Chương 9: Something Worth Breaking

I maintained a perfectly nonchalant demeanor as we passed through the iron gate. Adrian did not. His sword was already drawn, its blade angled low while his attention moved from the shattered windows to the sagging roofline and then across the courtyard walls. Every few steps, his gaze snapped toward another shadow, broken statue, or patch of dead ivy crawling over the cracked stone like black veins. Celeste walked beside him with a wand raised in her right hand.

The small thing was made from pale wood, with silver bands wrapped around its handle. It was hardly intimidating, but the air surrounding it shimmered as she moved, faint threads of magic spreading from its tip like invisible spider silk.

"Anything?" Adrian asked. Celeste frowned.

"Everything."

"That is not helpful."

"It was not intended to be comforting." I stepped over a piece of broken stone and surveyed the courtyard. Black Hollow House looked even worse up close. Dark timber, gray stone, and shattered windows rose in crooked tiers above us, while sections of the roof sagged and the chimneys leaned like broken fingers. Dead vines crawled over the walls and disappeared through cracks in the upper floors, as though the forest had tried to strangle the manor and failed. The courtyard must have once been impressive.

Now, the fountain at its center stood dry and cracked, its basin filled with leaves, scattered bones, and rainwater turned black with rot. Statues lined the path leading toward the entrance, though most were missing faces, limbs, or entire heads. Weeds had swallowed much of the gravel beneath our feet. What a delightful place. I could sense things moving around us. I chose not to mention it.

Celeste was already concentrating fiercely through her little wand, while Adrian looked prepared to stab the weather if it startled her. There was no need to disrupt their focus by announcing that I could feel nearly half the courtyard twitching against my senses. Skeletons waited behind the statues. Seven of them… No, eight. Their bones scraped softly as they shifted, carrying rusted axes and old swords in skeletal hands.

Above the roofline, elongated shapes drifted through the gray sky, their bodies stretched into something resembling fleshless shadows wrapped in torn cloth. They might have been aberrations, ghosts, or perhaps flying curtains nursing personal grudges. I would learn the answer once they attempted to kill me. Violence had quickly become my preferred educational method.

"Helena," Celeste murmured.

"I know." The first skeleton emerged from behind a headless statue, followed by another and then six more. Their skulls turned toward us in perfect silence. Adrian moved first. He crossed the courtyard with practiced speed, his sword flashing through a clean arc that sent the nearest skeleton's head flying from its spine. The skull struck the fountain and shattered. Adrian pivoted, reversed his grip, and drove the blade through the ribs of a second one.

It collapsed into a pile of bones, only for the scattered pieces to begin trembling two seconds later.

"How irritating." The bones dragged themselves across the gravel and started fitting back together. Celeste flicked her wand.

"Purifying fire." A ring of pale-blue flame erupted around the remains. The skeleton rattled violently before falling still as the fire consumed whatever unpleasant thread had been holding it together.

"Useful," I admitted. Celeste smiled without taking her eyes off the undead.

"I try." Three more skeletons rushed toward us. I raised my hand as violet light sparked across my fingertips.

"Helena, wait," Celeste called sharply. I paused.

"What?"

"If your magic is as destructive as it feels, avoid striking the foundation stones or the manor itself unless absolutely necessary. The entire structure is unstable." I looked at the house, then the approaching skeletons, and finally at her.

"You're asking me to be delicate?"

"I'm begging you to be precise."

"How annoying." Still, I adjusted. Rather than releasing a blast, I allowed the violet glow to curl around my fingers like claws. The nearest skeleton swung its rusted axe. I caught the wooden haft in one hand, and the material immediately turned gray, then black, before crumbling into dust. The ruin spread into the axe head, devouring the corroded metal until it flaked apart between us. The skeleton lowered its eyeless skull toward its empty hands, seemingly confused by their disappearance.

I drove my fist through its head, and a single pulse of violet light reduced the creature to powder.

"Oh," Celeste breathed. Adrian cut down another skeleton and glanced toward me.

"Can you do that to the others?"

"I can try."

"Try carefully," he insisted.

"Everyone keeps telling me that." The courtyard erupted into motion. Adrian fought like a man who had transformed discipline into instinct. Every movement served a purpose. He never wasted a step, showed off, or shouted any of the nonsense warriors in taverns claimed to yell during battle. He shattered knees, severed arms, created openings, and ensured Celeste always had room to cast. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Celeste proved even more impressive than I had expected. Pale fire burned the magic from undead bones, while a gust of wind hurled two skeletons backward before they could flank Adrian. Ice spread across the fountain and trapped another creature against its base long enough for her to trace a glowing sigil through the air. She snapped her fingers, and the skeleton crumbled. Then the creatures above us descended. One dropped from the sky with a sound like wet cloth being torn apart.

It possessed too many arms, although some might have been wings. I decided the distinction was unimportant. It lunged at Celeste. Adrian moved to intercept, but I reached it first. My hand closed around what might have been its throat before I slammed the creature into the courtyard stones. Its body rippled beneath my grip, made from gray flesh, clinging shadows, and rows of hollow teeth that clicked together without rhythm.

Violet ruin flared across my palm, and the aberration shrieked as its body warped like candle wax beneath invisible heat before bursting into black mist. The cloud scattered through the air and vanished without touching the ground. I examined my hand.

"Behind you!" Celeste shouted. I ducked as another aberration swept over my head, its claws cutting through the space my face had occupied a moment earlier. Adrian's sword passed through its body like smoke. Celeste answered with a bolt of lightning. That proved far more effective. The creature convulsed in the air, and I leapt upward. My fingers closed around a dangling, crooked limb that might generously have been called an ankle. I dragged the creature down and drove my ruin-covered hand through its chest.

It came apart screaming. By the time the courtyard fell silent, cracks had spread across the fountain, the gravel lay torn and scattered, and Adrian's boots were coated in bone dust. I looked around at the destruction.

"Well, fun place." Adrian stared at me. Celeste released a small laugh, though it sounded more nervous than amused. We approached the entrance. The front door was far taller than any door reasonably needed to be. Dead vines, worn faces, and unfamiliar symbols had been carved into the swollen wood. Despite its age and the surrounding moisture, it opened easily when Adrian pressed against it. Far too easily… The entrance hall beyond smelled of mold, rot, and magic left undisturbed for far too long.

A grand staircase rose ahead of us before curving into shadow. Open doorways waited on both sides of the hall, while torn portraits watched from the walls with their painted eyes scratched away. Overhead, a chandelier hung crookedly from the ceiling, half its candles burning with blue flames despite no visible hand having lit them. Celeste lifted her wand. The glow at its tip flickered.

"The source lies below us."

"Then we go down."

"There should be a cellar entrance or a staircase used by the servants," Adrian replied.

"We clear the lower floor first."

"Must we?" I sighed, resisting the increasingly reasonable urge to reduce the entire manor to rubble.

"Yes."

"Fine." We moved through the lower floor one room at a time, forcing open each rotting door along the way. The dining room contained skeletons seated around a table prepared for a feast that had turned to dust centuries earlier. They rose together when we entered. Adrian destroyed the first three with his sword, and Celeste's purifying fire reduced the remainder to ash. The kitchen had ghouls hiding inside the cupboards. One dropped from the ceiling and landed on Adrian's back.

I seized it by the spine and tore it away before Celeste could cast. Its blood smelled rancid enough that tasting it never crossed my mind. The library was worse. Books whispered as we passed, and one snapped at my hand when I reached toward it. Celeste sealed three shelves behind a barrier of spinning wind while Adrian fought two corpse hounds beneath a reading table. A skeletal hand attempted to crawl across the floor, so I crushed it beneath my boot.

The ballroom opened into a hallway that could not possibly have existed. The manor was rearranging itself. I could feel it happening as we moved. Walls shifted behind us, doors breathed open and closed, and staircases appeared to change their minds. The house was not truly alive, but some intention lingered within it. It felt like a host attempting to bore its guests to death before murdering them properly. Eventually, we found the stairs leading below. Or what remained of them.

They waited behind a narrow door near the kitchen, descending only six steps before vanishing beneath collapsed stone, broken beams, and tightly packed earth. The passage had been completely sealed. Adrian crouched near the blockage and studied it.

"There is no way through." I stepped forward and lifted my hand. Celeste grabbed my wrist. My gaze dropped to her fingers before rising slowly to her face. She released me at once.

"My apologies, but destroying that blockage could bring down the entire wing." Celeste commented with a surprisingly serious face.

"I could be careful."

"No," Adrian exclaimed.

"You don't know that."

"I know it with remarkable certainty." I sighed, feeling slightly annoyed at this man who wouldn't allow me to have any fun. Adrian rose from beside the rubble.

"There may be another route."

"Where?" Celeste looked toward the ceiling. The wood above us creaked. A faint glow emerged from her wand, bending upward toward the second floor. I followed its direction.

"You cannot be serious."

"The magic travels upward before descending," she explained. I looked at her, then at the collapsed stairs, and finally toward the ceiling again.

"What a stupid house." Adrian briefly sheathed his sword so he could adjust the strap of his pack.

"To go down, we must first go up."

"Wonderful. A maze with a sense of humor." We returned to the grand staircase. It groaned beneath our combined weight as we climbed. Halfway up, the steps began stretching farther than they should have. I noticed first, followed shortly by Adrian. Celeste realized what was happening when the polished banister beneath her hand aged into rotten, splintering wood within a single breath. She jerked her hand away.

"Do not touch the walls."

"I was not planning to caress the house."

"You touched the skull in the library."

"It was looking at me."

"It did not have eyes."

"That made it worse." Adrian made a sound that might have been a laugh. Celeste smiled. The second floor greeted us with a hallway lined by cracked mirrors. Wonderful… brings back bad memories. My evening had clearly suffered from a tragic shortage of mirrors. Each one reflected us incorrectly. In one, Adrian walked alone with blood covering his sword and Celeste nowhere in sight. Another showed Celeste with hollow eyes and a blackened wedding ring encircling her finger.

My reflection had silver-white hair, violet eyes, and a crown made from bone resting upon its head. I stopped walking. The reflection smiled before I did. My fingers twitched.

"Do not look for too long," Celeste warned softly. I tore my gaze away.

"I had no intention of doing so." The hallway led through bedrooms, sitting rooms, a nursery filled with broken cradles, and a music room where invisible fingers played a piano without strings. Undead found us along the way. Crawling creatures assembled from mismatched bones spilled from beneath furniture, pale hands pushed through the walls, and a woman-shaped shadow attempted to wind itself around Adrian's throat. Celeste burned it away with light so bright that I bared my teeth.

"Sorry." I blinked the spots from my vision.

"Warn me before creating the sun indoors."

"Noted." At last, we discovered another staircase. It was neither grand nor intended for servants. Instead, it had been hidden behind the portrait of a woman whose face had been disfigured. Adrian discovered the seam running along the wall. Celeste whispered a word, and the painting swung outward to reveal a narrow staircase spiraling into stale darkness. The air rising from below carried the scents of wet stone, grave soil, and something sickeningly sweet. Celeste's wand dimmed.

Adrian tightened his grip around his sword. I smiled.

"There it is." We descended. The staircase extended far deeper than the house should have allowed. It carried us past the first floor, beyond any reasonable cellar, and into a cold that sharpened with every step. The surrounding walls changed from wood to stone, then from stone to something black and slick. When my fingers brushed against it, the material pulsed faintly beneath my touch. Eventually, the stairs opened into an enormous underground chamber.

Hundreds of candles burned throughout the cavern, each producing a sickly green flame. Bones hung from the ceiling inside cages and woven charms, while roots crawled across the walls like swollen veins. They twisted around skulls, rusted chains, and jars filled with cloudy liquid. Overlapping ritual circles covered the stone floor, their carved lines stained so dark they were nearly black. At the center of the tangled design waited a hunched figure that might once have passed for a woman? No. A witch.

"Disgusting" was the first word that entered my mind. She was hunched and unnaturally long-limbed, wrapped in filthy layers of cloth that dragged behind her like discarded skin. Her fingers were thin and crooked, with yellow nails curling into claws. Greenish flesh sagged from her bones, while clusters of warts covered her cheeks and chin. A hooked nose protruded from her face, twitching as though she had smelled us long before seeing us. Stringy black hair clung to her scalp in uneven patches.

When she turned, milky-white eyes settled upon us. Her mouth stretched into a smile filled with brown, rotting teeth.

"Well," she rasped, her wet voice filled with delight, "fresh little things have found their way into my cellar." Celeste raised her wand. Adrian stepped between her and the witch. I surveyed the bones, green flames, and stained circles before returning my attention to the creature waiting at their center. A slow grin spread across my face.

"Finally," I murmured.

"Something worth breaking."