Chapter 19: CHAPTER 19

Anxiety and despair crushed any remnants of endurance in Jalice. She was seeing this memory play repeatedly without end.

She and her friends discovered the Black House. She found the shaft leading inside, and then she entered.

Nothing she tried ever changed its outcome. The children never seemed to hear her attempts at interaction, and the memory refused to let her run away. Every time, the memory played the same.

Jalice collapsed and sobbed uncontrollably. She hadn’t asked for this. The memory hadn’t afflicted her in years. She’d forgotten it even existed until now.

She squeezed her eyes shut, knowing it would do nothing. The setting would erect itself in her mind and begin again. In the seconds before the memory initiated, Jalice whispered a desperate prayer.

“Sahruum, I beg you,” she said. “Rescue me from this dungeon. I don’t want to see anymore.” She started to hyperventilate. “Get me out of here!”

The prayer would prove futile. It always did. She’d muttered dozens of prayers since the memory’s inception. She doubted this time would be any different. But desperation to escape urged her to try once more.

Darkness continued to envelop her. Jalice hesitated on a ripple of hope. The memory hadn’t restarted. It wasn’t unfolding. Perhaps Sahruum had listened and granted her a final peace.

A faint light blossomed and illuminated a dark corridor. Her panic returned.

The light, tinted a green hue, intensified in full before it vanished. Then the light repeated its cycle. Fade in. Fade out. She shrieked as an all-consuming despair swallowed her glimmer of hope. As if in response, the hall shot her forward, catapulting her towards the illuminated room ahead. She recognized her new surroundings and understood what was happening.

She was trapped in a new memory—the next memory.

* * *

Jalice exhaled when the green light returned seconds later.

The light repeated its rhythmic pattern: increase in brightness, then swiftly dissolve into darkness. The flashes of light offered her more time to study the corridor. Smooth black panels lined the floor, ceiling, and both walls in perfect symmetry. The corridor ended in a fork farther down, and the only interruption in its path was the offshoot room with the green light. Behind her, the corridor continued a few more feet before it veered in a different direction.

Her gaze floated from the ground up to the walls and ceiling. She’d seen nothing like it in either of the tribes. Whoever had crafted this place was neither Vekuuv nor Ikaul, and she permitted herself to consider that perhaps Kerothan had been correct. The architecture struck her as ancient and much too pristine for the current era. Everything about it emanated pre-Residuum. She didn’t find the possibility comforting.

She focused on the light, which continued without breaking pattern. Its green glow pressed across the shadows only to relent to them again. Deciding the light was her best chance at further exploration, she moved slowly towards the offshoot room. Her tentative steps echoed in the otherwise silent space.

The vibrations had her on edge. It was easy to forget the new sensation—she had already adjusted to it—but something about its effects wasn’t settling right. If she hadn’t known better, her assumption would be that she’d translated. She had no way to gauge this, of course, as she lacked any training to help confirm that suspicion. Yet she’d gleaned enough from conversations to know there were elements missing—no star-like embodiment, no lifechain, no lifestone. Without those, it seemed unlikely she’d translated. But she couldn’t shake the detachment from her body or the sudden, vivid complexity her emotions were having on her senses.

She wished she’d brought Hydrim. He would have known what was happening.

Jalice gingerly entered the vicinity of the light. Her skin and clothes caught in the green hue as it flashed. She stood in the doorframe and searched for the light’s source. The orb that it radiated from hovered in a corner of the room.

Jalice waited. No movement. No indication the room was unsafe. The light continued to flash from the orb while silence endured.

It was difficult to make out the room’s furnishings. As bright as the orb’s light was, it didn’t fully flesh out the vast space. Odd podiums sprouted from the floor. Crude objects hung from the ceiling, but their details hid in the shadows.

The room piqued her interest. Jalice wasn’t going to return to the others with nothing to regale them with but an empty corridor and an odd light. She edged into the room. As she approached the orb, she realized it wasn’t suspended but rather attached to a podium with a tilted slab. A closer look around proved that the other podiums dotting the room also hosted similar knobs, though only the one was producing light.

No larger than a throwing stone, the flashing orb was in fact more dome-shaped, and sat flat on the slab of metal. Jalice reached for the orb and ran her fingers across it.

The room came alive with twinkling lights.

She peered around in hushed awe, now able to observe more of the room’s secrets. Like the green orb, the other similar shapes fastened on the other podiums and panels now hosted light. Many sported a variety of colors, and some even had Braille-like dots embossed on them.

Like frozen fireflies in the night or stars sprinkling the vast void, these luminescent discs and domes still weren’t enough to fully banish the darkness. A dimness persisted throughout the space.

After marveling at the display, her gaze bolted to the room’s obvious centerpiece—a giant glass tube that ran almost the full height from ground to ceiling, interrupted only by the meager plinth upholding it. Panic shot through her like lightning, and she doubled back against the nearest podium. A petrified scream scratched in her throat.

Inside the glass, a leathery-skinned creature stared at her with a set of bloodshot eyes. Red veins ran like rivers across the white pupils into crimson irises. A charred visage wrinkled a face that shriveled into a reptilian snout. Rows of needle-thin teeth lined its jaw, while two horns spiked up from the back of its head. Most daunting of all, a pair of massive black-feathered wings squeezed against the confines of the tube.

Jalice’s eyes widened as her gaze trailed down its torso. Dozens of human skulls decorated its abdomen, locked in tight embrace within the skin. Desperate to escape the horrifying discovery but unable to look away entirely, her eyes shot back to its face.

Two words repeated through Jalice’s mind, projected by a voice that was not her own. The sound soaked her in paralyzing terror and swamped her mind. The voice never gasped for air, and the words pummeled her with no sign of stopping.

“Unworthy Bones!” it howled. “Unworthy Bones! Unworthy Bones!”

Jalice screamed. She needed it to stop or else she’d die from the havoc of its voice. The sound crippled something—everything—inside her.

The words changed in reaction to her scream. “Trapped. Trapped. Trapped.”

“Who are you?” she shouted. Her eyes leapt off the monstrosity behind the glass only to shoot back with an inability to look fully away. Despite the racket of words assaulting her, the creature’s lips never moved, as if it might be telepathic.

“Trapped. Unworthy Bones,” said the voice. “Trapped.”

“How are you trapped?” she asked, and instantly regretted the question. She didn’t want to hear any sort of response in the form of that torturous voice.

“Unworthy Bones, naïve.”

“What bones?” she demanded. “Who’s naïve?”

No words answered her this time, just a curdling howl. Jalice shrieked and covered her ears, but this brought no relief. The sound wasn’t auditory. It slithered in her head, inescapable and merciless. When it ended, Jalice found herself on her knees, choking back sobs.

“Blink, then die,” said the voice. “That’s all your kind can do. Bones that walk don’t impress me. Water that speaks is nothing. I’ve swallowed stars and drained the very light of this universe.”

Jalice raised her gaze to the creature. Crimson eyes bore into her. She wanted to run. Needed to run. But her limbs seized up and defied her.

“What do you want?” she asked desperately.

“Pitiful bag of bones,” it said. “Give me a body—your body—to crush into the ground and toss aside. Then I’ll find another and crush it into dust as well.”

“You—you can’t have my body. It’s mine.”

It wasn’t a laugh that rang inside her head. It wasn’t a cackle either. It was cruelty, emitting from whatever lay behind that glass. Jalice whimpered, finally tearing her gaze away to crumple to the ground in a heap.

“Get up, Unworthy Bones.”

Jalice shook her head. This time she refused to look up. She wanted to leave, and wished she’d never entered the House.

“Get up,” the voice repeated.

The words threatened to split her head in half. Jalice shot to her feet but still avoided its gaze. She trembled before her afflicter.

“Weak. Weak will, weak body,” it taunted, disgust soaking its words. “Unworthy. Your vessel wouldn’t last long enough to escape this place. Your mind would shatter, and your pathetic body would shred itself to pieces before I even made it out of this room. I need a different set of bones to carry me.”

Jalice grappled with its message. Was it letting her go? Her eyes darted towards the exit. It wouldn’t be able to stop her if she fled. It was trapped behind glass. It was helpless.

Her heart raced as she sprinted across the room. She wasn’t going to second-guess her decision now that she was freed of paralysis.

“Stop!”

The word held as much power as a physical hindrance. Jalice halted, still facing the empty doorway that led into the corridor. She was so close. Almost free.

“What do you most desire, bonebag?” asked the voice.

The question took her off guard. Jalice remained frozen, unsure of how to respond. A thought sprang to mind, and she whispered it aloud. “I want to leave.”

“That’s not your deepest desire. What do you covet that you don’t have?”

The question sank in. An answer formed, but she pursed her lips to contain it. This entity was dangerous. She wasn’t about to admit what she wanted—who she wanted.

“You desire to bind your aura with his, but he’s enraptured with another,” it growled. “I can make him yours.”

Jalice despised the part of her that hesitated. She should’ve been running already. Entertaining this malevolent creature and its cruel game was shallow of her. It couldn’t do what it promised. No one could. Jalice lifted her feet, and that was the end of it. She darted out the door, sobbing as the voice howled violent threats inside her head.