A Second Tyranny

Trapped

PEARCE

Pearce sat down leaning against the wide, sturdy trunk of one of the trees in the bone forest, and gazed up at the menacing blood-red clouds above him, deadpan. He had lost count of how long he had been stuck here—it felt like an eternity. The sky always remained red here in the Shadowland, so Pearce couldn't tell the difference between day and night.

His witch mother Izbella had told him much about this place. It was a labyrinth of despair, a knot of wrong turns, a blanket of fog weakening your resolve, a stench of lost souls that would do anything to claw their way out of this purgatory. It was the taste of fear in your mouth urging you forward, deeper into the maze, farther from any connection to time, sanity, or the living.

And I am sitting in the very depth of this hellhole, Pearce thought.

As stifling as life was on the Mountain with his controlling, maniacal grandfather known as the Wizard King, Pearce would've gladly returned to his domain rather than spending the rest of his life in the coldness of the Shadowland.

Pearce was almost killed by Whit and Wisty that day on the battlefield, during the war between the Wizard King's army and the people of the City. In order to prevent him from dying, he had shared his soul with one of the Lost Ones; in return, the Lost One would share his deathless strength with him. His father, The One Who Is The One, was the Undead that he shared his soul with. Pearce was a wizard who was half alive and half undead at the same time. When he had fallen through the black Portal pit that leads to the Underworld, he was sure that he would die. To his astonishment, however, it was the Undead part of his soul—The One's soul within him—that was killed when he fell through. Pearce himself was still alive. And now he was just the normal wizard that he had been all his life. His father's spirit living inside him like a parasite was gone forever. Pearce was no longer controlled by The One, following his orders and carrying out his bidding. For the first time in his life, he was free.

But not from the Lost Ones, unfortunately. From what Pearce could remember from the last battle in the City square, an army of kids had figured out a way to kill the Lost Ones by hugging them. It was a knowledge that shocked Pearce, as he thought his Shadowland comrades were invincible. His father—after seeing the Undead destroyed by love, by children—had commanded the Lost Ones to retreat and dive back into the Portal. Pearce soon tumbled in after them, and then the Portal was sealed, trapping them all in the Underworld. The Lost Ones wanted to get out, to return to the City in the Overworld. Pearce had told them that he'd find a way to get them out again, but that was just a lie in order to keep the Lost Ones from turning on him. He knew all along that there was no way out, that he and the Lost Ones were trapped in the Shadowland forever. But he decided to keep the truth from them. It wasn't long before the Lost grew impatient. They stopped believing in Pearce, and they did what he had been dreading: they turned on him. They tried to feast on his flesh, to devour him, but he sent a bright wave of white light at them with his magic before they could reach him, and the Lost Ones had fled. But that didn't stop the Undead from coming at Pearce again though. Every time they tried to feast on him, he had flashed his blinding white light at them, keeping the Lost at bay.

Ever since Pearce fell through the Portal into the Shadowland, his life quickly became a boring, repetitive circle. He spent the majority of what he assumed was daytime either wandering around the bone forest and the rest of Shadowland aimlessly, or avoiding the Lost Ones. There was no food in the Shadowland, so Pearce had to rely completely on his powers for survival. When he was hungry, he conjured whatever food he could think of with his magic, and savoured it. When he was thirsty, he created a bottle of water using his magic, and drank it in just a few gulps. He was glad that the food and water had sustained him. When what he assumed was night time had arrived, he climbed up a tree in the bone forest and slept. On the next day, he would do it all over again, and so on. There was really not much he could do in the Underworld, he had to admit.