Dancing on Strings

A Touch of The Wild

~~~ Unedited chapter~~~

Mai was gone. She knew Reve would try to stop her, she wasn't supposed to have built up a level of power that she could just open the door. That wasn't how it worked. Neither Griffin nor Angelique could simply open the door.

Griffin could move between the upper and lower levels of the palace when he was doing shows, as a form of entertainment to enchant the audience and lower their guard.

Angelique couldn't open the door because Reve didn't trust her with her sisters down there.

Mai wasn't supposed to be able to do it.

She wasn't supposed to be powerful in any way.

She was The Princess of Dreams in name only. She was only a human.

A mortal.

A pretty addition to the main palace.

So she could only imagine Reve's expression as she hiked up her skirts and threw herself down the stairs towards the glowing darkness below.

She was not anything if not persistent, years and years and years of dance had shown her that.

She flung herself down the last few steps, landing hard and looking around.

She was below the palace.

Before her stretched a huge towering hall made of sandy stone, stalactites hanging from the ceilings.

And all the way down were huge arching doorways, all the double doors partially open, allowing golden candlelight to spill from the various banquet halls as well as the thousands of voices.

She ran towards the first set of doors, looking in and stopped.

It wasn't the same banquet hall.

Similar enough but something in her core told her it wasn't the one she was looking for, like she had created each of them and filled them with particular people and this wasn't the right one.

The sensation made her cringe, because surely that was what Reve would feel if he came down here.

This hall was filled with people who didn't seem all that bothered by their enchanted imprisonment. They were all laughing, cheering and talking, wild and happy.

They hadn't noticed her so she moved back and went to the one across the hall.

Silence met her as she looked in.

It was full but it could have been empty.

Everything person in that hall sat in deathly silence and Mai hurried away, the quiet disturbing her.

She went towards the next set of doors before that same sensation told her what she was looking for and she swept away down the passage until she reached a set of doors that, like the others, were ajar.

She pulled one door aside and the shockwave that hit her was like a hurricane.

She stumbled, stunned, hitting the ground and blinking as the shockwave passed, making her look through the doors that now stood wide open and her eyes widened as what appeared to be a towering ocean wave roared passed the doors.

This was the right hall.

She knew it.

This was the hall she had seen when Griffin had shown it during her shows.