Chapter Text
Alex Fierro knows, without a doubt, that she’s never going to forgive herself for this. She can tell what her sister is going to say before the words come out of her mouth.
“Magnus is missing,” Sam says, hands clenched around her coffee cup. “And I think he’s in trouble.”
one week earlier
“Chase!” Alex yells from his perch on the back of a berserker from floor 98. “Make like Troy Bolton and get your goddamn head in the game!” He grunts and pulls his garrote tighter.
“Sorry!” Magnus yelps, ducking to avoid an arrow between the eyes. “Sorry, sorry,” he continues, stumbling forward and barely managing to block an incoming blow with his shield. The ax buries itself in the wood, stopping a few inches from his nose, and the girl wielding it yanks fruitlessly to get it out. Magnus hesitates for a second before throwing his weight forward, shoving the shield and burying the back of the double-headed ax in the head of his assailant. She goes down, and Magnus fumbles to free his arm from the ruined shield. “Sorry,” he says again, this time to the dead einherjar in front of him.
“Beantown!” scolds Mallory. “For the last time, we don’t apologize to the enemy!” Then she throws a knife with deadly accuracy into the neck of the berserker Alex is trying to strangle.
He curses as the guy gurgles, and leaps nimbly from his back before he crashes to the ground with a massive thud. “Hey,” Alex scowls when he lands. “I had that guy.”
“Snooze, you lose,” Mallory shrugs, retrieving her dagger with a wet squelch. “Let’s get a move on, people! TJ’s already halfway up that hill.”
Magnus is still standing over the girl he killed, a vaguely disappointed look on his face. “She was so nice, though. She let me cut her in line for tacos last week.”
“Not today! Friends in peacetime must be slaughtered indiscriminately on the fields of battle,” Halfborn declares, wiping his hands clean of blood and what looks like more than a little bit of guts on his pants. They’re also covered in blood, so the gesture doesn’t really do much in the way of cleanliness.
“Yeah, Magnus,” says Alex. “You should really get better at slaughtering indiscriminately.”
Magnus narrows his eyes at him, scrunching up his nose in mocking irritation.
It makes him look annoying cute, so Alex ignores his butterflies and sticks his tongue out in retaliation.
Magnus rolls his eyes, but blushes furiously, so Alex chalks it up as a win. Then TJ shouts a war-cry from somewhere, and they all haul ass up the hill.
The first thing Alex does when she resurrects is put on eyeliner. Then she heads next door to see if she beat Magnus.
Unfortunately, he’s already up and watching TV.
“No!” she pouts, throwing her hands in the air. “You’re always up quicker. Unfair.”
He shrugs. “What can I say? Being a wimpy healer has got to have some perks.”
Alex frowns. “You’re not wimpy.”
“You’ve literally called me wimpy. Multiple times.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s fine when I say it.”
Magnus smiles, a soft, surprised thing. Alex feels her cheeks heating up.
“Do you want to watch with me?” he asks, scooching over on the couch. “It’s Doctor Who. David Tennant seasons.”
“Naturally,” Alex responds. Magnus looks at her expectantly. The butterflies in her stomach turn to buzzing locusts. “Oh, um, no, I can’t. I have—pottery,” she finishes lamely.
“Oh,” Magnus says, smile fading. “Oh, yeah, of course.” He looks away, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “Sorry.” Alex wants to tell him to stop apologizing.
She clears her throat. “Well, see you at dinner.”
“Yeah,” Magnus sighs, something weary around his eyes. Guilt roils in Alex’s gut. “See you then.”
With a nod, she turns and heads back to her room is what is definitely not a retreat. Absolutely not.
Once inside, she closes the door and lets her forehead thunk against it.
The problem is, she doesn’t really know how to act around Magnus. And that’s something Alex isn’t used to—normally, she knows how to act around everyone she meets: like she doesn’t care. But with Magnus… well, she does care. It’s endlessly annoying.
Alex had told him that she needed space. That wasn’t a lie. Sometimes, when she was around Magnus, everything felt so unbearably easy that it was terrifying. It made anxiety itch beneath her skin, like when she was thirteen and would accidentally shift into tiny shivering animals when the world felt scary. It felt… too good to be true. Alex is an abrasive, antagonistic asshole. She doesn’t get nice things.
And that’s exactly what Magnus is: nice. It’s not that she doesn’t like him—she likes him so much, and she knows for a fact that he likes her too. (Subtlety, thy name is not and will never be Magnus Chase.) But she doesn’t need Magnus getting his gushy feelings everywhere. Sometimes, when he looks at her, it’s like he’s going to start glowing any minute—literally, because he does glow sometimes. Alex, to her eternal consternation, finds it inexplicably hot.
She figures that, given enough time, these feelings will settle down and get more comfortable; they’ll feel less like an overpowering wall of water that bears down on her. Then she’ll talk to Magnus and they can be… something more than whatever their few spur-of-the-moment kisses makes them now. (There were those few during their quest at Midsummer, and then a few more in the darkness of their rooms, and then that one in the kitchen of the Chase Space before Hearthstone had walked in on them and then promptly walked back out.)
A small, insecure part of her just wonders if Magnus will still be around for whenever she finally does feel ready.
now
“Missing how?” Alex asks around the lump in her throat.
“Missing missing,” says Sam, leaning forward. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Amir, but…”
Alex had noticed that Samirah had seemed… off, while she chaperoned their coffee date. And the minute Amir had left, Sam’s face had gone serious and she’d told Alex that something had happened.
Alex swallows. “How do you know he’s missing?”
“I haven’t heard from him since Saturday. It’s Monday afternoon.” She looks at Alex shrewdly. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”
“Um… Friday?”
“You haven’t heard from him since Friday?” Sam blinks surprised.
“Uh… yeah?” Alex tries to play it cool. “We don’t talk every day.” She knows full well that she usually talks to Magnus every day.
“You didn’t talk to him on Saturday?”
Now it’s Alex’s turn to be surprised. “Why Saturday?” She hadn’t seen or heard from Magnus since Friday but… she’d figured he was just ignoring her. On weekends, they didn’t have any mandatory training, so it wouldn’t have been too hard to avoid her through the endless halls of Valhalla. (Alex knew, because she’d been trying to avoid him and the entirety of Floor 19.)
Sam’s mouth parts in quiet shock. “He…” she hesitates, clearly deciding on whether or not to tell Alex something. “Saturday was the anniversary of his mother’s death.”
That hits like a punch to the gut. Alex’s first instinct is to think, He didn’t tell me? Then that shrivels up and dies pathetically when Alex has the much more hurtful thought of, I didn’t notice anything? I didn’t ask?
Sam’s voice softens. “I thought you knew.”
Alex shakes her head slowly. “I… no. He never said.” The words feel sour on her tongue.
“Well…” Sam fiddles with her coffee cup, nearly empty. “He told me that morning that he was going to out to camp in the Blue Hills. He was supposed to be back yesterday, but…” Sam shrugs helplessly.
Alex purses her lips. “How do you know he’s missing? Maybe he just decided to stay an extra day, or something.”
“That’s what I thought last night,” Sam sighs. “But then I… I had this dream.”
Alex’s knee begins to bounce. “You said you thought he was in trouble.”
Sam nods unhappily. “I was… I was looking for my phone.”
“You were… looking for your phone?” Alex asks, wondering if they’re still talking about Magnus being missing-in-action.
“In the dream,” Sam agrees, lost in her recollection. “I couldn’t find it, and I was getting so panicked, and then Magnus came in. He said, ‘Oh, Sam, you’ve never been good at taking care of important things.’ And then he handed me my phone, but the screen was shattered.”
“Okay,” Alex says slowly. “But maybe that was just a weird dream. I mean, your phone isn’t actually broken,” she points out.
“Alex,” Sam says gently, in a tone that makes her very nervous. “When he spoke, I’m… I’m pretty sure it was in dad’s voice.”
Alex feels like she’s back in Niflheim, freezing from the inside out. “You think he sent it? The dream?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, unsure. “It’s just… that dream, and then I haven’t heard from Magnus… I asked him to text me when he got back.”
Alex tries for a poker face, but something of her surprise must show in her expression. It’s just, asking someone to text you when they got home was a pretty blatant display of affection that Sam didn’t usually go for.
Sam looks down at her hands. “He was… he was in pretty rough shape when he left.”
Alex feels somehow even colder. “So… what? You think Loki took Magnus? The Aesir have him locked up.”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, frustrated. She bites her lip. “I just have a bad feeling.”
“Okay,” Alex says. “Okay.” She pushes back from the table, her chair scraping across the floor. “Let’s go ask Blitzen and Hearthstone. Maybe he just went to them.”
Sam hesitantly stands. “Okay. Maybe.” But the hope in her voice rings empty and false.
Alex doesn’t really want to give in to the same worried skepticism, but—Sam’s right.
She has a bad feeling.
Alex has never been one for mainstream fashion, but even she must admit that the fall line at Blitzen’s Best is pretty great.
She and Sam find the dwarf in question tying a sky-blue ascot around the neck of a mannequin in the window display. The mannequin is dressed in a stylish three-piece suit of some glittery navy material, wearing matching sky-blue cufflinks and spiffy brown wingtips. Blitzen waves at them through the glass and motions for them to come inside.
The bell above the door jingles as they enter, Blitz squeezing out of the display area and hopping to the floor.
“A visit from my favorite questers! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Your favorites?” Alex repeats. “Damn, we got an upgrade.”
“Well, friends who stop Ragnarok together stay together, I always say. Besides, Magnus has been ignoring me, so you got promoted.”
Alex sobers, and Sam wrings her hands together. “Yeah, that’s… kind of what we wanted to talk about.”
Blitzen fixes them with a scrutinizing look. “I take it this isn’t a purely social visit, then.”
Alex grimaces. “Unfortunately, no.”
Blitz nods, and gestures for them to follow him. “We’ll talk in my office.”
Blitzen’s office sort of reminds Alex of her pottery corner when she’s working on a particularly complex piece. It looks like a bomb of chainmail and high-quality fabric went off, covering every surface with a mound of half-finished sewing projects. There are pincushions everywhere, like porcupines with multicolored quills sticking out at all angles. Alex gingerly removes one from a chair and sits down, hoping that none of the pins came off and are laying in wait to stab her in the ass.
Blitz sits heavily behind his desk and pushes fabric off to both sides, creating an opening through which Alex can just see the dwarf’s face and the brim of his hat. Sam elects to pace in the back, clearly too wound-up to sit down in potentially-deadly pincushion chairs.
“So I take it you guys haven’t heard from Magnus either?” Blitz asks.
“No,” says Sam wearily. “Not since Saturday. We were hoping that he might be with you or Hearth, but…”
Blitzen shakes his head—no luck. “I haven’t heard from him since then either. Hearth is over at the Chase Space, but I would bet that he’s in the same boat as us.”
“Right,” Alex says. “Well, Sam thinks he might be… missing.”
Blitz frowns. “And you don’t think he’s missing?”
“I…” Alex hesitates. “I don’t know what to think. Hopefully he just… lost track of time and is frolicking in the woods like the cuddly little forest creature he is, but…” she trails off, not wanting to voice the rest of the thought: we don’t have a very good track record with “hopefully.”
“He went camping in the Blue Hills,” Sam clarifies from behind her.
“Right,” Blitz says. “His mom.”
Alex fights the bitter thing in her chest that whines, Blitzen knew, and I didn’t? Of course Blitzen knew. Alex is sure that he, in all his wonderfully supportive ways, had had many an emotionally-relevant conversation with Magnus about his open wound of grief. Just because emotionally-relevant conversations (particularly with Magnus) make Alex break out in hives doesn’t mean they don’t happen with other people. That weren’t her.
That’s right, whispers the bitter animal in her chest. You can’t even talk to him about your own feelings. Why would he ever talk to you about his?
“Yeah,” Sam says. “He was supposed to be back yesterday, but nobody’s seen him. And…” she swallows. “I had this dream.”
She describes it to Blitzen, who listens with a somber expression.
“Loki,” he growls when she finishes. “He can’t leave the kid alone, can he? Must be allergic, or something.”
“I was thinking,” Alex interjects. “There’s no way Loki could have taken him, he and his allies are too weak right now. But he would never give up the chance to rub something in your face,” she says to Sam. “He’s a great dad like that.”
“So… what?” Sam frowns. “Something unrelated happened to Magnus, and Loki just knows about it? Why would he tip me off, then? We’re obviously going to rescue him, now. Wouldn’t it be better for Loki if we never even knew?”
“We’d be worried even without the dream,” Alex points out, ignoring the embarrassment of that statement. Of course she’s worried. She’d be worried if any of her friends were in this situation. Because that’s what she and Magnus are. Friends. Yeah.
Blitzen looks like he’s sucking on a lemon. “Loki must think that it’s too late. Knowing that Magnus is in trouble but not being able to help? That would be… awful. He’d love that.”
The words settle like a stone in Alex’s gut. She clears her throat. “Well, people tell us it’s too late all the time. We’ve proved them wrong before, we can do it again.”
“We don’t even know where to start looking,” Sam says heavily. “We don’t even know what happened. Those are… pretty bad odds.”
“Never tell me the odds,” Alex quotes with a smirk. No one laughs. No one even cracks a smile. Alex sighs. (Magnus would have laughed, if he’d been here. He always thinks she’s funny.)
“Well, what do you want us to do?” Sam replies, frustrated. “Go off into the Blue Hills and start looking?”
“Of course not,” Alex scowls. “The Blue Hills are huge. We don’t even know what trailhead he would’ve started at.”
“Well…” Blitz says, a spark of hope in his eyes. “I know there’s a specific campsite he and his mom used to go to. If I had to guess, he’s probably there.”
Another thing he never told me. Alex files that thought away for later. “Do you know where it is?”
The spark of hope immediately sputters and dies. “No,” Blitzen sighs.
“So we have nothing.” Sam goes back to angry pacing.
“Okay,” Alex says, wanting desperately to defuse the situation. “Look, Sam and I will go back to Valhalla, see if he shows up tonight. Blitz, maybe… check with Hearth to see if he has any ideas?”
“Sure,” he replies. “We can look around tonight as well, see if he’s at any of our old haunts.”
Sam nods, clinging to their shoddy framework of half a plan. “Great. We’ll regroup tomorrow and go from there.”
“He’ll turn up,” Alex says, but the words don’t do much to alleviate the knot in her chest. “He’s done too many impossible things to go randomly missing in the woods for no reason.”
“Right,” Sam nods. “He won a flyting with Loki. He’s a healer, he can handle himself. He always turns up fine.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” says Blitz. “He avoided CPS for two years. That kid is a little too good at getting himself out of trouble.”
And a little too good at getting himself into trouble, Alex thinks bitterly. But she doesn’t say it out loud—she’s not the greatest in social situations, but even she can tell that her pessimism would do no good for Sam and Blitz.
But she can’t help but feel like sitting around, hoping for Magnus to save himself, is as good as signing his death warrant. A second, more permanent death warrant.
As they walk back to the Hotel entrance, Sam looks at her. “We’re not giving up on him,” she says.
“I know,” Alex responds, looking down at her shoes. They crunch across the frost-covered grass on the Common. It’s the end of September, and the early cold of Boston has already started to turn the season chilly and bleak. The sun is starting to dip below the horizon, coloring the sky in streaks of red and pink. Yay, air pollution! Alex thinks.
“He wouldn’t give up on us,” Sam continues. “We stick together.”
“I know,” Alex says again. “I just…” she trails off.
“You’re worried about him,” Sam supplies.
“You are, too.”
“I know,” Sam says softly. “But, for you, it’s…”
Different, Alex mentally fills in. “Yeah,” she mumbles. She doesn’t say anything else, as anything else she might say are things she doesn’t even have the guts to think about.
They make the rest of the walk in silence.
last Tuesday
Dinner at Valhalla tends to be… a loud affair.
“What did you say?” TJ shouts to be heard over the din of rowdy einherjar.
“I said,” shouts Halfborn, “that we should form a team for Thursday’s dodgeball! To the death!”
Alex thinks he is far too excited about a game of dodgeball. You’re supposed to stop caring about that stuff in, like, middle school.
Magnus clearly shares her feelings. “I’ve had enough of dodgeball-to-the-death for a lifetime,” he says loudly. “Literally. It’s what killed me.”
“Oh, did your fragile male ego get mortally wounded when a girl smoked you in third period phys-ed?” Alex snarks back, even though she knew full well how Magnus had died.
Magnus scowls back at her, just like he always does when he can’t think of a good comeback. Which is most of the time.
“That’s a great idea!” enthuses TJ. “It’s about time I get a chance to show you all up in projectile-based warfare.”
“Um, excuse you,” says Mallory. “I’m a great mark with these knives.” She whips out one of the weapons in question, pretending to aim it across the table at Halfborn.
“Exactly!” replies the Viking, unphased by the deadly blade pointed between his eyes. “You’d be a vision in tennis shoes and a team-colored penne!”
Mallory blushes as red as her hair and shoves her knife back into its sheath, muttering about stupid Viking flirts and stupid fucking feelings. Alex can relate.
Magnus wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know how much help I’d be in a game of dodgeball. What would I heal, your wounded pride?”
“Precisely,” replies Alex, leaning across the table to snatch a bread roll from his plate, even though she hasn’t eaten hers yet. “You’d heal our pride by dying first, in a much more embarrassing way.” She takes a huge bite of bread and smiles at him with her mouth full.
He flushes red and looks away. God, it’s so fun to get him flustered. It’s almost too easy.
Next to her, Mallory snorts. Alex looks over, but she just shakes her head, sipping her mead.
“Wonderful!” Halfborn cries, clearly having decided to speak mostly in exclamation points tonight. “Now, to important matters. We must determine a team name. A name to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies, to inspire awe in the souls of our allies! I’m thinking, The Berserker Ballers!”
Alex fixes him with a dead stare. “I would rather die. Painfully. Again.”
“Seconded,” replies Magnus.
“Thirded,” Mallory says with a smirk.
Halfborn pouts. “Well, fine. You pick a name then.”
“The Mighty Maulers,” suggests Mallory.
“The Deadly Destroyers!” shouts TJ.
“Team Floor 19?” deadpans Magnus.
“Let’s put a pin in this,” says Alex.
Then the announcement horns sound, and they direct their attention to the table of newcomers to be welcomed to an eternal afterlife of dodgeball and other enriching and deadly activities.
Later, Alex is leaning against her doorway, Magnus against his, both lingering for as long as possible before heading off to bed.
Magnus shrugs. “I just think that dodgeball is one activity that should be left firmly in shitty school gymnasiums.” Alex cackles at this, and Magnus grins. “Being homeless sucked, but at least I didn’t have to do P.E. anymore,” he continues.
Alex breaks down into helpless giggles. It’s not that Magnus is actually that funny. It’s just that—it’s late, and the lights are low, and Alex feels like there’s a helium balloon in her chest. “We should—” she gasps. “We should call ourselves the—The High-School Horrors.”
Magnus snickers. “The Teenaged Terrors.”
“The Undead Underage Undertakers.”
That one pushes Magnus over the edge—he doubles over with laughter, and Alex smiles even more in spite of herself.
A door slams open, and Mallory pokes her head out. “What the fuck are you two laughing about? Some of us are trying to sleep.”
Alex fixes her with a look, taking note of her mussed hair, red face, and how she seems to be clutching a bedsheet around herself in the place of clothes. “Hey Mallory. Isn’t that Halfborn’s room?”
Mallory’s face goes red with anger. “I—you—” she sputters. “Ugh!” She throws her hands in the air, and then quickly whips them back down when the bedsheet comes dangerously close to falling.
Magnus tries valiantly to tamp down his laughter. “We’ll be quieter Mallory. Sorry for… keeping you up.”
Alex can’t stop herself from snorting in a very undignified way.
“You know what?” seethes Mallory. “You two have no fuckin’ legs to stand on. Sure, Halfborn and I may be gross sometimes, but this shit?” She gestures between Alex and Magnus, standing three feet apart in front of their respective doors. “It’s fucking disgusting. Dancing around each other like wee fuckin’ babies. Just be adults and suck it up already! Odin’s socks, Halfborn and I were never this bad.”
Alex’s face is so hot it must be firetruck red at this point. She doesn’t look at Magnus, but she takes small comfort in knowing that he’s definitely as embarrassed as she is, if not more.
Mallory sneers at them in that loving way of hers and shuts Halfborn’s door with a slam.
An awkward silence descends over the hallway.
“Um,” says Magnus eloquently.
“I’ll probably go to bed,” says Alex, fully prepared to make a tactical retreat to her room.
“She didn’t—Mallory didn’t really mean anything by it,” Magnus says, stepping forward.
“I know,” Alex responds.
“I can—I’ll tell her to back off.”
“Don’t bother. She can say what she wants.”
“But… I know it bothers you.”
Alex swallows. It does bother her, but—she doesn’t really know why. “I’m just gonna go to bed.”
“Okay.” Magnus steps back as she opens her door. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Alex responds, and gently closes her door. She waits until she hears the schnick of Magnus closing his own.
Then she lets loose a huge sigh and sets off to beat her feelings into submission by way of angry, impassioned clay-sculpting.
now
Nobody on Floor 19 has heard from Magnus either.
“He hasn’t come back?” worries TJ.
“Of course Magnus got himself into trouble. Can’t catch a fucking break,” gripes Mallory.
“He’s a capable warrior. He will return soon,” reassures Halfborn.
“Well, he didn’t fill out a vacation form, so he should still be in the Hotel,” says Hunding when Alex asks him, just to cover all her bases. However, they never fill out vacation requests, so Alex doesn’t really glean anything helpful from the conversation.
Sam had gone off to ask the Valkyries who’d patrolled today if they’d caught of glimpse of him somewhere across the Nine Worlds. Between serving duty at dinner, she reports that nobody had seen him.
The rest of dinner is a somber affair.
When Alex returns to her room that night, she finds a gift from housekeeping in the form of a complete Doctor Who box set of DVDs, which she takes as a pathetic attempt to cheer her up. It just makes her feel worse.
It takes her a long time to fall asleep that night. She replays her last conversation with Magnus over and over. Then that gets too painful, so she tries to distract herself by reading, but she keeps thinking about Magnus—his smile, his messy hair, the feeling of his warm hands when he heals her, the broken look on his face when he’d left her room that Friday.
Finally, she shifts into a small tabby cat and curls up in her blankets, counting sheep until she finally manages to fall asleep.
It’s just her luck that tonight, she dreams.
She finds herself in her old pottery studio, from back when she was alive and living with her father. Though most of her memories from that time are less than pleasant, this old studio had always been a bright spot. Somewhere where she could be herself, where she didn’t have to look over her shoulder every minute of every day.
But now, the pottery studio doesn’t feel nearly as comforting. She’s alone at one of the wheels, a lump of clay in front of her, yet to be molded into a pot. The lights are off, the blinds drawn over the front windows.
Alex slowly stands from her stool, her steps echoing oddly in the space.
She wonders why she’s here. Usually, if her dreams feel this clear and lucid, it’s because there’s something important to see, but—there’s nothing here.
At least, that’s what she thinks until she hears something from the storeroom.
Warily, Alex turns. The door to the storeroom is cracked open, a strip of weak orange light spilling across the floor. As she approaches, she hears the sound again—a clank, like metal on metal. She can hear breathing, too, quiet and measured, but a bit too fast, a bit too panicked.
She grabs the handle with apprehension, already half-expecting what’s behind the door.
He’s huddled in the corner of the room, shaggy hair matted and falling in front of his face. Alex can’t see what he’s crouched over, but she can see the glint of the sword in his hand.
Alex had been hoping all night for Magnus to magically reappear, but now, being the coward that she is, she wishes desperately to wake up. She doesn’t want to see him like this.
“Jack, I need you to hit harder,” he grits out, voice rough with strain.
“No can do, señor,” Jack whispers back. Even the runes on his hilt glow dimmer than usual. “We’ve been trying for hours. You’re weak enough already. If I used any more of my strength, you’d probably die the moment you reclaimed me.” Alex has never heard the sword sound so… well, worried.
“Great,” grunts Magnus, swinging the sword down again. The impact of metal on metal. “You’re on your own, Magnus. Fucking typical.”
“They’ll come,” Jack replies, in a rare moment of supportiveness. “They’ll tear apart the Nine Worlds. You’ve just got to hold out.”
Alex wants to shout. We’ll come! We’re looking! Just tell us where you are! But she’s somehow completely sure that Magnus wouldn’t be able to hear her, the same way she knows that this is real.
Magnus ignores Jack. “Come on,” he mutters, adjusting something on the floor. Alex steps closer and feels bile rise in her throat. Magnus has been swinging away at a golden chain on the floor, the end of which is linked to a golden manacle, fastened around his bare ankle. Magnus swings his sword again but doesn’t leave so much as a dent in the metal. It must be magically reinforced.
Alex follows the chain with her eyes, brows raising as she sees the other end. It’s literally melted to the floor in a huge lump of cooled metal, like someone had heaped gold on top of it and welded it to the stone with the world’s largest blowtorch.
In fact, there’s a shit ton of gold in here. Surrounding Magnus are piles and piles of golden coins and jewels, weapons and armor and iPhones with gold finish. They’re also no longer in the pottery studio. The space has morphed into a large cave, so massive that the ceiling disappears into a inky black void. Sound echoes back and forth in a way that is deeply unsettling. Magnus is tucked against one wall, the other side of the cave sloping up into a wide tunnel that must be the exit.
Magnus whips his head up, making Alex jump in alarm. (Sue her, this place is creepy.)
“Shit,” he hisses. Alex has never heard him swear this much. “She’s here.”
For a moment, she wonders if he’s talking about her, but then she hears it—massive footsteps that shake the floor, coming from the exit tunnel.
“I need you to go back to a pendant now,” Magnus says to Jack.
“But—” protests Jack.
“Please,” Magnus whispers, ragged. “I can’t let her see you.”
It’s hard to tell with a sword, but Alex swears that Jack looks unhappy. “Fine. But, boss—”
“Be careful. I know,” Magnus says with a rueful smile, and Jack shrinks back into a runestone. All the light in the room goes with him, and Alex realizes that it had been completely dark except for the glow from Jack’s blade.
Her eyes take a moment to adjust, and when they do, it seems like Magnus has aged ten years. She wonders if that’s all just exhaustion he’s absorbed from Jack, or if he’d been putting on a façade for the sword. Knowing Magnus, it was probably both. He looks up towards the tunnel, and Alex finally gets a good glimpse of his face.
The bags under his eyes seem far too pronounced for the two days he’s been gone. His cheeks are sallow, his lips chapped, and his clothes are dirty and wrinkled. There’s blood crusted on one side of his head, coloring a clump of his hair with rusty brown. Alex can’t see a wound or bruise underneath, so at least he had enough energy to heal himself. At one point. His feet are bare, which Alex finds baffling, until she notices more dried blood on the bottoms of them and realizes that someone had taken his shoes to make it harder for him to escape. Her nausea doubles, pressing uncomfortably at the back of her throat.
The crashing footsteps get closer and closer, and Alex can see the panicked breath rattle in and out of Magnus’ chest.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, though she knows he can’t hear her. “I’m here.”
He bites his lip and seems to steel himself, before standing up. The chain drags across the stone floor with a grotesque, echoing scrape.
Alex doesn’t know what to do. The last time she felt so helpless, she’d been sprawled out on the front walk of her childhood home, watching spittle fly from her father’s mouth as he yelled.
She settles for sidling closer to him, and she can’t stop herself from raising a hand to drop on his shoulder. Of course, it goes straight through him, as intangible as smoke.
But Magnus goes ramrod straight. His head swivels around, and he fixes his gaze right on hers. “Is… is someone here?” Her breath catches in her throat. Before she can answer, he speaks again; a broken, hopeful whisper that cuts straight to her heart: “Alex?”
Another crash, so close this time that Alex feels the impact in her bones. “Hello?” calls a voice, deep and gravelly and deafeningly loud. It washes over her, makes the hairs on her arms stand up.
Alex turns and sees, in the mouth of the tunnel, two massive, glowing, golden eyes. “How is my little sunspot tonight?” the mouth drawls, revealing rows and rows of razor sharp teeth. Smoke trails from two nostrils on a scaly, gigantic snout. “Not trying to leave, I hope,” drawls the voice, and Alex swears she can hear a smile.
Beside her, Magnus shudders.
Then Alex wakes, trembling and cold, in an empty hotel room.