“At the risk of sounding like I respect you, Evander, I believe it might just be your time to shine…!”

  Amara glanced over and saw a scowl burst across Evander’s face despite the demands of their breakneck pace. He quickly reached over his shoulder, undoing the top strap on the bag he carried on his back with one hand, and pulled out one of the silver javelins it contained. His ability to do all that without misplaced movement spoke volumes to his level of calm despite their predicament.

  The air of the castle’s undercroft was uncomfortably warm and humid, its halls illuminated by a series of lit torches lining the walls at irregular intervals. Even as they ran, Amara could easily imagine the undercroft as slick and clean and cool back whenever it’d first been constructed. But age had yellowed most of the stone bricks which lined its ceilings and floors, and in many areas the stone itself had crumbled into piles of gray dust. Mossy lichen spread throughout the plentiful cracks in the floor like green spiderwebs, slick enough to cause Amara to nearly slip on more than one occasion. Often they ran past enormous wooden fermentation barrels, all heavily warped by the passage of time and steady exposure to the damp.

  Hippolytus and the guards which still accompanied him remained in dogged pursuit of Amara and the rest as they sprinted deeper into the undercroft, though the shouts and demands they’d started off with had gradually faded over time. Somewhere along the line it’d become clear that their targets had no intention of surrendering.

  A fight seemed to be all but inevitable. Amara’s group would either run out of space or into another pack of guards, and then they’d have no choice. But when she reached into her pocket for her lighter Mattias halted her.

  “Not yet,” he shouted as they ran, leaving his reasoning unsaid.

  Before she could raise an objection they turned a corner and entered into a massive, open-air room lit by a long series of utilitarian metal chandeliers. The path they’d been on joined with a tremendous elevated walkway which crossed the length of the room towards a sizable open gate on the far side. What seemed to be an abandoned mine sprawled in all directions fifteen feet or so below the walkway, full of aging, rusting minecarts and cloudy pools of standing water.

  “Now we’re in a mine?” Amara asked breathlessly.

  “A marble quarry,” Mattias said. He then turned to Evander, gesturing back the way they’d just come. “Give our gracious hosts a suitable gift, won’t you?”

  Evander frowned at him, but soon raised his javelin over his head and assumed a throwing position. Moments later Hippolytus and the rest of the guards turned the corner, and Amara saw surprise register in his face at the sight of Evander holding up his javelin.

  The javelin let out an ear-splitting whistle as it left Evander’s hand, shooting through the air with unbelievable speed directly towards Hippolytus. He reacted by throwing himself to the ground and managed to avoid it with only inches to spare, but the men behind him were not so lucky. The javelin passed straight through four of them like a hot knife through butter before embedding into the wall beyond with a tremendous crunch. Pieces of shattered stone flew off the wall in all directions from the point of impact, and the near end of the javelin bent inwards, far enough for it to take on the shape of an oversized fishing hook.

  The men Evander’s javelin passed through collapsed immediately, and the rest reacted by scrambling for the only nearby cover, back around the corner they’d just turned. Hippolytus immediately leapt back to his feet and managed to rejoin his men mere seconds before Evander had readied his next javelin.

  “Nice throw,” Amara said, impressed.

  “It was passable,” Mattias said, turning back towards the path. “Now let’s—”

  A new group of guards then appeared under the gate on the far side of the room, and to Amara’s immediate alarm several of them carried large oaken crossbows. The guards looked surprised to see Amara and the others at first, but the men holding the crossbows soon fell to a knee and took aim.

  Bolts landed at Amara’s feet with a tremendous clatter, some letting off small sparks as they ricocheted off the stone. One bolt in particular landed with less than an inch to spare near Amara’s boot, causing her to jump backwards with an involuntary yelp.

  Evander returned the favor with a javelin aimed at one of the crossbowmen, and it easily found its mark. But instead of retreating like the others the guards decided to charge down the pathway, bellowing threats and shouting. Those with crossbows remained where they were beneath the gate to reload.

  Hippolytus’s group seemed to have found it’s courage again with the arrival of backup, and soon charged back out from around the corner. Mattias frowned while glancing between the two groups now converging on them, and then surprised Amara by abruptly taking a running jump off the path. After a seconds-long silence that seemed to last forever there was a sudden noisy splash in the quarry below. When Amara and Evander rushed over to look, a large pool of pitch black water sat almost directly below the path, its surface rippling from Mattias’s dive, though he was nowhere to be seen.

  Amara and Evander shared a look of dread, but moments later a second volley of crossbow bolts filled the air around them, and finally they jumped in.

  The collision with the pool was forceful enough to fill Amara’s mouth with water despite her effort to keep it shut, and it was quite possibly the worst thing she’d ever tasted. Her feet found no bottom to the pool, and the water was dark enough to make it almost impossible to see. After gaining her bearings for a moment she swam in what she hoped was an upwards direction, and soon breached the surface of the pool, spluttering.

  Evander appeared on the surface beside her moments later, coughing and gasping for air.

  “Where’s Mattias?!” Amara shouted.

  He gave her a fierce shake of his head, and they both began to swim across the pool towards the nearest minecart, which luck would have it happened to be only a dozen or so feet away. The guards up on the walkway couldn’t spot them without looking straight down, but it would only be a matter of time before the crossbowmen moved up to a new position where they would have a clear line of sight.

  Now soaked to the bone and smelling of something not entirely unlike hot tar, Amara and Evander hurried as best they could out of the water and took cover behind the minecart. The bottom of the quarry was dimly lit, but even so Amara could see a few nearby paths cut out of the rock which led deeper into the unknown depths beneath the castle.

  A commotion erupted on the pathway above, and moments later two guards dropped down into the pool with a tremendous splash. Once the surprise wore off Amara readied her lighter, and Evander pulled out another javelin, but they were both once again surprised by a sudden unnatural churning of the pool’s water.

  Something long and enormous with sickly pink scales rose from the opposite end of the pool, slamming itself back down onto the water with an absolutely tremendous splash. Only one of the guards managed to make it to the surface, panicking and scrambling for the edge of the pool before a pale tentacle shot out from the water behind him. It wrapped itself around his helmet before pulling him down, and after only a few seconds the water became still again.

  Amara watched the pool in stunned silence for a long while before more ripples suddenly erupted from the water. Mattias then pulled himself out of the pool and began to stroll towards her, hair wet and robes soaked.

  When he reached them he took a moment to ring out the bottom of his robes before speaking.

  “Well. Shall we move on?”

  “Did you just—” Evander began before being interrupted by a shout from the walkway above.

  “No, don’t jump! There’s only one way out of there, we’ll catch them further on. You two, go directly to the king and deliver a report. The rest of you—follow me!”

  A tremendous clamour of boots and metal upon metal then erupted from above, and it began to move towards the gate on the far side of the room.

  “Good one Mattias,” Amara said. “Not only are we trapped down here, they're sure to have even more soldiers waiting for us up ahead.”

  “Brilliant,” Evander added.

  Mattias gave them a smirk. “Oh, to experience the anxiety of youth once more. I know Lucyra’s sewers quite well, but my knowledge of the castle is practically encyclopedic.”

  He moved off without another word. Amara and Evander shared a doubtful look before following after him.

  A small, stone-carved gate stood against the wall not far from the walkway, and Mattias strode towards it with a purpose. The light from above didn’t reach far beyond the gate, leaving the path ahead entirely cloaked in shadow, but Mattias didn’t seem concerned. For a moment it looked as though he intended to walk into the darkness, and Amara even reached for her lighter before he suddenly changed direction towards the gate itself.

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  He came to a halt just before it, searching the nearby wall for something.

  “We don’t have time for your weird—” Evander began before Mattias halted him by reaching out to the gate with both hands. He placed them against the stone, and after giving it a light push a doorway opened inwards, revealing a shadowy hallway beyond.

  “More hidden doors,” Amara said with a roll of her eyes.

  “How can you be sure they won’t find us in there?” Evander asked. “If we’re going to get cornered then we should at least give ourselves more space to fight it out.”

  “The guards don’t know this exists,” Mattias said. “This is a path that only the Seraphim know about. Only Shabboleth and perhaps his daughter know about it.”

  “That's convenient,” Evander said doubtfully.

  Mattias glowered at him. “This path starts up in the royal quarters and ends down here. It’s meant to be a secret escape route. Telling people about it would defeat the entire purpose of it.”

  “Stop it,” Amara said, placing herself between them. “We don’t need this right now. We’re gonna take this route, Evan.”

  Evander looked incensed. “We’re obviously going to have to fight this out at some point—”

  “That’s why we’re going to go this way. If there’s a chance we can slip past some of the guards then we need to take it.”

  A frustrated sigh exploded from him, but after a moment he gave her a nod. Mattias looked triumphant as he turned about to enter the hidden path.

  “If you wouldn’t mind giving us a bit of light, Amara.”

  She nodded, and pulled the lighter out of her pocket. After thumbing it she held it aloft, increasing the light the flame produced by encouraging it to consume more fuel.

  The light revealed a small landing which led to a spiral staircase traveling upwards. Amara immediately thought of the spiral stairs back in Raven’s Roost, but before she could ask after the similarity Mattias turned back and raised a finger to his lips.

  Be quiet, he mouthed to them before turning back to mount the stairs. Amara followed him with her lighter held aloft. After letting out a quiet sigh Evander stepped in after her, and quietly shut the door behind them.

  “What happens if we run into Shabboleth here?” Amara whispered to Mattias.

  A quiet scoff left him before he whispered back. “We should be so lucky.”

  The stairs spiraled forever upwards, and after the chase through the undercroft it didn’t take long for Amara to find herself out of breath. Fortunately they occasionally came across small landings as they climbed, secret entrances into other parts of the castle, and Mattias allowed them to take short breaks upon reaching them.

  Noises from the castle occasionally reached into the secret stairs at the landings. Men shouting, rushing about, heavy objects being pulled or pushed around. After listening to these goings on for a while Mattias shot a smug look at Evander, who responded by turning an unhappy frown to Amara.

  After what might’ve been half an hour of climbing, the stairs finally ended at another small landing. Mattias silently approached the doorway on the far end, placing an ear against it for a long while before slowly pushing it open. Light from the room beyond immediately filled the stairs, and Amara quietly shut off her lighter.

  The room they entered was more opulent than Amara had ever imagined. The ceiling was incredibly high above their heads, and the walls were white polished marble with ornate bands of delicate flowers inlaid masterfully like pieces of art. A soft red-brown carpet covered the floor, perfectly unstained and hardly worn from use. Comfortable furniture dotted the room at generous intervals; a queen sized bed with a mountain of pillows and a warm-looking comforter laid across it, a varnished red-oak desk positioned against the wall nearby, lined with a row of books and an assortment of random trinkets spread across it, and two luxurious couches arranged together in a nook beside the room’s normal entrance, a set of ornate double doors. Finally there was a full-sized mirror hanging on the wall beside the bed, and Amara was surprised for a moment when she caught a glimpse of herself in it. Her clothing had become more disheveled than she'd really realized, and her hair still looked a bit stringy and wet from their drop into the pool.

  The room could’ve easily been Shabboleth’s private quarters, but the faint floral perfume lingering in the air told Amara that it most likely belonged to a woman.

  Mattias strode into the room with a curious look, casting his gaze across the furniture.

  “Well, well,” he said. “It seems we’ve had a stroke of luck.”

  “How do you figure?” Evander asked. “Cause it seems to me that you’ve only gone and alerted the entire fucking castle to our presence.”

  “Shabboleth knew we were coming anyway,” came Mattias’s disinterested reply. He approached the desk, and bent over to inspect the objects laid across it.

  “This room is incredible,” Amara said. “I can barely imagine what living here must be like.”

  “Pretty eye opening,” Evander said while feeling one of the pillows on the bed.

  Mattias turned his attention to one of the drawers in the desk, and after opening it pressed a finger against something inside. A loud pop erupted from the opposite end of the desk, and a small compartment fell open. Inside there looked to be a long row of small box-shaped objects.

  An approving hum left Mattias as he approached the compartment. He extracted one of the boxes, looked it up and down, then pulled something gray and vaguely spherical out of it. Odd metal wires and rings stuck out of it via a lump protruding from the top of the sphere.

  “Grenades,” Mattias said. “How interesting. It seems Shabboleth has gone old school in his planning.”

  “What the hell is that?” Amara asked.

  “A throwable explosion,” he said. He then tossed it to Amara, who panicked for a moment upon catching it.

  Mattias extracted two more grenades from the compartment and tossed them to Evander. “These will be close to useless against Shabboleth, but extremely deadly against anyone else. Don’t be anywhere near these a few seconds after you’ve pulled the pin.”

  Amara held the grenade in her hand aloft, casting a wary gaze upon it.

  “How does this thing explode?” she asked. “It feels totally dead to me.”

  “They’re a result of ancient knowledge,” Mattias said. “Chemistry used to be one of the keys to our understanding of the universe. It’s very likely that Shabboleth is the last person in the entire world with enough knowledge to produce such things.” A scoff left him. “The other Seraphim would find this very amusing.”

  He shot a sudden, odd glance at the mirror, then crossed his arms behind his back and began to stroll across the room.

  “This entire castle is one big repository of ancient secrets,” he said, scanning the furniture. "In truth I’ve forgotten many things over the years….”

  He came to a slow halt before the mirror, and Amara watched as he looked himself up and down in it.

  “...But I could never forget any of the secrets this room contains. After all, it used to be mine.”

  A silence fell over the room. After a few moments an odd noise sounded from somewhere near Mattias, like something being dropped against the carpet.

  Mattias’s arm suddenly shot out from behind his back and into the mirror before him. It shattered into a thousand pieces as he reached into a dark space beyond, and Amara’s jaw dropped. A person stood in the darkness of the space behind the mirror, and Mattias clasped his hand around their arm.

  He cleared some of the broken glass away with his free hand, then pulled the person out through the gap, and Amara’s jaw dropped even further. Jezebel stumbled out from behind the mirror, nearly falling onto the broken glass at her feet before being yanked to safety by Mattias.

  “Help!!!” she screamed. “Help me!!! Guards!!!”

  Amara and Evander rushed over to stand beside Mattias even as he leaned threateningly close to Jezebel.

  “Why, princess Jezebel!” he said over her screams. “How nice it is to finally meet you!” His mocking tone then shifted abruptly to anger. “You’ll be quiet if you know what’s good for you!”

  “You have no idea what you’ve just done,” Jezebel spat at him. “Putting your hands on me was the stupidest thing you could possibly do! My father will never rest until you’re dead!”

  “Oh, I am counting on that, young lady. I’m looking forward to having a very productive conversation with him. And if you cooperate he might just get you back in one piece instead of several!”

  Amara shot a look of horror at Mattias, then exchanged a worried glance with Evander. She’d agreed to kidnap Jezebel, but torturing her or anyone else was not something she’d ever been willing to do.

  Fear filled Jezebel’s expression as she looked up at Mattias, and she fell silent. After a few moments her gaze darted to Amara before Mattias regained her attention by giving her a violent shake.

  “Now,” he continued. “You and I have a few things to discuss before your father arrives!”

  “Mattias—” Amara began before a disturbance at the door interrupted her. Someone twisted at the door’s handle, then began to pound against it.

  “Jezebel?! Jezebel!”

  “Help me, Hip!!!” Jezebel screamed.

  The pounding then took on an intense urgency. Mattias covered Jezebel’s mouth with his free hand, then looked to Amara.

  “Create some space for us, won’t you?”

  She balked at him, then turned to meet Evander’s gaze. The uncertainty in his expression only increased her own.

  Eventually, she turned to the door, and pulled the lighter out of her pocket. After thumbing it she sent the flame onto the carpet by her feet, which it accepted eagerly as fuel. After feeding on it for a moment in order to gain strength she sent it careening towards the door, and the pounding soon stopped as the flames ravaged it.

  When the door became weak enough to fall apart Amara pushed the flames outside, into the hallway where Hippolytus had just been standing. The marble flooring in the hall made for extremely poor fuel, but she drew strength from the flames within the room and soon managed to send up an enormous wall of fire.

  Mattias stepped past the burned door out into the hallway, dragging Jezebel behind him. Evander followed after him, and Amara took one last look at the room before joining them.

  Hippolytus and several guards stood on the far side of the fire, hands raised to protect their faces against the intense heat. On the opposite side of the hall from them stood a grand staircase ascending further into the castle, and Mattias soon began to hurry Jezebel towards it.

  More guards began to fill up the hallway alongside Hippolytus, and an odd ethereal roar suddenly sounded from their direction, loud enough to briefly cut through the roar of the fire. Evander listened to it intently, then turned to give Amara a deeply troubled look.

  She said nothing, and ran to join Mattias on the stairwell. Evander followed along, choosing not to put voice to the newfound reluctance they both clearly shared.

  “Jez!!!” Hippolytus raged behind them as they climbed. “Jezebel!!!”