"Trust me, you shouldn't want anyone like me on your back."
"Maybe I don't want anyone like you on my back," His eyes darkened as he stepped closer, confining me tighter into barely any space as my back pressed against the wall.
"Maybe I want you. U...
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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A CUTTING ROOM FLOOR, THAT was what it felt like I was trapped in. My hand still burned from the discomforting warmth that had ensued when I had taken hold of Flora Fischer's pudgy, clammy one. I needed the place the dwarf witch had in mind to translocate everyone and myself. As I had summoned the constellations inside me and they had doubled and replicated, my task proved frustratingly tedious for the witch's mind had not yet centered on a single place. Having to shoot a single constellation inside her consciousness to sift through her multiple choices as though I was deciding upon the gravity of a card during a gambling game was torturous and it took out a devastating chunk of my energy, leaving me strangely disoriented. A feeling reminiscent of dodging a butcher's knife and employing all your reflexes to a point where you couldn't move anymore.
Picking a place and translocating was a task that had to be done in mere minutes, and it was when the pressure had been lifted off by the end of it, was when I was fully able to take in the place I had translocated everyone to.
"Schalun Castle," The dwarf witch announced in the silence of our arrival, her head tilted upwards to examine the ruin that was the twelfth century castle.
The night sky was raging outside, and the castle—though a ruin—provided for a significant cover. The dark stoned structure had still strong sheltered ceilings, and a handful of walls yet standing that provided a sufficient shield from the mountainous landscape outside. Schalun—once home to a powerful wizard who had built it for himself and had resorted to a life of being king to muggles of Vaduz, Liechtenstein—was now an abandoned place, its presence concealed amongst the mountains and often being mistaken for the mountains themselves from what I had read of it in the Beauxbatons library once.
"It is 1 kilometer away from the town center of Vaduz," The dwarf witch articulated for the general audience that she had, before nearing me and lowering her voice to a whisper. "The acolytes are all in the town, my lady, I can gather them all up when you decide to visit."
I didn't answer, my eyes still inspecting the castle ruin. The stone was dense underneath my feet, and the ruin felt as though it still had years upon years of life and would be destroyed if someone truly tried for it to be so.
