Gaze of Fire

by Melissa Kellogg

  She realized that the mimecat’s illusion of a little girl in a blue dress offering her the teddy bear had been a trick. Regardless of whether she had chosen to take the teddy bear or not, the mimecat had meant for the little girl to drop the teddy bear in the exact spot that the dead crow lay in, so that it looked like the teddy bear had turned into a dead crow. It was clever. It made it look like physical objects were being affected, moved, held up, rattled, or transformed. It was skilled at this game; a game that involved horrifying and confusing its target with various illusions.

  “A mimecat? I’ve never heard of such a thing. It’s freaky as hell.”

  “Perhaps that’s where the word ‘copycat’ came from. It can mimic our voices, past scenes it has witnessed, and I think it can work its way into our minds in order to find out what our fears are,” Karena said.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I think it is.”

  What scared her the most about the mimecat was that it might make them turn on each other. The mimecat yowled. Its tail lashed back and forth even more violently. It was agitated. Its cover had been blown, and it was probably trying to figure out what it should do now. She backed up towards Hadrian.

  “You need to stay with Evelyn,” Karena said.

  “You need to stay with Evelyn,” a voice echoed. This time, she knew it had come from the mimecat.

  Hadrian clutched Evelyn tighter. “What’s it going to do?” he asked.

  “The mimecat is outnumbered at the moment, so it’s going to try to make us turn on each other or to separate. It wants to toy with us because that’s what cats and other apex predators do. It’s a behavioral thing, which serves as a way to increase their knowledge about how their prey behaves and to ease boredom, just like what rougarous do. The more it knows how to mimic, the more efficient it is at killing prey.”

  Karena pointed a finger to the ground. A steady stream of ice flowed from it and laser-beamed onto the ground, forming a thick line. She made a half circle around Hadrian and Evelyn who rested against him.

  “Don’t, Karena. You can’t fight it on your own.”

  “I have to, or else what happened to Evelyn could happen again. I can’t let that occur. You need to rest, as does Evelyn.”

  A clock tolled nine peals. It was nine o’clock, and time was running out. She had thirty minutes to make it to the ruins somewhere below the keep. With that mimecat messing with them, she might not make it. Hopefully, she could kill it before it ruined everything.

  “That thing messes with people psychologically. We’re not trained for that.”

  “I’ll figure it out,” Karena said. “Stay here until I get back. Don’t believe anything you see or hear. Even if I’m calling for you or for help, don’t leave.”

  Hadrian nodded. His eyes went to the mimecat in the rafters, and then to her, scared. Karena raised her arms slowly, and a wall of ice formed on top of the line that she had made. She created a half-dome made out of ice around Hadrian and Evelyn, and sealed them against the wall. It would protect them. She drilled out tiny air holes in the igloo-like structure.

  Now it was just her and the mimecat. She turned to face the mimecat. It was still studying her from on top of the rafters.

  “Don’t take it,” Evelyn’s voice said, but it wasn’t Evelyn who had said it. It was the mimecat repeating what it had heard.

  Hadrian’s voice said, “I can’t. You need. I have to.” The words were meaningless because of the mimecat leaving words out. The mimecat didn’t understand language. In a sense, it was a parrot that could repeat back what it heard, whether fully or partially.

  Karena knew that she only had a couple of chances to kill it because each and every time she tried and failed, it would be a new learning experience for the mimecat, and it would adapt. Ice formed on her palms. The rafters would make it difficult for her to kill it. She tossed up her hands with her palms pointing towards the mutated cat. A barrage of needle-like icicles hurdled themselves at the mimecat. She flung another round at it just to make sure that she killed it.

  A ripple of energy coursed over the mimecat. Instead of becoming speared by the scores of them, the ice needles flew right through it. The icicles burrowed into the wood of the rafters, and stabbed at the stone wall behind the mimecat, fell, and clinked when they landed on the ground.

  Karena stepped back. She didn’t know of any cryptid that could phase from solid to ghost-like at will. It had an ability that she didn’t know existed or could exist. The mimecat wasn’t from their world. The mimecat had to be interdimensional. It had come from the portal. It was the only answer. She had a sickening feeling that she wouldn’t be able to kill it. Perhaps a spiritwalker or someone with magical abilities might be able to. Her physical, elemental abilities wouldn’t do anything simply because the mimecat wasn’t from her world, and therefore, not constrained to the same physical laws.

  Alarmed and scared out of her wits, she ran out of the room to find the stairs that would take her under the keep and to the ruins. She ran down the hallway that was lined with suits of armor and taxidermied hunting trophies, turned into a different hallway, and turned again, and found herself back in the same hallway that she had started in. She frowned. How was it possible that she had circled back? She kept running, but found herself in the same hallway over and over again. It didn’t make sense that she constantly looped back to this same hallway when she exited it, turned left, then right, and somehow found herself back at the entrance of it. It had to be an optical illusion. The clock to her left now read fifteen minutes past nine.

  “Stop this!” Karena shouted.

  An echo of her voice came to her. “Stop this!” it said.

  At a loss of what to do, she put her hands to her face. She was so close to saving Asher, but the mimecat was preventing her from reaching him. She was running in circles. She didn’t know the layout of the keep to be able to close her eyes and feel her way through it. What could she do?

  The curtains around the closed window above her swayed back and forth from an invisible wind. Papers fluttered by her, and an elderly man rushed to catch them, all illusions of course. Everything seemed so real. She closed her eyes and held out her hands. She blew a cold mist around her. With the cold mist, she could sense objects that it drifted by and use it as a guide. But it was still frustrating. It would take a long time using this method to stumble across the stairs that she needed.

  Scratching noises and then a blast of piercing sound hit her eardrums. Bat screeches ricocheted off of the walls. The nargoths had found their way in. It was just one more thing to contend with. She couldn’t kill them, and nor was she able to kill the mimecat. Everything felt so hopeless. She opened her eyes and sank to the floor to weep. Down the hallway, a grandfather clock ticked, counting down the final minutes. The sonic pings neared. She pressed her hands to her ears.

  A panther’s angry scream cut the air. All of the rattling and shaking stopped. The ghosts vanished. The hallway shimmered and changed to what she guessed was its original state. She was actually in one of the kitchen hallways. She stood up, wondering what was going on. It dawned on her. The nargoths’ sonic soundwaves were disrupting the mimecat’s mind and illusionary abilities. It was a perfect collision of two nightmares, vampiric pets and an interdimensional predator. Karena couldn’t believe her luck.

  Before anything else tried to stop her, Karena ran through the keep’s first floor in search of the entrance to the underground part of the keep. In a room filled with statues, old portraits, and a faded tapestry, she found a section of the floor that had at one point been covered with an iron grate. Half of the metal mesh had been busted open with brute force from something that had come from beneath it.

  Yowling echoed through the hallways, getting closer. The air bounced with the nargoths’ sonic cries. She wondered if Hadrian and Evelyn would be alright. Karena glanced at the clock. It read twenty-five past nine. At most, she had five minutes. From the sounds of it, the nargoths and
the mimecat were going at it with each other, and weren’t interested in Evelyn or Hadrian yet, but the nargoths’ soundwaves would destroy their protective ice capsule. There wasn’t enough time to go back and check on them.

  A bell on one of the bookshelves in the room caught her eye. A drawing of a mimecat had been inlaid on its surface. She speculated what it was for. She went over and rang it hard. Somewhere in the keep, the mimecat roared in response. It didn’t sound happy. Karena shut the door of the study room, and padded down the stairs below the iron grate.

  She found herself in an underground cavern that dripped with stalactites. Four tunnels branched away. However, a gold, decorative plate had been nailed onto the side of one of the tunnels. When called upon, the Cattail ruins were supposed to emit golden light in the spiritual realms. The tunnel with the gold plate had to be the one that led towards it.

  Feeling the pressure of time, she ran into the tunnel. Pools of stagnant water and piles of corroded ceiling lay in front of her like an obstacle course. She leapt and sometimes had to scramble over them. Despite the condition of the tunnel, it was a miracle that it was still mostly intact after so long. Upon her approach, torches burst into white flames. The runes on them were still strong.

  Something crashed distantly behind her. The nargoths cutting sonic screams and the irate growling of the mimecat returned. Obviously, that bell had pissed off the mimecat. Her effort to alert all of them to her presence in order to draw them away from Evelyn and Hadrian and worked, perhaps a little too well.

  As she dashed through the tunnel, she threw out icy blasts in front of her to remove the spider webs that had been strung across her path. The sleepy spiders in their centers weren’t as fortunate as the ones roaming around on the walls. A stream trickled through the tunnel, bringing with it slime and cave loving insects of all kinds. Where were the ruins? Then a sudden glow lit the tunnel. Golden and radiant, it glittered on the walls, beckoning her to keep going. The portal was ahead of her; the ruins had responded to her question!

  Chapter 23

  The dusty air whipped around Asher. Even though the gusts were strong, the winged horse maintained its course to the golden light in the distance. Below, the ground was like a blur. They were traveling at a rapid speed, but yet the horse’s wings beat at a lazy rhythm. The ruins neared, and he was amazed to see it as a tower set partially into the side of a mountain. It was like a smoke stack, but made out of huge sandstone blocks. An arcade of arches and pillars crowned its height.

  The winged horse landed on the top level of the tower. Asher slid off. They had arrived not a moment too soon because another wave of pain shook Asher. He clutched his stomach and stumbled forward to the Cattail portal. It looked as though it was being baked in an oven because it was a doughy mound of solid rock that had deep cracks in it. Golden light escaped from those cracks. The rock was about four feet high and was as wide as the sundial in his father’s courtyard.

  He peered into it, and was surprised that the light didn’t blind him. Inside of the crack, he saw an underground cavern. Except for some of the light that filtered through the portal, it was dark in there. He stuck his hand in, but it bashed against solid rock. He massaged his fingers. That had hurt. Karena really would have to reach through the portal, because he couldn’t even put his arm or hand through it.

  Asher sank to the ground, and put his back against it to wait. He looked out at the distant wastelands of the dark spiritual realm through the gaps between the widely spaced, eroding pillars. They crawled with movement. He was glad to be so far away from the ground.

  The winged horse pranced and swung its head around. It nickered a goodbye and began to fade away. Its job was done. He was appreciative of its help.

  “Thank you,” Asher whispered to it.

  Another cascade of pain swept through him. He gasped, unable to breathe due to the agony. His vision went grey and jumped. He saw the wraith in front of him. It held the link to his body in its disgusting hands and bit it like a ravenous monster. There was barely anything left of the cord. The individual threads of the cord stuck out in all directions, and now the wraith had only had a few left to sever. Once the last threads were cut, he would be hunted down and consumed. His vision returned to his present location at the Cattail ruins.

  Fear clamped down on him. He wanted to return home, to see his family and Karena, and go back to the life he had enjoyed. He shouted into the air, declaring his hatred for Tristan and the unfairness of it all. Tristan had ensured his demise and had endangered Karena’s wellbeing. While Tristan walked away without consequence, he was going to endure immense suffering at that hands of that horrid wraith. It would be literal hell in every sense. The pain he was suffering through would only be the beginning.

  If he had been in possession of his powers, the surrounding air would’ve been sweltering in two-hundred-degree heat because he was so upset. If Connor was right, Karena might not make it to the ruins. How would he contend with the wraith? Was there any way that he could? He wouldn’t be able to become transparent, like he had with that spider, if it had the link to his body in its filthy hands. It could just reel him in. He despaired. He didn’t know what to do.

  And what about Tristan? Was he still a danger to Karena? Asher worried about her. The last thing he wanted was for her to die trying to save him when he couldn’t be saved. He just hoped that Tristan had been apprehended and rendered powerless so that he didn’t hurt Karena or kidnap her. Tristan’s bizarre obsession with her was scary. As much as he was going to suffer, so would Karena if Tristan abducted her and took her away to some remote location so that he could force her to be with him. Even though Karena was a Chaos elemental, she was at a severe disadvantage against a necromancer. Only a sorcerer or sorceress could fight a necromancer effectively.

  Suddenly, white forms materialized in front of him. He startled, but calmed down because they quickly took on shapes that he recognized.

  “Grandma, Grandpa?” he asked. His worries vanished and were replaced by joy. He had missed them.

  They smiled and sat down before him. They didn’t look the same as when he had last seen them. Rather, they appeared to be twenty years younger. As they had been in life, it seemed as though they were inseparable in the afterlife too.

  “You made it. I knew you would, grandson,” Grandpa said. His bushy eyebrows lifted just as much as the corners of his mouth did.

  Grandma beamed at Asher with a warmth that rejuvenated him. “We sent out a request to the higher angels, and they responded,” she said.

  “Can’t they do anything more to help me?”

  “They already have helped as much as they can,” Grandma said.

  “All I’ve seen is the winged horse.”

  “Much of their efforts go unnoticed or can be attributed to luck or unexpected inspiration on how to solve a problem. They’re always around and working in unseen ways,” Grandma said.

  “How else do you think we stayed together all these years?” Grandpa joked.

  Grandma punched him in the arm. Asher smiled, but then grimaced. Another sharp pain stabbed him.

  “Your silver coating is almost gone,” Grandpa noted.

  Asher looked down. He hadn’t noticed it before because he had been too preoccupied with getting to the portal. Semi-translucent splashes of silver energy coated him. They were drying up fast.

  Grandma frowned. Her expression hardened. “It’s that wraith,” she said.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” Grandpa said.

  “But there has to be a way to stop this.”

  “Some things in life will be out of your control. We must accept them as they come and endure through them.”

  “For thousands of years?”

  They looked at him with a knowing calmness. They didn’t have the answers, but they did trust in the universe.

  Asher sighed, and gave up on trying to explain the unfairness of it all. “What’s it like in the afterlife?” he asked. />
  Grandpa almost burst with childish excitement. “It’s lots of fun. We can do anything and go anywhere we like. If you can imagine it, it will happen,” he said.

  “We can’t visit all of the places in the afterlife. Some areas are blocked off because there are different levels, just like in the spiritual realm,” Grandma said.

  “It sounds complicated.”

  “It is, but isn’t,” Grandpa said.

  Grandma said, “It comes down to who you are as a person. If you’re a negative person, then you’re going to find yourself around similar negative people and negative environments, kind of like what you see here in this in-between realm between the material world and the afterlife.”

  “So I guess that means you can’t visit murderers, like the ones who murdered Horus and Ignita?”

  “Oh no, we can’t. That soul still lives in the material world,” Grandma said. Because she was a spirit, human emotions of anger and loss weren’t present. It was as though she was talking about the weather.

  “What do you mean? Horus was murdered four centuries ago. His death started the feud.”

  Grandma nodded and flung her gaze elsewhere. “And what does that tell you? If that person still lives, then what does that mean?” she asked.

  “Can’t you tell me?”

  Grandpa said, “We aren’t allowed to. These are earthly matters. We can visit the earth realm, but we can’t interfere. We can’t tell you things that are meant for you to figure out. But we can give you hints, like what we just gave you.” He clasped his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

  Asher thought about it. If the person still lived, then that person would have to have a long life span. Why would anyone want to initiate a feud?

  “So it wasn’t an elemental who murdered Horus?”

  Grandma and Grandpa exchanged glances. A spasm of pain coursed through him, interrupting their conversation. He could hear the gnawing of the wraith’s teeth in his head. It was as though mice were chewing on his brain. After a minute, it finally went away.