Page 46 of Chaos and Crowns

“Normally, you press the panic button and wait for the firemen, but I doubt we have time for that,” Odelle observed.

Antony shook his head.

“Let’s see if I can get this thing going again,” he said, already moving towards the button panel. “Hold the light up so I can see.”

Odelle did as he requested but asked, “How does being a magical blacksmith qualify you to fix electronics again?”

“Magical objects are made of energy, and electricity is just another sort of energy,” Antony reminded her as he examined the panel. “Sometimes, you’ve just got to talk nice to an object’s energy, and it will cooperate with you.”

“So you seduce machines into doing your bidding,” Odelle said drily as she watched a tiny glowing screwdriver grow out of Antony’s finger. She squinted at him, trying to see any signs of overexertion, but this use of the Light didn’t seem to faze him.

“I wouldn’t put it like that exactly—” Antony broke from his work unscrewing the panel as an echoing clang sounded above the ceiling of the elevator. They both looked up at the source of the sound.

“Maybe it’s somebody coming to rescue us?” Odelle speculated hopefully.

“I doubt it. We’re sitting ducks here.” Antony glanced around, seemingly abandoning the plan of jumpstarting the elevator. “We have to get out of here.”

Another clang echoed through the elevator, and the box shuddered around them. Odelle couldn’t agree more with the statement.

“Help me pry the doors open,” she instructed.

Odelle jammed her fingers into the gap between the doors, feeling several nails break in the process. As soon as she had managed to create a small gap between the doors, Antony joined her, each sliding a door in the opposite direction. They opened a gap a few inches wide before it became clear that this was a futile exercise. The elevator was completely between floors, only the very bottom of the outside door visible at the top. Even somebody as slight as Antony wouldn’t be able to climb through the gap.

“I guess it’s the escape hatch on the ceiling,” Odelle observed, even as her heart rate began to climb. A dark elevator shaft was not a place she wanted to spend time while being tracked by the Shadow, but their choices were quickly dwindling.

Antony kneeled down. “Get on my shoulders and I’ll lift you up so you can get it open.”

Odelle did as he bid, although not without accidentally shoving his entire head up her skirt in the process. After this was over, she was investing in pants for work, no matter how inconvenient it was for taking her legs off and on. Once she was seated on his shoulders, Antony stood, forcing her to clutch at the walls as she wobbled. Still, his height was sufficient to give her easy access to the hatch in the ceiling. She quickly followed the instructions on the red emergency sticker, turning a lever and pushing the flap up. Another lurch in the elevator caused her hands to shake as she worked. Finally, she was able to pull herself through the hatch onto the roof of the elevator, aided by Antony’s hands on her waist.

As Antony climbed after her, she shined her phone flashlight up into the cavernous dark, and her heart froze. Cables as thick as her thigh ran from the ceiling of the elevator and up into the shaft past where the weak beam of her flashlight could illuminate. Crawling on the cables several stories above them were twisted Shadows, hard to differentiate from the blackness of the elevator shaft, but distinguishable by their unnatural churning motions.

“Antony,” Odelle voiced in panic as she realized what the creatures were doing. A horrible metallic scraping preceded another echoing clang as the elevator shuddered again, and another fiber of the cable suspending the elevator was severed.

“Ares’s asshole,” Antony cursed, looking around. He seemed to spot what he was looking for among the cables on the walls of the elevator shaft. He stepped toward them, and Odelle saw some sparks fly in the darkness as he grabbed at them.

A high squeak escaped Odelle as the elevator dropped a few inches, not even able to draw enough breath to scream. Antony reached out and yanked Odelle towards the wall where he stood. She realized they could just squeeze onto a beam, not even a foot wide, running along the wall. She craned her neck to keep her eyes on the Shadows above, finding that some were beginning to slink down the cables towards them. Antony held a severed wire in one hand and pressed her flat against the wall with his other arm.

“Press your head back and don’t move,” he instructed as the top of the elevator right in front of her toes dropped another few inches.

Odelle couldn’t find her voice to ask why but did as she was told. As she did, she saw glowing Light out of the corner of her eyes. Antony glowed brightly for a moment. Then there was an electric sizzle and a whoosh as the elevator at her feet shot upwards, rushing by inches from her nose. The breeze from its acceleration rustled her hair, and she squeezed her eyes shut. From above came horrific screeches as the Shadows were taken for a ride. There was a clang and the shrieking suddenly cut off.

Only their panting filled the elevator shaft now, although Odelle could feel her heartbeat pulsing in her ears. After a few moments, she pried her eyes open only to immediately snap them shut again. Just an inch in front of her toes, the beam she stood on ended, giving way to a dark abyss that might have been the opening to Tartarus itself.

“Hey, it’s ok, we’re all right,” Antony said next to her, although the reassuring nature of his statement was undercut by the breathlessness of his voice.

“Right behind us is an exit door,” Antony continued. Sure enough, Odelle could feel the vertical crack under her fingers where she attempted to grip onto the wall behind her. The elevator must have dropped enough while they were climbing on top to get them even with the floor.

“I think I can get it open using one of these wires over here,” Antony continued.

He removed the arm across Odelle’s torso that had been pressing her back against the wall, and she almost whimpered at the loss of security that came with it. Instead, she bit her lip and nodded, even though he likely couldn’t see her.

There was a rustling of movement and another, smaller flash of Light. For one horrible moment, Odelle thought she was going to fall as the door behind her started to slide. Then she stepped backward through it, nearly avoiding tipping over. She finally filled her aching lungs, having been holding her breath almost since she exited the elevator.

Antony stepped back with her into a bland office hallway. Dull commercial multicolor carpet and humming florescent lights jarred their senses, completely at odds with the shadowy tunnel where they had nearly met their death. The predictable monotony of a corporate workplace had a strangely calming effect on Odelle, as if the nightmare of a few seconds earlier had to have been a dream she’d had after falling asleep at her desk. As she gained her bearings, a plaque next to the elevator caught her eye.

“We’re on the 97th floor. We can climb to the top from here,” she explained, already looking for the stairwell.

They found it around the corner and pushed in, dashing up the stairs as fast as they could. It turned out all the half-marathon training Odelle had done wasn’t in vain after all. Still, they both paused at the landing of the one hundred and eighth floor, hands on their knees as they caught their breath. Her heart rate hadn’t returned to normal from their encounter in the elevator before they started climbing, and now it made its displeasure known by trying to escape from her ribcage.