Daisy struggled ineffectually in the chair, tugging against the ropes wrapped tight around her torso. "Is this really necessary?" she asked, agitated.
"I'm afraid so," Pyrrha said. To allow Daisy to roam the Lodge unchecked would violate the terms of the Vow.
They sat across from one another by the fireplace, suffused with the soft golden light of the fungi sprouting all across the walls. With a quick look around, Pyrrha saw that the Cabal had spirited away anything of value from the common hall, leaving it a barren collection of purposeless furniture. The sole exception occupied Eilith's desk in the form of a pile of splinters and bits of string that had once been Pyrrha's violin.
The bodies of Irving and Maven lay peacefully atop the meeting table, the former cleansed of blood. A black shroud enveloped them. The sight of their motionless outlines elicited a twinge of something untraceable; abrasive as Maven had been, she hadn't deserved to die. Neither of them had.
Pyrrha returned her gaze to Daisy, and they held it between them for a while without a word. The weight of Pyrrha's decision hung in the air over them like a guillotine suspended by fraying rope; to allow Daisy into her world was a terrible risk, and she had taken it for both of them.
"Self-interest always wins out," Ashlin said. The burn ignited. "For all your posturing, you're just as pathetic as the rest."
Hati made soft snuffling sounds into the silence as he licked his paws clean of blood. The smell of it haunted the air. It seemed to cling to Pyrrha wherever she went, whatever her intent, naturally as a shadow.
Pyrrha gathered herself and refocused on Daisy, who looked back with concern, a small absurdity in her helpless state. "I—what I said in the Head's office . . ." Pyrrha's insides squirmed with guilt at the memory of Daisy's distraught face.
"It hurt," Daisy said. The matter-of-fact admission struck a dull blow. "I knew you didn't really mean it, but it hurt anyway, until I realized what you were trying to do." Her expression was one of steely determination. "I won't be pushed out and ignored any longer, alright? I don't know what all this is about, but it doesn't matter, because I know you. I'm with you, whatever happens."
"Why?" The question slipped out and carried all her uncertainty into the open.
Daisy's eyes shined with unexpected mirth. "Would you do the same for me?"
"Yes."
"Then why ask such a silly question?"
Pyrrha had no answer, no words to articulate what their friendship was worth to her. She nodded once, gratefully, and pressed down on the odd feeling in her chest, standing and drawing her wand. "I'll return shortly. Stay with her, please," she added to Hati, who grumbled in grudging assent. After a grateful pat on his head, she turned away to make for the western hall.
Daisy heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I'll be here," she said wryly after Pyrrha as the door closed.
The hallway beyond bore little resemblance to any typical corridor. It had subtly ribbed walls and ceiling curving to form a vaguely ovoid series of archways in gradient shades of deep blues and purples, all traced through with dark green veins; Pyrrha sometimes felt as though she were traveling through the enlarged blood vessel of some alien creature. At near-even intervals the gently curving path sprouted clusters of the same luminous fungi from the dry, spongy surfaces of the tunnel. As she stalked down the hall, the faint yet ever-present scent of the place permeated the air and brushed over her. It was nothing she'd ever encountered elsewhere; not exactly unpleasant, it smelled in the way she imagined a subterranean lake would.
Rounding the edge of the curve, the end of the hall came into sight, and Wasila with it. She stood with arms crossed before the threshold to the Lodge's antechamber, glancing over her shoulder with a sly smile as Pyrrha drew level with her. "That was a rather lengthy farewell. Had a bit more than stern words for her, perchance? She is rather fetching."
"Would that you were amusing as you think you are," Pyrrha said. "In fact, she'll be accompanying me, so mind what you say within earshot until I attend to Aradia." Her tone allowed no room for disagreement.
Wasila only made a vaguely intrigued noise by way of reply as she returned her eyes to the antechamber, and Pyrrha followed suit. It was a vast, circular space spanning a formidable width, and the towerlike surrounding wall rose several times higher to end in a deep black void twinkling with stars shining white amidst the clearest of night skies. The charm was a deviation of the one upon the Great Hall at Hogwarts, spelled to display the heavenly bodies no matter the time or weather.
The cylindrical wall swirled with the same dark and dreamy tones as the tunnel behind them, creating a mesmerizing effect around the chamber in the same way murky colors shifted behind closed eyelids in a dimly lit room. The wall was ringed with wide and flat protuberances that grew out smoothly to form landing platforms for each of the Lodge's three floors, accessible by the spiraling crystal staircase rising from the center of the space. Countless mushroom sprouts poked in all around the room, ranging in size from a nose to an entire head, and they cast their golden glow over everything to consummate the chamber's otherworldly atmosphere.
The fungi shined both bright and gentle to the eye as they illuminated the eclectic assortment of pilfered trophies Wasila had mounted along the wall. There were several rare paintings, metalworks, and tapestries from the family homes of the wealthy and well-bred, including an original Vefari weaving; over the entrance archway hung the enormous, pearly head of a famed dragon, the brief and wildly popular main attraction of the Circus Arcanus; the framed deed to a sizable tract of private land in the heart of wizarding Corsica, commended to one of Wasila's many aliases; even a pair of lacy white knickers graced the wall, reputed to have belonged to the daughter of magical Spain's prime minister.
"So," Wasila said thoughtfully as her eyes roved the room. "What's wrong with this picture?"
Pyrrha drew her wand and cast over the chamber with slow and careful strokes, her other hand held out to caress the air that slid between her fingers carrying arcane traces on its back. Under every spell at her disposal the secrets of the room were spilled over her, the enchantments melded to the Lodge, the charms that bound disparate elements together. As inside the common hall, the examen unveiled no perilous spells waiting in the wings.
She lowered her arms at last. "Nothing hazardous to be found." A hum of assent told her Wasila had already gathered much the same, and remained unsatisfied. "It's not unthinkable. You said the others had agreed to attempt to capture me alive."
"Eilith didn't," Wasila said. "She pretended to, but she didn't. She's clinging to this opportunity with everything she's got. Why is it you inspire such strong feelings?"
Eilith had made her sentiments clear ever since Pyrrha had joined the Cabal, and they had avoided one another since then whenever possible. Pyrrha had scarcely interacted with any of them, in fact, with the exception of Aradia, whose ambitions were tightly twined with her own.
Pyrrha sighed. "I don't know. We were in the same year at Hogwarts, but different houses. We never spoke. I knocked her out of the annual dueling tournament in our seventh year, but I can't imagine even she could stretch a petty grudge so far."
"A tournament? With spectators? Sounds like the last thing you'd ever bother with."
"Daisy twisted my arm." It had seemed important to her, one final attempt at socializing Pyrrha, she thought. She looked the vast room over again. "I haven't seen or felt anything. Are you certain of her intentions?"
"I know people." Wasila's tone gave away the smallest hint of disgust. "She wouldn't be Eilith if she didn't lay a few traps in your way. It could be . . ." She made a vague gesture with her wand and eyed the room, then lowered her arm with a frown. "No, not a single living creature."
A disquieting thought occurred to Pyrrha. "I don't suppose there could be an unliving creature?"
"What, like inferi? You'd know more about that than I would," Wasila said with an unreadable glance. She tilted her chin at the room. "Either there's nothing to find, or we can't find it. Let's proceed as if dear Rosier is a credible threat and hope for validation." Pyrrha shot her a questioning glance, and she smiled. "For our suspenseful stroll to end safely would be terribly boring, wouldn't you say?"
Pyrrha gave a noncommittal hum and led the way with her wand half-raised, pacing slow steps that echoed off the dark wood floor. They stopped by the staircase at the center of the room, and she walked a slow circle around to see everything sitting just as it had been, the air thick with tomblike silence. She met Wasila at the base of the stairs as the witch completed a spell.
"Nothing new," Wasila said at the querying look. "Up we go."
Pyrrha took the lead with a carefully neutral expression, suppressing the thrill of fear in her stomach as they mounted the stairs. She kept her eyes on her boots upon the translucent crystal that glittered with refracted light. The stairs were uniform, and the railing was not, as if the crystal pillar had spiraled from the ground like a vine twining round a fence post and had steps carved from it. In her mind's spiteful eye Pyrrha tipped over the railing and smashed her head against the ground, slipped backward past Wasila to snap her neck upon the steps.
Against all reason, facing her fear of heights never came any easier, no matter how often the occasion called for it. As they passed the first floor Pyrrha could feel the sweat beginning to pool on her skin, her heart laboring with the effort of a dozen flights of steps rather than one. Tingly numbness brushed up her fingers. All too slowly they reached the second floor, the midpoint, and Pyrrha failed to eliminate the ominous images besieging her as they advanced.
Halfway to the third floor the room was plunged into darkness. Pyrrha froze along with her pulse as her anxiety multiplied, and she clutched the railing like a lifeline as hoarse, rapid babbling sounded from a hundred surrounding mouths. Under sparse starlight the barest outlines of fuzzy shapes shifted along the walls.
Wasila's robes rustled as she moved, and the chamber was thrown back into harsh illumination, sourceless and pale, lending the creatures crawling up the wall a flat, two-dimensional appearance. The luminescent mushrooms hadn't gone out—they'd shifted to become head-sized beings with wild brown fur and four pallid, hairless limbs long and thin; they skittered up the wall and pounced across the room in a perpetual wave to clasp at the sheer edges of the staircase overhead.
"Yours above, mine below," Wasila said calmly, and Pyrrha made the mistake of peering over the railing to see a tide of creatures flowing down around the wall and over the floor, scuttling on clawed feet to meet the base of the stairs a thousand miles beneath. Her head swam as she pulled it back against the insistent tug of gravity.
Intense heat flashed across her skull, jolting her into alertness. "I won't let you fall," Ashlin said softly. "Kill them."
Deep and swift grinding noises came up from below as Pyrrha raised her wand aloft to meet the swarm descending on her, each of them jibbering like manic children with throats burned raw, their beady black eyes deep-set and glinting with hunger, too-wide mouths baring rings of needle-thin teeth.
She swept her wand in a slow arc as if casting a fragile bubble into the air, and a wide ripple tinged with red drifted up and around the staircase, through the sinking swarm like an insubstantial swell of water. The curse carved a low howl across air akin to a wolf-mother's lament; as the spell spread through them the chattering masses melted into nothing, swirled out of being like smudges of mud washed away by rain.
From below came a variety of violent sounds; calamitous crashing, low swoops of large unknowns rushing through air, and the neat, wet crunches of many somethings being bludgeoned. There was no time to see—at the deaths of their kin the creatures that still clung to the walls uttered a deep yowl as one, and they hurled themselves from where they hung level with Pyrrha to scramble madly over the railings beside her.
She drew her wand up herself with a flourish; the crystal at her feet flowed up and across her form to encase her like an exoskeleton. Through a vitreous mask she watched the creatures scrabble onto the staircase and rake at her with wicked claws, and she felt nothing as their frenzied assault slid away with noisy scrapes, futile as knives against compact ice. They clambered over her, teeth questing for flesh, and she gestured with an armored arm, heedless of the beasts clinging there; her crystal shell erupted with dozens of pointed protrusions in every direction, impaling the monsters and retracting again just as quickly. They dropped off and tumbled lifelessly down the steps.
An expansive motion saw the stragglers lifted away from the staircase in the wake of a fleeting shockwave, and they floated out over the room as if adrift in deep space, thrashing and burbling with impotent rage. Pyrrha made a sharp gesture; the crystal encasing her shot away in a barrage of spines to spear the drifting beasts precisely, nailing their bodies all across the wall with a battery of solid thunks. With a glance behind her to ensure her spell had effected the same there, she turned her wand to the stairs below as she ventured back down to Wasila, who met her coming up.
Wasila grinned up at Pyrrha, none the worse for wear. "Well, that was quite the surprise, wasn't it? I do wonder how Eilith managed to maintain such a convincing thick-witted facade after all this time," she said, sounding delighted. She twirled her wand; the sourceless light throughout the room coalesced into a radiant orb bobbing in the center of the chamber, casting a more natural light on their surroundings.
"Self-transfiguring creatures," Pyrrha murmured in agreement, turning to resume the ascent. Eilith had created beasts with the capacity to shapeshift, masking them from life-seeking spells while creating an effective ambush. Pyrrha found herself with newborn respect for Eilith's cunning.
The shot of adrenaline afforded to Pyrrha sustained her focused state of mind as they climbed to the third floor. She picked her way over countless furry bodies with eyes fixed firmly down, only a portion of her concentration dwelling on her distance from the ground as she considered what else might await them. The truth of it was that it was impossible to predict; magic carried endless potential, and Pyrrha didn't know Eilith well enough to extrapolate the ways she might use it against them.
At long last Pyrrha surmounted the final step, and she raised her eyes first to the broad crystal disk she stood upon, then to the rest of their surroundings. A flowing balustrade encircled the platform, so low as to be more decorative than protective. The fathomless black ceiling was near enough she imagined she could feel the chill of space settling over her, stars twinkling in the visible spectrum's every shade like immortal fireworks caught within a wrinkle in time. Careful not to let her eyes wander over the platform's edge, she peered down each elegant bridge that extended out to meet their respective landings, one for the east and one for the west.
Wasila cleared her throat from behind Pyrrha, and Pyrrha stepped carefully out of the way to claim the center of the disk. Wasila flashed a wide smile and glanced past her to Maven's door at the eastern landing, a thoughtful look crossing her face for a moment, and she turned about to match Pyrrha in contemplating the western bridge.
"I don't imagine she'd miss such an obvious placement for some trick or other," Wasila said as Pyrrha began surveying the walkway with careful sweeps of her wand. "Suppose we conjure another bridge?" Her voice carried unnaturally far, reverberating off the rounded wall to flutter down throughout the Lodge's heart.
The evaluation complete, Pyrrha shook her head. "It'll take the shape of a large serpent and strike when we attempt to cross, whatever the manner."
Wasila hummed. "Rather tame."
"It'll become a cloud of highly poisonous dust upon destruction."
"Ah, that's more like it," Wasila said, sounding somehow entertained. "What do you propose?"
Pyrrha took a few careful steps closer, the platform's edges ever-present in the back of her mind. "I can dismantle the spellwork . . . or is that solution too dull?" she added at Wasila's disappointed noise.
"Can't have it all," Wasila said with a shrug. "Have at it."
Pyrrha drew a pattern in the air ending with an extended outward flourish; a thin trail of violet light followed the arc like a cast fishing line, and it detatched from her wand tip to settle its glimmering length along the surface of the bridge. "What is it you want from me?" Pyrrha asked abruptly as she coaxed the charm to sink into the crystalline walkway.
"Do I take that to mean my assistance merits recompense?" Wasila's voice was level, as if she didn't really care either way.
Much as Pyrrha didn't want to admit it, she owed Wasila. Not only had she sided against Aradia—for the moment, at least—she'd passed on a vital piece of information in Aradia and Byron's current intentions and location, and she'd orchestrated the undoing of Maven and Irving's more deadly defenses. In a way, having brought Pyrrha into the Cabal's fold, Wasila was the reason for her vital partnership with Aradia: the reason her hopes hadn't perished with her family. The time had finally come for Pyrrha to give in. The thought formed an anxious knot in her gut.
"Yes . . . you'll have your favor," Pyrrha said heavily. Under her wand the thin streak of violet light had sunk into the walkway and split into dozens of winding offshoots, like a system of roots with no base of life to bolster. The translucent bridge's rich purple glow gave Wasila's face an eerie cast as she revealed the toothy smile always waiting underneath.
"I've waited two years to hear those words," Wasila said calmly. "I gather you knew that much already. Tell me, what makes you so sure you'll regret granting my request?"
The winding lines of violet light had bled out to suffuse the bridge in its entirety, and it faded as Pyrrha looked on, sapping the imbued poison along with it. She wouldn't say the truth, that Wasila's subtle yet undeniable yearning had unnerved her from the start.
"What does it matter anymore? There are greater things at work," Ashlin said impatiently. "Better she's an ally than a hindrance."
Pyrrha sighed, resigned. She twirled her wand; the bridge seemed to twist into itself like a towel being wrung dry, and it kept twisting tighter and tighter until it vanished from sight. At a quick motion the bridge reappeared abruptly, unspooling from empty air, expanding to slide into place as if it had never gone. The animation spell had been nullified.
"It's safe to cross, now." Pyrrha dragged her eyes from the bridge to meet Wasila's, watching her intently. They stood in silence for a few breaths. "Tell me what you want," Pyrrha prompted.
Wasila hesitated. "Information."
Pyrrha made an impatient noise. "Don't be coy, I've already consented. Stop wasting time and ask."
Wasila's eyes flashed with excitement. "Alright, then. My pleasure." She took a few sauntering steps forward until they were an arm's length apart, her expression unreadable under the muted starlight. "Two years ago," she said, "your parents died traveling by international portkey."
Whatever Pyrrha had expected to hear, it wasn't that, but fury swiftly overrode her astonishment. "Make your point very concisely," she whispered.
Wasila gave no sign of having heard her. "Shortly afterward, the man responsible for the faulty portkey's creation was tried and summarily acquitted, cited reason being a lack of evidence that he was the one to botch the spell."
Rage boiled in Pyrrha at the memories dredged up. There had been a surfeit of proof for anyone who cared to search, but it had been buried, obfuscated. The man—his name wasn't worth remembering—had been well-connected within the Tribunal's hierarchy, his mediocre profession a mark of shiftlessness, incompetence, or both. He'd been shuffled along without a care, returned to his worthless existence as if nothing had ever happened.
"And then, some time later . . ." Wasila continued, and Pyrrha knew what she wanted, at last. "The man checked himself into Slanewell. He'd lost the ability to cast magic. Even with consultation from the likes of St. Mungo's and Ghanta Oma, there was nothing anyone could do for him."
Pyrrha cleansed her mind of tumultuous emotion with even breaths. Wasila might have hoped to throw Pyrrha off balance, capture a glimpse of something in her gaze, but she wouldn't be manipulated. She met the witch's eyes with her own blank stare, awaiting the inevitable request.
"You made the man a squib," Wasila said, eyes glittering with feverish intensity. "I want to know how."
At once a light shined on Wasila's behavior, and Pyrrha reeled a little to know someone else harbored the same heart-crushing hatred as she, hatred that death wouldn't sate. "Who?" Pyrrha asked quietly.
"That's my business," Wasila said with a humorless smile. "Will you honor your word?"
Pyrrha would be a hypocrite to stand in the way of drawn-out revenge on principle, but the knowledge Wasila sought was an extraordinarily dangerous tool, especially in the hands of one so adept at guile as to weave through the most exclusive webs of influence with nary a thread left behind; almost no one was outside of her reach. The possible ramifications were as diverse as they were unknowable.
Wasila now had the upper hand in their dynamic with Daisy's entrance. Anyone Pyrrha cared for was a weakness ripe for exploitation, and she could no longer pretend they were merely school acquaintances who had long since drifted apart. If she refused Wasila, Daisy would become a target.
"Yes, and recent events have proven you incapable of protecting your own face, let alone someone else's life," Ashlin said. "Her favor is more valuable than the wellbeing of any stranger."
Pyrrha turned away to face the bridge again, stepping to the start with a lurch in her stomach. "I will," she said eventually. "But not until I've seen to Morrigan. The time it would take to instruct you is time I can't spare." She stalked across the walkway with measured strides, boots clicking against the crystal, her eyes fixed down on the next step in front of her. She reached the landing swiftly, yet still with ample time for her heart to palpitate erratically in her throat.
Wasila moved silently around her, a more genuine smile lighting her face. "I can wait a while longer. Thank you, Pyrrha."
Pyrrha nodded. "You have my thanks, as well. I assume you'll be making your own way from here?"
Wasila's smile shifted seamlessly into her familiar Cheshire cat grin. "And leave you all by your lonesome to contend with the likes of Morrigan? Never!"
"Ah," Pyrrha said. "Protecting your interests, I see. I'm surprised you haven't yet attempted to wrest the knowledge from me."
"I might have done, if I were positive I'd survive the experience," Wasila said with a wink. "Besides, you know what they say about revenge." Despite her playful tone, Pyrrha knew she was quite serious, and she shared the sentiment; if Wasila's head contained the knowledge she needed now, she'd have no compunctions with cracking it open.
They turned to face Eilith's landing. Left of the door was a modest garden composed of various magical plants Eilith utilized in the rearing of her creatures; among other oddities there were whispering vines rustling against the wall, several sprouts of the blue-leafed Hand of Bonenfont reaching blindly for their neighbors, and near a dozen merrily trilling flowers Pyrrha didn't recognize, their petals fluttering like phoenix feathers as they flew up to swap stems at regular intervals.
On the right was a small, placid pond surrounded by gently swirling sand, the mark of dune sliders cavorting beneath the surface. Shoots of bone-white reeds and gently whipping cattails rose from one end of the pool, a swarm of dragonflies flittering among them, their unusually wide and froglike mouths gaping soundlessly. Atop the nearest side spun a dozen lily pads like musical records, somehow leaving the water's surface undisturbed. Several dim lights bobbed around beneath. Pyrrha wasn't curious enough to approach for a peek.
"My turn, I suppose?" Wasila said, and she waved her wand across the landing with several careful gestures. She raised an eyebrow as she ended the search. "Nothing to worry about here, so long as we don't touch the water."
As Wasila advanced to the door, Pyrrha aimed her wand to probe at the pool curiously; it held a curse that would pull in and smother anything that broke the surface tension, likely to become food for whatever lurked beneath. She ignored the small chill down her neck and moved on ahead.
The heavy wooden door was reminiscent of Hogwarts. Wasila hummed a tune to herself as she ran her wand over the aged wood, then brushed her fingers down the same spot. She stopped humming to give a low whistle. "That's a nasty one," she said. "It'd have your brain pouring from every hole in your head—suppose that's why it's safe for Rosier. One moment . . ." She performed a quick maneuver; the door rattled as if struck by a battering ram as a discordant clang rang out. "There we are. Next stop, Eilith's quarters." Her expression soured. "Words I hope never to speak again."
They stepped through the door with raised wands, Pyrrha in the lead. It led to a stone anteroom that could've been carved out from inside Hogwarts and resettled within the Lodge; iron braziers lit the space from rounded alcoves in the corners of the stone-block room, and a glossy obsidian statue of a bald and blank-faced wizard stood like a sentinel in the center. Each featureless wall bore a door like the one behind them, and before they could take any action, the statue lifted one polished arm to point at the righthand door. It stood ajar.
Pyrrha swept the room for hostile charms and curses with deft waves of her wand, unveiling nothing that warranted attention. She cast the spells for life detection, and one human spark glittered from deep within the righthand chamber, faint with distance. All combined, hundreds of bestial lights shined inside each room ahead, and further sparks twinkling behind the anteroom's ceiling made Pyrrha's heart skip; the life forms grew swiftly larger as they closed in from above.
She barely got out a warning as the creatures came sailing in; they passed through the stonework soundless as ghosts, dark green and oblong blurs too quick to see as they sought her only to be swatted from the air at wandpoint. The creatures sank away through the stone floor as if it were water and reemerged in soaring arcs, fleshy missiles with stingers sticking from their round mouths.
Wasila stepped neatly aside as she vaporized five with a flick and a flash; Pyrrha batted aside seven, six, and four more with three swipes, then performed two quick flicks and a whirl of her wand; the room turned on its head as down became up, and the creatures fell upward to rain through the ceiling as the obsidian statue crashed after them headfirst with a resounding clamor, somehow remaining intact when it clattered to the stone. Pyrrha had anchored herself and Wasila to the floor; she glanced over at Wasila, who flourished her wand while holding her robes down with her free hand.
"They're coming back," she said, flashing a carefree smile. "Must be for the company."
"I'll alter the pitch of the charm as they approach," Pyrrha said. Her heart was hammering at hanging from a drop headfirst, nothing between her and death but her own split-second spellwork. Her head swam with the blood rushing from her numbing fingers.
The monsters cascaded up from beyond the ceiling in a silent wave, a volley of living projectiles; at a twist of Pyrrha's wand the room tilted sideways, and the lefthand wall became the floor; the creatures veered off course at gravity's pull, and Pyrrha destroyed a dozen of them in a wave of light, another cluster becoming a flutter of butterflies by Wasila's wand. The remaining monsters sailed past them to plunge cleanly through the stonework once again, and the statue tumbled haplessly along after them, each strike on stone a deep, grating clack. Pyrrha followed the beasts' progress with the life-seeking spell; they seemed to glide effortlessly through solid matter, by contrast rudderless in open space.
The collective turned beneath them, racing up along the inside of the floor-turned-wall they were fixed to. Wasila uttered an excited laugh. "They're catching on—coming straight from our feet!"
Pyrrha's heart rattled in protest as she tilted the room until they hung upside down once again. "Catch yourself!" she said as she released the charms holding them steady; panic squeezed her chest as the floor flew up to meet her falling head, and she cast at the last moment, her body turning in midair to alight feet-first in a landing soft as a step down stairs. A resounding boom marked the statue's collision nearby.
It had been far too close; she'd nearly died, she thought, a bizarre sensation of retroactive terror choking her chest like thick and sickly smoke. Her vision flickered, and she staggered a moment until something knocked her roughly aside; she struck the wall on her elbow, pain flaring as it broke with a swift series of clicks. Her pulse pounded as she fought her irrational mind for control.
A painful surge of heat stroked her skull as she looked up at Wasila, who had the remaining creatures trapped overhead within a charm resembling transparent gelatin; the air seemed to wobble around them as they wriggled helplessly in place. Wasila gave Pyrrha a wink as she stood, and Pyrrha swapped her wand to her left hand to cast out, confirming they had caught the last of the beasts. Adrenaline began to ebb while she drew deep breaths, and she looked the creatures over.
They resembled nothing so much as giant leeches. Each were slimy and greenish black with round mouths ringed with short, serrated teeth. Their bodies were of a size with a large breed of dog, and their shapeless forms rippled with subtle undulations, giving them the illusion of dwelling within shifting waters. A number of them had proboscides protruding from their throats, and the stingers glistened with clear fluid in the low light from the burning braziers; the flames still flickered down toward the ceiling as if they hadn't been upended.
"Revolting things," Wasila summarized, squinting up at the beasts. "Remarkable and revolting. It's as if they have no physical presence, but at the same time . . ." She beckoned; one of the leeches dislodged from the charm to float down toward her. She ran her wand up and down the creature's struggling body.
Pyrrha whirled her wand at her broken elbow; it mended itself with a dull crackling and a flash of pain. "Did you shove me aside?" she asked, taking her wand into her dominant hand again.
"No, it was Danforth over there," Wasila said with a tilt of her head toward the fallen statue, her eyes still fixed to the leech. "You appeared to be having a spate of dizziness or somesuch. Sorry; didn't want to miss one and have it land on you."
"The thought is appreciated, but I was fine," Pyrrha said stiffly. "I'd have recovered faster without being bowled over. You don't need my gratitude or my debt any longer, so don't do anything like that from here on."
Wasila gave her a faintly incredulous glance. "My apologies—I hadn't realized your skull was thick enough to withstand a massive mouth-spike. On the bright side, I did at least spare you the embarrassment of debuting the world's most hideous hat."
Pyrrha ignored the jab. "Did you use your arm?"
"What?" Wasila said absently, poking at the leech with her wand. It made contact with a soft squelch.
"Did you push me physically?"
"Yes. Why?" The leech shot up into the snaring charm at Wasila's upward flick, setting the writhing mass into a fit of quivering.
"Forget it." The fall had broken Pyrrha's elbow. Had her landing been perfectly poor, she wondered, or had the force of Wasila's push been abnormally powerful?
"Maybe you're simply brittle," Ashlin said. "Apt to shatter, like your mental state."
The space above became a sea of fire at the spell from Wasila; the braziers' flames erupted down into roaring plumes that consumed the higher half of the room and the leeches within. Stifling heat weighed on Pyrrha as the fire swirled overhead like a blinding, hellish tempest, bathing everything in radiant red light. Wasila gestured, and the flames receded as if sucked out of the air by the iron braziers to sink back into gently flickering embers; nothing remained in their wake except an acrid and metallic stench.
Pyrrha stood near the floor-wall and gestured for Wasila to do the same. She performed a gradual flourish, and the room tilted slowly along with her arm; they stepped carefully onto the floor as it leveled out, the statue bumping and sliding along awkwardly.
"Poor Danforth looks a bit worse for wear," Wasila said.
The statue lay inert on its back, scuffed and chipped in several places, and its nose had broken off. Its brow furrowed over solid black eyes as Pyrrha appraised it. "Couldn't be helped," she said.
They made for the door the statue had indicated earlier. It was still cracked open; the faint yet unmistakable scents of plant life and moisture wafted through the gap.
"The question is," Wasila said, peeking into the environment beyond, "will Rosier live to berate you for it?"
"You could end it right here," Ashlin added. "Seal the door with blood. Let her live off her own darling pets until there are none left. Let her waste away."
I didn't come here to kill. Pyrrha repeated the assertion aloud. "Though I will if I must," she added grimly. "What happens now is up to Eilith."
Pyrrha had been gone a full two minutes before it dawned on Daisy that Hati had teeth.
"Come on, come on! Bite like you mean it!" she said, eyes darting between the two exit doors anxiously. Anyone and anything could be roaming this place, and though Pyrrha had intimated she'd be safe where she was, she found it hard to believe, to say the least. The image of the old woman collapsing in a flash of emerald replayed in her head, the rush of air still echoing clearly in her ears.
Hati growled low in his chest as he gnawed away at the thick ropes binding Daisy to the chair, and his silvery eyes narrowed when they flicked to her, as if suggesting he'd find something else to bite if she carried on. For a minute the room was quiet but for Hati's grumbles and snuffles as he tugged, and Daisy held back a giggle at the wolf's frustration. With a final snap, his head jerked away, a twist of torn rope clamped in his jaws. The rest of the coil spilled off of her onto the floor, and she stood with a rush of excitement, rubbing life back into her arms.
"Brilliant," Daisy said, bending to pet Hati, who shook her off irritably and hacked out a frayed string. "Thanks for that. Ready to have a peek around?"
The wolf uttered an impatient bark and raced to the door Pyrrha had departed from, jumping to rake his claws down the wood with a noisy scrape.
"Shh! We don't want her hearing us—she wanted us to stay put, remember? Let's give her a bit to get further away before we go anywhere."
Daisy knew if Pyrrha truly didn't want her free, she'd have been contained far more securely than with a paltry length of rope. Pyrrha had seemed to be fulfilling the bare minimum of an obligation in front of the other woman. It was likely she'd have to put a stop to their excursion if they were heard tromping about, but Daisy still chose to take the ease of her escape as implicit permission to poke around.
Nervous energy thrummed in Daisy's limbs as she looked at the oddly bare shelves and bookcases, the softly glowing suncaps sprouting up everywhere, the concealed corpses of two people who'd been alive and well mere minutes ago. People who knew Pyrrha. They'd been familiar. The thought tied a knot taut in her chest, despite that they didn't seem to be on friendly terms. What made these strange recluses worth Pyrrha's time?
The room's main purpose appeared to be that of a gathering place, made obvious by the round table with seven seats, each for a dangerous affiliate of whatever sort of group this was. Two of them dead, one ostensibly on their side but likely to curse them in the back at any moment—Daisy hoped with a lurch in her stomach Pyrrha would remain vigilant—which left three more up in the air. Two, after Pyrrha returned.
Daisy wrung her hands as she strode the perimeter of the room with eyes peeled for anything that might be useful to see. She paused each time she passed a stray book or bauble left behind, but they were unfailingly mundane writings, innocuous objects; the mysterious coterie had likely anticipated some amount of damage to the room. Again Daisy stopped, this time before a wide and ornate silver mirror set atop an even broader vanity against the wall opposite the fireplace.
A probing pass with her wand revealed more than she'd expected; it was no mere ten-sickle mirror charmed for critique, and Daisy felt foolish for assuming as much. The enchantments there were for distant communication. Daisy briefly considered checking on Pyrrha before writing it off; she still had more to see.
Hati huffed impatiently as Daisy rounded the rest of the room, pausing at a desk that wasn't bare. Splinters of wood littered the surface around smaller shavings and coiled strands of wire; it had been a stringed instrument. Daisy cast Reparo without much expectation, and the intact fragments flew together to form a longer, narrow shard. The rest of the debris remained inert. She rifled through the desk's drawers to find assorted parchments with writing that wasn't Pyrrha's; there were lists of diverse, seemingly random herbs and potions, complex arithmantic equations regarding dosage to body weight ratios—
Hati barked testily, making Daisy jump. "Hell!" she said, pressing a hand over her racing heart. "Alright, we're going, you stubborn git. I imagine she's far enough by now." Daisy waved her wand, and the spell revealed three sparkling lights far above. "Yeah . . . it's now or never."
The wolf's eager bark mirrored her own anxious buzz as she replaced the parchment and joined him at the door, her wand held ready. No sooner had she turned the knob than Hati butted through the doorway.
"Watch it, you!" Daisy said as she followed him through. "You can't just barge in wherever you like—who knows what . . . ?" She trailed off at the sight of a hallway like she'd never seen before.
The ridged arch formations brought thoughts to an underground tunnel, but the porous walls swirling with dusky colors told another tale. The bleak and shifting tones were characteristic of the pangaea agaric, a mushroom with several magical properties, well-known for sprouting any and everywhere in the world where existed fertile soil. The tunnel was comprised of fungus flesh. Daisy didn't know what to make of it; there was no practical use for a mushroom tunnel that she could deduce.
Hati paced up and down the hall with his nose in the air, twitching, sniffing at scents under scents. He turned to face Daisy and cocked his head in query.
"Well?" Daisy said. "Can you smell her?"
Hati stared pointedly in both directions before returning his eyes to her.
"Which one is stronger, then?"
The wolf looked to her left.
"That's where she's gone. Let's follow the older smell down the other way—I bet it leads to her room."
Hati whined, turning his head toward the stronger scent.
"Don't worry, she'll be back soon—she said so herself. Stick with me for now, okay?"
Daisy started down the corridor, Hati pacing along behind her with a reluctant grumble. Their way was awash in golden light, and the walls whirled with the wistful tones of winter gloam, a dizzying display that brought together the dreamlike sensation Daisy felt as her shoes clicked off the wood floor to echo down the tunnel. The air smelled odd, like a half-finished brew primed for a spark, a key ingredient to catalyze a reaction.
They came upon a door set into the wall; Daisy's anticipation mounted, a sharp tingling spreading over her skin and within her limbs. She was finally about to learn what Pyrrha had kept hidden for so long, what had driven her to isolation, consumed her life to the exclusion of all else. Hati stood beside Daisy expectantly as she ran her wand over the featureless wood.
There were no safeguards. Daisy turned the knob immediately, thoughts too embroiled in possibilities to question the situation, but even as she threw the door open the realization hit her; before them was the common hall they came from, a deadly silent stage receiving a play of faint shadows across the glowing walls, players cast from the contours of the furniture by the flickering fire. Hati made a bewildered noise in his throat.
"Misdirection Charm," Daisy muttered, feeling faintly embarrassed as the suspense died quietly. She met Hati's unimpressed look. "Let's try that again. Follow the older scent, and I'll get us past the charm this time, alright? Teamwork."
Hati grunted and paced away down the same direction they'd gone. Daisy followed behind, casting out as she went, passing her senses over the imperceptible with steady gestures. The hall seemed to go on forever, its gentle curve thwarting any chance of spotting an end. Twice the way split into several offshoots; one tunnel glowed with blinding, distant light, while another flowed with water that poured from nothing, a roaring deluge cascading along the walls like a gravity-defying sinkhole. Hati led them up the leftmost path at each juncture.
A vague sense of unease settled over her as they progressed, steadily more urgent, more insistent that they were heading in the wrong direction; prepared, she repelled the outside suggestion and shut it out, and she undid the charm with a complicated wave of her wand. She felt a subtle, vertiginous shift, as if the planet had suddenly spun much faster for a moment.
"There." Daisy's voice echoed oddly down the hall. "Stay by my side, now," she said to Hati. "I'll make sure we don't run into anything else."
They progressed with measured steps down the gloomy hall, bypassing a corridor with faint, childish laughter echoing down, until at last they reached the end. They stopped short before a disturbance in reality; the tunnel ahead swam with indistinct colors and shapes, flickering black around the edges as it hummed and crackled with power. The air was thick with a perilous sense of volatility, fragile in the way of a sensitive concoction awaiting the slightest misstep, the smallest miscalculation to culminate in catastrophe.
Daisy was thankful to be familiar with Pyrrha's spellwork; it was a Warping Hex, cleanly neutralized by the Hexpatia Vitiata counterspell. At a deft maneuver of her wand the wavering space ahead seemed to shudder, and instead of resolving into clarity as expected, the whole of it swallowed itself with a scream of streaming wind; left behind was a flat black hole that consumed the air with one endlessly long and greedy gulp, drawing Daisy ever closer across the smooth wood floor as Hati's alarmed barks rang out behind her.
Panic shot through Daisy like frigid lightning as she struggled backward against what felt like hurricane winds, and her wand was a blur of movement; she invoked one counterspell after another while her shoes slid over the floor until she was so close the spell snatched her breath away; she leaned back on her heels an arm's length from undisturbed nothingness and felt herself stop, held back at the waist; Hati had her by the robes, himself anchored in place by sunken claws.
The curse howled in her ears as it drank the air around them, dragging them closer one creeping inch at a time, and Daisy conjured a shimmering barrier with a quick wave; even as it blossomed the shield sank in on itself to disappear within the depths of the curse like a soul down a dementor's throat. Her lungs burned, yearned for sustenance; dizziness set in while she cast her last countercurse to no effect, and she screamed a silent, breathless scream as she was drawn a hair's breadth from death; she cast her first spell over again in one final, desperate gesture, and the ravenous emptiness collapsed into itself and vanished with a low swoop.
Daisy fell to the floor on her knees as relief swept through her like a remedy, and she gasped for breath, blinking away black spots in her vision. "Twice?" she coughed. "The same bloody spell, twice? Why would—what in the hell . . . ?" She trailed off to fill her burning lungs.
Hati stepped past her to sniff at the now-empty space curiously, apparently intrigued by the faint ozone-like taste left in the curse's wake.
"Thanks . . . thanks for saving me," Daisy panted, patting his back as she got to her feet. Her body still thrummed with near-death adrenaline. "I'm fine, by the . . . by the way. No need for . . . all this concern."
Hati gave her an unamused glance and looked pointedly away, ahead of them, where stood a flat stone wall that terminated the hall abruptly. It was unmarked and featureless, with no obvious way past it; Daisy waved her wand outward to uncover no more curses before she approached the stone cautiously.
A metallic scent hung in the air about the entry. Daisy scrutinized every inch of the blank wall, searching with sight and spell for anything at all that may be found, but there was no hint of an opening mechanism. She tried vanishing, destroying, transfiguring, shifting the stone, careful pauses between each attempt in order to ascertain any effect.
Quickly she ran through every recourse, exhausted every option until there were none left to her; in a last ditch effort she drew out two small vials from her robes and mixed them steadily, peppering in powdered firecrab whiskers and a dash of basilisk vitreous before pouring the bubbling concoction over the wall with utmost care. The corrosive substance hissed and sizzled as it trailed black burns down the face of the wall, but no deeper.
The wall wouldn't be circumvented; the charm that sealed it was unfamiliar to Daisy, and was, as far as she could judge, impenetrable.
"Damn . . ." Defeat hung its weight over her heart. Pyrrha would cling to her secrets as long as she possibly could, and if Daisy didn't ferret them out, their situation would never change; Daisy would die not knowing her own best friend, or she would fade from consideration as before, or, most horribly, she would lose Pyrrha to herself.
No—it wouldn't happen. None of it. Daisy rallied her resolve, feeling ready to pummel her way through the stone with her bare hands. Hati gave a soft, encouraging yip as she whipped her wand through intricate patterns that facilitated the most advanced magic available to her. She probed at the stone with myriad feelers, every facet of every searching spell employed in every which way she could conceive of, and a few that she couldn't; she exhumed long-buried knowledge born from observing Pyrrha at work, from her advice and offhand remarks, from her patient and thoughtful lessons.
The wall repelled Daisy at every turn. Each tentative venture veered from her control to fizzle, negated, like trying to ferry a lit candle through rainfall. She persisted with grim determination, trying and trying again to deduce something, anything useful, until she lowered her wand and squeezed her eyes shut against unwelcome tears. It was then, beneath the turmoil in her head, that she felt it.
The floor vibrated under Daisy's shoes with the faintest of tremors in swift and steady intervals. Elation swelled in her chest as she knelt, pressing a palm to the wood; an unpleasant prickling sensation swept up her arm, over the nape of her neck, down the length of her spine. She shuddered, and Hati padded up next to her to place a paw beside her hand. He tilted his head curiously at the floor.
Daisy poured her focus into interpreting the sensation that raced through her every half-second. It was an enchantment like nothing she'd felt before, somehow both comforting and deeply unsettling, and the feeling intensified as she slid her hand across the floor to the bottom of the wall, where the acid hadn't reached. She pressed her palm against the barrier; the stone was warm to the touch, and it pulsed under her fingers with the same steady beats.
"Oh . . ." Daisy said softly. "Weird."
As she attempted to tease out any hint of what the gateway required—a key, a counter, a password—Hati glanced at her hand, then crept forward and placed a paw beside it against the stone; their outstretched limbs passed through empty air as the wall vanished.
"What—how did you—?" Daisy struggled with a whirl of emotions, and she pushed them aside as she stood, taking a shaky breath. Hati looked between her and the doorway ahead with wide silver eyes. "Never mind that for now, we've wasted enough time—let's go."
After a cursory magical assessment of the room beyond, Daisy stepped through the threshold into Pyrrha's quarters with a rush of feeling like the steepest dive on a broomstick. An antiseptic smell assaulted her nose, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the opposite wall, against which sat two massive and cylindrical vats of radiant emerald fluid. The translucent substance swirled with formless clouds and coils, and dark shapes drifted from deep within; Daisy approached one of the the vats and peered through the tempered glass, strained her eyes to make out something more distinct.
Her heart leapt into her throat as the unmistakable shadow of a human hand floated past.
"Oh—oh my God . . ." Daisy stepped back unsteadily as her pulse raced, nearly tripping over Hati.
The green liquid was a preservative. Embalming fluid. Pyrrha's extended sequestration had to do with human body parts—what on earth had she undertaken?
Daisy took deep breaths as she turned from the morbid tanks, already starting to rationalize—Pyrrha would never delve so deeply into the dark arts as to defile the dead, she thought. But that was a lie. Pyrrha had used freely whatever magics she deemed necessary, without a care given for society's conventions; she'd insisted Daisy receive instruction in resisting the Imperius Curse, and she'd made efficient use of the spell, a sure mark of ample practice.
It was also true that, to Daisy's knowledge, Pyrrha had never employed dark magic for personal gain, but Daisy's knowledge was quite obviously lacking. She turned a slow spin on her heel in the middle of the room; there were stacks upon stacks of ancient books, of course, but there were also tables laden with alembics, beakers and retorts filled with substances ranging in grim shades of red; there were brains and hearts floating within a swirling azure mist, occasional sparks and flickers of light arcing from their pulsating flesh across the cloud; set before the macabre nebula was a stone lectern, a large, leatherbound tome visible upon its stand.
Daisy approached the lectern almost against her will. As she drew near, that same faint and metallic smell passed over her, and she couldn't help but recognize it now. The book's exterior was well cared for, yet it gave signs of extensive use in the deep folds and creases visible, in the wrinkled yellow parchment betwixt the covers. The title appeared handwritten in white ink: Blodmaegen: a Compendium of Hematic Arcana. No name nor pseudonym laid claim to the work.
The book wore the same aura of danger Pyrrha's bag had. Hati whined as Daisy inched a hand forward, retracting it moments later when the dread sharpened, her heart pounding. She wouldn't learn the contents firsthand, but now that she'd been here, seen this, Pyrrha would surely explain. The only trouble was that Daisy didn't know that she wanted answers anymore. Aimless distress churned in her chest like a sickness, and she turned from the lectern to spot a nondescript wooden door.
She didn't care where it led; she had to leave, had to flee the assault of horrible speculations the room forced on her. Hati's claws clicked behind her as she retreated down the featureless hall beyond, passing under dimly lit oil lamps—the beating hearts behind her flashed before her eyes as if she'd apparated back.
Had Pyrrha's heart been cursed by her own hand? The meaning was incomprehensible—nothing could possibly be worth such devotion, countless sequestered hours spent doing something that was rotting her from the inside, killing her by degrees. Despair thickened the blood in Daisy's chest and weighed her limbs down.
The hall ended with a sizeable portrait of the singer Daphne Greengrass, of all people, flanked by doors on each side. The oddity of it stymied Daisy's dismay for a moment as she watched the woman doze within a spider-silk hammock in the background of her lavish dwelling.
A voice registered beyond the righthand door, high and cheerful. Daisy's heart rate accelerated, and she turned her wand on the door, staggering back as a pale figure passed through it and stopped just short of her.
"Oh!" It was the ghost of a young boy, slight and narrow-faced with a mop of curly hair. His throat bore the dark imprint of a large pair of hands wrapped around. "Sorry. Who're you?"
"I . . ." Daisy lowered her wand, feeling utterly overwhelmed by it all, unable to find her voice. Beside her, Hati cocked his head at the boy curiously.
"Are you . . . here to take Miss Clay's place?" the boy asked, expression falling. "Is she dead? She's dead, isn't she?"
"N-no, she's—she's fine," Daisy stammered. "Take her place in what?"
"In Mamma's Cabal, of course," the boy said, a smile lighting his face. "Did Mamma forgive her? I hoped so, but I didn't think she would—she was furious like you wouldn't believe, even more angry than when I broke her papa's mirror! But—wait . . ." The boy frowned. "If you're here, that means someone else is gone, right? Mamma says it's best to have seven people."
Daisy's heart twinged at the senseless deaths she'd witnessed. "Your mother?" she asked rather than answering.
"Her name's Aradia Tavani. I'm Vincenzo, but you can call me Vinci if you want. Oh—please don't tell Mamma I was here," he added, rubbing his neck anxiously. "She doesn't like me to visit, but I can't just leave Nona alone in that boring old room."
Pyrrha had someone locked up. Daisy's tenuous grasp on her rosy image of Pyrrha slipped further and further away with a plummeting feeling. She peered through Vincenzo at the nondescript door behind him. "And who—who is Nona?" Daisy asked, her throat dry as parchment.
Vincenzo narrowed his eyes at her under a furrowed brow, a childish expression of suspicion. "You don't know anything about this place, do you? Were you even invited?"
"She wasn't." Pyrrha's voice made Daisy spin on her heel in time to see the stunning spell strike her chest.