The Cinderella Punk

The Map [Edited]

~Elle~

I sat in my makeshift room at the back of the changing room of the Ring. It was larger than the attic that was my former room. It had a single bed, a dresser and a closet where I kept the meager things I owned.

Sometime back when I had first ran away from Fiona, I had snuck back into my old house to take the possessions I had kept hidden from her. I was fortunate that the only things she discovered and destroyed were my mask and school books.

And now, I had a safe haven. I couldn't ask for more.

I reached out to the frame sitting on my dresser, running my finger over the faces of the beloved people in it. It was a picture of my parents. My mother, was cradling me to her chest, her face upturned to my father, her hair wind-blown.

She had a look of pure, unadulterated love on her face as she gazed into my father's eyes. He in turn looked besotted with his two girls, his arm wrapped tightly around my mother's waist and his other hand cradling the back of my head.

It was a moment I couldn't remember but one that I treasured.

I gripped the frame in my hands, careful not to crush it as a wave of pain and sadness washed over me.

It had been a week since I had seen Havoc, a week since his lips touched mine, a week since I had been in his arms. Oh how I ached for his touch.

But I couldn't be selfish. He had a life of his own. I had to understand that. But time had run out and I longed to be in the arms of my beloved one last time.

Taking a deep breath, I placed the frame carefully back onto the dresser and slipped out the piece of parchment that was hidden at the underside of one of my drawers.

I knew my secret was safe within the walls of the Ring, but cautiousness was a habit I could not break.

The parchment was a large, and it spanned over my bed. I smoothed it out carefully, the paper so worn and thin, I was afraid of tearing it. Lines and curves extended from one end of the parchment to the other, leaving no space untouched. It looked like a maze. Fitting for it guarded a treasure beyond price.

My father was a lover of puzzles. When I was younger, he would craft out mazes and puzzles to entertain me. The intricate puzzles, riddles and mazes were a special form of entertainment, something that had no further meaning until today.

The parchment before me was the most challenging puzzle my father had ever gifted to me. And it was only when I was older did I realize it to be a map of some sort.

Now I knew that this was indeed a map, a map to the Library. But this was no ordinary map. It was map that could potentially save me, if I studied it right. Because the Library was nothing as it name suggested. It was a guardian of my father's treasure, a guardian that would destroy anything in its path, except those who could decode it.

It was a death trap.

The map had strange symbols that ran across the lines,and dotted the parchment in a seemingly random manner. There were shapes, figures of animals, numbers. At a glance, it just seemed like random doodling.

But in the remaining time I had, I spent decoding the map. The shap, I discovered, were clues to which path to take. I traced a path with my finger. Somewhere along the line were a group of triangles lined linearly, cutting across a different set of lines.

They symbolized an alternate pathway, a short cut that would help me evade the death traps ahead. But there was a catch. At the end of the trail of triangles was the number four. It was circled and marked with an 'x'.