Chapter 6
Ryu looked around the grand entrance hall. He needed to find a way to catch that rat. At the top of the staircase was a long hallway, which was on the same wall of the room as the double doors Toshiro had escaped through
Figuring that there might be a staircase to the second floor deeper into the castle, Ryu headed down the dark hall. The deeper he got, the darker it seemed, until he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He stuck his hand out in front of him in hopes of feeling a door or wall.
There it was, the cold feeling of finely finished wood. Ryu groped for the doorknob. He gripped the curved, intricately carved, handle and pulled the door back.
Unfortunately, the room on the other side wasn’t much brighter. Ryu barely made out the outline of two large staircases curving around a large, porcelain statue of a warrior on horseback. They led to a second floor balcony that, much like the one in the entrance hall, wrapped a full circle around the room. There were two more staircases and two more balconies just like the first higher up in the massive, dark, room.
The room was large and dark. A cold draft swept through Ryu like an ocean wave hitting a small boy playing on the shore. Ryu looked around the dark balconies. Moonlight streamed through the windows lighting the marble floor. Ryu thought he saw a dark figure dashing beside the railing of the third floor balcony.
He ran up the stairs, around the large statue. He ran up to the second floor and hooked a left down the shadowy balcony. Finally, he came to a door. He had no clue where he was going, just running, running through the dark corridors of the castle.
He opened another door and stepped into a long, brightly lit hall. It was enormous and had sparkling white pillars on either side of the long, red carpet trailing down the center. Ryu wondered why this room was brightly lit and the others seemed as though they hadn’t been used in ages.
He rushed down the grand hallway and turned when he came to a door on his right. Slowly, he opened the door and stepped into a large tower, lit only by the moonlight shining through a single narrow window. There was a stone staircase spiraling several stories up the dark tower.
He rushed up the crumbling, old, stairway, all the way to the top where the stairs came to a stop, meeting with a wooden floor. It was a small room with a sloping ceiling and dusty old trophy cases in the corner. He walked to the center of the small study and examined a pile of dusty books on a small end table. He noticed a small, wooden door covered in cobwebs and dust on the far wall. He gripped the rusted doorknob, not knowing what could be behind such a door so high up in a tower like this.
He opened the door and stepped out into the cool, crisp air of midnight. The full moon shone bright across the plains onto the castle. Ryu looked down and realized that he was standing on a stone bridge between the study in the tower he was just in and another, much larger tower in the east wing of the castle. He did not bother to look over the side of the bridge. He already knew that he was almost at the highest point in the castle. Normally, Ryu would’ve been not have been phased by the dizzying height, however, this bridge had no walls or railings on either side. But there was one more thing that made Ryu uneasy being on this bridge, the fact that standing in front of the door to the other tower was a man with short, black hair and a thick, broad, long sword slung across his back…Xavier.
