Page 11 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Just in time to see Ambra gather her power among herself and teleport away.

Leaving Chloe alone.

“Right,” Chloe says, unnerved, before she steps down into the barren patch of dirt. Magic swirls up against her ankles, like it’s seeking out her skin, before settling down again amongst the dead leaves.

The cut into the snow is precise, the edges of it melted into more of a slick ice against the illusion spell, and Chloe tugs off her glove to touch the surface.

It’s almost damp, like the part bumping against the spell are constantly melting and refreezing, which has interesting implications to a constant export of energy of demons. Ambra hadn’t said anything, but if Chloe had to guess, Ambra didn’t really think it needed remarking on.

But she can’t muse about that, not when there’s a trap door in the middle of the forest floor, leading her to her goals.

Testing the edge of the wooden door with her steel-toed boots, no magic sparks up there, giving her the base reaction of completely boring, completely dead wood, so she uses her boot to kick it up, revealing a pristine metal ladder, not a trace of rust or frost on it.

It’s a short, maybe six-foot ladder, leading to a clean-cut stone floor beneath.

“Neat,” Chloe mutters, then tests the first rung on the ladder. One hundred percent inert, nothing special about it, and it’d be easy for her to mold into a weapon if she needs it.

Always good to have.

Before she can further question herself, she hoists herself over the edge of the trap door, stepping down onto the ladder, careful to prop the door back open how she found it. She’s been in enough tombs underground to know to always leave an easy and obvious air source open.

It blocks most of the filtered light through the snow, stretching the shadows long, so by the time Chloe steps a foot onto the hewn stone floor, everything is dim, lacking details.

Except for the traces of magic. Power. Demon residue. Whatever.

It warps along the hallway in front of her, glowing darkly red against the wall, like the demon had trailed their fingers along the uneven stone while they walked. Not someone terribly concerned about leaving a trace, or that anyone would follow behind and see it.

And Chloe knows, she knows, that going to find her friend would lead her close to demons, all of them obsessed with the power innate, but still her skin crawls with how obvious it is.

There’s one thing to intellectually know, it’s another to see it.

Chloe pats the gun in its holster on her hip, then pulls out the single rechargeable battery from her pocket.

Some alchemists can easily transform biological matter; some alchemists can change their own faces, but Chloe? Give her a battery, give her a stone, give her a lock, and she can twist it to her will.

Rolling it in between her fingers, she clicks it into place, into the familiar shape of a small pen light.

After she had discovered her abilities as a pre-teen, she took it on herself to study everything she could possibly want to transform, and flashlights were easy to dissect and pull apart and understand.

She ruined quite a few computers dissecting before she truly understood them.

The pen light shakes in her hand, sparking against her palm, before it flicks on, illuminating the hallway.

The floor is neatly hewn stone, as even as you can get without power tools, and ancient. The age of it seeps into her feet, the echoes of people long lost, and all the potential therein.

If needed, she could change it.

It’s the same sensation she got in ancient churches in Europe, in long forgotten ruins in South America, and the echoes of old trapping cabins in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. That if needed, all it would take is a thought and she could change the very land she stands on.

Despite herself, her face splits into a grin.

The walls were carved with less care, rough and pockmarked with time but meticulously cleaned. Or kept clean with some magic, some automatic buffer from dust, keeping the ages of time away.

It’s been ages since Chloe’s been somewhere this old.

“Oh, this is great,” she murmurs, letting her fingertips rest against the stone. It’s granite, deep and black, close enough in molecular structure that she could do so much with it.

Her words echo around her, and the magic left by the demon flutters in the noise. Like it’s affected by sound waves, which is another level of interesting, if she’s being honest with herself.

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