“It’s like transitioning to the asymmetric plane,” Cassandra said.
“Maybe it only works for him,” Erik added. “Didn’t Kafka’s phobia have to do with fire?”
“I thought of that,” Nicholae said. “But we have to try. It’s all we have at this point. And I don’t want to be stranded in this pit forever.”
“Neither do I, but—”
“I’ll go first,” Nicholae said.
“No,” Erik said brusquely. “You just got Oliver back. If this doesn’t work, you’ll have to start over again.”
“Or I’ll just get terribly burned and you can pull me out. My heroes.”
“If we have to pull you out—you saw his scars. I’ll go first,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nicholae said.
“Who’s been to the asymmetric plane most recently?” I raised my hand.
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Nicholae slid his gas mask back down and adjusted the straps. “Let’s go.”
The closest flames were about a half hour walk through the wasteland. It was a fire patch in the middle of nothing, continually burning as if there was a gas hose underneath. The flames licked the thick air at least eight feet up.
We left boot prints in the dusting of ash, which covered the ground as far as I could see in every direction. It was raining embers again, reminding me of how much I wanted to rid myself of this hellish place.
Nicholae approached the pillar of fire without hesitation, without a word, without a look back. He removed his gas mask, let it drop to the ground, and walked into the fire. Nicholae stopped and stood within. The flames consumed his entire body. He remained facing away from us. His clothes started to burn. His hair. His skin.
A scream escaped the faceless man standing amid fiery demons dancing to the sound of his agony. He dropped to his knees and his head fell forward.
I couldn’t watch.
18
The Void
“It didn’t work!” Cassandra cried.
I peeked to see Erik run over and reach into the flames to pull Nicholae to safety, but the moment before his hand could grab hold of his brother’s blistering body, Nicholae vanished.
Erik retracted his arm and patted out the flames. Black patches flaked off his arm and the skin beneath writhed and blistered.
Cassandra tried to touch him, but he pulled away.
“Don’t,” Erik said, pacing and grimacing in pain. “It won’t go away! Damn this hurts.”
Welcome to the lives of regular people, I thought.
Cassandra and I stared at the empty pillar of flame in wonderment. Erik stared at it with contempt.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“It didn’t look like a pleasant transition,” Cassandra said. “If it truly was a transition.”
“It still is unpleasant,” Erik said. “Urgh!”
“I don’t wanna do that,” I said.
“I don’t want to stay like this,” Erik said. “Hopefully, it’s better on the other side. Only one way to find out.”
The fire crackled and spit embers like it was still digesting my father. A few fragments of his clothing finished cooking, the lit edges continuing to curl in on themselves until there was nothing left.
Then the flames began to dwindle, all of its fuel used up. Our doorway was closing and there was nothing we could do to stop it. The thick fiery trunk was cut down to a stump, and then extinguished itself altogether until it was nothing but a black stain on the ground—a shadow of the doorway that once was.
We scanned the land for the next closest fire. There were a few more patch fires not too far away, but we focused more on the burning forest in the distance.
“I don’t think we should go one by one,” Erik said. “It would be best to get it over with together.”
“Agreed,” Cassandra said.
“Sure,” I said softly, not certain that my voice could be heard through the mask.
“He made it,” Erik said. “We’ll make it, too.”
I heard an unspoken hopefully hanging in the air.
We headed for the forest, for the dead trees that seemed to supply endless fuel for the raging fire. It was a forest of large black skeletons perpetually standing at attention. And around the stripped trunks crept the Scorched Ones. We were still a mile away, but I could already see them. They were blurred objects moving amongst the trees, waiting for us to draw near. I knew it was them with their twisted skin, long claws, and deep-set sunrise eyes.
I held my medallion in one hand as we walked, with a childish expectation it would ward off the evil spirits—that it would work on Kafka as well as the creatures lurking in the forest ahead.
As we approached, a few of the Scorched Ones left their cover of fire and shuffled into the open wasteland. Erik and Cassandra already had weapons ready to strike. Walking behind my two Lorne companions, I unsheathed my sword and held it with the blade out to the side. The weight of it felt severe.
Erik and Cassandra split apart, coaxing the creatures in two directions. None of them continued straight, toward me, like I wasn’t even visible. Erik hacked with his ax and Cassandra sliced with her double-edged sword, both of them reducing their attackers to piles of limbs and split torsos. There wasn’t a hoard of them like our night in the dome, so neither Lorne was in danger of being overrun.
I held my sword at the ready, but there was nothing left to attack.
More Scorched Ones were on their way, lumbering out from the flames, but not so many at a time that Erik and Cassandra couldn’t hack one to pieces before the next one closed in.
Then there was a clear opening. I could see flashes of movement deep within the forest, but it was hard to tell if what I saw was one of the creatures or just flames at that distance.
“Now’s our chance,” Erik said, his voice metallic from the gas mask. “Are you ready Oliver?”
I wanted to confidently say “yes,” but the one-syllable word refused to pass my lips.
“You can go back to that underground community and we’ll pick you up on our way back. At least you’ll be safe there.”
“This is our window,” Cassandra said, using the pile of body parts to wipe the gore from her blade.
The piles writhed with moving parts and moaning heads like machines that didn’t know when to quit.
“Like they’ll take me in now,” I said. “After what you did to those two guys.”
“Okay,” Erik said. “Our building’s still back there. You’ll be alone, but you’ll be safe. You’ve got your medallion to ward off these things.” He motioned to his mountain of dismemberment.
“No,” I said. “I can do this.”
“Together,” Erik said, his voice still pained.
“Together,” Cassandra repeated.
The word reminded me of Desiree, of what she’d promised, of our relationship before Eli took her from me—before Alexandria sank her claws into her. I’d get her back. I believed it; I knew.
“Together,” I said, removed my gas mask, and followed them into the fire.
The instant pain was overwhelming and I instinctively wanted to run back to safety. But Cassandra took my hand and helped keep me steady as all the nerve endings in my body screamed at once. Then it was me who was screaming. Though it didn’t feel like me. It felt like I was somewhere else and this was all just a bad dream. First it was bright and then everything went dark—and not like closing my eyes, but a complete void of light.
The darkness and the heat were all-consuming, and my orientation to the physical world had disappeared. I could no longer tell whether I was standing or floating or falling—or already dead.
More screams arose from somewhere in the void. It could have still been me. There was no way of knowing. My pain was waning. All feeling was waning. The void was becoming more prominent. The void was becoming everything.
And then the void was everything.
When I came to, I was lying on the ground, on
a pile of fallen leaves. A tree root poked me in the back. A lush canopy of green leaves stretched overhead and dusty rays of sunlight shone through several pockets. Chirping birds were perched in the branches above, as curious of me as I was of them. Several of them flew away as if to inform someone of my arrival.
I blinked hard and the luscious scene above me didn’t change or disappear. The only pain I could feel was the kink in my back from lying on the protruding tree root. I examined my hands, which both seemed healthy and functional. My clothes were still intact. My sword was lying beside me. And Erik and Cassandra were waking up from the same disorientating dream.
I sat up and stretched my back, twisting and leaning to loosen up the knotted muscles.
“It worked,” I said.
“It did something,” Erik said, carefully getting to his feet. He gazed at his arms, where the blisters had formed after his first bout with the fire, now healed. “That sure was intense.”
“I hope there’s a different way back,” Cassandra said. She stretched her hands over her head and cracked her neck.
The edge of the forest was a few trees away and past it I could already see a landscape of swaying tall grass and flowers. I gathered my scattered equipment and wandered toward the wooded border. A few wispy white clouds were painted high in the sky. An eagle or hawk soared over the open land like an all-seeing eye. Small buildings peppered the distance, far enough away that I couldn’t discern any particular details. And the mountain range—once brooding and inflamed—was a patchwork of mixed greens and capped with snow.
Something soft brushed across my face. Several white tufts from a dandelion, not the raining ash from the wasteland I’d immediately expected.
The two Lornes joined me at the edge of the forest to gaze upon the picturesque scenery. It couldn’t have been painted any more beautifully.
“This is where all those people were banished from?” Cassandra said.
Silver sparks began to rain down in a column of light—three distinct columns. The columns evaporated close to the height of the tree canopy. More sparks appeared within the columns until they became so dense they looked to be single beams of pure energy. And then the beams took the shapes of humanoid figures, standing ten feet tall. The beings did not materialize into solid forms, but remained forms of pure energy, made up entirely of shivering silver sparks. The pillars and beings of energy had us surrounded, and forced us back to back.
These were Guardians—the ones Kafka had been hunting, killing—Guardians of the Great In-Between. I saw one fight Kafka and Nicholae on the island in the cave. I witnessed Kafka kill the radiant being and watched its sparks steadily blink out of existence.
Erik and Cassandra didn’t bother taking out their weapons. They recognized what these being were, too.
“We’re here to see Bryten Archanum,” Erik said shakily, not the sound I ever expected to hear escape the lips of a Lorne.
The guardians stepped out of their pillars of raining sparks and grabbed each of us simultaneously. With a guardian for each of us, they snatched us like adults dragging off fussy toddlers into the pillars of light. It was no contest.
The Guardian’s grip felt like the cuff of a blood pressure gauge around my arm, pumped to the max. I could do nothing but comply.
The sparks rained down fervently and soon they blotted out the outside world like I was standing behind a waterfall. My feet were in a fog of sparks, so much so, that they shrouded the ground from view.
The guardian never said a word, and in fact, never made a sound. Its face was a blank canvas of swirling energy—no features, just a shell.
When the waterfall of silver light began to dissipate, I could see I was no longer in the grassy field. The Guardian dragged me from the pillar of energy out onto a rocky cliff. Erik and Cassandra had arrived at about the same time, led by their Guardians to a larger cube of silver sparks, which created an energy enclosing cell. And through the sparks, I could just make out someone seated inside—Nicholae!
The Guardian pushed me into the cell, retreated to his pillar, and all the sparks composing the two energy forms dropped to the ground and disappeared. The other two Guardians were gone seconds later.
Nicholae stood and I hugged him.
“It worked,” he said, still holding me tightly.
“Yeah,” I said, not able to find additional words.
Erik walked to the edge of the raining sparks and found himself at an invisible wall.
“I’ve tried,” Nicholae said after releasing me. “I’ve tried everything I could think of to get out of here, but…” He shrugged.
“I can’t tell if we’re making any progress,” Erik said. “We’re hitting one roadblock after another and I don’t know if we’re actually getting anywhere.”
“I told it whom I was here to see.”
“So did I. No response.”
“I feel like we’re close,” Cassandra said. She manifested a bottle of water and passed it around to each of us. When it had made a full rotation, she finished it in one gulp and threw it at the invisible barrier. The empty bottle sailed through the perimeter of sparks and clanked down on the rocky ground beyond. “That’s interesting.”
The sun fell behind the mountain peak directly overhead, casting shadows around the rocky clearing. The clearing seemed to form a curving trail that disappeared behind boulders at either side, guarding passage into the inner workings of the mountain. In the other direction, the vista stretched for hundreds of miles. The cliff we were on extended hundreds of feet, but the base of the mountain was far below that. The vast green valley below encompassed several little townships and a whole lot of untouched land. There were no roads. No skyscrapers. No low-lying smog. Just unadulterated lush landscape.
“You seem calm,” I said, turning back to Nicholae.
“I’m focused,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the ground. “If we’re being forced to wait, might as well make the best of it and see if I can escape first. Focused and frazzled are not complimentary.”
“I found Mr. Gordon meditating a few times at school, when I’d meet him after class. He talked a lot about getting quiet.”
“That’s when things can truly become clear. What you mean to say. What you mean to do. What you have to do. That clarity can be the most powerful weapon you possess. There’s time to fight and time to reflect. Right now it’s time for the latter.”
This was a scary time to be alone with my thoughts. There was so much uncertainty in my life right now that the only way to cope was not to think about it. But this quiet time invited those uncertainties and insecurities into the forefront of my mind. They were loud. Trying to quiet them was like trying to ignore nails on a chalkboard—like trying to block out the sensory overload in the asylum. Then I remembered that I had and my mind quieted immediately, on command, and I found my own moment of calm. I basked in the silver sparks showering down on me and tried to think of nothing at all.
Just before dark, a young girl, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, with long curls of black hair came walking up the path, holding a tray with four steaming wooden bowls. She was barefoot and wore a long navy dress trimmed with lace at the tight collar and hem. On the side of her neck was a raised letter “A,” a prominent burn mark. A long wooden staff with one side of a leather strap tied to each end was slung across her petite frame.
“I brought food,” she said in a sweet little voice and set the tray down just outside the outer wall of sparks.
I noticed one end of the staff was wide and flat when she removed it from her shoulder. She used the wide end to push the tray through the perimeter membrane of sparks.
“Good evening to you,” the girl said, nodded, and walked away with her staff.
“Wait!” I called, stepping to the edge of our cage.
She either didn’t hear me or refused to respond, and soon disappeared behind the boulders.
“She wasn’t going to tell us anything,” Nicholae said and scooted forward to g
rab a bowl from the tray. He leaned in to smell the contents and took a loud sip from the edge of the bowl. “It’s good. Some type of vegetable soup.”
The rest of us grabbed bowls and drained them swiftly.
“Somebody knows we’re here,” Nicholae said placing his empty bowl back on the tray. “That’s a good sign.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Or we just drank poison,” Cassandra said.
I started to feel sick.
“That would be an anticlimactic end to our journey,” Erik said. “I’d much rather go down fighting, not poisoned in a cage.”
“We’ll see what happens tomorrow,” Nicholae said. He stood up and manifested four side-by-side beds. “Might as well be comfortable until then.”
I propped my sword against the rocks, but left my gun and boots on. I didn’t want to sacrifice readiness for comfort. The medallion around my neck shimmered from the sparks, so I tucked it under my shirt.
The silver sparks didn’t seem as bright in the moonlight, but I still couldn’t see stars past the sparks. The lights in the handful of towns flickered within homes and didn’t seem to illuminate any common areas except for the occasional bonfire. It seemed the whole world was preparing for sleep, which with today’s excitement wasn’t far off for me, either.
I closed my eyes and could still see the bursting sparks like tiny fireworks in my mind’s eye. Throwing an arm over my eyes was the only way I could reach the desired darkness.
I awoke to the sound of the wood tray being dragged from our cell. Another preteen girl, this one a shorter redhead, used the flat end of a similar staff to pull the tray through the outer wall of sparks.
“Good morning,” she said when she noticed me looking at her, but she didn’t meet my eyes.
“Good morning,” I said hoarsely.
She had the same letter “A” burned into the side of her neck. The protrusion of the letter was so prominent that it looked as if it might actually burst through her skin. The dress she wore was white with long flowing lines and her bare feet peeked out from the hemline.
Archanum Manor Page 20
