Page 26 of Darkness Consuming
Chapter Fourteen
The Bell Tower
Linkin
I’m going to just say it, Nollix might be slightly addicted to this offering stuff.
Or maybe he’s addicted to her.
I weirdly understand that. There’s this alluring spirit within her that I’ve never been able to ignore. Even when she was so good at ignoring me. It’s the way she smiled when I thought the world had broken her. The curve of her lips and the happiness in her glittering eyes always surprised the hell out of me. She wasn’t just this dejected person filled with very warranted anger.
Her emotions were resilient when a lesser person might have crumbled.
Nollix is here now though and we’re finally getting somewhere I feel like. A quietness surrounds us as we walk up the smooth stairs. The walls of the bell tower echo our every step around us.
I can’t help but pull my blade as we push open the door at the top of the stairs.
I know he won’t be there. The King won’t just be waiting with a cliché villainous smile on his damn face when I open the door. But the nerves striking through my veins demands I be prepared for anything.
My palm presses to the old door and it swings open with a crawling cry of the hinges. Crumbled brick, a mess of papers, and shattered glass litter the floor. The circular room has one single window that looks out at the gravestones lining the land.
“Where we saw her first and last and somewhere in the middle, huh?” Nollix strides into the wrecked room.
There’s no door within the room. There were no doors in the halls aside from the one leading here. A massive bell hangs above us, letting in the cool morning air.
The king’s place of peace doesn’t seem to be what we’re looking for.
“Could her words have had a different meaning?” I stand in the doorway, my blade fuming smoke as I let it rest against the old floor boards.
“I didn’t hear the Witch’s words,” Nollix says quietly.
Right. Because he was offering it up with the Reveries while I was trying to figure this shit out.
On slow and tired steps, I walk over to the small desk and wooden chair. I can’t bring myself to sit where the King probably always sat. Instead, I lean against the desk. The legs scrap across the flooring as I settle in. My ankles cross, one over the other and my gaze drifts down.
And then I see it.
The board just beneath my boots is thin, sliced at a smaller size than the surrounding ones. I push my back against the desk a little more until it reveals another foot of space. Another board cut oddly among all the others.
A knowing sensation skims across my flesh.
I turn and shove it so hard the desk flips on its side, papers and glass shattering to the floor, only adding to the mess.
“Hmm, I knew you’d finally snap one day. Aggression isn’t something to avoid but embrace, my friend.” Nollix clasps my shoulder as I stare down at the perfect square that’s outlined into the flooring.
Then both of us are staring at the outline.
Nollix lowers slowly, crouching down until his fingers pull at the closest board. It comes up easily. Hastily he grips the next and tosses it behind him. Then the next and the next.
His hair hangs in his eyes, his knees spread against the floor. In silence we stare down into complete darkness.
Heat fumes up from the hole in the flooring.
If I imagined the structure, it would logically have to be set up opposite of the spiraling stairs that led us here.
But there are no stairs leading down. There’s only shadows and heat like I’ve never felt before.
“What if there’s a reason I can get to Violence by using the offering and you cannot?” Nollix doesn’t look at me and his words start to prickle at my mind.
It seems the offering allows part of your soul to walk somewhere else while your body stays planted in the present. My soul wasn’t welcome wherever Violence is.
But Nollix’s was.
My lips part as realization trickles into my mind even if my mouth refuses to say it.
It’s because Nollix is half Demon.
The underworld would of course welcome one of their own.
