In the Shadow of Power - Hogwarts Legacy

Chapter 11

The passageway curved to the right and then opened up into a huge cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites created a maze through the open space, but through an opening like a window they could see across an underground lake was a set of doors. To their right was a smaller, similar set of doors with no visual handle for opening them. Instead, there were three metal plates hanging among the stalactites with the ancient magic symbol on them that Alayna had seen previously.

"I wasn't expecting there to be...man-made objects down here," Sebastian commented as he walked up to the door and looked it over. He glanced over his shoulder back at Alayna, "Any ideas how we open these?"

"It seems like these plates have something to do with it," Alayna approached one that was set a little lower so she could get up close. They appeared to be attached to a pole in such a way that they could spin. "Let me give something a try." She took a few steps back so she could see the three plates and cast at each of them. As each was hit, they began to spin and once they were all spinning the doors opened before them.

"Nice! This will be a piece of cake," Sebastian grinned. As he said that the ground beneath them rumbled and shook. A few loose stones tumbled down from above. From where Alayna was standing, she could see through that opening onto the lake rocks rising from the water and partially forming a bridge to lead to the set of doors across the way.

"Look, it's starting to form a bridge! There must be a few more of these we have to get through to complete it and then we can cross," Alayna pointed it out to Sebastian.

"Ah, then I guess we should continue on." Sebastian raised his arms to indicate that she should go first while he smirked. Still, she could not tell if he was being a genuine gentleman or just messing with her. She wasn't sure why it bothered her so much, not knowing. They had only met last week, it couldn't really be that she liked him already.

"I had no idea caves this big existed under the Forbidden Forest. It's incredible," Alayna said as they walked through to another area.

"I was unaware too. I know of a few smaller caves, but this place is massive!" Sebastian threw his arms up as they entered another large chamber. Despite their loud voices echoing through the cavern, Alayna heard some other sound coming from somewhere near by.

"Did you hear that?" Looking around the space, she couldn't see anything immediately besides the path that led onwards and some spiderwebs. Albeit, fairly large spiderwebs.

"Hear what?"

"It sounded like...clicking?" Alayna wasn't sure how else to describe what she had heard. The clicking noise echoed through the cavern again as did the sound of tapping as three large spiders crawled down from crevices near the ceiling of the cave. Acromantula as they were technically called in the book Alayna had read. She always just called them giant spiders. Back home, they frequently had problems with these beasts which liked to hide in the many crevices in the rocky landscape. Alayna absolutely hated them and was very afraid of them.

"Spiders! Ugh, I hate these things," Sebastian commented as he drew out his wand. Alayna broke free from her momentary paralysis and drew her wand as well. She wasn't so helpless facing spiders like these this time.

"You and me both," Alayna muttered.

"Use fire on them, they burn up quick," Sebastian gave her advice before casting Confringo at one of them. Sure enough, it went up in a ball of flame that ran screeching in circles before dying. Alayna was suddenly not sure she liked the idea of burning them when they made noises like that and ran around. The other two spiders began stalking up to them, clicking their fangs. Burning them, however, did seem to be quite effective.