The Keep

by Bella Forrest

  “SPELLBREAKER FILTH!” Agatha slammed her full weight against the wood, which was starting to look more than a little flimsy. The tremor sent a jolt of fear through Alex. A second jolt shot through him as her face appeared at the grate, spittle flying close to his face. “Come closer, have a taste of a mage’s fury! I’ll twist up your insides and turn them to mush—you’ll pray for death when I’m done with you, you wretch!” she screamed, her eyes wild.

  Alex quickly moved on, leaving Agatha to her slurs, hoping she’d forget about them once the haze faded.

  At the next cell, he paused again. Vincent’s chamber wasn’t locked, the door standing slightly ajar, much to Alex’s horror. He wondered if the necromancer had returned to his cell, like a bird coming back to roost. Alex braced himself for whatever he might see.

  Instead of an angry changeling rushing at him, Alex was met by the sight of Vincent sitting on the floor, apparently in a calm, meditative state. The strange-faced necromancer looked up and saw Alex, waving him on with a flick of his slender wrist.

  “I am fighting it, my good man. I will overcome… Do not tarry here when others require your aid,” he insisted, his translucent lids sliding over the impossible black of his eyes once more.

  Alex paused, uncertain, wondering if Vincent meant he was battling a golden monster, but as he looked closer he could see that Vincent’s eyes, still half-visible through the translucent lids, were clear of the misty haze of the red fog, and he was merely striving against the residual influence of paranoia.

  “My thoughts are not real. My thoughts are not my own,” the necromancer repeated rhythmically, letting the mantra do the work.

  Satisfied, Alex hurried on. He ran down a familiar corridor and turned left into a very dark hallway he didn’t altogether recognize. Where once torches had flickered on the walls, now they had sputtered out, and Alex knew it had not been caused by a chance gust of wind.

  Without warning, Jari sprang from the shadows and jumped onto Alex’s back. Alex cried out, grasping for Jari’s arms and throwing his friend to the floor with a hefty thud. Undeterred, Jari sprang again, dragging Alex down onto the flagstones. Alex winced as a hard punch caught him square on the cheek, followed by another vicious blow to the gut that made his eyes water, but he fought back just as hard, clawing for Jari’s arms. As Alex caught his friend with a lucky upper-cut to the jaw, he felt Jari go still for a moment, giving Alex the window of opportunity he had been waiting for. But Jari was quicker than that—the boy leapt straight back into the action, ducking out of Alex’s range.

  Frustrated, Alex fired a shield in the direction of the darkest shadows, where he could hear Jari creeping. The boy yelped as the shield found him, and Alex could hear the muffled sound of his indignation. The glowing barrier kept Jari from doing harm as Alex pushed his hands through the shield and rested them on either side of Jari’s head.

  As he removed the fog and paranoia with his silvery strands of anti-magic, Alex saw flashes of Jari’s life that made him smile. It was like watching a slideshow of highlights from Spellshadow Manor. An image of the Christmas they had all spent together popped into the spotlight—the great tree erupting from the ground, all of them standing to watch the lights and ornaments, the fleeting joy they had felt. He saw moments between Jari and Aamir, seen through Jari’s eyes, in the days before he and Natalie had arrived. They were laughing at something, stretched out on the grass, the sun beating down upon their grinning faces. Alex could almost feel the sunlight on his skin.

  Among the memories of Spellshadow, there were brief glimpses of Jari’s family life, his dad cracking jokes around the dinner table, an array of bright, beautiful paintings adorning the wall behind. Alex remembered something about Jari’s mother being an artist, and wondered if the paintings were hers.

  If they were, he thought, she was very talented.

  Another set of images flickered into Jari’s mind, showing Alex a hazy, heavily filtered montage of Helena, all the times she had looked at him with her piercing golden eyes, tossing her long silver hair. In Jari’s view of her, she looked like a forties movie star, everything heightened and smoothed out, seen the way he wanted to see her. It made Alex grin; he was truly seeing things through Jari’s eyes. It was tempting to Alex to search farther into his friend’s mind, but he quickly recoiled, confident the paranoia had gone. He realized just how close he was to deliberately invading Jari’s privacy. It wasn’t what he had learned mind control for, and such intrusion was exactly what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do.

  Meanwhile, Jari was snapping back to reality. “Whoa—what happened?” he asked unsteadily.

  “The wall thing happened again,” Alex explained. “You all locked me up and ran off, thinking you were being chased by monsters. I’m in the process of trying to find everyone so I can remove the fog and we can find Alypia and get her locked up. At the moment, she’s roaming free, and it’s making me more than a little nervous.”

  Jari frowned. “Were you just in my head?”

  “I had to get the fog out,” Alex admitted.

  “When did you learn to do that?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I made Demeter teach me,” said Alex.

  Jari made a low noise of displeasure. “You didn’t think to say something?”

  Alex sighed. “I didn’t think I’d have to use it on my friends.”

  “Well, I hope you didn’t go snooping,” Jari remarked, his tone wary.

  Alex shook his head. “Never.”

  “Hang on, did I hit you? I remember hitting something, though I think I thought it was a massive lizard.” Jari flashed a curious glance at Alex.

  Alex nodded. “You got a few good punches in. I managed one decent one,” he said, feeling for the tender skin of his cheek, where a nasty welt was slowly appearing.

  “That must be why my jaw is clicking,” Jari mused.

  “Well, glad you’re back in the land of the living, but we need to get going,” Alex said, once again pushing away the creeping weariness that slithered through his bones. There was no time for a breather with three more people to track down. “You coming?”

  They set off through the darkness into the next corridor, which, thankfully, still had working torches. Alex was glad of Jari’s company. At least with another person by his side, the thought of Alypia springing out wasn’t quite as bad. Still terrifying, but not quite as terrifying.

  As they headed into the deepest part of the keep, only a couple of floors above the entrance to Caius’s frightening pit room, they turned down an unfamiliar hallway and stumbled upon an indoor courtyard, littered with dead plants and a fountain that no longer spewed anything but lichen. Standing at the far side, lighting up the room with a very real, magical sword, was Ellabell, fending off imaginary beasts with the fearsome golden weapon, the blade glinting sharply. She let out a sudden, blood-curdling scream, thrashing the sword around in the air before her in a frenzied manner. She looked petrified, and the sight of her in such distress tore at Alex’s heart. He flashed a conspiratorial look at Jari.

  “We need a pincer movement—I’ll go around one side, you go around the other,” Alex whispered. “Sneak up on her and hold her steady so I can put my hands on her temples.”

  Jari nodded. “Aye, aye, Captain!”

  They skirted around the room, approaching Ellabell on both sides. Jari reached her first, almost losing his head as Ellabell swung her sword at the last moment, missing him by a hair’s breadth. In a fit of panic, the softly-softly plan went out the window, Jari tackling her unceremoniously to the floor instead.

  Alex ducked toward Ellabell and pressed his palms firmly against her temples, feeding his anti-magic through her skull and into her brain. He blushed as he saw himself in her memories, and felt more than a little strange watching himself through her eyes. It wasn’t quite like Jari’s hazy, romantically filtered movie scene, but there was a hopefulness to it that Alex felt guilty about trespassing upon. It wasn’t his place to feel her feelin
gs, and yet it pleased him to see that they were on a similar track, in terms of the way they were beginning to think about each other. He lingered a moment longer on the remembrance of his arms around her, embracing beneath the stars, before moving quickly away from such personal thoughts.

  She was the one whose mind most tempted him, but he returned to the task of restoring her to her usual self. It didn’t take long until all the fog and paranoia was gone, leaving Alex to recoil with reluctance.

  “Get them off me, get them off me!” she screamed, throwing Jari away from her. Blinking away the last of the fog, she saw what she had done. “I’m sorry, Jari… I thought you were a demon.” She gasped, turning to Alex. “What happened? Where am I?”

  “Alypia’s on the loose, big blast, red fog, golden monsters, intense paranoia, you wielding a great big magical sword that nearly took Jari’s head off, a little mind stuff to get rid of the bad juju… I think that brings you up to speed.” He forced a smile.

  She frowned. “Mind stuff?”

  “Yeah, he’s been fishing around in our brains again!” Jari remarked, throwing Alex under the bus.

  “What do you mean ‘again?’ I haven’t fished in your brains before—I haven’t been fishing in your brains!” Alex insisted, knowing how it sounded. “I just got rid of the fog, that’s all.”

  Ellabell glanced at him warily. Alex wanted to assure her that he hadn’t seen anything, and that he had never intended to use his newfound skills on any of them, but Jari cut in before he could.

  “Get a good look, did you?” Jari taunted, evidently relishing Alex’s discomfort.

  He sighed. “I just got rid of the imaginary monsters. Speaking of which, we don’t have time for this. We’ve still got Aamir and Natalie to find, not to mention Alypia.”

  The other two agreed, sharing a grim look as they followed Alex’s lead. They set off into the unnerving halls of the keep’s inner sanctum, moving slowly so as not to disturb the bats that slept overhead. As they walked, the cries and shouts of the inmates seemed to be dying down. Either that, or they were getting too far away to hear them anymore, edging deeper into the unknown.

  Alex was so focused on keeping his eyes on the shadows and focusing on the path ahead that he almost tripped over Aamir, who was passed out in the hallway, a livid red gash rising up on his forehead. It seemed like a bizarre thing to assume, but it looked unmistakably as if he had run into the wall and knocked himself out. Concerned, Alex crouched and shook Aamir awake.

  With a pained blink, the older boy came to, glancing around with a puzzled expression, as if trying to grasp at a slippery memory. More surprisingly still, he seemed to be entirely himself, with no need for Alex’s anti-magic. Whatever had knocked him out had clearly knocked the fog out too.

  “What happened to you?” Alex asked.

  “The last thing I remember was seeing a portal home… and trying to run into it,” Aamir admitted, albeit reluctantly.

  Ellabell and Jari helped Aamir to his feet. As they hurried down the hallway, Alex could taste the finish line. It was within reach now, and once they crossed it, they could get back to the task at hand—that of locking Alypia away where she belonged.

  We might actually fix this mess after all, he thought anxiously.

  Now, they just needed to find Natalie.

  Once they reached the subterranean floor of the keep, Alex paused in front of a familiar, empty cell. He was certain Caius would have moved the cot back into place once he’d left the pit.

  But there was nothing covering the staircase to the catacombs now.

  With a sudden surge of panic, Alex imagined Natalie stepping through the door at the end of the hall below, falling unawares into the pit itself, driven over the edge by imaginary monsters. He could picture the misty swarm of a billion vaporous particles, snatching at her essence, wanting to tear it out of her. Of all the places in the keep, how was it that she had found the most dangerous one? He had a feeling dark magic was responsible.

  He motioned for his friends to follow him down the staircase, wasting no time on an explanation. The other three shared a look, but followed anyway, and they stormed down into the catacombs.

  In the narrow corridor, the torches were flickering, and Alex was slightly relieved to find the large door at the end closed—it was one of the smaller side doors that was open, light spilling out. He raced toward it. Inside, he was met by the sight of a luxurious chamber, decidedly out of place in the dank, foreboding setting of the prison around them.

  The chamber was softly lit with stained-glass lanterns that pooled a multicolored luminescence onto the plush, rug-covered floor and tapestry-draped walls. The place was adorned with soft, rich furnishings, including full bookshelves and many other beautiful things—shining jewelry boxes, sleek wooden trunks with brass fittings, exquisitely carved statuary. It might once have been a charming place, but much of the furniture looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time, and a musty, mildewed scent clung to the air. Had it not been for the lack of windows, it would have been hard to tell that it was a prison cell at all.

  Alex staggered backward, the others jumping in fright. Natalie was in the room, though he hadn’t seen her at first. She crouched on the floor by the rotting remnants of a four-poster bed, moving unnaturally around a bottle in the center of a ruby-red rug. She was singing something quietly in an alarming, throaty whisper, her eyes entirely focused on the small, smoky black bottle that Alex recognized as a bottle of essence, though he didn’t have a clue where she’d found it, nor was she in a state to tell him.

  “All my friends are dead, now to kill the Head,” she sang over and over, her voice low and disturbing, her eyes like saucers.

  The others watched her in silent horror, but Alex’s eye was caught instead by the sight of a slim, wooden door at the very far side of the room, half-tucked away behind a velvet curtain. His gaze flitted back toward Natalie, remembering what Caius had said about the harmful nature of the essence here; if the warden was right, it wasn’t safe for Natalie to be so close to it. Tentatively, he walked toward her, bolstering himself with a protective layer of anti-magic as he neared.

  In a split second, she turned on him, lunging up from her haunches, trying to grasp his head in her hands, her nails raking at the soft flesh of his face.

  “You will pay, pay, pay!” Natalie screeched.

  Alex managed to twist out from under her grip, some of his hair ripping away in her clenched fist. “You have to snap out of this—” he began.

  Lunging again, she screamed in his face, clutching her hands to her chest as if they were burned, making Alex glad of the layer of protection around him that was keeping her slightly at arm’s length.

  The others edged closer, taking Alex’s lead.

  “Natalie, it’s us—your friends,” Ellabell said calmly.

  “You know us, Natalie. Come on, come back to us,” Aamir added, holding out his hand to her.

  “Natalie, buddy, come on! There aren’t any monsters. It’s just us,” Jari soothed.

  Natalie wasn’t having any of it. With each reassuring utterance, she charged toward them, leaping uncomfortably close, her face twisting into a feverish grimace, only to pull away at the very last moment. Her teeth gnashed together with a loud snap, her eyes flashing wildly, and she looked both terrified and terrifying, her hands moving quickly, creating something strange beneath her palms. Alex could feel that, whatever it was she was making, it wasn’t natural. She was as far from herself as he had ever seen her. This was worse than any curse.

  With a knowing look, he signaled for the others to try to distract her while he crept around the back of the room. Keeping to the walls, he moved slowly, stepping up onto the four-poster bed and moving forward, so he could try to grab her from behind.

  Meanwhile, Jari broke into a dance that looked like a cross between Saturday Night Fever and Riverdance, but even the blond-haired boy’s absurdity couldn’t keep Natalie’s eyes from flitting about the room, her
limbs bent at odd angles as she crawled across the floor, rushing toward them like an angry insect. Seeing that Jari’s dancing wasn’t working, Aamir tried reasoning with her instead, speaking to her as if he were bargaining with a small child.

  “Natalie, sweetheart, you need to calm down and come back to us. There are no demons, and nobody is dead. It is all in your imagination,” he said.

  This seemed to intrigue the changeling version of Natalie. With a sharp hiss that prickled the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck, she scuttled half-crouched, half-upright toward Aamir. Her eyes turned white, a milky sheen sliding across them. Behind her, standing between Alex and his quarry, wispy specters appeared from thin air, conjured by the words her mouth was still muttering and the twist and turn of skillful hands. The whole room went cold, everything suddenly feeling surreal. The gaseous shapes had hollow eyes and gaping mouths, their bodies wispy, blurry bones that bore the dangling strands of ancient cloth. Or so Alex thought—peering closer, he saw the scraps clinging to the translucent bones were not cloth at all, but the final hanging strips of flesh. They stared vacantly from skull faces, their empty mouths yawning in silent screams.

  Shivers of fear shot through Alex, and he tried to get closer to her, sliding down over the musty edge of the bed and creeping toward where she had scuttled back to, a short distance from Aamir’s legs. Moving stealthily, he pushed away the horror of the ghosts’ presence, turning sideways to avoid touching them as he slipped through a narrow gap between two of their kind.

  He was almost upon her when she whirled around, glowering at him with the milky white of her ghostly eyes. With unexpected agility, she jumped at him, the impact almost knocking him off his feet. Somehow, he managed to hold his ground as she lashed out at him, her teeth coming too close to his skin for comfort. She backed away again, preparing for a second strike.

  This time, Alex was ready for her. She leapt toward him, but he ducked just in time, grasping her shoulders tightly as she overshot her mark, pulling her toward him in a rough headlock. She writhed, struggling to get free, but he managed to hold her with enough strength that he was able to steady her, giving him the chance to press his palms to her temples and run his anti-magic into her mind. She froze instantly in his arms.