Let me tell you, I feel so terrible for promising an update after two weeks, when it's been more like… Two months. I hope this chapter makes up for the wait! It is a little bit of a filler chapter, but it needed to happen in order for the next one to make sense. Sorry for all the POV changes!
Enjoy! More at the bottom!
Chapter 10
SEBASTIAN POV – Tuesday Morning
I woke up to cold water lapping at my body. My clothes weren't dry anywhere at all, and sand rubbed between my fingers and toes and was matted into my hair. I had no idea how long I'd been here, but I felt extremely well rested. I slowly peeled my eyes open, blinking rapidly to attempt to adjust to the low light, and took in the circular, unusual, almost crystalline room.
What is this place?
A wide cavern stretched before me, filled up to my knees is crystal clear salt water. Refracted light rippled across the ceiling, and tiny fragments of rocks glittered in the dying sunlight. Semi-submerged manacles dangled from the huge walls, rusted on some parts but evidently strong. It resembled a really nice prison, or a really nice torture chamber. Or a really nice interrogation room. But I really couldn't see why on Earth Cecily would need any of those resources.
Why would Cecily go here? What was I thinking when I decided to follow her? There was nothing here! True, if it were mined then she would make millions, but as far as I know, manacles aren't necessary for mining in this day and age. I quickly discovered that my manacles came loose very quickly once you stood up and unhooked the chains. I then stood and moved into the blue salt water, perusing the room and cavern floor for any sign of the exit, hidden or otherwise.
I waded further into the numbing water, my blue converses soaked through and my pants drenched up to my knees. Soft sand and shingle crunched beneath my feet, and shell remains was caught in the laces of my shoes. The steady rhythm of drips permeated the thick silence and bathed the cavern in mystery.
The floor dropped suddenly into a deep trench, extending along the whole room. The water level now came up to my lower ribs, and the water was boreal. If I stayed in this secluded cave where the sun didn't have an opportunity to heat the water, I was at risk of getting hypothermia. I was already wracked with shivers, so I hoped that I would find the exit soon. I could feel the convection of the water moving the very bottom of my pant leg gently against my ankle. I waded on, and trod on something jutting out of the dimly lit cavern bottom, and an explosion of bubbles rose to my left.
I froze, looking into the water and thrusting my hand in that direction, coming into contact with chains. I tried tugging on them but they were weighted down with something I couldn't see. As I had discovered with my manacles, the chain was in a secure hook that attached above the actual rigger in the wall, so that I'd you tried to yank at the chains from below, nothing would happen, but as soon as you stood up you could unhook the chains with ease. This wouldn't work so well if your feet were chained as well, however.
I unhooked the chains and pulled at the weight below. I have no clue what it is, but it weighs a ton! Layers of interlocking chains were revealed from the water, and the bubbles increased the closer the heavy object got to me. The blurred water stopped me from being able to see what the object was. But soon enough, cold, tanned hands are grabbing at my arms and the next thing I know, my best friend is squeezing me to death.
JONATHAN POV
Damn boys. Damn blonde, egoistical, supernatural boys— I jumped as my phone rang and vibrated in my pocket, blaring Sexy and I know It. What can I say? I fumbled and nearly dropped the phone, snapping it open and pressing it to my ear,
"Hello?"
"Is he dead yet?" Trust Cecily to cut straight to the point. I suppose it works if there are Calypsaï or some other dim-witted life form nearby. I could hear soft winds and the crunch of asphalt and rubble in the background. A… parking lot? The dull purr confirmed my suspicions and I formulated my response, just to test her…
"Oh, sorry, didn't you want him to be? How would you like to hear this story about your relative Sebastian…" I trailed off, waiting for her, no doubt, angry response. I began to stroll towards the cavern, drumming my fingers along my thigh. Tide pool indeed…
"No, no I don't care!" She screeched, irked, and I allowed myself a small smile at that. I rounded the corner of the walkway above the tide pool, relishing in the sight of a silent Jace… Wait, what?!
I froze as I looked down the semi-submerged staircase, almost dropping my phone in shock.
"Er, Cecily… I don't think he's dead yet…" I trailed off, wincing in anticipation of the way Cecily would respond. I chewed my nails anxiously as a started down the staircase, towards the problem at hand.
"Why not? The tide pool must be full by now!" She sounded positively puzzled, and I'm sure that I would have laughed had the conversation not had been this serious and if my life had not possibly been in danger.
"Well, it must have been at one point, but now—" I checked my wrist for the time—"The water level should be receding, not rising. So, er… How did you feel about using Sebastian as a bargaining chip? Because about that…" I cringed, cursing my mouth. Why bring up Sebastian? This way, she would find out that practically nothing had gone to plan.
"He would be useful bait, I do agree…" I breathed a sigh of relief. Not caught out – yet.
"Well, the thing is, Jace may or may not have disappeared…" I murmured, hoping that maybe, just maybe, Cecily might miss this particular part of our conversation. Just in case, I braced myself for the unavoidable onslaught of verbal brutality, walking off the plateau at the bottom of the stairs and pulling off my shoes and socks and rolling up my jeans in preparation for wading into the icy water.
"Meet me back at…" I let out a breath of air that had been starting to ache in my lungs. She'd missed what I'd said, thank goodne—"WHAT?! When?!"
Oh, Lord… Ulysses help me!
"Uh, I literally just checked on the cavern… And Sebastian may have helped with his escape. It looks like he is quite the smart one… Does he have straight As in school? Is he running for Valedictorian?" I stuttered slightly of the last sentence, pointlessly trying to distract Cecily from her evident rage.
"Sebastian hasn't done anything like that. Why do you ask?"
About that…
CECILY POV
"… I'll get back to you on that one." Jonathan's nervous voice squeaked out of the speakers on my phone, the hang-up tone following swiftly after.
"Dammit, Jonathan…" I hissed, snapping my phone shut and forcefully pushing it back inside my purse. Amatis sat down in the car without a word, as usual. I slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses and pulled out of the drab school parking lot, my notorious 'dastardly' (as Seb put it) smirk fixed on my face.
It's go time.
CLARY POV
I'm starting to know how insomniacs feel.
It's early on Thursday morning. Very early, judging by the dusky, minimal moonlight bleeding through the shutters of my window and into my room. The house is eerily quiet, not even the birds having risen from their sleep. That means that it is earlier than 5:30am.
I haven't slept for more than five hours each night, plagued with vivid scenarios of Jace's death and a monstrous Eulysae figure coming to kill me in my sleep. I lay awake for most of the nights, staring unseeing at the chipped paint of the ceiling, which I hadn't noticed showed the plaster beneath it before. Sometimes I didn't want to fall asleep, knowing that my usually dreamless nights would be filled with images of a dying Jace and/or a pleading Jocelyn, who I hadn't spoken to since I last saw her.
I peered into the gloom to my left, where the vague silhouette of my bedside table lay. I knew that although there was not enough light for humans to be able to see, that I would be able to see had there been water in my room. Calypsaï vision is funny that way - pitch black water is as easy to see through as a sunny room, but in a dark room you're as good as blind. If I could see, I would see my lamp, a translucent glass of water, my cell phone plugged into its charger, the small alarm clock and the scrunched up piece of paper with Jocelyn's hastily scrawled name and phone number.
I groaned and scrubbed my hands over my face. Sometimes I wished that I was an inanimate object - like Raphael's little porcelain models of the Indian goddesses. Who knew that thinking would take so much work? It was exhausting, even with the right amount of sleep each night.
I sat up slowly, squinting in my bedroom. I had half a mind to flop back onto the bed, but I knew that even if did, I wouldn't gain any extra sleep. Shoving the crumpled sheets aside, I groggily swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood shakily. I then stumbled through my doorway, cursing when I caught my toe on the edge of the door jamb, and padded as quietly as I could down the hallway.
I crept into the dimly lit kitchen, missing the third floorboard on the left (because it creaked) and the sixth floorboard to the right (because it was loose). I had almost made it to the fridge when I heard it.
The wind, coming from my left.
The shutters on that side of the room didn't work - you needed a key, and we hadn't been able to find it. There were always strange noises coming from over there, and I'd never worked out what they were.
The shutters flapped wildly, narrowly missing the wall on several occasions. I peered around me into the gloom, listening quietly for any sign of life. There was a muted thud, and a screech like nails on a chalkboard. I shivered. Placing one foot in front of the other and avoiding the sixth (creaky) floorboard, I crept towards the noise.
The howling grew ever louder as I neared the shutters, instinct taking over as I raised my forearms in front of my face, squinting against the biting, gale-force wind. As I drew even closer, a blinding light seared through the gaps in the shutters and the strangest feeling came over me, encouraging me to touch the light…
A bright flash filled my vision. The fragments of light seemed to have an almost heavenly lustre, swirling with a feel and speed that seemed impossible for an inanimate object. All too soon, it was as if the fog lifted and suddenly I was thinking of Jace again, and the light got dimmer and dimmer until there was none at all and I landed in the middle of someone's overgrown backyard.
The moon was bright still, although a faint haze at the very edge of the horizon told me that it was later in the early morning than it had initially seemed. A monstrous house lay in front of me, a huge façade covering the exterior of the house, with massive floor to ceiling windows at regular intervals throughout the structure of the house. I looked around me, trying to gauge where I was. Blades of grass poked at my calves and knees, a mouldy wooden grate covering a small portion of the sharp iron fence around the property. I looked towards the house and puffed out my cheeks, chills running over my arms and legs, before deciding that the best option would be to at least check out the house.
As I walked around the perimeter of the house, I pondered my situation and what on earth that light, and those shutters, had really been. Of course, I'd heard of Portals, but they had always seemed a bit of a fairy tale to me. After all, I had never seen a real one, and they required an intense amount of magic and concentration to conjure. I hadn't been thinking of a destination as I had touched the portal, so it had clearly just taken me to its most recent destination; this house. I stopped walking and focused of keeping my footfalls quiet, keeping lower to the ground than usual, and peering around me as I continued my inventory of the grounds. I looked behind me hastily and snapped my head back around as I heard a soft sigh in front of me.
I ducked behind a marble column on the side of the house, peeking behind the intricate carving of cherubs and realistic feathers as I spied on the person who had sighed right in front of me. Thankfully, they didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong, and they continued to lean against the wall of the house and glance up to the window above them occasionally. They frequently glanced around the courtyard, and it was obvious that I had been very lucky not to have been seen while I was approaching. The mysterious but undeniably tall person continued to mutter and sigh under their breath. These mutterings seemed to come to a conclusion, and they lead to this person striding away from the wall and throwing pebbles at the window.
How romantic.
The moonlight hit whoever the person was at an odd angle, so that all was revealed was short, dark hair and sharp cheekbones. It was, however, obvious that this figure was male, due to a lack of cleavage in their silhouette against the moonlit grass.
The man repeated his action of pebble-throwing for some time, until the light that had started off as a glow on the horizon became a beam and then the uppermost crest of the sun in all its glory. The day was still surprisingly dark, but I was intrigued by this mysterious lover, and I had spent enough time watching the breaking dawn to know that in reality, only around a half hour had passed.
Finally, a pebble thrown by the increasingly frustrated night time lover was finally no match for the spider web of cracks already splintering along the glass, and broke a significant amount of glass towards the top corner on the right of the pane. The smash was loud – my ears had adjusted to the serene quiet – and I winced as the bold sound rang out, breaking the peaceful aura around the house. I shrank back a little further behind my pillar – but only enough so that even though I could see the man, he probably couldn't see me. Probably.
It seemed that I wasn't the only one shocked by the loud noise; from inside the window, a groan carried into the dawn air, followed by a string of colourful curse words as the 'groan-er' examined the damage to their (his?) window. Muffled shuffling and more choice words were uttered before a dark-haired boy appeared at the window sill, scrubbing his hand over his face. The action was eerily familiar, and I couldn't help but think of—
Jace.
But it couldn't be, of course. And no sooner than the boy removed his hand from his face, the stranger on the outside called up to him in hushed tones.
"Alec! Can you hear me?" Alec? No wonder I had recognized the movement. He and Jace were best friends; I wasn't surprised that some of their mannerisms were the same. But as I pondered this, I looked closer at the stranger in front of me, and realised that Alec wasn't the only one here that I recognized.
(AN: Back in time a little now; yesterday evening…)
CAMILLE POV
"Magnus, what did you do?"
I was driving back to our house, and Magnus was sitting next to me, practically exploding with glee. If something wasn't up, the world was clearly coming to an end. I hadn't seen him this excited… well, ever.
"My darling Camille, I was just thinking about the tracking device that I may or may not have planted on our dear, deranged Ms. Verlac's car while I was, ah… Looking at the rear axis and how it fit onto the underside of her beautiful car." Now, that was something I was not expecting. He had a new boyfriend/girlfriend? I wouldn't bat an eyelid. Modelling contract? Nope. But this… This was fantastic! We had a lead, and with this, we could easily find Jace! I was about to express my joy at this advantage, when some kind of buzzer went nuts in Magnus' lap.
"What the fuck is that?!" I screeched, swerving on the already slippery conditions, trying to focus on the torrential rain that had started up not five minutes ago. Magnus grinned gleefully in the corner of my vision, waving the buzzer in my face and singing, "Lalalalalalaaa…" I growled under my breath a let out a sigh, waiting for his explanation.
"It's like my… Tracking device. It's hooked up to the magical energy I exude, and is a physical demonstration of how I'm tracking Cecily—well, at least, her car." I waited a beat before grinning and letting my head thump back against the headrest, relieved that this was one thing I could count on Magnus for.
"But… Not today. It's late and I'm stressing about Clary, and from what Cecily said on the phone earlier, Jace has a little bit of time left." I proceeded to repeat Cecily's one-sided conversation on the phone, before calling it a night and sending everyone into their rooms as soon as we were home.
At 10:03 that night, I went into my room and promptly fell asleep. Little did I know, if I had stayed awake two minutes longer, I would have heard footsteps head down the creaky hallway and enter the room that no-one ever used unless they needed to use the Portal.
CLARY POV
"Magnus?" I called softly, not wishing to awaken any others in the house. Magnus' head whipped around towards me, and I leaned around the pillar a little more, revealing my location. The first thing that struck me about Magnus' appearance was the fact that for the first time since I had met him, his hair was bland and free of any kind of gel, glitter or dye. I hung limply around his face, strangely bringing out his cheekbones and strong jawline, but at the same time making him look far more vulnerable and years younger.
A throat cleared above us, and I flicked my gaze to the uncomfortable boy at the window. Alec had his hand on the back of his neck in that classic pose that all boys seem to feel the need to do whenever they are unsure of how to react to a certain situation; this definitely qualified. His blue eyes looked nervous, and as his gaze flitted between Magnus and I, I realised that Alec had no clue that we were 'related' and he must also wonder what I must think of Magnus and why he was here in the first place.
I stepped forward. "Alec, I would like to introduce you to my pseudo father and our favourite drama teacher, Magnus Bane." I smiled slightly before frowning. "Magnus, what in Calypso's name were you doing?" Alec looked a little puzzled at the Calypso reference, and I mentally kicked myself for using that phrase in front of him. But, no matter.
"Clary, look… I just really needed to talk to Alec… And clear something up. But no matter, because we need him anyway, and this explanation is going to take a long time. I would like to start by telling you both that I am, in fact, a magical creature and could I please demonstrate this fact by creating a portal for us?" I smiled and gestured at the wall, used to the usual magical aspects of our existence, and chanced a look at Alec in the window.
"M-magic?" He asked, visibly swallowing.
"Yes. Please come down here, Alec; do I really need to drag you?" Magnus replied with a hand on his hip; the epitome of boredom. Alec looked taken aback for a moment, but he recovered and began to scale the wall, holding on to the drainpipe and ivy climbing up the wall for better grip. He landed on the ground with a slight stumble and a thud, before glancing around and joining us.
"Well, go on, then. Show me what you've got."
Magnus started to mumble under his breath, and before long, a crackly aura surrounded us, as if the air had been charged with electricity. A spark on the wall became a glow and then a blaze, and suddenly a blue, swirling abyss was in front of us, rather than a wall. Magnus turned and handed Alec a small diving mask and oxygen tank, strapping them on in record time before shoving Alec into the middle of Triton and Atlanta.
CECILY POV
There was something about magic that had always intrigued me.
The way that if you focused enough, anyone was capable of harnessing its raw power and utilising the ability that all creatures are born with to sense where magic is being used. I had always had a knack for this kind of thing; now was no different. I turned to Amatis slightly, grimacing and looking straight ahead, onto the coastal highway that lead to Idris.
"A portal was just opened in the Bronx, used to travel roughly 770 miles South East. Destination was Bermuda." I smirked at the look of utter shock in the corner of my eye.
"Do you know what lies near Bermuda, Amatis?" I asked, my question full of condescension. She frowned at opened her mouth to speak, but I interrupted her.
"And how would you know this, Amatis?" I asked.
"Bermuda is the closest place to the Calypsaï kingdom on the planet. I know this because I have spent many years trying to track them down and give them what they deserve." Amatis' expression was steely, and the resolve in her words grew as her speech rose in volume.
"And what do they deserve, Amatis?" I asked, already knowing the answer that she would give.
"Nothing, Cecily. Nothing at all." I finally allowed myself a smile.
This is the end for you, Valentine.
What do you think? I hope it was worth the wait! Let me know in reviews!
Me being the idiot that I am, managed to forget to write down who followed, favourited and reviewed this story, so my sincerest apologies! I literally just have the first few readers, and to the following, thank you:
-mortalinstrumentsgurl1 for reviewing (every chapter!)
-Ryzxn for reviewing and following
-Iresha for following and favouriting
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Thank you once again! The next chapter is being drafted, and I have big plans for it! It may be quite a long one, but I hope that it will be worth it and I will try to get it out to you soon. I am moving back to the UK now, so we have tons of packing to do, but I may be able to find a few hours to write in, and believe me when I say that I will try!
Thanks for sticking with this story! And remember to review, follow and favourite!
-Physalie00
