Empty. Of course it was.

Banishing the cage that had formed around nothing as the black mesh struck the ground with a wave of her wand (the temptation to blow it up being a more appealing option), Valerie’s attention returned to the door the what was carved there. She took it back. She would rather some stupid poem over this. Groaning and rubbing her face, the Wampus sunk to the hard ground. It was a decision she immediately regretted as the ground was quite hot and her rear scalding because of it. Wand out, the sixth year once more conjured a small jet of water and used it first to splash her face to provide her with temporary refreshment and then drank from the steady stream.

“I hate this,” she muttered to herself as she pointed her wand to the ground to wet it and provide herself with a surface with which to write upon. Once she had made herself a muddy area (large enough, she felt, to transcribe her thoughts) she gave her wand another flick and clutched it between her teeth rather than holster it in her combat boot. The rustle in the grass still very much lingering in her thoughts.

Valerie had studied the basics of runes, but her emphasis had been on their usage and how they could benefit her in a task rather than their purposes lexiconically due to its complexity. She should have known there would be something to decode rather than a practical application given how two out of three previous tasks had panned out. At least with numbers to letters there were more concrete answers. The number one was always associated with A, J and S (for example). With runes. Ugh. Just ugh. She was not patient enough to commit all this to memory and thus had not even truly tried. It was a thought that infuriated her as she began the process of attempting to translate the runic alphabet into English, beginning with Thurisaz which she could tell you had its associations with Frost Giants, Thor, and Loki (seeing as mythology was an interest of hers) along with informing you of its use as a reactive force or directed force of destruction and defense. But ask her of its phonetic equivalent and the Wampus had to dig quite deep.

Although it did eventually come to her.

“This door,” she began, her fingers writing in the wet earth as she spoke. Speaking was not entirely necessary and perhaps a waste of energy, but it was also helping to keep her sanity for she loathed these sorts of things. At least she had recalled that the repeating of runes, such as Othala just now, was not an accepted practice when it came to translations and runic writing. A thought that in all honesty she had only recalled due to there being no word that was ‘dor’ in English. “This door remains….closed…” she continued, taking a few liberties due to phonetic necessity but stopped herself when she had written ‘weil’ in the mud. Perhaps it was the influence of Isa on her pocket, but there was no bubbling rage growing yet within her and saying the word aloud provided her with her best guess at what she probably ought to have known to write down. “...while th...surely that is meant to be the,” she muttered while tugging on the collar of her shirt to permit some air to flow through. “This door remains closed while the…” Snac? Snak? What was that supposed to mean? Skipping over the word and electing to continue on to the final too, Valerie finished her writing in the mud and mulled over Othala’s phoentics once more. Rooms? That made no sense as a precursor to free. Roams? That made more sense but hell if she knew.

“This door remains closed while the….snake...roams free?”

Glancing back and forth between her writings in the mud and the carving on the door, Valerie conjured herself more water to drink from and was careful not to allow the water to wash away her attempt at translating when something clicked and she jumped to her feet. Perhaps a bit too quickly as she stumbled a moment and had no choice but to use the door to stabilize herself, but she recovered soon enough.

That sound in the grass just now. She knew it was significant.

“Runespoor?” she whispered.

Her eyes went wild and began searching the grass for any sign of movement that could indicate the three-headed slithering creature.

Where had it gone? Was she meant to capture it first or finish translating the runic code?

Or was she entirely barking up the wrong tree?