Page 106 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Oh sweet Christ. What if he were doing so unintentionally, goaded beyond his limits by Macha and her daemon?

Silas bowed his head, brought down by the despair radiating from the trapped souls. He pressed his hands to his head. ‘You should go, George. Find your friends and leave this place.’

You’re abandoning them?George cried.

‘No. Of course not. But you need to leave… Can you do that?’

George shook his head, sooty face miserable.Only as far as the asylum, and that doesn’t seem far enough.

No. It did not. But it was better than remaining down here.

‘You should go there now, and do what you can to have them evacuate the place.’ The poltergeist could manipulate objects in the corporeal world. If the asylum’s residents did not already notice its foundations shaking, then perhaps the ghost could frighten them out. ‘Quickly, gather the rest of your friends and go. Thank you…for all you have done. I will not forget it.’

There was no way of seeing George’s blush beneath the soot, but Silas saw sign of it in the shy bob of the child’s head.

Just do your best then, Mr Mercer.

He offered a grim smile. ‘I shall. Now go, quickly.’

Silas did not wait to see if the sweep would follow instructions. He turned back to the monopteros. He flexed his hands, running over the options, which, without the bandalore, seemed seriously numbered.

He was not going to abandon these souls, but how the bloody hell did he free them?

The scythe might have been capable of making a dent in this magickal cage, but he wasn’t sure his new talent for beheading teratisms was as useful here.

Silas bit at his bottom lip, raised his hands, and took a bet. A bet that Macha, or whichever of the sorcerers had constructed the soul trap, was intent on keeping those things inside trapped there, not assuming they would need to stop someone from trying to getinthe horrid prison. The monopteros was deep, deep within the Sanctuary. He’d defied its catacomb-like passages to find it and had the help of a rogue ghost to do so. He hoped he could rely on the Morrigan being as unprepared for his ability to defy the Sanctuary as he was.

‘Right then, let’s see.’

Silas slammed his hands against the thin air between the columns. He closed his eyes tight, his head turned slightly into one shoulder, bracing for whatever might come next.

Which was…nothing of note. Save for the feeling of pressing up against a solid wall and a tingling in his fingers that bordered on ticklish, the end result was surprisingly mild. And extremely disappointing.

The souls’ cries rose. And a few words fought through.

Careful,said one.

‘Sound advice,’ he muttered.

Ankou,from another.

But the last discernible word made no sense.

Sluagh.

Silas braced for another try, using more vigour this time, leaning into the task like a man on the docks trying to shoulder an enormous load. He grunted, and grimaced, and spat all kinds of unpleasant words before he relented. He could not, it seemed, move a mountain with his bare hands. Not a magickal one at least.

‘Shit.’ Furious, he punched at the unseen barrier, and by god he was sure this time there was a yield beneath his knuckles.

Silas tried again.

And a third time. Feeling for a softness, a tender place, like he knew existed in the walls of the Sanctuary. Unstructured points that allowed him to pass through.

Silas sidestepped around the pillars, testing the spaces in between, one by one. The souls clamoured for him, and there were snippets of coherence within the babble.

Hurry.

Hurry.