Darkness.
That's the first thing I noticed when I wasn't falling anymore.
It was dark, and I was scared.
Very suddenly and oppressively and by foreign hand almost, I was terrified.
I sat bolt upright from where I'd landed, somehow appearing midair then crashing to the ground before I could register much of anything.
Looking around, I realized I was sitting on a staircase, which might've been why my landing hurt so much. The stone was gray, darker than the tattered remains of my dress.
Rising, I found myself surrounded by it, by gray walls and gray staircases and -
Where those stalactites?
"Whoa," I breathed, my breath clouding in the air and bringing attention for the first time just how cold wherever I'd ended up was.
Gripping my cloak tighter, but not bothering with the hood - the light was dim and gray, like everything else, and the flickering light of my flames brought not only a brighter glow, but a bit of color as well.
Needless to say, my curiosity was sparked.
Taking the last few stairs carefully, I found what seemed to be a bridge, stretching from one gray stone wall to another and over a long fall down. Not one I wanted to take, obviously.
Falling was so thirty seconds ago.
Besides the grayness of it all, wherever I was seemed to be pretty cool - no pun intended.
You know, once you got past the cages hanging from the ceiling.
And even those were a little cool, in a cage-y way. Iron, spiked, creepily empty as they swayed hauntingly gentle in the softest, wafting breeze.
Okay, maybe cool wasn't quite the word I should use.
But I digress.
The cold bit at my feet, and I tried to pump heat down to them without summoning the actual flames. Limited success, a few bricks scorched in odd patterns, but hey - practice makes perfect.
I glanced around, losing interest in the cages, and realized the walls - which I'd thought were cave-like in design - weren't as plain as I'd thought.
Curved, layered, pillared with the strangest, dark elegance - well, for walls, they were pretty impressive.
It was almost as though I bore witness to a grand castle, dark and abandoned, but enchanting and awesome.
The cages were still creepy though.
Shivering, I turned around in place and caught a flash of color.
It was a brighter, but almost faded purple - a mural of some sort that I could recognize from the distance. Three staircases and a bridge - and not to complain, but how big was this place? - later and I got a better look.
I squinted in the darkness, making out a strange swirl of black on faded purple-gray but little more.
I chided myself internally for not thinking of it right away.
A plume of flame three feet in height bloomed from my outstretched palm before I got it back under control. I brought my gaze back to the mural, and noticed it cut off abruptly, almost like a...corner.
A huff of breath in understanding escaped me, fogging the air as I stepped back and let the flame grow larger.
"Oh," I sighed, realizing the painting was much larger than I'd originally thought.
It took up the entire wall, but its depictions were cracked, faded and shadowed.
Nonetheless, I could make out separate panes almost, broken in jagged edges by a border of what may have been horse heads or black-robed figures bent double.
One showed droopy-eyed children, another a man tossing in his bed, a third four figures with upraised hands, and a fifth a tiny village shrouded in what looked like black lightning.
In almost every pane, however, was a figure, dark as the lightning with spindly limbs and spiky hair, surrounded by demonic figures black a pitch in color, which might've been horses or even wolves.
In the center, the figure stood with outstretched palms and broad shoulders, draped in a dark robe. His face appeared to be shrouded in darkness, his head tipped down.
Upon closer inspection,however - difficult but not impossible from below, - it wasn't shrouded, but scorched into a featureless, black stain on the stone.
"Who are you?"
The words, hissed from the darkness, came from everywhere - and nowhere, screaming and whispering - and sent a chill down my spine, just as bad as the feeling of being passed through.
I spun away from the painting and spotted a dark figure, cloak flaring and flame blazing up in my lack of concentration.
The speaker hissed, and the figure vanished.
"What are you doing here?"
I felt my throat close, realizing whoever it was could see me.
"You - you can see me?" I gasped aloud, searching the darkness. It hit me suddenly that they'd flinched from the light of my flame, and I extinguished it.
There was a pause, as though they didn't quite understand the question. Then,
"Answer my question, child."
Indignation rose over the desperate spark of hope. "Show yourself first, creep!" I responded.
A moment of silence passed, and a sudden doubt sparked within me - have I angered them? Will they leave?!
Careless in my desperation - Please, don't leave me alone again! - I surged forward, an urgent apology on my lips that made it no further before he stepped from the darkness.
It was him, the man in the painting - the same slicked-back hair that spiked behind his head like a dark, thorny crown, the same dark robe that fell all the way to the floor and seemed almost to be a part of him, blending seamlessly into his arms and chest.
And his skin!
Dark gray, like the walls and the mural and the light - a gray that sucked in everything, be it light or hope or bravery, and left only fear.
The fear - the terror that had blossomed so darkly in me upon my arrival and clung to me this entire time, refusing to be completely banished even by the familiarity of my cloak or the warmth of my flames - rose up within me.
His gaze was disdainful and the color of gold, but all warmth the color should have held was frosted away by hate and age and an inner darkness, inner deadness.
Upon meeting it, the terror exploded within me and my breath turned traitor as heat bloomed within me.
And for the second time that day, I was simply no longer there.