The Other World (A Shadowhunters Fanfiction)

Chapter 1: The Sky Will Tell Me

(I paired up all these chapters with song lyrics I like so, because Wattpad sucks and Archive Of Our Own is superior, you guys are going to have to tolerate YouTube links at the heading of every chapter now. Have fun with that y'all)

Once Cordelia became conscious, she immediately thought that she shouldn't be. Not because she thought she should still be asleep, but because she knew she was supposed to be dead.

The memories were jagged and horrifying and almost too much to take. Nausea rose, hot and tasting of bile, and all at once she was on her hands and knees somewhere cold, vomiting something that tasted distinctly metallic.

She dragged her eyes open slowly. Was she dead? When she looked around, she thought she might have died, and was now in hell.

This world was almost beautiful. The sky was a deep grey shot through with silver, like marble; Cordelia also quickly became aware that the light of the sun was filtering through thick clouds and into a large window, blocked only by a few thick metal bars and the rest of the carriage walls surrounding her.

Voices drifted through the window—human, though heavily accented and difficult to understand.

She was in... a carriage? No, this was not a carriage. Cordelia felt for a door, still on her hands and knees, and in the dim red light haloing everything, she saw a substance on her hands that was almost black in the dim.

Blood.

"Oh, God," she said. Fear swept through her, followed by a wave of agony in her abdomen. She tasted the tang of iron in her mouth again.

There was a sound emanating from outside the carriage—the clang of swords. Cordelia tried to stand, but the next onslaught of pain was so bad she almost passed out. The sounds of a struggle continued on outside the carriage—scuffling, and the sickening crunch of breaking human bone. A sound of pain, cut off. Then silence.

Fear ebbed and flowed in the silence. She tried not to make any sound. Her heart was beating so loudly she was sure it could be heard from the moon.

Clang.

Cordelia flinched. The sound of a sword against the metal door of—what was she in? A cage, she decided. She swallowed a whimper in her throat and felt about her person for a weapon. She was not dressed for combat—only in a cotton dress and corset and chemise, the same she'd been wearing on the boat on the Seine when it had all happened. When demons had filled the river and surrounded her and Matthew.

She'd been injured. A demon had pierced her abdomen with a spiky talon. She remembered Matthew's hands, trying to staunch the blood. His firm voice. Do not leave me, Cordelia. Do not fall asleep.

Afterward, she remembered only falling. Falling, and wondering what she was falling into.

Clang, clang, clang.

She realized she had no weapon to defend herself with. It was how she'd been overcome so quickly when the demons came. She was injured, though miraculously alive—and she would not be alive for much longer.

Clang. The lock finally gave, and then the door opened outward to the piercing blue of a witchlight stone. Cordelia squinted through the glare to try and see her attacker, to try to prepare herself for death, hoping it would be swift—

And saw, through the light that blinded her, a pair of amber-golden eyes.

"Layla?" James whispered.