Cursed by the Gods

Chapter 10

One moment we were picking a precarious path through the mountains about a mile from the boundary of the academy, and then, suddenly, we weren't even in Blesswood anymore. I gasped, my footsteps halting, my eyes going wide. The seemingly endless stretch of mountainous terrain before us had dissolved, and a dark, damp-smelling cave had loomed in around us, only a pinprick of light visible in the distance.

"What in the world of the gods ..." I spun around, trying to take in everything at once, even though it was too dark to take in even an inch of the 'everything'. That's when it dawned on me I was in a cave inside a mountain. My breathing started to come out in short puffs and I grabbed onto the nearest Abcurse.

"Exactly." Rome had been the one to utter the reply, sounding right behind me. His was the shirt that I held on to in a tight death grip. My feet began to wobble as I walked, my lungs weren't getting enough oxygen to my brain, I was having a panic attack.

He had dropped to the back of the procession after declaring to the group that I kept getting into trouble whenever he left me unsupervised, whatever that was supposed to mean. He had been the one to plant a hand on the center of my spine and push me forward, initiating this trip through reality. He seemed oblivious to my terror as he pushed us onward.

"What do you mean exactly?" I asked in the general direction of his voice. Maybe talking would help take my mind off it. Yeah, talking will help, come on Rome don't let me down, mate.

"The world of the gods," he replied, making me realize that I was staring at the wrong patch of darkness.

I adjusted my eyes, and then it hit me.

No—it didn't hit me! Because that was impossible!

This cave couldn't be Topia. The Abcurse brothers couldn't possibly know a secret passage into Topia!

"Anything is possible, Speedy," Siret muttered, grabbing my wrist and drawing me through the darkness, toward the little pin-prick of light. I must have spoken out loud—or else they could read minds.

Knowing my luck, it was the latter.

As soon as Siret's skin touched mine, my head was flooded with conflicting images. Thoughts. Memories. I had no idea what they were, but the men and women pictured in my mind weren't anything like the sols I knew. They wore robes as they strolled past insanely gorgeous scenery; lakes, rivers, oceans. Some of them were sitting on floating marble platforms which looked down over miles and miles of sky. Siret was using his trickery gift to fill my head with nonsense, and yet ... I couldn't help the feeling that this particular nonsense was actually real.

Because I was in Topia. Those demon-sols snuck me into fucking Topia! I was so going to kill them right after they smuggled me right out of this cursed place.

Dammit, I should've known better than this, I was too wrapped up in my fear that I hadn't even realized where the hell we were going. Otherwise, I would've hightailed back to the academy. Those brothers had no idea what they had just done.

Emmy wasn't just going to kill me anymore. She was going to cut me up into tiny little pieces, put each piece of me into a tiny box, and feed each box to a single bullsen, which she would burn, and then she would separate the ashes of the burnt bullsen into tiny little piles, and then she would put each tiny pile of ash into a tiny box, and then—

"Welcome to the world of the gods," Rome drawled, as we stepped from the cave and into the glaring sunlight.

Siret let me go, only to grab me again as I pitched forward. My feet were trying to move before my mind had caught up to the world in front of me.