Look, guys! Fanart for Chapter Two by Jean-Claude17!
jean-claude17. deviantart #/ d5k2utk
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Thank you!
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Chapter Three
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Crowley couldn't see anything.
His spine, broken upon impact, had immediately knit itself back together, so he knew that at least some passive demonic abilities were still working, but he couldn't see anything.
"Aziraphale?"
He considered taking off his sunglasses, then rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. They'd never hindered him at all before, so why should taking them off help him now?
"Aziraphale? Are you there?"
He got up off the ground (packed earth, it felt like when he touched it, hard as rock) and tried to feel out his surroundings. At once, on both sides of him, his hands encountered solid stone, rough as sandpaper, but impossible to scale, continuing up as high as he could reach. The underground corridor he was apparently in couldn't be more than two feet wide, if that.
Crowley felt his heartbeat pick up. Pathetic as it was for a demon, a snake demon to boot, he'd never been fond of closed spaces. He reached behind him. There was a wall there, too. He looked up. No light, not a speck. He stopped breathing, made his heart pause. Silent as the grave.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. He wasn't... Oh no... He wasn't trapped in a stone pit, was he?
"Aziraphale! For fuck's sake, if you're there, say something!"
He dashed forward a few yards, and to his immense relief, encountered no more walls. So it was a corridor, after all. One good thing, at least.
"Azira..." Oh, stop being so childish, he told himself. Aziraphale clearly wasn't here, else he'd have answered him at the first call.
Another good thing, that, actually. Whatever it was that had snatched Crowley out of the forest, wrapping around him and covering his mouth before he'd had a chance to cry out, and then thrown him down a hole, it hadn't caught Aziraphale yet. The angel was still free, and if he was crafty, as Crowley knew he could be, he would stay that way. Crowley would just follow the corridor to wherever it led, and they'd meet up again in no time, he was sure of it. Corridors always had exits, didn't they? And he'd met the urban legend, in a sense; that was something, too.
Crowley started walking, whistling a tune as he went.
Things would be fine.
He just hoped Aziraphale was all right.
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"Dear! Where are you?"
Rustle, rustle.
"Crowley, stop it! This is not funny!"
Rustle, rustle, cree-eek.
"Crowley!"
This was impossible, Aziraphale hadn't heard any footsteps moving away, Crowley couldn't have gone anywhere, besides, he'd been dead against their splitting up, and he couldn't have gone off the path either, because the trees -
Wait.
Those trees...
Those trees were almost too close together to let even Crowley-as-a-serpent pass between them. Yet only a few moments ago, when last he'd aimed his torch at them, Aziraphale, hardly snake-thin, could have moved among them with ease.
Oh, God.
Rustle, shff, shff, rustle, crackle.
"Crowley," Aziraphale whispered, and he could hardly breathe for fear, "where are you?"
Snap.
A twig, right behind him.
Very slowly, Aziraphale turned around.
Then he saw.
His torch flickered and died.
