The remnants of multiple dreams found their way back to my mind as I daydream inside the library.
Days went, hours flew away as we swallowed the knowledge the books had to offer. We couldn’t stop. The drive of possibly being stuck in Maorat for ten years building a new surge of motivation and need inside our depraved bodies. Sometimes we would forget to eat, and the two little librarians would bring us something without asking for anything in return, disappearing as quickly as they arrived, and before we could even thank them.
My dreams involved two women. One with black hair and the other red. My red. The red I would fantasize for hours if my brain didn’t snatch back the control over my body from time to time. In these states I was so different. Driven by another form of power on which I had no hold over. Pure animalistic, visceral craving. The details of such dreams were not easy to remember, mostly impossible even. But the red would bring out furious emotions throughout my soul that I couldn’t retain nor deny. And today was no exception.
As I read the same paragraph over and over again, I had felt some parts waking up suddenly because of my imagination, thrilling inside my mind. Her hands roaming, her soft breath over my neck, her perfect body against mine. Even her moans, her screams. My subconscious would scatter, in the course of the day, reminiscing feelings, or sounds, or touches, while I was deeply occupied. As if it was working against me at all times.
When I started my umpteenth read of the script, I closed the book violently. These pages couldn’t even contain the beast under my skin, that seemed to be needing release from any angle. As I withdrew my shirt over my head, Kâl strangled a strange noise as she straightened from her seat. “What are you doing?” her voice was higher than usual.
“Sorry, is this bothering you?” I answered, pointing at my chest and abs. She shook her head, mouth gaping and brows frowning.
“Startling, at best, but this isn’t the time for… what are you even doing?” she insisted. Admitting I had been thinking of an imaginary woman that had a facility of making me completely crazy and aroused didn’t seem like the best response to offer. I leaned on something else.
“It’s been a while since my last workout.” This didn’t suffice, by the look of expression on her face. “Can I exercise here?”
She finally shrugged, didn’t even answer and shook her head, gripping the book tighter and higher above her face. Positioning myself in a plank, I still heard her whisper. “Men…”
After a dozen push-ups, my breathing found its rhythm and I exhaled at a regular pace. “You know I can do two things at a time,” I bragged, still focusing on my posture and the contractions of my muscles.
“You mean… multitasking?” she fake-laughed. “You might be a woman after all.” I laughed, and almost lost my balance and cadence. After a few breathings, I resumed. “Did you have any particular training?”
She meant with Hidram and the hormones he would have me feed on. “Not so different from anyone else. It was just longer. Harder.”
“Did you use weights?” she mused, as I glanced toward her and could see she wasn’t reading much anymore.
I stopped mid-air. “Have you seen me?”
“I am.”
“How much do you think I weigh?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Good point. But let me help.”
And before I could even understand the situation, she used my broad back as a chair. Fortunately, I wasn’t face close to the ground when that happened, and so I took the time to evaluate the charges before I slowly, so slowly descended. Not that this would make it any better. It only lengthened the time where my muscles were contracted. So, worse. But my body still managed, not effortlessly. I reached fifty. Kâl emitted an impressed whistle. “Okay, you definitely are a machine.”
As she withdrew herself, I still put a knee to the ground, eyes flaring. “And you’re a pain in the ass too.”
“What do you mean? I’m positively charming!”
“You will be once you are back on that armchair with the book in your hand.”
She placed her hands over her hips, challenging. “Are you threatening me, Weapon?”
“I’m only advising, Shadow.”
“Or what?”
She lifted her chin, her gaze lowering as I was myself on the ground. And as she had witnessed how strong I was, she also realized how fast I could be, when in fractions of seconds I had lifted myself onto my feet and had grabbed her low, pulling her onto my shoulder, as she folded over me, her legs fighting the air and her hands hitting my lower back with force. “Put me down!”
“You mean literally?”
“I’m going to destroy you,” she hissed, and I wasn’t sure we were still joking. I remembered how despicable men had been to her, but she also admitted she liked me more than she had imagined. So, I braced myself when I bent over and put her feet back on the ground. My lip bitten by my teeth, I stood before her, towering her just a bit, my expression apologizing for me, as she couldn’t hold the laugh any longer. My shoulders felt the weight out of them. “Don’t ever do that again.” She still pointed one finger at my face as she sat back on her chair and grabbed the book once more.
I continued my exercises. “Do you have something new?”
“Nothing useful. You?”
“I can’t fucking concentrate.”
She hummed. “Why is that?”
Again, we weren’t this close. “If only I knew.”
“I think you do. But it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”
I grunted, turned and laid on my back, starting crunches. “You’re saying this like you don’t have any secrets you don’t feel like sharing.”
She stayed silent. Rustles of pages and loud breathings filled the quietness for a few minutes. I didn’t need much anymore, with all the drugs and steroids Hidram had imprinted inside my body in a way I could never lose. My practicing had continued only so my powerful force wouldn’t fade. Because, as much as I disliked watching myself in mirrors, I loathed witnessing my strength becoming weaker and weaker. This was my hard limit. “And the door?”
“Yes?” she lulled, not even crossing my stare, annoyed I would even perturb her reading.
“Nothing new?”
“No.”
As I stood up and gathered my breath, the glint of the two librarians shined on my peripheral visions and I remarked they had been organizing the aisles, silent as a ghost. “Hi.” I said to them. They slowly nodded, as a response. And as they turned around to leave behind the shadows of the furniture, an idea occurred in my mind. “Could we ask you some questions?”
They froze. Kâl moved on her seat, quietly asking what I was scheming, the book already resting back onto the little table to her right.
Min and Geia kept sorting the books patiently to finally spin towards me, gaze crossing. “Graast orhaii, raegraen,” they answered. And we frowned. But then, they lifted their hands, in a matter that was unequivocal. They invited us to share our interrogations.
“Have you been here all your life?” I figured it was best to start slow. With quick yes or no questions. Because they didn’t seem like the talkative type. Rather preferred mysteries and unspoken insinuations. They continued their work for a few beats and I changed positions again, using a chair to work on my triceps.
“Which life you speak of?” they talked in unison with their heads still uncomfortably low. When they were too short to arrange a book, they used their magic to place it.
Kâl gathered her legs and sat on her feet, inviting herself in the conversation. I guessed she could understand them. “You had multiple lives?”
“We traveled.” Was all they answered, with a light shrug of their shoulders.
“And you speak the common tongue?” Kâl insisted.
“We speak many languages,” they walked toward another area in the library, but close enough so we would feel welcomed to carry on. “That is what the work requires.”
“What work?” I asked faster. When I arrived at a hundred, I changed to another exercise again. Kâl followed Min and Geia’s movement but I could also feel her stare as she watched me doing squats.
“The work we do here.” They appeared from behind the shelves, a dozen manuscripts on their three hands.
“You’ve always worked here?” Kâl maintained the discussion as I was too focused on my breathing.
“Yes.”
“Have you brought all these books here?”
“Yes.”
“Are they all from here? Zelian?”
“No.”
“How did you bring them all to this place?” She managed to ask the questions burning my tongue.
“We had many lives to gather them. There was a time where movements were easier.”
Kâl stood up. “How old are you?” They stared at the floor for a moment, probably counting the years. Until a minute passed. And another.
“We can’t tell.”
“Where are you going when you disappear?”
“Elsewhere.”
“I think we are boring them,” I interrupted, finalizing my series. But their look, when they turned on me doing lunges, didn’t betray any annoyance. Just pure patience. Kâl and I understood they were pragmatic, and as the Maors had said, they didn’t like being too perturbed. Only, they stayed with us. And waited. For another question maybe, or for the moment they would be dismissed.
“Questions need to be properly formulated. And answers shall attain their purposes,” they recited, while they moved yet to another aisle. We both shared a glance and resumed our frantic questioning.
“Have you always been in Maorat?”
“No.”
“No? But you said you’ve always worked here?”
“We traveled,” they repeated. I grabbed my shirt to drench my sweat.
“Are you Maors?'' We bounced back over each other’s questions.
“We are whatever we want to be.”
“So, you were not always looking like this?”
They watched themselves and I swore I could see the wires connecting in their heads, the engine ruffling. “Our powers had diminished,” they responded as if we had asked something else completely. I figured they once had the ability to change but it required a power they no longer possessed.
“Are you working for the Maors?”
“We haven’t been working for anyone in a long, long time.” I glimpsed a rictus over their down faces. Were we amusing them?
“How did you end up here?”
They breathed loudly for a second before responding. “The library is ambulatory. This is the place it chose. Only now, it cannot move.”
“Why?”
“The portals are closed.”
We shared another glance and Kâl made the honor of asking the next. “Do you know a portal nearby?”
“Zelian contains three portals.”
“No, but in Maorat?”
They seem to search inside their heads, their eyes almost visible. The longer we waited and the more impatient we became. “Maorat’s position is unclear.”
The extent of their power seemed limitless. The moment they were back in their heads, they were capable of doing incredible things. What did they do just now? Where did they go? Searching for the answers?
“And what about a door?”
They cocked their heads to the side while Kâl rapidly explained how the door in question should look. She talked about ebony rocks, and weirdly shaped stones. And then their faces lit up. “The Door.” Our exchanged gaze reflected the same incomprehension to their attitude. “Come back tomorrow.” They added, and yet disappeared wherever they went. Elsewhere.
We stayed quiet a few seconds, still trying to make sense of all they had said, and what they purposefully didn’t want to explain. “If they can speak the common tongue, why didn’t they ask them to translate the books?” I queried, not really expecting a response. But Kâl nonetheless did, shrugging.
“They answer to nobody.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
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If I had faith in anything, I would have prayed to anyone, any god, deity, whoever was kind enough to hear my supplications and purge me from the dreams possessing me each night.
I was reluctant to close my eyes, until the lids were too heavy to even bother trying.
She had appeared again. Her flaming mane glowing behind her, sometimes falling over her shoulder, but almost not touching as she wore it rather short. I’d imagined my fingers caressing the waves. Her hair and her body. Lying against mine, nesting perfectly against my own curves and angles as if she was made for me. And I figured my brain wouldn’t mold her anything but perfectly, since she was created for myself only. She had turned her face to me and had smiled, and the clouds lifted for the sun’s rays to fall over her back and my torso.
This was nice. Not too warm. Not burning hot. Just enough to feel completely at ease. “What are you thinking about?” she said with her gorgeous voice I could have listened to for hours.
“That, this is incredible. That I can’t begin to understand what we are living.” She laughed while she hid her face in my neck, her warm nose tickling my throat.
“You smell so good,” she admitted and her praises were the kind of drugs I decided I would need for the rest of my life. When she had been so divine, she still talked as if I was the god. “And you’re so… big.”
I snorted. I could understand what she meant, as she was much smaller than I was. Again, I wasn’t medium. Inhumanly large. And that was what she meant. “You know,” she still added, smiling through the words.
“Yes, I do.” And we laughed a bit more. “What are you thinking about?” I’d asked away, as it was very difficult to read her otherwise. She hummed, always nestling against me as she thought of the answer.
“Many things.”
“Which are?”
“Where is this leading us?” she asked the questions rhetorically. “With everything we’ve learnt, do we even have a future?”
Was she talking about the Maors? And Maorat? And the way we were trapped here, for now, with no real idea where the upcoming days would lead us? Or was I completely lost inside my own dream and fabricating myself a whole other life? Where I still had the same complications, apparently. “I want to focus on the now.” My hands gripped her waist and lips crushed against hers, her taste familiar like I had kissed her many times before. “How is this so real?” I whispered while nipping her chin, searching for her mouth that she deliberately forbade for myself. “You drive me crazy.”
“It’s only fair.” She covered her face with her arms while giggling.
“Don’t do this. Don’t hide.” She sensed the change of tone, of how my fingers clenched on her wrists so she would obey. “I need to see you.”
“You see me. I’m here.”
“Not for long. I want to enjoy you as much as I can. While I have the time.” I planted my mouth under her ear and savored the gasp that escaped her throat afterwards.
“I’m not going to disappear,” she laughed, her breast moving against my own abdomen.
“You say that now… but you always end up slipping away,” my hand draped the back of her neck and I embraced her strongly, as if to mark myself on her, and mark herself on me. “Stay here. Stay with me.”
“I can’t. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“You know why,” she answered sharply, her eyes still soft but her expression stricter than before. I needed to smoothen these brows.
“I wish I knew,” I replied as my lower body started rocking against her, and even with her whole strong will, she couldn’t restrain from the pleasure. She had caressed my hair and nape and my lids closed for a moment, as I focused on my other senses.
I hoped persuasion was strong enough, although all of it, her skin, the way she would look at me, the sound of her laugh, the beauty of her face, would fade away by the seconds I would wake up. So, I had made the most of it, had smelled her, listened to her, ate her until I couldn’t breathe, until she would be on me forever, carved inside my heart and soul, so I wouldn’t, couldn’t forget about her ever again.
It was pointless, as the morning came. My eyelids fluttered, my body set itself in motion, grabbed the clothes, put them on and walked its way to the library. By the time Hei-Tria waved his hand to unveil the door and I stepped inside, I couldn’t remember why I was feeling insecure about my smell.
As the dagger fidgeted around my fingers, my book was lying over the small table on the right side of the armchair I was lounging on for a long time.
It hadn’t taught me anything else than what we already knew or didn’t need. Since the explorer was a human, he had traversed a lot of streets that I didn’t even know the names of, as they had been decimated after his journey. His book was more research, with no real sources to confirm his theories, and so most of the second half needed to be tread with caution.
He talked about other books, other authors, to explain and relate the arrival of the Maors on Zelian, the way they had been treated, how they had been excluded almost immediately after. He quoted the Maor he had exchanged with, the questions he had asked but the creature in question had already been born inside Maorat, and within the years, although they were very attached to the story of their real and natal planet, the way they had found the sanctuary or how it had been created hadn’t remain. The information was passed on orally and with that, details had been forgotten. Until they didn’t speak of it anymore, and the foundations of Maorat had been obliviated from anyone’s mind.
We could ask Min and Geia but they had been completely invisible since last night when we had left them. The bell didn’t ring and the Maors’ throat sounds were not working either. They were somewhere else, and until they had seemed fit to come back, we couldn’t do anything but wait.
Hei-Tria had decided to come, once we had explained our discovery with the two librarians. That they might be a lead with the door, and the portals. The Maor and Kâl were both sitting around the table, managing to commute as much as possible, with hands movements, shaking of the heads and other onomatopoeias to understand each other. Sometimes they would ask me to translate and I would play parrot until I was too much in my own thoughts to even acknowledge their voices.
My dreams were becoming more and more vivid, out of hand. The feelings that were submerging me afterwards were enormous compared to the small quantity I would endure during my monotonous and miserable life with Hidram. Deep and strong emotions coming from the core, I could physically sense my heart thrumming or reacting to that woman. I wished I could at least call her by her name, but as the idea never occurred during my dreams, I was also convinced I would just forget as I would wake up. The control fleeting away once my lids were closed and the reveries commenced was one of the worst sensations I could experience. Control was everything to me. All my life. And these were asking me to give away the one thing I needed to count on.
Her blurry face emerged inside the golden gem, as I forced my brain into remembering. As always, the hair, striking color, appeared first. Then her irises, icy, clear, white, gray, blue. But the rest, nothing. No details, no features, untouchable. My fingers caressed the stone as I had stroked her cheek multiple times before and I regretted not being able to reminisce the feeling of her skin under my hands.
My short nails bumped over the rim of the slot and I swore I felt the gem moved. As I straightened my spine, Kâl and Hei-Tria noticed my movements and saw my distraught face.
With my index and thumb, I pulled on the stone. And with a light resistance, it stayed between my fingers. The glow of the markings on the handle disappeared and the dagger transformed into a basic knife. At least, visually, it didn’t contain the beauty I had perceived once I had laid eyes on it.
They all noticed, and I stood up, coming forward to the table, the dagger balancing inside my palm, the gem resting over my fingers. “How did you… The carvings…” Kâl started.
“Pass it to me, please.” they asked. I grabbed it by the steel, only to notice it wasn’t sharp. As if the blade had never been sharpened. Or never meant to harm. “The jewel too.” I executed.
As they held the two objects, they inserted the stone back inside the receptacle, and the markings graved themselves back on the wood. We were all very close and the evidence struck me immediately as the curves and nooks of the inscriptions unraveled. “Isn’t this Maor’s language?”
Hei-Tria instantly turned the dagger around, in all positions, until they found the right one, and their eyes widened. They were no white inside them, only nuances of dark colors, almost impossible to discern. Only their pupils were pitch black and remarkable. “It says… Dreyma lives in.”
“Dreyma?” Both Kâl and I said at the same time.
“This is a name I sense isn’t unfamiliar,” Hei-Tria explained, their eyes vacant, searching. “But… I cannot recall.”
I rested my hands over the table. “Lives in? Is there one’s spirit in the gem?” My mind was furiously trying to create a meaning to all of this, my eyes drifting from one place to another as I tried to remember every bit of lore I’d read during this last week in Maorat. And as I grabbed the dagger again, I almost sliced my thumb in two. Kâl ogled me with her irises widened, curious and eager as much as tired and in miscomprehension.
My hand drifted between my remaining curls and I sighed, loud, before Min and Geia magically winnowed inside the library and started talking. “Dreyma is Lumnis.”
Their hair looked disheveled, as if they had been under a powerful current of wind for an entire day. Their faces were even more visible but they kept them low enough any particularity was indiscernible. “What?” Kâl interrupted the moment that seemed to have stopped in time.
“They go by many names.” They continued, their attention on the dagger.
“Who are they?”
“I see you have found the key.” Silence fell for other heartbeats and I didn’t try to ask the question again. Their presence alone was driving shivers along my spine. And as their gaze faced only the floor, the phrase lingered in the air, destined for someone we didn’t really know.
Hei-Tria spoke with a solemn tone after observing the artifact. “The dagger needs the gem for its purpose to uncover,” they recited more to themselves than the rest of us.
“What did they say?” Kâl questioned, standing up. The Maor straightened their hands towards me and I gave them the dagger back. They withdrew the stone another time, and shifted the tip for us to see inside; the wood from the shaft had been carved in a way that couldn’t be mistaken. Particular angles, specifics turns and sharp geometrics. “Do we have to insert something inside the weapon?” Kâl frowned, getting slowly closer and closer to rip her hair out of her head.
“This is the key.” They responded. As they watched Min and Geia with fierceness, we all turned toward the two little librarians and waited for them to speak.
“The Door has been found.”
Kâl’s brows frowned. “And the dagger is the key to the door?” She had been asking the same question again and again but the elements seemed improbable. Min and Geia smiled ever so slightly before answering. “Showing will be easier.”
With a swift movement, they joined their hands, where a spiral of dark dust circled endlessly, growing and growing each second while they murmured in another language four sentences. Then, their three palms facing the dark and black veil shifting inside the circle like waves, they blew towards that direction, and the passage popped as a bubble. Only a frame remained, where we could only see the beginning of a gigantic door, made of piled up stones, similar to the library we were spending most of our days in. “March through the Glaze and you’ll enter the place.” Min and Geia talked simultaneously.
“Amazing…” Hei-Tria whispered. All this magic was so foreign to me I suddenly didn’t feel so sure about the whole plan.
“Have you known about this?” I wondered, my gaze frozen around the portal.
“I had fallen upon grimoires representing the place. But the descriptions were conveniently cryptic. And the emplacement, completely undiscovered.” The Maor explained. “Until we had waited so many years, hope long annihilated.”
Neither of us moved. Kâl seemed fascinated to the point where she couldn’t take her eyes off the magic swirling around the portal. I was careful. Distrustful. Something was off.
I didn’t keep my eyes away from Hei-Tria, and even gestured to them, with my head, to lead the way. If we had nothing to be afraid of, they shouldn’t fear crossing the magic gate. One side of their lips tugged upwards and they started moving towards the portal. They lifted one of their fingers and stroked the veil, which awakened like a pool of water untouched for years. Waves after waves arose until the whole picture was blurry, and the Maor plunged, appearing on the other side, and waited, looking straight at us, the magic slowly taking power back, the flow decreasing its pace and stilling once again.
Hei-Tria moved, crooked their fingers to our direction in a gracious and a slightly slower speed. As if they were under the surface. “March through the Glaze and you’ll enter the place,” Min and Geia repeated.
Their hands still showing their palms, we moved together and passed the magic barrier in one quick motion. In front of us, a room lost in darkness, geometrically carved stones forming an ensemble of walls and one majestic door at the very middle, with a small and golden protuberance at man’s height.
It was almost impossible to imagine an entrance somewhere. Dark obsidian cubes were stacked on one another, some retracted, some pointing onward, creating a cascade of black sharp rocks, and a sense of profundity. The place was barely illuminated, leaving us with the incapacity to verify our surroundings. Feeling helplessness creeping under my skin made the latter crawl. “That smell…” Kâl whispered.
Kendara’s same air filled the whole place. That suffocation we experienced for years, after one week of sanity, disturbed us so much we had to cover our mouths. The Maor tried keeping a controlled expression but I could see their inconvenience. “Let’s get this over with.” I stated, stealing the dagger from the Maor’s grasp.
Only five steps ahead, and I was removing the stone from the weapon, and shoving it into the small piece of carved rock. The golden gem glowed in my palm and its bothersome warmth almost made me drop it to the floor. I was submerged by troubled feelings of malice, persuasion, manipulation. But the Door left me no time to think over it, when it started shifting into a different form.
Every cube and rock slid into position, turning right and left, or up and down, sounds of implements reverberating over the walls when each piece found their place, until it molded into a regular black door. The weapon had been swallowed, only the blade had bent itself upwards, leaving a thin silver line right above the round wooden shaft sunk into the stone. One loud thud quivered the entire room and I switched my footing into a fighting stance, my hands drawing automatically to my daggers, ready to face whatever was about to be unleashed upon us. But only a voice emerged. And spoke in an unknown language. “Lor trei iss piëtrat.” The sonorities had echoed with the words the librarian had spoken to me the day before.
Hei-Tria took a step forward, jubilant. Min and Geia translated. “The Voice. Protection mechanism. It is asking you to present yourself.”
My eyes strictly on the door, I obeyed. “My name is Nolis. I am a Kendarian.” And the rest I wasn’t sure it had any value for this entity to know. My mouth agape, I glanced at the two Maors and shrugged my shoulders, summoned their help in quietness. The reason I was the one talking and not Hei-Tria was still incomprehensible. Min and Geia whispered, “Reveal what you wish,” and I wanted to say that I wished to leave Maorat immediately, to return to Kendara in the darkness and live a morn life, or that I wished to be teleported to a thriving city elsewhere on this planet, any other place than here. Only, this wasn’t what I was asked to choose. So, my answer changed, and the Voice felt it. “I wish to find a path to Fryor.” Silence fell and we waited. Until it shouted one word and made the whole place tremble. “Lirartio.”
The Maors gently pushed me to the side and placed their palms over the surface where the dagger had sunken. Min and Geia spoke in a throat language, low and hoarse sounds shaking the ground for long seconds. The voice replied. “It says your intentions are unclear,” The two sisters explained. “It asks to show your worth.”
“How?” Kâl immediately asked and I shot her a dreadful stare for it. The voice growled in ancient tongue and my whole body froze. Powerful magic imbued the place and I wondered for a second if we were going to leave it alive. One quick glance over my shoulder and I felt a slight weight fall off them seeing that the portal was still there, showing us the glowing and reassuring picture of the library. “It wants you to reveal your deepest secret, your vulnerability” The Maors admitted. “If you wish to remain safe, I advise you to cave.”
Their eyes were solemnly on me.
Hei-Tria marched back to where Kâl was standing, and all of them left me in front of the Door again. Why was I the one targeted?
My deepest secret. I couldn’t even remember the last time I felt vulnerable. I had been raised with that very feeling wiped out into the abyss. I wasn’t allowed to be vulnerable. For my own safety, I had to control everything.
I didn’t have goals, didn’t have purposes until my path crossed Kâl’s. I stole and threatened, but never had I taken a life before that Jalyon. Monsters were easy to deal with, they were hovering over us, menacing our daily routine. They had to be taken down, for the greater good. Forcing people into the truth, ordering them to leave, lurking in the shadows to frighten, using my reputation and my power for persuasion, that was what I was asked to do. At least, that was how I decided to take care of my missions. As long as Hidram was seeing results, he couldn’t care less of the means. And I used that chance to avoid killing.
Only one thing was going to satisfy the Voice and I couldn’t comply with it. I had to find another way. Or manipulate the truth, just enough it wouldn’t raise any suspicions but wouldn’t also reveal, to the Maor and to Kâl, my real identity. As a final gesture of my false obedience, I dropped one knee to the floor, placed my hands, palms facing the sky, in front of me, and started thinking of a way to twist the truth in my favor. But when I opened my hands, the gem fell off my grip, and laid on the ground, its glow illuminating the whole room.
The voice gasped. And we all stopped breathing. “Cadrè Lesstar.” It murmured. And opened.
We were so convinced we would have to protect our faces from the dangerous sun of Zelian, from the dusty and warm air, from the dry earth sometimes creating sand storms when the wind would rise from the dead only for a few hours of punitive appearance, and vanish later with no regrets, leaving us bruised from the attack and still desperate for more, abandoned with the sun for only company. We were so sure we would have to cover our eyes, for we lived in complete darkness during unending cycles. We found nothing of the sort.
We faced an Orulis. The portals our ancestors used to time travel through space and teleport themselves on other planets. ‘Rulis’ meant ‘flying’ in an ancient human language, and the O preceding it only referred to the shape of the portals. A perfect circle. “Incredible.” Hei-Tria approached the Orulis, their hands in supplication. I imagined hope filling their veins, their entire body. Years and years of exclusion, of mistreating. And there, right in front of them, the solution.
I stood, shoved the gem back in my pocket and joined the Maor next to the space gate. Min and Geia approached Hei-Tria and murmured to them, unaware I would be able to hear. “As you expected.”
They shared a grin and my brows frowned. My nostrils flared. When they turned around, they immediately noticed my presence, but pretended nothing happened. The old Maor talked. “We should head back. I need to seek the Protector.”
The Door transformed again behind me, closing its visible entrance for the curious eyes to see. I breathed, turned around to retrieve the dagger that the door spitted out and followed the Maor through the portal again. But right before it closed on me, the Voice declared one last thing through a whisper. Although the meaning escaped me, I could feel the stone react to its words. “Pry ès urr Yord, hem triss yak.”