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Bree and Conner sat side by side on Mary's Bridge. The place around them just seemed to emit serenity. They sat in comfortable silence, forgetting about their troubles for just a moment in time.

Bree thought about everything that they had done to get to this place in their 'mission'. They had done a lot of bad things and when Bree said it aloud earlier, it made them sound like really bad people. But when Conner said that it was okay 'cause 'They were doing the wrong thing for the right reason', that just made Bree feel better about it. She didn't feel as badly about it, which really helped her conscious.

Bree was easy-going around Conner, which still surprised her every time she realized it again. She was just calmer and cooler than she normally was, and she thought that was a good thing. Conner made her happy and she really liked being happy. *Okay, I'm done writing the sappy thoughts about Conner, UGH! I hate writing sappy stuff! But seriously, back to the story.*

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Bree perked up when she saw a flashlight beam in the distance. As the figure got closer, she saw that it was Emmerich. She sighed in relief, she thought it would be the Polizei(German police) coming to kick them out.

"Guten Abend(Good Evening)," Emmerich said. "Are you ready to explore the castle?"

Emmerich led them to a path that crisscrossed down the hillside to an observation deck near the waterfall. They crawled over the railing of the deck and then followed the stream all the way down to the bottom of the hill the castle was perched on.

"Careful, don't get your shoes wet," Emmerich instructed.

The closer they got to the hill, the farther the stream flowed into the land beside it, like an overflowing bathtub.

The bridge, the castle, and the mountains disappeared from view behind the thick trees that surrounded the base of the hill. After walking along the stream for a while, they stopped. Emmerich felt around for something on a wall of supposed dirt and rocks. His hand grabbed onto something and he heaved open a steel door that was built into the side of the mountain.

"This way," Emmerich said, happy that it had worked.

Conner and Bree had another staring match to see who would go into the tunnel first before Conner took the lead again and crawled in after Emmerich. Bree climbed in after him and found a twisty, turny, winding tunnel dug through the earth before her. The three of them crawled for what seemed like miles until they got to an endpoint. Emmerich pushed open another door and toppled out of it. After Conner had crawled through the door, Bree put her feet first and pushed herself out more gracefully than the boys had done. What? You're supposed to learn from others' mistakes.

After getting into the room, she looked around. They were in a small storage room of a gift shop.

"This used to be the servants' quarters," Emmerich said. "Now stay close behind me, I just have to go punch in the code before the alarm goes off."

They traveled past the gift shop and into a hall dedicated to the history of the castle and all that went into making it. Emmerich walked across the room to the keypad, punched in a really long passcode, and sighed with relief when it worked.

"Neuschwanstein is all ours!" he said.

"All right, Emmerich, take us on a tour," Conner said. "We want to see everything."

Emmerich obliged, and marched them down the hallway and up a spiral staircase. The lavishness of the castle had begun. The circular walls around the staircase were covered in a wallpaper patterned with dragons and symbols Bree didn't even recognize.

"This place gives me the creeps," Conner said and shuddered. Bree found this amusing.

"Me too," Bree said. "I love it!"

"A lot of people think it's haunted," Emmerich said. "Many visitors have claimed to see ghosts moving past the windows at night or hear sounds from inside when it's completely empty."

Bree heard Conner gulp in front of her and she grinned. At the top of the stairs, they passed a statue of a dragon standing like an overgrown watchdog guarding the hallway.

"I'll show you the throne room first," Emmerich said and guided them down the hallway.

Every inch of the hallway was decorated in wallpaper of diamond, checkered, or floral design. Pillars with animal carvings sat in the arches of the windows and each window was lined with gold. The colors may have faded over the years, but the castle remained a spectacle even more than a century later.

Emmerich led them through an open doorway and into the throne room. It had a towering domed ceiling. A gigantic chandelier hung from the ceiling and was rimmed with hundreds of wax candles. The walls were covered in beautiful paintings of mythological and religious figures. Every species of the animal kingdom appeared in the mosaic floor as if the circle of life was right under their feet.

Colorful arches and pillars surrounded the throne room. Balconies wrapped around the top of the room, facing a high platform under a large mural of Jesus Christ. The platform was the perfect place for a throne, but it was empty.

"So if this is the throne room, where's the throne?" Bree asked, she had noticed that missing factor the moment she entered the room.

"He never had one," Emmerich said. "King Ludwig II had an extravagant thone made to match this room but he was declared insane before it was finished."

"So the king never got to sit on his throne?" Conner asked. "That's tough."

"Most of the castle remains unfinished," Emmerich said. "Ludwig was spending all of Bavaria's money to build his luxurious homes and when that began running out he started borrowing money from other countries to complete them."

"I can see how that might lead to a bad reputation," Bree said.

Conner looked around the room desperately, he was looking for the portal. Bree wanted to tell him not to make it so obvious but then remembered that they were supposed to be 'hiding a weapon', so it made sense to look closely. Conner shook his head slightly and sighed, the portal was definitely not in this room.

"Do you think this room would be a good place for the weapon?" Emmerich whispered, even though they were the only three in the entire castle.

"No, not here," Conner said. "Let's keep looking,"

"I'll show you King Ludwig's bedroom next," Emmerich said.

They followed him back into the hall and entered a pair of heavy wooden doors. The king's bedroom was covered from ceiling to floor in extravagant wooden cravings. The bedroom was sizably smaller than the throne room but still very large for a bedroom. It had a beautiful bed in the corner with a nightstand and desk next to it. There were cravings of disciples, nobility, and harvest on everything.

Then took a look at everything in the bedroom, even the small grotto tucked in between two rooms.

"See any place that works?" Emmerich asked.

Bree was just as interested as Emmerich. Conner hadn't really told her what they were looking for, just that he would know it when he saw it.

"Not yet," Conner said. "I'll know it when I see it,"

"Then I'll take you to the Singer's Hall next! Thee are many things to see there!" Emmerich said.

They returned to the spiral staircase and walked up to the fifth floor. When they walked into the Singer's Hall the first thing they heard was the sound of their footsteps echoing back at them. The hall was by far the largest room in the castle and stretched long and wide.

The Singer's Hall was such an over-stimulating sight that it took Bree a few moments to take it all in. The whole hall seemed to blend into one giant work of art. There were depictions of all kinds of religious, royal, and fairytale artwork around the room. Candelabras lined the perimeter of the room while enormous chandeliers hung from the high ceiling.

Bree's attention was caught by a painting in the corner. ^It looked like the lady in the painting was being tricked into something. Weird.^  *Okay, so when I went to Neuschwanstein last summer, there was a painting that looked exactly like this. I noticed that right away, probably like Chris Colfer did when he visited the castle for research. He probably went into the Singer's Hall and was like, 'Huh, that lady looks like she's being tricked into something. That's weird. I'm gonna have to find a way to put that in my book, because that's an interesting part of the castle.' So, here we are, Bree looking at a weird painting.* "Has anyone ever noticed that every woman in an old portrait look like she's being tricked into something?" she asked.

"They still use this room," Emmerich said. "They fill it with chairs and instruments and put on concerts and performances to this day. This would be a convenient place to store your panpipe."

Bree saw Conner through her peripheral vision stop in his steps around the room. His mind was racing by the looks of it. While he was thinking, Bree thought too. ^This would be the perfect place for the portal. It made a whole lot of sense. Panpipe, Singer's Hall, singers, music, music, panpipe. Total sense.^

She saw Conner come to the same conclusion and he smiled. He looked around the room, looking for possible portal's and Bree did the same. She saw Conner's eyes land on something in the corner, and she turned to that direction as well.

In the corner were pillars and arches, but behind them was a painting. It was the largest painting in the whole room. It was of a majestic forest with trees, flowers, squirrels, deer, and boulders.

Bree looked at the painting and then back at Conner. Conner's eyes were glued onto the painting and he had a look of remembrance. He knew something about the painting that no one else knew like he had seen the place before. The Land of Stories was what it was. Bree could feel it inside herself.

It was a strange feeling, like the feeling she got when she was talking to the lion statue. ^Was it magic? No, she wasn't of magic blood. Or was she? She might not know what this feeling was, but she did know one thing. They had found the portal to The Land of Stories.^

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TLOSGEEK2-OUT!!!