Author stuff: It's raining today and I just want to go to bed and play Animal Crossing.
It isn't that much, but it's a good start
Chapter 3 - Just breathe, just relax, it'll be okay
Douxie wasn't sure of what to make of Aja. The missing Akiridion Princess he'd been hearing people gossip about in court. And the court did love to gossip.
The elves were a solitary people, preferring to hide themselves away from the world to live their long immortal lives. They were all tall and lovely, and only those of the highest nobility had silvery white hair. And some had too many arms, which were just too long. With fingers that had an extra joint. And that was all he really knew.
From what he could tell of Aja, the little time they'd spent together, she had more spark than most of the stoic elves he'd managed to meet in his time serving as his uncle's apprentice. Which, truth be told, was a grand total of twenty whole minutes in three hundred years.
He had so many questions — like that sword thing she used, what was it? — but now wasn't really a time to talk about such things. There was a lot for them to get through before they could actually complete the whole rescue mission.
"How do you think Jim is handling himself?" Archie asked as they entered the room just beyond the long hallway.
Douxie couldn't see much of the room, but he could see shapes in the darkness. And then, after they took a few more steps in, lights momentarily blinded them. They each drew back, shielding their eyes.
When he felt fine to look around, he slowly lowered his arm.
The room was filled with stone statues and items. People who'd been cursed and things that had done the cursing. He recognized a few of them, but most were well before his uncle served the Avalonian king. At least, he thought they were.
He scanned the room for a pair of familiar shapes. With as spacious as the room was and as many statues as there were, it was going to take some time.
Time that they didn't have.
He tapped on the earpiece, wincing at the sound of it clicking.
"Hey, can you tell me how much time we have left before the next job?" he said to Krel, making Aja and Archie jump.
"About thirteen minutes and 23 seconds left."
Not nearly enough time to get through the whole room. He doubted they'd even be able to check a quarter of it.
"Thanks."
He nearly jumped out of his skin when Aja spoke.
"Any word from Jim?" she asked.
"Nothing yet."
Douxie frowned. It was rare that Jim didn't say anything, especially on a mission like this one.
"Can you see him on any of the cameras?" he asked as they moved through the statues. They stayed within eyeshot of one another, just in case. Douxie wasn't sure of what that 'just in case' was, but their minds all went to the worst case scenario. At least, his did.
"Or around the perimeter?" Aja said. "If we have to split up further to get to the second mechanism —"
"No splitting up further." Douxie gave her a sharp look. "If we split up any more we risk… Well, it wouldn't go well. Wizard tradition, sacred numbers, and all of that."
"You Wizards have strange traditions."
"Jim's location is hidden from the cameras inside the building," Krel said. Douxie could hear him click away at the keys. "I've searched the system for him six times now. The room he's supposed to be in is empty."
Douxie sucked in a hiss of breath. That wasn't good.
"Does the mechanism still look intact?" he asked.
A brief moment.
"Yes."
"Maybe he got through already?" Aja said, giving a half hearted smile that twitched across her face.
"The mechanism is a door with locks," Douxie said. "A lot of locks. He should have just been able to break it down."
"Unless your beloved uncle reinforced it," Archie said, picking up what looked like a compass in a box. "Well, this is broken. It doesn't point North?"
"Should you be picking anything up?" Asa asked. "I thought everything in here was cursed."
Douxie carried on looking. Stone faces frozen in silent screams, mouths gaping and hands outstretched. Vaguely familiar but not the ones they were looking for.
"Just because something is cursed doesn't necessarily mean that it will cause harm." Arhcie set the box down and pointed to a statue with its back to them. "That woman was cursed to turn all people who meet her gaze to stone. Those red dance shoes make the wearer dance themselves to death. If you swallow that stone over there, you'll have hiccups that can't be cured. And this compass… Douxie, what do you think it does?"
Douxie turned back around to look at it. His eyes widened and he straightened up when he saw exactly which compass it was. He opened his mouth to respond, but he was cut off.
A sprinkle of dust trickled down from the ceiling and a figure landed between them.
Author stuff cont'd.: I rewrote this scene so many times, and it still doesn't sit 100% for me but this is so much better than what I wrote before.