Enchantyon: Welcome Home

Keridwen of Khar Vell

The Old Aureate Wing

Imafenduwell Hall

Following their playtime in the courtyard, Thumper’s parents permitted him to show Keridwen around specific parts of Imafenduwell Hall.

“But stay in this wing of the Hall!” his mother, Elara, called after him. “No hopping around all of Tesardess—Thumper, do you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you, Mom!” Thumper called back.

The first place he took her was to the second floor of the Hall. He explained to her it was there that the different apartments and bedrooms they used were located, as well as several lounge areas, and even a few study halls.

“And this,” said Thumper, opening one door. “This one is your room!”

The bedroom in question was a large room with a fourposter bed in the centre of the back wall, and on either side of the bed was a large window. There was a children’s table with chairs off to one side, and there were also several other pieces of furniture, like a dresser and a bedroom mirror.

“Wow…” said Keridwen as she spun around in the centre of the room, taking it all in. “This is all for me? This entire room?”

“Yup! And look at this!”

Thumper went to a switch on the wall, which he pulled down using all four of his arms. The lower section of the wall then retracted, and three large tubes made of hard, clear glass revealed themselves. They started roaring like a strange hurricane, sucking in air from the bedroom.

“They’re laundry shoots!” Thumper shouted over the sucking noise. He was trying to be careful not to get sucked in as he made his way towards the centre of the room where Keridwen was. “You just toss anything that needs to be cleaned into them and they go all the way down to the laundry room—”

“Are you sure these are safe?” Keridwen shouted, as the noise grew louder. “They just seem very strong! I don’t want to get pulled in by them! Where did you say they went?”

“Yea, they’re fine!” Keridwen could just barely hear Thumper say. “They weren’t working a day or two ago…but my dad and granddad fixed them! So they should be fine—Oh shoot!”

In one giant pull, the middle laundry shoot yanked them both backwards, and before Keridwen knew it, she was hurdling through the air and into the laundry shoot.

Keridwen and Thumper screamed as the air current carried them so that they were floating in the air as they flew through the pitch black tube. The tubes themselves, it seemed, went throughout much of Imafenduwell Hall, and thus, Thumper’s house tour took on a whole new turn.

“Thumper!” Keridwen screamed into the dark, over the vacuum winds. “Get us out of here!”

“Uh, I can’t!” Thumper called back, presumably just in front of her. “We’ll have to wait until the system detects us in it!”

“It can do that?!”

“Well, it’s supposed to! Hey look! We’re passing through the main dining hall!”

Keridwen just barely had time to take a quick glance at what he was talking about. At certain points, the laundry tube jutted out of the wall, and they glimpsed the long room below. A sturdy oak table dominated the room. Red and white banners hung from the beige stone walls, while gold, silver, and brass decorations adorned the rest of the room.

Next, it introduced Keridwen to a massive barn-like room. Saddles were fitted on most of the animals in the barn, which was filled with stables and different animals, and had sunlight streaming in from the wooden ceiling. One creature in particular that caught Keridwen’s eye was a griffon with feathers that were a mixture of red, gold, and brown. It was wrestling with a giant raven-looking creature over what looked like a small golden ball they were playing with, somehow just barely missing the other creatures around them who were too busy playing around with some broomsticks to notice them.

“Where are we now?” Keridwen called out in the renewed darkness.

“If those are the stables, then we must be in the Old Aureate Wing still!” Thumper replied. “That’s good at least!”

Suddenly, a blaring siren alarm sounded all around Keridwen and both she and Thumper fell to the surface of the laundry shoot. They fell to the glass tube and slide through it with such speed and impact that Keridwen was certain she would get a rub burn from it all. In a sudden burst of light, Keridwen saw Thumper and their dire circumstances that had been impossible since being pulled into the tubes. Keridwen realized Thumper was nearly hidden under the dirty laundry in their own tube, which she had failed to notice earlier. Looking around, Keridwen realized they were still within the walls of Imafenduwell Hall. A complex network of glass tubes surrounded them. All the laundry in those other sections of the system had stopped, too.

“ERROR! ERROR!” cried out a mechanical voice from somewhere. “WARNING! BIOLOGICAL MATTER DETECTED! INITIALIZING THOROUGH ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. PLEASE HOLD…”

To Keridwen’s shock, Thumper actually gave a sigh of relief at the sound of this. “Phew! Thank Yggomni!”

“You’re happy?” Keridwen said. “Why? We’re still stuck here.”

“Well, yeah, but now the system knows we’re here, so it’ll probably just spit us back out somewhere—either your room where we came from or somewhere else. See, I told you my dad and granddad fixed it!”

“ATTENTION!” said the mechanical voice. “ANALYSIS OF SITUATION SURROUNDING DISCOVERED CONTENTS HAS BEEN COMPLETED! BIOLOGICAL MATTER HAS BEEN DESIGNATED AS WASTE AND VERMIN. REROUTING TO FURNACE FOR IMMEDIATE INCINERATION. HAVE A PLEASANT DAY!”

“Uh…Thumper?” Keridwen’s hair and dress started blowing in the wind again, and within seconds, both she and Thumper were hurdling through the air once more as the laundry system kicked back into action, this time keeping the lights on.

“At least we can see this time!” said Thumper.

“Yeah, now we can watch ourselves as we burn up in a great big furnace! That’s just great.” Keridwen shot back sarcastically. “Get us out of here!”

For a moment, Thumper twirled around in the air current helplessly with a look on his face that said he was trying—and failing—to keep his cool. Finally he said, “Ok…I think I know where we’re going to be in a minute! Hold on!”

Thumper reached out and placed his hand on the side of the glass tube. The result was that he slowed himself down just enough so that Keridwen could catch up to him. He grabbed a hold of her with his two lower arms. He desperately searched for a grip on the glass as they entered another exposed section of the laundry shoot, using his two upper arms and his legs to slow their descent.

Despite feeling very squeezed inside the tube at that moment, Keridwen’s eyes quickly became fixed on the room underneath them. Upon various pedestals and shelves rest and stood various amulets, suits of armour, weapons, as well as other trinkets. There were pelts of monsters on the floor and the heads of various creatures—and even one elf with antlers—mounted on the walls. And standing in front of one pedestal all on her own was none other than Lalauri. Onto the pedestal and underneath a glass dome, she was placing a large, half-ethereal, severed hand that was all too familiar.

“This is Miss Lalauri’s trophy room!” Thumper exclaimed. “This is where she keeps all the cool things she brings back from—”

“Thumper!” shouted Keridwen. “Just start shouting so we can get her attention!”

While all four of his hands were fully occupied, Thumper joined in on Keridwen’s shouting as she also started banging on the glass tube. It was no use, though. Lalauri was wholly transfixed on examining the items in her trophy room, as if taking a stroll down memory lane.

“ERROR! ERROR!” examined the mechanical voice once again. “BLOCKAGE DETECTED. INCREASING SUCTION STRENGTH.”

“Oh, boy!” said Thumper. “Keri, hang on!”

And then they were off again. Ripped from where they had stopped, Keridwen watched as the trophy room disappeared in a flash and they reluctantly continued their journey through the laundry shoot.

Then the tube went straight down. Panicked and screaming, Keridwen and Thumper hopelessly held onto each other tightly for dear life as they plummeted head first down into the unknown depths of Imafenduwell Hall.

The surrounding air quickly grew hotter and hotter the deeper they went. Suddenly they were no longer in the cramped world of the spaces in-between the walls of the Hall. The tube section that they were now in was in a vast underground cavern with a floor of molten lava directly beneath them.

“How deep are we?!” Keridwen asked.

“I don’t know,” said Thumper. “I’ve never been down to the furnace before!”

“How do we get out of here?!”

“I don’t know!”

That’s when Keridwen saw the furnace. On a large island of bedrock in the middle of the lava, a tower of iron stood tall, emitting plumes of smoke from its exhausts. In the main chamber, a roaring fire blazed away. It directly connected that same chamber to the glass tube they were in.

“That doesn’t even make any sense!” said Keridwen. “Why would there even be a furnace down here if there’s all this lava?!”

“Keri, I don’t think now’s the time to argue architecture!” Thumper tried stopping them again by holding onto the walls of the tube again. However, this time he shouted in pain and quickly pulled back his hands. “It’s too hot! We—we can’t get out!”

Keridwen’s eyes darted in every direction to find something that she could use to escape from their situation. Further down the length of the tube from where they were was a fork in the shoot; one direction was leading to the mouth of the furnace, and the other was leading somewhere else.

Unfortunately, the fork in the path was closed off because the tube that led elsewhere was disconnected from their tube, hinting at a system that could switch between the two path options. There was no means for either Keridwen or Thumper to have any influence on it…unless she used magic.

With less than a minute before being tossed into a fire that was already causing them to be drenched with sweat, Keridwen reached out with her hand and tried with all her might to will the track to switch the tube over to the other pathway. Keridwen didn’t even know if she had that magical power within her, but she had to try.

Then Keridwen’s hands caught on fire. Whether it was from her use of magic, or from the proximity of the flames, she didn’t know—she couldn’t focus enough to sort that out. All she knew was that her hands and forearms became enveloped in burns as the glass tube only just budged. The section of the shoot that could move rattled in defiance as Keridwen screamed in both pain and frustration to get it to move.

With one final wrench, the glass tube made the switch to the other tube track just as they were coming up to the fork, sparing them from a fiery death by only a few seconds.

“ERROR! ERROR! BIOLOGICAL CONTENTS EVADING INCINERATION!”

As the mechanical system voice raged around them, and as Thumper cheered and shouted for joy at their escape, the pain became too much for Keridwen. The world around them slowly faded to black around her as the glass tube carried them to a place unknown.

“Keri? Keri, wake up!”

Keridwen slowly returned to the waking world with a throbbing headache. Still drenched in sweat, she was now freezing in the cold air that she now found herself in.

It was Thumper who had been calling her name, and he was kneeling down next to her on the floor of wherever they were.

“Thank goodness, you’re ok!” Thumper exclaimed, as Keridwen sat herself upright on the floor.

That’s when Keridwen realized she was actually on a floor and not floating in a glass tube anymore. Looking around the area, they appeared to be in a large torch-lit workshop of some sort, with workbenches and various tools that she had never seen before. And off to one side was a large dais with a giant suit of what Keridwen could only assume was armour. Only it looked like a set of armour for one of the brasshulks that were all around Imafenduwell Hall, given its size and how elaborate the design of it was.

“Where are we?” Keridwen finally said.

“We’re still underground somewhere.” Thumper replied. “Under the Old Aureate Wing. Careful! Your arms! They’re still burnt. I put some bandages and stuff on them, but you should still be careful with them.”

“You did this yourself?” Keridwen examined the bandages that neatly covered the entirety of her hands and forearms. She could feel there was even some sort of salve for her wounds that eased the pain somewhat. “Wow, Thumper. Where did you even get this stuff?”

“From my medicine pouch.” Thumper quickly showed her the small leather pouch that was attached to his side. “My Mom makes me carry it around whenever I go off on my own. She even showed me how to do stuff like this so I can mend myself a bit in case I get hurt…we should probably try to find a way out of here, though, if you’re feeling better. Can you walk?”

Keridwen nodded and slowly rose to her feet with Thumper’s help.

The two began looking around the room. Whatever this workshop’s origins were, it must have been ancient. Keridwen was unsettled by the sight of a few doorways that had caved in, the wooden structure having rotted away and collapsed in some areas long ago. Eventually, she found another door that wasn’t caved in. Keridwen removed the wooden plank barricading the door and peered through the doorway into a torch-lit corridor that seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions.

“Keri, I think I found something!” Thumper called out.

Leaving the door open a little, Keridwen went over to where he was. Thumper had been standing in front of a part of the wall where there was a sort of cabinet built into it. Although calling it a cabinet didn’t seem entirely right to Keridwen. On the wall beside the cabinet was a pair of buttons—one had an up arrow on it and the other had a down arrow painted on it—and there was a light on the ceiling of the cabinet.

“It’s called a dumbwaiter!” Thumper exclaimed. “It’s used for getting things between different floors. I didn’t know one of them came all the way down here, though. We can use this to get back upstairs!”

“Where upstairs, though?” Keridwen asked.

“I don’t know. But anything’s better than being stuck down here.”

After having nearly been tossed alive into a furnace, Keridwen didn’t agree with that sentiment. However, their only other option was to walk down a seemingly endless hallway for who knew how long. And so, Keridwen climbed and squished herself into the small cabinet, and allowed for Thumper to sit on her lap as he did the same.

“Hey…Keri?” said Thumper as they pushed the button to have the dumbwaiter take them upwards.

“Yeah?” said Keridwen.

“Could we not tell anyone what happened? If my mom finds out that I got us sucked up by the laundry shoots and nearly thrown into the furnace…well, I just want to do a bunch of things and they’ll never let me if they here about this…”

“Why? What do you mean? What do want to do?”

“I want to explore! I want to see everything out there in the world! My parents don’t want me to, though—they rarely let me even leave Imafenduwell Hall because they’re worried I’ll get myself into trouble. And even in here, they only let me stick to the Old Aureate Wing because here’s where we live…if they find out I nearly got us burned to bits, they won’t let me out of their sights until I’m granddad’s age!”

“How old are you now?”

“Seven—so it’ll be forever!”

“You’re about a year younger than me? Huh. Well, don’t worry, Thumper. Your secret is safe with me. Besides, all that anyone has to prove that we went anywhere at all is all this dirt on our clothes, and we could’ve gotten that from anywhere. No one will know that it was your fault. I promise.”

“…Really?”

“Really, really.” Keridwen smiled down at him. “And you know what? I’ll even go exploring with you! We can start with Imafenduwell Hall! You said you’ve never been beyond the Old Aureate Wing, right? Perfect, then you and I will both do it for the first time! We’ll make a map of the place, pack snacks, and explore the bits of this wing and the others that you haven’t been to yet. And we’ll be back before anyone knows we’re gone, just like today.”

Looking down at him, Keridwen caught the edges of the great big smile on the little nulliwump’s face.

“Thanks, Keri.” Said Thumper, looking up at her. “That sounds awesome.”

“Yeah, of course. Anything for a friend.”

When the dumbwaiter finally stopped ascending, the pair found their opening blocked by a wall of some sort.

“Well, now how do we get out?” said Keridwen, looking around the small box for something she might have missed.

“Hang on a second.” Said Thumper, inspecting the wall. “I don’t think this is actually a wall.”

“What is it then?”

“I don’t know…but I think we might be able to get through it if we kick it hard enough.”

And so, that’s just what they set out to do. After several attempts, they felt the object that had been blocking the entrance loosen, and a small sliver of light appeared at the edge of it.

“Alright,” said Keridwen. “One final push then, and I think we’ll have it. One…two…three!”

However, just as they went to kick, the barrier flung open, revealing a very confused Lalauri who received the full might of their kicks straight to the stomach. This—added to the elf’s shock—sent her tumbling backwards and falling to the ground.

“OUCH!” Lalauri said, stroking her stomach as the children hurried out of the dumbwaiter.

“Oh, no!” Keridwen rushed over and knelt down on the ground next to the elf. “Sorry, Lalauri! We didn’t mean to!”

“Ugh…Keridwen? Thumper? What were you doing back there? I thought you were a wild animal bumping around back there. Wait a minute, if you were in there then…you must have been down in the lover levels. What in the world were you two doing down there? And how did you even find your way down there?”

Nervously, Keridwen told Lalauri a tale about how they had got lost wandering around the Hall and ended up in the lower levels. While recounting the events, she conveniently left out the part about Thumper causing their journey down the laundry shoot or the danger of being incinerated.

“And the reason that my hands are burned was because…well, I tried to use my magic to teleport us back to the main level and…it didn’t work properly.”

When Keridwen was done, Lalauri gave a loud sigh. “You know what? At least the two of you are safe and back up here again. You’re both a mess, though. Come along. Let’s get you two changed and let’s see if we can find a potion or something to fix those arms of yours, Keri.”

“Um, Miss Lalauri?” said Thumper. “Where are we, exactly? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this room before.”

They were in one of the nicest bedrooms that Keridwen had ever seen. The ceiling was adorned with a sparkling crystal chandelier, and the walls were graced with several stunning paintings. The room was incredibly spacious, and a luxurious four-poster bed with silk sheets caught her attention. She finally understood that the large painting had been the culprit all along, preventing their escape from the dumbwaiter.

“The reason you’ve never seen this room is because it’s almost always locked so that no one can get in. It’s a guest room I put together some time ago for my friend, Mindara.”

“Who’s that?” Keridwen asked.

“She’s someone who helped me out of…a very dark and very literal pit of despair a long, long time ago. She sometimes comes to visit—rarely, though. So, when she stops by, I’ll have this room set up for her.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I believe it was about…oh, maybe a hundred years ago now? Now come, children. Enough questions. Let’s get you two sorted out.”

And with that, Keridwen let Lalauri guide her out of the lavish bedroom, bringing an end to her and Thumper’s exciting misadventure.