𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 | 𝐀𝐙𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐋

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 19 - 𝖈𝖑𝖔𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖎𝖓

Mara had felt the magic before she had placed her hand on the monolith. It possessed strange energy of magic.

Fae magic was so different to wizarding magic.

This felt like wizarding magic.

Ancient wizarding magic.

Summoning spells were tricky, unstable bastards. Sometimes it was as if they had their own personality. How long would the spell last? How accurate would the spell be?

The monolith had landed Mara in the middle of a cave. The floor was smooth, as of water had spent millennia flowing through, yet it was unnaturally flat.

Something rarely found in nature, and led Mara to believe that the ancient beings and fae craved this structure with whatever magic or skills they possessed.

The floor or cave Mara was in was designed like a throne room or cathedral. Long naturally forms black crystals and jaded rock formed a high winding point.

Mara was in the middle of the room, directly below the point. Tunnels seemed to exit from every angle of the round room, a strange transparent glass-like material allowing an unnatural purple hue filled the room.

It was tense, the lack of windows or natural light made Mara feel uneasy. For fae, months could pass like centuries here. They weren't like humans who needed the sun or fresh air.

The fae might have been life, a raw, more potent form of life, but it seemed so unnatural even for the fae.

Mara's head was spinning with questions, and she desperately wanted to go in search of answers.

Mara felt stuck, not in a glued-to-the-floor sense but in a trapped in time sense. Every bone in her body was screaming at her to leave, go anywhere but here.

But before Mara could even think about leaving the floor started to vibrate and slowly began to raise.

This felt like a cruel version of some of the muggle amusement games. Ones where the room would spin and the floor drop as the spinning room would support their weight on the wall.

Mara briefly allowed the pain to overcome her, but only for a second. Mara had fought in wars, defeated witch hunters, and killed and destroyed bigger things than a room.

But never had she gone in without so much of a hint of what to do. Before everything had been clear. Murder the enemy, destroy this, take that.

Mara and always been armed with knowledge, something she was without currently.

The floor had now risen beyond the first row of arched windows, the floor magically fitting around the jagged edges of the spiralling arches.

A rush of true panic began to overtake Mara, the distant overpowering tug on her body of the mating bond that seemed so inconsequential before now seemed to be the only thing Mara could focus on.

Azriel's anger and sorrow seemed to consume Mara's every thought, just as Azriel had done so in the past.

The rising floor only fueled Mara's determination to escape, leading her back to Azriel.

As the floor rose it became evident to Mara that whatever the material and magic used to create the walls, it became thinner and more transparent as it rose, the light from behind the walls reminded Mara of the way that light would shine through Azriel's wings, highlighting the thin membranes across the leathery skin of his wings.

Mara ran to the edge of the wall and began to punch her fists through. At first, it felt like punching pure rock, but that soon gave way to a glass-like material, saving the rest of Mara's bleeding bruised hand.

Mara managed to break through a layer of glass but only succeeded in revealing the seemingly thousands of layers of the magical glass, each one a brighter misty light, like looking at the sun through a heavy snowstorm.

Mara's hand ached at its abuse and forced Mara to retreat back to the middle of the room as the ground rose past the break in the wall she had made.

Looking up at the high point of the cathedral ceiling became obvious, as a scroll dangled from a golden chain.

The magic emanating from the scroll was powerful and a feeling of hope rang through Mara's body. This had to be the fourth death trove.

As the walls began getting smaller, Mara reached out her hand, desperate to grasp the scroll before the walls suffocated her.

With her non-battered hand, Mara reached out, calm and determined and jumped up, locking the scroll in her grasp as magic burst through the room, shattering the floor as if an earthquake hit and shaking the celing as the room shook.

The floor gave way and Mara began to fall when, for the second time in an hour she was teleported by magic, only this time it was somewhere that no amount of knowledge could save Mara from.