Something was very wrong. Ayda knew it before she opened her eyes. Something ached inside of her, the pain of a phantom limb gone missing.
My magic! Ayda opened her eyes and bolted upright. Magic blossomed before her eyes — she was still using her magical vision, and so the random ambient magic in the cold stone cell was easily visible.
Ayda looked down at herself and saw nothing. Her skin, yes, slightly translucent. But no magic inside. A shudder racked her body and she clutched her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth and wrapping her wings around herself as if to stave off a chill breeze. Wrong. So wrong. Everything… is wrong. She tried to cry and found she was past tears. Just that awful emptiness gaping inside her. Where she’d lost everything. She squeezed her eyes shut and banished her magical vision.
“Ayda?” Tel’s voice brought her back from the brink. She heard the clip-clop of hooves and felt the ground shake when he laid down beside her. He blew warm air across her back. “Come on, girl. This is no time for giving up.”
“She’s already won.” What more could Nadra take from her?
Tel scoffed. “She won the first battle, and so you’re going to surrender the war? What about Madeline?”
“She’ll be fine. Nadra just needs her magic,” Ayda said, numb. But as the ache of her missing magic became familiar, she prodded the wound and found hatred blossoming again. Taking Ayda’s magic was just the latest in the long list of Nadra’s crimes. That woman couldn’t take anything else from her. But that just meant Ayda could give everything she had now.
Tel was right. Ayda still had a war to win. She swept her wings back and got to her feet, meeting Tel’s gaze. Her knife pressed against her ankle, cold, promising revenge.
“That’s more like it,” he nodded. His ears pricked forward. “So what’s the plan?”
“Five days. We have five days.” Ayda recounted everything Nadra had said after Tel had been led out.
“And you believe she just wants to fix what she broke?”
“Stars, no,” Ayda said. “She just wants Madeline on her side. But I believe what she said about going to the Well in five days. I’m not sure what she’ll do there, but we have to stop it.”
Tel nodded. “Seems to me getting Madeline away from her is our best bet.”
Ayda agreed, heat rising to her cheeks. She had been overconfident. Her plan had failed, and now Nadra had everything she needed. But the plan was perfectly reasonable, she argued with herself. It seemed logical that the magic would work. Cinder thought it would.
Looking back, it seemed like a leap supported with the weakest of logic, but she pushed that aside. “How long was I out?”
“All night. Not that I was worried or anything.”
“Madeline?”
Tel shook his head. “I haven’t seen her. They must be keeping her somewhere else.”
A long pause. “We need to escape.” Ayda took flight, ignoring her aching wings.
She looked around the cell properly for the first time. In was about the size of a large stall, with a heavyset wooden door that had a grilled mesh for a window, far too small for Ayda to fit through. A similar window at the back of the cell let a little light in. At the bottom was a locked flap, presumably for delivering food. In the front corner sat a wooden bucket of water, and strewn across the back half of the stall was old, musty hay. Everything else was solid stone.
“Say we escape.” Tel’s ears flickered. “What then?”
“I — back to Vjorin, I suppose.”
“Then I can’t come back with you.” Tel swung his head away from her. “I’m a deserter. I’ll be executed.”
“They wouldn’t.”
“Oh, they would,” said Tel, trying to sound unconcerned. “I can find another job. But not in Vjorin.”
“That’s fine,” said Ayda. “I’m not done with Nadra. In Vjorin, they’ll just hide us away. We’ll find another city, stay there until we have another plan.”
“But first we have to get out of this pit,” Tel said softly.
The only thing Ayda could think of was to find a crack to slip out of, search the area for the key, and come back for Tel. And then try to find Madeline. She flew to the wall beside the door and started running her hands along the mortar between the bricks.
This was going to take a very, very long time. But it wasn’t like she had anything else to do.
A day passed, and then a night, and then the better part of a second day — in total, three days since they had left Arvania, two since Nadra’s ultimatum. Ayda had been over every inch of the cell along with Tel and found no cracks or weak spots. She had tried flying out the flap when they were brought meals, but had been swatted back before she could get through. She had tried prying apart the metal mesh to fit through the window, but had only succeed in breaking her fingernails.
“Cinder will know for sure by now something went wrong,” Tel pointed out. “And… I’ve been sending messages out through the wind,” he said reluctantly. “It’s hard — there’s not much of a breeze.”
Ayda shook her head. “We’re in Neleluna… I don’t think there’s anyone left to hear them.” She looked up at him. “We can’t rely on a rescue. Too much hostile territory to come through, especially since they won’t really know where we are.”
She had been siting on the floor, listless, for the better part of an hour, trying not to think. About anything. She was getting used to the hole where her magic had been, but she suspected it was much like getting used to having a broken wing. Painful and limiting.
Idly, she flew over to the door yet again, jiggling the knob and peering into the keyhole. A simple lock, but its simplicity didn’t matter, with no key and no way to pick it.
Behind her, Tel slurped — he was drinking from the water bucket. She caught it out of the corner of her eye.
Drinking water from a wooden water bucket.
Ayda spun in midair, hand going to the knife in her boot. “Tel?”
“Yeah?”
“Kick that bucket apart. I need a piece of wood, about a foot long. We’ll pretend you kicked it in your sleep.” It would be nearly as tall as she was, but she’d whittle it down.
“And why, exactly, am I breaking our only water bucket?”
Ayda lowered her voice, just in case there were Shades nearby. “I think I can carve a key for the door.”
Tel’s ears pricked forward. “Carve it with what?”
“My knife. They never searched me.” It would be crude. If only she could bend sunlight for the details — but she forced that thought away.
Tel let out a bray. “Simple as that?”
“Simple as that.”
“How long will it take?”
“I’m not sure,” said Ayda, sizing up the keyhole. “But I’d better get started.”
--------
A/N: I feel like this whole imprisonment part is rushed, but I'm concerned that if I expand it, it won't add much to the story and it will make the story feel like it's dragging between this part and the final part. Thoughts on this as you read the next few chapters are appreciated.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
137,484 Literary Works • 672,034 Reviews
Hi there!
Wow, so a lot has obviously happened since the last time I read a chapter, but I was still able to keep up with this pretty well. I think this was, for the most part, a really strong chapter. Your description of Ayda's feeling kind of like she was missing a limb from missing her magic was really powerful (more on that in a minute, though). There was a nice balance of dialogue vs narration, and I feel like the description was really good - even though all I think you really described was Ayda's despair, not the setting.
To answer your query: the only part of this that felt rushed to me was this
So to get back to Ayda's feelings on missing her magic - now, to be fair, I don't know how much you addressed it in the previous chapter. Since she started this chapter waking up, I assume she lost her magic in the last chapter and then either passed out or fell asleep? So you've had a previous chapter to deal with her despair, I guess, but I feel like at that time things would have happened so suddenly there wouldn't have been much time for her to process her feelings and the fact that her magic is gone. Upon waking up, she basically has a paragraph to do just that and then immediately moves on - it's clear this is still going to hurt her, but I'd expect either more time spent wallowing in self-pity or else for it to be clearer that pushing through the loss and fighting is a humongous effort. I think that part could be slowed down without detracting from the plot, since the loss of her magic is such a huge trauma.
I also love that her experience in sculpture and carpentry are helping to move the plot forward - even though it's probably hard to carve a key for a lock on the outside of your cell (maybe a lockpick would be easier?), I don't doubt that she'll be able to do something for it because I know she has a lot of experience and that sculpture is actually her passion. I wasn't really expecting that to tie in, except as a reason for her to sneak away from home to join competitions, so I was pleasantly surprised here.
Thanks for the feedback! You're definitely right about her getting over it too quickly.
)
True story: for the entire first draft up until this exact scene, Ayda wasn't a sculptor. That entire plot came about because I was trying to think of a way to have her escape the cell. (And because I was thinking simultaneously that she needed more personality. It sort of snowballed from there and is now a massive part of the story.
It worked out so well! I love that she's able to escape without her magic.
Hey Mea!
I think you're getting my 1st review for #RevMo !
If Ayda managed to escape with her crude key, I'd say that the imprisonment is a bit fast. More like, *if* she succeeds though--right now I honestly don't know whether she'll succeed or not. Especially somebody catches her in the act of carving her key. So if she can escape, like I said a few sentences ago, I would suggest to slow down the pacing rather than expand it? I don't know if that will work but maybe adding a few sentences and tweaking the ones to make it seem as though the hours are long and boring and frustrating might help. They must be worn-out and I would be interested to see if either (or both) Tel or Ayda were bored inside, despite their desperate predicament.:p
I think maybe this imprisonment time is a good way to regroup Ayda and Tel's energy and further develop their friendship. And see how they'll face the future. Tel will most likely be branded as a traitor, Ayda will have to return with less hope...if they escape. Because there was this big scene before when she ran into Nadra, I think the prison scene would be a good place for a "sequel"--the scene right after the Big Event, where everybody has to start gathering their pluck again before their next act.
I noticed that Ayda's being doing a lot of work--searching along the mortar, trying to escape through the flap--and I would like to know what's Tel doing. Is he trying to find a way to escape too? Or is he sitting with nothing to do? Trying to brighten up the mood? Sleeping? Doing the period of Ayda fruitlessly trying to find an escape, I felt as though Tel was missing because he doesn't seem to be doing something--to me, even just staring into space *is* something.
I really like the way that Ayda's talent other than magic might possibly give them a glimmer of hope. It's always nice to drop some talent in the chapters before that might help the character out later! And this case, woodcarving. I wonder how Ayda can carve something nearly big as her without any help. With that tiny knife. And I also think that the bucket might be thick and hard to carve through? Well, I have to read 13.2 to know but just a note
I also loved the way you described Ayda's loss of magic as an empty hole. It just feels right to describe it that way because Nadra snatched part of her away. She's going to have less power now, but now a possible Escape looming ahead does show that you don't need magic in a magical world to be able to do things. It must have been so crushing to turn on her magic vision and see magic everybody...but not in herself.
Hope this helps~
-Ink
Thank you so much! I think you've done a great job of articulating what's missing from this scene, and it's super helpful. Behind-the-scenes-fact: Ayda being a carver at all came about because I wrote all the way through the first draft and realized I needed a way for them to escape in this scene. That was where the gem of the idea came from - obviously it's expanded a lot to be a huge part of the story. xD
Glad my review helped!
Oh, so that was how Ayda came to be skilled at carving--and yes, I've noticed does play an important part other than just a hobby (and it was also a spur for Ayda to go to Crescent Moon).