Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Dancing Fortress ❯ Chapter 4

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

(A.N.: Look! Inspiration! It's short, but it's there nonetheless.)

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FOUR:

I seem to be getting somewhat ahead of myself.

The Fortress. From the outside, it looked very much like the other castles I'd visited in my travels, all grey stone and high narrow windows and very little to give it any sense of the life within. It was even rather small for all the legends that surrounded it-- I believe I was actually disappointed when it first came into view. Just a squat stone box tucked away in a valley, with the odd tower or outbuilding to break the monotony of its walls. Nothing overtly magical or mysterious about it at all.

It seemed much larger from the inside. That was the first thing I noticed. After the first narrow hallway that attached to our conveniently placed window, it became a maze of passages and rooms and walls that should have been straight but somehow gave the impression of leaning in towards us as we walked. It was dark, except for the oddly dim light from torches along the walls.

I was lost within two turns. But Heero never hesitated as he led us deeper in.

That red-haired girl was the first other person I saw in there, though for some time before that I'd had the impression of being watched. Had the feeling that there were forms moving just at the edge of my vision, furtive and silent and vanishing without a trace when I turned to look. Maybe I was imagining them. Maybe they were other inhabitants of that awful place, haunting us like the ghosts they so nearly were--

Heero eventually broke down and told me a few things about the Dancing Fortress, you see. How its trait of vanishing was developed because it had a tendency to appropriate people from wherever it was, and therefore had to keep moving to avoid having anyone make the connection.

A tactic which was apparently successful, because that was the first I'd heard of it.

According to Heero, the people that wound up inside the Fortress' walls weren't locked up or chained in any fashion-- in fact, they never saw their captors. They were simply left to wander through the mazes of hallways, forming groups where they could. Food appeared at odd intervals. Familiar faces vanished, and new faces appeared, but for the most part life in the Fortress was a silent, drawn-out nightmare in the near-dark.

It was some small comfort to know that Heero had already escaped once, and could in all possibility do so again. But when I looked behind me, no more than a few steps into the Fortress' halls, there was no window on the wall there. Despite the fact that we had just crawled in through it, it simply was not there.

At that moment, I didn't find anything to be very much comfort.