"We'll meet back up here at the grand staircase in ten minutes if we find nothing. If you do find something just shout for me and I'll come running to you." Dion says before turning to start climbing the stairs, but suddenly pauses for a last moment and looks back at me with a firm look. "Oh. Also... Promise me you won't go into the room at the end of the hallway. It's...private. I'll search it on my own later if we don't find anything in the rest of the house." I'm a bit confused by what he could want to hide from me but don't question it further since he looks like he doesn't want to talk any more about it.
"Okay, sure, I promise.", I answer with a slight shrug of my shoulders. He has been even more tense since we entered the house and I don't want to make him more uncomfortable, especially not when we still barely know anything about eachother and I don't know what could upset him. A promise like that should be easy enough to uphold, I'm not that much of an nosy person anyway.
After Dion has left I make my way over to the hallway to start my search. The first room I enter is a dining room with a massive table for at least 10 people. There's no food on it at the moment but I can hardly imagine having enough food to fill the space on top. I practically hear the higher class laughing at our misery while they stuff their faces.
The other rooms are equally lavish, one filled with huge shelves full of books that are covered in thick layer of dust, as if they haven't been touched in a long time though even a single one is very pricey and rare to find. Another room is filled with paintings I know too little of to say if they are expensive or not. They look incredible but since I've never seen one before I can't say whetever or not they are especially good or if every painting is as beautiful as these ones are.
When I get to the end of the hallway it becomes easy to understand why Dion didn't want me to go in the room there, the door is the only one painted a dark forest green and seems to emmit a completely different energy, somehow even less inviting than the rest of the mansion. I'm about to turn around when I hear a soft rustle from inside. Even though Dion told me to not go inside how could I just ignore the noise when it could be one of his, possibly injured, family members in there? I'm sure he'll understand if I break my promise to help save his family.
"Hello? Is there someone in here?", my voice rings out as I carefully open the door. The door reveals a room with one wall almost completely out of glass, looking into the garden outside while the other walls are lined with bird cages stacked on top of eachother high enough to reach the ceiling. There's space for at least 20 birds and I'm seriously asking myself why the hell someone would need that many but Rein once told me rich people have weird hobbies so I'm not about to waste any more energy on thinking about this too hard. The thing that does concern me though is the dead bodies of the birds laying all over the ground. It seems someone had opened their cages but didn't open the window so the birds were just flying around, crashing into eachother and against the glass of the window in their haste to be free. It's sad to think about how the only thing separating them from their freedom was a thin, transparent piece of glass. They could see the outside but still couldn't escape. Their desperate desire to be free became the cause of their death.
"Dion! Come here, you should see this!", I shout for him but only silence answers me.