Riddle Owlington

# Riddle Owlington and the Secrets of the Sunken Archives The first thing Riddle Owlington noticed when he descended into the cathedral's basement was the sound. Not the drip-drip-drip of water, though that was certainly there, echoing off stone walls like a mechanical heartbeat. No, it was the *creaking*—a deep, groaning sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, as if the very earth beneath the cathedral was breathing. "Do you hear that?" whispered Cipher Moonwhisper, Riddle's fox companion, whose silver fur seemed to glow in the candlelight. Cipher had excellent hearing, better than most creatures, but even he sounded uncertain. "Ancient machinery," Riddle said, his large owl eyes scanning the cavernous space before them. His talons clicked against the stone floor as he moved forward. "Gears, pulleys, weights. Built centuries ago to keep the water out. But listen to how *wrong* it sounds." The basement opened into something far grander than either of them had imagined. Massive columns stretched upward into darkness, and between them lay shelves upon shelves of scrolls and manuscripts. But the water was everywhere—pooling in corners, dripping from above, slowly, inexorably consuming the ancient texts. A particularly heavy drop fell onto a scroll nearby, and Riddle saw the ink begin to run, bleeding centuries of knowledge into oblivion. "We don't have much time," Riddle murmured. They had come because the town's Grand Librarian, old Professor Dustwhisker, had contacted Riddle in a panic. Flooding had started three weeks ago, destroying irreplaceable documents. The cathedral's engineers said the mechanical systems were failing, but when they'd tried to repair them, the damage seemed to get worse. Strange. Suspicious. The kind of thing that made Riddle's feathers prickle. "Where do we start?" Cipher asked, carefully placing his paws to avoid the spreading puddles. Riddle adjusted his spectacles and pulled a worn journal from his satchel. "The Grand Librarian gave me this—a catalog of the oldest scrolls in the archives. And look here." He pointed with one wing to a series of notes written in the margin. "Someone has marked certain scrolls with a symbol—a circle within a circle. Seventeen marked scrolls, scattered throughout the archives." "What do you think it means?" Cipher asked. "I don't know yet. But according to the catalog, all seventeen were added to the archives around the same time, four hundred years ago. The same year that *this* cathedral was completed." Riddle's eyes gleamed with the thrill of a mystery. "Someone wanted these particular scrolls hidden. Stored away where no one would find them. And whoever designed these mechanical systems made sure the archives would stay dry. Stay protected." Another groan echoed through the cavern, louder this time. One of the massive pulleys on the wall shuddered, and rust fell like snow. "Come on," Riddle said. "The first marked scroll should be near the eastern wall, in section seven." They made their way deeper into the archives, and Riddle began to notice something remarkable about the architecture. The cathedral's blueprint had shown simple walls and stone chambers, but the reality was far more intricate. Channels had been carved into the stone itself, guiding water away from the documents. Weights hung from pulleys in careful balance. It was a masterpiece of engineering—designed to keep something safe. Something precious. Section seven was half-submerged in murky water. "Brilliant," Cipher muttered. But Riddle wasn't discouraged. "The scroll won't be on the lower shelves. Look up." There it was, on a high shelf, wrapped in protective cloth that had yellowed with age. Riddle flew up—one advantage of being an owl—and carefully retrieved it. The cloth fell away, revealing a scroll sealed with ancient wax. Riddle broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. At first glance, it looked like religious text. Latin phrases, biblical references, the kind of thing you'd expect to find in a cathedral. But Riddle had trained himself to read between the lines, to see the hidden meanings beneath surface words. He scanned it quickly, then looked at Cipher with wide eyes. "It's coded," he said. "The margins aren't decorative. They're *intentional*. See how certain letters are written larger than others? It's a cipher. And Cipher, look at this—" he pointed at a particular passage, "—'the fourth letter of the seventh line shall reveal the door to truth.' There's a message hidden within the message." Another mechanical shriek split the air. Water began pouring from a crack in the ceiling, a steady stream now instead of drops. "Riddle!" Cipher urged. "Go!" Riddle commanded. "We need the other sixteen scrolls. If we can collect them, decode them, figure out what message they're hiding together—" They raced through the archives, water rising around their feet, ancient machinery grinding and failing above their heads. The creaking had become almost constant now, punctuated by the crash of falling stone and wood. Riddle's mind raced even faster than his wings carried him. Someone had hidden these scrolls. Someone had built an entire system to protect them. But why? And why, when water started breaching the archives three weeks ago, had no one reported seeing anyone try to *fix* the mechanical systems? The Grand Librarian had said the engineers' repairs made things worse. That wasn't incompetence. That was sabotage. Scroll after scroll, they collected the marked texts. The third scroll came from beneath a collapsed shelf. The fifth they found floating in a pool of water, rescued just moments before it would have been lost forever. The ninth scroll, they discovered, had already been partially destroyed—but the coded sections, mysteriously, remained intact. By the time they'd collected fourteen of the seventeen marked scrolls, Riddle's mind was beginning to piece together a pattern. Each scroll contained a different type of cipher. Each one referenced "the truth" and "the secret." And woven throughout all of them was a single repeated phrase, written in the margins in tiny letters: "The foundation stands on lies." "Riddle, look!" Cipher pointed toward the center of the archive chamber, where the largest mechanical system loomed—a massive arrangement of gears, each one larger than Riddle himself, connected by chains and pulleys. One of the central gears had completely broken in half. Water poured through the gap like a waterfall. "We're out of time," Cipher said. Riddle clutched the fourteen scrolls to his chest, his mind still working, still searching for the missing piece. He had the coded messages. He could decipher them given time. But time was exactly what they didn't have. "The remaining three scrolls," Riddle said urgently. "The catalog said they were stored in a special chamber. A vault within the archives. Where would that be?" Cipher's ears perked up. "There. Look at the pattern of the gears. It's not random—it's architectural. The gears are pointing toward something, like arrows on a map." Riddle looked, and his eyes widened. The fox was right. The largest surviving gears seemed to direct attention toward the far wall of the chamber, toward a section that appeared seamless and ordinary. They waded through rising water, and Riddle examined the wall with meticulous care. His wing traced lines of mortar, searching for imperfections, irregularities. And there—a section where the stone had been removed and replaced. More recently than the surrounding stone. "Help me," Riddle said. Together, they worked at the stones, prying them loose. Behind the wall was a small chamber, perfectly dry, sealed by an ancient mechanism. And inside, placed carefully on stone pedestals, were three final scrolls. The seventeenth and final scroll was different from the others. It was bound in leather and marked with a symbol Riddle recognized—the seal of the cathedral's founder, Archbishop Edmund Carver. Riddle opened it with trembling talons. The message inside was written in clear, unmistakable text, no cipher needed: "I, Edmund Carver, write this truth for posterity. The cathedral was built upon ground where a terrible injustice occurred. A community of scholars, seekers of knowledge, was condemned as heretical and their library burned. But before the flames took them, we, their friends in the church, rescued their texts. I built this cathedral as both monument and tomb. Beneath these stones, we have created a library to preserve what was nearly lost forever. But I fear that those in power will not accept this. I built mechanical systems to protect these archives, and I have commissioned seventeen scrolls containing the full history. This truth must not be buried again. It must be found. It must be read." The water was up to their waists now. The entire mechanical system was failing, groaning like some ancient beast in its death throes. Riddle quickly gathered all seventeen scrolls, wrapping them in cloth from his satchel. "We have to go," Cipher insisted. "Now!" They ran, water chasing them through the corridors of the archives. Behind them, they heard the sound of massive gears finally seizing, the entire system coming to a halt. The creaking stopped. In its absence was only the sound of water, flooding everything, consuming everything. They reached the stairs and climbed, climbing, climbing, their hearts pounding. Behind them, the sound of the archives collapsing, centuries of stone and history crashing down into the dark. They burst out into the cathedral's ground floor just as the water broke through, flooding the stairwell behind them. They stood there, gasping, dripping wet, covered in mud and ancient dust. The seventeen scrolls were safe. Riddle held them like precious jewels. "We need to decode these," Riddle said breathlessly. "And then, we need to show everyone what we found." "But Riddle," Cipher said slowly, "if this truth was buried for four hundred years... if there are people in this town whose power depends on it staying buried..." "Then," Riddle said, adjusting his spectacles, which were now cracked but still functional, "they're going to be very angry when we reveal it." The owl and the fox exchanged a glance that was equal parts fear and determination. Above them, the cathedral bells began to ring—either in warning, or in celebration of a mystery, at last, beginning to be solved. In the cathedral above, in the comfortable offices of the Town Council, a certain councilman named Edmund Cross—a direct descendant of Archbishop Carver—suddenly felt very, very cold. He had spent years ensuring that the cathedral remained neglected, that the mechanical systems were never properly maintained. He had even hired workers to sabotage the repairs, to let the water in, to destroy the archives before anyone found out what lay beneath. But as he sat in his office, staring out at the rainy afternoon, he sensed that his carefully constructed lie was about to crumble. And in a small cottage on the edge of town, Riddle Owlington spread out the seventeen scrolls on his study table, lit every lamp and candle he owned, and began the intricate work of decoding them, of reading between the lines, of uncovering the truth that had been hidden so long. Cipher Moonwhisper curled up by the fire, watching his friend work with admiration. Riddle's eyes moved back and forth across the ancient texts, seeing patterns where others would see only random letters, understanding meanings hidden in the subtext of centuries. Outside, the rain fell on the cathedral, and beneath the stone, the great mechanical systems lay silent at last, their ancient duty finally complete. They had protected the truth long enough. Now it was time for the truth to be read. And Riddle Owlington, witty bookworm owl, was exactly the right creature to do it.