Välikirja: The Wyvern's Pact

Chapter Twenty-Three - Stay Quiet, Or Else...

This is dedicated to one of my first readers, one of the best, one of those I love and trust the most. Thank you for inspiring me and helping me finish Lohikäärme (and, hopefully, Välikirja as well). You seriously are one of the best things that happened to me in my whole wattpad life. ♥

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Chapter Twenty-Three - Stay Quiet, Or Else...

          He told me to run. He told me to keep running without looking back. By now, I was just running through corridors upon corridors in hopes of outrunning them, whoever was following me and Chaucer. My heart was beating so fast; my legs throbbing even faster. Could we make it? Could Aiden make it?

          "Where are Chaucer and Koshka headed?" the Amaranthine hovering above my shoulder asked, pupils dilated.

          The castle is ruined. Aethelgard had been assaulted by different forces before, but this was different. The walls weren't engulfed by flames, nor was it eroding because of lightning, thunderstorms, or landslides.

          Noise bombarded my ears from all directions. Students screeched as they chased us, interrupting my trail of thought. They were screeching, screaming, squealing, shrieking, squaking. My hands clutched the skirt of my dress only to try to hold on in vain. I couldn't.

          I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I had to keep control of myself. I had to make sure I wasn't going around the castle in circles, or else, sooner or later, someone would find me and take me down without effort. I didn't need to be the cause of my own death. But most of all, I had to make sure I stayed conscious. The burning feeling on my forehead kept distracting me from the rush I should be in, made my legs wobble in surrender. How could I go on at this state?

          "Hide, Koshka," a voice in my head whispered.

          A soft hand touched my forefinger, then another hand touched me. They weakly pulled me up, but I could tell Chaucer was giving it his all to pull me up.

          What was I doing? Giving up and letting the pain swallow me? I didn't have time for that, nor the right to surrender. After all the sacrifices they've made for this, the least I could do was fight until my last breath.

          I was up on my feet before I knew it. "In that room," I told Chaucer, pointing my finger at the room with the open door. The room looked like a decent place to hide in for a while. Perhaps it had some shelves or tables under which I could hide?

          I pushed open the door and hurried inside. The room was a wreck, just like the other rooms we had passed by earlier. The floor was covered by shelves upon shelves. The walls were mostly crushed by the shelves and other furniture that crashed into them; the remnants engulfed by flames and ice.

          "Where to hide? Where to hide?" I asked both Chaucer and myself as we crawled our way into the room, across the piles of rocks, wood, and books that were far from salvageable.

          "In here!" Chaucer squealed.

          My head snapped to where his voice came instantly. I saw him hovering above an open cabinet that stood about two and a half feet tall. I wasted no time, quickly crawling into the cabinet. Before closing the doors, I was about to pull Chaucer inside with me, as he was too innocent to know what was happening, but he flew inside by himself, like he understood the situation.

          "Stay quiet," I whispered to him as I peered through the thin line of space between the two doors of the cabinet. "The magisters...the scary, old women with long nails that look like claws? They're coming after us. We have to hide, or else..."