by Peach, Hanna
They moved, this time with fluidity through the air. Alyx opened her eyes in surprise when she realized that she was dancing. Jordan was watching her, a hint of a smile on the corner of his lip. With a light nudge, he gracefully spun her out, before folding her back into his arms. Alyx couldn’t help the small laugh that betrayed the thrill he had given her.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” she said.
“I am glad that I can surprise you… as you do me.”
“I surprise you?”
“All the time. You never act the way I expect you to.” He laughed. “It surprises me when I actually manage to impress you. And…” his mouth pursed for a moment, “how I react to you surprises me.” He stared down at her as he admitted this.
Alyx wanted to speak, wanted to ask what he meant by that, but… a part of her was afraid to know. An unexplainable part of her cried out that she shouldn’t let him open up to her. She shouldn’t be letting herself get this close to another man. Another man? What a strange thought. Just who did she think she was betraying by being here with Jordan?
Look away, this part of her insisted.
But for some reason she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. They held her. Like his arms held her. Even as Jordan twirled them away from a couple that was about to collide with them in the air she didn’t take her eyes off him. She felt her trust in him solidifying. She had submitted control to him. But unlike the sense of being torn from the sky by a flock of possessed birds, this felt… safe and free…
… free… the blur of the gravel rushing under them… her head resting against his back…
Alyx shook her head to clear her mind from the disjointed flash of something she couldn’t quite grasp. When she tried to recall the exact image that fell across her mind, it eluded her.
“Are you okay?” Jordan asked, his eyes narrowing in concern.
“I swear I just—”
At that moment, a loud call of trumpets commanded the attention of the crowd. The music ended and the couples stopped swirling in the air. The ceremony was about to begin.
Jordan pulled away from her and Alyx couldn’t help the disappointment inside her and how empty her arms felt. She realized that for those brief moments dancing with Jordan, she had forgotten where they were and why they were here. She had forgotten what was at stake. And she had forgotten that they were currently surrounded, on all sides and above and below, by their enemies. How strange that dancing with him was able to do that to her.
Now, as she scanned the crowd around her, her nerves began to rattle awake again. The crowd began to move from the airborne dance floor towards the stands. Jordan led Alyx along with them.
They kept slipping further back towards the edge of the stands. Thankfully, the crowd was only too happy to let them as they pushed forward in the stands like one giant beast just to get a better glimpse of the front altar. Alyx glanced around her, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Only meters away was the very top of the seating, where she knew there was a steep drop down the back of the stands to the ground.
She eyed the guards who stood at various points around the stands, all in their warrior blacks. Some wore raven-feathered masks, the combined effect making them look like demented hell-crows. Who was underneath those masks? Were any of her old flock nearby? Xavier? Lutando? She looked for Symon, wondering where he had gone to, but she couldn’t see him.
Alyx snapped her face away from the closest guard, a tall, broad-shouldered seraph, when he caught her gaze. For a moment she feared that he, like Symon, would recognize her under her mask. She tensed as she waited for him to grab her roughly. But he didn’t.
The crowd around her hushed. The figure of Elder Michael, standing at the altar in front of his son, Daniel, had raised his hands to signal the start of the entwinement. Alyx chanced a glance at the seraph guard again. But he seemed preoccupied with the goings on at the front, and he hadn’t appeared to have recognized her. Stop being so jumpy, she scolded herself.
They were now at the very top of the stands. So far no one seemed to have noticed them. Alyx’s heart was thudding so loudly in her ears she could barely hear the reverb of Michael’s voice through the speakers. She peeked over her shoulder. The drop loomed below her and the distance to the cover of the trees seemed to stretch out. Would they be seen leaving the stands? Would they be stopped?
The crowd erupted in a roar of cheers as Constantine appeared in a flowing white dress that shimmered like a gem and made her long red hair seem even redder. Jordan squeezed Alyx’s hand, and they both dropped over the edge towards the ground. She had to hold down her skirt from billowing up as she fell. She landed silently on the ground in the shadows of the base of the stands next to Jordan.
With a glance around to check that no one was watching, Jordan activated the Miragecharm set into his belt. They darted across the open grass towards the trees and made their way through the deserted pathways of Michaelea, towards the top of the mountain.
* * *
Vix moved uneasily through the unfamiliar forest around Michaelea. She had spent her life as a warrior in Urielos and had only come to Michaelea a few times when duty called. Even so, that would have been over a hundred years ago. How time flies.
Unlike Alyx, Vix wasn’t dressed in a gown, but in black pants and a black fitted shirt. She had borrowed Alyx’s warrior jacket, thinking if anyone saw her they would just assume her a lightwarrior skipping out on the ceremony. Alyx’s jacket was a little snug in the shoulders but Vix’s old warrior’s jacket had long been destroyed at her own hands.
Wearing this jacket caused all those old feelings, those old thoughts, that old hatred to trickle in. Vix shook her head. Pull it together, Vix. You know you’re no longer that person.
She could hear a cheer roaring in the distance from the announcement ceremony. In her mind flashed a face, olive skin with almond, hazel eyes. Danielle.
Was she there at the revelries with her entwined? God damn it. Why was she even thinking about her? Since Vix had seen her lone figure in the distance in the Urielos Dreamscape, these old memories had resurfaced. Vix brushed these thoughts away. She had to focus.
Vix spotted Mayrekk’s hut up ahead and she slowed her movements, carefully holding aside branches and leaves so that they wouldn’t snap and give away her presence. She paused several meters away from the entrance, still hidden by the dense forest. The hut looked silent. No guards stood at the front as none had when Piki had done his reconnaissance. With Mayrekk’s prisoner’s bracelet and the state that he was in, there was no threat of escape.
Vix visually searched the area once more before she slipped through the bushes towards the door. With her back to the wall and one eye on her surroundings, she tested the door knob. It turned and the door pushed from the frame. She checked again that no one was watching before she slipped in.
With the door closed behind her, Vix took a quick moment to survey the dim hut, feeling the jarring familiarity of viewing this scene from Piki’s memory. Except now, from what she could see, the place had since been torn apart. There were gaps in the shelving where vials and bottles and jars had once stood. Glass was now shattered and twinkling across the floor like a fresh layer of snow. Amidst the drifts of fragments, some parts stained a pale pink or pastel green from spilled liquids, were dried, crushed plants and odd-shaped metal parts. Vix felt her apprehension turn to fear when she realized that she could smell the copper tang of blood.
“Mayrekk,” she hissed as she floated further into the hut and over the broken items. She moved towards the back of the room. She saw him as she moved around a piece of shelving. Mayrekk lay haphazardly across his single bed. As if someone had thrown him across the covers like a discarded jacket.
The big Seraphim began to stir as she moved to his side. “Don’t be afraid, Mayrekk. I’m here to help you.”
“You’re not Alyx,” a male voice said from behind her.
Vix spun just as a pulse of DreamWalker entered her b
ody. Too late to pull up her defenses. Before she could get a good look at the seraph, her world faded to black.
* * *
Alyx felt the unease in her stomach growing as they made their way to the part of the forest which had been the center of Mayrekk’s invisible prison in the DreamScape. Turn away, turn away.
It was a subtle mirage with no defined skin, the edges drifting out like mist so that you weren’t alerted to the fact there was a mirage here; there was no bubble pop feeling when they entered. Just a growing need to veer away from where the edges must have been. Even though they were invisible under their Miragecharm, Alyx couldn’t help but check their surroundings again. The sounds of the entwinement ceremony were rumbling in the background. Other than that, all seemed quiet and still.
Alyx squeezed Jordan’s hand when she saw the boulder that she recognized from Piki’s memory, standing stoic and stern like a gray lighthouse amongst a green sea. After exchanging a look, Jordan and she approached.
She slipped her hand into her pocket to touch the single metal piece that Tobias had made in an attempt to recreate Elijah’s Pick. It was the best that he could do with the time he had. But would it be enough? Did he get the mixture right? Was the magic strong enough to break the shield? Would it work? What if it didn’t?
She pushed these thoughts from her mind. Her flesh protested against the cut of the metal as she closed her fist around it. It had to work. If it didn’t, she would throw herself at the shield until it shattered against its will. Or she would tear down this whole mountain rock by bloody rock to get inside. Alyx took a deep breath, trying to settle her insides.
This close, Alyx could just make out the faint buzzing of the shield. There was definitely something hidden here. Alyx placed her fingers on the cool rock. At once the carved image of a tree within a decorative circle, twisted roots and leaves, delicate and detailed, rose from the stone.
Jordan had also placed his hand on the boulder. “Strange marking. What do you think it means?”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe.”
With Tobias’ pick gripped to her palm with her thumb, Alyx placed her hand on the boulder. As she did, the familiar hum of electricity caused the hairs of Alyx’s arm to stand up. She pulled the pick from her pocket and placed it on the boulder. With a familiar crackle, the small area around the pick began to fall away. Keep going, she urged it. But the widening space slowed until the unshielded circle remained steady. It didn’t even get big enough to go past the edges of this damned carving. It wasn’t even big enough to fit her shoulders in. Alyx swore and dropped her hand.
“What now?” she said. Jordan didn’t answer. He moved his fingers around the door, tracing the design. “Jordan, we don’t have time to stand around admiring the carving.”
“Didn’t we see Michael fiddling with something here in Piki’s memory? An entry point?” His fingers traced the rock. “It looks like a puzzle, don’t you think?”
Alyx frowned and placed her own fingers back on the rock so that the carving reappeared.
“See within the design… it’s actually six concentric circles that make a small circle with five rings around it.” He traced the circles as he spoke.
The design was so well crafted and the pieces lay so flush against each other that the separate circles were difficult to see. Alyx had missed them at first, but now that Jordan had pointed them out she could see them. She noticed that the small circle in the middle was set back into the rock.
“Yes, I see the circles.”
“Did you notice this piece down here? See how the rings don’t go all the way round?” Jordan traced a slim long vertical shape that cut across the rings from the edge of the middle circle out past the fifth ring. Each ring connected with this odd shaped piece and the other end of the rings fell short of completing a circle. “What does this odd piece look like to you?”
She traced her finger around this odd-shaped piece, long and thin with teeth. “It looks like… a key.”
“Exactly. I think it’s exactly that. I think we have to get this odd-shaped piece – this key – to slide into the center.”
“So how do we do that? The rings are butting into the key keeping it from sliding back and forth.”
Jordan placed his fingers on the outer ring and slid the ring-piece around so that the end was no longer restricting the key-piece.
“They move!” Alyx exclaimed.
“It can’t be this easy,” muttered Jordan and he placed his fingers on the second ring and pushed. “This one’s not moving.”
Alyx rolled her eyes. “Of course it wouldn’t be this easy.”
Jordan pushed at the third ring. As it slid away from the key, the outer ring slid back in. “What the… wait…” He slid the third ring back in and sure enough, the outer ring slid back out. Jordan pushed the second piece. This time it moved, causing the outer piece to slide back in.
“Yes,” he hissed in triumph. An energy seemed to vibrate from him. “I think I know what this is. Some of the pieces coordinate their movements with other pieces. Like here, the second piece can only be moved out if the outer piece can move back in. But, the pieces aren’t entirely dependent. You can see that I can move the outer piece without effecting the second piece.”
“Right,” said Alyx, catching onto what he was saying. “So you just have to figure out the right sequence of movements…”
“…and the key will be freed to slide into the center,” he finished for her.
Jordan began to slide the different rings back and forth, seemingly to test them at first. Then his movements grew more confident. Alyx barely realized she was clutching onto his shoulder as he worked with impenetrable concentration. She watched the ring-pieces slide in and out. She chewed at her lip when he cursed and retraced his movements. She bounced on her toes when he hissed “yes” under his breath.
Finally, “I think…” he slid the last ring away from the key. He grinned. “I got it.”
He glanced up at Alyx just as she looked at him. She only realized now how close their faces were. She must have been leaning in closer and closer to him as he worked without realizing it.
We’re breathing the same air, she thought. This felt so intimate. Jordan’s eyes dropped to her lips. Was he going to kiss her? A rush of heat rose through her body rendering her breathless, and yet there was an odd sense that this… this was wrong. Did she want him to kiss her?
Yes.
“Do you…” he started to say.
No. Yes. I don’t know.
“…want to do the honors?” he finished.
Honors? Of course. Idiot. The key. Alyx cleared her throat and leaned back. “No, you should do it. You solved it.”
Jordan grabbed the back of her hand with his and laced his fingers between hers. He raised their combined fingers up to the key. Tingles shot up Alyx’s arm as he pressed their fingers to the cold stone.
Together they moved their fingers up. The key-piece slid effortlessly to fill the space in the center of the circle. She heard a click. Jordan pulled his hand back and Alyx felt a strange sense of loss and relief when his warmth left her skin.
Alyx stared at the silent stone. For a moment everything was still. Then there was a soft hissing… finally, the rock began to crumble away, falling into a dark hole in the shape of an arched doorway. For a moment, Alyx just stood there blinking.
“Let’s go, but be careful,” he said, unsheathing his sword and moving into the tunnel.
She nodded and unsheathed hers as well. Who knew what they were entering.
Chapter 16
Alyx stepped inside the opening behind Jordan. A noise behind her made her jump. But it was just the rocks scurrying back to reform the stone wall. The tunnel inside sloped down and was lit by a row of pale yellow glow worm globes secured to the wall at head height. Jordan led the way, Alyx close behind him. The tunnel spiraled down into the depths of the mountain. Finally it began to level.
“I think I see th
e end of the tunnel,” Jordan whispered back to her.
They came to a stop in front of a rock wall.
“A dead end?” said Alyx. “Surely not.”
Jordan reached his hand out and he gasped when his fingers went right through the stone. A mirage. He pulled his fingers back. “I’ll go first.”
Alyx nodded and gripped her sword handle tighter. Jordan stepped through the mirage and Alyx followed.
Through the mirage wall Alyx took a second to reorient herself. They were standing at the edge of a large circular space capped with a dome. The ceiling must have been coated in Mirage magic as it looked like the daytime sky, blue and spotted with moving clouds. The walls that rose up were rock but covered mostly with moss. Wooden shelving meandered around parts of the walls in spiraled sections like a spider’s web. In the center of the chamber rose a dark structure, centralized at the base and up a kind of trunk, then spreading out to form branches. Off the ends of these branches were large, red glowing orbs like poisoned apples, large enough that Alyx didn’t feel like she could get both her arms around them.
Alyx’s mind flashed back to her memory of the naked and bloody bodies in Michael’s DreamScape “garden”. A chill fell down each vertebra of her spine like a trickle of water. What the hell was this place?
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here. I’m turning off the Miragecharm for now to conserve it,” Jordan said. She could hear the nerves tightening his voice. “Let’s not stay in here for too long. Let’s find what we need and get out.”
Alyx nodded. As much as she wanted to tear this place apart and inspect the structure closely, figuring out what is was and what it was for, she couldn’t forget why they were here. To get Mayrekk’s prisoner’s apex and Raphael’s charm.
