by BJ Hanlon
His chest thumped. Edin concentrated on it. The beat was loud and soon drown out all other noise. He had to get out, had to leave and find her.
“I have to go,” Edin said.
“From our engagement party? Why?”
“You’re not real… none of this is real.”
She took his hand and put it to her face. “Do I not feel real?” Then she leaned in, her lips inches from his own then she lowered his hand to her chest and put it over one breast. “Do these not feel real?”
Edin swallowed. They did, everything felt real, even the warm breath.
It wasn’t though. He was certain of that.
Edin pulled away. “I’m sorry, I need to go, I need to wake up.”
Her face grew grave, not scared but scary. Her smile faded and her jaw clenched. The eyes that’d been gray green slowly morphed to a dark red… the color of blood.
Arianne stepped back and raised her arms. A moment later, everything went silent. The band stopped and the talking ceased. Edin had the feeling that everyone was staring at him. He looked around and saw it was true.
Their eyes though, everyone’s eyes, were red. Jaws opened and he saw great needle-like fangs protruding from them like stakes.
Edin heard his name again.
“Arianne I’m here.”
Blades were drawn and the crowd began to move in. It encircled them. From inside her bodice, Arianne drew a silver dagger, not her bejeweled one. The hilt shone brightly and the pommel was a figurine. A monstrous figurine. There was no other name for it.
“My love, this hurts me more than it hurts you,” she said.
Edin stepped back and reached for his weapon. He drew it and scanned the room. Everyone, even his mother, his companions, his friends all had weapons out and were staring at him. Edin held out a hand, trying to summon his ethereal shield. But nothing happened.
If it was a dream, his dream, shouldn’t he be able to do what he wanted? Couldn’t his will change what was happening?
Edin closed his eyes and pictured them all gone. This entire place gone. The food, the music, the family.
Beyond his eyelids, the bright firelight went out and when he looked again. It was dark but for the full moon shining through the windows above him.
He looked at the people again. In the moonlight, they had transformed. They were dematians.
“Was not the other way better?” Arianne asked stepping closer to him. She hadn’t changed, she was still her at least. Save the red eyes. “Was it not more palatable than this? We can go back if you wish… or you can die.”
Edin glanced at the giant doors. They were fifty feet away, tall and barred and blocked by king’s guard, the dematian king’s guard.
He needed to get out. That was his only exit, his only choice. The crowd moved in, he was surrounded and was unable to use the talent.
“Breath dang it.” He heard. It was in his head but it was Arianne’s voice and it was filled with tears.
Edin turned in time to see one of the dematians run at him with a weapon. Edin dodged to the right and slashed through the gut. Its face flickered to one of the partygoers, a young man about Edin’s age with short cropped black hair.
Edin cut through another person. Another face flickered in. A woman, a very old woman though she’d moved like the wind.
More came at him. Edin dodged, parried, and riposted. He couldn’t attack, there were no openings…
A large spear aimed at his chest. Edin knocked it out of the way with his off hand and lopped the attacker’s head from its shoulders. The head became Dorset.
Edin took an arm off Horston, a leg from Grent. Dephina had her two blades, she attacked in a frenzy that nearly took off Edin’s head.
But he twisted out of the way and his blade bit into her neck and a spray of black blood splashed onto others who screamed. He was backing toward the entrance slowly.
Now though, when he needed endurance, it was fading. Edin’s sword arm began to feel as if he were fighting with a two-handed weapon. His chest heaved with heavy breaths. He blocked an attack from the side and then countered with a thrust to the chest and felled Berka.
The guards came at him with great horsehead knives. He blocked and leapt over their attacks at the same time, ducked a return slice and took off a leg. The beast tumbled into his partner, its groping hands catching his partner’s arm and both went down.
Edin ran toward a swordsman, the man had his legs spread and slashed his greatsword at Edin. Edin dropped to his rear and slid between the legs on the smooth ballroom floor. He left his own blade up and cleaved the man in the groin. Sympathy darted through him for a moment.
A blinding pain caught him in the lower back. A knife of some sort. Edin flailed his sword arm around his head and heard a cry of pain. He stumbled forward and looked at the attacker. His mother’s arm dropped to the ground holding the knife. She fell back, her yellowish eyes looking up at him as if asking why.
Tears welled up as blood rushed from her severed arm.
It was fake, this was all a lie, he told himself. But now he was fighting through his own tears. It blurred everything. He stumbled up the stairs, the attackers staying just outside the reach of Mirage.
He stepped back. A dematian leapt up swinging a jewel encrusted blade. Edin sidestepped the move and it sent pain through his back.
He ignored it. Swinging his own weapon up and he took off both arms.
The king fell backward. “Traitor! Kill…” he cried as he crumpled into the pack.
Edin took another step up.
“Breathe Edin, breathe.” It was Arianne in his head again.
Edin couldn’t think about it, he had to keep going. Whatever was happening, this wasn’t the real world. He stepped up again, but nothing was there. Edin glanced back and saw the large doors a few feet behind him.
But in front of them stood a dematian with its face flickering between the beast and Arianne. She held her bow with an arrow nocked and pointed at his chest. “You have betrayed me. Abandoned me when all I have ever done is love you. I cannot allow that.” She let go of the string and the arrow flew.
Edin swiped at it with his blade and deflected, but only slightly. He screamed as it struck his chest to the left of his heart. Edin lashed out blindly with his sword. He felt it strike flesh and saw Arianne collapse in the same way she did at the dry dock.
His heart screamed and she shimmered back into the blue dress with the plunging neckline. But now, there was blood seeping down from the slash across her chest. She looked up at him with those sad gray-green eyes.
“How could you, I loved you…”
“Not real,” he muttered and pushed down the pain and crawled over her body.
He sheathed the sword and got under the golden bar. Edin hoped it was only wrapped in gold and not solid metal. He pushed up with all his might, his body leaking blood from the stab and the arrow. Edin felt woozy and tired. It inched up, but that was all it needed. He threw it out and it slammed on the ground cracking the ballroom floor and then tumbling onto Arianne’s body.
Edin pushed open the door and saw a blinding light. He fell into it.
He gasped for air, his vision blurred to a white light far above him. Arms wrapped around him, pulling him in and hugging him.
Tears wetted his cheek as Arianne suddenly pressed her lips to his. “You’re alive…” Arianne cried and shook.
Edin’s arms felt weighted but he wrapped them around her as she collapsed onto his chest.
“You moron, don’t you ever do that to me again,” she cried.
After a few moments, Edin remembered the dream and the meek, doting Arianne. He chuckled, this was the real Arianne.
“What?” she said.
“I’ll tell you later.” Above him the domed ceiling held a bright white light at its center almost like the skylight in the agora. “Where are we?”
“The tower, you collapsed moments after we entered.” She pressed her lips to his again and sat up.
“You were unconscious for hours… and stopped breathing.”
“Help me up.”
Arianne took his arm and pain ripped through his lower back and chest. He looked down but saw no blood. It hurt though, as if the arrow had hit him true.
“What’s wrong?” Arianne asked.
“You shot me with an arrow…” Edin said and then grinned. He pulled her close and kissed her.
“Call me my love.”
She raised an eyebrow and made a gagging noise. “I’d rather shoot you with that arrow.”
“That sounds about right.”
Arianne helped him stand and walked him to a stone bench. She pulled out a few pieces of dried jerky and gave him the waterskin. Apparently, she’d grabbed her pack at some point.
After seeing that dream… whatever that was, he would’ve preferred the ale but he couldn’t complain.
They were quiet for some time and Edin got to take in the room they were in. It was a circular hall lined with benches. In nooks sat unmoving humanoid statues, men in long flowing robes, they carried swords and shields, bow and arrows, spears and staves.
Their faces were elongated and nearly all of their chins were pointed. Thin men, with long flowing hair with something like horns poking out near the tops of their heads.
“This is an elvish tower, isn’t it?” Edin asked.
Arianne nodded.
At the center, stamped onto the stone floor stood a symbol. An unknown leaf, with thick veins protruding like barbs. In the center was what looked like a white marble ball.
“Where’s Fokill?”
“I don’t know.” She pointed and he saw the three empty nooks across from and to the sides of the front entrance. “There are three doors… all were closed when I entered.”
“Well, I suppose we go look for him,” Edin said.
“Are you stupid? You nearly died.”
“Would you want to be stuck in here alone? What if what happened to me, happened to him?”
“Then he’s probably already dead,” Arianne said. “Elven towers affect people differently, or so the stories say.”
“Have you been affected?”
“Not so far as I can tell. But who knows what’s beyond the darkness? Who knows what horrors await?”
Despite his reservations about the creepy Fokill, Edin knew they had to find him. “We cannot leave him alone.”
Arianne sighed.
“You don’t happen to have any ale, do you?”
She rolled her eyes and dug in her pack. A moment later, she handed the aleskin to him and turned back to staring at one of the passageways. The white light from the dome barely reached the threshold.
Edin drank the warm ale and stood. He felt a slight light-headedness for a moment and had to lean on Arianne to regain his balance.
Edin held out his hand to summon an ethereal light. Nothing came. “I don’t think the talent works here.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. “Come on.” They went to the front door and Arianne slipped out.
Edin was about to follow but stopped. What if when he exited and came back… the same thing happened to him?
She came back with a thin branch and spoke. The wood smoldered for a moment and then burst into flames at one end. “Dorset showed me the unending flame spell.”
“So, spells work?” Edin asked. He took it from her hand and looked back into the room. “Which way would you go if you just entered?”
Arianne glanced around slowly at the three dark doors. “Right.”
Edin held her hand and headed that way. He pressed a hand to the wood door and pushed. It swung open silently to a long and narrow corridor with no windows or any nooks where statues of ancient elves stood dormant. Why’d he think dormant?
Arianne looked around. “This is too long a hall based on the size of the tower, there is elven magic here.”
As they walked, the hall began to turn slightly to the left. The air began to smell worse, dank and musty with a sweet odor that made his skin turn to gooseflesh.
Eventually, they came to a smaller door as unassuming as any he’d ever seen. Edin touched the knob and felt a cold chill run through him.
“Take my arm,” Edin said as one hand was on the knob and the other still holding the torch. He felt her grip his bicep and her nails digging into his skin. Edin turned and pushed.
It swung open silently, silent as a graveyard, he thought.
Then suddenly, before him was a sight unlike any he’d ever seen. It was as though it they were transported to somewhere else.
The roar of water crashing came from beyond the door as they were met with a bright sunlit world. They stood at the edge of a cliff next to a waterfall emptying into a clear pond some fifty feet below them. And surrounding the pond were colorful flowers and trees. A pair of fat rodent-like creatures drank from the water’s edge. The air felt warm and humid and made his breath feel heavy.
They stood at the edge of this precipice and stared out. It was beautiful and shocking. After a few moments he called out for Fokill. No answer.
The Foci Dun Bornu lived so close with nature that they would probably love this place. To the left he noticed a small dirt trail heading down below between trees and flowers. It looked nearly manicured as if the path were recently trimmed by some horticultural expert.
Edin stepped forward but Arianne gripped his arm tighter and pulled him back.
“This is an illusion,” Arianne said. She turned. “Where’s the door?”
Edin looked at a flat wall of granite that rose up next to the waterfall. The door was gone. He pressed his hand to it and felt the rough stone bite his skin. Cool stone, but it was stone.
His heart began to pound. “A trick… the door has to be here,” Edin said. He ran his fingers all around looking for it. Trying to find a seam or something.
“It’s gone…” Arianne said pulling his hand away. As Edin turned to look a man burst from one side of the path to the other.
“Fokill?” he yelled but the man disappeared. Was that him? Edin wasn’t sure and for a moment, he thought the man wasn’t wearing clothes. It would be just like that creep, Edin thought.
There was no reply. Edin glanced at Arianne, who was biting her lip as if trying to figure out a difficult problem.
“What do we do? We can’t go back,” she said.
“We go forward…” He took her hand and together they stepped onto the dirt path. The ground was soft beneath his feet. The place had the smell of a recent rain.
Edin felt warm and removed his heavy cloak and threw it over his shoulder.
“Want to tell me what happened when you collapsed.” Her voice sounded nervous as if thinking of something else would take her mind off it.
Sweat dripped down his body as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. They followed the path as it sloped downward at a gentle angle.
Edin started to talk as they walked side-by-side down the path and through the jungle. Edin’s shoulder brushed against leaves and tall flowers.
A flower, taller than he was, had orange pedals the size of Edin’s head. Birds cawed overhead and the sky was as bright a blue as any he’d ever seen. Dreamlike.
As he was finishing up the story about their engagement party the pond appeared at the end of the open path.
The water was crystal clear and teeming with multicolored fish. Colors he didn’t even have names for. To the right was a small pit with a dying fire.
“Fokill?” Edin called out again to no response except the birds.
But then the name was repeated though had an odd tone to it. Not like an echo but like someone saying it back to him.
Edin glanced at the water and then up at the falls toward the place they came in. Almost directly above it, the bright yellow sun shone down and there were rainbows, hundreds of them. Bright and full of every color he’d ever seen. It felt surreal.
“It’s paradise here,” Arianne said. “One day I’d like to have a small house in a place like this. N
othing too grand just a…”
“Didn’t I tell you I’d take you to paradise?” Edin said but she wasn’t listening.
She was pointing across the pond to a cottage of sorts. One that was hiding in the trees but not just in them, it was off the ground almost in the canopy.
“There’s no way Fokill could’ve constructed that,” Arianne said.
“No,” Edin said. “That means someone else might live there.”
The jungle around the pond was thick and impenetrable. It was as if the trees blocked their path forcing them to go only one way to the treehouse.
Through the pool of crystal-clear water.
They seemed to come to the same conclusion. Edin furrowed his brow but Arianne looked frightened.
She spoke. “Eleven ruins are dangerous. Few who enter, even with an eleven guide, rarely exited. And if they did, they were changed.”
“I do believe it may be a little late for that,” Edin said squeezing her soft hand. She offered a placating smile but her eyes didn’t agree.
“Fully dressed or not?” Arianne asked.
It seemed almost a crime to swim such a beautiful pool of water in the rags they were wearing. Edin began to unbuckle his belt and sword. He dropped his clothes and stood only in his undertrousers.
“You need to get those things washed,” Arianne said.
“Next time we’re at the laundry, I’ll take care of it.”
She began disrobing. She’d already had her cloak off and pulled her tunic over her head. An undershirt, pure white got caught and began to rise with her tunic.
Edin caught his breath. It rose higher and higher reaching the bottom of her chest. It caressed the underside of her breasts for the briefest of moments and hung there teasing him.
Then it dropped.
She was in only a white linen tunic and underwear that held firm to her body. She caught him staring and frowned. “You’ve seen me already… we’ve made love.”
“I know… but that doesn’t mean I can’t stare when you take those off.”
She slapped his bicep. “Come on.” They packed everything they could inside the sack for Edin to haul across the pond while the bulky cloaks were carried by Arianne. As they waded into the cool water, the soft sand felt like a bed for his feet.
