When Illya’s grandmother drinks a potion sold by a dubious, but very charismatic, salesman, Illya must venture into the serpents’ lair to acquire the key ingredient for the antidote. The only problem is, she’s not alone in there.
The lights in the underground parking lot flickered on one by one, each band of yellowy light illuminating the darkness, pushing it back to reveal the dim shapes of cars and concrete pillars. They weren’t very bright, but Illya was more concerned by the way they lit a straight path deeper into the darkness. The concrete stretched on it seemed forever, until the lights became mere pinpricks and then were swallowed up by the dark.
Turning her head, eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of movement, Illya noted that none of the lights behind her were turned on. The outline of the door she had entered by was gone, too. She could turn around, or walk backwards, and try to get out, but in the dark it would be too easy to find something that would kill her, something she didn’t want to find. Or something she did. She had come this far; she had to go further still.
The hazy outline of her was reflected manyfold by polished windscreens set in rusted hulks. Illya tried not to look too closely at the spaces between the cars.
Taking a deep breath, Illya closed her eyes. The lights didn’t matter with her eyes squeezed shut, and safely behind her eyelids she didn’t need to see the other people.
There were no sounds of movement, just the ragged thumpa-thud of her heartbeat.
Illya inched forwards, trusting toes and fingertips to guide her way. Not too far out from her body; if she could see herself, she wouldn’t resemble a sleepwalker but more someone who, half asleep, knew a door was coming up soon and just wanted a small buffer between themselves and nasal pain. In her head, she pictured about the blueprints, scrounged from old council archives. They didn’t change the gross architecture of the buildings, typically, which was a blessing, but it was amazing how far sixty meters could feel with no sight. It might have been as far as the furthest stars in the night sky, for all she could tell. Illya was floating in an inky void, without tether or compass.
Her footsteps sang a lonely tune, echoing off rusted cars and rattling around the concrete pillars. The smell of old, cold metal and dampness clotted in her nose, mingling with the dry, musky smell of scales. Illya paused, hands trembling, ears straining. There was only the sound of her breath, nervous and short.
She knew that somewhere up above, in the mirrored maze of polished chrome and glass that - years ago, now - had once housed humans, they had sensed her. The silent statues caught between cars and peering around pillars spoke to that. She hoped she was fast enough. Her footsteps sounded deafening to ears straining to make out the faintest silken slither of scales. Fingertips trailing over corroded metal and plastic eaten away by time, she inched forwards, following the heat. Illya wondered if they could smell her fear.
With painstaking care, she crept forwards. The air grew thick and muggy, the sound of her footfalls accompanied by the quiet hiss of split pipes, belching unseen clouds of steam into the air overhead. Sweat gathered along her hairline, pooled at the nape of her neck and began to trickle down her spine. Illya could taste the metallic tang to the air, from old pipes and her own fear.
Glass crunched underfoot, and she froze. Her breath and the pipes hissed into the silent, humid air. If she could see the steam, she imagined it would mirror spittle flying from the mouth of a man, a traveller, extolling the wondrous properties of his tonics. It would mirror the slow clouds of frozen breath, icy with wintertime’s touch, hanging above her granny’s bed, growing ever slower.
Illya dared to reach a little further ahead, a step crackling loudly as she stepped tentatively into her self-imposed darkness. Basilisks liked glass and mirrors; they didn’t break them unless they had good reason. Like a nest.
Her fingers brushed against stone, cold despite the moisture-thick, oppressive air, and she flinched away. It felt, in some ways, like skin - she remembered the curve of fingers, the puckering of old scars turned hard - but mostly it felt like dead stone. A few tears squeezed between her eyelids, and she let them hide among the beads of sweat dripping down her face. She had come so far.
She reached out again, tracing the line of a straining arm until, quite suddenly, it ended. Not in a hand, or even a wrist, but in a jagged, broken stump that grazed her fingers painfully. Her breath caught in her throat as Illya imagined the jaws that could crunch rock, the piercing, deadly eyes set above terrifying fangs.
Taking another step forwards, her foot knocked against something that rocked and rolled away, and she gasped. Glass sliced into her knees and the palms of her hands as she dropped to the ground, hands moving with desperate, twitchy motions, swimming against the inky black sea behind her eyes.
Somewhere close by, something hissed.
Her fingers brushed against a cool, smooth shell. Illya’s hands stung as she fumbled blindly, picked up the egg, cradled it close to her breast. She turned slowly, hoping that she had gone a full one-eighty degrees, hoping that she hadn’t deviated from her straight path at some point in her blind march through the serpents’ lair.
Around her, behind her, came the crackle of glass as something large and heavy slid towards her.
Illya took a step forwards. The only dangerous thing about a basilisk was its gaze; all she had to do was keep her eyes closed and hope she wouldn’t be too late.
“Hold on, grandma. Hold on.”
