by Ren Ryder
My source stretched and grew irregularly as I absorbed chunks of the massive storm. I felt like I was coming apart, like my skin might dissolve and my insides would turn inside-out from the pressure.
I kept the energy moving inside me while my source ate it up like a glutton at its favorite buffet. It felt, odd, like a balloon expanding to push aside the organs in my chest. Channels of mana burned beneath my skin like an extra set of veins.
Around me the barrier of thorns disintegrated to reveal the Unseelie Court and the queen. Their shock was palpable. Clearly I hadn’t been expected to survive.
“He… absorbed… all of it?” Lady Maive spoke in clear disbelief.
“No… way.”
“He’s… some kind of monster.”
“Halfling mutant!”
“An… aberration.”
“What… what are you? Changeling Freak!”
The pressure waned, and my spirit glowed in the visible spectrum. Clenching my fists, I laughed. Coils of energy lingered in the air around me, and a veil of vibrant mana surrounded me like a second skin. My aura was much expanded, and pressure emanated from me as physical force.
Lady Maere’s dark eyes sparked, but she otherwise didn’t react. “The court bears witness, you’ve withstood the test of spirit.”
I felt… good.
Looking to the unflappable faerie queen for direction, I asked, “Well, what’s next? Got any more tests, or are we done here?”
“Freak! Speak with respect or lose your tongue!”
“A monster should be taught its place!”
I ignored the courtiers as they raised their voices in anger at the tone I’d taken. I rolled my shoulders and took the opportunity to examine the marks left by the test of iron. It looked like I’d tattooed my right forearm with dark rust in numerous irregular rectangular shapes. I touched them lightly, and was surprised to feel no pain.
Lady Maere waited for silence, rather than called for it. “Whose whelp are you?”
I met her eyes with a challenging stare of my own.
A darkly amused smile stretched my lips. “You expect a discarded bastard changeling to know anything of its origins?” I asked.
Lady Maere tsked. “Your final task— return alive from yonder pit.”
I wrinkled my brow in confusion. “What pit? What’re you talking about? I don’t see any pit.”
Maere pointed to my feet.
My stomach dropped.
I looked down.
White crystal turned see-through, revealing a pit beneath my feet. I had an instant’s clarity before the wind was rushing past my ears and I was falling into the dark below. I windmilled my arms and tried to get purchase in the pit’s bottleneck, but the walls were greased slick.
“Bell!” I screamed.
“Coming~”
Winds surged around me and slowed my fall, but I crashed hard before Bell’s working took hold. I landed feet first, and the force of my fall scrunched my body together and made me fall onto my back. My head hit last.
Everything happened so fast and unexpected that it took me longer than usual to gather myself, and when I did, I patted myself down in disbelief.
I’m not hurt?
A soft floor of ropy cushions had broken my fall.
Bell’s shining form alighted by my side, looking vexed. “You okay?”
“What is this place?” I asked.
Bell tilted her head. “A garbage chute, maybe?”
I scoffed at her response.
I looked around, trying to pierce the heavy darkness. The only thing I could see for sure was Bell, and the white crystal phasing back into place a hundred or so meters above. My gut tightened into knots and a rising anger grew in me. There goes my only sure escape route.
I clenched my jaw and forced myself to keep a lid on my emotions. Slow, I breathed in, then out, in, then out. After a quick count to ten, I regained some semblance calm.
“What did the Phantom Queen ask you?” I asked.
“Who? Oh, Maere? Ah, you know, the usual chit-chat, nothing much of import.”
I called her out. “That’s an awfully suspicious response.”
“Nothing suspicious here! Hey, look, it’s alive~” Bell gestured to my feet.
The soft, pillowy floor that’d saved me from injury began to move.
Snakes. A sea of slithering snakes had broken my fall. Big ones, little ones, spotted ones, bright snakes, earth-colored snakes, snakes big around as my head— all kinds of snakes.
Hyperventilating, I backpedalled until my back was against a wall. A chorus of hisses followed my movements. A rattlesnake kept pace with me and shook its tail menacingly.
Bell was trying to contain her laughter. “What, so you’re afraid of snakes?”
I shivered in revulsion as a snake coiled around my ankle. I kicked my leg and sent it flying before it could make any progress up my leg.
“I’m not afraid of them or anything, I just don’t like them, okay?”
“Wow, you really are— oh it’s too funny. How can you be afraid of a wittle snake, when you fought a wyrm?” Bell broke out into hysterical laughter.
“Can you please focus on helping me find another way out of here?”
Bell kept on laughing without regard for our situation, so I put aside a sudden desire to strangle her and focused on the task at hand.
“You’re the actual worst,” I told her.
Bell seemed to take great pride in my remark. “Guilty~”
My pupils expanded and light filtered into my eyes. I tried to keep a calm demeanor as thousands upon thousands of snakes became visible, forcing myself to take slow, measured breaths.
Torches lit of their own accord, illuminating a series of stairs descending deeper into the pit. Rather than warm shades of orange and red, the torches burned bright blue.
Faerie fire.
“Looks like an invitation,” Bell said.
“To go deeper into the pit,” I sighed. “Can’t we decline?”
Bell shrugged.
“I guess we better see what’s what.”
Moving slow and deliberate, I shifted my feet across the gravel. The scraping sound alerted the snakes around me, but none moved to strike. Once positioned, I bent my knees and leapt for all I was worth.
“Here goes!”
I cut through the air like I was shot from a cannon and slammed against the pit’s opposite wall. For an instant I stuck like glue. Then I bounced off the rock wall and landed hard on my back.
“What the…” I shook my head, wiped off the gravel clinging me, and stood.
Bell gave me a round of applause.
I crossed over to the topmost stair and looked down. From the top a downward spiral of blue torches lit the way with depressing regularity. It was a long way down.
“Why don’t you go first?” I suggested.
Bell put some distance between us and waved her hands. “No way! I’m just an innocent observer!”
I gave her a dirty look.
Taking that first step felt like plunging into a bath of ice water. I shivered and did a double-take. Thick, smoke-like miasma seethed over and around my foot, as if it was questing for a way inside my body.
Shaking off my revulsion, I steeled myself and started down the stairway. Blue light flickered across my body as I passed the first torch hung on the wall. I leaned over the side, away from the wall, to peer down into the abyss. About halfway down the miasma grew so thick that it obfuscated everything.
Staring, I said, “Wonder how far down it goes.”
“Only one way to find out!” Bell said.
“Right…”
I cast aside my hesitation and started to jog down the stairs. The cold energy set my teeth on edge, but I plowed through it without letting it drag me into its pace. Flickering faerie fire provided me just enough light to see where I was putting my feet.
My bangle heated against my left bicep.
I had to slow my pace when the dark cloud of
energy began to overtake the torchlight. Stepping more carefully, I walked with a purposeful stride, my right hand trailing against the wall to keep from tripping. As the chill grew I started to feel a bit slow, more confused, but I pushed through it.
Bell stopped trailing behind me and landed atop my head. “Don’t you worry, I’m here, no need to be scared.” I could feel her grabbing hold of bunches of my hair.
“How thoughtful of you,” I scoffed at her.
The pit seemed to narrow and the walls felt like they were pressing in around us. “Do you feel that?”
Bell’s teeth were chattering. “Feel what? No! I don’t feel anything!”
“Sure you don’t.”
The oppressive feeling only grew the deeper we went, making me certain we were drawing close to whatever awaited us. It was so dark by that point that I was mostly feeling my way along.
With the miasma obscuring my sight, I focused on my other senses. I didn’t pick up anything, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something to be found.
A sudden change in the regular pattern I’d come to expect while descending the stairs made me lose my balance and trip. I flailed my arms to regain my balance and kicked around to find the stairway had ended and the pit had bottomed out. In case there was another drop-off, I tested each step before committing my full weight to it.
“What— what’s going on?” Bell asked.
“Shh,” I shushed her.
My sixth sense screamed and I hopped backwards, sending gravel flying and making a loud racket. Raising my hands up, I took a defensive stance and got ready to move at a moment’s notice.
“What is it?” Bell asked.
“I don’t know.”
I cocked my head to the side as a clacking sound drew my attention. Rocks started to ping off the walls with startling frequency, rendering my sense of hearing useless.
I cursed.
I shifted my weight but was too slow to react to a crushing blow that clipped me on the shoulder. I skidded sideways and stopped when I struck hard stone. Moving quick I repositioned myself right before an attack landed where I’d been a moment before.
I stepped too hard and lost my footing trying to get back out into the open, stumbling.
With whistling speed something strong and fast hit me hard from above. I was flung to the ground with incredible force, then restrained quicker than I could react. Before I could make a move to extricate myself from the pin, several sharp somethings were pressed to my vital points: throat, temple, heart.
I laughed nervously. “Hah. You got me. Good one.”
“Good one~” Bell echoed in a hollow voice.
It wasn’t much of a leap to think that there was some kind of intelligence behind the entity holding me hostage. Putting aside the raw power on display, its tactics were smart, cold, and calculated.
The silence stretched long.
I tried a little test. I strained against the force holding me in place, but made no headway. My chest ached and my ribs creaked as the constricting force holding me immobile grew. The pointed objects held at my vital points pressed harder, drawing blood.
The message was clear.
I ceased all outward signs of struggle.
“Wha—” I coughed, then drew in a rasping breath, “What do you want?”
The presence didn’t respond in words, instead an avalanche of total disdain and all-consuming hatred fell upon me.
My mind shrieked as a strong presence battered against my psyche, trying to get in. It felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to my head. I struggled to keep my thoughts straight.
The psychic assault continued, battering at my untested defenses like an army attacking an unprepared village at the first light of dawn. I didn’t have the experience or wherewithal to withstand a protracted psychic assault.
“Bell?” I rasped.
She didn’t respond, either scared out of her wits, or in a trance. What sort of monster could cow Bell into submission?
Again the force holding me in place constricted. My body started to pop off with little crack-crack-cracks. I could feel my bones grinding together. Pressure started to build up behind my eyes. It was hard to breathe, each rasping breath made me weaker and weaker.
I felt like I might pop from the pressure.
While the assault dragged on, a suctioning force began to leech away bits of my mana. Bright energy bubbled out of my wounds and was devoured. It felt like part of my soul was being ripped from my body.
I clenched my teeth to hold back screams.
Whatever sort of entity had me in its clutches, I knew it could crush me like a bug if it wanted to. So why hadn’t it already? Why this long, drawn-out exchange? Maybe it just enjoyed torturing its victims, but if there was a deeper reason, that was something I could exploit.
I took a shot in the dark. “You want out,” I choked.
A voice spoke straight into my mind, jarring in its pitch and intensity. “I want out. I want out. I WANT OUT. Release me. Release me. Release me release me release me release me release me!”
Vibrant insanity stained my besieged mind and our psychic connection ballooned. A high-pitched giggle eked out of my mouth before I clamped my mouth shut and regained some semblance of rationality.
My vision grayed over, and I clung to consciousness.
I took a page out of Bell’s book. “Let’s—” I snickered, “let’s make a deal—” I burst out laughing, then emphasized, “I can help you.”
I felt the entity shuffling around in my mind as my paltry mental barriers began to fall to the invading presence. I’d never felt so violated. My mind clouded over as I fled to the deepest corridors of my psyche for safety.
Had I made a mistake in trying to reason with it? Trapped for who knew how long at the bottom of a great, yawning pit and fed faerie leavings, was there even enough sanity left in the thing to bargain with?
An hour, maybe a day later, a drastic change occurred. With abrupt speed the psychic invasion ended, and the physical force keeping me immobile loosened. I swallowed a great lungful of air as my feet hit the dirt.
Right away I was overcome by frustration. One of the few things I valued above all about my life was my ability to govern my mind and choose how I acted, but that had been taken away with such ease.
My ears popped as the thick miasma shifted and compressed. An object pinged against the dirt, bouncing across the gravel until it hit my boot. I bent down without touching it and strained my eyes to examine the darkness for any clue of what it was.
A thin tendril of psychic energy reached out to form a connection with me. “Soul fragment. Take,” it said.
I placed my hand over the object and dared to pick it up. It was a ring made of shadows.
“Escape. Freedom. Vessel.”
The shadow ring shifted in my hand. It was alive. I almost cast it aside in revulsion, but my survival instinct decided to kick in at the last instant, stopping me from following through.
Shivers wracked my body.
I gritted my teeth and shook my head. “I won’t be your vessel, and I’m not letting you possess anyone, either.”
Anger funneled through our psychic connection thrashed through me. I wobbled and fell over, but shook my head and stood back up under my own strength. I stared down the darkness with grim resolve, and something in it relented.
“Escape. Freedom.” Images of New London— my own memories— flashed through my head.
I frowned.
It wanted to hitch a ride out of the Otherworld. For some reason, sympathy for the formless entity welled up inside me. Even if it was no more than a severed part of itself, it wanted to escape. It wanted freedom.
That wasn’t the motivation of an evil being, was it?
I relented. “Okay, fine, deal.”
An excitement that wasn’t my own thrummed through me. “Wear.”
With an uncomfortable grimace, I slid the ring of shadows onto my left thumb. Nothing crazy happened when it sett
led into place, but I was wary nonetheless.
As the black miasma lifted the darkness cleared. With it went the cold, repressive force. A ring of torches at the bottom of the pit sparked then burned bright, illuminating a hidden trapdoor in the floor. Still though, a feeling of dread lingered.
I felt Bell shift her body atop my head. “What, what happened?”
So she’d been stuck in a trance, then.
“We survived, no thanks to you, as usual.”
“Hey, that’s not fair! You wouldn’t be alive without my help you know!”
I sighed regretfully. “I know. A shame, that.”
I dusted myself off and strode over to the trapdoor. It was made out of ashwood and banded with rusted iron. I braced myself and grabbed the handle by its base and tugged once, hard.
It sizzled and burned cold against my flesh, but a huge ray of light beamed into the pit. I shaded my eyes with a hand and squinted to get a better look at the room beyond. The landscape flipped as my perspective shifted, then I fell out the trapdoor and onto a floor of glittering crystal.
Chapter Thirteen
I laid boneless with my cheek pressed against the crystal floor. I was strung-out. Disoriented, I looked around at the diminished crowd. Most the court had dispersed in my absence, but some few had remained behind to hold vigil in case I returned.
A young centaur trotted sideways and stomped its hooves upon sighting me. “My queen!”
That’s my cue.
I yawned and sat up. My eyelids felt heavy, and I was fed up with tests. The show was over, I wanted to say.
Lady Maere looked poised and ready on her crystal throne. “A champion returns. Whether you are sane, that is another question. Those that return are often, warped, by the djinn’s influence.”
I shrugged. “In this or any world, I’m as sane as I can be.”
Lady Maere peered at me as if she could see into my thoughts. “The court bears witness, you have withstood the test of mind.”
Apparently a coherent response was enough to prove my triumph over the djinn. I had done no such thing of course, but somehow I’d satisfied the test’s original conditions. I looked, but there was no ring of shadows on my finger.
It was hiding?
The tiny crowd cheered in tandem, “Witness!”
