Chapter Text
The first thing Kit noticed was that she couldn’t see. The second was that something was trying to crawl into her mouth.
When she tried to swat at whatever force feeding itself to her, she only succeeded in further tangling her body in her bed sheets.
…No.
Not her sheets.
Tome’s cloak.
Kit quit fighting fabric, her not-so-mystery intruder skittered down her chest and onto her lap.
She felt her way to freedom and pushed away the last of the cloth over her head, not that it made any difference. It was dark , even with Kit’s night vision. She held out her hand and from her fingers sparked to life a ball of kitsunebi, its powder blue light washing over her.
Stein was vigorously scrubbing the saliva off her leg onto Kit’s, but on seeing her awake, the tarantula bolted off her lap and scampered in panicked circles along the ground.
It wasn’t until Stein’s third wheel around that Kit’s memory struck her like a slap to the face. Amulet. Trap. Faust .
“Oh, god.” Kit said, “Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god .”
She scrambled to her feet and scanned her surroundings. Where was she?
Everywhere she turned there was rock. Jutting up from the ground in spires or broken mounds, walls of it stretched up and over her head where she was greeted by the looming forms of stalactites. There was only one visible exit to her left, but whether it led out of the cavern or further in , Kit couldn’t tell.
For a second she figured she was under the quarry. The last thing she remembered before blacking out during the fall was that she’d been falling downwards . But the lack of a hole on the ceiling killed that thought. Whatever spell Faust sprung must have teleported her someplace different. Thinking back on the way the ground opened beneath her made the cavern feel like the stomach of a massive beast. The tunnel being the…
Kit suppressed a shiver, "Ew." That kind of thought was more Tome’s speed.
Another slap to the face. TOME!
She spun around, looking for anything large and round and definitely not a stalagmite, but the oppressive pitch-black of the cavern made it hard to see in detail.
Taking a deep breath, Kit brought the fire still flickering in her hand to her mouth and blew. The flame flowed outwards, stretching into a thin wisp before it split– forming several other identical orbs of kitsunebi like bubbles from a wand. The darkness shrunk away as her foxfire spread across the cavern.
She did eventually find something that fit the description of ‘round’ and ‘definitely not a stalagmite.’
Spotted with decay, a human skull peered from under a slab of stone splayed against the wall. Its cranium cracked and shattered open like an egg shell. It looked like it’d frozen mid-shriek, but it was only because it didn’t have a jaw.
“...Too old,” Kit said after a moment, setting her shoulders. “ Way too old.”
It wasn’t her first time seeing human remains. It was fairly common to when someone worked in the magic field. Back at the Spiral, there was a collection of bones– so many Kit could bet they could assemble entire skeletons. She’d even had to use a few when Paige had nudged her to do some…experimenting.
The skull calmed her in a morbid sort of way. Maybe it was the familiarity. Or the fact that it simply wasn’t her.
But the reassurance lasted all of five seconds.
A spark of light caught her eye. She nearly snapped her own neck in to see what it was. It was coming from Stein . A seizure wracked through her tiny frame. Patterns of white light sparked her legs, her torso, lit up her eyes. She looked like she was blowing a fuse.
Extinguishing the flame in her hand, Kit threw herself to the ground to hold her– but the second she touched Stein, her head exploded in agony. Light seared her sight. She screamed and instinctively curled up on her side. Sharp, shooting pain assaulted her skull, it felt like someone was trying to shove a pair of ice picks into her brain via ghost lobotomy. Her eyes shut tight and it was in the space behind her eyelids where she saw Tome.
Then it was over. As quickly as it’d started, the pain vanished– but the image of Tome bound in glowing chains, eyes ablaze with the same blinding light stayed. Kit laid there trying to steady her breathing, Stein still slumped in her hands.
She was Tome’s familiar, of course she felt whatever he did. When Kit touched her, the feedback transferred and gave Kit a front row seat to something she dearly wished she didn’t have.
Faust had Tome and whatever Faust was doing to him… it was killing him.
Kit was trembling so bad she had to make sure she wasn’t squeezing the life out of poor Stein.
What do I do? She thought. What can I do?
Stein collapsed in another seizure. Again Kit saw Tome writhing in pain, the ice picks driving into either side of her head. She couldn’t help herself. Kit dropped Stein, closed her eyes and pulled her hands into the cloak.
She wanted to cocoon herself in it and pretend they were her bedsheets. As stupid and desperate as it sounded, she just wanted this to be a nightmare. Give into the thin hope of waking up at her penthouse.
She gave herself a five-count, opened her eyes and– surprise, surprise– she was still laying on dirty cave floor.
Stein was pulling herself back on her feet and with wobbly triumph, weaved towards the passageway.
“Wait…” Kit tried to call but it was little more than a rasp. She lifted her head and tried again, “Wait, where are you going?”
Stein headed into the gloom without so much as a pause.
“Stein, we don’t know what’s out there!” Kit frowned, “ In there– whatever– Stein! ”
From the darkness beyond the light of her foxfire, Kit saw the flash-crackle-pop of another seizure. Kit winced.
She gave the cavern another quick glance around, all it did was remind her of the skull still peeking out from under the stone slab with empty sockets. How long had it been there? And how long until Kit joined it?
Kit pinched the bridge of her nose, letting out a low growl of frustration.
She didn't have time for this. Stein didn’t have time to baby someone too busy feeling sorry for herself. They needed a way out. Do something besides moping around waiting for a miracle…
Well, Kit would’ve guessed starvation came first, but starvation usually didn’t leave broken craniums.
She pushed herself off the ground and– reluctantly– followed Stein into the tunnel, her small army of fire orbs trailing behind her.
Being an old world tarantula, Stein was a quick little thing– but in the time it took Kit to catch up to her, she had two more seizures. “Oh, honey…” Kit sighed as Stein struggled to regain her bearings, “You’re not going to get very far like that.”
Stein peered up at her, thumping her front legs in exasperation as if saying: Don’t you think I know that?
Kit knelt and offered her shoulder, “Hop on, just… try not to touch me. Maybe the cloak will keep the magic from–”
She guessed Stein was a little more irked about being dropped earlier than Kit thought, because she didn’t let her finish her sentence before she leapt full force onto her face. Just in time for another seizure.
Kit saw Tome again. She also saw Faust.
His hands hovered over her mentor’s head, his fingers curled into claws. He moved them slowly, with effort– as if he were trying to drag something heavy towards him. With each pull, tendrils of light flowed from Tome’s eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth. Each motion brought another wave of pain. The light rolled itself in between Faust’s palms like a winding ball of yarn.
The seizure stopped, but again Kit kept the afterimage, though much clearer than the last two times. When she closed her eyes, she saw the room Faust was keeping Tome in.
There were rows of bookshelves spaced narrowly from one another, curving to follow the arched formation of the chamber. Tall pillars and walls led up towards a glass ceiling, where the moon shone down on them like a milky spotlight. But what really stood out to Kit was the floor.
Tome knelt in the middle of a magic circle engraved into the tile, the figure of a silver crescent moon in the center shimmering under its real counterpart. The chains held Tome down onto the circle, glowing in the same light Faust weaved in his hands.
But the light wasn’t coming from Faust or the circle itself, it came from the moon reflecting off its twin. Faust was harnessing it to do… whatever it was he was doing to Tome.
Kit blinked the sight away, trying to readjust to her surroundings, but something nagged at her. She had the undeniable feeling everything she’d seen was happening just above her, all she had to do to see it for herself was to continue down the tunnel.
Stein persisted down that very passageway. She wasn’t looking for a way out. She was on her way to Tome. Which, unfortunately, also meant the way to Faust .
“No!” Kit cast the length of her cloak over Stein like a net, blocking her path, and looked in, “We need to find a way out , not– are you THREATENING me? ”
Stein– normally sweet and gentle unless you were a cricket– held up her legs and bared her fangs for Kit to see. She’d never done that before. Stein moved in a little closer, still on offense, daring Kit to do something about it.
It took a few beats for Kit to wipe the offended look off her face and instead gave an insulted scoff, “I wanna get out of here alive , thank you. You’re leading us straight to Faust.”
Stein ran up her leg so fast for a second Kit thought she was going to bite her. The tarantula thumped angrily on her knee and raised one fuzzy foot at the clasp holding Tome’s cloak around Kit’s shoulders.
A cold, crushing shame clutched her chest, but she set it aside… mostly. “I know.. .” Frustration stretched out the word, “I saw . I don’t…”
Kit exhaled sharply. “I don’t like this anymore than you do, but we need to be smart about this.”
But Stein wasn’t buying it. She turned her back on her and continued on her way, leaving Kit to want to thump angrily too.
She knew what Stein was thinking. She was a coward abandoning her mentor. Standing up, Kit wrapped the cloak tightly around her, her hands taking fistfulls of fabric in an attempt to stop her hands from shaking as she continued on her way.
But what choice did she have? Kit barely held her own against Faust back at the quarry and the only reason she even tried was because she thought Tome had a plan to get them out of there. Fat good that did her. If her teacher – the man with a twenty year head start on this whole magic business– couldn’t fend off Faust, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Not on his home turf.
But running away wasn't so simple. Looking for an escape should have been the best option, but deep down Kit knew she was kidding herself. She didn’t have a clue where she was. Even if she did make it out of the cavern, nothing promised that was better than staying in it. With a teleportation spell, Faust could have whisked them halfway across the world and something told Kit that anywhere near a police station was too much to hope for.
She could be walking into some in-the-middle-of-nowhere forest riddled with monsters or right off the face of a cliff or anywhere else on prime Evil Lair Real Estate.
It’d been why she hadn’t bothered trying to use her phone – seeing the lack of signal bars on the screen would have truly sent her into the pits of despair.
Kit had two options and neither exactly helped the rising panic of impending death.
The thought gave her pause.
Impending.
Realization dawned on her. She’d been so terrified about the probability of dying that she hadn’t considered why she wasn’t dead already . Faust could have killed her back at the quarry, or just let her fall to her death when he drop-chuted her into the cavern. Instead, he’d kept her alive…
The only reason Kit could figure was that Faust saw use in her.
The thought didn’t exactly soothe her– if anything it gave her the case of the creeps– but in that understanding, Kit saw a chance.
A whole lot of risk.
But a chance.
If she could ingratiate herself to Faust, at least for a short while, she could buy herself some breathing room. Maybe even get Faust off Tome’s back for a minute. The room he and Tome were in– all those bookshelves– there had to be something she could use to get them out of there. It wasn’t much of a plan, more a half-baked outline, still it was something.
But she had to get to Tome while there was still time.
Dread clung to her with the weight of a lead vest, but she surged forward– honing the terror into a sharp focus. Another crackle of light from up ahead, Stein still trudging along. Kit scooped her up without stopping.
“Yeah, okay.” She told Stein, regarding her with a bit more respect, “We’re gonna get him back.”
She wasn't thrilled at another round of moonlight shock therapy, but she needed more information on what she was dealing with. It wasn’t long until she got what she asked for, but Kit forced herself to keep moving through the pain and vivid images.
Her kitsunebi cast stark, flickering shadows against the walls. Kit felt like she was walking through a parting mob– one watching her march to her own noose.
The tunnel was longer than she expected it to be and despite her adrenaline rush, she became increasingly more disturbed. Claw marks carved grooves into the floor, cutting a clear trail of something crawling its way through the tunnel– nearly taking up its entire width.
Her skull friend back at the cavern had brothers. Both piled and scattered, there were bones strewn throughout. Some were smashed, or broken into pieces, looking as though they’d been chewed .
The deeper in she went, the heavier she felt. Her senses were getting fuzzy– like if she were suddenly coming down with a cold. She strained to see beyond the light of her foxfire or hear anything besides her own thundering heartbeat. It only made her jumpier, her paranoia trying to make up for her natural senses.
Another shock and– as a testament of how awful her situation was– she was almost grateful for it. It stopped her from wanting to turn on her heel and head back into the cavern. She couldn’t give into fear. Her life, as well as Tome and Stein’s, depended on it.
At last, just a few yards away, she could make out the mouth of the passageway. Even if it didn’t guarantee an out, the sight of an exit encouraged Kit enough to pick up the pace.
In fact, she was so beyond ready to get out of the tunnel, she nearly walked herself right off a ledge.
It wasn't very tall, but one glance down and Kit puzzled out why she felt like she’d stuffed ear plugs up her nose. Just five feet below her, her image mirrored over rippling water. The blue of her flames– now worryingly dim– made a ghost out of her reflection.
Water was not Kit’s best element. She’d found out pretty quickly after discovering her powers that one quick splash was all it took to cut her off from them. She used to sit in her bathtub for hours ignoring the pruning of her skin because it was the closest Kit had to being normal again. That was before she met Tome, though.
Now, Kit hated the feeling of having her senses muted. Even if– when – she got out of here and back to her everyday life, Kit couldn’t fathom living with regular senses. She hadn’t been to her pool in ages because just being around large amounts of water weakened her.
Unease tried to worm its way into her thoughts, but she was already so churned up with the cocktail of anxiety and dread that she decided unease was overkill. Still…
Kit tried to see how far the water reached. There was a path that led off to her left, but she couldn’t see farther than a few feet in front of her. A few of her orbs went ahead, lighting the way. Others started over the surface of the water. Though it afforded Kit with a better grasp of the size of this cavern, it didn’t comfort her disquiet of coming across the very thing that could leave her completely powerless in an instant and at the worst time possible.
Kit kicked herself for leaving her parasol back at the Spiral.
Stein urgently beat her legs on Kit’s hands.
“Okay, could you give me like five seconds to find an exit?” Kit snipped, maneuvering a skittering Stein between her hands, but she wouldn’t keep still. Stein squirmed her way into the folds of the cloak. “I won’t be much help if I take a dive–”
She caught movement in the reflection.
In a fraction of a second, Kit threw herself back as something erupted out of the pool. She caught the glint of jagged teeth in the firelight. A torrent of water cascaded over her– she had just enough sense to shield herself within the cloak, the fabric turning cool but staying dry.
Her kitsunebi were less lucky judging by the crackling-hiss of fire being snuffed out. Moving on nothing but instinct, she rolled as far from the ledge as she could manage and onto her feet in time to see a massive webbed hand smash into the ground where her head once was– its claws as big and sharp as kitchen knives.
In the low light, her brain was still trying to catch up with what was happening, not able to really process the form towering over her.
It was huge . A monster that would've made Tome look vertically challenged. Its body had the broad-shouldered, long-limbed build of a swimmer, but that was as close to human as it got. Dark scales covered his arms, ending only to meet with the slightly lighter leathery patch that started under its enormous snout and down its belly.
Frankly, that was as far down as Kit wanted to look, but Kit sensed something moving behind it. A tail, probably the size of her entire body.
It had a large wedged-shaped head, long and angled– like that of a crocodile. With the way it sniffed the air, Kit guessed its eyesight might not be its strongest suit.
From its chest, a deep, rumbling noise resounded through the cavern down to her bones. She felt as though her entire body was vibrating, shaking like it was going to fall apart.
She realized it was laughing.
“Is this what that cursed magician sends me?” asked the monster. Its voice was a throaty, barely decipherable growl, but for some reason had a hint of Oxford to it. “I wasn’t aware Faust carried a sense of humor. I don’t appreciate it.”
Kit squeaked as it hunched over, shoving its enormous snout in her face. She got an unwelcome look up its nostrils and an even less welcome whiff of its breath– rancid meat and stagnant brine. And ‘ My, what big teeth you have. ’ She forced herself to look up and found herself staring into a familiar amber eye.
The monster cocked its head to direct its gaze on her, its one eye doing its best to make up for its missing pair.
“Hmph.” It snorted, “I see why he’d been so pleasant earlier, but this is hardly worth my time. But perhaps…” It looked over its shoulder, studying the water it’d emerged out of while stroking an imaginary beard.
“Perhaps you can entertain me…”