All things considered, grave robbing and all, I was feeling pretty damn good about myself as I walked through the twisting halls of the Mausoleum, back towards my dorm room. I could already feel the cool sheets from my bed if I closed my eyes. The fingerbone in my pocket seemed to thrum with power, and I had to fight the impulse to close my hands around it and start stroking the ivory bone.
So all in all, I was feeling pretty damn good about myself as I made my way to the Mausoluem's entrance. Up until I realized that I wasn't alone.
"Hello!" a voice called into the Mausoleum, echoing through the eerily white halls and alcoves of the structure.
I froze and felt my blood go cold.
"Hello!" the voice called again. "Is anybody there? Olly olly oxen free!"
I slowly pressed myself up against one wall, hoping the darkness would conceal me.
"Come out!" the voice called. "I know you're there!"
It had to be one of the Lion Hallers. Cecil, Lydia, or maybe someone else asked to stick around and make sure no one had seen the pre-rush rites for whatever reason. Mages were rather attached to their secrets, or so I'd found.
There was a pause, then the sound of footsteps on stone. "Come now," the voice purred. "I promise I'm not mad. You just wanted to see the mausoleum at night, right? I will admit the way the shadows dance off the stones here is rather lovely to behold."
The speaker was coming closer; I didn't recognize the voice, but I didn't think it belonged to anyone I knew.
A growling noise rumbled through the mausoleum, then a dog of all things trotted into the pale light.
A dog.
A fucking dog.
It wasn't a small dog; it was almost the size of a small pony and blacker than coal. The hound's claws clicked as it lazily walked on the white stone floor, and a long pink tongue was sticking out of the beast's mouth as it panted at me with an amiable sort of grin.
I honestly wasn't sure what to do at that moment. I'd always liked dogs. Our old herder Lolly was my constant companion growing up, and the only remotely positive thing about living with Lord Woodman had been the pair of small white fluffy poodles that he'd kept. Laertes and Benvolio were both much fonder of me than their master. I liked to think it was because I wasn't a complete wanker like he was.
Needless to say, I had yet to meet a dog that didn't like me. So I suppose it was that track record, and desire to give out some pets that led me to abandon all pretense of stealth and step out toward the dog. Evidently forgetting about the odd voice, the fact I probably was in a place I shouldn't be, and that I was at a magic school famous for the number of yearly fatalities among its student body.
Mistakes were made.
"Hey there friend," I said. "What're you doing here?" I offered my hand out for the hound to sniff.
The dog cocked its head at me. "What am I doing here?" the hound asked in perfect English. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
That, I think understandably, took me a bit off guard. I just stared at the hound, distinctively male by its voice, and tentatively reached to scratch him behind the ears.
"Nice doggie," I said stupidly.
"Nice doggie? Nice fucking doggie?"
I pulled my hand back quickly as the black hound snapped at me and his form seemed to inflate several times, taking on an almost bearish resemblance. "What do you think you are doing here, boy?"
"Nothing!" I said, raising my hands out in a warding gesture. "Nothing at all! I'm just—"
"What's that in your hand?"
I froze and felt the slight curved of the tiny piece of Richard Baillie's finger bone. I hadn't even realized that I'd taken it out of my pocket, it felt so soothing in my hand. I swallowed, trying to think of some clever excuse I could give the talking dog. The talking dog. God, what has my life devolved into?
"Uh…"
"Grave robber!" the dog howled. "Robber! Robber! Thief!"
He then charged me, swelling into a bear-sized mass of glistening teeth and claws coming straight for me. Naturally, I turned and ran back as fast as I could in the other direction. Which, of course, took me straight back into the mausoleum, and, once it occurred to me, probably some dead end in the near future.
I swore as I ran, taking turns at random, hoping if I lost the hound for a minute, I might be able to start back for the entrance. Assuming I could find it, of course. Assuming I didn't just wind up lost down there and die.
Those cheerful thoughts kept me company as the dog hounded me at every step. He barked furiously and something pushed at the edge of my awareness. A sort of story? Or words strung together?
Hound buried under stone. Hound to chase all grave robbers away. Black hound. Church's grim to chase sinners at the gates of hell.
It felt almost like mana. It was like a spell, but like if a spell was also trying to tell a story.
A story.
Narrative…
But it wasn't like the sort I was used to feeling from spells. It wasn't mana being twisted into a Narrative, but almost like the story itself was emanating mana. Like the story itself was whispering off somewhere in the distance, offering power to anyone who might want it. All you needed was to be willing to make yourself part of the Narrative being told.
Was that what Mason and the others had been talking about in the library? The internal versus the external facets of Narrative?
Fat lot of good realizing that will do me now.
I finally lost the blasted dog by turning a corner and ducking behind it. The hound barreled past me, continuing to bark angrily. I breathed slowly as it continued its furious chase.
The dog would probably realize it wasn't on my trail anymore in short order, and if it was anything like the hounds I knew from back on Lord Woodman's estate, then it could track me by scent. I had to disappear, lose it somehow.
If only I could cast a Working like Cecil and Lydia had earlier. If I could make myself invisible and soundless, then I'd have a chance of evading that bloody dog long enough to leave the wretched mausoleum. But I didn't know how to cast any spells and even if I did, I didn't have any mana—
I blinked and looked down at the finger bone still clenched in my hand. A conduit I could use to draw in mana. But even if I gathered mana, I didn't know any spells, let alone one that would hide me from some sort of giant magical talking dog.
A low growl sounded near me.
Sucking in a breath between my teeth, and deciding I really had nothing to lose, I tried to feel, to remember what had come over me when I'd been in Professor Ogg's classroom, pinned under that spell of his. The feeling of power coming out of the feather and filling me.
The feeling was immediate.
Mana surged from the dead boy's finger bone and pushed into me like blood rushing through veins. It was like a series of tiny rivers were in the process of being filled inside me and my Witch's Mark grew warmer in response to the sensation.
It was like I was finally being warmed by a fire after spending a lifetime out in the cold of a winter's night. I was getting lost to the feeling.
But the moment a massive black paw slammed into me, and sent me sprawling on the glassy white floor of the mausoleum, I snapped out of it.
I'd somehow held onto that tiny piece of finger bone, clutched so tightly in my left hand that part of me was afraid I'd break it. The rest of me though was far too preoccupied with the stabbing pain on my face where it had collided with the ground, and the ache on my back where the blasted dog had hit me and where I'd surely have a whooping bruise the next morning.
Assuming it didn't eat me, of course, and I stared up at a maw of long white teeth approaching me, being eaten felt like an increasingly likely scenario.
"I don't suppose we could talk about this first?" I called out to the approaching hound.
"Thief!" it barked. "Thief! Thief! THIEF!"
It was a shame, really. I'd always thought I was good with dogs, and one was going to eat me. Wonderful.
Then I heard something, and the hound clearly heard it too, because we both froze to listen. Then the sound came again, someone else walking across the glass smooth, rock-hard floor of the mausoleum. The dog cocked its head in concentration, like it was trying to decide between finishing the intruder right in front of it, me, or pursuing whoever else was skulking around the mausoleum at such an ungodly hour.
I needed… I needed to take advantage of that hesitation. I needed to get away from the wretched dog before it finally got around from eating me. Mana pulsed in my veins. If I… if I could do whatever Cecil and Lydia had done earlier. If I could just make myself unnoticeable. Invisible to the dog, then I could escape. I could live.
The mana pulsed in me, and I tried to remember what it had felt like when my awareness had brushed up against that Working. Sightless and soundless. Like a ghost, invisible to all eyes except my own.
Sightless. Soundless. Eyes see no evil. Ears hear no mischief.
A Working snapped into place around me.
I was barely aware it had happened until the dog growling again and sniffed the air. Its massive hellfire red eyes spun in its sockets and the hound let out a great howling bellow. "WHERE HAVE YOU GONE?"
I stared at it, unsure of what to do. The Working around me still buzzed with mana, but I wasn't sure if it would hold if I moved around at all. Then again, I also wasn't terribly sure when the spell would stop, and if I was at risk of it just sputtering out on me the longer I sat on the ground.
The dog pranced on its forepaws, sniffing at the ground and presumably trying to catch my scent again.
I slowly slid to my knees, and when that didn't seem to disturb the Working keeping me hidden, I took a chance and rose to my feet. Finger bone clutched tight in my fist, and with each of my steps slow and deliberate, I slowly backed away from the hound as it pressed a great muzzle to the group sniffing around in loud crashing inhales.
Then there was another clattering noise, the sound of something being knocked into, and the hound threw its head back and howled a long ghostly note before charging at me with a lolling tongue and white teeth. I had enough time to stare at the creature in horror, waiting for it to sink its gargantuan teeth into me, but the hound continued past me in a rush of fur blacker than soot.
I spun in time to see the giant black hound leap into the air and slam into a student at the other end of the hall, paws first. I supposed one of the would-be Lion Hall rushers had stuck around the mausoleum to explore. There was an awful ripping noise and a spray of scarlet blood.
I stayed still, and did my best to focus on the Working around me, praying it wouldn't stop.
The hound looked up and gave a long howl, its lips stained red. Then it leaned back down, scooped the bloody shreds that remained of the unfortunate student up in its mouth, and swallowed with a satisfied gulp. Liking its chops, the dog trotted down the hallway. Seemingly, it had forgotten me.
I didn't wait for it to remember me.
As fast and quietly as I could, reasoning that the more stealthy I was, then presumably the less strain I'd put on the Working keeping me hidden, I moved through the twisting halls of the Mausoleum back toward its entrance.
My heart didn't stop thundering in my ears until I was well out of the mausoleum and had slipped back in my dorm room.
***
A glance at Sylas's bed showed him already there and sleeping with his mouth wide open and snoring loudly. Clearly, he wasn't whoever had been unlucky enough to have the giant magical walking dog eat them.
Bit of a shame for that.
I wrapped my stolen finger bone in an old handkerchief and tucked it away in one of the drawers of my desk.
I'd like to say that after my late-night escapades, seeing Lion Hall rituals, robbing graves, and running from giant magical talking dogs, that I fell right asleep.
I didn't.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, the spirits of Angitia started their murmurings. It was like the bastards waited for me to close my eyes to start their jabbering.
"Death, Death comes for you, Theodore Crowley."