The water continued to rise. When it reached the tunnels, it poured down their lengths, which delayed the rise of the water level in the main chamber. But they had a whole pond above them, and the delay would only last so long. Jeremy tried to remember the symbols he saw when they were first paralyzed, but they were too fuzzy. All he would be able to do was re-paralyze them, anyway. He did not know how to undo it.
He groaned and rolled his head to the side in frustration. Then his head shot up. He could move! “Moira, can you move?”
She raised her hands and looked at him, then glanced at the water pouring through the hole. Jeremy pushed himself up using the stone pillar as leverage, then hauled Moira to her feet. They wobbled unsteadily toward the deluge.
“Okay,” Jeremy looked around for something to stand on so they could reach the hole, even though he already knew there was nothing. “The pond is pretty shallow, right?”
Moira nodded.
“Let’s wait for the water level to rise and lift us so we can swim out.”
Moira eyed him, then nodded again, “Okay.”
Twinkling blue, green, and magenta colors swirled above them. Jeremy surged toward it. As soon as he broke through the water's surface, he gulped a few murky, pond-flavored breaths of air. Moira gasped and splashed beside him. When the ringing in his ears faded, Jeremy heard a cacophony around them.
Whereas the night had been eerily silent before, now it was deafening. Frogs croaked, cicadas sang, and birds called. Dawn’s dim light began to bleed into the atmosphere. The huge moon hung low on the horizon, about to be washed out by the sun’s brilliance. Jeremy did not think they had been down in the tunnels long enough for the entire night to have passed, but there were other more pressing concerns.
All this was the backdrop for the spectacular sight of Moira’s mansion crumbling along the pond's shore. The walls rippled and buckled. The roof crashed down after. It was a landslide of shattering glass, brick, and ivy. The ground shook. Shockwaves rippled across the water. Jeremy’s jaw dropped, and he got a mouthful of pond water.
“Holy fuck.” Moira hollered beside him, throwing an entire night's worth of strangeness and frustration behind her words. She smacked a palm against the water’s surface. A portion of the mansion still standing after the initial collapse crashed down as if shouting back at her. Jeremy was busy spitting out pond water and trying not to drown.
The collapsed mansion was quite a sight. It went down in a multicolored explosion but was nothing compared to the swirls of color painting everything around him. Even in the dim light of dawn, when everything was monochromatic, he could see bursts of vibrant greens in the grass and trees. Every time a frog croaked, a burst of lilac rose from the shoreline. Even the breeze swirled through the air in a kaleidoscope of pale pastels like those within an iridescent opal. The sight overwhelmed him and sent him sinking back down into the depths of the stone chamber. He forgot how to tread water. Moira grabbed his collar and hauled him to shore.
“What are you doing?” She shouted at him as she dragged him through muck and cypress knees. They also had their own tinge of color swirling around them, a brown-blue mosaic. He laughed and got more pond water in his mouth.
“Have you gone nuts?” Moira dumped him in the grass. She was still wearing her strappy heels. Her dress was muddy brown rather than pastel blue, and her perfectly styled hair and make-up were ragged and dripping. Jeremy splayed out on his back and laughed.
Moira was the color of buttercups and the sun. Looking at her felt like looking at the sun. It blinded him. He looked at the soft cypress limbs above him. They swirled with a gentle blue-green. Moira poked him in the arm with the toe of her shoe.
“Why haven’t you gone nuts?” He asked her, “All that just happened. The world looks like an LSD trip. Your mansion has collapsed.”
“Oh shit.”
He had to squint at her but could see that she turned to look toward the mansion.
“What?”
“That thing is coming over here.”
Jeremy scrambled up, hands slipping in the wet grass. The creature, or god, or whatever it was, came out of the rubble of the mansion. It drifted across the lawn and pond toward them. Jeremy rubbed his eyes. His brain hurt from all the colors. If the creature managed to level an entire mansion, there was not much he could do against it. His little spell from earlier, whether it had been real or something his panicked brain imagined, was as effective as spider silk against a moose. He laid back down.
“What are you doing?” Moira hissed.
“Sleeping.” Jeremy said, “It’s almost dawn. I usually go to bed by nine p.m.”
Moira sputtered. Then she started hitting him. Jeremy grumbled but cracked his eyes open. The creature stopped before them. It did nothing else.
In the distance, bricks tumbled down the mansion's rubble. Birds flitted overhead. Jeremy stared at them, entranced by the swirls of color on their feathers and through the air as they took flight. Moira kept smacking him, but he could hardly feel it over how loud the colors echoed in his mind.
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“Are you looking at this?”
Jeremy was looking at everything. But he tried to look at what she specifically referred to. The god had transformed into a person clothed in draping fabrics. They were reminiscent of classical dress but not quite the right style. They also looked like the strange ruffled fins from its other form.
The god observed them with a face now. It was much more human than it was before. It smiled, not the toothy smile of Aunt Angie and Uncle Howard, but a gentle one, like a blooming flower or sunrise. Still, the god was difficult to look at. If Moira was blinding, it could only be described as incomprehensible. His skull filled with static. His chest felt ready to burst. The ringing in his ears gradually grew louder. He could not be sure if his eyes were open or shut.
Then it all stopped.
His eyes were closed. He opened them. The god stood before him, one hand hovering over Jeremy’s head. It looked at him with deep, cavernous eyes. The colors no longer invaded Jeremy’s thoughts. They were still present but were back to reminding Jeremy of the UV patterning on flowers that bees can see rather than a terrible, mind-melting acid trip. Things shifted and swirled out of the corner of his eye, but everything seemed normal unless he focused on seeing the colorful overlay.
The god placed its hand above Moira’s head. She blinked at it. Then, it stood back and looked around. It took a deep breath and spread its arms, then it disappeared. In its place remained a little chat box hovering in the air.
[gl hf]
“I guess it is not going to eat us,” Moira said as the chat box faded. They looked at each other, then at the mansion. Without a word, they began to walk toward it. Moira paused and finally removed her heels while using Jeremy’s shoulder for support. Jeremy pulled out his phone to see if he had reception. Water dripped out of the case. The screen remained blank. Jeremy sighed.
“You seem pretty calm even though your mansion just collapsed.” He observed.
She glared at him, “What do you want me to do? Run around screaming and crying hysterically? Besides, that is not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I just learned that my family were secret keepers of magic, and my Aunt and Uncle tried to sacrifice me to some old god. I can always rebuild the mansion.”
“Oh, of course. Just rebuild it. No problem.” Jeremy nodded, “Your Aunt and Uncle said that the god blessed only them with magic. Do you think it just blessed us with magic? Is that why we can see the colors?”
“What colors?” They reached the outskirts of the rubble. A thick cloud of dust hung in the air. The sun peeked over the horizon and sent streams of golden light through the swirling particles. Water sprayed from ruined plumbing somewhere nearby. Moira began to climb over the ruin.
“All the colors overlaying everything.” Jeremy said, “Can’t you see them?”
“No.” She stopped to survey the rubble. “I need to figure out where my room used to be to try to salvage some different clothes.”
Jeremy watched her clamber off. He bent and picked up a brick. A fracture in the middle split, half of it fell to the ground. He hoped the party dispersed before the mansion collapsed. Time passed strangely while they were underground, so it was possible.
He followed Moira. She no longer radiated yellow but a much more muted dark red. Jeremy could make out a string of strange symbols in the color, just like Aunt Angie and Uncle Howard had. For the first time, he looked down at himself. Red swirled around his chest, along with a few symbols of his own. He might be able to look for signatures of people buried beneath the rubble if he concentrated hard enough.
“I’m going to try to look for survivors.” He called out to Moira.
“Why?” She shouted, “I doubt anybody is alive under all this.”
“They might be.”
She shrugged and kept going, “Suit yourself. I’m going to find better shoes.”
Jeremy looked down. A considerable amount of rubble stretched beneath his feet. Whether because there was no one or he could not see through the press of brick and drywall, he found no swirling colors or symbols. He climbed around and found more of the same. Then, he came across the collapsed glass dome of the massive entryway to the mansion. Its metal frame remained in place, although it was twisted beyond recognition by the collapsed walls. All the glass shattered across the marble floor below. Jeremy peered over the edge and gasped.
The bodies of Aunt Angie and Uncle Howard lay beneath the glittering layer of glass shards. Pools of blood spread across the white marble from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. They no longer smiled. Their faces were contorted into twin expressions of horror. Given that they were not crushed beneath anything, and the glass appeared to have done minimal damage to them, Jeremy guessed that the god ended their lives. So much for gifting them magic. Perhaps there was a twist on the actual circumstances of the god’s contract with them. Maybe they had trapped the god and forced it to give them magic somehow. When the sacrifices to feed the spell did not occur in time, it took the opportunity to escape and enact its revenge. Jeremy scratched his nose.
“Oof,” Moira said from just inches away. Jeremy startled and grabbed a twisted beam to prevent himself from falling off the edge. “That explains why their paralyzing spell lifted.”
She wore a pair of worn boots, dusty hiking pants, and a t-shirt. A backpack was slung over her shoulder, and she had tied up her hair. As it dried, it became apparent that the wavy hair of last night had been a styling choice. Her natural hair was kinked and curled, trying to escape the scrunchy. She shoved a bundle of clothes at him.
“We both will smell bad until we can shower, but you can at least wear something more comfortable than that terrible rental suit.” She handed him a pair of sneakers, too. Jeremy glanced down at the bodies below.
“If this is your Uncle’s stuff, I don’t really want it.” He said. There was nothing wrong with wearing the man’s clothes. It was not the clothing's fault that their owner was a power-hungry, family-sacrificing magician. But still, he felt revulsion at wearing something of the man’s. The suit was not in terrible shape. It was dirty, and his sleeve was ripped, but that was about it.
“No, silly.” Moira assured him, “You would never fit into his clothes. You are much too tall. But you are about the same height as my boyfriend, so his things should fit you.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Yes,” Moira patted the sneakers, “He keeps a bunch of his stuff in my closet for when he stays over.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“Yeah.” She narrowed her eyes, “Why? You didn’t think something was going on between us because we almost died together or something dumb? That only happens in movies.”
Jeremy shook his head and looked at the sky. It was obscured by dust. He could have avoided all of this. He thought Moira was lonely. “Why didn’t he come to the party to be your date last night?”
“He was busy.” Moira shrugged.
“Why were your Aunt and Uncle so insistent on you having a date?” Jeremy asked. “Weren’t they setting you up because they thought you were lonely?”
“Well…” Moira gestured at the marble entryway below, “I think we established that was not their motivation.”
Jeremy’s knuckles cracked because he gripped the clothes so hard. He thought about tossing them right back in Moira’s face. She rolled her eyes at him.
“My Aunt and Uncle don’t know about him.” She said, “He’s from a competing company’s family. It’s all very Romeo and Juliet. I’m sorry my family drama got you involved in all this.”
Jeremy loosened his grip on the clothes and shook his head.