Pandora's Box

Chapter 9: Part I

Tear drops gently spattered on the glass casket's pristine surface. The glass was cold beneath Pandora's hands. But not as cold as her father's face.

Pandora stared at King Drake's pale features. His eyes had been closed and covered with a pair of copper coins: payment for the Reaper. Current fashion called for the application of deep red blushes, but Pandora had insisted the king's face be preserved as naturally as possible, knowing he would've preferred it that way.

Despite the mortician's subtle touch, Pandora hated looking at her father through the glass. Hated the stillness of his chest. Hated the silence of his heart gone cold and unbeating. The grief steadily grew from sadness to a focused rage.

"Don't worry, faday. You'll be home soon."

Pandora removed the music box from her satchel and knelt before her father. Lid opened, the golden ballerina twirled on its toes while an indigo light cast a film over the mausoleum. Malachai stood behind the princess, watching the door at Pandora's insistence. Pandora sealed her eyes and pushed every waking thought from her mind until all that remained was a blank white screen. A long moment passed.

"Pandora—"

The princess threw up a hand, demanding silence. She let her focus resettle and poured her will into the dancing ballerina pirouetting in her hand. Pandora was only distantly aware of the air crackling with static around her shoulders. She willed her father's name onto the blank screen of her mind's eye before imprinting the only other word in the whole world that mattered beside it.

"Aeonituum..."

The most ancient of the Blight's words of power came to her in a flash as though it had been hers to toy with since birth. Pandora's muscles spasmed and she lurched forward, catching herself with her free hand. She dug her fingers into the music box, steadying it against the roiling storm of the spell's power. She opened her eyes to a brilliant display of jagged lightning jackknifing back and forth from the artifact in her palm to her father's casket.

Wind from beyond the veil separating the world of the living and the World Beyond stormed in the House of Sunset's massive burial chamber. A tempest of cobwebs gusted freely and roared like a storm-shattered sea's wailing.

A powerful surge threw Malachai off his feet, slamming him hard against a wall. The young man grunted as he hit the stone floor. He rolled onto his belly, wind resisting every feeble twist of his body.

"Pandora!"

The princess turned over her shoulder. Malachai reached for her with a struggling hand. The lightning pouring from the music box glared to blinding and Pandora felt the heat of the box's base bite deep into the soft flesh of her palm. The sound of shattering glass rose over the tempest. She screamed.

And the lightning vanished. The wind huffed itself out.

Pandora collapsed in a heat and dropped the music box. The ossified box snapped shut as it rolled, then fell still just beyond her outstretched hands. The world dipped and swayed. Something sour churned in her belly. Settling screens of dust lazily fell.

Hands gently rolled her onto her back and then eased her into sitting up. "Are you alright, princess?" Malachai asked.

"I... I think so." Pandora's temples thundered and her belly did all it could to keep the bile down. She dared to peer over Malachai's shoulder at the casket. "Did it work? Where is my father?"

A powerful voice spoke from within the thinning wisps of silt and shadow.

"Here."