Author's Note: Hey guys - this long-awaited chapter is my Christmas/holiday present to you all, and I thank you for sticking with this story for so long. :) I might be a little out of practice writing the characters, but I'm going to do my best.
Shadows of Anarchy
Molly groaned lowly as her eyes blinked open, leaving her staring dazedly up at a hole in the ceiling. It took a few minutes before her sluggish mind registered that the hole was in fact a still-open trapdoor, which she had apparently fallen through, if the furious stinging in her back was any indication. Said stinging was rapidly gaining in intensity, but she swallowed and managed to push it out of her mind as she gently levered herself up into a sitting position, hissing as the motion aggravated her burned skin. Ooooh yeah, that really hurt!
She whimpered softly in pain as her skin pulled and stretched when she moved, carefully standing and trying her best to look around without moving her head or neck too much. She was reasonably successful at the first part, but utterly failed at the second part, a hiss of pain slipping from between clenched teeth as she finally gave up on trying to turn her head to look around. Instead turning her entire body, she squinted as she tried to see through the darkness surrounding her and make out something, anything that might tell her where she was and how to get back up to the floor she'd been on.
The only light, as far as the apprentice wizard could tell, was coming from the open trapdoor above her and illuminating her and a small area around her like some sort of spotlight. Far from being comforting, the light shining down on her made her feel like either a target or some sort of art object being presented at auction. She shivered, ignoring the stinging the small motion caused, and instead focused on finding some way to get the heck out of there and back up to where Bakura was.
She wasn't even mad at the white-haired man anymore - strange how falling through a trapdoor could do wonders for someone's priorities.
All things considered, Molly thought distantly as she hesitated over whether or not to use her Sight, she'd probably gotten off easy. If she remembered that one documentary she'd seen about Ancient Egyptians, they had the habit of putting nasty surprises at the bottom of their trapdoor/pit-fall traps. She swallowed, feeling nauseous as an image of skeletons impaled on a mass of spears flashed through her mind, and she hurriedly closed her eyes and breathed deeply as she tried to use the concentration techniques Harry had taught her to banish it. That part of the documentary had always stuck with her, and right now she was seriously wishing it hadn't.
Shaking her head and then hissing slightly as the slight swing of her hair pulled at her burned scalp, she brought her focus back to the matter at hand. She didn't want to step out of the lighted area, no matter how targeted it made her feel, but she had the sinking feeling that she would have to. Air magic was out, since she didn't have anything to focus it, her blasting rod being in so many pieces that it wasn't even funny from the explosion, so she would have to come up with another idea.
Once again the apprentice contemplated using her Sight to try and figure out if there was anything in the shadows surrounding her that might think she would be a tasty snack, but she hesitated over actually doing it. Anything she looked at with her Sight would be forever burned into her memory, meaning she could never forget it, and if she wasn't careful about what she looked at she could get images that would make horror movie-makers green with envy embedded in her mind. At least that was how Harry had described it to her - she didn't know for sure, but she was taking his word for it. He spoke from experience, after all, and generally knew what he was talking about when it came to magic.
The incident with the gnomes and the three-headed talking turkey notwithstanding.
Molly shivered, not even noticing the faint pain it caused, when she heard something rustle in the shadows, sounding a great deal like her dad's cape did when he moved around. It was definitely fabric, but as her blue eyes darted around, trying to pierce through the darkness and find what had made the sound, she saw nothing save the surrounding blackness. Okay, that was just plain creepy, she thought with another pained shiver.
It wasn't just the darkness that was getting to her; the very air itself felt heavy and oppressive despite the shadows being kept at bay, like there was a weight pressing down on her chest and making it hard to breathe. She took shallow breaths even as she carefully gathered her magic and tried to sense if she was under some sort of spell, just in case someone or something had decided to cast some mind magic and make it seem like the air was trying to suffocate her. She wasn't under a spell or charm or anything that she could tell, but she was still tense as she tried to figure out a way to get back up to the level she'd fallen from.
Just as she'd resolved to open her Sight and hope for the best, a faint flicker of light appeared in the darkness, setting the apprentice wizard on her guard as it gradually grew brighter and brighter. The source of the light came closer and Molly watched, enthralled, as the dark retreated somewhat, revealing the stone floor beyond her own lighted area. And as the light came closer, it solidified until she found herself looking at a glowing white ball* while she blinked in disbelief.
The light from the hovering orb grew brighter, and Molly relaxed in spite of herself, feeling a comfortable warmth wash over her. It was strange to feel so comfortable around something warm, considering she had thought she had had enough of hot things for a long time, but the glowing ball moved a bit closer, then retreated. It confused her, but after the strange thing repeated the motion several times, she thought she got the gist of what it wanted, namely for her to follow it.
Molly was reluctant to actually do that, as Harry had told her about a lot of fairy creatures that led travelers astray in the old days, but the now-clearly seen path through the shadows surrounding where she'd fallen tempted her. 'Face it, Molly, you have to get out of here somehow,' she thought, 'and at least if I follow the floating ball of light I'll be able to see where I'm going, not to mention that if I stay here I'll probably die of starvation, dehydration, or something even worse.' That pretty much decided it for her, and the blonde took her first step onto the stone floor revealed by the glowing orb and cautiously followed the floating light as it drifted away.
A short time later, and Molly could safely say that wherever that trapdoor had dumped her was freaking huge. Sure she didn't have a pinpoint sense of time, but even she knew that if you could walk for five minutes without reaching the end of a room then it was a big room. Of course, just after she'd thought that she looked ahead and noticed the light coming off the floating orb was starting to illuminate what looked a lot like walls, and she could have hugged someone she was so happy when she saw the stairs and took her first step up them.
She was getting closer to the ground level! To where Bakura and the bathroom and everything hopefully was!
Feeling a bit giddy, there was a distinctive bounce in her step as she ascended the stairs, following after the light ball and trying to ignore the fact that now that she could see the walls, the images painted on them looked distinctly ominous. The further up she climbed, however, the less frightening the wall carvings became, and she suddenly realized that it was getting easier and easier to breathe. That was certainly one thing to be thankful for, she noted, and she sighed quietly in relief as she reached the top of the stairs and followed after the glowing orb as it drifted down a hallway.
It was getting a lot easier to see, Molly realized after a moment, and it wasn't just because of the bright light given off by the floating ball. No, it was because every once in awhile, after turning a corner or several, she would pass a lit torch that gave off a respectable amount of warm orange light in contrast to the pure white light of the orb she was following. There was no set pattern to when she would pass a torch, but she took the mere fact that there were torches there as a sign that she was getting closer to the floor that she had started on.
The glowing orb led her up four more sets of stairs, and Molly was really starting to wonder exactly how far she'd fallen and stars and stones how had she managed to walk away from falling from that height?!
At the top of the fourth set of stairs, she was forced to squint against the light coming from the doorway, so much so that her eyes were nearly shut, and walk into that light practically blind. She blinked afterwards, looking around in confusion when she found that she was in a hallway that had a surprising amount of torches compared to the previous hallways she'd been in. In fact, the hallway actually looked...familiar. Like déjà vu familiar, and she realized, with a start, that she had walked down that very corridor with Bakura on the way to the bathroom earlier.
Elation filled her, and she couldn't stop relieved laughter from escaping her as it clicked that she was back on the floor that she and Bakura had set up camp in. And she knew that she could find her way back to the lounge-type room if she could get back to the bathroom, so it was with a bright smile that she looked around to find the floating orb in order to thank it (or some equivalent, in case it was a creature of the NeverNever**). Her smile dropped into a frown of confusion when she realized that the glowing ball was gone, with no trace that it had ever been there, and her bewilderment deepened when she turned around and found that the doorway she'd walked through was also gone without a trace.
Her delight at getting back to a place she knew in the creepy Egyptian-themed place she had found herself in was dampened as a chill ran down her spine. Empty night, she thought, staring at the hieroglyph covered wall in front of her. It was like there had never been an opening there in the first place, and with no sign of the glowing ball that had led her there, she was honestly wondering if she'd imagined it or if she was seeing things.
She shuddered at the weirdness of it, then pressed her lips together and steeled herself, turning and attempting to get her bearings. After a few minutes Molly remembered which way the drawings on the walls had been facing when she'd walked passed on the way to the bathroom, and she started walking back towards the lounge, deciding to skip the bathroom altogether. Her skin and muscles ached and she really, really wanted to just lay down and sleep for a week (and hopefully be unconscious when her skin started peeling - that moment was an ever-present dread hovering in the back of her mind).
Her feet aching, Molly groaned softly, muttering, "...Really hope there's some of that water left..." under her breath as she trudged down the hall. In the back of her mind, she registered the feeling that something was off, but she didn't truly acknowledge it, focused entirely on finding her way back to the lounge as she was.
Moments after the blue-eyed*** woman's soft mutterings faded, a shadow seemingly cast by one of the torches stirred unnaturally, writhing on the stone wall momentarily before darting off in the opposite direction that Molly had gone. It's work was done.
*Mystical Shine Ball. Pretty self-explanatory.
**The Winter and Summer fairy realms, also a home to other supernatural beasties. Anyone who knows Dresden Files will know this one.
***I'm sorry, everyone, I can't seem to decide what color Molly's eyes are. I know I said they were brown in a previous chapter, but then I reread the very first chapters and apparently I said they were blue...I don't know anymore. Which do you guys prefer? Blue or brown? (When in doubt, ask the readers, LOL!)
Author's Note: I am soooooo sorry that it's taken me so long to update this story, and I want to thank everyone who favorited this story and added it to their alerts. I know it's not that long, but that seemed like a good place to end it. As I said, this is my Christmas/holiday present to all you readers, and I wish you a Merry Christmas and happy holidays!