The first thing Clary noticed was the overwhelming stench of burning tires. She covered her nose to stop herself from throwing up. Her stomach churned, not only from the smell but from the journey as well. When she was finally sure that she could stand up without puking, she lifted her head to find the others. She vaguely recalled her hands slipping away as they fell into the void. Panic rising to her throat, she scrambled to her feet and surveyed the barren land of Hell.
Nothing. No one. She could feel the horror creeping up her spine. Scribbling a Speed rune onto her arm, she ran through the plains. She dared not yell her friends' names for fear of alerting demons to her presence. Instead, she found a mound of black rocks, large enough to be a hill, and climbed it. Her foot slipped on a rock and she stumbled. She regained balance before she tumbled to the ground, but the jagged stones had cut a large gash into her leg. Clary reached to her pockets for her stele but caught nothing; the stick of adamas was stuck between some stones below her.
"Damn it," she cursed under her breath. Clary carefully slid down the hill and pulled the stele free. However, the action had dislodged more rocks, and the whole mound began to disintegrate. In a panic, Clary twisted around and threw her arms around her head to shield it from the falling rocks. When she hit the ground, she frantically pushed herself away to safety, clutching her stele tightly in her grasp so she wouldn't lose it.
The deafening clamour eventually quietened, and Clary slowly stood up. Where there had been the mound of black stones was now replaced by a giant sink hole surrounded by the remaining rubbles. She carefully approached the hole, the tips of her shoes touching the outline of the gap. Clary peered into the darkness, then nudged a pebble in. A small clatter indicated that the fall wasn't too long.
"This is going to be the worst decision I've ever made," she mumbled to herself. Securely fastening the stele to her belt, she took out a witchlight stone and stepped into the hole. Clary had to bite down a yelp as she hit the carpet of stones. She rolled to spread the impact, but the rocks beneath her weren't helping.
Willing the witchlight to brighten up, she studied the marble walls of an outstretched corridor. As the light hit the walls, runes of angelic power glowed as if to correspond. Intricate runes carved into the smooth marble emitted enough light to illuminate the halls. Sucking in a breath, Clary stepped closer to the murals around her. One depicted a figure she was very much familiar with: Jonathan Shadowhunter.
The murals explained a history of might-have-beens, a history of wrong choices and terrible decisions. The Nephilim had denied coexisting with Downworlders, who had sided with their infernal parents as revenge. The Nephilim fought a futile fight, and perished with the rest of humanity in this dimension. Clary had discovered a catacomb, a fancier version of the Silent City.
The sound of her footsteps was the only thing breaking the deathly silence. The hall ended in a circular room, closely resembling the Accords Hall. On the table was a single map, similar to the ones Clary grew up knowing, only covered in a matrix of black lines. Several small pins marked locations, with notes attached to them.
"The City? What's that?" Clary mumbled to herself as she took a seat to have a closer look. Blue pins were sparsely positioned around the red pin named the City, and another note described them as Protection.
"We've seen it on our way. If Magnus is anywhere in this stinking place, it's there."
Clary nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice. Alec and Isabelle stood by the entrance, both looking exhausted.
"Thank the Angel," Clary breathed. "How did you find me?"
"With the ruckus you made, it would be harder not to," Isabelle shrugged. "and then we found the hole. Were you trying to get Asmodeus's attention?"
"At least she found something useful," Alec inspected the map. "The lines must be the map of the catacombs. We'll be travelling much safer through this structure."
"Please, please tell me you know where Jace is," Isabelle added. Seeing Clary's face, she threw her hands up. "We can't do anything without Jace, and we don't have anything of his to track him with."
Clary swore under her breath and tapped the table with her fingers. A glimmer caught her eye, and she almost screamed, Eureka! "The ring," she said as she pulled the metal band from her finger. The circle of herons glinted in the light of the runes. "It's Jace's. We can track him by it."
"Let's hope he's with the faerie guy, then," Alec said. "Could you give it to me? Our parabatai bond will make it easier." He closed his fingers over the ring when Clary handed it to him, and traced a Tracking rune on the back of his hand.
"Can you see him?" Clary anxiously watched as Alec closed his eyes.
"He seems to be in a cave… Yeah, I can see the faerie, though it looks like he's injured." Alec frowned. "Why would Jace enter a random cave in Hell? That's the worst move I can think of."
"Is there anything special about the cave? We can't search every cave in existence," Isabelle asked as she watched her brother intensely.
"I can only see what Jace is seeing, and that's not much," Alec replied, and paused. "Wait. I see runes of protection on the walls." He sighed as he let the connection dissolve. "He could be anywhere. How are we going to find him?"
"Not anywhere," Isabelle said with a grim sort of triumph. "Protection. Protection runes. He must be in one of these." She fingered the blue pins on the map.
"But which one? There's at least a dozen of them." Clary's forehead creased with worry. She wished she could make a rune to find them, but no image came to her mind.
"We'll start with the nearest one," Alec said, his expression hard. "Let's take the map."
"Wake up, fool! You will get us both killed!"
Jace woke up with a start, his eyes wide open. It took a moment for him to remember where he was—Edom. Beside him was the faerie knight, his amber eyes watching him with impatience.
"Where are the others?" Jace demanded.
"I believe we were separated on the way," he replied. He offered a hand, which Jace took to lift himself from the ground. "This place is full of danger. Even the air itself is poisonous. We must complete our quest before it is too late."
"We can't go without the others," he said with a frown. He rummaged his pockets for anything he could track the others with, but he had no luck. "Do you have anything of Clary's?"
"We have just met after a near decade of separation," Elcid said, his voice worn. "That is to say, no."
"Damn it, what are we going to—duck!" Jace dived forward, pushing the faerie to the ground, just as a demon swooped from the sky with open talons. Having missed, the demon let out a frustrated screech and lunged again for the Shadowhunter. "Sansanvi!"
The seraph blade blazed to life at his voice, and swung just in time to plunge into the demon's neck. The two were sprayed with black ichor as the demon's corpse rocketed to the ground. Before Jace could deactivate the blade, Elcid pointed to the sky.
"Our presence has been alerted," the faerie growled. Jace followed his gaze to see three more demons in the distance, their silhouettes against the sunlight growing bigger as they soared towards them.
"I wish I had Alec with me," Jace grumbled as they broke into a run. Three minutes in Hell, and he already missed Alec's archer skills. He had no time to apply Marks, and the demons were gaining on them.
"There," Elcid shouted. "That cave will be sufficient shelter!"
"Brilliant idea," he yelled back with as much sarcasm as he could muster. "I bet the caves of Hell are perfectly safe." The screeches were getting louder, and Jace could hear the flapping noises the demons' leather wings made. With a grunt, Jace changed direction and pulled out another seraph blade. "Sanvi!"
The blade sailed through the sky and sank into a demon's wing joint. Howling in pain, the demon plummeted to the earth, twisting and snarling. Jace launched himself onto the demon and used Sansanvi to sever the demon's snapping head. As soon as the demon slumped, he pulled out Sanvi from its corpse and deflected another demon's talon. He glimpsed Elcid cleave through the third demon's leg with a faerie sword, before leaping onto the airborne demon in front of him. He swung onto the demon and thrust his sword into its back before it could twist around and bite his arm off. He jumped off the demon as it hit the ground. Elcid watched with a bloody sword in his hand.
"We need shelter," he said in a weak voice. Jace's eyes widened to see the blood gushing from a gash on his arm. "I have been impaled, and I need rest to heal."
"Heal? I can't put an iratze on you, and you're going to bleed to death before we find a safe place!"
"The cave," he said quietly. "It had been shelter for the perished Nephilim of this dimension. I can use faerie magic to heal, but it will be of no use if our lives are threatened every second."
"Perished Nephilim?" Jace asked, but before Elcid could answer, the sound of something collapsing made them stiffen.
"What could that be?"
"Nothing good," Jace said with a grimace. "Let's go." He let the faerie lean into him, supporting his weight as they headed for the cave. He tensed as they entered the cavern, and held up the witchlight stone. The stone's warm glow revealed the protection runes carved into the walls. He lowered the faerie to the ground, who slumped against the cold wall.
"This dimension had once held humanity," Elcid murmured as he took out some leaves from a small sack tied to his belt. He rubbed it in his palms and put it to the injury. "However, these Shadowhunters were a race prouder even than your arrogant people. They denied the rights of Downworlders, and eventually perished in the hands of demons and those they had ignored. Since then, the lands of Edom have been ruled by Asmodeus."
Jace didn't reply, but merely observed the faerie. He remembered how Clary had spoken for the faerie with a confident look in her eyes. The way he said that he had killed a superior also bugged his mind. Jace had an inexplicable feeling that the reason Elcid had been imprisoned was related to Clary. Though he didn't know this faerie, he felt a strange obligation to keep him alive.
The question slipped from his lips before he could stop himself. "What happened between you and Clary?"
Elcid laughed. It was a hearty sound, a sound of genuine amusement. "Don't tell me you're jealous, Nephilim." When Jace responded with a scowl, he laughed again. "We were each other's teacher. I taught her the basics of fighting, and learned from her human emotions. Suffice to say, she changed the way I view the world."
That sounded so much like Clary that his heart ached. He wished she was there by his side, or at least know whether she was safe. The only things that kept him from bursting out of the cave to search for her was the fact that he hadn't felt anything through the parabatai bond, and a hopeful guess that if Alec was safe, Clary was, too.
"Did it have anything to do with killing your superior?" Jace asked, prying his mind away from Clary.
"He asked for it," Elcid replied, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "He had a grudge against the warlock, and was planning to kidnap her, imprison her in the land under the hill. Time flows differently there. A year in your world is equal to decades in Faerie, and he wished to return her to the warlock when she was on the brink of death from old age. He wanted the warlock to witness his own child die in his arms, with barely a decade of happy memories to hang on to."
"So you killed him." Jace felt nauseous at the thought. The Fair Folk were twisted beings, capable of punishing those who had wronged them, in the worst way possible. He wondered what Magnus had done to infuriate the faerie.
"He had ordered me to do the kidnapping. I slit his throat instead," Elcid simply said. After that, they sat in silence. Jace used a Heat rune to start a fire, and took out a packet holding their provisions. He held out a biscuit to Elcid, but the faerie refused. He tore it open and wolfed down its contents. Eventually, the silence was broken by Elcid, who had peeled off the leaves to reveal fresh skin. "It's dark outside. Sleep. I shall watch for demons."
Jace watched the embers dance, casting quavering shadows across the walls. It reminded him of Clary, of her fiery hair billowing in the breeze and the fire in her eyes when they met his. The absence of his ring gave him a strange sense of hollowness, but also relief that she carried a piece of him even in the depths of Hell. Then he realized with a jolt that they still had hope.
"She has my ring," he breathed. Elcid turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "Clary has my ring. She can track us with it."
"Then we should stay here, to make it easier for them to find us," the faerie commented. "Perhaps she will spot the blood trail and follow us here."
Jace disliked the idea of doing nothing, but he had no choice. He sighed, the weight of his worries somewhat lifted, and cast his eyes again to the flickering flames. It was going to be a long night.
Author's Note:
Thanks for the reviews :) I read them over and over again. The next update will take me more time, I'm afraid. I have to study for midterms :/
Thank you for following and fave-ing me, too. You keep me going :D