There's dark magic in these walls

It was raining hard that night.

The fortress of a prison might have been well hidden in the mountains but not even the rocky armour could protect the prison from this rainfall.

The sky bled water for hours upon hours until nothing could be seen but a wall of rain.

The sound was archaic. It was the sort of storm that consumed the sky.

There’s a reason for this prison’s concealed location. The fortress holds the most deadly and dangerous individuals known (and unknown) to man.

The dark magic in the walls is what keeps them there since no man could ever tame their power. Perhaps it was the rain, but the thrum of dark magic seemed louder tonight. Like it had a pulse, an awakening.

It was the opening they had been looking for; they being a small group of teens who had taken their little exploration of the mystic forests a bit too far and ended up being chucked into this hell.

It was the perfect opportunity.

They shared heavy glances across their cell.

It was time, time to escape.

The explosion was the easiest bit. They had been planning it for months, trading secrets in order to get the resources they needed to pull it off. With the rain covering any noise, it went unnoticed, a cracked hole in the stone wall forming. But they hadn’t pulled it off yet.

They had to make it out of the prison.

Alive.

Yanking each other over the dismantled wall, they ran. Their feet splashing in the puddled floor. They could hardly make out the murky path that spread out before them. The prison was a maze in itself, never mind the blinding rain. But with their lives on the line, they fought against it.

Their rags for clothing clung to their soaked bodies as they sprinted for the bridge.

They had to make it.

The guards, the ones with skulls for faces and blood-red eyes, were tethered to this land, too dangerous to be allowed anywhere else. If they made it to the bridge, they were safe from them.

Not yet.

If they got caught, their fate would be worse than death.

They plummeted down the steps, taking 3, 4 at a time.

The atmosphere felt different around the prison. There was always a deathly silence but tonight there was this frantic energy in the air. It was like the mountain was watching.

They ran past iron barred cage after cage.

They were so close.

They were so close when she stopped running.

The others went on not noticing she had stopped.

She halted in the rain. Her chest rising up and down, panting from her efforts. She flicked her head to and from the others getting ahead of her to the cage to her right.

Its cage.

She knew it was theirs. Everyone knew it was theirs. It was notorious.

Her fingers itched.

She thought back to the night they had been captured. 'It' had been there. When she had been cornered by a burly guard, who decided her life wasn't worth a cell, 'it' had saved her.

'It' had no idea who she was but that didn't stop it protecting her. She owed it. She knew what it was but she owed it her life.

She dug her nails into her hands. She bit her lip.

She shouldn’t. She looked forward.

She would.

She untethered the keys from an unconscious guard's chain and dug them into the lock.

She hurried, her fingers slipping in the rain.

As soon as she heard the click of the lock turn, she ran. She ran head first into the rain and didn’t look back. In fact she didn’t need to, the sky told her all she needed to know. If it had been a storm before, now it was a full-blown blizzard, disaster, whatever you wanted to call it. A war had unfolded in the sky.

It was out.

There’s dark magic in these walls. But even darker magic within them.

“Come on!” her friends bellowed to her from the bridge.

Lighting bolts filled the sky as she pushed herself through the storm. There were shrieks of agony and noises of destruction but she ignored them as she forced herself forwards. As her feet landed on the bridge, she allowed herself one last look back.

The small explosion they had created to escape was nothing compared to the dark fury which crawled out the unlocked cage and consumed the sky.

She had never seen such a dark night.

What had she done?