Brooks Event Self Para
While exploring a seemingly abandoned Roman mansion, Brooks comes across a set of files that may have something to do with the curse afflicting both sides.
Brooks probably should have taken the hint the last time him and Harper almost died because they left camp. That girl and her bow wielding evil sidekick should have been enough to scare him under the lake for the rest of eternity. Unfortunately for him, Brooks didn’t seem to learn from his mistakes very quickly. Which was how he had ended up back outside of the camp and strolling around the outskirts of New Rome by himself on the shores that surrounded the lake that secretly stored the Greek’s camp underneath.
Mansions stood guarding the view of the lake. Homes that Brooks could only dream of living in. Most of them stood abandoned, the war’s constant fighting took too much of a toll. Many of them were physically harmed, siding burned off or roofs completely caved in. In one spot only the foundation from what used to be a home remained. Brooks guessed that it had been completely burned to the ground. Although Brooks had spotted the mansions from a distance on multiple occasions, this was the first he had been so close to them. And it didn’t take long for his eyes to hone onto a shattered window. His instincts got the best of him. He only considered his options for about thirty seconds before he was jogging over to the oversized home and stripping his jacket off. He wrapped it around his fist and began wiping at the frame, making sure to dust off any remaining shards of glass before attempting to climb through. Once he was positive that he was safe, Brooks tossed the jacket and his bag through the hole and then hoisted himself up and into the building.
The first thing that Brooks noticed was that the place was clearly being used for something. A quick glance through the first floor told him that it looked like somebody was keeping supplies here. Maybe patrols were keeping supplies for easy access? Brooks couldn’t be sure. He moved through the first floor and eventually made his way up the steps and onto the second floor. He made his way into a bedroom and found that there was a desk sitting up against a large window that overlooked the lake. “What do we have here?” Brooks asked aloud as he made his way to the desk and started rifling through the papers. Most of it was in Roman or Greek, which Brooks could just barely make out despite the fact that his brain was apparently hardwired to know the language. And it must have been true. Because in spite of his obvious lack of any training in the languages, there were certain words or phrases that began to jump out at him and start making sense. Curse was apparent. Though he didn’t know what curse the papers were referring to. Brooks slid into the seat and started shuffling through them, wondering if any of the other pages might jump out or if he was really lucky, someone had translated English onto the pages.
From the few things that he could make out from the pages, one of them was some sort of spell. There were clearly a set of instructions and what was probably a list of ingredients but Brooks couldn’t decipher any of it. Maybe if he brought it to Wally, he would be able to figure the spell out. He hadn’t seen anybody at the camp with spells as impressive as Wally. A few pages after that and Brooks came across the sketch of what looked like some kind of ceremonial knife or dagger. He couldn’t be sure, but the detail on the hilt made it look like its use wasn’t intended for actual battle. But then again, he knew very little about Greek or Roman ways of fighting.
He wasn’t sure how long he spent trying to read those damn pages. All he knew was that at some point the sun had started to sink below the tree line and his focus was broken when he heard voices from the bottom floor of the mansion. The noise was enough to frighten him into jolting upward and slamming his knee into the desk. The talking downstairs came to an abrupt halt and Brooks knew that they had heard the noise. In an instant, Brooks was shoving all of the papers together in a hasty but semi neat pile and then stuffing them into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. And got up and shut the bedroom door, locking it behind him before making his way back to the desk and climbing on top of it.
Brooks was just about to crawl out the window when he spotted it. On the other side of the room, resting on the top of a bag, was that knife. It had to be the same one. He hopped off of the desk and ran over to grab the knife, shoving it into his backpack before making his way back to the window. He felt around the windowsill until he found the locking mechanism and unlatched it, shoving the window open and climbing through it and onto the roof. Seconds later he was sliding down onto the balcony before finishing his final drop to the bottom floor and taking off into the forest. Hopefully someone back at camp would know more about this curse than he did.