There was something wrong within the empty hallways. They were clear and quiet but that wasn’t what bothered Tobias; it was normal in the early morning for the catacombs to be that little bit more echoy, the halls seeming to whisper with borrowed words that bounced off them fighting back the loneliness. It was the darkness within them that made him uneasy, the inky shadows which the flickering golden light of the torches seemed to be heavy and aggressive as if biting and fight with the light so they could consume the passageways completely. There was the occasional laugh and up-beat murmur to be heard over his pounding feet and heavy panting, but the walls seemed to corrupt it and spit it out into something sinister beyond that the walls seemed silent, watching him dash by at full speed with an air of trepidation as if they knew something he did not.
These were not the walls he knew so well. Something was wrong, he could feel it in his bones but he was not sure what it was exactly. It was so strong he could almost smell it. Was he too late? Had Adeline already gone? Had she left some kind of trap for him that he was blinding charging into? Or had the initiation not worked and she was lying unconscious somewhere lost to a never ending dream? The dread began to rise in him, his mind turning over even more horrible situations, each one even more grim than the next. The walls passed him snippets of voices Adeline’s and one that for some reason seemed familiar although he was unable to discern to whom the voice belonged. Was it his mind playing tricks on him? Was that the dreadful clank of armour?
He had managed to travel from the market chamber and to the residential passages in record time, but now his throat burned as his lungs screamed for air. His blood thumped in his ears, and his footsteps reverberated through the hallways filling his hearing with the sounds of his sprinting. There was a chill in the air now; the tell-tale sign that a door to outside world was left open somewhere making his heart sink but it only made him renew his speed. If she had found her way out there was always the tiny possibility he could get her back if he was efficient enough. He knew the castle and its staff passages like the back of his hand once; maybe he could head her off before she raised the alarm.
Crash! Thud “Watch it!” And his train of thought was interrupted.
Tobias skidded to a halt. It was that familiar yet unfamiliar voice again and tried to stifle his loud panting, but his chest heaved too heavily and he resorted to covering nose and mouth as he stalked through the corridors a little closer. Ahead of him was a knight who had his back to him. His armour glinting in the dancing light, the princess lay at his feet clearly he had been carrying her off but why was she unconscious? Had he done that to her? or he had found her like that? The man he was shouting at was a shock. Mortimer stood defiantly before him his frail and crooked frame haloed by the iconic blue glow of magic which he had used to stand rooted to the ground deliberately blocking the knight’s way. Unusually the hood of his cloak was down, the full extent of the ravages of dark magic plain to see in his thin, snow white hair, the hundreds of folds in his skin and the droop of his eyelids but his grey eye shone with the youth of any man in his twenties. But why was he here? Did Johana send him? More importantly how had a knight gotten into the catacombs? It was worrying beyond comprehension. The mages had gone to such great lengths to remain a secret all these years. Suddenly, Tobias cursed the fact his bow was hanging on the back of his chamber door. At this distance, he could easily dispatch him via the tiny exposed parts of the neck and the armpit. It would be no harder than catching a ball thrown from three paces away.
Mortimer growled, “I would suggest you ‘watch it’ Ace. You may have left these walls many years ago but I am still your Elder!”
Ace! This knight was Ace? Memories of vicious attacks from his childhood came flooding back. He had never known why Ace had singled him out as a punch bag of sorts, but the hatred the two had for each other was equally shared. When Tobias saw him coming he always told Lia to run in the opposite direction, or would stuff her somewhere out of sight as quickly as possible and would stand, much as Mortimer did now, defiantly in the boys path and fight him off as best he could. Ace had the advantage of age over Tobias but Tobias’s knowledge even by that age was superior to others his age who only dabbled in casting. It made the two evenly matched and both ended up bloodied and exhausted at the end of a fight which continued even after Lia had been taken to the palace.
Lia always seemed to be a catalyst for hatred between the two. Ace knew she was Tobias’s weak spot and he exploited it to its fullest. In the early days, when he had discovered where she was, Tobias would sneak into the gardens in the dead of night and use the old servant’s passages to visit Lia, where they would stay up late talking about their two converging lives. He had only managed to do it twice when on the third he had been caught by Ace who fought him to within an inch of his life and thrown him down the steps of the passageway forbidding him to ever see her again. “If you ever come back here again, even setting a toe onto the grounds,” he had hissed menacingly in his ear as he lay broken at the end of the passageway unable to move. “and I’ll slit Lia’s pretty little throat, but not before I hurt her first. She’ll be begging for the end before I’m done. Nice and quiet. No one will ever know and they’ll find her body rotting in the moat the next morning. You know how good I am. You know I can make it all look like a horrible accident.” Tobias shuddered at the very thought. He had never even dared to go anywhere near his sister again. He knew how cruel Ace could be and he had no idea where Ace had gone, one day he had just left. He had tried to send her ravens but they only came flying back with the seal unbroken. Now he realised that he had been in the palace all along, he wondered whether Ace had been intercepting them, nevertheless he sent them every year in the hope that one might get through to her, but every year they returned untouched as if Lia didn’t exist anymore.
Tobias’s worries now lay on the crumpled form of the princess. If Ace had an interest in her it was for nothing good and as Ace and Mortimer snapped back at each other with, his breathing calmed Tobias crept forth from the shadows towards the royal heap on the ground. The argument was rising to a battle the two too absorbed in each other to notice his presence. Then he was safely out of eye shot, behind Ace’s massive armoured back, crouching beside the princess his hands moving to tend her but there was a massive crash and Mortimer was thrown backwards into a wall. The sound of metal scrapping against metal and then the ringing of a freshly drawn sword sounded in his ears and the brightly polished metal appeared at his cheek, so fast it was as if it appeared from thin air the blade so sharp that even with the slightest pressure as it was pressed to his cheek it sliced the skin and he barely even felt the metal break the skin. Blood began to drip down his cheek and off his chin onto the yellow sandstone below. He didn’t look up but even as the passage settled into silence he could hear the smile in the air. Once more Tobias had underestimated Ace; once more Ace had let him think that and once more Ace had got him right where he wanted him.
Statistics: Posted by Ursus — Fri Feb 14, 2014 11:55 am