as a pained expression swept over my face. I just couldn’t get the memory of it out of my head. I kept seeing my hand reaching out to her, my fingertips blurring as her dead white eyes came in to focus. All that blood, soaking up the white tips of her hair and that beauty shining through, even in the face of death.
I gritted my teeth and tapped the edge of my blade on the stone walls of the cell block a few times. The echoing sound soothed my nerves, telling me I could do this.
I would do this.
I straightened my frame along with my resolve and continued through the dimly lit space that I could only barely see from the few torches that were lit. It seemed Harpies had far better eyesight than humans did.
I continued to walk around in what seemed like a maze with no purpose until I came to a broken set of stairs that finally led above and out of this madness. The staircase was made of wood with a lot of the steps either rotten or missing completely. This then meant that when my foot went through one, I screamed anyway despite not being surprised. Thankfully, it was a sound that didn’t travel far, or if it did, then no one had been around to hear it.
I carefully pulled my foot up and out of the hole, gripping on to whatever wood I could find that looked strong enough to hold my weight. Doing all this while trying not to lose my weapon in the process. Once back on my feet, I continued up the stairs with more determination and admittedly, more care. Damn, but now was not the time to be clumsy and well, looking down the centre of the spiral staircase, I knew it was a long way to the bottom. Not only that but falling through one of the treads would no doubt mean falling through them all. Gods, by the sounds this wood was making I felt as if I were walking over thin ice on a frozen lake.
The moment the staircase started to narrow further I knew that I must have been climbing some sort of tower and now it wasn’t just the steps that had been left to ruin. But then again, what did Harpies need with steps?
“Duh, Fae,” I muttered to myself, already out of breath and in need of about six pints of water! Well, at the very least I had healed from my injuries, ones sustained from when I was knocked out and kicked in the ribs…thank you Harpy bitch but more sincerely, thank you Lucius for your magical blood.
“Oh Gods,” I hissed, pausing to lean against the stone wall, covering my mouth with my hands. Shamefully, I hadn’t even thought of Lucius until now. Of course, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been a little preoccupied, what with killing things and dissecting them for slightly insane and sinister reasons. Which also meant that I hadn’t thought of the shit storm that was going to come from his wrath at finding me missing yet again! Fuck, but I was going to find myself locked up for good this time! First the McBain brothers and now fucking Harpies…I mean what the Hell was wrong with me! Was I seriously a magnet for this shit, talk about a chip off the old block…thanks Mum, I thought wryly, being aware of only some of the times she managed to get herself kidnapped and needed her ass saving.
“You’re in Hell, that’s what, idiot!” I scorned myself, and speaking of which,
“Time to get this shit over with!” I said with a snarl of my own whilst looking up to realise I was near the top as I could see more natural rays of light reflecting off the stone. Of course, I soon discovered why when I reached the last few steps. The tower looked as if a giant boulder had catapulted through the air and had taken it out. In fact, the second I breached the crumbling stone and looked out to the view in front of me, I realised it wasn’t just the tower.
“It’s the whole castle,” I muttered in awe as I took it all in. To be honest, all that was left of the place were crumbling battlements and towers surrounding a bailey that was filled with broken stone from the castle and thick clusters of soul weed. I couldn’t tell if the castle had been attacked