“I need some air,” he croaked, his eyes glancing toward the far window.
With Aamir’s help, Alex rose and stepped toward it. His burning lungs were desperate for some fresh oxygen, and his eyes longed for the sight of something that wasn’t hewn from hefty gray stone. However, as he reached the windowsill, he saw that the landscape beyond was blurred from sight behind a veil of shimmering bronze fog. He could make out vague shapes on the horizon—the hint of trees, perhaps the point of a mountain—but nothing solid. It was all a haze, no doubt intended to keep morale low. How could the prisoners hope, when they had no outside reference to remind them of why they kept living? Without sky and trees and sunshine, the world became very small and very bleak.
Alex tried not to let the disappointing view get to him as he attempted to drag wisps of crisp oxygen into his lungs, filtered through the bronze fog. When he focused all his attention on breathing, needing the pureness of real air, it made him feel suddenly panicky, like he was trying to breathe through a straw filled with cotton wool. If he hadn’t been conscious of Aamir’s hand upon his arm, he knew he might have allowed the penetrating fear to take hold of him. As it was, Aamir’s presence calmed him somewhat, reminding him that he still had his friends to fight for, even if he couldn’t see the trees and the sky that might give him renewed hope. Someday, he would look upon the real sky again, the one drifting aimlessly above his hometown, and that would be worth everything.
Across the room, he heard Natalie and Ellabell begin to share all that had happened at Stillwater with the professors in hushed tones, with Jari chiming in where he saw fit. Alex paused, not wanting to disturb their chat, though part of him wanted to go to where they were congregated and encourage them to talk about the illusions they had seen while under the hold of the nightmare fog. No one had seemed eager to discuss it, and Alex didn’t want to pry, not when the group’s mood had only just returned to some semblance of normalcy. Suddenly, he heard the name “Gaze” mentioned in somber tones and saw Lintz’s face fall; it was more sadness than Alex could take.
He turned back around, his attention distracted a moment later by the sound of a splash. Peering curiously over the edge of the windowsill, he saw that there was murky water below, running in a kind of moat around the keep itself, but he couldn’t make out the shape of the thing that had made the loud splash. Whatever it was, it was big, the ripples it had made continuing to undulate outward before bumping against the steep, muddy bank. He watched the still moat closely, wondering if the creature might emerge again. For a moment, he thought he saw a vast shadowy form moving beneath the surface, but it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
He let his exhausted eyes wash over the hazy fog again, and the blurry shapes of trees behind it, and, beyond that, the possibility of a mountain peeking up on the distant horizon. He closed his eyes, imagining that the real world lay just beyond those imagined peaks.
He turned again as Lintz and Demeter moved toward the door of the tower, saying their farewells. The professor toyed with his moustache anxiously, his face a picture of grief. Alex understood; it couldn’t have been easy to hear the fate of a much-beloved friend. Guard duty called the two older men back into the depths of the keep again, and they had to heed it, checking the prison for any escapees, locking all the doors that needed locking, keeping everything in order.
As soon as they had departed, Alex was suddenly overwhelmed with prickles of irritation, which flared inside him and spread like wildfire, clawing under his skin. He struggled to suppress the annoyance that had emerged so unexpectedly, breathing heavily to try to calm his piqued emotions. It didn’t make sense for him to feel something so violently, so quickly. Perhaps it had something to do with the barrier and its crackling, livid magic.
Then claustrophobia washed over him just as suddenly, and his chest felt like it was constricting, his throat tightening. The stabbing pain inside his body came back with a vengeance, pulsing through his nerves like a white-hot blade, and it was as if the walls were closing in on him.
He stood quickly, wanting to escape the room, but his body had other ideas. The pain made his vision go blurry for a moment, his knees buckling as he crumpled to the floor. Natalie reached out to catch him, her reflexes lightning fast, setting him on his feet again. Hurriedly, he scrambled to regain his balance, pushing away from her in an attempt to stop his unruly anti-magic from running through his hands and into her skin. He didn’t want his uncontrolled emotions to hurt any of those around him.
“Are you okay, Alex?” she asked, but Alex was looking at the other two now, who were also eyeing him strangely.
He didn’t know if he was just being paranoid, his fears fed by the barrier, but suddenly everyone’s eyes seemed to be on him and he didn’t like the feel of them burning intensely into his flesh, judging him, scrutinizing him, assessing him. He’d had enough.
“No, I’m not,” he panted. “I-I have to go. Don’t follow me.” With that, he rushed from the tower room and headed toward the door of a guard room that lay adjacent to it.
Reaching the guards’ quarters, he lay down on one of the makeshift beds and hoped sleep would come quickly, only to sit bolt upright a moment later as he heard the door open. Natalie walked in. She looked concerned, and Alex was paradoxically both annoyed and relieved that she had followed him. At least she had come alone. He wasn’t sure he could handle more than one person at a time right now.
She sat on the chair next to him. “What’s wrong, Alex? You’re acting really strangely.”
“I just… haven’t been feeling very well,” he said.
“It is more than that, I can tell,” she pressed, narrowing her dark eyes. “We’ve been through so much—you can tell me anything, and I will not judge you for it, as you have tried not to judge me when I have strayed off the path a bit.”
He exhaled, closing his eyes. “Fine,” he grated out. “There’s a reason I’m not feeling well. I feel all… twisted up inside, and being in this place isn’t helping.”
“Why do think you feel this way?” she asked, sounding like a psychiatrist. It irked Alex, despite himself.
“Something happened at Stillwater, and it’s making everything worse. It has something to do with the golden beasts I set on Alypia… I used some of my essence, I think,” he said, wincing. He hated to say the words aloud. He didn’t know why, but he felt a sort of shame about it, as if he had damaged a gift or broken something very precious, and he didn’t like the way that felt. Every negative emotion felt heightened by the barrier’s persistent presence.
“I thought that may have been the case,” Natalie replied in a hushed tone. “I know it made me feel like that… Always on edge, everything feeling terrible, every nerve irritated.”
Even if she had known of his sacrifice, she couldn’t have warned him of the repercussions. He had acted on impulse, seizing the moment, and now he was dealing with the consequences. Hadn’t he said that once, brimming with bravado in the halls of Spellshadow? Hadn’t he said that he would deal with the consequences of a missing piece of himself when the time came? Well, the time had come and gone, and it felt agonizing and impossible to deal with. He looked to Natalie with a renewed sense of respect, understanding that after her portal act she had likely gone through much the same as he was.
“How did you get through it?” he asked her quietly, feeling his frayed nerves begin to calm slightly.
She gave him a warm smile. “Friends looking out for me, and plenty of rest.”
He managed to return her smile. “Well, that’s what friends do, right? They look out for each other when they do idiotic things.”
“I doubt it will be our last time,” she chuckled, though it was somewhat strained. It felt to Alex as if there was something else she wanted to say, but whatever it was, she didn’t say it.
“Are you all better now?” he asked.
She shrugged. “As strange as it may sound, I think the focus of learning again at Stillwater has had someth
ing to do with it. I do not know how I felt before it happened, but I feel closer to the normal I remember than I have in a long while.” There it was, a hint of the unspoken thing.
Alex skirted the allusion to missing Stillwater, taking comfort from her latter words instead.
“And it took rest?”
“Rest and not rushing into anything major, or you will only make it worse… though I believe you have already defied that a few times recently.” She smirked, picking up a blanket from the pile on the table beside her and handing it to him. “Thanks, by the way, for saving us from those hallucinations—I have not had the chance to say it yet.”
“Don’t mention it,” he muttered. “It’s what we do.”
She nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “It is what we do.”
As he pulled the blanket around himself, Alex realized he must have been running on the fumes of residual adrenaline and sheer determination all this time, because the exhaustion hit him like a tidal wave.
On the far side of the room, he could hear Natalie clattering around, and she soon returned, clutching a mug in her hands. She crouched on the floor beside him and passed him the steaming beverage. Lifting it to his lips, the familiar prickle of peppermint wafted into his nostrils, and he felt a small smile curve at the corners of his mouth, remembering Gaze and her endless teas. Sipping cautiously, he swallowed the hot liquid, feeling it warm him as it slipped down his throat. There had been an undeniable method to Gaze’s tea madness—it worked, and whether it was a peculiar placebo effect or not, it made him feel better.
He was still awake and sipping tea when Ellabell entered the guards’ quarters and hovered in the doorway. Alex watched Natalie walk over to where Ellabell stood. For what seemed like a lifetime, they whispered between themselves, glancing in his direction every so often, as if just to add to his gathering anxiety.
So it was an unexpected delight when Ellabell came over to where he lay and sat on the bed beside him, encouraging him to use her lap as a pillow as he curled up to rest. Whatever Natalie had said, Ellabell was wearing a fresh expression of deep worry as she absently stroked his hair, soothing him and willing him to sleep. It felt nice to have her so close, but he didn’t like to see concern furrowing her brow, especially when it was there because of him.
“What’s up?” he asked sleepily.
She smiled, brushing hair from his eyes. “Never mind me. You have to sleep now, Alex.”
“I’m not tired,” he lied.
“Sleep.”
“Why the frown?” he mumbled, teetering on the edge of slumber.
“I worry for you,” she whispered.
He reached for her hand, his eyelids sliding shut. “Why?”
“Oh, Alex, you fool,” she breathed. “I worry for you because…”
He didn’t hear what she said next, as he found himself drifting off into a deep, dreamless sleep, the sleep of the world-weary.
Chapter 4
The next morning, from the meager supplies Lintz had stashed away for them in the tower room, the group ate and drank quickly, talking very little between bites and sips. The food in their bowls was some sort of thin, gelatinous porridge, gray in both color and flavor, though the tea they had to wash it down with made it more palatable. Alex still felt on edge, but the nourishment perked him up slightly. A few times, he caught Ellabell looking at him with concern, but he smiled reassuringly at her, trying to let her know he was okay. Whether she believed him or not was another story.
After breakfast, Lintz was going to show them the beetles that would alert them to any opening portals, before Demeter introduced them to his friends so they could get on with their mission of locating the keep’s stash of essence. In a place full of necromancers and murderers, Alex couldn’t imagine the label “friend” being a wholly accurate one.
The group got to their feet, with Aamir holding out a hand to Alex. Alex shook his head, confident he was recovered enough to walk unaided.
“You sure?” Aamir asked, frowning at Alex.
“I’m fine,” he replied, more tersely than he had intended, though Aamir didn’t seem to notice.
After the first few minutes of walking, Alex found he could ignore the dull pain in his chest. As long as he kept moving one foot in front of the other, he could pretend he was okay. Slowly, he followed the others, with Lintz leading the way, until they came to the large common room below. A workbench was set up against the far wall, with a few of the beautiful clockwork beetles arranged on top.
“You’ll each need to take one of these,” Lintz said, passing out smaller variations of the beetles to everyone present.
Alex turned the intricate mechanism in his hands, marveling at the craftsmanship. The beetles themselves were no bigger than the palm of a hand and looked more like scarabs than their larger counterparts. The metal that formed the carapace had been tempered to look multicolored, the hue changing depending on how the light hit it.
“Incredible,” Alex murmured.
Lintz grinned. “These are my beetle beacons,” he explained. “I’ve been using them to inform me when a portal is detected. If one senses a portal appearing, it will flash and make a high-pitched siren sound. The lights work like a compass. Allow me to demonstrate.”
Lintz ran some of his magic through the mechanism. The scarab lit up, a shrill sound piercing the air. A light shone on each side of its shell, four in total. The alarm sent a shiver through Alex as he wondered what it would be like when the device went off for real, signaling the impending arrival of Alypia. He knew such an event was imminent, and that knowledge filled him with a cold dread.
“Now, you see, all four lights are flashing, but if a real portal had appeared, it would only flash in the direction of where the portal was opening. All you have to do is follow it, and the sound will grow louder the closer you get,” Lintz continued.
“And how do we turn it off?” Ellabell asked, covering her ears. The sound was irritating, to say the least.
“You simply press down firmly on the carapace of the beetle,” he replied. With his chubby thumb, he pressed down on the multicolored metal shell; there was a small click, and the shrill sound came to a grateful end. “So, say the two of you are on beetle duty,” he said, gesturing toward Alex and Ellabell. “You would follow the sound and light, reach the destination, and then pull away the portal. If you find yourself on beetle duty, you will need to carry fully charged big beetles with you, and once you have removed the portal, you’ll need to replace the used-up beetles with the fresh ones, and bring the depleted ones either to me or whoever is on magic-filling duty. And so the cycle will repeat.”
The process seemed simple enough, and Alex was eager to begin their exploration of the keep.
“So, you’re sure these friends of yours will be able to help us, Professor?” he asked.
“The two of them have been here for a very long time,” Lintz said, pocketing his own beetle beacon. “I daresay they know this place better than even Demeter or I by now.”
“They’ve been allowed out of their cells?” Aamir asked dubiously.
“They’re good people, and their doors are always unlocked because they’re important… associates… of ours, and so they have as much free rein of the place as we do,” Demeter said. “They’ll be expecting us shortly. Come on, we must strike while the iron is on fire!”
“I should check on my other beetles—I’ll catch up with you folks later,” Lintz said, a slight grimace crossing his face. Alex suspected the professor was still peeved at their choice to find the keep’s essence against his warnings.
They made their way out of the room, heading through a number of hallways and corridors in a series of turns. Demeter paused in front of two wooden doors that were ajar, situated at the end of a wide hall. He knocked on the first of the two doors.
A willowy older woman emerged, dressed in a tattered, once-violet dress. Her hair was dark gray, falling well past her waist, several sections woven with what looked
like strands of colorful silk—though where she would have gotten such a luxury, Alex wasn’t sure. She wore dried flowers in a woven band across her forehead and around the back of her hair too, structured into a sort of flower crown that gave her a distinctly earth-mother quality. As the torchlight caught the side of her face, Alex could see that she had once been beautiful. Her high cheekbones gave her a dignified air, and her green eyes glittered with a perpetual irreverence. She flashed an easy smile at them as she stepped out into the corridor. It was bright and welcoming, and Alex felt an instant warmth toward the woman, who seemed pleasant enough—much too pleasant to be in a place like this, surrounded by so much grime and darkness, nowhere near the bounty of nature.
“You must be the little cherubs!” she cried in a crisp, clear voice. “My name is Agatha Spjut, and I am delighted to meet you all. What brings your angelic faces to my door?”
“We need your assistance, Agatha,” Demeter explained. “We’re going in search of hidden essence, and we need good minds to help us map out the prison, so we don’t keep looking over the same old ground.”
“How exquisitely adventurous of you all! I love a spot of bravado.” She grinned more widely, clapping her hands together. “Delighted to offer my help, dear ones, absolutely delighted! I might look ancient, but this mind is as sharp as any you’ll find. Are we roping in old Forcier?”
Demeter nodded. “I was just about to knock.”
With that, the professor knocked on the second door down, bringing the arrival of Demeter’s second friend, though he didn’t make quite the same first impression as the pleasant, hippie-like Agatha. In fact, at first glance he was quite alarming. The skin of his face was paper-thin, a network of blue veins running visibly beneath the pale surface, connecting from pallid lips, across sunken cheeks, and up over a high forehead into a hairline of silvery gray. The man looked startlingly emaciated, his clavicles protruding from beneath a black waistcoat, leading to a thin neck that barely looked capable of holding his head up, like the stick of a lollipop. It didn’t seem to bother him, however, as he moved fluidly from the room.