Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alabaster
She stood before a long lost massive window, that’d be a swirling mix of colours, if there was sunlight. Instead, the grey sky beyond had muted the effect of the panes.
A clicking echoed rhythmically in the vast chamber, matching an even pace of footsteps against the stone floor.
The sound tugged at something familiar. She whirled in anticipation, but she was alone.
She squinted, trying to locate the sound’s source across the ever-reaching chamber, but it was too dark.
She noticed the edges of the hall were creeping towards her. Panic flared in her. She knew she wanted no part of it. Whatever was within that darkness, whatever was coming, she wanted it gone.
A low cackle drowned out the clicking footsteps that made tormented shivers run along her spine. It was a cackle that she knew intimately, and she felt nothing but horror as the sound rung throughout the chamber.
She frantically whipped her head from side to side, watching the ever-darkening hall’s sides creep ever closer, but nothing was there except an absolute darkness.
A familiar fear caught in her throat. The kind of fear that made her feel small and young once more. It was the type of na?ve fear that she’d once thought if she pulled her bedcovers over her head, it would keep her safe.
How wrong she’d been.
There was no protection from this, from her .
The cackling turned to a cumulative cacophony. In a sad attempt to quieten the high-pitched screeching, she covered her ears.
She instinctively knew that the darkness leeching from both sides was not something she wanted to touch her. She wanted nothing to do with it.
She stood in horrified fixation as the dark edges rushed at her. She would have screamed, but the sound caught in her throat.
As the dark edges closed in, it transformed into shapes. Shapes that became clearer the closer they got to her.
The darkness transformed into creatures.
The creatures that were…there were no words.
The creatures were unlike any she’d seen before.
They were flying, crawling, and rushing at her from both sides.
They were pitch black. A type of black that the moment it touched anything, it was swallowed whole by the creature’s endless darkness.
They were featureless, grotesque, with elongated limbs.
She ran.
She ran as fast as she could towards whoever had been walking with a steady, sure gait. She didn’t know why, but she knew if she could just get there, then she’d be safe.
She didn’t get far until she felt claws tearing at her arms. She tried to rip her arms free, but it was futile. Claws replaced more claws. It was endless. The creatures held her solidly between them.
As she stood fighting, squirming, doing anything to dislodge their black claws, the cackling had risen, and a second voice had joined the first. The terror that’d gripped her held firm.
She realised in her struggle she couldn’t move her feet; they were stuck to the floor. She didn’t want to look at the creatures. She knew once she saw what they looked like, then there’d be no unseeing it.
Instead, she looked down at her legs, hoping that if she could see what held her, then she could undo it.
She expected to see her legs covered in the same type of darkness that’d leeched from the creatures, but no.
She was being held in something solid. It was white and cold.
So cold that it took her breath away and stopped her from being able to scream.
She squirmed, pulled, and tugged, trying to get away, but she knew she could not.
She was stuck.
Her panic turned to helpless fear.
No, this couldn’t be it, not like this.
Her breathing became laboured as she realised that the substance had rapidly covered her legs and body.
She’d been so focused on getting free that she hadn’t noticed that the creatures had retreated to the darkened edges of the hall. Finally, the owner of the steady gait came into view. Surprise but relief filled her at who she saw.
The Marquis of Laerus.
She desperately reached for him, but the rapidly spreading coldness engulfed her hands and arms.
His measured clicking steps came to a stop as he stood just out of reach.
His head tilted to the side as he watched her mouth be stuffed with the bland hardness.
Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t scream nor sob.
Despair and devastation filled her as she had no choice but to surrender to the shimmering ivory alabaster.
In one final attempt to be spared, her eyes went wide and watery as she wordlessly pleaded with him to help her save her, but he stood there unimpressed, unmoving, and utterly bored.
Nothingness surrounded her. Encased in the pure white luminous stone. Stranded in her horrifyingly helpless and suffocating pose.