Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 400
Chapter 400: Moving closer
Mia glanced around the group, intentionally trying not to search for anything for a moment. Just because she’d had an initial bit of success channeling her magic more precisely–and less overwhelmingly–didn’t mean she should push it.
Anaisa chewed her lip, looking at Martin.
“I can only think of three reasons, with my experience as a Countess and as the wife of a short-term royal guard,” Her lips twitched slightly as she mentioned the position with a hint of irony. “I don’t like any of them.”
“What are they?” Martin asked hesitantly.
“Firstly, that there is something so dangerous outside that they’ve withdrawn inside to defend the fortress from within, but given that we haven’t encountered anything ourselves, that seems unlikely.”
“What’s the second guess?” Grandpa asked gravely, and Anaisa frowned towards the obsidian edifice.
“The second guess is that they aren’t guarding the castle from intruders anymore; they’re imprisoning something within.”
“The Emperor?” Ford guessed, looking up at the castle. “In the dream, Trace talked about the emperor. The emperor’s magical dreams…”
“The third reason?” Mia had to push away the overwhelming afterimage of the Emperor’s fearsome visage.
“They’re drawing us in for an ambush.” Anaisa frowned.
“I hate that one the most,” Martin sneered. “Any chance I can wait out here?”
“Do what you like,” The redheaded woman snapped, then calmed herself a little. “Nothing could keep me from going after my husband.”
“If it is an ambush… maybe we should stay invisible from this point on?” Ford suggested. “I think with the presence of the trees, I should be able to sustain it fairly easily.”
“Maybe I should wait out here with Webster and Martin so you don’t have to work hard enough to keep us all hidden,” Grandpa suggested, a little reluctantly.
Mia was already anxious about her father and Daniel being left behind. A further split made her heart wrench.
“Can’t we all stay together?”
“It’s harder to move and communicate while invisible,” Ford sighed. “The fewer, the easier.”
Mia’s eyes welled and she looked up at the distant ceiling of the cave for several seconds to contain the tears and let them evaporate.
“All right, then,” She conceded. “The quicker, the better.”
Ford, Anaisa, and Mia joined hands–Mia in the lead since she knew the way, and Ford in the middle to make it easier to cast his magic over them.
“One squeeze is stop, two is go or go faster, three is look at something, and any more than that means you want me to turn us visible,” Ford glanced at both Mia and Anaisa until they nodded their assent.
“We’ll be going inside, up some stairs, and through some passageways into a room with a very large bed,” Mia’s eyes unfocused as she spoke. “When I say large… well, you’ll see. Uncle Trace is on the far side of it, up some steps, sitting on a chair.”
“Anything else we need to know?” Ford asked her solemnly.
She pursed her lips, and shook her head. “I’m sure there’s more but… I think we need to hurry.”
“All right then. Let’s go.”
Without further ado, the trio vanished. Mia thought she would never get used to the sensation of doubting her vision. To watch her arms and body disappear from her sight was disorienting enough to give her a momentary bout of vertigo.
Thankfully, it faded quickly, and she walked confidently, if carefully, forward with a final glance towards Grandpa, Martin, and… Webster.
The monster’s dark silhouette and sharp antlers, shrouded in spun cobwebs of an unknown substance, were a stark contrast to the gentle glow of the golden trees.
Still, it gave a silly wave under Grandpa’s control, and she managed a brief smile, though the old man wouldn’t be able to see it. The ones left behind moved out of sight and into the dense forest, and Mia concentrated on the path ahead. The gates were open, but…
How was she to open the gargantuan doors? They looked as if a team of twenty oxen would be required to budge them.
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Pulling Ford along with a tug of her hand, and Anaisa behind him, she realized the path to Trace wasn’t exactly straight towards the central doors, but to a smaller, more human-sized set off to one side.
One problem solved, a hundred more or so to conquer.
Would they be spotted opening the door? Could the wights see them even through Ford’s magic?
There was only one way to find out for sure, and it was the way they had to go.
Coming to the smaller entrance, she took a deep, silent breath before lifting her hand to the handle and pulling. In her anxiety, she braced for some great, rusty screech that would alert every creature in the entire cave to their location.
Her expectations were subverted. As soon as she began to pull, the door disappeared. Startled, she froze for a second, but her hand still grasped it.
Ford! He had made it disappear so that no sound of its creaking would attract attention.
It was a risk, since someone might almost as easily notice a door vanishing. Still, she pulled it the rest of the way open and led the other two into the black castle.
Though the obsidian building was so dark on the outside that it seemed to absorb light into its inky walls, the inside was brighter than she anticipated.
It looked almost exactly as it did in her vision, except… there were occupants here. Some were lighting lamps–was it nighttime? How did one measure time down here?–and others hurried about.
None carried weapons. Perhaps they had no need of them.
Mia wondered if she would be able to recognize the wights she had seen once before, now what seemed ages ago, but the creatures all looked so similar to her that it would likely be impossible.
She pushed that concern to the back of her mind. For now, her primary goal was to get to Trace… without bumping into or being discovered by the inhabitants of this terrible place.
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