the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[jackfrostbite]

Crying, crying. Quieter crying.

The wall she eventually touches is rough and uneven, much like the floor over which she walks.

Quieter crying. Silence.

[deepest_magic]

Cloak wrapped around her hand, she follows the wall -

She stops when he stops crying.

[jackfrostbite]

Sniffle.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella doesn't say anything. Right now he may not know exactly where she is, which might be useful, and if he starts crying again she can shuffle forward again.

[jackfrostbite]

"Sit down," he says tiredly, "you're only going to hurt yourself."

[deepest_magic]

She sits, leaning against the wall.

[jackfrostbite]

"How far do you expect to get even if you did manage to climb over me without my noticing? These tunnels will bear no light, most of them. You don't know how to find a door, or how to open one if you could. And that's if you don't get hopelessly lost or trip on the floor and break your skull."

[deepest_magic]

"James will find me."

[jackfrostbite]

"You seem very sure of that."

[deepest_magic]

"Are you not? You want her to find us and if you thought she'd have trouble with it we wouldn't be down here."

[jackfrostbite]

"There are a lot of places I could have brought you that aren't a lightless dead-end tunnel with a secret entrance if I wanted to be found while I was still in the middle of deciding whether or not to kill you," says Winter.

[deepest_magic]

Oh.

Isabella wraps up a little snugger in her cloak.

Ring hugs.

[neverbeatme]

(Ring hugs back.)

[jackfrostbite]

"But you are very sure that James is going to find you," he says, "so perhaps I should be looking for more magic tricks, hm?"

[deepest_magic]

"Any number of creatures could have seen which way you went and when they find the cave entrance they can track us by scent and see by sonar. There are dog knights, and at least one bat."

[jackfrostbite]

"No," says Winter. "No, I don't think so."

[deepest_magic]

"There is a bat. Order of the Currant. His name is Aleek."

[jackfrostbite]

"But that is not why you believe James will find you. You believe that for some other reason. What is it, I wonder?"

[deepest_magic]

"She won't stop looking until she has."

[jackfrostbite]

"Probably true. But depending on what exactly happens to you down here, it might take her a very long time indeed. And that, you do not seem to expect."

[deepest_magic]

"I'm very concerned about the possibility that you will kill me, but I can't do very much about it so I'm concentrating on possibilities in which you do not."

[jackfrostbite]

"You were ready to sneak past me into a dark tunnel with no knowledge of what awaits you there except that a safe path must exist because I used it to get here. Would you like to know what I think? I think you have something that will lead you to James or James to you, whoever manages it first. Without that, your chances in those tunnels are much, much worse than your chances with me."

[deepest_magic]

[jackfrostbite]

"And now," he says, "I must decide what to do about that."

[deepest_magic]

Isabella wraps up tight in her cloak.