Shadows of the Serpent

14. Trapped

Trapped

The light confused me the most.

Everything flashed white, in a way I almost remembered.

I felt the shift well before my mind could make sense of it.

I felt it before I’d even stopped moving sideways.

My shoulder slammed into something hard, solid, and I sucked in a breath without making a sound.

I somehow kept my head enough to know I needed to make as little sound as possible.

It was the darkness, maybe, but definitely not only that.

I already knew I hadn’t hit the fountain’s base. The air smelled different.

It felt colder. Mustier. Less open. More cramped.

Where I’d landed was definitely quieter.

I rubbed my arm, biting my lip as I kept my breathing silent.

I blinked, fighting to adjust to the nearly non-existent light.

I felt cautiously over the wall I’d run into.

I tried to make out the material, the size of it, just with my fingers, still without making a sound. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like stone, but when I found the end of the flat surface, my fingers found stone next. I pushed on the flat, not-stone part, and decided it must be wood.

Whatever it was, it wouldn’t move. Whatever blocked me in, it was heavy.

My hands followed the wood all the way to the other side, but I met stone there, too. I followed the stone but only reached the wood on the other side.

I was trapped.

I pressed my face to the crack where the wood and stone met, but I couldn’t see anything but more darkness. When I pressed my nose to the crack, I got a little more.

There was definitely a room beyond there.

That room felt large, possibly cavernous in size. I could somehow sense the larger space with my nose and breath more than my eyes, which did nothing for me in the dark.

If I’d felt safe, even a little bit, I might have made a sound.

I would have done it just to gauge the echo, or lack of one.

That room beyond the wood and stone walls smelled of mold and damp, and like rotten, disintegrating paper and parchment mixed with rat leavings and layers of dust. Something in the exact combination of smells hit me as strangely, achingly familiar, but my mind was too scattered and agitated to pin down where I knew it from.

I turned around carefully, feeling around for more gaps and holes, but only found another small, dark crack where the wood met stone on the other side.

I was definitely trapped behind something heavy and made of wood, something shoved into the corner of a large room.

My eyes slowly began to adjust to the dark.

I’d often wondered, even on Earth, why I could see so much better in the dark than most kids at school, and definitely better than most adults.

Since I’d arrived in Magique, I’d decided it had something to do with magic.

It’s almost like I could see through my aura when my eyes failed me, or some combination of my aura and my primal.

In any case, everything around me appeared to glow with the faintest gold sheen.

I peered upwards, and saw a distant ceiling of what looked like heavy logs and plaster.

My ability to see more of my own confined space didn’t change anything, except now I could see the top of the wooden thing blocking me. From the intricate carvings I glimpsed, I guessed it was a heavy wardrobe, or some other enormous piece of furniture.

I tried cautiously to move it again, and again, it didn’t budge.

I would need magic to move it. I would probably need magic to climb over the top, given how high it was and the way it fit against the stone. I hadn’t quite made up my mind to do it yet, though. I wanted a better idea of where I was, and what sort of chimaeras might be in place.

I looked down, and saw I stood on a thick rug, green or possibly blue, which explained at least some of the musky and dusty smell, not to mention the rat droppings.

Through the same small crack I’d used before, I got a bare glimpse of the larger room. The space was as dark as where I stood, so it didn’t help much, but it definitely gave me a sense of being in an underground space, given the lack of windows.

Well, and light.

There was almost no light down here.

There wasn’t even artificial light, or magical.

I dug my fingers into the crack and again cautiously tried to push. I pushed harder when the massive piece of wood didn’t move, throwing my entire weight behind it, but got nothing. I didn’t let myself give up for a few more minutes, but it was useless.

The thing probably weighed a ton.

I leaned against the stone wall until my breathing gradually slowed back to normal.

I fought to think.

I’d phased. I must have phased.

Why here though? What was I doing here?

No alarms had gone off. Maybe it would be fine to use my magic.

It didn’t feel fine, though. It felt like that would be a very bad idea.

I clenched the muscles of my jaw and shoulders, not trusting myself to not cry out in frustration, as I continued to stand there with nothing but debilitating silence.

Despite that silence, I didn’t feel safe.

That could have been claustrophobia from being trapped, but it didn’t feel like that’s all it was.

However I’d ended up here, it definitely didn’t feel particularly useful. I leaned my arms and head against the back of the wardrobe, fighting to breathe.

Think, Leda. Think.

“Who goes there?” a voice demanded.

It erupted from only a few feet away, so loud and near, my heart stopped.

Luckily, instinct had me freeze. If I’d jumped, gasped, sucked in a breath, or even just shifted my boots on the rug, he definitely would have heard me.

For it was unquestionably a male voice I heard.

Suspicion filled his words next, along with a harder malice.

“Whoever you are, come out now, or I’ll kill you where you stand!”

A red-tinted light burst into life near the crack between the stone wall and the wardrobe. I let out a gasp, unable to squelch it in time.

Luckily, the sparking light made a hiss that was louder.

Even so, I froze once the gasp left my lips.

I stared without moving at the flickering red light, which now filled the entire length of the crack on the left side of the wardrobe.

I stared into the illumination, no longer able to see anything past it.

Then a bulging eye pressed itself to the other side of that crack between the stone and the wood.

It stared at me, and I saw it widen even more.

“Witch!” the voice snarled. “Witch, I see you there! No point trying to skulk and hide now!” Triumph mixed with disquiet in his voice.

I saw that eye twitch from the conflict between the two emotions.

“How did you get yourself wedged in there, little witch? Are you employed by the family?” His voice darkened.

“Or did someone send you here to spy and scamper like a little sneak? Not very wise, if so. Not very wise––”

But that was too much.

I jerked myself backwards, throwing myself away from that light, away from that bulging eye and the dancing red flames––

––and I fell abruptly through the stone wall a second time.

Unlike the first time, I didn’t fall sideways.

Or really, maybe I did, but the instant I passed through that shockingly bright light, the world tilted violently around me.

Vertigo hit as every part of my physical body lurched with the swivel of the planet’s orientation change. I’d been moving one way, with one set of rules, when abruptly, that planet disappeared and reappeared somewhere else.

I let out a terrified shriek as gravity shifted with it.

For a long-feeling increment of time, I hung in silence, trying to will myself to move the way I had been when I first stumbled through the stone.

Then, everything righted itself, and I found myself plummeting backwards.

Everything after that happened extremely fast.

I glimpsed a stone arch as I passed through it.

Sunlight flashed in my eyes, blinding me.

Then I was just falling, watching a shockingly high, arched ceiling recede as I fell away from it.

I flailed my arms and legs, screaming, trying to turn myself around so I could see where I was falling.

I only managed to get sideways in time to see an ocean of dark fabric swim rapidly into sight.

I fought to make a mudra with my hand, to build a shield, but everything happened too fast, and I was only halfway through when I crashed into it.

I let out a pained cry, landing on my hip and shoulder.

For a bare second, I was suspended in the dark cloth.

Then a loud ripping sound filled my ears, and I shrieked again.

I fell through the hole in the thin covering, despite my desperate scrabbling for the wooden posts that held the fabric in a near net. In the process I only managed to rip a longer, more ragged hole.

I cried out again, mostly in delayed shock, because I had a lot less further to fall.

Even so, again maybe in reflex, I fought to finish another spell, to slow my fall, or maybe just to make sure it was soft enough not to hurt.

I landed before I could get that one finished, too.

Luckily, as I said, it was a much shorter distance to fall. More lucky still, I landed on something wide, flat, slightly bouncy, and incredibly soft. The dark green duvet felt like landing on a pile of feathers.

Even so, I bounced when I landed, getting air the first time.

I landed more gently the second time, and could have cried out in pure relief when my head fell back on something unbelievably soft.

I didn’t cry out, though.

I didn’t make a sound.

I was too shocked to move or think for what must have been a few seconds.

Adrenaline pumped insanely fast through my blood, making it impossible even to catch my breath.

My hip hurt. My tongue and cheek hurt, and I guessed I’d bit both on my way down from the ceiling, or when I first collided with the back of that wardrobe, or at some point as I stumbled through one of the stone walls.

I was still breathing too hard, and seeing spots.

When I closed my eyes, I saw that bulging eye in the darkness behind my closed lids, and the sharp red light around it.

But it wasn’t dark here.

Unlike where I’d just left, the room was well-lit, with fire and aging sunlight.

I turned my head, and saw the front door first, then the study with its enormous desk and built-in shelving, then the tall, iron-framed windows and the kitchen with its rows of neat containers holding teas, coffee, sugar, salt, and other spices.

Even once I’d identified where I was, I nearly blacked out.

Maybe I just wanted to black out.

Relief, disbelief, and frustration crashed together, and instead of calming me down, the combination made my head pound, my hands clench around the fabric of Bones’s duvet.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

I closed my eyes, and tried to count backwards.

Mostly though, I wanted to scream.

Fuck.

I’d been in his house.

I’d made it inside the Black Tower.

I’d gotten past all the deadly chimaeras, past whatever black magic and blood spells locked down and protected Dark Cathedral’s fortress, and I’d gotten back out the same way, without a real scratch on me.

I’d finally bloody phased.

And, just like I’d expected it would, it sent me right towards Bones, even if I hadn’t quite made it to him, or even to the same part of the castle as him.

I still hadn’t done or learned a damned thing that would actually help me save him.