Strains

Chapter 19

We're in the courtyard again. Caiden opens the first gate for me and instead of heading to the next one, he takes a sharp left. There are three other, smaller outposts here that are severed from the main library building. All of them are made from the same black stones that make up the library and its foundation.

Caiden goes to the building in the middle. He hands me his candelabra while he fishes out a key from his cloak. I take a giant step back as he swings the door outward, revealing shallow steps into black nothingness.

Something deep within myself stirs uncomfortably, like distant seasickness.

"What do we want from down there, exactly?" I say.

"A better lunch than your facilitator made you."

I chuckle to hide my uneasiness. "Okay, but you first."

I follow a few steps behind him and try to lighten the floor as best as I can. Last thing I need to do is to kill myself in some dark pit. Still, with every step we take we just go deeper into the darkness until I can't hear the chirping birds outside anymore. In the silence, the growing nausea in my stomach churns. I'm not even sure I'm hungry anymore.

I put a hand against the wall to steady myself.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, it's just creepy down here," I lie.

"Oh, well luckily for you, this is it. Give me a sec."

He walks beyond what I can see under the candlelight. A torch a short distance away begins to burn, before another and then another. Light fills the room at the base of the stairs.

I didn't realize the narrow stairwell had opened up into a huge stone chamber. Torches lined the walls of the stone bowl until they met a stone archway in the center. It was a cold sort of foreboding that made me happy to stay up on the stairs.

Caiden pulls a bag from his cloak and leans over. There are some items littering the floor, but I can't make them out from this high up. Once the bag is filled, Caiden climbs the stairs again.

"Got it, let's go back."

I nod and follow him at his heels out of the creepy place.

He locks the door behind us while I catch my breath. The air is much lighter out here. What was that place?

"Does a picnic sound good to you?" Caiden asks.

"Sure, I think I'll have to go back to my room afterward though."

"Fair enough."

We gather my things back in the library and walk to the koi pond in the flower garden. Technically, it lies in a grey area on the very edge of the academy boundary. It's as close as Caiden is willing to get to the academy grounds.

We tuck ourselves away in between the camellia bushes. Caiden pulls off one of his cloaks and sets it down as a blanket.

"Guess they have multiple uses, huh?"

Caiden sits down on the makeshift blanket.

"These?" He pulls at his collar. I nod in confirmation.

"Dulling my other senses helps me hone my psychic abilities. The complete darkness in the library and these seem to help as well."

I sit across from him, the bag of whatever he got from the dark pit between us.

"So how many layers do you have under there? Don't you get hot?"

"Three, and the hotter the better."

That doesn't sound comfortable. The one we're on top of is already duvet-level thick. I pull at the bag.