Chapter Thirty-Three
To Fall
The fresh night air tingled in Michael’s lungs as the bronze doors of the keep swung outward away from him, and he looked out over the courtyard.
No sentinels walked its walls. No blacksmith hammers fell by its forges. No smoke rose from its many chimneys. He knew it was early, but it couldn’t still be Settling yet.
Michael stepped out onto the frost-touched forum to find he’d forgotten his shoes. He crinkled the blades of grass between his toes and smiled, though before long his feet were numb to his ankles. He wasn’t certain where he was walking to and merely put one foot in front of the other until he found himself moving up the nearest stairwell hidden within the fort’s walls.
He finally broke out onto the battlements and found himself looking out over the vast and empty lowlands of Bawdion, a myriad of rolling hills and clumps of forest, all glazed in the pale moonlight of early Brimming.
One moment Michael was looking over the fields and the next he was among them, moving through the long grass as the winds gently swirled it around him.
He walked further and further along through the hills until finally the great cave-crevice crept up before him, and from its wide, stone-edged mouth howled a sinister draft, whistling and shrieking through the different cracks and nooks.
Michael climbed into the opening and suddenly the light of the moon was taken away, casting him deep into darkness again. His heart rushing, Michael held out his hand and his veins flushed to the surface of his skin as a sphere of pure starlight floated up from his palm.
The cavern was like any other in its essence, though admittedly wider than most, likely to fit twenty people shoulder-to-shoulder. It held little creeks trickling quietly and a good deal of moss and algae clinging to the odd rockface. Beyond that, it was hardly the setting for an evil hoard’s entrance, he thought.
Even so, Michael clenched the light in his fist and kept walking, listening only to his short breaths and weary steps as he made his way. Michael was unsure of exactly where he was trying to go, but something drew him. As he moved through the cold stone beneath the hills, Michael began to notice the small tricks being played upon him. He’d close his eyes in one place and open them in another, as though his mind was skipping over the uninteresting parts. His magic didn’t burn in his veins, nor did the long march from his room leave any fatigue in his heart. Michael looked around in gentle amusement and chuckled softly, I’m dreaming, he knew.
Before long, Michael couldn’t see the cave entrance any longer, nor did his light extend anywhere meaningfully in front of himself, and slowly but surely, he felt the muscles begin to tighten in his heart. The darkness was eagerly waiting for his mind to let the Arcancy go, to forfeit the light in his grip and allow shadows back in once more.
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Michael blinked away his sudden tiredness. You’re dreaming. Nothing is going to happen.
He reached up to rub his face when he realised he was holding his make-shift sword in his right hand. It was heavier than he remembered, and its edge was coloured with dried blood. Nirrada’s blood.
Michael clenched his teeth and shook his head. This time he spoke aloud. “You’re dreaming. You left this in the Treewater. You’d never even be in here alone.”
A pebble fell from the cave ceiling somewhere in the dark and his head snapped in its echoing direction. His heart thundered so hard that it hurt within his breast. Michael tightened his grip on the sword and idly lifted it. “Breathe.”
Another pebble fell, skittering across the floor behind him.
Michael held up his magical starlight and shone it about the cavern, and it was only then that he realised he had no idea which way he’d been facing before.
A third stone fell, but this one hit the ground and stayed there. Far less like a cave slippage, and distinctly more like a footstep. Then came another. And another. And then the cavern was overrun with the noise of stone footsteps.
Michael ran. He didn’t know which way he tried to sprint, but he flew as fast and hard as he could. His foot crashed against the slick stones and his ankles bent and twisted in the dark but he managed not to fall. The path rose and fell before him. Had it been this uneven when he first came down?
He could have been sprinting for a minute or an hour by the time his foot struck an oddly shaped stone. Moment or age, the result was the same as he went crashing to the floor in a twisted, painful mess. His head snapped against the ground and a swirling knot of colour swam in his head. Nausea rose in him like a tide.
Blood trickled through Michael’s hair and the moment he tried to push himself up, his head split with throbbing and the world swam before his eyes. Still clenched in his white-knuckled fist, the small orb of light was now weak and pale and pulsing like the faint beat of his heart.
Michael closed his eyes as the blood trickled into the corner of his mouth. “You’re... just...-”
“-Dreaming?”
Michael opened his eyes and shook from head to toe as he titled his gaze upward.
There stood a figure cloaked in shadow, like the very sight of them was forbidden to him, and his mind refused to perceive it.
The figure crouched down low, empty of face, yet Michael knew they were smiling. “Are you sure? Not a vision? A prophecy? That would explain why your dear fortress was so empty. They must already be dead.”
The darkness of the figure erupted and filled the cavern, crushing Michael to the stone floor until the pressure became so overwhelming that his bones began to crunch, his flesh began to peel and his screams deafened him in the void of his own madness.
*****
His eyes opened blearily for a moment to notice near half a dozen people crowding around him, whereupon he quickly shut them again, wondering if they'd noticed. They hadn't, but the tone at which they spoke raised the hairs on Michael's neck. It was still dark out and the glance he’d managed to take was of the medical bay ceiling.
His body ached with the faint memory of the weight of the world, but as it subsided, Michael realised he was wrong. It didn’t ache. It burned. It burned like Arcancy.