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Shadows and darkness surrounded the professor in his zeal until they settled upon his body like transparent wings. I crawled away from him, but didn’t get far.
A powerful hand wrapped around my upper arm, and it dragged me up from the floor. “You’re not going anywhere. As my prized student, you will finish what you started.”
“But I started nothing,” I said, desperately trying to make him hear reason. I planted my feet, grabbed at anything, doing my best not to go wherever he was taking me.
“You just don’t know you started something. Foolish mortal flesh. It had been you this whole time, and I couldn’t see it. But no matter, I see it now. Soon. Soon, I will be free from my prison.”
He pulled me along, tossing his desk aside with one hand. There, underneath his desk, was a spell engraved in a spiraling circle.
The dark energy that pulsed from it made me sick to my stomach. Whatever was down there, I didn’t want to open it.
“Finally. The final missing piece that will open the source.” Almost reverently, he placed my hand over the middle of the circle and pushed down. The glyphs glowed a dark light. Nothing good would happen if we ever got this open.
“The entrance to the labyrinth was here this entire time?” I asked out loud. I didn’t expect an answer. Professor Snowden–or whatever had been wearing him–replied, anyway.
“Not the entrance, my dear, but the exit. And you’re going to help unleash me from my prison.”
“Prison?”
“I needed someone able to open it. Why you? I don’t know, but I will find out when I regain my powers.”
“You can’t kill me!” I said desperately. “Elfhame will ask questions.”
He cackles. “No one cared about the other aides, and they died long, horrific deaths,” he said. “It takes a lot of blood and magic to keep this mortal flesh alive. A lot.”
The floor beneath us gave way, and in the next moment, I dangled on the edge of an abyss. A black nothing yawned beneath me. My heart clenched in terror and fear. I was staring at the labyrinth, and there was something here that stared back.
I cobbled together some base spells to keep me anchored to Snowden’s office. “People will look for me!” I screamed at him as he stomped on my hand, trying to cast me away. Scraping what spells and craft I could, I made an anchor to keep me in this world, where I belonged.
“Let’s be honest,” a voice echoed in the darkness and pressed into my mind. “No one will come for you. No one has before, and no one will come now.” Something cold and slimy wrapped around my ankles and pulled me down.
My fingers slipped, and I shrieked. Snowden’s maniacal laughter echoed in my ears. When the crazy man was suddenly ridiculously happy, bad things were about to go down. I knew this.
My breath rushed out of me when I stopped in the middle of my free fall. The magical tether I created held, and I grit my teeth to hold on to that sliver of power. Desperately, I reach toward the ever-shrinking circle of light.
I gave everything I had to the thin line of potent energy that kept me tethered between worlds. Intention was important. Words were important. These all fueled magic, and I needed it now.
“Please,” I said desperately as the labyrinth’s darkness seeped itself against my skin, forming a shroud.
Memories rushed to the forefront of my mind. I clung to the ones that filled me with the most joy. Declan, Rothgar, and Jalen appeared in my mind’s eye. None of the hurt, shame, and embarrassment that I had felt this past week came up. Only the way they felt, the way they held me, the words they spoke to me. All I wanted now was to feel their strength around me. Their warmth.
The darkness wanted inside of me, needed me to accept it, and I refused, still clinging to the tether, which had stretched into a filament as fine as spun gold.
Please.
As the threshold between worlds sealed, and as the darkness wrapped itself around me in ever thickening layers, Declan’s face came into view. Frustration marked his face, as it looked like he searched for something.
Or someone.
Me. He was looking for me. He was here; I wasn’t just hallucinating about him.
I gathered up the last bit of strength I had and poured it all into the only name in the universe that mattered.
“Declan!”
Chapter Nine
A SPIRAL PORTAL OF DOOM
