The Shadows' Empress (Part 4)

Roland continued down the hallway staring at all of the elaborate wallpaper and ornate chandeliers that were once probably very beautiful. But now, the wallpaper was shredded, some parts still clinging to an earlier time. The Chandeliers were all on the floor, broken, dusty and surrounded with broken glass. All but one chandelier. The one that still hung from the ceiling looked just as old as the others. The lightbulbs were all broken, but aside from some dust, there was nothing else wrong with it. Roland began to wonder what could have caused such damage when he heard a deep creaking behind him. He turned around to see the front doors closing slowly until they slammed shut. One of the support beams that hung parallel to the doors broke in half and both halves hung down diagonally across each door locking Roland inside.

“I guess I’m not leaving until I find what I came for,” Roland muttered. Knowing that the entire building could collapse at any moment made him nervous. He decided to try to figure out why the Empress led him there, so he could get out as soon as possible.

Roland stopped in the middle of the enormous hallway, feeling intensely overwhelmed. The hotel was five stories tall, and extremely long from one side to the other. Now that he thought about it, Roland realized that the hotel slightly resembled the Waverly Hills Sanitorium that he’d heard about in a documentary, although the hotel didn’t curve at the ends the way the sanitorium did. It also wasn’t red, but most things in that world didn’t have color, anyway.

‘This place is too big,’ Roland thought. ‘How am I supposed to be able to find anything?’ It was then that Roland realized every time he saw the Shadows’ Empress, she had either expected him to follow her, or had told him where to go.

“Maybe I should’ve gone up the staircase?” He asked himself. A part of him wondered if the Empress was still up there somewhere, waiting for him to meet her in a room that would ultimately have the first clue. Another part doubted she would wait when she saw him walk a different direction. However, Roland decided to go up the stairs would be his best chance, and worst idea, given how weak everything in the building looked.

As Roland backtracked toward the large spiral staircase, he heard a door behind him slam against a wall as it flew open. He spun around to see what caused the noise to see the door break free of its top hinge and lean crooked away from its frame. There was no light on in the room, and Roland was frozen in his spot, not knowing what he should do. He was positive that he didn’t want to investigate, but he was too afraid to turn away from it. After a short period of time that felt much longer than it really was, there was a snorting sound, similar to a horse. A very big demonic horse. The frightened teen began to wonder if this was the Nitris that the Empress told lived in the cave. Thinking of the creature’s name led Roland to wonder why she named it that. The name reminded him of cars built for drag racing.

Before Roland could compose himself enough to leave the area he heard the sound of hooves clip-clopping on the ground from inside the dark room. After a while, an animal seemingly covered in ice stepped out of the room. It was a bit bigger than Roland thought it was. It had to duck its head to exit the room, and when it did, Roland began to feel lightheaded.

“I-it really is a horse…” he muttered, freaking out internally when he noticed that he could see its organs throbbing within its icy shell of a body. There was what looked like cold steam emanating off the horse’s body causing everything around it to freeze. Even the broken door the horse kicked out had frozen hoof marks on it, and the ground around it became covered in ice more and more as the horse stood there.

‘The horse is blue…’ Roland thought. ‘Why isn’t it grey, or something?’

Before he had to think about the horse’s color scheme, too much, it reared back and let out an intense scream that Roland had never heard from a horse before. It made everything in the hallway vibrate, causing some things to fall from the walls. Even the last hanging chandelier came down in an explosion of glass and dusty gold.

That was enough for Roland. The sight of the horse had scared him enough that it caused Roland to freeze, which he thought fitting in a messed up sort of way. But the scream raised his level of fear to the point where his fight-or-flight reaction took over, sending him running as fast as he could back the way he came, praying he didn’t trip on the debris in his way and fall.

The horse was catching up much to quickly. Roland assumed the newly fallen chandelier would be an obstacle for the horse, but it was big enough to jump over the broken mass of glass without issue. Roland hadn’t reached the staircase, yet. Even if he had, he’d likely not make it to the next floor. Instead, he dove into a room with an open door on his left. The Nitris ran passed the room, but quickly turned around. However, before it got back, Roland shut the door, and moved a large wooden desk in front of it. The Nitris began to ram into the door to the room, which caused the entire wall to freeze after a while. The ice was too thick for even the horse to break down.

Just to be safe, Roland hid under another desk on the other side of the room, next to a locked door, accidentally hitting his head as he got under it. This caused a narrow drawer to open up and a map and blueprints to fall out. The blueprints had some extra room that weren’t on the map, and each of them had a small drawing in red on the areas where the missing—or hidden—rooms were located.

“Well, now I know where to go,” Roland whispered to himself. “But how do I get out of here?”