Page 14 of The Catacomb King
The Prince had thrown me onto an enormous bed. The mattress was large enough to fit three people comfortably. I peeled back the blanket to inspect the mattress; it was made of what seemed like woven silk. The shimmering black blanket on the bed was silk, too, as were the pillow-cases. The mattress’s stuffing poked out the seams. I yanked out a strand of the stuffing and identified it as a strange, soft, flaxen straw.
They had plants in the underworld, then.
I crawled off the bed. Experimentally, I tried the metal door. It didn’t budge. I might as well have been in a vault.
The floor was carved out of the same onyx as the walls, though it didn’t glitter chunkily like the walls did. Rather, the floor had been sanded down and made as smooth as poured stone. An enormous rug was spread in front of the fireplace. The rug, too, was made of woven silk. The rug’s design of dark, badly dyed colors was so chaotic it was hard to look at.
And the furniture. It was clear and translucent, like nothing I’d ever seen. There was a chair in the corner, a large box with cubbies that I took for a dresser, and, unbelievably, a bookshelf full of books. I longed to look at the books but there was no time; instead I went over to the chair, tried to pick it up, and overbalanced so hard I nearly fell over. It was as light as a feather. I’d thought it would be heavy, like wood or metal or stone, but it was more like resin or poured glass.
I peered closer. There were bubbles trapped in the material. The chair’s poured edges were bumpy, like no one had bothered to sand them down. And when I put the chair back on the floor, it wobbled.
I frowned. The chair was as badly made as the rug. And the same appeared to be true for all the other furniture. It all had a rich quality to it, but there was no technique to the craftsmanship. Why was all this shit so badly made?
Because this was nothing but a fancy holding cell, was why.
They didn’t need this room to be nice. After all, I wasn’t expected to be here for long.
I began to shiver even harder.
I shuffled closer to the fire, trying to calm myself. There had to be a way out of here. Someone had done it before. (Yeah, two hundred years ago, for barely twelve hours, and not before they fucked her up so bad she ate her way through leather.) All I had to do was escape this room and flee back up the tunnels. Surely I could retrace the Prince’s steps. (No, I couldn’t.) I would go up, up, up. I’d climb the walls if I had to. (I had never climbed anything in my life.)
I hurled myself against the door. Nothing. I beat my fists on it. Nothing.
But surely someone would come for me eventually. Surely the point was not to let me starve in here.
(What if it was?)
My mind returned to my original thought: I needed a weapon. When someone opened the door, I would attack them. Kill them if I had to. Then fucking run.
I searched around. The glass chair. The stone floor.
I rolled back the chaotic rug, revealing a great expanse of stone floor. I smashed the chair on the stone. Again. Again.
The muscles in my back and arms burned. But finally, one of the chair legs split.
I snapped the chair leg off. I hurled the rest of the chair into the corner. I threw myself to the ground and scraped the edge of the chair leg across the stone ground, over and over again, faster and faster, filing it one way, then turning it, filing it another way, then turning it, filing it again, like sharpening a pencil —
The metal door creaked open.
I lunged.
The horrifying monster who’d opened the door screamed and shut the door again.
I stood there, panting with my makeshift spear, my heart hammering.
That hadnotbeen the Prince.
Whathadit been? A… godling, surely? It had had… I thought it had had a human face, and human hair, but the body, the arms, if they were even arms…
I swallowed. It had looked like a spider. A giant, five-foot-tall spider with a human face.
I pressed myself back toward the fire, trembling. The spear shook in my hands.
Something small glistened on the floor in front of the door. The hideous spider-godling had dropped it.
I whimpered. Ireallydidn’t want to find out what it was. I couldn’t get the sight of those eight horrible legs out of my head, and I couldn’t stop shaking. “I want to go home,” I whispered.For the first time since my kidnapping, I found myself fighting back tears. “Please, gods, take me home. Let me go home.”
None of the gods answered.
