Chapter 33
Regulus
At first, the cave had reminded me of home, the place I grew up, and that was not a good thing, though it did match perfectly with the stormy sea outside. When I reached the lake, however, the atmosphere changed, the water was softly glowing, the crystals tripling its light, and it felt both melancholic and hopeful. Just like myself.
I read over the half-page I'd managed to rip out of the book once more, but considering there was merely a fraction of it and it was supposed to be nothing more than a myth I found myself stuck. I crumbled the old piece of parchment, my tears staining it, and threw it at the lake, both pissed and broken.
“We accept your offer,” a billion voices whispered, the sound echoing back from the walls, shivers ran down my spine, “get in the water,”
Of course, I would need to get in the water, I'd guessed so. There was one issue there - I couldn't swim and water and I had a rather traumatic relationship. Maybe as long as I didn't go past where my feet could touch…
I let my right foot hover above the water for a while before dipping it in.
“Ouch,” I yelped back and looked at my shoe, which had burned away to my skin.
“No clothessss,” the voices hissed. I didn't know who they were or what they meant, but these were the only directions I had been given and I would not give up now, not after I'd come so far, not if I likely didn't have long left to live anyway, so I opted to follow them.
I threw my clothes alongside the newly acquired wand in a pile between some gigantic gemstones and stepped into the water. A crack echoed through the cave and I realised the tunnel I'd come in through was blocked by a thick stone wall now. I swallowed and stared at my reflection in the water.
My hair was long and flowing down my back and shoulders, my breasts round. It was all wrong and it wasn't me in the reflection I was staring at. If it took me drowning here, alone, to change that, then so be it.
“Reggie?” a familiar voice broke the silence as a distant echo just as I was about to step in further. I wished for it to have been just my dumb imagination.
“James?” I asked nevertheless and he responded again, begging me to get out the water that I didn't even know how he knew I was in. I shook my head, “Go away, James,” I told him and blocked out the rest of it, walking deeper and deeper into the water until my feet barely touched the bottom. I couldn't go any further and the voices were silent.
Briefly, I considered getting back out, but then again I hadn't even covered myself head to toe in the water yet.
I ducked down underwater and opened my eyes to see if it did anything.
A million faces were in front of me with no surface in sight anymore. One grabbed me by the arm, another one took my leg, pulling at them. I closed my eyes and focused on not screaming or I'd lose any air I had left while being dragged further and further into the lake.