25

The thing that came to Felicia and Arthur's mind was that they had been spotted and the pipe song was the enemy's form of attack. Normally, attacks came in physical and magical form and while music could be considered a form of the latter, they were rarely used in direct attacks. However, since Arthur had just given a power in the form of utilizing his voice, it was understandable why the two thought that way.

Felicia's eyes were filled with alarm and her hands went to her bow and arrows. After about five minutes and nothing happened, she asked Arthur since he was kinda the expert on anything related to song and voice now, "Is that just a normal music?"

Arthur was not 100 percent sure as well because he could sense a tiny trace of magic in the music. However, the music did not seem like it had any effect on Felicia and Arthur. Arthur told her his observation and reminded her to be on her guard. Felicia nodded.

Then she asked, "Arthur, can you tell where the music came from?"

Arthur focused on the origin but with the manor standing in the way, it was hard to tell anything. The only thing he could be certain of was that the pipe music came from inside the house.

In that case, they would need to head into the house. Arthur tried the door and it was locked. He turned to look at the window and there were quite a few of them on the first floor. Arthur waded through the overgrown bushes to try them out and unfortunately, they were all locked.

Arthur turned back to Felicia to break the bad news but he saw the woman was smiling at him. Felicia tutted, "Tsk, tsk, you underestimate me." Felicia reached into her hair to pull out a hairpin. She squatted down to the doorknob and stuck the hairpin into the keyhole. "Now just give me a few minutes..."

Felicia tweedled with the lock with a serious countenance on her face. After a few minutes, just like how she had promised, Felicia sighed and announced as she stood up. "Done, there we go." Then she stuck the pin back into her hair.

Seeing the inquisitive expression on Arthur's face, Felicia explained, "It's just a skill I picked up from attending ranger classes."

Arthur was mighty impressed. He tried the door and as Felicia said, it was now unlocked. Arthur resisted the urge to cheer for Felicia lest he attracted the attention of the person who was playing the pipe. Arthur and Felicia strode through the door and they found themselves standing inside a large ballroom. The place had seen better days but they could imagine the lavish balls that had been thrown there. Everywhere they looked, there was signs of broken luxuries, like the huge chandeliers that no longer shone, the carpet that desperately needed a good dusting and many more.

The ballroom had stairs to its right that led up to the second floor and on the first floor, there was a corridor at the back of the ballroom that led to the left.

"This place sure is huge," Felicia commented. Thankfully, she kept her voice low or else it would have bounced off the hollow walls and created an echo. The room was so big that it felt like they were inside a cave.

"Do you think this is some abandoned manor left behind by a rich family?" Arthur asked. "What do you think have transpired here that the place fell to such a state of disrepair? Why was it abandoned since obvious effort and not to mention a lot of money had been invested to build this place?"

"I don't know." Felicia shrugged. "Perhaps we can find out more clues about the place's history as we try to unveil the mystery of the Red Mother. I have a feeling the two might be connected in some ways."

Arthur nodded. If the Red Mother was not just a figment of imagination of the villagers, and it was looking less and less to be that, there had to be a reason why she chose this particular locale to haunt.

Arthur and Felicia stopped in the ballroom to access their situation. They were inside the lair of this mysterious Red Mother but so far, they had not seen any trace of this supposedly dangerous figure or the children that they were tasked to rescue.

The pipe music though was still ongoing and that was their only lead so far. Therefore, Felicia turned to ask Arthur once more, "How about now? Has it become clearer for you where the music came from?"

For Felicia, it just sounded like normal music. Arthur said that he sensed magic within it but Felicia did not feel anything, she was not sure that was a good or bad thing. It could either mean that the magic was so powerful that she did not realize she had been put under its spell or the magic was so weak that it did not leave any impact on her.

Which one was the truth, there was no way to tell until they found the one playing the pipe, which was why Felicia had turned to Arthur with that particular question.

Arthur focused on the pipe music and now that they were inside the manor, the sound had indeed become clearer. He pointed at the corridor at the end of the ballroom and then he told Felicia, "It's coming from there."

Felicia and Arthur walked to the corridor. There was a closed room on the right of the corridor but since Arthur said the music did not come from inside it, they moved past it.

They continued on the corridor until they reached the end. The corridor led to the back porch and a small closed-in garden. Felicia pulled Arthur to hide behind the wooden door that opened to the porch when they arrived because she spotted the person responsible for the pipe music.