Page 65 of Serpent and Shadow

But that was too much.

I jerked myself backwards, throwing myself away from that light, away from that bulging eye and the dancing red flames––

––and I fell abruptly through the stone wall a second time.

Unlike the first time, I didn’t fall sideways.

Or really, maybe I did, but the instant I passed through that shockingly bright light, the world tilted violently around me.

Vertigo hit as every part of my physical body lurched with the swivel of the planet’s orientation change. I’d been moving one way, with one set of rules, when abruptly, that planet disappeared and reappeared somewhere else.

I let out a terrified shriek as gravity shifted with it.

For a long-feeling increment of time, I hung in silence, trying to will myself to move the way I had been when I first stumbled through the stone.

Then, everything righted itself, and I found myself plummeting backwards.

Everything after that happened extremely fast.

I glimpsed a stone arch as I passed through it.

Sunlight flashed in my eyes, blinding me.

Then I was just falling, watching a shockingly high, arched ceiling recede as I fell away from it. I flailed my arms and legs, screaming, trying to turn myself around so I could see where I was falling. I only managed to get sideways in time to see an ocean of dark fabric swim rapidly into sight. I fought to make a mudra with my hand, to build a shield, but everything happened too fast, and I was only halfway through when I crashed into it.

I let out a pained cry, landing on my hip and shoulder.

For a bare second, I was suspended in the dark cloth.

Then a loud ripping sound filled my ears, and I shrieked again.

I fell through the hole in the thin covering, despite my desperate scrabbling for the wooden posts that held the fabric in a near net. In the process I only managed to rip a longer, more ragged hole.

I cried out again, mostly in delayed shock, because I had a lot less further to fall.

Even so, again maybe in reflex, I fought to finish another spell, to slow my fall, or maybe just to make sure it was soft enough not to hurt.

I landed before I could get that one finished, too.

Luckily, as I said, it was a much shorter distance to fall. More lucky still, I landed on something wide, flat, slightly bouncy, and incredibly soft. The dark green duvet felt like landing on a pile of feathers.

Even so, I bounced when I landed, getting air the first time.

I landed more gently the second time, and could have cried out in pure relief when my head fell back on something unbelievably soft.

I didn’t cry out, though.

I didn’t make a sound.

I was too shocked to move or think for what must have been a few seconds.

Adrenaline pumped insanely fast through my blood, making it impossible even to catch my breath. My hip hurt. My tongue and cheek hurt, and I guessed I’d bit both on my way down from the ceiling, or when I first collided with the back of that wardrobe, or at some point as I stumbled through one of the stone walls.

I was still breathing too hard, and seeing spots.

When I closed my eyes, I saw that bulging eye in the darkness behind my closed lids, and the sharp red light around it.

But it wasn’t dark here.