41. Matilda
41
MATILDA
“We fight,” I repeat, more firmly this time. But before anyone can respond, the chamber shifts. The red glow is snuffed out, and we are plunged into darkness again. Luc throws up a few weak orbs of Hellfire, which he manages even in the dampening chambers. I guess that shows you he is above this kind of shit. Or outside of its realm, maybe?
“What the fuck?” I mutter as ancient symbols appear on the walls.
“Praxian texts,” Vex mutters.
“How do you know?”
“Wild guess, sprinkles.”
“Can you read them?” Draven asks.
Vex shakes his head. “No one can. No one has reportedly ever seen them. These are older than the ones we saw at the tunnel entrances. Much, much older.”
“I can read them,” I whisper. The symbols glow in response to my voice. “They’re talking about the original magick. Before it was split.”
“So definitely Praxian, then,” Vex says, almost smugly.
Luc moves closer to me despite his earlier resolution to stay away. “What do they say?”
I step toward the nearest wall, my hand drawn to the drawing. As my fingers brush the symbols, they burn with a white-hot light that doesn’t hurt.
“When the elements were one,” I translate. “Before the great divide, magick flowed pure and whole. The Praxian force knew no boundaries, no limitations...”
The chamber trembles, and I feel the power building around us, which is different from anything I’ve felt before.
The symbols move, rearranging themselves like a cosmic puzzle. My head pounds as the translation flows through me.
“The chosen vessel will emerge when darkness threatens to consume all. One who can channel the pure force, untainted by the divisions of time.”
“Matilda,” Vex says quietly, “I think?—”
But I can’t stop reading. The words pull at me, demanding to be spoken. “She will stand between two forces, fire and shadow, chaos and order.” My eyes flick to Draven, then Luc. “Bound to both, yet mastered by neither.”
The chamber shimmers with energy, and new symbols appear, these ones burning with an intense purple light.
“But beware,” I continue, my voice shaking. “The power of Praxian magick cannot be contained by one vessel alone. It will consume?—”
Suddenly, pain rips through me. The symbols flare blindingly bright, and I feel something ancient and powerful trying to force its way into my consciousness.
Draven and Luc move to catch me but Vex holds them back. “Don’t touch her! The prophecy is activating. If you interfere?—”
“Prophecy?” Draven’s voice is muffled like he’s shouting through water.
“That’s what this is!” Vex replies. The rest of his words are drowned out by the roaring in my ears as more symbols burn themselves into my mind. Images flash before my eyes: magick in its purest form, before it was split into different schools and elements. The raw power of creation itself.
And something else. Something darker. A warning about...
The vision cuts off abruptly as my knees give out.
The symbols on the walls stop glowing, but I can still feel them beating in my mind like an afterimage.
“I’m okay,” I say and manage to push myself to a sitting position. “But there’s more. Something about...” I press my fingers to my temples, trying to hold on to the fragments of the vision. “A price. There’s always a price.”
“What did you see?” Vex asks, crouching next to me.
“The original magick—Praxian magick—it wasn’t meant to be divided. The split wasn’t natural, it was forced.” I look up at them, my head still spinning. “Someone did this. Someone broke it apart on purpose.”
“Why?” Draven’s voice is tense.
“Because...” I struggle to piece it together. “Because united, it was too powerful. Too dangerous. The prophecy says the vessel—I think that’s me—can channel it, but...” I trail off, remembering the warning that had burned through me.
“But what?” Luc demands.
“But it requires something else. Something only you and Draven can give me.” Vex stiffens, and I smile at him. “Don’t worry, I need you too. It says I can’t do this alone, or it will tear me apart. I need you to be an anchor, maybe, is that the right word? An overflow vessel.”
He gives me a serious stare that makes my blood run cold.
“What?”
He pulls something out of his pocket and holds it up.
I gasp when I see the amethyst pendant. “My test was to see if I could do what was necessary if this all went tits up. This,” he moves the pendant from side to side, “I had to put this back on you when you went off the deep end. It killed you.”
“But you did it anyway?” Luc snarls.
“I had no fucking choice. She was lost to the power and killing everyone,” Vex growls, but he is still looking at me. “I am your anchor, Tilly, but I’m more than that. I’m the one that will push you to want more, to drive you closer to the edge.”
I have no words. I know he did the right thing in his test, but it hurts all the same.
“You did the right thing,” I mutter eventually when his stare demands me to say something. “Of course you did. Don’t ever doubt that. I don’t want to become a power-hungry killer. But what do you mean about driving me closer to the edge?”
“It’s a complicated family history lesson that goes back to the Wells and Blacks. Every family who got involved with the Blacks kept their own name to try to lessen the burden of being involved with dark magick. I’m Blackwell. One of two. I’m the anchor to powerful magick but also the catalyst.”
His words resonate deep inside my brain, and some things click into place. Blackthorn. Black and Thorn? I stare into Vex’s eyes and see a similarity to our Headmasters. “Are you and Blackthorn related?” I blurt out, suddenly needing to know.
He chuckles softly. “You’re a smart cookie, aren’t you? Yes. He is my uncle.”
“Your higher power,” Draven mutters.
I look up sharply. “What?”
“Nothing.” But his gaze is on Vex, regarding him almost warily.
Vex narrows his eyes at him, but shifts his stare back to me. “I am your overflow vessel, Matilda. Your anchor. But if you are by my side, your power will know no bounds.”
“Just like the reading said.”
He nods and grimaces before he says, “I understand if you want to cool shit between us.”
I blink. “What? Are you breaking up with me?”
His face remains passive. “I don’t want to. Fuck, I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, Tilly, but if we stay together?—”
“Bad things will happen,” Luc says steadily. “Well, aren’t we a motley bunch of asshats?”
I snort in amusement, even though nothing about this is even remotely funny. “Fuck it,” I say, standing up. “We will make our own rules. You two,” I point to Luc and Draven. “You are kind of outside of this. I don’t really know how or why, or even how I know, but your Hell magick, or whatever you call it, isn’t part of this split. It’s separate. It always has been.”
Draven nods. “That makes sense. Our realm exists outside the network of realms where Earth and other places are.”
“The texts showed me something else. Something about containment.”
The chamber darkens again, as if responding to my words. New symbols appear, this time blood-red and bleeding like open wounds.
“The vessel must be contained,” I translate. “Or the power will...” I stop, my blood running cold as the full meaning hits me.
“Will what?” Luc demands.
“Destroy everything,” I whisper. “Not just me. Not just this realm. Everything. All realms. All existence.” I look at Vex. “That’s why you’re the anchor. But you’re also the catalyst because...”
“Because sometimes things need to be destroyed to be rebuilt,” Vex finishes grimly. “That’s the curse of my bloodline. We preserve, and we destroy. We contain, and we release.”
Draven frowns. “And what about us? What’s our role in this clusterfuck?”
More symbols appear, and I feel that pulling sensation again, that ancient knowledge forcing its way into my consciousness.
“You’re the barriers,” I say, understanding dawning. “Because Hell magick exists outside the normal magickal spectrum. It can create boundaries that the Praxian magick can’t cross. Like containment walls.”
“So we’re basically magickal prison guards,” Luc says bitterly. “Fantastic.”
The chamber suddenly shudders violently, cutting off any further discussion. Again.
It’s like it doesn’t want us to draw conclusions or make decisions.
“We need to move,” Vex says sharply. “Now.”
“Why?” I ask, but then I see the chamber isn’t just shaking, it’s collapsing in on itself.
“The trials are over,” Draven explains as chunks of the ceiling begin to fall. “And I don’t think we’re meant to survive this part.”
“We’ve learned too much!” I yell.
A massive piece of wall crashes down where we were standing seconds before. The symbols are still glowing, but now they look less like writing and more like veins of fire spreading through the stone.
“This way!” Luc shouts, gesturing toward what looks like a tunnel. But as we run toward it, the floor between us and the exit crumbles away, revealing a pit of writhing shadows.
Vex eyes the gap. “Jump.”
“Are you insane?” I demand, but another section of the ceiling crashes down behind us, leaving us with few options.
Luc grabs my hand. “Together. On three.”
I glance back at the collapsing chamber, then at the pit of shadows, and finally at him. “If we die, I’m going to kill you.”
He grins, that familiar reckless smile that makes my heart skip. “One...”
“Two...” I grip his hand tighter.
“Three!”
We jump, with Draven and Vex right behind us. For a moment, we’re suspended over that writhing darkness, and I swear I hear voices calling from below, promising power, promising answers, promising everything if we just let ourselves fall.
We crash-land on cold stone, rolling to absorb the impact. The air is thick with the musty scent of age and decay. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see we’re in some kind of ancient crypt. Row upon row of alcoves line the walls, each containing skeletal remains in various states of decay.
“Well, this is cosy,” Vex mutters, dusting himself off.
A low growl echoes through the chamber. From the shadows emerge three figures that make my blood run cold. They look like they’re made of living darkness, their forms constantly shifting and writhing, but maintaining vaguely humanoid shapes. Where their faces should be, there are only swirling voids that seem to pull at my soul.
“Guardians of MistHallow,” Vex says carefully. “Ancient ones. We aren’t supposed to be down here.”
“No shit,” I growl, my earlier declaration reinforced. We have learned and deduced more than we ever should have, and now they are trying to stop us.
The first guardian moves with impossible speed, its arm elongating into a blade of pure shadow. Luc barely manages to dodge, the shadow blade slicing through the air where his head had been.
“Any time you want to help, brother,” Luc calls to Draven as he ducks another attack.
Draven is already working on it. With a muttered word that makes my skin want to crawl off my body and hide somewhere, he crouches and slams his hand to the ground.
The earth trembles, and I feel the bile rise in my throat as the stench of death surrounds us.
The skeletons in the alcoves rattle. One by one, ancient bones knit themselves together, rising from their resting places. The sound of clicking bones fills the chamber as around two dozen skeletons assemble themselves.
“Now that’s what I call backup,” Vex says appreciatively.
The guardians pause their attack, seeming to reassess the situation. Then, they must decide that this changes nothing, and then they strike all at once, their forms splitting and multiplying until we’re surrounded by voids of sheer darkness.
“Attack,” Draven commands, and his skeletal army surges forward.
The crypt erupts into chaos. Bones clash against shadow-substance, the guardians’ haunting shrieks collide with the clatter of animated skeletons. One skeleton, wearing the remains of what might have been ceremonial armour, swings a rusted sword through a guardian’s midsection. The shadow-being howls, its form temporarily disrupted.
Two skeletons flank me protectively as I press my back against a wall, trying to find an exit.
These aren’t mindless automatons. They move with purpose, with muscle memory from lives long past. A skeletal warrior in tattered chainmail executes a perfect parry against a guardian’s attack, while another wearing priest’s robes makes gestures that actually repel the shadow beings.
“Nice army, Dray,” Luc shouts to Draven over the din of battle. “Friends of yours?”
“Better than a skanky bitch trying to fuck me,” Draven retorts, and Luc shoots me a horrified stare. I shake my head and roll my eyes. I don’t give a fuck about the skanky Tilly demon thing.
He grins with relief and conjures a weak Hellfire blade, using it to keep a guardian at bay while three skeletons attempt to flank it.
A guardian swoops down from above, its form liquid-like now, trying to engulf Vex. Before I can shout a warning, an unusually tall skeleton crashes into it, ancient bones grinding as it grapples with the shadow being.
But even with our skeletal reinforcements, we’re losing ground. The guardians seem to feed off the darkness, growing stronger from the dark magick being flung about and used to command dead armies.
Vex fights his way to me, punching one of the guardians. It connects to my surprise, and I stare at my own hands. I don’t have the power. Or rather, I don’t have the knowledge. I’m still useless. “There!” he shouts as he skids up beside me. “That has to lead somewhere!”
A guardian lunges for me, but one of my skeletal protectors throws itself in the way, bony fingers latching onto the shadow being’s form. The guardian shrieks, trying to pull free, but the skeleton holds fast even as darkness begins to corrode its ancient bones.
“We can’t defeat them!” Draven shouts as another skeleton shatters, its bones turning to dust as a guardian tears through it.
Vex grabs my arm, pulling me toward the hidden opening. “Move! Guys!”
We sprint for the narrow gap, the remaining skeletons forming a barrier between us and the guardians. The sound of bones splintering follows us as we squeeze through the passage single file. It’s barely wide enough for our shoulders, the rough stone walls scraping our arms as we run.
“They’re coming!” Luc yells from behind me. I risk a glance back to see shadows seeping through the walls, reaching for us with tendrils of pure darkness.
The passage twists and turns, forcing us to run almost blind. My lungs burn, and my legs ache, but pure terror keeps me moving. The guardians’ shrieks echo off the stone, making it impossible to tell how close they are.
“Left!” Vex shouts from ahead. “There’s a... fuck!”
He stumbles as the floor suddenly slopes upward. I crash into his back, and Luc crashes into mine. Only Draven manages to keep his footing.
“Up there!” Draven points to what looks like a trap door far above us, moonlight seeping through its cracks. “That has to lead outside!”
The shadows are getting closer, the temperature dropping as they advance. My breath comes out in white puffs now, and I swear I can hear whispers in the darkness, promising terrible things.
“Boost me up!” Vex commands, bracing himself against the wall. Draven makes a cradle with his hands, launching Vex toward the trap door. He hits it hard with his shoulder, and it bursts open.
Cold night air rushes in as Vex pulls himself up. He spins around, reaching down with his magick, which appears to be working just fine now he is free of the chambers. “Come on!”
One by one, we scramble up the magickal rope Vex holds steady for us. I haul myself out of the pit and roll onto the damp grass, gasping for air.
Looking around, I see we are behind the library at MistHallow. The trap door we emerged from has already faded into the ground like it was never there.
“Everyone alive?” Vex pants.
“Define alive,” Luc groans, rolling onto his back. “I didn’t think shit could get worse than a trip through Hell, but that was… that was…”
“There isn’t actually a word for it,” Draven agrees. “Shit.”
“Shit works,” I rasp and sit up slowly, my whole body shaking from adrenaline and exhaustion.
Vex helps me to my feet, his hands lingering on my waist longer than necessary. Despite everything we learned down there about his role as both anchor and catalyst, I find myself leaning into his touch. Some things are worth the risk.
“We should get inside,” I say. “Figure out what to do next.”
“Sleep,” Draven announces. “Sleep is what we do next. Then maybe drink until we forget about shadow monsters and prophecies and the end of all existence.”
“Sounds like a solid plan,” Luc agrees, pushing himself up.
As we make our way toward our rooms, I look back at where the trap door had been. There’s no trace of it now, just frozen earth and grass. But I know it’s there, just like I know the knowledge burned into my mind by those ancient symbols is real.
The power of creation itself, split apart for a reason, and it’s chosen me as its vessel, with Vex as my anchor and catalyst, and Draven and Luc as my barriers.
“Hey,” Vex squeezes my hand, pulling me from my thoughts. “One apocalypse at a time, okay?”
I manage a weak smile. “Yeah. One apocalypse at a time.”