Hello! I'm keeping this short because I'm half asleep now, since its half past 4 in the morning. But I would like to thank all the reviewers, they really boosted my muses and enthusiasm! This one will be loooooong, watch out for yourselves!
Of all the nights she had spent in castle Dracula, this one was the most miserable for Agnes. She whipped the large wooden door with her gloved fists shouting and swearing to Dracula for hours, first nervously, then in an annoyed and demanding tone. Finally she slid down with her back against the door begging. Knowing what the count could do to Elizabeth to blackmail her, made Agnes panic. She knew that she stunned Dracula with her behaviour, but she was not convinced that it would keep him from hurting her sister. The thought of Elizabeth being hurt because of her pertinacity towards Dracula, made her go crazy with compunction. Agnes began freezing as sitting on the cold floor after a time, and lay upon her bed to think of a possible plan to escape. Again. She was exhausted from the constant stress she had to cope with in this gruesome place. Fray flowed in her veins along with her angel blood, but the current situation was without prospects. Agnes hit the bed with her fist angrily.
„ Who could compete this monster!" Tears began falling from her eyes. Again. She was surprised that this has happened to her for the second time that day; she hardly ever cried. Agnes thought that she had cried all her tears away when Aziz died, and often felt she couldn't cry anymore. However, this time the tears blurred her vision and her eyelids began feeling heavier each moment. Agnes gave in to the calling of the fays of sleep and curled up on her bed, hugging herself. Few hours later she woke up to the awkward feeling of shivering. She was shivering with cold.
„ Great!" she thought, „ Now he's having me curdled!" Her breath formed thick clouds in the air, and the rumbling sound of her stomach reminded her that she hadn't eaten for a while again. The warm fire in the fireplace went out long ago, and Agnes lost herself in the sight of the charred wood, then she hit herself upon the head
„ The fireplace! Of course!" she jumped from her bed, ran to the fireplace, stepped in to the furnace chamber, and looked up the chimney.
„ Well, this is going to be a tough one! But perhaps I can take the way the smoke can! " Agnes said to herself, then began wiping the soot out of her eyes, which fell on her face when looking up. She leaned against the back wall, then suddenly heard a strident sound from behind herself, and she fell back. Agnes hit her head and was covered in dust and spider webs, but she still glanced around in delight.
„ A secret passage!" she thought gladly. She looked behind herself and could see nothing but spider webs and darkness, but the sight at the moment made her heart jump as if she saw paradise itself. Agnes quickly sprang up and ran to the windows, to see the Sun rise above the horizon to her relief.
„ Perfect!" she thought with a wide smile „ I have all day!" She quickly removed all the spider webs from her clothes and searched her gear through for the small oil-lamp she always carried, then lit it with one of the half-burned candles. Agnes quickly put on warm clothes, she could see dark clouds approaching, and the chill of the outside world already made her freeze to the bone. She pitied that she had to leave all her other precious things behind, but couldn't risk that they might hinder her, and the calling of freedom made her forget the losses. She sprayed some of her favourite perfume upon her neck for the last time and put the delicate-shaped bottle back to the vanity-table with a smile of goodbye. Agnes took the oil-lamp and walked to the newfound door of her room, entered the passage taking a last look at her golden cage, the place of her imprisonment, then tried to pull the thick brick-door behind herself back to its original position. She turned around, and began her journey in the dark and narrow passage.
„ Well, certainly not the best place to be!" she figured as she made her way through the endless cavalcade of cobwebs. Agnes went on walking in this slow manner by the flame of her little lamp for a while and felt that she would drown in the silence of the place. Suddenly she could feel some kind of block by her feet, and kicked something. Agnes bent down to see the skeleton of a wretched human; the skull she had just kicked away from the backbone. She recoiled partly with fright, but more with embarrassment: she didn't want to destroy the mortal remains of the poor soul.
„ The body and spirit of the unlucky fellow must have been destroyed in his life." She looked at the damages upon the bones, and shook her head.
„ Aquidesco ab pacis" she said and drew a cross in the air above the remains.
„ He might have believed in God." she thought. The skeleton reminded her sister being in danger and her heart was beserted by fear. Agnes rose quickly and stepped over the skeleton carefully not to crush any part of it. She went on, increasing her pace, walking for long minutes what seemed like thousands of years to her, then finally reached a wall. Her fingers paddled it carefully, when she heard voices and sounds of little feet trotting on the other side.
„ So the passage did lead somewhere!" she thought, and decided to wait until all the sounds die beyond the wall. Agnes put her ear to the wall, and what she heard, made her eyebrows arch. Gnarls, snaps and snarls could be heard, and Agnes figured out it was a strange language, but she didn't feel like meeting the speakers of it. As silence took over the place again, Agnes pushed the wall as hard as she could, and slowly but surely, it began to move.
„ They must have forgot about this corridor" she thought, as she managed to push the „door" open just enough to squeeze herself through the narrow gap. Agnes stepped out to a broad corridor, and she was keen on pushing the fake wall back to its place, hiding the key of her escape from curious eyes.
„ I honestly wish I would never ever need it again, but who knows?" she thought and engraved a small symbol in one of the stones, using the tip of her dagger. Then without having an idea where she was going, Agnes set off in a direction, sliding in the shadows quietly. She passed numerous doors in the corridor, walked through many rooms: ones smaller, others larger. Suddenly Agnes felt a strange dejavu, and remembered her first wandering around the castle. And meeting Dracula eventually. She grimaced at the thought, and hoped that it will not turn out that way this time. She came into a room that was larger than the others, and it had all kinds of weaponry exhibited on walls and in china cabinets.
„ Just what I need!" Agnes smiled and began examining all the swords daggers, shields and knives as if she were in a market. She was looking for a suitable sword when she noticed her catana sword in one of the showcases. Agnes tried to open it quietly, but it was locked. She had to consider the ideas of choosing another weapon and leaving quietly, leaving her precious sword behind, or break the glass that would probably make so much noise, all in the castle would notice her. Agnes puckered her brows then punched the glass with her gloved hand. The sound echoed through the whole castle, and she knew it was a stupid decision to make, but she had not the heart to leave the sword here. Agnes felt much stronger and more confident having her fingers enclose the well-known hilt, and lifting the sword from among the chips of glass. She looked at the shiny blade with delight, and then found a belt with a sheath for it. She overheard the steps of somebody short coming to her direction, and Agnes stormed off through a huge domed door. Agnes ended up in a dark corner hiding from the dwergi, whom she found most dumb. She crouched completely, not to have her head exposed to the sunlight, and found a rope by her feet, with an iron hook. The rope appeared to be in a good state, and strong enough to bear a human's weight.
„ What do you know? This is my lucky day!" Agnes gave a smile and put the coiled rope upon her shoulder, and could hear the Dwergi approaching again.
„ They might be brainless, but they sure have noses!" she sprang up and fled in the opposite direction, coming to a large room with wooden suspension bridges leading from one side of the room to another. All kinds of machines and electric devices lay in the depth under her feet, all covered in cobwebs. Agnes could see some dwergi coming both from left and right as well as from behind her back.
„ Don't they ever get tired?" she asked out loud, then jumped off the suspension bridge, grabbing a rope hanging from above, and began sliding down. But more dwergi were waiting for her by the end of the rope. She was not as close to them that she couldn't have climbed back, but the evil creatures started shaking the rope, making Agnes dizzy. She felt like an artiste in a circus, and she didn't like the thought. Eventually she got tired of the whole thing, and jumped off the rope landing on the cold stone floor in a smart somersault. Agnes had a hard time getting up, her wrists weren't nuts about the performance, and her head was spinning round, the sight of the place around her reminded her of looking into a kaleidoscope. Abusing the weak moment of hers, the dwergi had cornered Agnes, and she was considering whether she needs to chop them in half, or kicking them would be enough to gain a route to escape. Then Igor showed up behind the troop of dwergi, out of the blue.
„ Not him!" Agnes thought to herself „ Now they have a commander too!" she rolled her eyes, and gave Igor a hard stare.
„ Don't worry, princess, „ he rasped, „ we're not going to hurt you. Unless you obey my orders"
„ Princess? „ thought Agnes raising her eyebrows along with her upper lip „ Since when do I have that title?"
„ Don't you take me for an idiot Igor! I didn't escape to go back without a fight!" she said finally, and looked at the dwergi. „ Dracula will probably explode with fury anyway!" she thought, then gave a razor-sharp smile to Igor, and raised her sword. Agnes never had any fun killing anyone, but the gruesome circumstances must have affected her in a wicked way, for she was having enormous fun slaughtering the evil little creatures, almost dancing among them. She ended up fixing the tip of the blade to Igor's chest, with a wintry smile. The feeling of helplessness was gone from her heart, and she loved being in control.
„ Now who's giving orders to who? Show me the way out of here!" Agnes ordered.
„ The Master would hang me on a hook by my throat if I did that!" came the reply.
„ Sorry to inform you, but either I will make a hole in you now, or he will finish you later. Make a choice."
„ If you kill me, how will you find the way out then, puppet?" Igor said with a wide smile and eyes narrowed. Agnes looked up, rolling her eyes, and she could spot the Sun peeking in through one of the dirty windows, reminding her of the course of time.
„ I don't have time for this!" Agnes hit Igor on the forehead with the grip of her sword, and then chained his limp body to a pillar.
„ That will keep him from waking his Master!" she thought, then ran off through the first door she found. Wandering around in the huge castle, she soon had to figure out that there was no path she could take to escape. She cooked up another possible solution, but that was the last thing she wanted. Agnes had to decide quickly; she knew that time, by all means, was on Dracula's side. Agnes had to face the fact that she had no other choice but to climb down the walls of Castle Dracula. She never climbed any mountains before; she had no idea how to descend down the rocky side of the mountain. Agnes looked down at the dizzying depth that lay by her feet as she stood on a windowsill.
„ I hope the rope can cope with it" She looked up at the sky, and could tell that the Sun was still high, but tiny flakes of snow have started falling from above a long ago. The horrible fate of freezing to death loomed before Agnes, but anything sounded better than dying at Dracula's residence. At least then. Agnes began her perilous journey with fear she had never felt before.
Dracula was dreaming. He was fully aware that it was a mere dream, but for some reason it seemed real. He hadn't dreamt for centuries, he couldn't even remember what images his brain gave birth to when sleeping, the last time. He looked around, and he recognised the spot immediately. Dracula was in his own castle, everything conducted perfectly to the smallest detail. But when he reached out to touch a gargoyle, the image seemed to be blurred by his touch. As if all was covered in water, and his finger started rings of waves upon the surface. Dracula wondered from what depth of his mind came the phenomena. Then he could see the path laid for him, and began walking towards his chambers, drawn by an unfamiliar force. He pushed the heavy doors open, and headed for his ice coffin. Dracula suddenly felt tired, and unknown feelings took over his dead heart; he felt a kind of agony, as if it was tied up tautly with a thin branch of mandrel. Finally he got his well-known rest place, and looked inside the coffin. What he saw went beyond all his fantasies. Agnes was lying in his coffin, frozen under a thick ice, just like him during his night-rests. Her arms were crossed over her breast, and her eyes closed. Agnes' beauty remained in the crystal-clear dungeon of the ice, but she was no longer alive. Dracula was struck by a sudden feeling of grief: Agnes was dead. Not one of his kind, she died like ordinary mortals.
Close to the time of sunset, Agnes had got far down by the side of the mountain. She lost sight of Castle Dracula long ago, due to the distance, and the heavily falling snow. All her body was frozen; she was hanging from the rope in despair, trying to swing herself under a salient rock to be protected from the snow. The cold cleared her thoughts when she began climbing down, and helped her in concentrating, but by now, she wished to be somewhere else. Her jacket already got wet from the flakes, and it froze on her, making it harder to move. The tears she had cried also froze on her face. Agnes knew she had made a foolish decision when she thought she could make it this way, but she wasn't willing to give up that easily. She swung herself with her last strength, groaning from the strain, and she managed to land on the ledge of the nearest rock. The snow didn't fall there, so the uneven surface of the place gave Agnes a hard time when landing. She tried to sit up, but all her body was in a pain: she was chilled to the narrow of her bones. Agnes curled up, lying on the cold rock, trying to warm her up a bit, but she knew she stood little chance of survival. After a while she could hear a strange soundcoming withthe wind, which reminded her of her childhood; the flapping soundwhen the servants around the house were shaking out the wet sheets after washing, in the afternoon sunlight. She would have given anything to feel that sunlight upon her face now. SoonAgnes' body refused to obey the orders of her brain, and her eyelids closed in unconsciousness.
I told you it will be long! Sorry I didn't have time to mention all my loyal readers by their names, I will next time, I promise! Please read and review and become my loyal reader! And I still have the drawings of Agnes and Midnight available for sending!
