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The stone steps descending into the cold belly of the beast were a slippery, broken obstacle course when I last had the misfortune to be marched down them. Kit’s burst of fire may have cleared the way of persistent mould, but the steps beneath had already splintered into a powdery spider’s web of cracks, each tiny flaw penetrated by poking microscopic fingers and blasted open to the freezing air. I had forgotten how cold it was, entombed in this ancient mausoleum.
Curt leads the way, barely descending to the fourth step before it shatters beneath him and he staggers sideways, bouncing off the mouldy wall, his temple smacking the stone with a sickening crack.
“I would suggest one avoids doing that by careful placing of one’s paws,” says Kit, with more than a hint of amusement.
“You think?” Curt snarls, clutching his torch with the fingernail crushing grip of death. His free hand heads for the bump on his forehead, unaware the thin layer of mould transferred from the wall creeps towards his left eye.
I push Curt’s hand away, commanding, “Don’t touch it. Claw, please.”
Kit duly pings out a claw and slices a strip of wool from my jumper, leaving an unravelling mess. I wipe the probing patch of mould from Curt’s forehead and toss it behind me. The wool sprouts tiny legs and crawls up the wall, where it quivers and spits at us in rebuke as the throbbing mass sucks it inside.
“I’ll test each step,” says Curt, tearing his gaze from the slowly sinking wool. “Only walk where I do.”
“How very comforting,” Kit rumbles.
“Kit,” I say, with an accompanying glare. “Please.”
“You’re no fun,” the cat replies with another eye roll. “I thought you craved adventure.”
“He has a point,” says Curt, poking the next step with his foot before gingerly transferring his weight. “Most trouble does trace back to you.”
“This from the mould eating hermit with the limp and his barmy prison cat sidekick,” I reply. “And I’m done talking to either of you.”
That promise breaks within minutes of downward creepage. These stairs terrified me before. I remember creaking rock and chunks breaking off and bouncing down the steps, but now it’s completely silent, all sound muffled by cushioning brown slime. It feels like the walls are closing in on me. Which they probably are, given that the mould gets thicker and juicier as we descend. Even our flickering shadows, cast by the torches, sink into the arms of a decaying void.
Gaining comfort from the sound of my own voice, I ask, “Kit, do you know where this stinking shite came from?”
“From a whiffy wolf cub, I imagine,” says Kit. “He’s your mate.”
Curt growls, but keeps poking at the steps. I give Kit a nudge.
“I’m asking about the mould, which you well know.”
“Yes. Well.” Kit’s frown by torchlight is a macabre sight. “I’m sorry to say it arrived with the conjuring of my fellow cats and later with the serpents. The use of dark magic spread uncontrollably and the mould along with it. I did try to restrain it back then, but it was too late.”
“No kidding,” Curt mutters.
“I’ll have you know...”
A viscous squelch interrupts Kit’s retort and I wave my torch in the direction of the ominous noise. A tower of mould detaches from the wall and flings itself onto the steps behind us, like a wave breaking on the beach. Across the ceiling and down every wall, it’s on the move, sliding and dripping and crawling. And it’s all heading straight for us.
“It’s following us,” I whimper, my feisty self wilting in the face of homicidal excrement.
Curt swings his torch at the pathway ahead. A rolling brown marshmallow fills the way, leaving smears of itself on the walls and ceiling. “It’s coming up the stairs,” Curt rumbles.
A blob of mould bubbles out of the wall and spits a globule of slime at me, just missing my face. I retaliate by jabbing it with the torch and watch it scuttle away from the flame with relief.
“It senses the burgeoning magic,” Kit replies. He nudges Curt in the backside. “Speed up, wolfbite.”
“Keep your nose to yourself,” Curt grumbles, already testing the next step. “Where are we going?”
“You think it’s heading for the book?” I ask Kit, keeping my eyes on our slithering enemy.
“More accurately, it’s heading for you and the DreamWay, together,” he replies.
“And you too, mage tigerlion,” I point out, shuffling closer to Curt. “We could do with some helpful magic.”
As though in response to my plea, the combined light from the two torches conveniently illuminates a crumbling archway.
“I recognise this,” I tell Curt, pointing at it with my torch. “We need to turn off the staircase there.”
A quivering wave passes through the mould and the squelching and crawling speeds up, as though it understands my words and strains to catch its prey before we escape. All around us, from every angle, the mould closes in, covering our exit. A sparkling wind whistles past my eye, grabs at the torch flames and blasts a wall of fire down the steps and through the archway. The mould retreats, but not as far as before, growing braver or stronger.
“Run!” booms Kit.
Curt grabs my hand and we sprint down the crumbling steps, all fear of falling smothered by the nightmare of drowning in that putrid slime. We hurtle through the smouldering archway, just as a flashback stops my heart...
I’ve been here before.
On the other side of this arch stands a balcony, whole sections torn away, hanging above a sheer drop to the ballroom below. I almost fell through that gaping hole.
“Stop,” I holler, hurling myself backwards and heaving on Curt’s arm to counteract headlong flight.
The shock of having his shoulder yanked from its socket slows my mate, but not enough. Momentum propels him to the red hot balcony’s jagged edge and the balls of his feet tip over, thrusting his bodyweight forwards. Dropping the torch and my hand, he flails his arms like propellers in a desperate fight not to nosedive to his death and take me with him. His torch plunges over the edge and drops onto the carpet of mould below. I grab his hand, straining to keep him from falling as his weight slides me across the balcony on my backside, feet scrambling to hook onto anything solid. I jam both legs either side of the gap and bend my knees, hollering like a Viking in battle.
Pulling on my counterweight, Curt regains equilibrium and slides his feet back onto the balcony, leaving me sitting directly behind him. Squeezing my hand, he glances back at me with a smile of relief. It morphs into a wide eyed, open mouthed scream of horror as Kit thunders onto the balcony in a four pawed leap and ploughs into Curt and me, knocking us both over the edge.
Still clinging to Curt’s wrist as he drops away, I fling out my other hand, reaching for the metal struts, even though they’ll burn straight through my flesh. Something warm and furry thumps into place and I grab hold of Kit’s rock steady front paw. My torch whistles past Curt’s straining face in a blur of flame and joins its twin on the undulating floor below, as the full weight of his body dangles on the end of my outstretched arm.
“Let me go,” he calls up at me.
“Never,” I scream, more from the pain in my shoulder than commitment.
Kit drops full length across the balcony and dangles his other front leg over the edge, poking Curt in the nose with a toe. “Take a paw.”
Curt’s impressive biceps ripple as he launches himself upwards and grabs hold of the offered paw. A roaring Kit shuffles backwards, hauling my mate and myself up and over the edge. With the weight gone from screaming arm muscles, my hand slips from Curt’s, pulling my wolf’s head wedding ring off my sweating finger. It bounces along the balcony with a musical ching, bumps into the twisted metalwork and ricochets straight over the gap. I scramble to catch it and Curt hauls me back, afraid I might follow it into oblivion.
“My ring,” I wail, not hearing it hit the floor below. The mould swallows my only treasure.
“I’ll make you another one,” Curt tells me, clinging on tightly.
“I want that one.” I grasp my knees and bury my face there, forcing tears to stop by sheer willpower.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, caressing my shoulder and hand.
“I’m fine,” I snap, not looking up, letting anger burn through grief and fear.
“Thank you,” I hear Curt say to Kit. “Although we were fine until you knocked us over.”
“You’re welcome,” Kit rumbles. “We need to move on. Now.”
My face emerges at the tone, noting his cat’s eyes sparkling unnaturally in the sudden darkness. All our flaming protection now flickers in the ballroom below. The two torches rest in the stony epicentre of small, mould free circles, like the holes in Swiss cheese. Broken statues, once dominating magnificent décor, have crumbled almost to nothing, leaving a random snake rattle still poking through the glistening mould covering the ballroom. The impressive staircase, down which Anguis once carried me, has completely disintegrated, leaving a filthy pile of rubble and a jagged drop.
An ominous squelch, emanating from the far end of the balcony and through the archway, warns of returning mould, creeping closer in the darkness.
“We need the torches,” says Curt, arms still clutched tight around my shoulders as he nods at Kit. “Can you magic them back up.”
I slip out of his embrace and stand, staring down at the ballroom. “We need to go down there.”
Curt and Kit peer over the edge at the thigh high mould swamp and glance at one another.
“Why?” asks Kit. “If I may enquire?”
“Let the ring go, Big Bum,” Curt says, flinching when I scowl at him.
“It’s not for the ring,” I grind out. “That’s where we need to go. Through there to the library. It’s where the book appeared last time and I know it’s down there. You remember?”
A deep sigh indicates that he does. “So, how are we going to get down there?”
The silence following his question is punctuated by squelches, getting closer by the second.
“I see,” warbles Kit. “True magic to the rescue. Dee dee dee bumbum.”
The arriving mould bubbles up and pops, releasing a fart of putrid gas in reply.
“Now would be good,” mutters Curt, edging away, caught between the oncoming mould and a death drop.
Kit lifts a paw and pings out his razor sharp claws, one at a time, making Curt gulp. The cat unleashes a huge grin and slices through my unravelling jumper which drops in a pile at his feet, leaving me with a not so trendy crop top. He flicks it into the air, coughs out some crimson sparks and lights the shrivelling wool, blowing straight through it and down into the ballroom below us with a glorious, stone shaking roar.
The sheet of flame envelops the ballroom and a tsunami wave of mould sweeps backwards, breaking against the walls, leaving bare stone and two abandoned torches in its wake.
“Hold onto her,” Kit tells Curt. “I’ll air magic you both down.”
“Aren’t you using too much magic?” I splutter. “We still have to...”
“True magic never runs out,” says Kit. “Only my energy.”
“Same difference,” I snap.
“Would you like to offer an alternative?” the cat retorts.
“Don’t argue,” Curt orders, sweeping me up into his arms. “Let’s fly.”
“Wiffle piffle whizzbang doodah,” says Kit, hardly filling me with confidence. He rises up on his back legs and lifts his quivering front paws as though beseeching the heavenlies. His voice takes on an eerie echo. “Grrrrrr. Yowl. Raow.”
A cloud of sparkles descends upon us and Curt’s feet leave the ground. Over the edge we hover with me clutching Curt’s hair in open mouthed panic.
“Ow. The hair,” he hollers as we swiftly descend.
I scream one long excruciating note that only ceases when Curt’s feet hit the stone floor with a hefty jolt.
“My frulking hip,” he moans, his painfilled clutch nearly crushing my ageing bones. That’ll cure my constipation, at least.
“Put me down,” I shout, straight down his ear and he drops me like a sack of potatoes.
“I want to go back to my quiet lodge,” he whinges. “And you’ve pulled my hair out.”
I’m about to retaliate with a bald spot joke when Kit lands on top of him.
“I’m far too aged for this sort of manoeuvre,” groans the cat, still slumped on Curt’s chest and resting a paw on his face.
“Geh orff meh face,” mumbles Curt.
Kit raises his paw and glares down at my squashed mate. “I’ll have you know, this sort of magic is most tiring.”
I recover one of the torches and hold it high. That wave of mould is already dropping in height as it flows back towards us.
“We have to go,” I urge.
Kit rolls off Curt and stumbles to his paws. I offer Curt my free hand, but he glares at me.
“Suit yourself, Mange.” I hold out the other torch and he snatches it from my grasp, brushing his sweaty locks out of his eyes.
“The library?” asks Kit.
Slowly revolving, I scan the ballroom and spot the doorway Anguis once carried me through. It feels like yesterday, and a lifetime ago.
“That way.”
Kit coughs, honking out a spark and blowing a thin stream of fire through our torches. A narrow pathway cuts through thick mould, forcing us to travel its length single file. The returning slime quivers, waist high, on both sides, reminding me of the Biblical parting of the Red Sea.
Wafting the torch from side to side, Curt hurries down the pathway, faltering as the crumbling head of a snake statue rolls free of sticky mould, only one eye and a broken fang remaining. Curt kicks it out of our path and, as I rush past, it silently pleads for salvation as the mould creeps over the stone eye, blinding it forever.
