A Ballad of Snakes and Shadows // A Dark Sebastian Sallow Romance

Chapter Thirty: Pain // The Summoning

((TW//CW: Blood play, blood drinking, sensory depravation, mild (mild) gore, violence, degradation/humiliation, hard cnc, mind break, traumafucking))

'Are you afraid of the dark, savior?'

It was a chuckle that resounded from the depths of the blackness that surrounded me, the same one that followed me mercilessly as I struggled to find my way through it. There was something menacing lingering behind the rumble of Sebastian's voice, something sinister that kept my feet moving blindly forward.

There wasn't any doubt, in that sound, that he'd finally unhinged his jaw so that he'd be ready to swallow me whole once he caught me.

My feet continued forward, unwilling to let him have that chance as I tried to navigate my way through the darkness of the vault. Though the monstrous serpent loomed close, coiling its body around the pillars in anticipation of catching its prey, this lamb would never stop running.

Blindly, this little creature would scurry her way out of the perpetual darkness if it killed her.

The lamb, however, did indeed wish it had its wand.

'Or is it the monsters in it that make you tremble?'

My breath caught in my throat as his voice whispered closely to the left, and willed myself to take a sharp turn to the right. I wish I hadn't been so careless with my wand, or perhaps I would've stood a better chance against him. It wouldn't have mattered, I thought, because he always would've found ways to level the playing field so that he would remain the only one with an advantage.

He indeed had the upper hand between the darkness I sprinted through, and the ability to hear the scattered line of thoughts that skittered along in my head.

Desperately, I tried to conjure a light without it though, willing myself to be able to harness that same wandless magic that seemed to come so easily to him. I'd never practiced much of it myself, but I was running out of options.

The Ancient Magic of the Keepers could be yielded the same way as that magic, yet each time I tried to imagine it in my hand it would completely sizzle out before it had a chance to come to life. It was becoming increasingly impossible to traverse the expanse of the room, and for now I had to settle with sprinting with my hands outstretched into the darkness.

It wouldn't bode well for me to collide with a pillar, or even worse, Sebastian himself.

As I ran, I tried to survey as much as I could, looking for any trace of something that held even a smidgen of light or clue to an exit. This layer of the memory was cruel though, completely devoid of light, or traces of magic.

There was nothing here at all.

There were only endless shadows and the near silent foot falls of the devil who chased me through them.

'Are you lost, little one? Come to me, and I'll show you the way.'

'I promise I won't bite.'

That demented, disembodied laugh seemed to come from everywhere, throwing me completely off guard every time he spoke. When I believed that it'd come from my left, he'd say something to the right. So I would careen to the opposite side, to avoid getting too close, but that same rumble of his voice would be just behind me instead.

Sebastian was everywhere and nowhere, all at once; that made this all the more dangerous.

I knew that this was already going to be a deadly game, but the stakes seemed to keep getting higher and higher as my mind ran just as quickly as my legs did.