Where Dark Meets The Light

Chapter 12: Going Dark

Both Jay and Charlie landed heavily on the cold ground in a heap. Jay huffed as she got the wind knocked out of her. The cup had slipped from their grasp during the landing and fell a few meters away from them both.

For a few heavy seconds, they were both frozen.

Jay was frozen at the shock that Charlie was here, with her, and Charlie at the sudden change of scenery. A few seconds passed with nothing but their heavy breathing breaking the silence before Charlie tackled Jay.

"Why?! Why on earth did you do that?! Huh?!" Charlie punched her in the face and Jay was a bit too taken aback to dodge it. "Why couldn't you just have let me take it?! What kind of coward are you to attack me like that?!"

He threw another punch but this time Jay was prepared. She dodged it and flipped them over. Then she sat on him. "Listen. You aren't supposed to be here. We have to get you back." She hisses furiously.

"What?" Charlie asks in confusion. First, she wanted to kill him, and now she's worried?

"I said, we have to get you back. Where did the cup land?" She gets off of him and pulls him to his feet. She's looking around wildly and spots the gleaming blue glass of the cup. She grabs Charlie by the collar of his shirt and starts to incessantly pull him towards the cup.

"Let go of me!" Charlie yells at the top of his lungs.

Jay is about to hiss at him to be quiet when she hears a raspy voice hiss, "Bind them."

She can just spin around to see that a man holding what looked to be a bundle of cloth had snuck upon them. With a wave of the man's wand, both teens got dragged over to a statue and were bound to it. She hadn't even gotten the chance of defending herself, since she realized too late that her wand was missing.

She twisted around and saw that Charlie was bound equally well. He had dropped his wand at some point apparently because he was now as wandless as herself.

This was bad, really, really bad.

The hooded man came forward and Jay knew that the bundle the man was carrying was no one other as the Dark Lord.

Charlie was struggling wildly in his bonds, no doubt bruising his ankles and wrists. Jay wanted to struggle as well, but she recognized the spell the hooded man had used. She used it herself often enough when bounty hunting, and knew that there was no way she was getting out of them without the use of a wand.

The hooded man left them for a moment. She was thinking rapidly on how to play this. All she could come up with were half-baked plans. The only thing she could really do right now is go along with it. Charlie was still fighting his bonds with a desperation Jay had to admire. There were tears streaking down his face and he was yelling, begging for an explanation.

She couldn't give him one, not now anyway.

The hooded man returned with a stone cauldron, one big enough to fit a fully grown male. It was full of water. The hooded man raised it over a low burning fire and waited for a few moments for the cauldron to stabilize. He then pointed his wand at the flames and the fire went from smoldering to hip-height in a heartbeat.

The liquid in the cauldron started to boil fast, Jay noted. Charlie was still demanding to know what was happening, what is he doing-

"Silence!" Hissed the bundle from the hooded man's arms.

In his shock, Charlie actually fell silent. "What-" He stammered out fearfully.

"It is ready, my lord." Jay knew that voice. She had heard it many times over in her dreams. It was Wormtail. The traitor.