sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-10 04:39 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-10 04:39 pm
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Cartographer's Craft, Ch. 20
The next morning, Moody met a grave, pale-faced Remus Lupin at the Leaky Cauldron. The werewolf was standing at the bar, hunched over a glass of pale liquid, the only occupant of the pub other than Tom the bartender.
"Bit early to be drinkin', lad," he said, by way of greeting. Remus glanced up at him with a weak smile.
"Liquid courage, Alastor," he answered, picking up the glass and swirling the drink. "You're early."
"So are you. We're ready now, if you'd like to come along."
Remus set his half-finished drink down, left a pair of sickles in payment, and followed the Auror out into Muggle London once more. It was a short walk to the red telephone box which was the admission point through to the Ministry, but to Remus' surprise they passed it completely and made for a nearby bookshop instead.
"Mornin', Manny," Moody said as they entered.
"Good morning, Alastor," said the bearded, balding man at the till, cheerfully but without looking up from the book he was studying. They passed through a curtain dividing the shop from what appeared to be an equally messy kitchen, then turned left and descended a dim staircase.
"I thought you said we were going to the Ministry," Remus said.
"Back-entrance. No fussing about with visitors' badges," Alastor replied. His wooden leg clacked on the smooth stone steps. They descended through a series of staircases and landings, many of which had doors or what were clearly one-way windows looking in on various parts of the Ministry. Remus counted: one, two, three, four levels and they passed the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, with which he was all too familiar. Five, six, seven -- Magical Games and Sports, bedecked with pennants for the various British Quidditch teams. Eight, the atrium they would normally have entered; nine, the --
"All right, lad?" Moody asked, as Remus stumbled on a landing. The Department of Mysteries, where Arthur had been attacked and Sirius had died. There was no window on this level, but he could feel the malevolence through the walls.
"Fine," he said, and they continued on. There was a door marked 10, but they passed it without hesitation. Another flight of stairs and their way terminated in a small landing with a door in each of three walls. One was marked 12; one was unmarked, but chained and boarded shut.
"Level thirteen," Moody said, indicating the unmarked door. "We don't go there anymore."
"Ever?" Remus managed to ask.
"No," Moody answered, in a voice that said he was not going to give any further details. Remus turned to the third door, straight ahead. Moody put out a hand and opened the door to level eleven. Remus had the feeling that if he himself had tried, he might not have a hand anymore.
Inside it was surprisingly light and airy; there was a bare white room with a young uniformed Auror at one end, sitting behind a desk. He didn't acknowledge Moody as they passed, and Moody didn't speak to him. Another door, a hallway full of charmed windows like all the Ministry's floors had. As they passed a candle bracket in one wall, Moody reached out and touched it; the wall faded to glass, and Remus saw rows of cells beyond it.
"Holding cells for prisoners goin' to trial on ten," Moody said. Most of the cells were empty. One looked as though a hurricane had hit it -- there were dents in the bars and the bedding had been torn to shreds. The door was open.
They stopped in front of yet another door, and Moody turned to him.
"There's no one as would require this of you," he said quietly. "Not me nor anyone else thinks you're anything like a coward, Lupin."
Remus watched him expectantly. He didn't trust himself to speak. His heart hammered in his chest and he could feel the cold prickle of fear on the back of his neck. Moody watched him a moment longer, then opened the door.
The room beyond was stone; a high, vaulted ceiling echoed their footsteps back to them and the charmed windows were full of rain and wind. Glass -- well, something clear and probably strong, which might as well be called glass - divided the room in half.
On the other side of the glass stood Fenrir Greyback. They had clearly manhandled him into a uniform at one point, but most of it had been torn away and he was naked to the waist, white scars criscrossing his chest and arms. Remus felt the cold burn along the scars he himself had in very similar patterns.
An Auror sat off to their left, on Remus' side of the glass. Moody whistled shrill and jerked his head; the man rose silently and disappeared into the corridor. Fenrir hadn't moved, and Remus couldn't take his eyes away.
He heard the door close; Moody had gone too.
"Fenrir," Remus heard himself say. The other man narrowed his eyes.
"Lupin," he said finally. There were charms on the room; his voice was crystal clear, not muffled at all by the solid glass. "Come to gawk?"
"I came to talk to you."
"Yes; you do talk."
Remus swallowed.
"I can smell the sweat on you," Fenrir said. "I remember that. The fear. They've left you alone with the monster, haven't they?"
"They have."
"They said I wasn't to have any visitors."
"I'm here...unofficially."
"That human bribed my guards. And you think they're any better than us?"
"Yes. I do think they're better than you."
There was an uneasy, tense silence between them until Fenrir laughed.
"You're a headstrong bastard, Lupin, like your father. And me, too," he said proudly. "You were the best day's work I ever did."
"I don't doubt it, considering your usual standard of conduct," Remus answered.
"But you wanted to talk, and I seem to be doing the bulk of the talking. Ironic, considering how they have me chained and bound." Fenrir glanced down. Remus followed his gaze. There were shackles on his ankles -- silver, wrapped in leather to keep it from burning him. "Your keepers do a good job looking after you, grooming your fur, picking up your shit -- "
"They are my family."
"Don't you mean your pack?" Fenrir asked nastily. "Can they hunt? Can they run alongside and keep up with you? Don't you starve for their flesh on the full moons? I remember how yours tasted. Fresh."
Remus closed his eyes and clenched his fists.
"I need to speak with you."
"So you keep saying, and then you start to cry -- "
"I am not crying," Remus snarled. Fenrir smiled lazily.
"Like I said. Your father's son."
"Listen to me!"
"Then talk. Pack-traitor."
Remus licked his lips. "You've seen what they're capable of, Fenrir. I know they shot you." A muscle in Fenrir's shoulder twitched. There was a dark scar there, puckered and angry still. Silver wounds didn't heal quickly. "They're mine and they did it because you threatened me."
"You're proud of that."
"No. I hate it. But they did it. There are people who won't stop at defending me. There are people who would do it to any werewolf for no good reason at all."
"And you'd rather -- "
"Shut up," Remus said, and to his shock, the other man obeyed. "Your pack is in danger. They've already been hurt because they attacked others. Soon it won't end in injury. It'll be death. Do you think yours will be safe? Do you think they'll thank you for that?"
"My pack is strong."
"Your pack has no leader. Your pack is scared. Every werewolf in Britain is scared."
"Good!" Fenrir growled. "Good! Fear breeds strength! You're afraid of me and look at you! Good that they're scared, good to strike first!"
"Who cares, if they end up dead anyway? They're your pack, Fenrir. Do you think for a moment about them instead of your own wretched hateful pride, your sick taste for children?"
"I think of nothing but my pack, cub, of which you are a member whether you like it or not," Fenrir answered sharply. "If you cared for our pack, you would free me and join us, tainted or not."
"If by tainted you mean literate -- "
"What do we need with books?"
"Perhaps if you took the time to find out, you wouldn't be living in the wilderness and picking raw meat from your teeth! For fuck's sake, Fenrir, there are better ways to live. This isn't some glorified ancient tradition, it's just a disease. You're letting it kill you."
"Me?" Fenrir asked, his voice dangerously low. "It's killing me, is it? Do you see the muscles on my arms? Do you see the way the guards look at me? You're a woman. Pale and fine, not even any marks on your hands. Your teeth are dull from eating overcooked food."
"None of this matters," Remus said, frustrated. "Fenrir, please."
"And you beg."
"All I'm asking is that you think of us. They tell me you're going to stand trial, and believe me, I had to fight for you to get that. Please, don't make our lives any harder."
"Let them kill me."
"They might anyway, you know."
Fenrir growled deep in his throat.
"All I ask is that when you stand public trial, you remember us. The less you talk about biting children, the less you snarl and parade around your ignorance like it was some sort of badge of pride, the less we'll suffer. You owe me this, Fenrir. You owe me for thirty years of this curse."
"And what am I owed for sixty of my own?" Fenrir asked. "Who owes me? What do I collect?"
Remus bowed his head. He knew that Fenrir was owed as much as he was, even more; but Fenrir had collected in the lives of children.
"I think any debt you were owed was taken off the books when you took your pound of flesh," he said, viciously. "Didn't you kill your own daughter, Fenrir? Trying to make her like you? You owed her, too. And you owe her more now."
Fenrir leapt for the glass, snarling. His fingers scraped against it, nails breaking, fingertips leaving bloody streaks. Remus waited until he was finished.
"I can't offer you anything. Whether you fight it or not, things will move on. If they leave you behind, you have only yourself to blame."
He didn't want to turn his back, but he did it anyway; turned his back and walked to the door. There was no handle on the inside, so he knocked gently.
"You're just a cub, you know," Fenrir grated. "You belong to me. I'll own you yet."
"I doubt you'll ever own anyone again, Fenrir," Remus said, without turning. "You chose to live as a beast; you oughtn't be surprised when men put you in a cage."
"You choose to live like a man -- how have the men treated you?"
"None of them ever infected me with an incurable disease, so they're one up on you."
The door opened then, admitting the guard from earlier; Remus brushed past him in his hurry to leave. Fenrir's scream of rage was cut off when the door closed behind him.
Moody's good eye was staring at him but the large, magical false eye looked over his shoulder, through the door.
"You watched?" Remus asked, tense.
"Aye. Had to. Security reasons."
Remus nodded.
"Looks like you had the better of him. Say anything interesting?"
Remus shook his head, combing his hair back with his fingers nervously, resting the palm of his left hand on the back of his neck.
"Do I need to sign something? Can I leave?" he asked, suddenly conscious even despite the windows of how deep underground they were. He felt shut in, as caged as Fenrir had been.
"This way," Moody said, leading him back the way they'd come and up to the atrium level. The door on the landing led them into a fireplace as if they were entering through the floo network. They hurried to the lift and it shot upwards, emptying them into the red phone box across the street from the bookshop through which they'd entered. Remus drew a deep breath of fresh air, shakily. His knees felt weak, now that it was over, and he sat on the kerb before he could fall down.
"Do what you came for?" Moody asked, standing over him, eye swivelling around to take in the street.
"I said what I had to. I don't know if he'll listen," Remus said, scrubbing at his face with his hands. "But now I know...I know that he's there, that he can't get out."
They remained there in silence for a while, Remus breathing deeply, Moody scanning the street and muttering to himself if anyone passed too close. Finally, Remus pushed himself upright and turned to face the older man.
"Thank you," he said. "He said you bribed the guards -- "
" -- they owed me."
"You don't need paying back?"
Moody shook his head.
"Thank you anyway. It's appreciated."
He offered his hand and Moody shook it; without another word, the Auror crossed the street again and re-entered the bookshop. Remus waited until a couple had passed, clearly on their way to lunch somewhere and in no hurry to get there, before he began to walk in the opposite direction. Tonks was probably already waiting for him in Diagon.
***
While Remus was descending into the deepest corners of the Ministry with Alastor Moody, Sirius and Harry were arming themselves with sandwiches, a charmed thermos full of soup, and two books -- the notebook Hermione had been keeping on the horcruxes and a book of Great Wizarding Graves, which had a rough map of the graveyard where the Gaunt Crypt was located. They worked quietly and rather more efficiently than usual, and neither would quite meet the other's eye.
It was understood that they were, in fact, sharing a bed; it was just different when Sirius was Padfoot. The fact that one of them couldn't talk and didn't have...well, hands, which could roam in unwelcome ways in sleep...was a reassurance against the hint of anything more than platonic. Sirius had been reluctant to try it again after realising that he could, in fact, flip out of his Animagus form while sleeping, but he'd never done it before and perhaps it had been a fluke.
If it was a fluke, it could fuck right the hell off, as far as he was concerned, because it had happened again and this time Harry had woken up before he had.
When Harry moved, Sirius woke too, and then quickly bolted across the bed; he'd been curled around the other boy, face pressed to the nape of Harry's neck, arm thrown carelessly over over his hip. His hand had been dangling perilously close to Harry's thighs.
Now, washed and fed and tooth-brushed, dressed, prepared to go, he stopped when Harry thrust the bag of food at him without looking at him.
"It was an accident," he said. "That's all." Harry glanced at him. Sirius shrugged. "Bound to happen sooner or later. Doesn't mean anything."
"That's not what it looked like when you just about fell out of bed to get away," Harry said.
"Well, you startled me," Sirius answered.
"I wasn't trying to!"
"All right, all right," Sirius said, annoyed. "If you're so particular about it, Padfoot can sleep somewhere else."
"I didn't mean that," Harry sulked. He stepped into the floo and announced "The Spring, Glastonbury" without saying anything further, and Sirius followed hurriedly.
"Well, then what did you mean?" Sirius asked doggedly, catching up to Harry who was already halfway out the door of the little wizarding pub.
"Just that you didn't have to look so horrified about it. I know it was an accident," Harry continued. "If you don't like it you needn't keep doing it just because you think I need someone."
"I'm sure you don't need anyone," Sirius answered, just as sullen now as Harry. "That's not why I ever did it anyway, so you can just stop thinking the world revolves around you, Harry Potter."
"You're one to talk -- " Harry replied hotly, but Sirius cut him off.
"I didn't ask to be brought here! I know the world doesn't revolve around me, I know it's gone on without me," he replied. "Where the bloody hell are we going?"
"Glastonbury Abbey," Harry answered, tight-lipped. Sirius grabbed his arm and pulled him around.
"This is a stupid fight," he said. "It's really stupid. It was an accident! I didn't mean to do any of it!"
"Stop shouting!" Harry shouted.
"I'm not shouting!" Sirius shouted back.
Harry set his jaw resolutely. He looked so much like Evans that Sirius had to swallow to keep from saying it.
"Let's go," Harry said, shrugging out of Sirius' grip and walking past him. Sirius, furious, Changed and ran past Harry, faster on four legs than Harry was on two. He hadn't looked to see if anyone was watching and didn't care if they did.
Fortunately, doggy senses didn't impair his ability to read and the signs for the Abbey were quite large; even after Harry started running to try to keep up, Padfoot beat him there. He sat smugly at the entrance to the Abbey, but Harry passed him without a word and walked into the car park next to it. Sirius trailed him, pretending that he was in no hurry. Harry pushed the gate from the car park to the Abbey grounds open, and Sirius ran to get through before it closed again.
It was a Saturday, but at ten in the morning in the off-season the place was hardly crowded. Harry made for a nearby building with a signpost reading The Lady Chapel, consulting a small map in his hand. It was a rather squat, squarish building, and Sirius could see that the entrance led only a few feet inside the roofless building before it was fenced off. Down below was an empty, stone-lined crypt.
The entryway had a doorway recessed inside another doorway, and Harry stopped in the arch of the outer one, consulting his map again. Carefully, he tapped a series of stone blocks in specific order as Padfoot came up beside him.
There was a subtle shift in the air as a door appeared in the inner doorway, heavy wood and banded with black iron. Harry put out his hand and shoved it.
Inside there was no longer a fenced-off stone porch looking down into an empty crypt; the door revealed a beam-braced wood floor, solid to Harry's footsteps, and a central stairway at the front of the chapel.
Sirius remembered, dimly, reading about the dangerous magic in Glastonbury and the surrounding areas. Things doubled up here; there was a Muggle world layered directly over an old magical world, and sometimes you could walk through the same door twice and find yourself in different places. Wizards had got lost walking the spiral road up to Glastonbury Tor before, because the road they went up wasn't the same one they went down.
Overawed by the second chapel that lay before them, he followed Harry rather more docilely to the staircase. At the head of the stairs was a sign.
Here lies the family crypt of the
Ancient and Venerated House of Gaunt
Now Deceased
The use of which was discontinued when
It was purchased from Elias Gaunt in 1877
By the Ministry for the Preservation of Magical Landmarks.
Ancient and Venerated House of Gaunt
Now Deceased
The use of which was discontinued when
It was purchased from Elias Gaunt in 1877
By the Ministry for the Preservation of Magical Landmarks.
In smaller letters that were harder for his doggy eyes to read, it continued:
With the decease of the Gaunt family in the early twentieth century came the terminus of many other proud families, including the Peverell line whose last descendant married into the Gaunts in the sixteenth century, and purportedly the last remaining bloodline of Salazar Slytherin, one of the Founders of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The crypt was once highly dangerous and contained many pitfalls and secret magical traps, but has since been thoroughly inspected and cleansed of any potentially terminal hexes. Please proceed with care, however, and report any unusual activity at once.
The Magical Trust, formerly the Ministry for the Preservation of Magical Landmarks, owns and maintains the crypt. We thank you for not littering.
He trotted down the slippery steps after Harry, who had taken far less time to read the sign. Here was the stone floor and here were the stone walls, but the space was lit by brackets of candles set low on the walls and the rest of the stone was...different. Twisted. Sculpted bodies writhed out of it at points and faces emerged, leering, from others. There were strange indentations and irregular outcrops. There were gargoyles.
At the far end of the crypt there was a large throne, on which sat a skeleton in a crown. It took him a minute, with his flickering vision, to realise the skeleton was a metal sculpture, probably bronze.
It smelled dusty and empty; Harry's scent was the only living smell here, the only smell at all other than the warm hints of candle wax.
"You might make yourself useful and help look around," Harry said, his voice weirdly dampened by the crypt. Sirius snorted and began snuffling in corners, but there weren't even any spiders. He inspected everything below hip-level of a man and left Harry to the higher-up things. The doors showed no signs of being recently disturbed; the candles held the scent of someone, probably a caretaker, only at the bases and in the same place for each one, where he'd picked up the candle and put it in the bracket.
Harry was studying the inscriptions, which were mostly in Latin, working his way down towards the skeleton at one end. Padfoot kept one eye on him; just because he was furious with Harry didn't mean he wanted him to get killed.
When they finally reached the skeleton, who was wearing not only a crown but a cape settled around his shoulders and a ring on one upraised hand, they both hesitated. Sirius snuffed suspiciously at the bony feet and then put one paw hesitantly up on a fold of cape to inspect the beringed hand; the ring was a crude copy of a coat of arms, probably the Gaunts'.
Harry, such a copycat, put one of his own feet up on the other side and took hold of the upraised hand for support, clambering up the slippery bronze figure to peer into the crown.
"Nothing," he muttered, inspecting the narrow space behind the sculpture. He began to climb down, much more difficult to do without slipping, especially in his cheap trainers. He stretched one leg and let go of the skeleton's arm, reaching for the curve of the ribcage and hooking his fingers around the edge.
Instead, somehow, his hand slipped and he tumbled down, barely catching himself. Sirius darted forward, ready to help, but Harry dusted his shirt off and glared at him, shaking his left hand as if he'd hurt it. With a determined look he stepped on the skeleton's foot and leaned over his splayed knees, resting one hand on its arm again and reaching the other out slowly.
Sirius watched as Harry pressed his hand flat against what should have been empty space where the skeleton's mortal stomach would have been located. After a moment, his fingers seemed to hook in something invisible, and he pulled.
There was an ominous creak and something appeared; a wooden box, fitted to the insides of the skeleton's ribcage. Sirius barely had time to be surprised before there was a second ominous creak, and the hand Harry was holding moved.
Harry yelped in pain as the beringed skeletal hand gripped his wrist and the skeleton's head turned to look straight into his eyes. He jerked backwards, scuttling off the statue, but the hand held on and when he pulled further away, the elbow-joint flexed and snapped.
The skeleton looked down at where its missing forearm should have been, then opened its jaw in a silent scream and lunged forward. Harry stumbled backwards just as Padfoot, with a low growl, leapt ahead of him to meet the skeleton in mid-lunge. His teeth closed painfully around solid metal, but he got a good grip on the ribcage and shook his head for all he was worth. The skeleton's other hand emerged from below the cape and batted at his shoulders, but now Harry was beating it away with the bronze limb still stuck to his wrist and Sirius had time to wrench the ribcage off the pelvis, sending it and the skull flying with a crash into one of the other tombs.
The skeleton's left hand, ripped from its socket, clattered uselessly to the ground with the cape, and the legs began to kick. He took two glancing blows to the chest before Harry shouted a freezing hex, which froze the hips and knees in place and left the remains of the skeleton flexing its toes uselessly. Padfoot leapt away and went for the arm still digging its bones into Harry's wrist, ripping off everything above the metacarpals. The finger bones, without anything to bind them together, fell away and Harry rubbed his hand, which had been starting to turn purple.
The skull and ribcage lay still and quiet in the corner and Harry went forward before Sirius could stop him, giving it a sound and vicious kick with his shoe. Vertebrae went flying, but even as Harry reached down to retrieve the box, the skull itself leapt up and only Padfoot's violent tug on the hem of Harry's shirt saved him from losing a few fingers. He fell backwards over Padfoot, who changed back just in time for Sirius to catch him, one of Harry's arms wrapping around his shoulders, Harry's back against his stomach. Sirius propped himself up on his elbow and stared at the skull, fascinated and horrified, as it lay on its side with its jaws snapping. Harry, gripping Sirius' neck tightly, let out a breath of air and tipped his head back, relaxing against Sirius' body in relief.
After a few seconds he pushed himself to his feet and picked up the skull by the top of its head. Its jaws snapped and jerked, and Harry carefully pried the joints apart, separating jawbone from skull. He tossed the skull aside, and the metal cracked loudly on the stone.
Sirius reached up to brush his hair out of his eyes and realised that there was blood in it; further exploration revealed, with a sudden sting of pain, a long gash just above his left ear. There was blood filling his mouth, too; he spat, and with the blood came a couple of chips of bone -- broken teeth.
"Harry," he said, and Harry turned, shoving the jawbone in his pocket. His eyes widened.
"Sirius -- "
"I'm okay, just..." Sirius felt the sharp edge of a broken tooth cut his tongue. When he moved, it felt like there was a bone broken somewhere in his left shoulder. Tears of pain streamed down his face. "Get the box and take me home."
Harry yanked the oddly-shaped box out of the bronze ribcage and ran back to Sirius, helping him up.
"Reckon we should let the Magical Trust know about this," Sirius mumbled, pain rippling across his shoulders. Harry wrapped one arm around his hip and got him standing; at least his legs seemed to work, though he could feel the bruises forming on them. He could see the ones already raised on Harry's wrist.
"Can't Apparate," he mumbled hazily. "Got a broomstick?"
Harry's grip on his hip tightened. "Can you walk all right?"
Sirius eyed the stairs rearing up before him, wondering just how much it would hurt whatever was broken when he walked up them. Harry followed his gaze.
"I think I can carry Padfoot," he said quietly. "If you can change back."
Sirius closed his eyes and, with great effort, willed himself into dog-form. It took longer than usual and it hurt like all fuck, but he managed. He felt Harry lift him, cursing at the weight, and he tried to help without clawing anything. Eventually they managed, Padfoot with head and shoulders over Harry's right shoulder, Harry's arms holding the rest of him tightly against his chest and stomach.
"You couldn't have been a poodle?" Harry asked, as he staggered up the stairs. Sirius tried to keep still and think light, inhaling Harry's reassuring scent.
The rest of the journey was a blur of light and movement, the smell of grass again and then of exhaust and hot brakes, until he was laid on warm pavement. Harry's voice echoed loudly in his ear, suddenly. "Sirius, change back. I'm taking you to St. Mungo's."
Sirius moaned -- it came out more like a yelp -- and this time the change seemed to take forever. When he was done he found himself lying on the pavement near the car park. Harry was standing over him, holding his wand out firmly.
There was an enormously loud bang, and Sirius opened bleary eyes. The Knight Bus; oh, clever Harry.
"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the -- Merlin, what happened to him?"
Harry helped Sirius to his feet and shoved him into the arms of the man standing in the bus doorway. "We need to go to St. Mungo's. Now."
The man looked at Sirius uncertainly. "Express is ten sickles extra -- "
"Does he look like he's willing to wait? NOW, ALRIGHT?" Harry shouted. Sirius winced and let them manhandle him into a lounge chair near the door. There was a terrible roar and a burst of light behind his eyelids, and then he was being helped down again, walked across a seemingly endless expanse of pavement. There was a blurry figure in green in the distance, who appeared to be on fire.
"Harry?" called the figure. "I didn't expect -- oh, Merlin, what has he done to himself?"
"We did it together," Harry said, and the figure doused the burning thing he held in his hand and caught Sirius as he fell forward. "He got attacked by a statue -- well, he attacked it first -- he's broken some teeth and he's got blood everywhere..."
"Yes, I see that. Come on, Nigel," the figure said. "It's Augustus. You're at St. Mungo's. In you come...SOMEBODY FIND ME A BED PLEASE, ARTEFACT ACCIDENT COMING THROUGH...no, that young man's with me, keep up Harry or they'll send you back to the waiting room..."
Sirius, suddenly began to giggle. McGonagall was wrong; I'm going to end up being killed by architecture again...
Then there were cool hands on his face and chest, and a soft voice murmuring words that sent him down into darkness, still laughing.
***
A few notes on this chapter...
The Lady Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey does exist and my description of its exterior is accurate as far as my knowledge goes. The interior layout of the magical "twin" of the chapel is not accurate to the chapel and crypt as it is now or has ever been.
While researching crypt architecture for this chapter, I stumbled across the Kaisergruft in Vienna, which is where the inspiration for the Crypt King came from.
Fans of Black Books: Yes. It was intentional. :D
To Chapter 21
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