Akemi watched, stricken, as Mort’s body descended. She braced herself for the inevitable impact, expecting him to plunge into the azure river below, to be swallowed by the earth. But it didn't happen that way. About halfway down, he disappeared, as if swallowed by the sky itself.

The water didn’t wrinkle even in the slightest.

She turned to Bamo, brows furrowed.

“This has to be illusion magic, right?”

He peered over the edge, nodding in agreement.

“No shit.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Okay,” she said, raising her eyebrows expectantly. “Then you go first.”

His face turned pink in surprise as his eyes darted frantically from her to the cliffside.

“Why me?” he said, finally, straightening out in an effort to disguise his obvious fear. “This is your insane idea. You’re just dragging me along for the ride.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one with wings.”

He instinctively pulled them back, trying to make them look as small and non-present as possible. Akemi laughed, then gently pushed him in the chest with the palm of her hand. Not enough to actually throw him off balance, but enough to get the message across: she was serious. Winged animals first, women and children after.

“Fine,” he sighed, bringing his claws to cover his chest. “Like this, right? I can't remember which one he put on top of the other…”

“Stop stalling.”

Bamo drew in a deep breath, stealing one final glance over the cliff, like he was preparing to bungee-jump from an airplane. Akemi couldn't help but roll her eyes.

"In the name of the Dark Lady," he intoned, taking a slow step backward. "Grant me passage."

And with that, he surrendered himself to gravity.

Akemi leaned over the cliff's edge once more, observing as Bamo followed Mort's mysterious fate, vanishing into the wind. A subtle shimmer danced in the air as his form dissipated, resembling a wavering heat mirage. Was it a crack in the illusion?

“Bamo?” she shouted down into the ravine. There was no response.

Alright. Enough of this.

She clenched her hands to her chest, swallowing hard as if encasing herself in a straitjacket. Each cautious step toward the cliff's edge felt like a battle against her own instincts. She despised heights, always had. Even as a child, riding horses had been a nerve-wracking ordeal. Every tremor underfoot had felt like a small earthquake.

She felt the same unease creep back now, with the overgrown grass tickling her angles, the uneven rocks jutting into the soles of her shoes. She looked down, and the busy insects of the woods looked back up at her; a pack of ants, typically single-mindedly focused on carrying food up and down twigs, were watching her like a rapt audience.

Could they sense her fear? No, that was ridiculous. They were ants.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” she said, reaching the end of the cliff. Her insides twisted; her stomach churned. “It’s not real. It’s just another illusion. Just like Agnor’s.”

If only her brain knew that. It had been much easier to whack her fake mother with a ball of flaming insects than jump off a cliff.

Before she could think twice, she flung herself backward, messy and inelegant. The wind seized her like a giant fist, hurling her downward with the force of a pitched baseball. It felt suffocating and freeing all at once.

"Dark Lady!" she cried out. "Grant me safe passage!"

"Could you please stop yelling?"

Akemi’s eyes snapped open, breaths falling out of her in frenzied heaps.

What the hell?

Just a moment ago, she’d been in the air. Her mind had felt so certain that she was about to hit the water, that she could still feel the sensation of it crawling over her senses—the deafening splash as she landed, the cold, wet river water.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

But none of it was real.

She glanced at her hands, confirming what she already knew. They were damp with something like dirt, but not wet, not submerged under ten feet of suffocating liquid.

Above her, a torch danced, casting flickering green light on Bamo's face. He extended his free hand, and she accepted it gratefully, allowing him to help her to her unsteady feet.

“I–is that fire?” she stammered, the world still spinning.

“Of some sort,” he murmured. The green flame wavered in the air.

As she stood upright, her surroundings came into focus. The flame—or whatever it was—reflected off the walls, revealing a wide expanse of polished stone. The stone gleamed as if recently washed, with traces of soap bubbles clinging to its surface.

This must be it.

The meeting place, the one the magistrate discussed in his letter. It was certainly the right place to keep a secret hidden. She imagined even Nocturne would have a hard time slipping his way in unnoticed.

Her heart picked up again, Nocturne’s bandaged face flashing in her mind’s eye; small bursts of residual anxiety skittered across her nervous system.

Calm down.

She drew her fingers across the cold, hard wall, trying to ground herself. To her surprise, soft white light emanated from the rock, gently caressing her fingertips, as if it was leaning into her touch just as much as she was leaning into it.

It felt strangely… comforting.

She closed her eyes tight again, trying to focus on that single emotion.

“You don’t like heights, do you?” Bamo said quietly, after a moment. “You weren’t even actually falling, if that helps. It was just a few feet at the most.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she grunted, forcibly disconnecting herself from the cold wall. She realized she must have looked very strange, clinging to it as she had been. “Where’s Mort?”

“I’m right here.”

Akemi jumped. The drotling was, indeed, right in front of her, a few paces away. He had been hidden by the darkness. It was only when Bamo shone his torch on him that his short silhouette came into view, still solemn and apathetic.

“Thanks for the heads up,” Akemi grumbled, exhausted by all the sudden jolts to her nervous system. She turned to Bamo. “Where did you even get that torch?”

“Mort gave it to me.”

She looked pointedly at the drotling. “Well, does Mort have another one?”

“Come,” the child said instead. “I’ll escort you to the pool. This is where we pray.”

Stuck in a dark room with no exits or entrances, she had no other option than to obey. Still, as they walked through the corridors, plans began to filter slowly through her brain. Would she have to kill him? She didn’t like the idea of killing a child, even if it was allegedly just a pile of sentient dirt in disguise.

Maybe I can subdue him with Chloroform instead.

Regardless, she’d need to come to a conclusion quickly. She was here to find High Magistrate Serk’s coveted research, not drop to her knees and praise the Dark Lady.

The drotling came to an abrupt halt. He turned around, large, doe-like eyes gleaming as he grabbed Bamo’s torch from his hands. Then, holding it tightly, he perched himself on his tiptoes and brought it to the waiting mouth of an unlit sconce.

Swoosh. With a swift motion, the green flame ignited, casting a mesmerizing glow that spread like livewire around the room. One by one, the flames leapt to life, igniting a series of sconces in a perfect circle.

Bathed as they were now in a soft, seafoam luminescence, Akemi could make out the true dimensions of the chamber. It was smaller than expected, its circular form snugly encased in the same polished stone. Ahead, the floor descended into a lower platform, where a stagnant pool of water rested, encircled by a patch of sand.

At the center of the pool was a stone obelisk. It wasn’t the obelisk itself that caught her eye, but what was resting on top of it. There was a sheet of paper there, tucked in between the obelisk and a stone paperweight. It seemed… out of place.

“What’s that piece of parchment for?” Akemi asked, trying to temper her curiosity. “The one sitting on top of that little statue?”

“An offering, I assume,” Mort said. “There are many offerings here.”

He wasn’t wrong; the sand was scattered with small carved trinkets. Mostly pottery, handmade moons and figurines. But notably, no letters. The drotlings didn’t exactly seem like a wordy people. Which made a letter—written on such a fine, industrial piece of paper, placed so centrally, so obviously, to anyone who was keen on taking instead of offering—very strange. Alarm bells rang in her head.

Mort dug his torch into the sand and kneeled, pressing his head to the soft, tan granules. He began to hum to himself, a low ohm. Akemi and Bamo shared a glance.

This would be the perfect time.

She pressed a finger to her mouth, signaling for Bamo to stay quiet. His eyes widened.

“What are you going to do?” he mouthed, suddenly looking very concerned.

She gave him a stern look.

“Just stay there,” she mouthed back.

He didn’t look happy about it; in fact, he looked even more distressed, but she knew he would stay. Bamo was good at one thing, and that was taking orders. He was a fine sidekick that way. Perfect for the role.

With the bat fixed in place, Akemi approached the drotling from behind. She kneeled down in the sand behind him, feigning like she was about to pray, and then, without hesitation, gripped her hands around his mouth.

“[Chloroform]”

A sharp, urgent pain lit up Akemi’s arm. An unbearable pain. She tried to withdraw her hand, but something was clamping down on it hard, keeping her fingers solidly in place. She cried out in pain, thrashing her hand around to no avail. It simply wouldn’t release. It was as if it had been taken under the wheel of a car and trampled a dozen times over.

At her cry, the drotling’s head snapped around, doing a full one-eighty. Its neck wrinkled unnaturally, allowing it to maneuver like a possessed owl. With Mort’s face now exposed to the light, Akemi could see exactly what had mangled her.

It was his teeth, sharp like daggers, clenched unforgivingly around her hand.

Blood was seeping from her palm, streaking down his chin. His skin, once pale and perfect, was falling off in clumps. Underneath it was nothing but mulch. A mixture of skeletal bone and dirt from the forest floor. A guttural, bestial cry emanated from deep inside him, echoing out of his maw of a bloody mouth.

Akemi’s face drained of color.