He Couldn't Be That Bad? // Sebastian Sallow and You (spicy)

48. Saving Anne

PART 1.

Sebastian wastes no time, he grabs my hand and Cog's, and we're whisked away to the Room of Requirement before I can ask what's happening.

Cog tells us Anne is very far. And it's cold where she was. Deathly cold. "Cog cannot enter. Powerful magic keeps out all. Cog can feel the young witch. Inside the cold death, the impossible mountains of icy cliffs and treacherous paths." He shudders again and I am impressed and a little saddened by the lengths this elf went though to make good on our deal.

Sebastian and I put on our winter gear as he says. "Cog, can you tell Ominis we won't be at dinner? If it's as treacherous as you say, I don't want him to come. But don't tell him till we've already left."

Cog grumbles under his breath. "Bossy wizards, will Cog ever be free of bossy wizards?"

Ignoring Cog's pouting, I ask Sebastian as I throw on my heaviest coat. "Why would Anne be somewhere so cold?"

"Beats me." Sebastian shrugs into a shabby wool coat of his own. "She always hated the cold so she must be going where I least suspect her."

I think back to the way she'd double over in pain from her curse. The anguish in her eyes when she clung to Solomon's body. Perhaps it was a move of desperation, not simply to spite Sebastian.

Cog takes our hands and looks up at us sincerely. "Cog will not stay to bring you home. This is a one way ticket."

"No problem." Sebastian stands taller. Easy for him to say, I can't remember the number of mischievous adventures we'd been on where he'd had all but zero idea of an escape plan.

"Thank you for telling us, Cog." I walk over to where I'd set down our Christmas presents and pluck the house key from Ominis. Pocketing it, I already feel much more at ease. I haven't mastered apparating and I'd rather have a fail safe than rely on probabilities in the heat of escape. And once we get to Ominis' home, we can take another mode of transportation back to Hogsmeade.

After I rejoin Cog, taking his tiny hand in my gloved one, he wastes no time and we vanish from the Room of Requirement in a blip.

Instantly I'm met with crushing winds and a cold so ferocious, the fist breath in the air feels like icy daggers down my throat and in my chest. Cog has taken us to a cliff face where biting wind howls so loudly I can't make out his words. He points up a thin ledge that must be a path, then vanishes again with a snap.

Instant dread and regret consume me as I look up to see our near perilous journey ahead. Each blast of wind coming from the top of the mountain is like mother nature herself doesn't want us here. Peaks of the mountain range around us stand pointed into the air like teeth of a gaping maw, lying in wait to swallow us whole. Any residual warmth leaves me. It's a struggle to even remember a time where I felt warm, as a seeping cold that hollows out everything inside me and leaves simply a husk.

Then we walk.

The steep incline has us with our backs to the near vertical drop, hugging the side of the cliff as wind pushes us any direction it can. Determined to knock us from our goal. Finally after we've continued shuffling forward and upward for at least thirty minutes, the path mercifully widens enough to stand regularly. But my limbs have frozen stiff, and my heart practically stops when I see what lies on the path before us.

Dead bodies line the way, wearing clothes across all eras of time. By the way they've fallen I'm not sure if they were on their way up, or trying to climb back down the mountain. They hardly look decomposed. The frigid temperature makes their ghastly faces look frozen in time as well. I really hope there aren't inferi here.