KotLC: Eclipse (KotLC X Magnus Chase)

Chapter 20

Sophie's POV

I woke up, drenched in sweat with a scream lingering in my throat after another nightmare.

I glanced at the clock and sighed. Three forty-five. Great. It was still night.

I decided that, since sleep was overrated, I should go and explore this place some more.

------------------

The lofty corridors were mostly dark at this time of night, no longer glowing with light. Torches still hung from sconces on the wall, but they weren't roaring with fire like during the day. Instead, the torches had a dim glow, providing just enough light to see by.

I took note of every turn I took, not wanting to get lost.
I wasn't sure what I was actually looking for; I just wanted to look around Valhalla by myself.

A sudden chill wafted through the corridor, and I shivered.
The air seemed to get colder the further down this corridor I went. The darkness and silence felt as if they were getting thicker, causing the already dim light from the torches to get even dimmer.

A low chuckle suddenly tore the deafening silence to shreds. The lights rapidly extinguished one by one as the darkness seemed to move towards me.

I backed away, unwilling to allow the shadows to touch me and drag up painful experiences with these kinds of darkness, Shadowflux being my least favourite.

I was too slow.

The shadows rushed past me, extinguishing every torch as far as I could see, leaving me in the dark, the only sounds being my accelerated breathing and a roaring pulse in my ears.

The creepy chuckling stopped, only to be replaced by a sudden, earsplittingly painful screech drew my attention to the way I had come.

Looking back, I glimpsed two glowing red eyes and a horrific grin.
Stygmir.
But there was something different about him, his eyes didn't hide the same intelligent glint, and the glowing red was more maroon than blood-like as they had in my visions with him. The stench of iron hit my nose.

This wasn't Stygmir.

With no warning, the apparition charged, clearly looking as if it would try to kill me. Its footsteps made no sound as it ran.

I, like any sane person in this situation, ran the opposite direction, away from this shade.

I sped through the corridors blindly, heart pounding in my chest. I no longer cared about getting lost. I just needed to get away from that thing. I channelled some more energy into my straining legs, accelerating through the corridors at a breakneck pace.

I glanced back the way I came, tripping and crashing face first into the floor. That was going to hurt tomorrow. The good news was that I didn't see the shadow thing anymore. The bad news was that I was lost.

I looked at my immediate surroundings. There were several doors, which made sense. This was a living floor, after all. There were several extinguished torches lining the walls, but strangest of all were the wooden double doors just next to me.

They were obviously not the doors to an einherji's room because all other rooms I'd seen until that point were single doors.

I cautiously approached them, wary of any sign of that weird shadow creature around me.

Opening the doors, I was blasted in the face with a burst of frigid air, revealing a balcony overlooking the battlefield I had died on yesterday.
It was different during the night. What had looked harmless in daylight was now a creepy silhouette in the dim light of the moon.
Trees stretched their gnarly arms up towards the star filled sky while the buildings sat ruined in their villages.