Page 68 of Sightwitch
I ran.
I don’t know how I mustered such speed after so much exhaustion. After losing the one thing I’d wanted: my family. Yet somehow, by the grace of Sirmaya, I ran faster than I ever had before.
The world around me misted into a streaming haze. Ice rocketed toward me, sentient and grabbing. I ducked, I dove, I twisted and turned. I hopped, I stumbled, I ran, ran,ran.
“I don’t want to sleep!” I tried to holler between bounding steps. “I want to heal you! I’ll find another way—no sleeping!”
The ice did not listen. The tremor did not stop.
I reached the bottom floor, where the Rook screeched and flapped at what little remained of the exit. If I’d thought it tight before, it was nothing compared to now. I wasn’t sure I could even fit in there, much less squeeze all the way through.
The Rook squawked a warning.
I dove sideways. Half a beat later, ice smashed to the ground. A huge column of it shattered outward, and as each shard hit the ground, it reached for me.
No. No.No. What little power I possessed was a drop of water compared to the other Sisters. Thousands of them slept in this mountain, from the thousands of years we’d been protecting Sirmaya. With my mind, my drive—I would heal the Goddess from the outside.
I would not succumb to the sleeping.
I hit the exit and flung myself inside. Cold wrought the air from my lungs, and ice razored into my chest, my legs. Shrinking! This space was shrinking! And the ice would not let go. Over and under, it crowded in, trying to hold me down.
“Release me!” I shoved sideways. Harder. Harder. Blood streaked the blue behind, but I couldn’t stop. The Rook had squirmed ahead, and since he was still moving, there had to be a way out.
Time stretched into a strange, incongruous thing measured in grunts and cracks and endless straining. Until finally I was there—I could see a sliver of darkness that could only be Paladins’ Hall.
As if sensing how near I was to escape, the ice closed in all the harder. A shackle sliced around my left wrist. Then another around my ankle.
I tugged, I fought, I screamed, “I don’t want to sleep! I am going to heal you! Let me go!”
Still, the ice ignored me. It pulsed outward, a vise to clamp off my breath, to smash in my skull.
Still, I battled and reached. Blood and tears mingled in my mouth. There was the hall—right there. I was so close, so close.
I reached it.
Even now as I write this, I do not know how. The ice moved enough for me to free my wrist and ankle, then I toppled headfirst through the doorway.
But I wasn’t safe yet, for the ice was not stopping at the door. It was thrumming outward, trying to claim me even as the door’s halves swung in.
Please shut, please shut.
The door did not shut, and in a stone-trembling roar, the ice burst out. It was coming for me.
I scrabbled around, my mind a clash of rules and fruitless prayers. Rule 35: Stay calm, for panic serves no one.
Please, Sleeper, help me. Please, please.
Rule 13: Never leave a fire untended.
“Enough,” I hissed at myself. “Focus, focus.” What were my options? I was alone on the ledge with the Rook nowhere to be seen—nor Captain. I hadn’t thought he would be here, but I’d hoped.
How else was I going to leave this platform? Even without the ice, I needed a way off.
Fighting to ignore the approaching ice—so loud, so loud—I scuttled to the edge of the stone and stared down.
A galaxy of stars met my eyes.
We had flown right over it, and I’d never seen.
