Ella scooped the little girl up in her arms and ran.
Expecting at any moment to feel hot breath on her neck, Ella left the house behind her and rushed back to the paved stones of the road. Risking a glance behind her, Ella saw the cloud of smoke and flame surge ahead. The house was gone, as if it had never been.
The menacing figure still walked toward them.
“Please,” the little girl whimpered.
“I’ll protect you,” Ella said.
Ella’s heart pumped as she ran along the road, away from her pursuers, heading into the haze. She was forced to set the girl down and instead held her hand, pulling her along as they ran from the encroaching darkness.
The blonde girl was surprisingly fast and kept pace with Ella, no faster and no slower than she was herself. Her little hand fit snugly into Ella’s palm. The task of protecting the girl gave Ella a sense of purpose she hadn’t felt before.
They ran, and now the man was at the front of the cloud that was the enemy. He was one of them, and the threat stronger than ever before.
A blurred shape appeared through the mist, a triangular mass at the end of the road, lying directly ahead.
Ella saw it was a mountain.
“Quick,” Ella said to the little girl. “We’ll be safe here.”
The mountain came at them all at once, a stepped pyramid of dark stone looming down, solid and indomitable.
“There’ll be a chamber at the top,” Ella panted as she led the girl up the steps. “They can’t hurt us there.”
“I’m scared,” the little girl whimpered.
Ella’s legs burned with fatigue, and sweat dripped down her brow. Wet strands got in the way of her vision, and she impatiently brushed them aside. At her touch, the hair came out in a big clump. Ella looked at the strands in her hand in horror and flung them away.
Ella climbed step after step, surprised that a girl so small could keep pace with her. Glancing back, she saw that the enemy had reached the base of the mountain, the man running forward to lead the charge. He brandished the dagger and snarled as he dashed up the steps, his white robe twisting around his thin frame, though there was no wind. He smoothed back his slicked hair, and symbols on his hands and neck glowed with fire. Ella shook her head and returned her gaze to the front, desperately searching for the chamber she knew was here.
The man was nearly on them. Ella reached the dark opening and turned wide eyes behind her as she saw him lunge up the mountain. Ella heard his hoarse breathing and saw the dagger in the man’s hand speed through the air, not aimed at her, instead shooting forward at the little girl.
Ella pulled the girl into her arms, and she launched herself up the final step and into the dark opening.
Ella fell.
Suddenly there was nothing in her arms: the girl was gone. Ella screamed as she plummeted endlessly through darkness, her limbs writhing and her vision conjuring a hard floor coming up to meet her. She ran out of breath and gasped before screaming again. She screamed, emptying her breath three more times before she realized she was face down on the ground.
Ella struggled to make sense of it. She’d been falling, and now she was on the ground. She lifted her head. Where was the little girl?
Ella was in a cavern, and though there was no source of light, she could easily discern the craggy walls and smooth stone floor. She rose to her feet and, tilting her head back, could only see a black void above, a shadowed height disappearing endlessly to the limits of vision.
There were two side tunnels leading from the cavern, one large and one small.
Ella walked toward the entrance of the smaller tunnel and peered inside. This tunnel was walled, with blocks of stone fitted next to each other to fill the arched ceiling. The tunnel glowed with blue light, and it turned at the end. Deciding to see what lay after the turn, Ella walked inside.
Her bare feet made no sound on the stone, and the air was cool and dry. She rounded the corner, and still the tunnel stretched on. Ella walked for an age as the tunnel bent left and twisted right, heading deeper and deeper into the rock.
Ella frowned, tilting her head to the side as she heard a strange clinking and bubbling. As she rounded the next corner, Ella stopped and stared.
A man in a black robe had his back to her, and Ella saw a symbol on the back of the robe: a triangle bounded by a double circle. A bench stood against the wall of the square room, and Ella saw smoke pouring from the mouths of bubbling glass flasks, with pipes leading from one vial to another. Jars lined the wall, each containing a colored liquid or powder.
Ella cleared her throat, and the man turned.
He was old, with kind eyes and a high forehead. Ella saw he held an open book in his hands, the pages yellowed with age.
He closed the book with a snap and scowled at Ella.
“I told you,” he said. “Everything is poison; there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison.”