Nomad {Editing}

::Chapter 32:: Mirrored Image

Chaos drowned them from almost the moment they had breached the surface world.

The stench of fire and smoke hit them like a brick wall, so thick it was near impossible to see let alone breathe. Soon the group was panting, desperate for air, as they fought to find their way through the bedroom and into the corridors.

Only praying that here they would be able to find somewhere to breathe.

At last they burst through the door and into the stone corridor, gasping for breath they struggled for a moment longer. Bent at the waist and heaving, drawing in as much air as he was capable of.

No one spoke for a moment, looking back into the room. For now the fire seemed contained in its walls.

Witch fire. Charlie recognised from the stories he had heard as a kid.

Recognisable from the way it burned, precise and controlled. Almost the perfect opposite than how normal fire worked, and a hundred times more deadly. It devoured everything in its path, little could stop it.

It appeared their enemy were playing a game of cat and mouse with them, it was there intent to burn down the castle with them inside it. But why don't they do it all at once? Charlie questioned in confusion.

"They must still be here," somewhere. Charlie said out loud, though deciding to omit the last part. "They're looking for something?" He said the next part with a little less certainty, he couldn't begin to think what for.

Shrugging his shoulders, a frown on his face and eyebrows furrowed with concentration. "We only need to find one man, and he's infinitely less dangerous then the rest of them." The growl which echoed from the Prince was enough to terrify any man.

Anthony.

Charlie would hesitate to call him much less dangerous.

"Don't forget the King," Charlie added as much as he hated to do it. "As well as Briar, Violet and Arthur," he said with a firm voice. Despite the fact he was shaking pretty much from head to toe, not just because of the fact he had been submerged in water for so long.

Now with flames licking at his fur as they began to slowly breach the corridors as well, he was beginning to warm up yet the shaking didn't stop. The fear, the exhaustion and the pain was beginning to take its hold.

And Charlie was beginning to struggle to shake it off.

"We're all dead if we don't find Anthony," Robert replied with the same growl to his voice. "And their aren't enough of us to split up." Despite his attempts to sound calm and held together, Charlie knew his older brother enough to know that he hated every word which came from his mouth.

He could guess that the Prince was fighting every animalistic urge to stop himself setting off running and not stopping until he found his wife and daughter.

In spite of it all, Charlie admired his brother for being able to hold it together enough to know what the reasonable, logical thing to do was and do it. Following his head rather than his heart, something Charlie had never been good at.

Charlie knew that he would never have been able to make the same choice as the prince.

Part of him wondered if Robert was doing it because he was terrified what the truth might actually be. That the last remnants of the people he loved might be at the bottom of that cave, drowned.

All because of his and Charlie's choices.

Moving slightly, Charlie placed a hand on his brother's shoulder and left it there for a split second before removing it. It was a minute gesture, one most hadn't noticed, but he knew his brother would have felt it.