"What do we need to do, then?" Octavia finally asked.

Madrigal's eyes flickered to Viola. "I need Viola to let us get to the other side of the ice."

The Soulful Maestra winced. "You don't know if there's something immediately on the other side."

"If there was, I think it would've gone off when you first made the wall. We don't need to go that far. We just need to stand right on the other side."

It still wasn't enough to fully assuage Viola's fears, if the look on her face was any indication. Still, she sighed. With several quick breaths into Silver Brevada, so, too, came subtle cracks in her ice that Octavia had to squint to observe. Crawling in subtly from both the left and right expanses of her wide glacier, they fanned out across the edges of the barrier. Delicate notes left them splintering into ever more deltas with soft, nearly inaudible crunches. It never inched inwards further than the absolute outskirts, localized only to two narrow widths of crystal.

Viola trilled. They shattered. A rain of precise, clean-cut crystal splashed down onto the marble below, almost beautiful in the way it graced what intact flooring remained.

What that left the Maestras with was two equally-narrow gaps, just barely sizable enough to squeeze past on either side. Madrigal took the left. Octavia took the right, her face pressed nearly flat against the chilling ice as she sidestepped her way through. There was a comfort that came with being so close to Viola's protective ice. She lost that comfort the moment she came out the other side. Not for a moment did she part with what was left, physically or otherwise. Clinging did little for her nerves.

"Please, for the love of God, be careful!" she heard Viola cry. "You better come back in one piece, do you hear me? Both of you!"

"It's okay, Viola," she heard Madrigal call back. "The Magical Madrigal will protect the Ambassador with everything she's got. I won't fail."

"You need to be safe, too, you know!"

"I will."

"What about you guys?" Octavia asked loudly, worry pooling in every word.

"We'll be fine," she heard of Josiah. "We'll wait. If something happens, we can protect ourselves. It's…not safe for us to move around too much right now. We'll be okay here, I promise."

It wasn't a reassuring answer. It was still an answer, regardless. Putting faith in his words was a struggle, for how she added a new knot to the collection in her stomach every second. It was beginning to hurt.

Madrigal offered Octavia a smile once more, her own back pressed flat against Viola's ice. "Promise you'll trust me, okay?"

Octavia gulped. She nodded, Stradivaria nestled comfortably on her shoulder.

"You won't need Stradivaria. It's easier if you just hold him like normal."

Octavia raised an eyebrow. "I…what's your plan, exactly?"

"Take a deep breath."

Confused, she obliged. It had never exactly helped her before.

In turn, Madrigal took one herself. Octavia watched as she raised Lyra's Repose into position, her fingers settling calmly upon each string with little hesitation.

"Don't move for a minute," the Maestra murmured.

Octavia nodded, growing more anxious by the second. Either immune to her distress or overwhelmingly aware, the Spirited Maestra played softly and without remorse. Slow plucks at vibrating copper gave way to a gentle breeze that ruffled the hem of Octavia's skirt. Madrigal's breathing was steady, evenly-paced as her movements gradually quickened. Note by note, the speeding song born of her strumming drifted through the air in time with a rippling gust.

What had seconds ago been a delicate, cooling wind now intensified rapidly into a gushing storm that whipped against the back of Octavia's legs--and her back, overall. Her efforts to remain flat against Viola's icy shield were largely faltering, the tempest that rushed past her ears stinging her calves with stray bits of marble. Her braids, just as well, were assailed by the ruthless gale, spurred harshly forwards as they pulled against the remainder of her hair.

She braced her boots against the shattered floor, bending her knees and digging her heels in as she battled to keep from tumbling in full. For as lovely as Madrigal's fierce, crystalline ballad was, her wind never failed to rattle Octavia.

When she managed to turn her head, fighting the force of the storm against her bare skin, Madrigal at her side was encountering resistance even to her own song. She played on unhindered, each masterful pluck and strum precise and immaculate all the same. It still didn't keep her, too, rooted firmly, and she herself was forced to brace. Her sandals slid against the marble surface underfoot, dangerously smooth. Even so, she successfully fought to keep still, her curls viciously compromised by the gale that blasted them in turn.

They stood fast in the eye of a little storm, nestled firmly against their backs. Battling to remain steady was growing ever more difficult, for how each gust seemed to stream yet quicker. Octavia could've sworn she heard Madrigal grunting with effort, slender fingers moving so swiftly over Lyra's strings that she wondered if they'd outright snap. It was all she could do to blink, her eyes buffeted by wind that had even managed to blight her face from behind.

"Promise that you trust me!" she heard Madrigal cry above the tempest, her song never ceasing.

It took everything Octavia had to physically nod. "I trust you!"

Madrigal fixed her eyes squarely ahead, gazing down the lengthy expanse of open corridor that awaited. "We're gonna run!"

Octavia's eyes pooled with terror. "What?"

"You're already fast!" she called above her gales once more. "You're gonna go even faster than that! We're gonna go together!"

"Are you sure?" Octavia cried.

A plan to disperse the explosives had been her first guess, either individually or via some chain reaction. A plan to find an alternate route was equally as plausible. She had not, under any circumstance, anticipated a plan that involved sprinting through the literal minefield. As to exactly how many eager explosives awaited her underfoot, she didn't want to know. For as much trust as she'd granted Madrigal, Octavia was beginning to regret her decision.

"Hold onto Stradivaria and don't stop running! Run as fast as you can and don't look back! I'll keep up with you, no matter what, so trust me!"

"Madrigal!" Octavia cried simply, offering the girl her own horrified gaze.

She caught it. It meant nothing. At the very least, all it warranted in return was the same soft smile as always. "You promised you'd trust me!"

Octavia hesitated, gripping either portion of Stradivaria harshly enough to hurt her hands. Whether or not she was lying was debatable. "I-I…I'll trust you! I trust you!"

Madrigal beamed. "Remember, don't look back! No matter what, keep running!"

Octavia nodded, unable to still her heart as it pounded desperately against the walls of her chest. "Okay!"

With her fingers still flying, Madrigal's eyes narrowed. The Spirited girl winced somewhat as she fought to grow her soft song ever louder. The force of the gale at Octavia's back was becoming outright painful, the tiny vortexes of marble smacking into the back of her legs surely leaving welts. "Ready?"

No, she wasn't. The question was deranged. Still, of this alone, she was perfect. It was natural and thoughtless, on a physical level. Stradivaria in hand meant little, and her legs would fight where her light could not. Octavia lowered her body close to the floor, exhaling sharply as she, too, glared down the other end of the far-too-long corridor. It was at least twenty straight seconds of sprinting, at her speed. For what lay underfoot, that much was an eternity.

Harper was faster. Josiah could keep up. Viola's athletic abilities were almost non-existent, and Renato's were of a different flavor entirely. Octavia was still unsure how fast he actually ran. Madrigal, then, was a mystery. She'd never considered the need to crack it. It left prayer.

Her fear was undeniable, not localized to her own well-being by any means. Still, "trust" was a heavy word, and she'd been throwing it around quite a bit lately. She had to try.

Against her best judgment, with every fiber of her being pleading for the opposite, Octavia nodded. "Ready!"

Madrigal counted her down. Every number was torture. Three was regret. Two was fear. One was wondering what she was even doing here. Zero was the fastest she'd ever run in her entire life.

With her eyes not daring to leave the sanctity of the furthest wall, the pounding of her boots against the slick marble below was nearly inaudible above the roar of the tempest that spurned her onwards. Her propulsion was explosive in its own right, blasting her forth with such ferocity that her already-notable running speed was perhaps all that kept her on her feet. She didn't run to escape the wind. Instead, she fell in sync with it, welcoming the relentless rush of the storm pressing with devastating force against her back.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Despite her fixation, Octavia could hardly see her goal, her eyes watering from the sheer swiftness with which she'd been blessed. She couldn't turn her head. She couldn't speak. She could barely breathe, lest her unbelievable forward momentum steal the air from her lungs. She could only run, the equally-ferocious and endless song of a determined harp still semi-audible even now. Somewhere at her side, a bit less than parallel, Octavia knew another Maestra was there.

It was muted somewhat by the other sounds she'd expected, contrasting starkly with swift winds and harsh notes. She'd been completely and utterly correct in her assumptions regarding the peppering of ever more explosives underneath. The way by which they took deadly turns assaulting her from below was horrifying. If she were to count the number by sounds alone, it would take her too long to conclude. The term "minefield" had been startlingly accurate. It was sheer luck, or perhaps skill she wasn't intended to possess, that kept Octavia's limbs attached and her life intact as she passed them over with heavy steps.

In less than the time it took to blink, hardly a temporal distance between the moment she lifted her foot from the marble, they'd erupted in full. In her immediate wake, massive chunks of yet more swirling marble hurtled upwards towards the ceiling in every direction. The blazing, superheated shockwaves stung her ankles, even blasted by Madrigal's unwavering gale as they already were.

Again and again the process repeated. Every boom of each localized burst that threatened her life missed her by literal inches, newly-born pebbles of flooring splashing against her calves. She never looked back, pained as she was. To stop was to die. To hesitate was to die. If she could feel the wind that shot her down the corridor, Madrigal was surely at her side.

Octavia didn't bother counting the distance to the other side by time. She still at least clung to the vague estimate she'd thrown together previously. Where she'd once assumed twenty seconds' worth of sprinting, she instead was content to halve her guess. The corner turn that rapidly approached, thick masonry that abruptly terminated her momentum, veered to the left in a manner that she dreaded.

The moment her steps followed suit, the two Maestras would be blinded as to what followed. There was a non-zero chance that whatever awaited could kill her. Her current and exceedingly deadly situation was enough of an indicator. If nothing else, she opted to adhere to Madrigal's philosophy to the bitter end. There was nothing to do but run. She could only hope that Madrigal came to the same decision, ultimately. Where the floor exploded below her, Octavia's heart threatened to explode within.

Mere feet from the wall itself, she skidded, her boots scraping hard enough against the marble to elicit a terrible squeak. When Madrigal's wind abruptly shifted its current, following her decision as it continued to assault her back, it was enough to confirm the expectation of Octavia's choice. She counted her blessings on every star in the sky that, in the moment of her turning momentum, her tiny slowdown hadn't ended with one less foot attached to her body.

There was no room for reprieve, regardless. She'd have to drink in what was before her while in the process of tackling it blindly. The pursuing explosions, invisible as they were, trailed in the wake of her dash, clawing at the threads of her life each time her soles scraped the floor.

It was just as bright, more of the same monotonous white that lured her deeper into the depths of SIAR with every frantic step. It terminated, eventually. Octavia initially believed it to be a dead end, a radiant wall of silver sparkling beneath the light that graced the lengthy corridor. It rapidly approached. It was no wall. It was solid, it was sealed, it was iron, and--if looks were anything to go by--it was fortified.

It was inescapable, and she was barreling towards it as fast as her unstoppable sprint could carry her. Octavia's eyes widened in utter terror. Her speed left no time to raise Stradivaria, let alone channel her light in a desperate attempt to break through. She could hardly move her arms as it was, the storm still bursting at her back much as death still burst at her feet. Was she still supposed to be running?

"Take my hands!" she heard distantly, breathlessly.

For you and you alone.

The song that her ears had clung to so desperately in the midst of her race through Hell had shifted in an instant. It was just as quick and just as unbending, the tempest that roared forth from each note still dominating in every way. Still, there was something more that Octavia initially couldn't place. There was a sharper tone. With it came a more vicious lick to every pluck and ping that tinged the stirring air.

Sonorous as it was, the ballad skirted the threshold of audible pain as her breath was nearly sucked from her lungs. Octavia was cutting it dangerously close, seconds from a full and lethal collision with the steel barrier that awaited her ahead. She battled to resist the overpowering urge to squeeze her eyes shut. It was inevitable.

She would've been startled by the unfathomably-sudden gust crashing into the iron before her, had she not been spurned forth too fast to muster a recoil. It crunched and creaked beneath the pressure of the blast, a gushing gale that pushed forever without mercy. The groaning steel bent, budged, and folded, firm and yet not all at once.

She'd expected the effort of channeling such fearsome winds to leave Madrigal crying out high above the cacophony of chaos. Instead, Octavia found only human silence in the face of metallic punishment. It didn't erupt, nor did it crumple in full. It wasn't blasted inwards, nor was it sucked outwards. The gaps that it did leave were enough, peeled downwards from the threshold haphazardly. It went low. One reasonably-high jump would be enough to clear what remained below her. It was possible.

Octavia barely had time to contemplate the idea. She was upon the metal seconds later, her body moving before her thoughts could. She didn't jump so much as she did dive, her feet slipping out from beneath her at the last possible second as she tumbled forwards. With Stradivaria in hand, her balance was nonexistent. She bashed one knee hard against what was left of the iron door on the way down. Octavia cried out in pain as she rolled several times over along the floor, the impact against the hard surface unkind both to her limbs and to a violin driven into soft skin. She groaned.

It took her a moment to process the absence of sound--freedom from explosions, freedom from gusts attacking her ears, and freedom from the song that had guided her way. The latter was a source of panic. She scrambled to her feet, her position irrelevant in the face of isolation.

"Where are you?" Octavia cried.

"I'm here," she heard softly.

Octavia's neck ached from the speed at which she snapped her head behind her. She breathed an immense sigh of relief at the well-intact buns, curls, and gentle smile that endured at her back. Madrigal, too, rose from the swirling marble, somewhat grayed beneath the dimmer lighting. "I'm with you."

Adrenaline poisoned Octavia's blood in excess, and her heart raced in place of herself. Regardless, she found at least one small victory in the form of Madrigal's safety. For that, there was warmth. The weakest traces of a smile teased the corners of her lips.

"Where are we?" Madrigal murmured.

Octavia had been too distracted by their surprising survival to actually consider the question. The northwestern wing was most definitely not the storage unit. Of that, she was certain. The door here had been significantly fortified, by comparison. For what reason, she was initially unsure. It was, as she'd observed, dimmer, the lights overhead providing far more pitiful illumination than the onslaught of luminescence in the corridor. The room itself contrasted sharply with the emptiness of the hallway, filled nearly to the brim with its own flavor of belongings instead.

She blinked at the sight of racks, pedestals, shelves, cases, and every conceivable method of storage once again localized to one room. They were gathered in such excess that she did, briefly, wonder if there was more than one storage unit in SIAR. In the absolute worst case scenario, Octavia feared she'd misremembered which wing she'd tangled with Drey in. She dismissed the idea. She'd long since committed the exact place his corpse had fallen to memory. It wasn't here.

The weapons were most notable, above all else. They were excessive, and greatly so, to a degree she couldn't put into words. Every shape and flavor of weapon she could imagine had a place in the room at least once over. Nestled comfortably into one of many, many optional homes, steel glistened and varnish shone. A variable sea of violence stood at the ready--presumably, given the nature of Drey's craft. Some were neatly divided, spears upon sharpened spears and honed knives of all styles among much of the same.

There were firearms. There were many, many firearms. There were enough that Octavia wondered if Drey was expanding his masteries prior to his demise. If his toll was anything to go by, he'd been fixated relentlessly upon refining his skill with blades. He embraced everything they came with, and she'd dealt with that much firsthand. The ranged weaponry was every bit as well-restored and shimmering as the flavors of edged steel they dwarfed in number. He'd undoubtedly had more planned for his dream, blood on his hands or otherwise. The less time Octavia spent imagining a gun pressed to Priscilla's head, instead, the better.

It was a reflex to scan for more sharpened violence with her eyes, disgusting as the instinct was. There was a deep relief that came with her inability to spot a polearm once stolen from the Blessed City. For the sins it had witnessed itself, Octavia would've destroyed it, given the chance.

She didn't recognize half of what she was looking at, somewhat dizzied by the incredible amount of vicious tools surrounding her at every angle. They climbed high upon the walls. They rested peacefully amongst cases tethered to the marble below. They even jutted from mixed, haphazard wooden crates, stacked and scattered about the massive room.

The sheer size of the place left it somewhat larger than the storage unit, if memory served. Even so, it felt far more crowded and suffocating. Octavia had all the room she needed to walk. Still, by content alone, it was overwhelming. Every color, every cultural style, every shade of decades and centuries past assailed her eyes with simultaneous glimmers and gleams. It was as marvelous as it was deadly.

For how desperately she'd battled to rack her memory, she'd forgotten the one place he'd boasted of directly to her face. She could still hear the passion in his voice, if she let it echo. If Octavia had her way, his voice would never haunt her again.

"The armory," she spoke quietly at last. "SIAR's armory."

Madrigal, too, wasn't immune to the splendor of the room. "Wow," she breathed.

"I…forgot it existed," Octavia continued. "He told me about it once."

"He never did learn to keep his mouth shut."

The sudden voice was enough to make Octavia jump, even distant as it was. It was a reflex by which she raised Stradivaria to position in an instant, fingers tensed as she pressed hard against every string. Her other hand gripped the bow tightly, her eyes darting around the room in panic. At her side, Madrigal had done much the same, albeit with slightly less fright. Their third, unexpected companion continued well before they could even process pressing them.

"If he would've just kept to himself, he'd still be here to play with his toys. In a way, he had it coming. He always was a fool like that."

She wasn't hidden. She was practically in plain sight, and it was largely Octavia's folly for missing her on her once-over of the armory's glamor. Octavia blamed her positioning, the angle of a knife-studded shelf having done wonders to block her initial visage. Pinpointed by her low voice alone, she was more than visible with her back to the grayscale wall.

One sharpened heel dug into the masonry, her posture relaxed. Her hands pressed against the same, concealed as they were behind her back. With her head tilted slightly, cursing them with a piercing gaze, Octavia half-expected her to smile. She knew better. She'd never seen a smile on those lips, fleeting as she'd seen them at all.

"Maybe it's cruel of me to say he deserved it, because he didn't. He was a visionary. He was a great man. However, his arrogance was a folly that led him to mistakes he should've known better than to make," she offered softly.

There was a part of Octavia that had expected to be surprised, or shout, or scream in the face of a disgusting revelation. She should've cried, she should've trembled, or she should've shown some sort of semblance of distress aside from the adrenaline slowly pooling in her bloodstream once more. Instead, all she found was the sick satisfaction that came with being exceedingly, impossibly correct. It didn't matter to how awful of a place, nor how horrific of a conclusion her instincts had led her. In the end, it was exactly where she'd needed to be.

"Octavia, was it?" the woman muttered.

The Maestra nodded, narrowing her eyes. "I'm surprised you cared enough to remember," she said disdainfully.

She scoffed. "At this point, I'd be remiss to forget, with the way you never seemed to evade his lips. Even now, he'd be scolding me about my manners if I didn't at least try to recall a name."

"If that's the case," Octavia breathed, "then it's been a long time, Portia."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.