Chapter 6:

The light of a stone

Over a million coloured windows


“Celsian!” Opal shrieked again, her grey eyes wide with terror, while probably strangling the other girl with all the force she used to cling to her neck. Not that she didn’t deserve that, to be clear. “What the hell!”

As Celsian jumped, Opal saw her life flashing before her eyes and regretted every single decision she ever took to arrive at that point in time. She could already see the article titles on the newspapers: “Young Saviour dies from a fatal fall, after trusting a complete stranger”. She would’ve laughed, if she wasn’t so scared. What was she thinking? No, what was Celsian thinking? Or, even better, was she even thinking? Opal should’ve really asked her what was her escape plan, but the situation had been kind of difficult and they hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to discuss that in detail.

Celsian, that unbelievable idiot, had the gall to laugh, delighted. “Don’t worry princess, I have everything under control!”

“Well, then prove it!” she shouted, and then added, just so that the other didn’t get even stranger ideas: “And don’t call me ‘princess’!”

“As you wish, Opal!” she replied easily, with the same elated tone.

Then, all of her pockets started glowing simultaneously with a soft yellow light. Opal didn’t understand why until slim branches made of stone came out and enveloped Celsian’s upper body, like some sort of magical armour, before stretching like the legs of a spider and taking hold on the castle walls with a horrible sound, slowing down their fall to an acceptable level. Celsian was grinning happily, while her long braid tore at the wind like a whip and Opal stared at her, amazed.

“That’s… your magic?” she asked – or, to be precise, she yelled over the noise that was still being made –.

“It is! Isn’t it wonderful?”

That was probably a rhetorical question, but Opal answered truthfully anyway. “It’s incredible!” It also explained pretty well how the hell the other girl had managed to reach her room and destroy her window. To be clear, she was still pretty upset about that fact – she liked that stained glass, okay? –, but that power was admittedly very cool and she wasn’t immune to it.

Celsian’s smile, if possible, grew even larger with excitement and pride. “I know!”

To be fair to the castle guards, they did try to stop them, either with physical or magical weapons, but they were way too surprised by Celsian’s particular display of power and their arrows and spears of stone didn’t manage to do much apart from giving Celsian a perfect excuse to show Opal a few of her favourite tricks. For the record, Opal wasn’t all that amused in that moment.

They slid down and climbed up the walls, walking over the fortifications and horribly scarring a castle that by the likes of it had never seen many battles. Once that they put some distance between them and the palace, Celsian landed in a not so elegant way on her feet and finally put Opal down, while her armour and legs of stone retreated back into her pockets.

“Okay, what’s next?” Opal asked, patting her uniform in the vain hope of dusting it off. “An underground secret passage? A magical carriage? The statues coming to life and escorting us to your secret hideout? Surprise me.”

“Uh, very sorry to disappoint you, but no. We must run.”

Run?

Celsian rolled her eyes. “Yes, you know, it’s that thing you do when you walk really fast, now come on!”

She broke into a sprint, and Opal couldn’t do anything apart from following her. At least she was used to it, with all the times she’d been late for school. Maybe, after all that world travelling fiasco, she would’ve joined the track team or something.

“All those magic tricks, and the last part of your grand escape plan is this?!” Perhaps she shouldn’t have wasted her breath while she was running, but she couldn’t always have great ideas.

“Yes, well, sorry if it’s not up to your expectations, but those magic tricks, as you call them, wouldn’t have been exactly inconspicuous!” She slightly turned her head in Opal’s direction, always keeping an eye on their surroundings. “And, in any case, if you really want an underground passage or whatever, you can just create it yourself!”

Opal looked at her and very nearly stumbled on a root. “Wait, for real?”

“… I really have to explain more than a few things to you once we get somewhere safer, because evidently those old moss-backs didn’t bother with anything.”

The promise of knowledge was extremely attractive, and also something that no-one else in that world, apart from the other girl, had given her. “Where are we going, by the way?”

At that, Celsian smiled again. “To the only thing you got right in your brief rambling: one of my hideouts!”

Okay, that was cool, Opal thought, partially ignoring the voice in her head that told her that the other only had multiple hideouts because she was a criminal. Was Opal considered such too, now? Or did the guards just think she had been kidnapped? She didn’t know what was worse, honestly. She pushed all those thoughts aside, in the corner of the problems for Future Her. “Let’s go then!”

They continued to run until they reached the outskirts of the residential area, when they slowed down their pace not to draw too much attention – or, well, at least in the hope of drawing less attention than what they were already receiving, because many people had seen Opal walk with a knight in the castle’s direction just that morning –, and then Celsian began to take streets that got narrower and darker with each passing minute, even though the roads were so grand and pristine in the other parts of the city. Opal dearly hoped it was just her impression, or that she would’ve been able to summon those useful spikes of stone if the need arose. She also hoped the news from the castle hadn’t reached the citizens yet. She was hoping for a lot of things, actually, and wasn’t really on board with the idea that her life was precariously hanging by a single thread of intertwined chances, but there wasn’t much she could do about it at the moment.

After some time, Celsian stopped in front of a wall and Opal bumped into her. “Ouch” they both moaned.

“What made you stop like that?” Opal asked, confused, rubbing at her nose.

Celsian shook her head. “Just watch and you’ll find out.”

She put a hand on the wall and the latter trembled, while a rectangular section of it glowed with the same yellow light of Celsian’s pockets and then slid on the side to reveal a concealed spiral staircase.

Celsian smiled, with her eyes crinkling in satisfaction, and inclined her head, making a gesture, that probably wanted to be elegant and chivalrous, towards the newly appeared entrance. “After you, milady.”

“Opal” she absentmindedly replied, in a way that was rapidly becoming automatic, too distracted by the recent show of magic, before beginning to walk up the stairs, followed by the other.

She tried to count the number of steps, but she constantly found herself thinking about something else, so she gave up very fast. When the door on the wall slid shut once more they found themselves in complete darkness, but Celsian made her pockets glow again so that there was a faint yellow light surrounding them. However, not even that was enough to save Opal from bonking her head on a wooden trapdoor, that abruptly stopped her climbing with a somewhat loud thud, the sound of which reverberated all across the staircase.

“Ouch!”

“Oh, haha, I forgot to tell you about the hatch, didn’t I?”

“You don’t say!” She rubbed at her head, hoping not to find a bump later.

“… Sorry.” At least, by the tone of her voice, she seemed properly apologetic.

Opal sighed and pushed the trapdoor open, walking up the last steps of the stairs and finding herself in a very small room, devoid of windows but full of glowing little rocks. Its furniture was sparse at best, but everything achieved such a high level of total chaos that maybe the fact that there weren’t many things was a positive point, after all – and that was saying a lot, because come on, she was a high school student, her room wasn’t exactly the picture perfect example of order –. The only tidy spot in that whole mess was what seemed like a working space, with sheets of papers all neatly organised in piles and notebooks arranged side-by-side on the shelves.

Celsian climbed after her and put a hand on her hip. “Well, Opal.” She made a vague gesture at their general surroundings. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

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