Convulsion

✿ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴇᴇɴ ✿

Lily

"Get in!" Hands roughly shove me forward, and since I can't see anything I stumble until I fall over and onto the ground. I grit my teeth, clutching my head as I sit up on the cold, damp floor. For a few seconds everything looks fuzzy and I feel all clammy and sweaty, but then that feeling fades and I'm able to remember what's going on. A thud vibrates through the ground as the cell door slams shut, shaking me out of my trance.

"Hey!" I protest groggily. I clumsily push myself to my feet, throwing myself against the grimy cell bars. The force of my body makes the bars shake and ring loudly as they vibrate, but they don't budge. I find myself scowling, staring at Brittany as best as I can with this haze over me. She's standing right in front of me, and the only thing keeping me from her are these bars. I somehow manage to stick my hand through them despite the narrow gaps, and I reach for the keys in Brittany's fist. The keys brush against my fingertips, but Brittany pulls them out of my reach.

"Nice try." She shakes the keys right where I can't reach them, and then she grabs my hand and shoves it back into the cell hard enough to make me fall onto the ground again. "Good luck." She lets the keys rest in her hand, squeezing her hand into a fist. When she opens up her hand again there's nothing but a small ball of shiny metal. I frown at her but she shrugs at me, throwing the ball inside of my cell. "The power of Pression. Ghostclaw will decide what to do with you."

She smirks and then walks away, turning left and walking down the dark and cold hallway. There's barely any light in here, and the walls and floor are damp and murky. Even with barely any light my eyes seem to adjust eventually, and I can see into a cell that's across the hall when I stand up. There are two bodies inside, one is leaning against the cell bars, their hands sticking out, and the other is lying down on a bench that's attached to the wall inside of the cell.

"Well, that's a first." The person resting against the cell bars speaks, and by the sound of his voice I think it's Brayden. "I haven't seen The Damsel in a long time."

"Shut up." I spin on my feet, turning around to see Steve sitting on the dirty floor behind me, leaning his head against the tiny bench that's nailed into our wall.

"Hey, watch it," I warn.

"Yeah, watch your mouth," Richard calls. He's in the cell with Brayden, right across from us on the other side of the hall.

"Why? Just watch, we'll all die anyway," Steve mumbles. I glare at him, sighing.

"Pull it together," I exclaim, loudly enough so that everyone nearby can hear me. "The world isn't ending."

"Yes, it is," Amaryllis argues. Her voice shocks me but I walk over to the bars of our cell, trying to peer through them in order to find out where her voice is coming from. It sounds like she's to the left of our cell, but I can't see her.

"Amaryllis is right." Eric's voice comes from the same direction, so he's probably in the same cell as her. "We're trapped in the middle of a Gloaming hideout. What's to stop them from taking your necklace and ending the world?" Everyone goes silent. I stand still for a long time, gripping the cold metal bars in my hands. This can't be it. This isn't the end.

"We are," I whisper. I hear either someone shift in the darkness across from me.

"Sorry, what?" Amaryllis asks.

"I said, we are." I grab my necklace, it doesn't glow this time, but I go on. "We're Guardians. Maybe I'm not as much of a Guardian as you guys are, but you've been trained for this. It's our duty to protect this Realm, right? So we need to stop and focus. We need to work together to get out of here. So, who has an idea?" For a few moments all I can hear is my own breathing, but then Richard speaks up from his cell.