Forbidden magic

chapter twenty one

You're mad. Bonkers. Off your head...
But I'll tell you something...
All of the best people are.

-Alice in the wonderland-

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The scarlet red liquid pumped up her throat, oozed out of her mouth and streamed down the side of her ashen face. Raven fought hard to keep her head up to avoid choking on her own blood which in her opinion was a pitiful way to die.

She was fortunate she could even move her head since the rest of her body was fiercely deadlocked by the invisible force impregnably dragging her along the frigid surface of the floor.   

As if intuiting the sudden danger, a burst of adrenaline surged through her followed by the familiar tinge of magic surfacing within her being. She felt the power slowly radiating as it started out towards the various parts her body. 

No, no, no! Raven began to panic, abominable images of the raging dragon flashed across her mind causing unrest and revulsion. She instantaneously  recalled how her hypnotic power had driven the colossal beast into a frenzy and knew that she needed to keep the magic strictly within her, no matter the cost.   

She tried to push it back inside her but it repelled against her will and only accelerated its spreading, throwing her into a slight conniption. Raven felt the magic coursing through the veins of her palms and seeping into her fingertips. Her  green eyes began to glow a luminous white, an abysmal sign denoting that she would soon uncontrollably unleash a destructible force.

Raven growled under her racy breath and tried to collect herself, whatever happened she needed to refrain from lashing out and causing more dastardly chaos fraught with inevitable death. It took a minute for Raven to grow lucid enough to realize  that she was no longer being dragged around, that she was in complete control of her body again.

The world gradually came to a standstill around her as she frantically sat upright, her atrocious coughing ceased abrupt. There was utter darkness everywhere accompanied by eerie silence instigating wariness within the girl.

Her jaded nerves were calming down and her magic retreated into her system giving her a brief moment of relief. Raven wiped her blood smeared face with the back of her hand and placed it on the ground to push herself up. Her brows furrowed when her fingers dug into a nest of loose granular rocks around her.

Raven scooped up a fistful into her cupped hands and stood up. She brought it closer to her face and drew in a deep breath, confirming that it was sand. She let it trickle through the cracks between her fingers and stood befuddled. How did a clump of sand end up in a cottage in the middle of nowhere?

While she took her time to apprehend the situation something slithered over her feet. Addled, Raven paused and looked down but couldn't see a single thing due to the absolute blackness that enshrouded the place. She curiously shuffled to the right to test if it was some sort of creature, but could only sense her own feet sifting through the tiny grains of sand.

You've lost it, Raven. All of it.

Just as she was convinced by her own conscience that her berserk imagination was the bane of her own illusions, she felt the slithering movement beneath her again. Only this time it was much bigger and she felt herself being lowered into the ground.