Alex was currently sitting cross-legged on a slender white cushion which had a modest square shape with rounded corners, outlined by a garish golden trim. This room, like the room they had arrived in was large and had a polished marble floor and white walls. Everything here was white, or at least very bright Alex thought. The whole place seemed to have achieved a mixture of opulence and bad taste exactly balanced to become irksome.
Eric and Sophia were seated to either side of Alex on similarly shaped cushions, and in front of them separated by a wide low table laden with fruits, sat the elderly man who had introduced himself as Way Watcher Cairn.
“Please help yourself. I pride myself as an excellent host” Cairn said with a smile as he made a broad gesture towards the fruit. Alex and Sophia took to the fruit, but Eric simply glanced disinterestedly at the whole table while crossing his arms, and then fixing Cairn with a withering stare that made the elderly man clearly uncomfortable.
“Ahem…” Cairn said, trying to dispel his discomfort and averting his gaze from Eric. “I predict you may have questions?”
“You better believe it buddy” Eric said sourly, “Like where in damnation are we! And what is this place anyhows… And another thing-”
Cairn held up his hands to stop the now red faced Eric who seemed about ready to burst with pent up frustration. Not that Alex could blame him, he himself was getting tired of being given the run around with no answers given from anyone.
“This place is a hub of sorts. A place where souls convene before they are brought into Yggdrasil, which is the name of this world.”
“Wait, what do you mean souls?” Alex interrupted before giving Eric the chance to lead the conversation again.
“Oh! I forgot your plane is high in natural order” Cairn said before coming to a pause. There was clearly more but the Way Watcher fidgeted and his expression became nervous.
Cairn sighed before he spoke again, “There is no easy way to say it, so I will speak as plainly as I can. Did you know there are several different mortal realms?”
“You mean like parallel dimensions?” Sophia said, suddenly looking very interested. Maybe she is some kind of science fiction nerd Alex thought. No brain, focus. Old man explaining things.
“Yes similar to that” Cairn said with a smile. “Each mortal realm has different natural laws. We classify them as high and low order. Since Yggdrasil is a low order realm, the natural laws here are incompatible with those of your own realm.”
Alex grew pallid as a sense of dread formed knots in the pit of his stomach. He had no idea what Cairn would say next, but his mind began racing with ominous predictions.
“So when physical things – or beings – pass through the gate between incompatible realms” Cairn said “they suffer a mild case of… Evaporation”
– Absolute silence –
“You evaporated me, ya bony prick! I’ll murder ya” Eric yelled out as he lunged himself across the table, showering the room in a colourful explosion of fruit. It wasn’t Eric’s outburst, which caused Alex to gape. Cairn, old and frail looking Cairn, was already halfway across the room from where he had sat just a moment ago.
Eric was trying to recover and get to his feet as he’d practically jumped flat on his stomach onto the table in his attempt to get at Cairn. Although before he could get that far, Cairn began intoning oddly, it had the vague sound of singing yet the words were unclear to Alex.
A distinct yellow light suddenly suffused Eric almost blocking him from Alex’s view, and once it receded Eric stood still as a pillar, staring ahead of himself mutely.
“What did you do to him” Alex said in panic. As Eric seemed right now, he reminded Alex a little too much of his catatonic aunt for comfort. Apart from the whole standing by his own power business, that is.
“Sometimes, bereaved souls cannot be made calm, so we have means to suppress them” Cairn said
- another silence -
“So we are dead?” Alex said, not sure if that was even the right question to ask at this point. He spared Eric another glance, more worried about his own fate than Eric. After all he barely knew the man.
“Yes you are.” Cairn said, matter-of-factly.
For some reason, the finality of the answer made Alex relax. Dead he thought. At least he still felt fine. Did he feel fine? Nothing seemed out of place or different from when he had stepped through the gate. He had even eaten that piece of fruit just now.
“Given the circumstances” Cairn said “I think this is enough conversation for now. There are matters we must attend.”
Cairn clapped his hands and almost immediately, a door opened and three identical looking women came inside, walking in single file. They each wore a white unadorned robe simplistic in design. They would have been beautiful Alex thought if not for the fact that they were all semi-transparent, allowing him to see through them like hazy glass.
One of these glass women walked up to Eric laying her hand on his shoulder to guide him out of the room, while the other two walked up next to Alex and Sophia, one stopping in front of each of them.
“Please follow these attendants, Alex, Sophia. You can direct any further questions at them.” Cairn said, as he gestured at the remaining two glass women. Alex wanted to protest but dared not after seeing what Cairn had done to Eric. Instead he meekly followed along as the glass women led him and Sophia out of the room.
After a few minutes of walking silently in the seemingly endless white hallways, completely indiscernible and unchanging to Alex’s eye, their group finally came to a halt in front of a doorway. The glass women turned and one of them spoke: “Inside, your souls will attune a form.”
“Attune… what?” Alex said, staring dumbfounded at the woman. is she amused? Alex was sure he had briefly caught sight of a smirk on the glass woman’s otherwise impassive face.
Sophia gave Alex a shrug before she stepped through the door with an excited light in her eyes. Her spirit of adventure was definitely not something Alex could compete with, but after taking a moment to steel his nerve, he followed after her.
Junk. Everywhere. That was the best Alex could manage to describe the sight that met him. Various items, statues and ancient weaponry stacked from floor to ceiling in haphazard manner littered the spacious hall as far as I could see, which wasn’t far at all as most of his view was blocked by the hills of junk. Alex was sure he had unwittingly just stepped into a hoarder’s den.
Sophia had already run off, disappearing into the maze of things leaving Alex alone at the entrance. A faint gust of air buffeted Alex’s neck making him look behind him. The door was gone. Shit Alex thought, sensing his anxiety resurfacing. So much for courage.
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With no other option left to him, Alex began down a path at random making his way further into the strange room. As he went Alex began to note a definite theme to the items scattered about. Mostly they were ancient weaponry, swords and axes he recognized, but there were countless others he only vaguely recognizes and had no name to describe.
Every now and then he would see a piece of armour, or a small ornamental trinket scattered about the floor among the mass of weaponry. A small curved sword laid out on an old table suddenly caught Alex’s eye. He walked over, and reached out to grab the sword, but just before he could reach it a sudden child-like laughter echoed out around him.
Startled, Alex withdrew his hand casting about himself looking for the source of the laughter. There, a little way off from him, he caught sight of a small form as it slipped around a corner out of view. Before he realised it he had begun walking towards where the form disappeared
Really Alex? When was it ever a good idea to follow the mysterious creepy child? He thought this, and yet he kept moving forward compelled by reasons he didn’t understand himself. Every time he would stop, unsure of where to go, the sound of laughter would ring out again, leading him further and further into the junkyard maze.
This continued for, what to Alex’s increasing anxiety, felt like a very long time, until he had come to stand still at what appeared to be the centre of the room. The silence weighed heavily on Alex. He hadn’t noticed while walking but he now saw that the floor he stood on wasn’t floor at all. It was instead a giant web of items held sturdily together by piling atop each other in haphazard manner.
The sinister cold voice of a child rang out behind him: “Aaaalex” it said, drawing out the A’s and ending on a disconcerting upward pitch. Alex turned around and there stood a child-like figure with a dark expression. Its tiny hand grasped around the hilt of some weapon buried into the floor.
Cold dread caused the hair on Alex’s neck to rise. The child pulled with inhuman strength and the floor gave way, plummeting Alex down into a white formless abyss. As he tumbled weightlessly, the last thought Alex had before hard ground struck the light of consciousness from him, was whether a soul could die.
Sophia looked at the door in front of her with excitement before sparing a quick glance at Alex. The guy really was a wimp in her opinion. He seemed frightened at every little thing.
As far as Sophia was concerned, this was a great opportunity to explore something more wonderful than her boring ordinary life as an accountant at Holtmen and Wood’s. Her boss was a chauvinist pig, so her career was really a dull prospect.
She saw no reason to be frightened either. After all, why would anyone go to the trouble bringing them here, only to hurt them? She preferred to act sooner rather than wasting too much time overthinking everything.
With these thoughts Sophia stepped through the door into the room beyond. The sight that greeted her made her heart quicken in excitement. She was in a veritable treasure trove of martial weaponry from every thinkable age and country.
Sophia laughed giddily and ran into the twisting passages made by the piles of weapons. She had a fairly good suspicion what the attendant girl had meant when she had said their soul would attune a form – and she could barely wait.
It took her longer than she expected to find what she was searching for, but she finally did, draped across a halberd that was stuck halfway into a pile of swords was a belt with a six-piece revolver in its holster.
Ancient weaponry is cool and all Sophia thought, but guns were used for a reason. She reached out for the belt, and as soon as her hand touched it her vision flashed white. She was standing back outside of the door, with the attendants staring at her with smiles.
“Interesting choice” one said.
“It has been many centuries since any souls were allowed in the throne of treasure” the other remarked.
“and longer still since this one was chosen” the first said
Sophia grinned, feeling triumph swell in her heart. She simply knew her choice was perfect.
The attendant who had spoken first spoke again, “Please follow me. We must wait for your companion to finish his choice, but we need not wait here.”
Sophia happily followed along. In her mind she had already discarded Alex as a useless man who could only get in her way.
Alex awoke slowly. At first he thought his face had gone numb, but he soon realised he was lying in a shallow puddle. Climbing to his feet Alex saw that he was in some form of hollow, like a cave with no entrance, formed by the weapons and armour that had fallen to pile up around him.
It took a moment for his mind to register but at the centre of the hollow sat a softly glowing unadorned spear, and the water he was standing in seemed to emanate from it in small rivulets that pulsed out in rings from its tip in a steady rhythm.
Feeling trepidations at approaching something so wholly unworldly Alex decided prudence would be to leave the mysterious weapon alone for now, and instead look for a way out of this mess.
As soon as Alex turned his back on the spear an unwelcomingly familiar voice spoke out “Alex, Alex, Alex. You disappoint me. I had hoped you would be more… adventurous”
Alex had gone rigid, and he slowly spun around with a sense of dread. There stood the child which had caused him to fall into this unholy mess to begin with, a single tiny hand hefted on the length of the spear.
“My first choice went and got herself killed before getting here, so I am stuck with you, and you’re stuck with me” the child said.
Before Alex could react the child-figure spun the spear around and dashed forth so fast that the puddle parted where the child moved. Alex only saw this after the spear was already lodged deeply into his chest piercing straight through his sternum. Burning agony began to spread from the wound as he stared down in horror.
“I’m not a bad person, you know? Just a little impatient” the child figure said meeting Alex’s eyes before everything flashed white around him.
As the pain slowly receded Alex began to become cognizant of his surroundings again. He was standing in front of the door he had entered into the strange hoarder room, except only one of the attendant glass-women remained.
“What happened?” Alex said, his voice croaking with the effort
The attendant looked at him and burst into a ringing laughter, each sound of her laugh bled into itself with the next, like someone was playing a multitude of crystal wine glasses.
“You were gone for over sixty hours” she said after managing to stifle her laugh “and I think you are the first soul to ever fall onto a blade rather than grasp it”
Alex rubbed his seemingly intact chest, staring at the woman. She clearly knew something of what had happened, but she assumed he had fallen?
The woman caught Alex’s gaze and fixed him with a serious glare before she said, “That is what you will say happened, if you value your existence”
Alex could only nod in mute agreement. Whatever had happened, he could clearly tell by her reaction it wasn’t supposed to have happened. Remembering the pain from the spear piercing his chest he would rather forget the whole matter anyway.
After studying him for a few moments the glass woman nodded, satisfied.
“Since you took so long, there is no time for you to rest. Come” the attendant said, starting down the hallway. Alex stared mutely at her as she went. What happened to just living a quiet life? He thought despairingly before he set out to follow.