I held the key in my hand. It felt rough but I didn't mind. I tried the key in the door lock and from the sound that it made, we were certain that it was open.

“What do you think is in there?” Flaming Star asked.

“I don't know, but there’s only one way to find out.”

I pushed the door open, our lights cut through the darkness and revealed to us a staircase that went down. Stepping in, I felt the pressure of the heavy air on my chest. We took the steps down when suddenly all the candles that were attached to the wall sconces lit up one by one and illuminated the whole way down.

The staircase was not very long but what waited for us in the end was huge. It was a library full of books, lit by the giant chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

“Wow!” I said, “If only Twilight could see this, she would flip!”

“Yeah, it is kinda big, but I've seen bigger.”

“It's not the biggest library for sure, but the fact that he has one that is this big and is full is what is amusing.”

“I guess that's fair.”

“Does your palace have a library too?”

“Yes, and I think it is about the same size as this one, maybe slightly bigger and...aarg” he stretched his shoulders, “brighter.”

“Flame, are you feeling alright?”

“How many times do I have to tell you, I'M FINE!”

“But you neither look nor sound fine, at least not to me.”

“Whatever. What are we looking for in here again, more skulls?”

“I don't think so. The last letter sounded like we need to find another clue or something to make us do something with the dead. I imagine this is the last thing we need to do to get out of here. But I kind of doubt it at this point.”

“Let's hope that whatever we do will be our ticket back home.”

We stayed silent for a while.

“Let's take a look at the books,” I suggested.

“Um, why exactly?”

I sighed. “Because we should look around for something, and there’s nothing but books around here to look at.”

“Fair.”

There was a table and chair in the middle of the library. On it was another envelope. I picked it up and opened it.

Of all the letters I found, this was the most complex. I just stared at it for a few minutes, trying to make sense of it. But eventually, I gave up. Instead I went and looked at the books.

I started with the shelves that were closer to me. The left column seemed to be for poetry and famous works of literature. There were books such as “Foxy and Foxtail”, the collection of Lonely Poet (the one that has a poem about a crow or something), Leaves of Grass”, “Epic of the King” and the Sonnets. Those were not all but just the ones I know and had heard of before.

“Did you find anything?” Flaming Star shouted.

“Yeah, I found another envelope, with another riddle that I have no clue about.”

“Let me see,” he said as he came to the table and picked up the letter. He read it for himself quietly and then looked at me. “Whatever this is, it will lead us to what we want. We gotta put our minds together.”

“I guess that's the best thing to do now!”

We started theorizing about what the letter could have been leading us to, most of which were stupid speculations that we just passed by, but we thought some more. Maybe whit it is telling us not to go deep meant that what we want is not on the further shelves of the library. Or it could have meant that it is not a thick book. The records of the past could potentially be the history books.

“What if by it does not contain any ‘knowledge that is vast’ it is trying to tell us that is not a science book?” I suggested.

“Maybe, but we can't be sure...”

“In that case, we won't be certain of anything!”

“You’re right, we need to start testing some of these speculations.”

So did we. To start things off, we didn't look at the further shelves of the library. The “records of the past” could have been referring to the history books so we didn't check those either. And we went with my theory about the “knowledge that is vast” referring to science and stuff. Which left us with a few columns and that was where we didn't ready know what to do.

“So what now?” Flaming Star asked.

“I have no idea ... maybe we could ... hey, do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“This ... this music ... sounds like piano ...”

“Yeah ... a soft piano ... it sounds like it's coming from upstairs.”

“Did you see any pianos when we were up there, because I don't remember seeing one.”

“I think I did, but at the same time ... I am not sure.”

It was then that I realized that one of the candles had gone out.

“Flame, we are still on a time limit, only this time we may have more time to solve this.”

“At least we have more time.”

“Yeah, but the first time that we ran out of time there was only one skeleton, the second time there were four, and...”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That the penalty seems to be getting more and more serious, and I don't want to pull off the plan we used last time.”

“Look, no matter if they are one, four, or a hundred, I'll be fine!”

“No, you won't be!”

“Let's just focus, we don't have time!”

We tried thinking about the last parts of the letter. Meanwhile, the music started to ramp up, like it was reaching its chorus. But we didn't mind.

I reread the letter again: “don't go deep it is near and around/though it does not have a poetical sound.”

As I was reading it, it hit me! Literature! What we are looking for was also not in the literature section!

“Flame! It's not on the literature section either!”

“How do you know?”

“The clue said it doesn't have a poetical sound! What has a poetical sound? Greatest works of literature!”

“Yeah, that makes a-”

Before Flaming Star could finish his sentence, the music suddenly changed the tone from soft piano to literally smashing the keys rapidly! The music got so fast and rapid that I almost felt like it was a different song! But after a few seconds, the music stopped. And as soon as it stopped, we realized that a few more of the candles were also extinguished. We were running out of time!

“We need to hurry up!” Flaming Star said.

“Yeah! So not in historical, not science nor literature, and it's not on the deeper shelves of the library. Then it leaves us with just a few shelves, and that is if we are correct!”

“Let's hope we are! Something tells me that there is something really bad waiting for us if we run out of time!”

“Did you get anything else from the clue?”

“No, but we better act fast; there is only a few shelves, so we might be able to find what we are looking for by reading these books.”

“Are you sure that is a good idea?”

“No, but it is probably one of the best that we have at the moment. So, let's get started.” I dragged the ladder all the way from the left to the right for the biography section. “I'll head up and drop the books for you.”

“Got it.”

I climbed the ladder and dropped the books from the top shelves one by one; there were a lot of books and most of them were heavy. Luckily, I was not the who was supposed to catch them. But it didn't really matter.

“Hey, you are catching them, right?” I asked.

“No, I am going to let a book flatten my face!”

“Ughhhh!”

“Look, I am at least picking them up!”

I just pulled the books off the shelves after that and let them fall. After I was done with the top shelves I headed down the ladder.

“So what now, we read them?”

“Yeah, till we find what we are looking for in one of them.”

“And what exactly are we looking for?”

“Something like a ritual thing for bygones, I don't know!”

So we started. I sat down in the chair at the table and Flaming Star sat on the table. We each took one book at a time and looked through its pages as fast as we could. And then we just threw them into a pile of read books! Or we skimmed through the books; whatever you wanna call it!

After quite some time, we managed to get through all of the books, but there was nothing. There sure was quite a handful of information about many great people, but not what we needed. Before trying to pick up the bottom shelves book, I looked around the library to check the candles and it felt that many of them were extinguished. I was not sure if it was me not noticing it before or time had passed that fast but I knew one thing for sure: we needed to hurry up!

I picked a bunch of books and put them on the table, I told Flaming Star to do so, too. Then we read them as quickly as we could and moved on to pick up more and when we were done with those too we repeated the cycle. But even after finishing the whole biography section we still haven't found anything. The pile was getting bigger and bigger and our chance to find what we were looking for was getting smaller and smaller.

“We are getting nowhere with this!” Flaming Star nagged.

“YES, we are, we just need to keep looking!” I said as I adjusted the ladder on the other shelves and climbed it.

“I don't know about you, but I’d rather make a hole in the wall to escape than look for who knows what in the middle of the books inside a library!”

“I know it is boring and all,” I dropped down a few books, “But we are running out of time with every second, and it’s too late to come up with a plan B knowing that we are still unsure of what we are looking fo-”

I was panicking and throwing a bunch of the books at the floor, but there was one that I held in my hand which caught my attention. It was a black book with the icon of a bearded face, wearing a wizard hat, and from that I figured whom this book was related to: Star Swirl the Bearded! He may not be a great unicorn or a wizard in this world, but he is certainly a great astronomer and was known as a wise person. But what bugged me was something else.

“Hey, Flame, what are the books on the floor about?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what is their subject; is it science, poetry or what?”

“Oh, uhm …” He picked up a few of them. “This one is labeled as: math, and it's beauty! And this one is labeled as: Mathematics problems and their solution!”

“So this is the math section!”

“So what?”

“this book seems to be a biography of Star Swirl the Bearded, but we just finished the biography section and it's way over there!”

“Yeah, but it's not a big deal, maybe it was misplaced.”

“Maybe ... or it CAN BE THE ODD ONE OUT!” I shouted. “Catch me!” and in my excitement I jumped from the ladder.

“Ow wow wow!”

I crash landed on Flaming Star with the book in my hand.

“You are not gonna suck my blood now, are you?” Flaming Star said.

“Maybe later,” I said as I stood up. “First off, let's get out of here!”

I put the book on the table and started scanning through it.

“Now why in the name of sanity did you jump on me?”

Just when I wanted to answer him, I found another envelope in the middle of the book. “Because this IS what we are looking for.”

I opened it and took out the letter that was inside, although this one was a bit different:

There was also a drawing of a pentagram in the bottom of the letter, indicating that the skulls should be placed on the points of the star.

“Now what is this exactly?” Flaming Star asked.

“Not sure, but we better keep this one with us, along with the...” I realized that I did not have the skull in my hand! “Where is the skull that I had in my hand?”

“You put it on the table.” He pointed his finger at it.

I picked it up and looked around to judge our situation according to the candles. They were almost done. It was at this moment that I heard the sound of the piano again.

“Do you hear it too?” Flaming Star asked doubtfully.

“Yeah, and I think we should head upstairs to see what awaits us,”

And so we did. We walked up the staircase, and as we walked candles were extinguishing one by one! Halfway up, we started running to get to the door faster. And once we stepped into where we first came in, we noticed something. The room was lit up by candles, but not normal candles: these had a red, bright flame that gave the room an ominous look. And as we walked around, more candles lit up, but these ones had green flames. They were surrounding a pentagram.

“What is going on here?” Flaming Star asked surprisingly.

“Nothing good, for sure.”

The music reached its crescendo and as it did black holes started appearing from all over the room! Many, many holes and we both knew what was going to come out of them all.

“Sunset, hurry up! We need to perform the thingy!”

“Great idea!”

We ran up to the pentagram, and as we got there, the music stopped and the skeletons started crawling out of their holes. Meanwhile we set up the skulls on the points.

“They are almost out!” I said nervously as I looked back.

“What was the sentence that we have to say?” He stepped in the middle of the pentagram.

“NO! You are not doing this, it's dangerous!”

“Dangerous is the army of undead skeletons that are coming!”

Most of the skeletons were out, and I didn't want Flaming Star to put himself in the risk of being possessed. So I took him by the arm and threw him on the ground.

“Sorry, Flame, but you already put your life at risk once today, now is my turn!”

I steeped in the middle of the pentagram and said the words: “Az shoma komak mikhaham ey raftegan!”

And as I said that, the skulls floated in the air, and I felt an unconformable sensation all over my body! It felt as if someone was controlling my body. “Am I being possessed?” I asked myself. But then the skulls started rotating around my body. They let out an ear deafening scream and the only thing I could do was close my eyes.

After a few moments, I felt I could move my body again so I opened my eyes. The door was open, there was no bone barricade. I looked back and only saw Flaming Star on the floor, no skeletons in sight.

“Is it ... done?”

I looked around; the skulls were nowhere to be found, but the pentagram was still there. All the candles were extinguished! It was done.

I helped Flaming Star stand up and then we both walked out of the mansion. For some reason I felt something great in my body, a feeling of power.

The door slammed closed behind us as we walked out and the click sound that it made gave us the certainty that it was locked.

“Are you OK?” Flaming Star said as he was catching his breath.

“I guess, I am still in one piece.”

“What a night that was...”

“No kidding! It sure is something that I’ll definitely remember.”

“I also hope that you haven't forgot about histories exam tomorrow!”

“I don't really care at this point! I just want to figure out what is the deal with Pro. Skull Mustache.”

“Sooooo, you don't want this?” he showed me a piece of paper.

“What is that?” I grabbed the paper out of his hand.

“It's the answer to the exam; found it in his room of records. At least we got this out of that nightmarish house, am I right?”

“Flame...”

“What?”

“This is for last year’s history final!”

Author's Notes:

Happy Halloween! I hope you have enjoyed this story and if you have please give a thumbs up and if not please let me know in the comments why.

Special Thanks to my Editor Daniel Drazen.