There was a moment of silence. Eluvie expected Amu to argue. Instead, he walked wordlessly to one of the shelves and began doing something. Eluvie heard the clang of tools being laid out: metal against metal, metal against wood.
She began to struggle.
She was strapped down tightly and weak from days of punishment and blood loss, so her strongest effort did nothing against the leather straps.
She cursed herself for being so foolish. She had begun dreaming and had forgotten how little power she truly had. She had believed that they would not kill her.
How far along was Amu, she wondered? How much longer did she have to live? What could she do? Like a gift from heaven, a memory came to her. She recalled her transformation a week before. She had been unable to escape the palace, but perhaps it was good enough to get her out of the restraints. How could leather straps hold down a vein of - whatever that was?
The only question was: could she do it now, out of the sun?
She decided to try.
It took a thought; only a thought. In one moment, she had a body. In the next, she could see the entire room. She saw herself as a network of gold spread out over the room, covering the floor and the walls like a giant golden mass of thread.
It was so easy all along, she thought.
Lady Mirab swore.
Amu was standing beside the now-empty bed, holding a knife and looking quite amused. Lady Mirab's expression was jumping from one emotion to another: first irritation, then anger, then worry.
"Lock the door," Lady Mirab ordered.
Eluvie tried to move and found the flaw in her plan. She was essentially a flexible mass of gold, arranged into a branch-like structure, and about an inch deep, a foot wide, and several meters long if she stretched herself into a straight line. Moving her new form was a challenge.
She tried to move toward the door. Instead of moving, however, the ends of several of her branches stretched toward it.
Someone shut the door. Fortunately, that achieved little. There was a gap underneath the door wide enough for her to slip through - if she found a way to do so.
She tried a new strategy: moving different parts of her new body in different ways. While some branches extended in the door's direction, the others contracted, shrinking toward a central position.
It worked. She moved just a tiny bit toward the door, but it felt like it had taken ages. The second attempt went better. By the third, parts of her had reached the door, but it was still too slow. It was much slower than walking.
Pain shot through her, and for a moment, she was thrown into panicked confusion. She contracted intuitively, pulling away from the sensation's location. When the confusion cleared, her web-like structure was gone. Instead, she had drawn herself into a mostly circular shape near the door. She had also sunk deeper into the ground, forming a depression in the stone floor tiles. Lady Mirab was standing near the sight of the sensation, holding a small glass rod.Lady Mirab approached Eluvie, holding the rod out like a weapon. Eluvie had never seen it before, but she didn't want to wait to examine it. She had pressed herself several inches into the ground, so deep that she was past the stone times and into dry, brown earth. She pondered that for the length of a lightning flash. The clinic was on the second floor; there should be a room under it. But she had no more time to ponder the palace's strange construction. If she had sunk into the ground, it was possible to sink deeper. That could be her best escape route.
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She tried to push downward but found no success. The stone was just as solid as stone could be.
Lady Mirab reached Eluvie and pressed the rod into her center.
The pain returned, just as stunning as the first time. Eluvie, once again, reacted by contracting, but there was no room for escape. She tried to press downward again, but that achieved nothing. Lady Mirab kept the rod on Eluvie, her face a contorted mask of anger and satisfaction.
Eluvie felt herself buckling under the pain. It was no worse than what she had already endured, but she could feel her consciousness slipping. If she lost now, she would never win again.
"Please," she begged, "please help me get away."
The ground parted, and Eluvie sank in like a stone through mud. For a few seconds, she was so stunned that she forgot to think. Then she realized that she had not sunk far. She was only about a foot below the surface. She could see Lady Mirab staring down at her with confusion and concern.
She tried to press further into the ground and found it resistant again.
"Please," she begged, "please, this isn't far enough."
For a moment, nothing happened, then she began sinking again. She did not know if her effort or pleas were producing the result, but she continued both, pleading and pushing until she hit a hard surface and the ground would part no further.
There was no light that far down, but she could still see. Her fall had created a cylindrical hole in the ground. She could see Lady Mirab, far above, peering down into the hole. In fact, she could see the whole clinic, but not the rooms or hallways beyond it.
Below her was a hard, smooth surface, the barrier that kept her from leaving the palace. She could see more dirt beyond it, but none of her efforts would carry her past it. She had not escaped, but she was in a better situation.
Above, Lady Mirab leaned away from the hole and eyed Eluvie's attendants.
"What are you still doing here?" she asked. "Go, and find a ladder."
Eluvie's heart sank. Of course, they could reach her. She needed to move.
She practiced her movement technique again. It took a little practice, but she was soon moving at the same speed as a slow walk, dragging the golden mass of her body up and down the dirt wall. She pushed a tendril into the wall and found that it parted easily. So she widened the resulting hole and pushed the rest of herself into it.
"I feel like a worm," she thought.
She didn't like the feeling.
She traveled through the dirt, making tunnels as she went, until she was a significant distance from her initial position. They would not reach her with a ladder now, but the tunnels she had traveled through led to her position. She had escaped, but she was not hidden.
She tried to close the hole behind her by pushing the dirt closed, but it was difficult to do in her current form. And even if she succeeded, it would take hours or days to close all of the tunnels.
Maybe I can make the ground do it for me.
It had not yielded to force earlier, but it had seemed to hear her pleas. The thought seemed ridiculous, but there was no one around to laugh at her.
Please, she thought, close the tunnels.
Nothing happened. The tunnel remained resolutely open.
Please, Eluvie pleaded. I know you listened to me before.
She continued the pleas for another minute, feeling foolish but desperate.
Then, a voice spoke in a grumpy, sleepy tone. "What is your problem?"