The Mysterious Frozen Fire - Chapter 8: Terrifying Clue

I've been very busy the past several days and have had very little extra time to work on my story.  But I still want to get a chapter posted every week, if I possibly can.  It may not be on Wednesday every time, but each should be.  When I posted this it is still Wednesday somewhere.

Please feel free to ask me any questions about the characters that I've introduced so far in the story that you may not know about, if you have not read my first story.  All comments are gladly aprricated.

Enjoy!

The Mysterious Frozen Fire

Chapter 8

Terrifying Clue

          All four of us were probably thinking the same thing: “How can we find this mysterious woman viking in this whole crowd?”

          Just then Annabeth came over and said, “Are two you guys still playing or not?” She pointed at me and Hatt.

          “Yeah guess we are,” I spoke.

          Annabeth walked off and continued to look for our other friends that would have hid.

          I then turned around to speak with the other three, “I think it would be best if we don’t directly go looking for this woman.  She might see us before we see her and run off.  She doesn’t know that we know about her.  So what she doesn’t know is that we know what she knows.”

          Adam shook his head and then replied, “So what your trying to say is if we go looking for her, do it in an indirect way?”

          “Exactly,” I stated.  “Just keep your eyes open for a woman that would look rather out of place, alone, or anything else out of the ordinary.  I didn’t get a very good look at her for in the closet it was dark and I was up high.  But if I had to guess she’d be about between Adam and my self’s heights.  That’s really the only thing I can give to describe the woman.”

          Hatt and I bid Annett and Adam, “Goodbye,” for now as we would probably see each other later on when it is time for the evening meal and also the Snoggletog Celebration, Hatt and I continued in the game searching for our friends.  After about ten to fifteen minutes we had done so; except for one thing, no one could find my older sister, Asvord.

          “Well she’s has to be somewhere,” my little sister said.

          “I know Elsa, but where?” I replied.

          Tuffnut said, “Where did you leave her last?”

          “Tuff this is a person we are talking about,” Hiccup explained.  “Not a book or object you might misplace.”

          Ruffnut then said hitting her brother on the back of the head, “Yeah you idiot this is a person we are talking about.”

          Tuffnut then face planted because Ruffnut hit him so hard.  Tuff sat up and said, “Ooo, stars.  Nice stars.”

          Annabeth kind of just stared at what the twins were doing.  Hiccup told her just to ignore them for the most part and you will be fine.

          Faith mentioned, “I saw your sister, Asvord go in the direction of the side door to the Hall.  Maybe she’s still there in that room?”

          “But Jarl searched there,” replied Hatt.  “Could she still be hiding there?”

          “Let’s find out,” I stated as I led the group to the room with the side entrance to The Great Hall.

          When we arrived and entered the room, it looked the same as the time when I checked the door.  Just to “trouble check” I told everyone to search the room and the upstairs room.  Everyone did so and reported back when they were done that they did not see my sister anywhere.

          “Where could she have gone?” I wondered.  “She couldn’t be in any of the other rooms or places in the Hall because a lot of you guys were hiding there and said that she was not there.”

          There was a table nearby and I leaned up against it.  Several of the others sat down on the benches of the table I was leaning up against.  I then turned around and thought out loud where I thought my sister could have gone.

          I saw Elsa walk a little bit over to my left and crouch down near the floor.

          “Look at this Jarl,” stated Elsa.

          I noticed something near one of the wood square-titled floorboards.  When I walked over and examined the square tile Elsa said, “Look here around this floorboard.  Are you thinking what I am thinking?”

          “I think I am,” I said smiling at my little sister as she had found a very important clue; either for finding my sister or how the mysterious woman may have escaped without being noticed by either Hatt, Annett, Adam, or myself.

          Meen questioned, “What did you find?”

          “Hey Hatt do you remember what I said about if the ‘mysterious woman’ what evidence would she leave behind if she were to exit The Great Hall?” I asked as I collected a white substance from along the little grove next to the square tile floorboard.

          Fishlegs interjected, “Hold on, the m-mi-mysterious woman?”

          “I’ll catch all of you up on the details in a few minutes,” I stated.

          Hatt then answered my question, “If the ‘mysterious woman’ tried to use one of the exits of The Great Hall there would be evidence of snow around the door frame, especially near the floor.”

          I held up my hand with the white substance and smiled.  There was a short pause.

          Hatt then realized, “Is that…-?”

          I shook my head saying, “Yes it is.”

          “What’s what?” asked Snotlout.

          “Come on it should be as plain as the nose on your face,” Astrid mocked.

          “What?” Snotlout said jumping off the bench he was sitting on.  “What’s on my face?  Get it off!”

          Tuffnut jumped up and “helped”, “Wait, I see it.  I’ll get it off.”  Tuffnut punched Snotlout in the face.

          “Hey!” exclaimed Snotlout.  “What was that for?”

          “Oh, I sorry I missed.  Whatever it was, it got away,” Tuff shrugged his shoulders.

          Ruffnut then teased, “No wait, its right behind you!”

          Tuffnut gasped, “What?! Where?!”

          Snotlout then said under his breath, “I’ll show you who can punch me in the face.”

          “Hey alright!” ordered Hiccup.  “I think what most of us know,” Hiccup gave a stern look at the twins and Snotlout, “is the clue that Elsa just found and the white substance Jarl is holding, is snow.”

          “Snow?” said Snotlout, very puzzling.

          Fishlegs then wondered, “Why would snow be this far from the side door here, which has not been open since it started snowing, and be just around the one tile there?  Unless…”

          Astrid intervened, “The floorboard there is actually a cover for a hidden passageway.”

          Ashley then got up from the bench with Hattori, “Well what are we waiting for?  Let’s go see where the passageway will take us.”

          I agreed with Ash.  This might not be where my sister had planned to go, but maybe she saw the “mysterious woman” open the cover and go through.  Know my sister the way I do, she would have followed this woman to see where she would go.  However, I am worried my sister may have run into some trouble when she followed the woman.

          After I opened the cover door, I poked my head in to see how big the passageway was.  There was just enough light from the room above for me and a single torch on the wall below to see that it was a small room just like the size of the one above; but the ground, walls, and surrounding area was carved out of the rock of the mountain.  There were about the same number of furniture items in the room; though from here to the ground below was only about a six foot drop.  Planting my hands on the side of the three foot square opening, I lowered myself down into the bottom room.  Since I was a little less than six feet tall, it was only a short hop down to touch the ground.

          “Watch yourselves as you come down.  The height of the room is not much taller than I am,” I warned the others as they started to come down.

          Adam then volunteered, “Since I am over six feet, I think Annett and I should stay above here.  But also to guard the floor-door in case the woman or your sister comes back up without seeing you guys first.”

          “Sounds good,” I replied back.

          “I can barely fit in this room,” declared Cullan.

          Once all of my friends were in the cave room, we all started down a rather narrow tunnel due north from our position.  We had walked nearly twenty yards when the tunnel started to curve downwards to the left and leveled off when we had gone back south.

          Once we had gone out from under The Great Hall, there was a noticeable drop in temperature.  This was due to the fact that the heating from the Hall could not over compensate for the fact that the cold air from the weather outside seeping through the ground and finding its way into this tunnel.

          In this room there was much lighter from several torches on the walls.  This room looked very much like The Great Hall’s “war room” where our viking ancestors would go over battle maneuvers during wars.

          “Have you ever seen this room, Hiccup?” I asked.

          “No I have not,” Hiccup replied.

          Astrid added, “I don’t think any of us knows about this room.”

          “This probably was safe haven for the village if there were ever under attack,” suggested Hiccup grabbing one of the torches on the wall and walking over to the center of the rather large room to examine some papers on a large round table.  “By the looks of these papers and the information on them, they date back several generations.”

          “Why would our ancestors just forget about a ‘war-room’ as awesome as this?” thought Snotlout then said under his breath, “I know I wouldn’t.”

          Ruffnut then stated while she and her brother picked up a couple of knocked over chairs, “It looked like there was a fight in here.  Look at the mess in this place.”

          “It is very messy isn’t it,” I replied.

          “Messy?” said Pat.  “I think it is just.. lived in is all.”

          Explod nudged Pat, “I was thinking the same thing.”

          Thoreous joined in, “So was I.”

          After spending several minutes of looking around the room, we all came back together for a meeting to think of what to do next.  We found that there were three other passageways leading out south, southwest, and west.  We all decided that we would split up into teams and go searching the tunnels for clues possible clues of the whereabouts of my sister and for the “mysterious woman”.  I again got asked by Fishlegs about how this “mysterious woman” came from.  So I then recounted what had transpired when I was finding a hiding place for the game; and from then on with Hatt, Annett, and Adam.

          While getting use to the smell of the room and the temperature of the room, I started smelling something.

          “Do you smell that guys?” I questioned.

          “Yeah,” said Hatt as he sniffed the air.

          Meen then concluded, “Is this the sweet-honey smell from before?”

          “Yes it is,” I responded.

          Navaro then addressed the fact that, “This strange woman has gone through this passageway.”

          Ashley then stated, “Because our mysterious figure is a woman, I am beginning to think that his sweet-honey like smell Hatt and you, Jarl, is not just a coincidence with the woman.  But that the smell is a perfume of the woman that she wears.”

          “You know you may be right,” said Astrid.

          Hattori tacked on with a smile at Ashley, “Ash is always right.”

          After we had picked our three teams of six, six, and five people, Tuffnut saw something on the floor, “Whoa look at this.”

          “What?” some of us asked.

          “There is blood here on the floor and part of the table here,” Tuff directed our attention to the floor.

          “Must have been from an epic fight between warriors,” Snotlout expressed.

          “Wait hold on,” I said when Hiccup had drawn the torch away from the floor.  “Come back with torch Hiccup.”

          Hiccup did so and I examined part of the floor next to the spot where Tuff had pointed to.  There was a one-inch oblong circle of blood on the ground.

          “So there’s blood on the ground,” Snotlout declared.  “What of it?”

          There was something different of this blood compared to the rest.  I dabbed my right pointer finger in it and rubbed it against my thumb.

          “Just as I thought,” I voiced.  “This blood is different from the rest of the stains because it is fresh.  It has not dried to the same feel and color of the other splotches.  This blood is fresh.”

          I then looked at my sister at the same time she turned to look at me.  I was starting to fear the worst, but I did not want to think about that now.  I just wanted to find my sister.