There was a knock at my door, then another, and another. She never gave up. It was one of the reasons she was always by my side. No matter what I did to get away from her, she would always come back. I still couldn’t tell if I was happy about that or not. It didn’t matter either way, because no matter what I said or did she would return and stand at the other side of the door, knocking. I just never opened it. I couldn’t open it. I was too scared of what was on the other side.
“Please come out,” she said, and I could hear her voice shaking. “You haven’t been out since she fell. I haven’t seen you since then, and I’m worried. Please. Please.”
I turned over on my side and ignored her, trying to recapture whatever dream I was having. I remember running away from something terrifying, but at the same time, I was excited. I was scared, but also strangely happy. I wished I could feel that way all the time, so I closed my eyes and tried to find the dream again. A loud thump came from just outside the door, and my heart began to race. My eyes shot open and I jumped out of the soft cushiony bed and ran for the door. When I grabbed the knob I came back to my senses and realized what I was doing. I was about to run out of my room. I took a few steps back, trying to stop my arm from shaking.
“Kay—“ I tried to speak, but my voice was hoarse. Clearing my throat, I spoke again, “Kayla are you alright?”
There was no response, and my heart sank to the floor. Has it happened again? Would I hear sirens coming down the street, just like last time? I tried to peer through the cracks in the door, then through the keyhole, but of course I couldn’t see anything. Finally, with a heavy heart and shaky hand, I turned the knob and opened the door. Just on the other side was Kayla, who was sitting in front of the doorway, head in her knees and arms wrapped around her legs. Her long brown hair flowed over the gray tank-top, and her nails blended in with the pink sweatpants she wore. It looked like she was about to go to bed, but instead of doing so she decided to bother me and plant herself in front of my door. I was annoyed, but I felt my heart settle upon seeing her alright, and not in any danger or hurt. I took a few steps back and started closing the door.
She turned to face me, tears in her eyes and soaked onto her pant legs,”Wait! Please. You can’t stay in there forever. You’ve been hiding ever since the accident, and now your Nana is in the hospital too. We should go visit them. All of them.”
I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to tell her no and run back into my room. If I went out, I could end up just like them, lying down in a hospital bed just waiting to die. I didn’t want to risk that, but I wanted to see them. I wanted to hold their hands and tell them everything would be alright, even though I knew they wouldn't hear it. “Nana would hear it,” I convinced myself.
“Okay, but I need help,” I admitted, and Kayla’s smile flashed on her face.
It was a comforting smile, almost like a mother’s, which I never really got to experience for myself. “Or did I?” I questioned, but the thought quickly went away.
“I’ll be with you every step of the way,” she said.
A light drizzle was starting up as we walked outside, and a sense of ease pushed down some of my fear. Rain meant less people, and less danger. I wrapped my hoodie around me and waited for Kayla to do the same. Then we began our walk. The hospital wasn’t far, but every step I took grew heavier as the rain poured down on us harder. I was outside, and my heart was racing. Something must’ve given away my fear, because Kayla slipped her hand into mine and smiled at me. The walk started to grow shorter.
“Hold on. Let’s stop here for a moment.”
“What, but…” I pointed to the hospital, which was only a few blocks away.
“I have to go to the bathroom. And no, I can’t wait. I’ll be back in a second, just wait here okay? You’ll be fine.”
I nodded, released her hand, and watched as she disappeared into the shop nearby. I leaned against the brick wall and looked upwards, letting the rain hit my face. It was strangely cold. So cold it felt like my face was burning, but I kept letting it drop onto me. Finally, when my face was thoroughly soaked, I moved over under the awning just above the store’s front door.
“Hey ____!” someone yelled to my side.
He had said my name, but I couldn’t understand it. It was like the word had become jumbled around in his mouth and came out in another language. Confused, I looked over at him, and my heart raced. I didn’t recognize him. In fact, there was nothing to recognize. His face was empty, devoid of any features and replaced with a black void. I tried to beg him, not even knowing what I would beg for. He grabbed my arm and I was suddenly thrown into an alley. A punch came, then another.
Blood seeped from my nose, but rather than being warm, it was freezing cold. The rain pouring down on me was freezing cold. My clothes felt frozen. Even the pain from the punches felt like being hit with a splash of freezing water. Then, in an instant, the world melted away from me. There was no longer anyone hitting me, and I was wearing a giant backpack and different clothes. I held onto something soft between my arms, and something large was holding onto my leg. The freezing feeling stayed, and I realized I was underwater, being dragged down by something.
I looked down to find a massive paw covered in white fur with crystalized icy blue claws wrapped round my leg. “Mathear,” I realized, but my thoughts were still a mess and I couldn’t understand what was happening. All I knew was that I had to get away. I kicked against the beast, but its claws only dug deeper into my leg, and a shot of pain ran up my spine and through my body. I let out a scream, and water rushed into my lungs. I was drowning, and my lungs screamed in agony for air.
Under all of my jumbled thoughts and freezing pain, I felt something. It was like a string, one that I couldn’t touch with my hands, but could feel nonetheless. There were three of them, one flowing towards me, one to the soft thing in my arms, and one to the mathear. It connected me to the water. I could feel the water’s surface rippling and the ice right above it, as well as the water being moved around by the mathear’s struggle. On instinct, I pulled at the surface, or maybe I pushed, and I was suddenly being launched forward. The mathear’s claws tore at my leg as I flew away from its grip, but soon I was no longer able to see the giant beast. I kept going, until I was launched out of the water and fell onto a hard, cold surface.
Mouthfuls of water came rushing out of me as I coughed and struggled to breathe. Finally, when I was able to suck in some air, I fell to my back and tried to collect myself.
“Sean. Sean,” I said aloud. “I am Sean.”
My mind came back to me, and I sat up in a rush. The cold had started to become too much, and my body shook in pain. Even though I felt exhausted both physically and spiritually, I opened my Soul to the Nex around me and pushed away as much of the water still clinging to me and my clothes as I could. Hundreds of droplets flew everywhere, landing on the rocky floor and walls. That's when I realized I wasn’t standing on the surface of the frozen lake I’d fallen into. I was in a cave, with a small opening that led out into the lake. The cave wasn’t very large, my head nearly touching the ceiling even in a sitting position. It was fairly wide, though, and I could see that it went much deeper thanks to a faint blue light emanating from within the darkness.
A small noise drew my attention to the soft thing I once held in my arms. It was the same beast I had chased for a whole month, and had done everything I could to defend it from the mathear. The owl was soaking wet and shivering, one of its wings slightly bent. I dried it the same way I had myself, and crawled over to the beast, doing my best not to hit my head. It stared up at me with big blue eyes, clearly still terrified.
“Don’t worry. I’m not gonna hurt you,” I told it.
The owl let me pick it up, and I held it close to my chest as I crawled deeper into the cave, hoping that it would open up into a larger area. I kept going directly towards the light, and eventually found my way into what looked like a purposely carved out part of the cave. It was a long hallway with unlit torches lining the walls. I was at one end, where a cave-in clearly occurred, which likely created the opening I had crawled through. At the other end was the blue light I had been following, and it trailed off into the darkness in front of me. I finished crawling out of the small opening in the hallway and stood, then quickly let out a yelp in pain and fell back to the ground.
My stumble startled the owl, and it began flapping its wings in fear. I set it down next to me, then my backpack next to it. Mustering up all the courage I had left, I looked down at my wounds. The scratch on my side had stopped bleeding, but I wasn't concerned about how deep the wound was. I could tell it was bad, but the giant beast hadn’t hit me anywhere important and all the scratch would leave was a nasty scar. What really concerned me were the ice formations that had been created around the wound. They were slowly growing, crawling up and replacing my skin. I didn't feel much pain from the wound except for when it was made, which meant the ice was numbing me while spreading itself across my body. It must’ve been some kind of poison, meant to kill me when I thought I was perfectly fine.
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I opened myself to the Nex, and felt the mysterious, icy poison. It was a spell, one that came with a preset instruction tailored into it by the creator’s Soul. Restivus had taught me about these. They were difficult to create, but highly effective as they acted without the mage directly controlling them. Feeling the spell with my Soul, I could faintly sense the small string of Nex, and the expanding pool of frozen water just on top of my skin. I pushed at it with my Soul, feeling a bit of resistance from it due to its previous instructions, but they were hardly much of a barrier now that the spell's creator was dead. In a flash of blue, the spell flew off of me and shattered against the stone wall. A bright red layer of skin appeared from where the spell had clung to me, but that would heal with a bit of time.
I turned my attention to my leg, and quickly reached out towards my backpack. There was no spell around the wounds, probably because the mathear had no time to make one while it struggled for its life, but the deep cuts were still gushing out blood. The inside of my pack was still soggy, making it hard to find what I was looking for, but eventually I pulled out the bandages mother had made me take every time I went hunting with Father. I had protested every day, of course, but now I was thanking God that she had made me take them anyway. I quickly wrapped them around my leg, putting as much pressure on the wounds as I could, trying to bite back the pain. Many times I had to force water out of the bandages, exhausting my body and Soul even further, as well as replacing the bandages that quickly became soaked in blood. Eventually the bleeding stopped, and I rested against the stone wall trying to catch my breath from the exertion.
I let out a long sigh of relief, then felt a smile creep onto my face. Laughter soon followed, hurting my exhausted lungs even more, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had taken down a Mathear. In reality, it was more like I escaped a Mathear that accidentally fell into a lake and drowned, but this didn’t matter to me. I had done it. I had saved the owl and myself from what was likely to be a very gruesome death. I couldn’t wait to see Father’s face when I told him.
A chirp to my side broke me out of my laughter, and I turned to see the owl sitting next to me, its broken wing hung loosely at its side. It looked like the bone might’ve been snapped in two, and I worried that it probably occurred when I pushed it out of the way of the mathear. Even though I was saving it, it was ultimately my fault the wing was broken. “I’m sorry,” I told it, “I didn’t mean to. Do you mind if I… take a closer look?”
The beast looked up at me cautiously and let out a quiet, “Hoooo.” Then, it put out its wing the best it could.
Examining the wing further, it was actually in much better shape than I thought. The bone was damaged, but not broken in half, and would probably heal fairly quickly. Other than a bit of dirt on the owl’s pure white feathers, it was relatively fine everywhere else. “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said, and I gently rubbed the bottom of its sharp beak with my finger. It graciously accepted, closing its eyes in satisfaction.
I took a look around the hallway, trying to figure out where we had ended up. The faint blue light barely illuminated the hallway, but I could still make out some of the carvings that were within the wall. Indented in the smooth stone of the hallway was a long serpent with wings, similar to the one carved into my bow, but this one had four small legs and feet, barely half the size of it giant wings, one set near its wings and the other at the back of it’s slender body. It was the symbol of the Frosta family, which made me think that I may have stumbled into an old section of the castle. After all, the castle was carved into the mountain I had just been on top of.
Underneath the serpent were crude carvings of humans, bowing to the creature flying high in the sky. One wore a crown, but instead of bowing, he stood tall, raising his arms towards the creature. The man with the crown stood on a mountain, and a single droplet of water was falling from the serpent down to him. I tried to look for more details, anything that would help me understand what I was seeing, but I suddenly sensed a faint string of Water Nex to my side. It was the owl, and it was pushing Nex out of its Soul and towards me.
“What are you doing?” I asked it
The owl didn’t respond, not that I necessarily expected it to, but I started to understand it. The owl was trying to form a Soul Bind with me. Maybe it was scared to continue alone, worried that I would leave it, or terrified to leave this place with a broken wing and try to survive the wilderness by itself, or it just simply trusted me now, but I didn’t know why it was trying to do this. Either way, I wasn't going to deny it.
“Are you sure?” I asked, hoping my question wouldn't cause it to rethink.
The owl didn’t respond, so I started pouring Nex from my Soul towards it, just like I’d seen Father and Ronan do before. At first, nothing happened. Pouring Nex out of my Soul was a normal process, something I did each time I crafted a spell, even simple ones like forming a waterball. However, when the owl’s Nex started flowing into my body, I felt a pin prick of pain in the center of my chest. It slowly dug into me, pulling something out that I could barely feel, and replacing the empty space with something new. A piece of the owl’s Soul flowed into mine, pushing out a piece of my own that would go into the owl. It felt foreign, and wrong, as well as freezing cold, but I kept pushing Nex towards the owl. The cold feeling filled my whole body, like a freezing embrace from inside of me, but I didn’t stop. I had been waiting to do this for months, and now, the moment was finally here.
As if something was clicking into place, my body shook, and Nex stopped pouring out from me and the owl. Several new feelings came at me like a wave all at once. The ice that covered the water I had come flying out of just a few meters further in the cave felt completely clear now, just like water always had. The blurriness that always blinded me when trying to work with it was completely gone, replaced with a relieving clarity. I could also feel the owl. It wasn’t a physical feeling, just a sense that it existed and was nearby. Some of its emotions leaked into me as well. I felt its fear, its worry, and a strange sense of regret.
“It’s alright,” I said to it. “You and me, we’re partners now. I’ll take care of you, and you take care of me.” The feeling of regret slowly dissipated, and a sense of relief filled me instead. “You know, I can’t keep calling you ‘owl.’ You need a name.” My cheeks heated in embarrassment as I thought for a very long time, but could only come up with one name. “How about, ‘Winter,’” I asked. The owl, or rather Winter, seemed pleased, so I stopped trying to think of any more names. “Now then, let’s get out of here.”
I moved Winter onto the top of my pack so that it was secure within it, but could still poke its head out and see. Then I threw it onto my back and used the wall to help myself up. Just above me was one of the unlit torches which I grabbed and used like a cane, trying to support my injured leg as best I could. It didn’t work very well, but I pushed through the pain as I walked down the hallway towards the blue light. I didn’t know what it was, but I really didn’t have any other way to go.
“Leave,” an ancient voice rumbled as I stumbled through the darkness of the hallway.
The voice didn’t come from any specific direction. Instead, it was like it had come from inside my own head, traveling out of my ears rather than into them. Winter made a small, fearful noise and crouched lower into my pack. I stopped walking, terror holding me back from moving forward. It took a minute before I remembered that I didn’t have any other direction to go, or a way to leave anyways. So, I spoke back, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I can’t leave. I have nowhere else to go.”
“I… do… not… care,” the voice said slowly, like it had to think before saying each word, “Go… away… and… tell… no… one… of… this… place.”
After a few seconds of consideration, I started walking again. My brain shook as the voice erupted into anger. “I… said… leave! Another… step… and… I… purge… your… Soul… and… turn… your… body… to… shards!”
The voice still spoke slowly, like each word was as important as the last, but it screamed it into my head. I went dizzy for a moment, only able to stand by propping myself up with the torch. Finally, when the voice stopped, I was able to think again, but the only word that kept flashing in my mind was, “Run!”
I didn’t listen to myself, instead staying still and trying to collect my nerves. I could try crawling back through the cave and plunging into the lake again, but that came with too many risks, and I didn’t even know how I managed to push myself up to the surface. I also was way too exhausted and injured to be able to perform any kind of spell like that. So, with my options entirely limited, I spoke to the voice again. “Please, I beg of you. Me and my friend here mean you no harm. We only want to find a safe way out. I will tell no one of this place, I promise you. I can’t ask you to trust me, after all, you don’t know me, but I ask that you spare our lives regardless. I have… a family. People I love that I need to get back to. I don’t want them to search for me if I’m dead in some cave. So please, let us pass.”
A minute passed, then another, and another. No response ever came. With no other options, and an amount of courage I didn’t know I had, I took a small, slow step forward. Nothing happened, and a sigh of relief escaped from me. “Thank you,” I said, and continued hobbling towards the faint blue light.
As I made my way down the hallway, the light began to brighten, and I could clearly see where it was coming from. At the end of the hallway was a simple wooden door, slightly withered from not being maintained. As I walked up to it and put my fingers around the handle, I was overcome by the fear from the memory I had just regained. It was still fresh in my mind, and I hadn’t managed to push it fully away from my thoughts yet. My hand shook like it had while I was dreaming in the water, and my heart thumped erratically.
“What… are… you?” the voice asked, breaking me from the memory.
“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand,” I answered.
“Your… Soul. It… is… strange.”
I didn’t know how to answer the voice. I had heard from Restivus that my Soul was strangely powerful when it came to harnessing Nex. Everyone had a limit to the amount of Nex they could take into their Soul, ultimately limiting their total strength. For most, this wasn’t an issue. Most spells were made to use as little Nex as possible without ruining their strength. So, as long as a mage had a constant stream of Nex flowing in and out of themselves, their Soul’s limit didn’t matter. I had never hit my limit, though, but I was curious where it would be. Not too curious, though. Father had told me once about Bind Fiends, and how, after making to many Soul Binds, they lose themselves and begin pulling in so much Nex until they explode. I was pretty sure my new bond wouldn't cause this to happen to me, and my Soul had been described as being weird before, so it couldn't be refering to me being a Soul Fiend. The only thing it could be referring to is what Restivus had saw in me before, but I didn’t know how to explain it. So, I simply tried to be polite. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re referring to. Perhaps if we meet, I could explain better? May I open this door?”
“Come… in,” the voice said.
With its permission, I opened the door.