Chapter 27 A Downward Spiral
A Downward Spiral
She’d gone for the groin, which was a high-stakes gamble.
Azul might have anatomy in that region delightfully similar to a human’s, but that wasn’t necessarily true of all fae.
Especially these ones with an insectile feel to them.
Still, even if they didn’t have humans’ particular sensitivity in that region, it tended to be central enough to at least slow them down.
Fortunately, luck was with her.
The fae warrior doubled over, clutching their groin as if to hold in the globby gloops of black jelly that apparently formed their insides. Double yuck.
Then they burst into red-orange flames and burned with a stink like melting tar.
Cha didn’t linger to be further grossed out.
Or, really more important, captured by the onrushing hoard of tall, yellow pipecleaner warriors hurtling down the hallway.
She took off running at top speed, wishing she’d taken the time to put on her boots instead of stowing them in with Azul.
Once her feet had been tough as leather from going barefoot on the farm in every kind of weather.
Now she was practically a princess, they were so tender.
Least of her problems, though.
She caught up to Dy who was huffing and puffing and looking wan herself, pushing the cart with effort.
Cha didn’t bother asking questions or offering explanations.
She put her shoulder to the cart and pushed.
They picked up speed, but probably not enough to hold back the onrushing guard.
She opened her mouth to say something. She didn’t know what, as no pithy last words came to her, but Dy spoke first.
“My turn to play rear guard. Keep going.”
Cha didn’t much care for that solution, but she also hadn’t done a brilliant job earlier so she stuck to her one task and pushed.
The spiraling nature of the palace began to work in her favor, the ramp sloping downward ever so slightly.
Near as she could figure, the servants’ passage ran under the halls for the more highfalutin’ palace population.
Occasionally she passed various ramps and circular stairs leading upward, along with shafts containing magical boxes that would go up and down to carry heavier supplies.
They’d gotten lucky on their timing. Setting aside the very unfortunate run-in with Gnome-Clerk, they hadn’t run into many fae at all.
The ones they had passed hadn’t been interested in their efforts.
Now they just had to get lucky finding the cargo bay at ground level, and jump in Big Betty where Dy had left her.
Maybe things were starting to go their way.
The cart was much easier to push now, the slope doing most of the work.
As soon as Dy caught up with them, they’d be able to really speed out of here.
In fact, she was seriously going fast now, almost feeling like she wasn’t pushing at all and having to jog to keep up with the cart.
Okay, no almost about it. She was running now, with the glamoured Katu loping beside her, which looked so absurd she’d laugh if she had breath for it.
She was also having to dig her fingers into the crate to hold on, not pushing at all, but pulling to actually slow it.
If she’d been a bit less brain-fogged from not eating and drinking, along with the cumulative lack of rest since she’d arrived—what she got for fucking instead of sleeping, not that she’d normally regret that choice—she might have figured out what was going on a hell of a lot sooner.
As it was, she only realized way too late that the cart was careening down an increasingly steep and spiraling ramp.
In another few moments, she worried less about Dy catching up to them than catching up to the cart.
The weight and momentum of it had escaped her grasp and she was now racing like a complete asshole after a cart careening wildly out of control into an increasingly dim tunnel.
The only thing keeping the cart from slamming into the walls on either side was a subtle slope from each wall that kept the cart to a gutter in the center.
In fact the once squarish hall had become something of a tube.
Katu could no longer gallop beside her, instead dashing ahead to carom from one side to the other like a fae parkour athlete crossed with a wild cat.
A dizzying image that made her eyes cross and head ache.
The worry that now consumed her: what would happen when they reached the bottom? Azul would likely survive the crash, but it would almost certainly snap him out of the enchanted sleep, at which point he’d be conscious and would refuse to leave the Citrine Palace.
The cart continued to outdistance her, even though she ran with all the long-legged speed that had won her more than a few trophies in academy footraces. Katu stayed ahead of the careening cart, though barely. It would take Dy forever to catch up.
Then, dead ahead: the very thing Cha had feared. A wall loomed, solid and featureless. The cart barreled straight for it at bone-shattering speed.
Desperate, unable to think of any other solution—it was too late to throw her body in front of the cart to stop it—she drew the Moonruby wand.
With the Cinnabar sword in her right hand and the wand in her left, she waved it as she ran, the pink glitter absurdly frivolous in the gloom, and sang out, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”
The cart stopped so suddenly, she ran right into it, staggering backward from the impact with an oof of pain and lost wind.
Hands on knees, she bent over, huffing and puffing.
That wasn’t just from nearly knocking herself senseless on the cart; the pell-mell race after the cart had robbed her of breath.
Too much ale and riding ley lines. She was out of shape.
Katu came to her and wound around her legs. The glamour had vanished, she realized, which was frankly a relief with that dizzying dissonance between the jaguar’s movements and his appearance. However, that meant that they’d gone beyond the range of Dy’s sorcery, which was not a good thing at all.
Also, she wasn’t at all sure how they’d get out of this apparently dead-end tunnel.
Pushing the cart back up the steep ramp was not only daunting, but likely not an effort she could sustain on her own for very long.
And that was without the threat that, if she stumbled or weakened, it would flatten her.
She’d been too preoccupied with chasing the cart on the way down to pay attention to exits that would lead to the cargo bay.
She’d assumed it would be at the bottom and that assuming had certainly made an ass of her and her.
Also, she was deeply worried that Dy hadn’t shown up yet.
What would she do if Dy had been taken prisoner?
She’d really like to check on the sleeping Azul, to ensure he hadn’t been injured by that abrupt stop—it wasn’t as if he had any decent cushioning in there, besides their gear, which didn’t count—but she couldn’t open the crate without Dy’s magic.
A real oversight there. But then they hadn’t considered they might get separated.
At some point, however, Azul would wake from the enchanted sleep on his own and bust himself out of the crate with his powerful sorcery.
Wouldn’t he?
Missing those halcyon moments when all she worried about was Azul being pissed at her for going against his will and abducting him from his own wedding, and rather than fret uselessly, Cha set to searching hopefully for some kind of hidden door to the cargo bay.
Holding up the Moonruby wand with its helpful pink glow, she surveyed the rather cavernous tunnel.
Rather than being flat, as she’d first assumed, the end was curved, a full half-sphere, like a giant finger had poked it when it was soft and left a huge indent.
It had no seams, cracks, or anything that looked like it could be a doorway.
No one understood ninety percent of what the fae did, but this exceeded even their usual weird choices.
Why have a tunnel that dead-ended like this?
She supposed all things must come to an end—ha!
—but something about this struck her as particularly odd.
And hopeless, which was one of her least favorite feelings.
“Baby cat,” she called to Katu, who was exploring on his own, “can you sniff out a way out this cul-de-sac?”
He came over and blinked up at her, amber eyes catching the pink light from the wand, amethyst collar shimmering.
Her own collar threw similar purple prisms of light, which reminded her of one of the other many reasons she needed to decant Azul sooner or later, so he could remove the bloody human pet collar.
Katu offered no particular help. If she was guessing, she’d say he was communicating a big nope.
Time to face the music. And to try using the wand for something else besides an emergency brake and improvised torch.
She waved it in the air, pink glitter showering onto Katu’s glossy black coat.
“Oh, happy cart,” she sang, feeling like an idiot, “roll back uphill slowly, roll back uphill slowly, roll back uphill slowly.” Without realizing it, she’d put the words to a tune sung by the field hands back on the farm.
It worked fine, establishing a nice, steady work rhythm.
To her immense excitement, the cart moved, rolling a little up the hill before stopping.
It paused for a long, breathless moment on Cha’s part, then rolled back down.
And kept going until it hit the slope of the concave dead end.
Not ideal.
At least the cart had bumped gently. But now it was even more solidly at the bottom of the dead end. Dead end. What a horrifically gloomy phrase.
But the wand song and dance had worked for a little while.
Until she stopped singing. So apparently she would have to serenade the cart back up the hill until she found the cargo bay or Dy, preferably both.
Still, why had the wand stopped the cart and kept it stopped, but she had to keep singing to keep it moving?
She’d look it up in Nerd Girl’s book, but that was still inside Katu and besides, she couldn’t get past Lesson Two until she learned it anyway.
She was locked out of it by a stupid enchantment.
Magic sucked. Too bad her singing voice did too.
“Oh working cart,” she sang, showering said cart with pink glitter, “roll on up the hill, roll on up the hill, roll on up the hill.”
The cart stirred and began a steady pace up the hill.
Cha walked behind it. Not that she wanted to be flattened all that badly, but at this rate she was willing to use her body as a brake rather than have to repeat any part of this ordeal.
Sure enough, as soon as she stopped singing for anything longer than a breath, the cart would shudder, stop, and threaten to roll downhill again. Gravity also sucked, she decided.
What she hadn’t figured on was that she—already fairly worn out, having only very recently been so out of breath she’d been about to faint—was now having to trudge uphill while singing without pause.
Which wasn’t happening. The without pause part, that was.
And with each pause, the cart also hesitated, wanting to roll backwards.
She was also getting hoarse, which seemed to undermine the effectiveness of the singing-to-magic pipeline.
The cart slowed ever more all the time. Worst of all, adding indignity to the other injuries—the fucking chain mail sex slave outfit was driving her crazy and not in a sexy way.
As predicted, the dangling triangles of the top chafed her nipples like mad.
What she hadn’t foreseen was that the lower pieces would get caught between her thighs as she trudged, producing a sensitive rash.
Several times she considered simply stripping naked for the sheer relief, but she didn’t really like the idea of confronting any of the Citrine fae while nude except for her sword belt.
Eyeing the interminable climb, Cha estimated the point at which she’d lose her voice—or lose consciousness—and she’d be back where she started, at best. Or dead.
Frankly, dead was starting to sound pretty good. At least then she could give up on the whole breathing and singing thing.
Katu circled her and the cart, clearly anxious about the whole proceeding. Too bad he couldn’t be more help. She even considered triggering him to transform into his carriage self, but without a ley line, he’d just be dead in the water.
Why were there so many descriptions of stuff with “dead” in them?
Okay, yeah, she was getting punchy. And, while she was no mathematician, she had an instinct and gift for estimating speed and distance.
Maybe a skill, you’d call it, born of long practice.
Anyway, she wasn’t going to last all the way through the next circle and she had yet to see any kind of doors to cargo bays or anything at all.
She was seriously fucked. And still no Dy.
Cha was in the midst of calculating an interim solution—what if she laid down while still singing, trailed off, and let the cart kind of roll up against her?
Then she could rest and be a doorstop—when a yellow glow began to illuminate the tunnel ahead.
Yellow meant Citrine fae of some sort, but she hardly had anywhere to hide.
At least they could spring Azul and she could stop with the infernal singing.
If she got lucky, maybe they’d just kill her.