“What?” Elmer stood agape. “What do you mean by that? I already told you I plan to join the Pathway of Time.”

The landlord scoffed and fell to sit on his chair. “Not possible, tenant. Ya don’t have a choice in what ya get.”

The freezing cup no longer filled Elmer’s palm with an icy sensation as his pulse and his body’s warmth slowly flared up. “What are you saying?” He fed his landlord with a blank look.

The man pointed a finger at his head and another at the cup Elmer held. “Use ya brain, tenant. Why do ya think the elixir requires the ingredients of each pathway?” The man raised an eyebrow, but Elmer remained silent, his grip tightening around the cup. The landlord sighed when he heard nothing. “Ya casting a die drinking that elixir, tenant, cause ya don’t get to choose ya pathway, the pathways get to choose.”

Elmer’s heartbeat raced and his neck stiffened. “That’s a lie,” he denied, his voice low and without energy.

His landlord downturned his lips. “It’s not, tenant. Each pathway is made up of different characteristics. To become an Ascender of a pathway ya have to be in resonance with its unique characteristic. The pathway ya best aligned with is what yer’ll become an Ascender of.”

“That’s not possible,” Elmer said, refuting his landlord’s words once again as he shook his head. It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be. Elmer took a step backward, his body becoming heavy. Characteristics? He did not care for any of that; all he wanted was the Pathway of Time.

Why was not a single thing going the way he wanted?

Elmer looked into the cup and watched its color constantly change, and the taste on his tongue suddenly became bitter. He quickly dropped it on the table as though he was repulsed by it, and fell on his buttocks with a misstep as he backed away.

“No,” he said, heat now rising beneath his eyelids. “I need to be in the Pathway of Time.” He gripped his head, shuffling his fingers into his brown spiky hair. “I need to be in the Pathway of Time,” he voiced again—harsher, this time—then took his face to his landlord’s as traces of tears blurred his eyes. “There has to be a way, shouldn’t there? Surely there has to be.” His landlord’s pale face kept gazing at him in silence as though Elmer’s display was not something new to his eyes. “Say something!” Elmer lashed out at the little man.

“There isn’t,” the man said with a sigh as he turned away from Elmer. “I told ya, didn’t I? Ya know nothing.” The man flipped open the small leather-bound tome on the table and looked through it.

“That’s a lie!” Elmer shouted. “If it was that way you would have told me when I came to you, but you said nothing. You said nothing!”

“Yes, I didn’t say anything.” The landlord kept reading the tome.

“You made me get the ingredients. You made me believe I could join the Pathway of Time. You! You!” Elmer’s nose twitched twice as his brain scrambled about and came down to putting the blame on the little man.

But he knew. Deep down he knew. His body, his mind, his whole being just needed someone to lash out at for his misfortune, for his constant failures, for his continual inability to do anything to help his sister.

“No,” his landlord shot back calmly. “Now that is where ya lie, tenant. Ya came here with resolve in ya eyes for joining that pathway. Ya already believed ya could before ya came here. And, ya wanted to help ya sister—or so ya said. Even the prospect of turning into a monster couldn’t stop ya, how could I?” The man pointed at the cup on the table while he kept reading the tome. “That’s ya path to becoming an Ascender. If ya bear the characteristic of the Pathway of Time then ya’ll get it, if not then help ya sister through whatever pathway ya get, time or no time.”

Elmer’s gaze fell, and a tear streamed down his right cheek as he closed his eyes.

Again, he was being left with no choice. When would he ever be given one?

He clutched his stomach and plummeted his forehead to the floor, his chest caving in as he did.

How would his and Mabel’s life have turned out if he had not taken her out of the orphanage that night to see the steam cars? Would they have lived peacefully without ever coming in contact with this sort of world? Would he have never known this sort of pain, sorrow, anger? And…

He took his gaze up to the wooden cup standing on the table.

Would he have never felt so much spite and hatred?

He sniffled, resigning himself as he rose to his feet. “This,” he said while he picked up the freezing cup, his voice still shaken. “What next after this?”

The landlord flipped another page before pointing to the glass cage at the end of the room. “There next.”

Elmer rolled his nose. “What am I going to be doing in there?”

“Ya’ll be entering into something of an illusionary dream world.” Elmer’s eyes sharpened, but his landlord shushed him quickly by saying, “Don’t ask. I’m not an Ascender. I don’t know what exactly ya’ll be seeing in that world.” He flipped another page.

“But,” Elmer said, sniffling still, “you have done the elixir for people before, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have—a long time ago,” the man replied. “But everyone sees different things. Some see gates, some see stairs, some see doors, and some see themselves. It doesn’t matter what ya see though, ya have to successfully pass through it or ya become a Lost.”

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“Did the ones who successfully became Ascenders tell you that?”

The landlord shuddered at Elmer’s question, but he regained his composure fairly quickly. “No,” the landlord said. “I’ve had no—” He suddenly interrupted himself, then shook his head. “Stop asking me questions, tenant. Ya here to become an Ascender not have me lecture ya.”

You’re licensed alchemist, shouldn’t you be telling me all I need to know…?

Elmer decided not to push it. He looked at the cage and back to the cup in his hand, the liquid going from gray to cream as his heart raced. Then with a sigh, he pinched his nose and silently, but quickly, gulped the whole thing down.

It layered his tongue with a musty feeling, and it had no taste. It was also neither hot nor cold, nor warm as well. Elmer could not pinpoint the exact temperature of the liquid as it ran down his throat and into his stomach. And after all that, nothing happened. It was just as if he had drunk a normal cup of water, or to be more precise due to the texture, a cup of tasteless mutton stew.

Then, his landlord wailed, shocking Elmer.

“Why’d ya do that without letting me know?” The little man jumped to his feet, subsequently falling his chair to the floor as he hurried to his shelf.

Elmer was confused. He followed the man’s frantic movements with his eyes blinking rapidly. “But you said—you were watching. What’s wrong?”

“Take off ya shirt and go into the cage now! Thankfully I’d filled the bathtub with water beforehand. Ya a crazy one, tenant. Hurry up!” The landlord rushed through his words as he whipped out four three-pronged candelabras from the shelf, and Elmer quickly did as he was ordered despite being confused.

The interior of the cage was cool and somewhat welcoming. It was small but felt extremely wide, and it made his body relax. It was almost like he had wandered into a mother’s embrace.

A mother’s embrace? He did not even know what that felt like in truth.

The soft smile that had been on Elmer’s face, as he had closed his eyes to relish in the ambience he was within, suddenly faded, returning him to reality. Then, he saw the chains rooted to the floor in pairs at the head of the filled bathtub and at the end. They were carved with golden symbols just like the ones that were on his revolver, and a gloomy sense of dread fell upon him at their sight.

His muscles tensed and his breathing became rapid as he shuffled backward with a step. “What are these for?” he voiced to the landlord who was outside. “What are these chains for?!” He turned his gaze to see the landlord setting up the candelabras in pairs at the head of the cage and at the end as well… just like how they had been set up for Mabel on that night.

Elmer’s breath caught briefly. Why was it so similar?

He was about to rush out of the cage when his landlord entered.

“What’s wrong with ya?” the man asked, and Elmer responded by pointing at the chains.

“Why are there chains?” His eyes glared through the lenses of his glasses.

“To keep ya bound for the pain that’s to come.”

To keep me bound…?

The landlord walked to the head of the bathtub and undid the cuffs. “In now, there’s no time.”

Elmer stood stiff and silent while his eyes kept darting between the chains and the candelabras, and when his landlord suddenly approached him, he flinched.

“Tenant! What do ya think’s going to happen if ya keep dallying about, huh?! Do ya want to die?” the landlord said, his voice cold and shaken, but Elmer’s heart still kept pounding restlessly. “I thought ya wanted to help ya sister, is it death ya prefer now?” Elmer inhaled sharply at those words and his clouded mind freed up.

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Good,” the landlord said. “Now, into the bathtub.”

Elmer hastened into the waters. They were cold, almost as freezing as how the cup of elixir had been. His teeth rattled as his lean body drowned into it, leaving only his head above the water.

The landlord took the chains and cuffed Elmer’s wrists and ankles with them, then he hurried out of the cage and closed its wooden door shut. He picked up a box of matches next and lit the milk-colored candles of the candelabras while muttering some sort of prayers, before running over and dragging the curtain of his window to shut out the light of late-afternoon from entering into his room.

“What next?” Elmer asked, his voice echoing around the glass walls of his cage.

The landlord kept a long distance. Elmer was not sure why, but the man had something of a glint of wariness in his eyes.

The man let out a deep breath. “Still fears me,” he voiced. “I do not know the exact time ya drank the elixir, but it usually kicks in after something of a minute, so it should probably start right about now—”

And suddenly Elmer felt his stomach gurgle. He looked down sharply at it and noticed that it was slowly swelling, giving it something of a pot-like shape. His mind went blank immediately and his heart thumped.

“What is this?” Elmer mumbled. And then it hurt.

It felt as though the walls of his stomach were being pummeled from within, and the countless creepy things which looked like little fists that kept revealing themselves from his insides made him believe that was truly the case.

Steadily but quickly it hurt more and more, and Elmer hyperventilated. What was happening to him?

He turned his eyes to his landlord who was well away from the cage. “What’s happening to me?!” Elmer screamed, asking. “What’s happening?!”

The pain skyrocketed, and with it came something of a burning sensation. It was as though his stomach was now on fire.

Elmer gasped, clenching his jaw and holding in his breath while he twisted and turned inside the bathtub. His toes curled as he tried to drag his hands to reach for his stomach, but the chains they were bound to, whose golden symbols were now glowing brightly, held them tight, preventing his arms from even moving an inch.

“It hurts! It hurts! What’s happening?!”

He kicked his legs, he pulled his arms, fighting and splashing the waters of the bathtub all about the cage as though he was a zebra who had been cornered by a pack of crocodiles in a small swamp.

Then, the heat grew from his stomach and rose up to his neck, spreading all over his body along with his countless veins which showed themselves in a raging pain. It became harder and harder to breathe, until suddenly he couldn’t anymore.

His rebellious scampering stopped slowly, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, going from red to blue to green to gray to cream, and then it turned pitch-black as indistinct words made their way into his ears. Some words of pain and misery, some words of anger and sorrow, some words of rage. The ravings tore through his senses, their cries almost pushing him into madness.

At that moment, Elmer jerked his head backward and croaked in agony before letting out a gut-wrenching screech which pierced through the walls of the cage, making known his suffering as his face contorted into a disgusting mask of anguish.

It was as though every inch of his body was being pierced by countless needles, making sure he would die in the worst possible way known to man.