Hello again! I'm so glad it's Friday. I've never had a set time of day for posting chapters on Fridays, but just so you know, it's going to start being a little later in the day. School's back in for me as of last week, so I'm posting after school now. I get out at about 2:30 in my time zone (give or take an hour or two, depending on where you live), so it'll be sometime after that.
(oh my gosh I forgot how much I kinda love the end of this chapter!)
Seth laid halfway off his bed with his head hanging upside down, holding a book about dragons in front of his face. He was at the point where the story was getting interesting enough that he almost didn't want to put the book down.
He was abruptly startled out of the fictional world when he realized he could see Eve's face very clearly in his mind, and it wasn't just in a memory. He quickly understood that one of the undead must be seeing her in reality, and he saw her through its eyes. But to see her so clearly and forcefully-he sat bolt upright. There would have to be a lot of them seeing her at once.
Focusing his mind on seeing through his subjects' eyes, he switched from the vision of one to the next to the next. They showed almost the exact same scene, Eve on a horse surrounded by revenants, wraiths, and zombies. Yet she was not frozen in fear. She had a knife out and was swinging it enthusiastically at whatever came within her reach.
Seth froze when he recognized another distinctive face among the mob, an old witch (who was technically undead but you couldn't tell from looking) with no name but a definitive presence. He knew of her, and he knew that she was bad news.
The presence of the nameless old witch and that many of the undead instantly told Seth where this was: an area of the dragon sanctuary Wyrmroost specifically set aside for them to live in. What was Eve doing there? She'd gotten herself into a pretty big mess.
Swinging his feet off the bed, Seth got up and hurried down the hallway. Eve seemed to have gotten herself into their territory fair and square, but Seth couldn't just let them kill her.
There were certain areas in the Under Realm where an exit portal to a specific destination could be opened, as Seth had done for Eve when she first found the Under Realm, instead of just leaving through the main entrance to the rest of the island and wherever it happened to be at the moment. The closest one to his room was in the library, which was where he was going now.
When he reached the library, Seth ran past a few rows of bookshelves to a distinct path off to the side that was hidden from the perspective of the entrance to the room. That path led to the cozy sitting area of the library tucked away in the back, with a couple comfy chairs and footrests and warm lighting. It was the back wall of this section of the room that held the portal.
Seth placed his hand on the wall and focused on directing the portal to the site of the scene he could still see crystal-clearly in his mind. Eve was still swinging her knife at the grasping hands of the zombies and wraiths, but she couldn't get away through the tight mob crowding her horse. Seth couldn't see the old witch anymore.
Stepping through the portal, Seth was instantly surrounded by the crowd of the undead. He waved one hand in a stop motion that echoed with a power that ached deep within his bones. The temperature dropped slightly as the entire mob froze in their places.
The sudden silence was almost stifling, broken only by the sound of Eve's heavy breathing as she continued swinging her knife for a moment after everyone else froze. When she realized what had happened, she slowly moved her knife closer to herself as if expecting a zombie to lunge and grab it out of her hand, looking around to find the cause.
Every undead being in the vicinity turned their heads incredibly slowly to look at Seth.
Eve followed suit. Once she realized who she was looking at, her confused expression turned to recognition, then back to confusion. She opened her mouth, then closed it, seeming to be trying to come up with words to say. Finally, she settled on "What are you doing here?"
Seth ignored her, pushing through the crowd to stand directly in front of the witch. He snatched what looked like a knitting needle out of her hand. "What are you doing?"
She glared at him. "I am perfectly justified in cursing a trespasser."
A trespasser? Seth blinked once. If Eve had been trespassing, the witch did have the right to retaliate. Hopefully she hadn't been. He turned to Eve. "Were you trespassing?" he asked, again avoiding an explanation.
"I-" she spluttered. The poor girl didn't look any less confused. "I mean, I was never told not to come here."
The witch's cold glare switched targets. "You barged into my home uninvited." Seth silently noted the fact that Eve seemed to have a habit of barging into dangerous and possibly forbidden places uninvited.
"I didn't come just to harass you or anything," Eve insisted. "I only came here to look for help. Usually people like you can help, and a lot of times the usual solution is to look for help from someone like you. So that's what I was doing."
The witch began to speak again, but Seth interrupted her. "Well, sounds like this girl had good intentions and didn't cause any damage or destruction or anything. We'll let her off with a warning this time." He turned to Eve. "Visiting a witch is a bad idea, trespassing or not. Don't do it anymore."
Eve had seemingly forgotten how to talk again. "I- You can't just- I didn't-"
Seth shot her a sharp look, and she stopped talking. Hmm. He didn't know he could do that. Maybe he should try it more often. "You," he said cheerfully, "are going to leave here and go home and not come back here. And you," he continued, turning to face the old witch, "are going to forget this ever happened. Are we clear?" He watched both women for an answer.
Eve nodded, still speechless. The witch glared, but she offered a single nod to indicate that she would do it.
"Great!" Seth said, clapping his hands. "Then I think we're done here." He waved his arms at the gathered crowd of the undead. "You guys can go home, the show's over." They slowly dispersed.
Seth started to walk, then realized he didn't know where the main road was from there. He waved at Eve to go, then followed the direction she went, walking alongside her horse.
"How in the world did you do that?" Eve exclaimed once they were far enough that no one could probably hear them. "Why can you tell them what to do and they just listen to you? You got that from the Under Realm somehow, didn't you? How?"
"I...picked up some stuff," Seth said lamely.
"Yeah, right," Eve scoffed. "I'm not dumb. That's not something everybody can just learn to do."
Walking just fast enough to keep up, Seth stared at his feet. Having a friend was cool, but the fact that it meant people would ask him questions was pretty lame. He wondered if she would leave it alone if he just didn't say anything. He tried to sneak a quick glance at her to see if she'd given up, but she was still staring directly at him.
"I dunno," he grumbled. "Why do you care, anyway? It's not your business."
Eve rolled her eyes. "You just stopped an entire mob of undead guys and talked a witch out of cursing me, and I want to know how you did it. You said you're the Underking's assistant. Does that mean you get some sort of powers like that?" She squinted at him. "Or were you lying about that?"
Seth blinked, startled. Was she allowed to just guess that? No way was that fair!
Eve crossed her arms. "You were lying then." She raised one eyebrow.
Seth whipped around to gape at her. How could she just know that? "I- how do you-" By that point, it was too late to try to keep up the charade. She'd caught him anyway.
"Your face, dummy," Eve said, almost laughing. "That was the guiltiest expression I've ever seen in my life."
Seth scowled. He'd have to work on that. "Okay, fine," he said slowly, scrambling for an explanation. Try to come up with a different lie? Tell the truth?
Don't tell her, whispered a voice in his head that brought the memory of things rotten and dead.
Whatever he said, he couldn't take too long. "I'm not working for the Underking."
Eve nodded like she'd already suspected that.
Seth nodded with her and said nothing more.
"And?" Eve prompted after a few seconds of silence. So much for a partial answer.
No one must know, they insisted.
"And what?" Seth repeated, shrugging. "That's what I got."
"And how did you do that? You still didn't answer my question!"
And you will not.
"What can I say? Those dudes like me."
"That still doesn't explain how you made them listen to you! And that doesn't answer my question either! Why do they like you? They don't like people; they kill people!"
And you are weak because you do not.
"Well… remember how I'm a shadow charmer?" Seth hoped that would be a good enough answer. If he was lucky, Eve didn't know enough about shadow charmers to know that they didn't inherently have power over undead beings.
He was not lucky. "Shadow charmers can't tell them what to do, genius." Seth opened his mouth to argue, but Eve interrupted again. "I've read a lot of books."
Why do you tolerate this hounding?
Seth sighed. His head was starting to pound, from both Eve's relentless questioning and the barrage of smothering darkness on his mind by the voices and powers of the Underkings.
She just wouldn't give up, huh? He would've found that trait admirable had it not been being used against him. "All right. It's not that. But I don't want to talk about it, and you don't want to know."
Eve sat back, and Seth could see the gears turning in her mind. Finally, she said, "Yeah, I do want to know. I get that it's probably some sort of dangerous secret or something, but I promise I won't tell anyone! You can't just go and do something like that and then not tell me how!"
Seth suddenly felt a heavy weariness like he was much older than he was. He was tired of trying to lie about things and tired of having to try to lie about things. Why was he hiding it, anyway?
Why tell our secrets to a stupid mortal girl? the slithery, crawling voices challenged.
However, their challenge had the opposite effect from what they intended. Don't call Eve stupid, Seth shot back at them, acknowledging them for the first time. She's my friend, and I can tell her what I want to.
To Eve, he said, "I can command the undead because I am the Underking."
i swear i've heard the echoes of a voice
like a dream that you feel but you don't remember
i've known it ever since i was a boy
like a word on the tip of my tongue
