The Writer's Escape

11. The Summoning

"So what is this ritual, exactly?" Serena asked as the sorceresses removed her blindfold. 

She was standing outside on a slab of stone, and ragged cliffs surrounded her— of course, she must be in the sorceresses' mountain lair. The sun crawled higher overhead, and wind blew about the reddish sand around them. A few demons stood around them, watching everything with blazing red eyes.

Both sorceresses ignored her. They had shackled her to one of the rocks, chains chafing against Serena's ankles. 

She didn't know why they bothered. She wasn't fool enough to attempt to escape now. Even if she could wriggle out from under the noses of the sorceresses in their own lair, even if she could survive the vast expanse of the desert, she would still have lost her best chance of getting out of her own storyworld alive.

But she couldn't stop herself from gasping when the sorceresses pulled out Serena's leather bag, the one she had been missing, the one that had travelled with her all the way from her home. "Hey! That's mine!"

"Is it now?" said Daria absently. And from the bag, she withdrew a book: the last in the Dragon's Heart trilogy. Though the paperback cover was now torn up and smudged with a smashed bottle of mascara, and the pages were filled with sand, it was still intact.

"What are you doing with that?" Serena asked uneasily.

Daria tossed her the book, and Serena stumbled to catch it. She stared down at it in her hands, thumbing the cover, the protagonists smiling up at her with daggers in their hands. If only she had their fighting skills, she could have ended this story days ago and have travelled back home by now, instead of helping the villains of her own story win. They were the epitome of everything she'd ever wanted to be. 

"Hold it in place," Lillian said, her voice cold and stern. "And take a seat, lest you collapse during the ritual."

Serena did so, the rough rock of the mountainside scratching her knees.

"This may take a while," Lillian continued. "If at any point you attempt to flee or to interfere with the spell, we will strike you down. Do you understand?"

Serena nodded, noting the sharpened blades sheathed at Lillian's hip. She tried again to ask what was going on, but the sorceresses continued to ignore her.

Instead, they linked hands and began chanting. They were going to try to summon a spirit. Which meant . . . that meant the book must be the spirit-keeper. But what spirit would be linked to a book not even from this world? And why would they need Serena, instead of just the book?

A few moments later, an uncomfortable itch started in her insides, like her organs were trying to crawl out of her body, and a faint glow started up around her skin and the book. Magic pierced through her, and she understood. 

The book wasn't the spirit-keeper. She was.

The sorceresses continued to chant, and images floated to her mind like ice cubes floating to the top of a glass, dark shapes swarming and trying to get out.

The magic locked Serena's limbs in place and light burst through her skin, blinding her. Pain clawed at her and she gnashed her teeth together. Magic flowed through her but she had no control over it; she was just the vessel. Her eyes rolled back and the world around her, the chanting sorceresses and the bright swirling sunlight and mountain fortress, all faded away. Suddenly it was as if she was in a different world.

She could still hear the chanting, but other forms were taking shape around her. She was deep in the heart of a deserted valley, the sky above clouded by ash, the smell of sulfur clogging her nose. A suffocating heat pressed down on her, and when she looked around, molten lava was flowing down the mountainside, gurgling. Soft gray flakes of ash floated down from the sky like snowflakes and brushed her skin.