“Down the mountain?”
“I heard one of the Magisters talk about it once,” Lynn explained. “The drains all connect together before going all the way down the mountainside. They end up in a river somewhere.”
“Are you kidding me? Are you willing to bet your life on what that Magister said?”
“If you any other suggestions, now is the time.”
Tomas looked back the way they came. The doors to the sanctum were continually being smashed, with screams emanating from within. Tomas did not want to guess what was happening inside to any survivours still remaining, and could not estimate how long they had before those creatures got out.
“I don’t even know if I can fit in there!” Tomas said.
Lynn bent over, gripping the grate in the floor with her fingers, and lifting with all her strength. The grate barely moved an inch.
“Stay here, then,” she said.
Lynn tried again, heaving as she bent her knees and strained her arms to lift the heavy metal grill.
Tomas considered his options only for a moment, realising he really had no other option than to try this. He knelt beside Lynn, grabbing the other side of the grate and lifting.
The pair slid it across onto the stone floor. The dark hole, now accessible, seemed to drop down into a void of nothingness.
The pit stank of stagnant water and grime. Tomas also realised they had no light or torch to take with them.
It wasn’t going to be pleasant at all.
“You first,” Tomas offered.
Lynn grimaced at him. “None of that chivalrous crap. You can go first.”
“Look,” Tomas sighed, “my shoulders are broader than yours. If I get stuck in there, you’re gonna be stuck, too.”
Tomas gestured to the hole again. Lynn groaned, sitting on the edge of the small dark hole in the ground and letting her legs dangle precariously.
There was no way of telling how steep it was, how deep it sank, and what lay within.
The doors to the sanctum far off burst open with an awful screech. They could hear men running and crying for help. Swords smashing. Monsters howling in the dark.
They weren’t far off, now.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Tomas said.
Lynn smirked nervously. “Is that supposed to make me feel better about this?”
Lynn dropped into the hole with a scream of sudden fear as she was swallowed by the blackness. Tomas closed his eyes, took a breath, and lowered himself into the hole while clinging onto the sides to first ensure his shoulders would fit.
As soon as he realised that he wasn’t going to get stuck at the top of the drainpipe, Tomas made the terrifying choice to let go, feeling each finger release from the edge.
He held his breath and fell.
The first part of the shaft was nearly vertical. Tomas slid down, petrified the walls would tighten around him as he fell. He shuddered upon hearing Lynn’s shouts and screams down below in the dark but kept slipping down with no way to stop himself.
The air grew tight, the last speck of moonlight above fading within a moment.
Tomas closed his eyes as he slid, the shaft changing angles as he descended but doing little to slow him down.
Consumed by black, his shoulders grinded against the rocky sides of the shaft. He held his breath and maintained any hope he had left that the nightmare would soon end.
It felt like everything was constricting around him.
Onwards he fell, down into the earth beneath the Grand Repository. Tomas clutched the key around his neck tighter than he ever had before.
Get me out. Get me out.
Chapter 41 - Chains
Katryna Bower watched the rushing flow of water between the stone walls of the city’s canals, up from the outer steps of the Castle Bower keep.
She imagined floating on her back in the water of the canal, the sun bearing down on her skin and letting the current take over all movement. Relinquishing all control.
She could feel it. The power. The freedom.
And the uncertainty.
Katryna rubbed her hand firmly across her forehead, trying to rid herself of the painful tension headache that had struck her earlier in the day.
It had been a day and a night since she, Finn, and Ser Arthus Medonia had confronted Trish and Edrick over their family’s murders, though in Katryna’s mind it felt like an eternity.
She had not gone to see Finn since his horrific injury. The royal physician, Jerrem Denar, informed her that he gave him gloom orchid extract to put him in a deep, painless sleep to heal… though he also warned that Finn had sustained a very severe wound and could possibly die from it.
It was the last thing Katryna wanted to hear. She could not bear to see another family member lose their life. Not again, not so soon, not after all that had happened.
So Katryna rested on the steps leading up to her family’s castle in a dress from the day before with unbrushed hair.
She felt out of options. Trish, locked in the castle’s dungeon, had refused to tell anyone where the stable boy’s kidnapped mother was being held. Finn was fighting for his life. What was she to do?
She looked out over the sun-swept city, bustling with life and colour.
Now may be the right time for me to leave, Katryna considered, constricted with anguish and despair.
Townspeople shopped, traded, and worked, and a flock of grey gulls graced the sky with their presence. Guards and nobles went about their business, walking past her as if she weren’t even there, going to and from the castle.
Life went on.
What was left for Katryna in Ravenrock?
Two servant girls shuffled past, deep in conversation.
“You didn’t see the orange lights in the sky last night?” one asked.
“No? But
