The Dark Side #1

Chapter ~ 17 ~

I manage to lower myself down into the water using my magic after I used it to gently drop Xavier down first. I don't want to be waiting around for us to get caught because he's taking forever to lower himself down another cliff; it's easier if I just speed him along. So we manage to trudge through the water, past the broken up body of the angel we threw down here, and make it to the metal door. Obviously, it's locked, but Xavier does this really cool magic stuff, where he twists his hands together and presses them against the lock. It soon overheats and melts away, letting us open the door swiftly. I shrug at him as I move past.

"Nice one," I comment, and he bows slightly.

"Thank you," he murmurs, and we step into the dark tunnel together. Xavier conjures up some more fire to give us light, and I test the air around us for other life forces. We seem to be alone, but I just hope it stays that way. I don't want to have to fight any sewer rats or the other gross animals that live down here. This should be the easy part.

"Wherever this lets out to," Xavier announces, "we need to be careful. There could be angels everywhere."

"They can sense our magic," I murmur back, stepping through the water that rises halfway up my boots. "I have a stone in my bag that shields magic from Trackers, so they cannot sense us, but we would have to be together for it to work on us both."

"You should take it," he tells me. "It will be more disastrous if they catch you over me."

"Yes, but I can use my own magic to shield myself," I reply, holding the stone out to Xavier. He hesitates, but eventually takes the stone and shoves it in his own pocket, muttering something under his breath. Then, I he stops in his tracks, and I stumble to avoid bumping into him.

"Up there," he announces, and I lift my head to find a loose grate that looks to lead into the fort's cellar.

"This is good," I tell him as he puts his hands together to help me up. "The cellar is better than the kitchen, or the mess hall."

"Stop talking before they hear you," he grunts as he lifts me up rather easily. I reach up and push at the grate, pulling it back before pushing it away from me. I then grab onto the sides of the open hole and pull myself through, staggering to my feet. I wipe a bead of sweat from my forehead as I straighten my back and grimace, looking around. It's definitely a cellar; it looks like the angels are big fans of wine.

Once Xavier is through, I tell him how to activate the stone before we find an exit to the cellar that leads out into the rest of the building. With the door open and the coast clear, I turn to Xavier and nod.

"Good luck," I whisper. "If either of us is not back here within the hour, the other leaves. Understand?"

Xavier looks at me with a strange look on his face that I've not seen before, but he finally nods back and moves off to the left of the corridor, while I take a deep breath and head right.

Each corridor is lit with a torch in a black bracket that casts dancing light on the stone walls around them. My boots are almost soundless against the floor, which is an added bonus to the dim light my shadow interrupts when I move. Now, all I have to do is search through as many rooms as I can without being caught. Which – I know – is going to be very difficult. But if I'm lucky, I'll be able to sense Kai when I get close to him. That's if he's even in here at all.

I use the air around me and send it under doorways I pass, trying to see if I can sense more than one body in each room. But no one seems to be in any of them. Either, this fort is a decoy, or they're all gathered somewhere else, altogether. My bet is on the latter; there's no way they're guarding a hideout as good as this just to distract me.