Chapter Fifty-Two • Oubliette • Lillith
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For a while I plummet through inky darkness. Beneath me, a small square grows larger and larger. As I careen toward it at fatal speed, the light ricochets off detritus from the vanished room.
One of the pieces of debris flails uncannily. After squinting, I realize the bits of debris are not debris at all. They’re my friends.
Aemon, Bastion, Wren—they’re all spearing through the darkness with me.
I can’t make out their expressions, can’t hear if they’re screaming over the wind whipping past my ears.
But then I see him—farthest from me, a tiny speck of black and grey and white.
I know him the way I know the pattern of my own tattoos—know the contours of my home in the dark.
He’s going to die if he hits the ground at this speed.
I’m going to die if I hit the ground at this speed.
The square below us enlarges enough now that I can’t see the void past it. It looks like we’re being dropped into one of those hand-held labyrinth puzzles with the metal ball, oubliettes placed at challenging points in the structure.
I’m just about to squeeze my eyes shut and brace for impact when a flash of light surprises me. Wren acts as the light’s epicenter, a smoldering ember—a wick of a candle caught by the flash of a match. Her power radiates out to each of us.
A warm updraft catches me, cradling me with the gentle comfort of an invisible cloud. The wind slows us all down with just enough time for me to make mental note of everyone’s proximity to me as we drift to the marble floors in the maze.
Aemon is closest. Somewhere to the east. At least, what I think is east.
Wren landed closer to the center. Bastion vanished deeper toward the middle of the labyrinth. And Damien is the furthest from me. He still looks no larger than a pin prick against the backdrop of this horrible place. I think that’s by design.
Because the only way The Aberrant could strip my magic from me was through a subjugation spell. Bastion and Wren are safe, as long as none of his cronies can get their hands on them, and even then, it would take weeks before the working settles in.
But if he gets to Damien... if he steals that last sliver of my magic from him...
The whole world is fucked.
“Aemon?” I shout, as loudly as I can manage.
“Already on my way to you,” he calls back. “Don’t move. Alright? Stay there.”
I never thought I’d feel relieved to hear Aemon coming my way, but that’s exactly what calms me, like a flush of cool water on fevered skin. I’m not even sure I can move, anyway, so I sit on the ground with my back pressed against the mahogany wainscotting and try to breathe.
“Are you close?” I call.
“I’m sorry, am I not getting through the eldritch horror’s maze quickly enough for you?” he asks.
Something fragile in me snaps—not in the way something bursts when too much pressure is exerted on it—more in the way that a thin film of frost gives way to the gentle brush of a fingertip. “I’m scared,” I hear myself say, the two words just as brittle as a sunbaked sand dollar.
He doesn’t respond for long enough that shame starts to climb my weakened spine. Then he says, “I’m almost there.”
He doesn’t have to shout it that time. And I hope that means he’s close.
“Keep talking to me; it’s going to help me find you,” he says after a couple minutes.
“Why did you bring Damien?” I ask him.
“We didn’t,” he says through a sigh. “I told the buffoon to stay with his bandmates, and the little shit rushed the portal right before Wren closed it.”
“Wren?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, sounding almost frustrated. “Wren.”
He appears at the end of the corridor, running toward me as soon as we meet gazes and kneeling next to me. “You look like hell.”
“You dodged a bullet then,” I say half-heartedly. “Won’t have to worry about me letting myself go, you know?”
He rolls his eyes but brackets my face in his hands, looking between both of my eyes. He must not like what he sees, because his expression turns grim. “It’s gone,” he says, his tone a condolence in and of itself.
Tears prick my tired eyes and fall onto my cheeks. I nod. “Yeah,” I choke out, swallowing tightly.
He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry,” he says.
I nod. “Can you... Can we make a portal to Damien?” I ask. “We have to get to him. We have to protect him from this thing—”
“I can’t,” Aemon interrupts. “I’m sorry. But I can’t. I—I have enough magic to heal you up a bit and get you on your feet. But I’m afraid the vast majority of my power resides elsewhere now.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, confused. Did The Aberrant get to him too? Then I blink as the realization settles in. More like slams in. Like a gut punch. “...Oh...” I say.
Wren’s power had been arcing off of her like she’d become a human tesla coil. Until now, I haven’t thought too hard about it, frankly. I think I’ve just been half-delusional with exhaustion.
He sighs. “Yep. Finally got my promised bride, just in time to really, really need the power she inherited as her dowry.” His lips are a thin, worried line.
“I’ve got just a touch less power than you now.
Luckily, though, Wren and Bastion are probably much more enticing meals than your little drummer boy. ”
I shake my head. “No,” I say as Aemon’s hands warm on my neck, vitality pulsing into me through his palms. It’s comforting, but it makes me miss Damien even more than I had already allowed myself.
“You don’t understand. The creature... He wants to devour my magic so he can break the wards on The Buried City. ”
Aemon’s hands stiffen on my neck. “What?”
I nod. “I marked him a while ago—to keep him safe while we were in The Buried City. So even though he ate up the rest I have, the wards are holding on by a thread, thanks to Damien.”
“Fuck,” Aemon growls. “Fuck.” He grasps my wrist and pulls me up to my feet. “Can you walk?”
I wait for signs of an aura, or for a wobble in my knees. But it doesn’t come. “I can walk,” I say. “But I can’t breathe very well. Could you help me with the laces on this dress?”
“You’re asking me to undress you? Never thought I’d see the day.”
I give him a weak, withering look, and he heaves out a tired breath. He lifts a hand and twirls a finger. “Come on. Turn around.”
I do, pulling my hair over my shoulder. Aemon tuts a little sound before working at the bundle of laces. “He’s such a beast. You poor thing, you must feel like a holiday roast.”
“I’d prefer not to think about being food, right now. Little close to home.”
“Right,” he says.
The laces give way and I inhale my first deep breath in I don’t know how long. “How is Bash here? What about The Buried City?”
“Wren is holding them up,” Aemon says, something tense in his tone.
I turn and look at him. “How the fuck is she doing that?”
“Very, very recklessly,” he says, displeasure clear in the tight set of his mouth. “So, let’s get out of here as quickly as we can.
Aemon helps me to my feet, keeping hold of my wrist, as we run through the corridors.
I get the sense he’s continuing to feed a trickle of vitality into me by way of physical contact, so I let him tug me along like a child.
I’m not exactly athletic. The chase through the forest with Damien proved that.
But I don’t get a stitch in my side, or any aches in my chest, no matter how long we run over the marble floors. I’m grateful for that.
It’s unnerving, though, how well Aemon seems to know this place.
I chalk it up to luck for a while, or maybe even sensing Wren’s location now that they’re...
married. Gods, that’s fucking weird. But then he slows, just before a strange pattern of tile work, lifting me over it and placing me on the other side while he straddles the tiles.
“Uhm. Are we dancing now?”
“Yes, Lillith,” he says sardonically. “I’m pausing our pursuit to halt a potential apocalypse because I want to waltz with you.”
I blink at him, and he rolls his eyes. He pulls a coin out of his pocket, joins me where I stand, and tosses the coin so it perfectly lands in its center.
The floor drops out from beneath it, opening into a black void, just wide enough to fit a single body.
“Oubliette,” he says.
“How did you—”
“There’s a reason I didn’t come with you to Virginia, Lillith,” he says. “My fear of this monster wasn’t unsubstantiated. It wasn’t just some cowardly boogie monster of my own creation. His mind is uniquely suited to torture. I know firsthand.”
I frown, guilt tightening the muscle of my heart. Wren and I called him a coward.
If I’d known this is what he’s been avoiding—if I’d had any concept of just how terrible it could be...
I open my mouth to apologize, but I stop short when I see him look at the mouth of the oubliette with a furrow in his brow. “Huh,” he says, as if just realizing something.
“What?” I ask.
“Well... It’s just that, I’ve been in this maze before. That’s why I know it,” he says. He looks around the corridor, eyes clocking details that bear no great meaning to me. “But he’s never used the same method twice.”
“Maybe he was being hasty?” I ask.
Aemon shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I don’t think that’s it, as vindictive as he is.”
“What is it then?”
“I think something’s weakening him,” he says. “I think something’s wrong with his magic.”
“Maybe the gods he ate aren’t agreeing with him.”
Aemon’s gaze lands on me again, eyes narrowing. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“His appearance,” I say. “The antlers—the strange moony eyes…”
He stares at me for a long beat, and I watch the realization settle in. “Oh,” he says. “I... can’t believe I’m just—how?”
There’s a shout from somewhere deeper in the labyrinth. Aemon and I both look toward it. It sounded close. Bastion’s voice.
“Later,” we both say at the same time, and then we’re running again.
This time, I’m able to run without the aid of Aemon’s small magics bolstering me.
Whatever he’s done, I feel less like a colt dropped straight out of mare’s womb.
No more wobbly knees or weak muscles. What a relief, to have basic function returned to me.
I can only hope we get to Damien before The Aberrant does.
And that we have enough magic to stop him if we don’t.