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Her betrayal struck deep. I shouldn’t have trusted her.
Then she pulled a small glass vile out from her belt and poured my blood into it with careful diligence. She capped it and put it down on the floor while she reached around her neck and pulled a chain free from her shirt. There were two other vials just like the one with my blood. My hand stung as she threaded my blood onto the chain with the others before she clasped it back around her throat.
I grappled with the cruel reality of being stuck in my own paralyzed shell, unable to do anything to fight back against my enemy. This was a waking nightmare, and all I wanted was to break free. Mais shifted around me, and the hair on the back of my neck rose with alarm.
What was her plan?
I watched as much as I was able as she pushed her arms underneath me. With inhuman strength, she lifted me off the ground and carried me out of the room. My mind raced, and I wanted nothing more than to force my body to respond. I tried again and again just to move my fingers and toes, but nothing happened.
“You’re probably wondering who I am while you lie there trapped in a waking sleep,” she chuckled, as if amusing herself.
If I had control of my arms, I would have punched her square in the nose.
“I am not of this realm. I serve the Dark King. As you can guess, I’m not human either. I’m a changeling. It was easy to take the face of an elf, especially one long dead. Everyone trusts a pretty face, and you weren’t any different.”
She stared down at me with an evil grin, her eyes glimmering with ominous intent. How had I not seen any sign of her treachery before this? Grinning wider, she glared down at me as her eyes flickered an otherworldly purple. Her pupils grew much larger, rimmed by thick lined irises that shimmered with a violet, ghostly hue. I swallowed hard, deeply troubled by this sudden turn in events.
“The Dark King’s sorcerer was right. A spelled apple was key to capturing one of you. You’re much more amenable this way,” she continued. She descended deep down the winding road of the keep, where even the light of the rising sun could not reach. Internally, I struggled, trying to break free and forever entombed in my waking nightmare.
At the end of the street was an entrance to a dark cave. She carried me inside, and I soon realized that this place was the burial ground of several powerful mages from eons past. Great statues were erected in their honor, painted with vibrant colors, and preserved in the dank shelter of the deep cave. I screamed inwardly with fury as she strode deeper and deeper, until at long last, she reached a massive cavern. It was a mystical place. I could feel it deep within my bones.
In the middle of the cavern was a steaming pool warming with light green glowing lights that swam by in flashes. In the center of the pool was a curving rock slope. At first, the lights reminded me of eels swimming through the water, but upon closer inspection, I realized that they were not. Instinctually, I knew I was seeing the personification of magic right before my eyes. This place hummed with it.
She strode up to the top and pulled another vile out of her pocket. This one wasn’t empty. The inner contents swirled like hazy purple clouds. At the sight of it, my stomach sunk, and my blood ran cold.
Without a word, she threw it against the ground, shattering the glass with ease and releasing the cloudy contents into the air. With a loud pop, the misty haze expanded and swirled outwards in a circle, faster and faster until a blurry violet-hued sphere appeared. In the following seconds, the magic glitched until it eventually stabilized to showcase a whole other world. She’d created a portal between Terraheim and Helheim.
This was bad.
A feeling of terror brewed deep inside me, and had I the chance, I would have run straight out of the cavern screaming.
A massive mountain range lurked in shadow, rimmed with a sinister, dark purple glow. A great castle rose ominously from the desolate landscape, surrounded by nothing but ash and dust. Constructed from dark grey rock, its towering spires pierced the brooding sky, casting long shadows that seemed to devour the surrounding barren lands. The fortress loomed with a sense of foreboding, its angular architecture evoking a formidable presence that sent chills down my spine.
The castle’s massive stone walls bore the scars of battle and decay. Gargoyles perched upon the ramparts, their stony, twisted gazes leering down upon unsuspecting intruders. At the heart of the fortress, a central tower reached towards the heavens, its pinnacle lost in the dreary gloom. Jagged spires adorned its surrounding towers, resembling the gnarled fingers of a skeleton reaching up into the sky.
Mais stepped forward, leaping off the rocky slope and straight into the portal. I screamed on the inside, terrified as my world turned inside out. My sense of gravity tilted as wild, vicious wind buffeted my body, dragging me up into the air away from the ground as if I was caught up in the whirling winds of a tornado. The magic was a veiled haze all around me until her feet landed on the ground with a hard jolt.
She’d taken me straight to the gates of the fortress of Helheim.
With purpose, she strode through the front doors of the castle, and then, as if her steps were lighter, she descended into the pit of it with me in her arms. The elvish façade that had kept her identity hidden faded away, leaving the face of a frightening demon in its place. One side of her face, from her temple to her jawline, was burned away in a savage looking scar. The edges were jagged and raised. Much of the flesh of the right side of her face had been destroyed, revealing the sinewy threads beneath. The eye on the right side of her face burned a brighter purple than the other. What remained of her marred flesh had taken on an ashen hue. Much of the right side of her lips had been destroyed, showing off her pointed, catlike teeth.
She was a monster.
Once we arrived at the dank dungeons beneath the castle, Mais deposited me on a cold stone bed before she looked down at me with a vicious expression of victory.
“My master is not ready for you. You’re going to have to wait to meet him. He’s going to be especially pleased with a prize like you,” she smirked maliciously. She slammed the door shut and locked it with a skeleton key. I watched her tuck it away in her pocket before she turned around and strode up the stairs, her steps light.
I was left in woeful silence for a blissful few seconds before the tortured screams of the damned started. There was no end to them, and my eyes watered.
A single tear raced down my cheek.
What was to become of me?
* * *
Time seemed to stretch on for an eternity as I lay there in the cold, dark dungeons of Helheim. It could have been minutes, hours, or even days that I listened to the agonized cries of the forsaken souls of this land. Sometimes I could make out words and even a few occasional full sentences. Most of the time, though, the screams just revealed how much pain was being meted out in this terrible place.
It was impossible to tune out.
