Soul Fire

7.1

...

Bloom plopped herself down on the couch beside Xenia, who was typing away on a laptop. Bloom was desperately trying to kill time to stop herself from going crazy as she waited for Stella to tell them it was time to go. "What do you know about Stella's ring?"

"Aside from the obvious?" Xenia said, not bothering to look up from whatever she was doing.

Bloom shrugged.

Xenia continued typing. "Not much."

Bloom nodded, and rested her head in her hand casually. "What are you working on?"

"I'm trying to figure out the optimal place to enter Cloud Tower. We can't teleport in, there are spells that prevent it, but I think there may be a way in through the underground tunnels that connected the three schools." Xenia looked up briefly, before turning her attention back to her device. "Unfortunately, nobody knows where the entrance to these tunnels are, so I'm using technology to calculate the most statistically favorable place for them to be."

Musa bit into an apple loudly and threw herself into a chair beside the girls. "How do you even know there are underground tunnels?" she said between chewing.

"During the last Great War, the faeries of Alfea were targeted. When they couldn't defend the walls anymore, they escaped somehow." Xenia said, "The probability of their existence is high."

Flora leaned against the door frame, her arms wrapped around her torso casually. Her sandy brown hair was braided back neatly in preparation for their attack. "You don't need to calculate their entrance, Xenia." Flora said softly. The girls turned to look at the faerie, who was dressed in a black sweatshirt and black leggings. It was strange for Bloom to see her in them, she didn't even know that Flora owned any black. Flora shrugged and continued, "I already know where they are."

...

The girls stepped quietly down the main staircase, passing the glass mural as they went. Bloom avoided looking at it, but she did brush her fingers over it for good luck.

When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Flora led them to the left.

"This is the direction the witches came from on the night of the ball." Bloom leaned forward and whispered. "Maybe these tunnels are how they got into the school."

"I wouldn't put it past those slimy witches to discover them." Stella said softly.

Flora led them forward to one of the hall lounges. She turned the brass handle of the large wooden doors and led the girls into the room.

Velvet couches sat in the center of the room, with large sturdy wooden tables and chairs littered throughout the large space. Three tall arched windows occupied the wall across from the door, and to their left was a wall of bookcases. Bloom had read enough Nancy Drew to speculate that the passage had to lie somewhere in those bookshelves.

The room was ornately decorated, with dark wood paneling and intricate rugs, tapestries, and curtains. To their right was a soft crackling fireplace.

"They'd really put a passageway in one of the residence wing lounges? It seems too easy for people to sneak out." Musa said, trailing over to the bookshelves. It seemed she had the same idea as Bloom.

"It makes sense." Bloom said softly, "in an emergency, the students would be able to escape."

Bloom stepped over towards the fireplace, her eyes lingering on a large painting on that wall. In the painting stood nine men and women, some with wings, some without, around a large flame that burned in the middle. She recognized a similar image from the mural. "Who are these people?" Bloom asked, crossing her arms before the beautiful work.

"Those are the original nine nymphs of magic." Stella said. "There's one from each great kingdom." Stella pointed towards one with gleaming blonde hair and large wings. "That's my ancestor, Mal, the goddess of sun. Her gift of light has been passed down through the entire Solarien royal line."

"Who are they?" Bloom asked.

"We don't have time for a history lesson right now, Bloom." Stella scolded. She tightened her hair which was pulled up into a high ponytail and adjusted her black turtleneck, "Ask me again if we make it out of this alive."

Flora stepped forwards towards the painting. "It seems you already found it." She smiled at them and placed her hands over the top right corner of the frame and pulled. With a click, the right side of the painting popped out and swung open like a door.

Stella snorted. "Fitting that the nine nymphs would look over this passageway. Pretentious assholes." Stella didn't hesitate as she heaved herself up into the tunnel. She crouched down and held out a hand for Flora.

Flora grabbed Stella's hand and pulled herself up into the tunnel, followed by Musa and Xenia. Bloom grabbed the frame of the painting as she stepped in, and spotted a small rope on the side to pull it shut. Clever.

Once the frame clicked back into place, Stella peered back into the lounge. She could see the shapes of the room pretty clearly from behind the painting. "They make it too easy to spy." She said softly, her voice echoing slightly in the stone corridor. "I wonder how many of these there are."

The girls shivered.

Bloom looked at the green ivy vines growing along the walls and roof of the corridor. Stella snapped and a faerielight bobbed above the girls' heads, illuminating all of the vines and the girls' faces. The girls walked forward and stopped in front of a twisting narrow staircase.

"Down we go.." Musa trailed off, peering over the dark staircase. She couldn't see the bottom.

Stella grimaced. "Now's the fun part: finding the entrance to Cloud Tower."

Xenia already had a plan for that, it seemed. She sent pulsing pink darts of magic into the passageway, which were mapping the tunnels out in real time as the girls walked.

The girls descended the stone staircase, keeping close to the wall. The staircase was narrow, and there were no railings. Bloom supposed it would be easier to fly down and up, but she didn't bother suggesting it as her hand trailed along the stone wall that hugged her left.

Bloom was relieved when she finally got to the bottom behind the girls. They were met before three dark archways that could have led anywhere. Xenia looked at her device and pointed to the left one. "That way."