Iris leaned against the dilapidated walls of her sorry excuse of a Mind Palace, yawning as she waited out the almost bi-weekly midnight visit. Again, she tried putting pressure on the wall with her shoulder, but unlike flimsy set-dressing, the phone wall did not seem to budge. The lights flickered, and she blinked, swearing that the harsh bulbs were not doing her eyes any favours. She yawned again, hopelessly tired even though she knew by now she always woke up the next morning refreshed. It was a pilgrimage in her dreams, but considering how regular they had become and how little happened during them, they were more a chore than anything else.
Her beast-friend, whom she had never bothered to name, coiled around her feet, a sort of incarnation of her power that seemed to fend off any terrors that made the particular night terror well…terrifying. The walls had not loomed over her in a long time, the carpet had long since given up on clawing at her feet, and the imitation Evalyn sitting in the far corner had long since become docile. Iris refused to ever let her guard down, but once the horror had been sapped from the hallway, not much was left of it apart from its dingyness. She had seen countless others like it patrolling the city, and learning how dime-a-dozen such places were, had almost filled her with disappointment.
She winced, clutching her stomach. Cramps, the ones her mother had insisted were a regular phenomenon for a girl her age. Both parents had kicked up an awful fuss when they began, celebrating and telling her to pick an age. In the confusion, Iris had chosen twelve; it had been almost a year since.
Thirteen soon. The number made her smile sometimes.
She had grown more proficient in just about everything. Reading, writing, speaking, schooling, and most importantly, fighting. Evalyn had said Iris was developing her own style, one strikingly different to herself, and Iris relished the thought of being different. She had always admired Evalyn, but the thought of doing things her own way was equally as enthralling. She had grown bolder by the day, needing a humbling from her mentor at least once a week. Now, she was bold enough to nod off during her bi-weekly visits, paying no heed to the dangers that lay just beyond the coils of her guardian Spirit.
Today, she felt a bit bolder than usual.
“Hey,” she said, tapping her beast with the tip of her boots. The beast reared its head up at her sluggishly, looking equally as tired as her. “Wanna try the doors again?”
The beast began to uncoil itself, taking up a position Iris now found familiar. The tip of its tail hovered at her feet while its body curled around her, its head resting just above hers. It was a stance the beast assumed whenever she was preparing for a fight. Easier to attack from, sure, but Iris had long since figured it was defensive in its nature.
Whatever small part of her psyche was responsible for letting bullets fly through her brain or opening her Mind Palace to override an enemy one on impulse had seemed to take physical form. A small part of the vast power she had yet to tap into, firmly as her ally. Never under her control, only an ally.
She walked past the first three entrances she had opened years ago. She could not discern why, but doors had not opened for her since her first few months under her parents' care. She had tried tugging on them, even going so far as to push off the wall with a foot until her fingers went numb. Just last month, she had grown so impatient that she had taken to one with her powers, thrashing it with oversized claws and pounding it with an imitation battering ram, the sort she had seen police use on safehouses.
Nothing had worked, but she was bored once again.
She walked up to the fourth door in the sequence and tugged on it as she always did, and as if it was a gag routine, it didn’t budge.
“All right, fine,” she sighed. “keep your secrets.”
She turned on her heels and strolled across the hall to the next door, making it halfway across when…
“Ha!”
She swivelled on her heels, catching the door by surprise as she turned around. Her beast followed up excellently, surging forward in a fraction of a second and ramming its jaws into the door handle. The wood cracked, and Iris saw the handle hanging by a thread, the lock busted, and the door ajar.
She froze in amazement, watching as the handle's weight tore its final thread, falling to the carpet with a muted thud. She looked at her hand, the index finger still firmly pointed in declaration. Elliot had insisted the dramatic pose and vocal exclamation were key to a successful bait-and-switch, but the idiotic suggestion had largely wafted into one ear and out the other. She’d have to apologise to him later.
For now, she’d explore the fruits of his miracle advice. Pushing the door further ajar, she ventured through, her beast following closely behind.
A bright light burned her retinas, and her beast moved to shield them as they adjusted. The colours slowly began to seep into her vision, dyeing the scene before her in a stunning sheen of silver. Walls like crystals stretched around her, reaching for the sky or perhaps even further. It was a room, in some sense, but not a room with any human sensibilities. In the way ‘room’ and ‘chamber’ were technically interchangeable, but one commanded a grander, more mysterious picture in the listener’s mind, the space borrowed heavily from the latter.
A chamber of some sort, and chambers were never built without something to store in them.
The crystalline walls and mirror-polished floors reminded her of something else she had seen, equally otherworldly and out of place. The first door she had opened, where she had frozen to death while overlooking a monumental city that looked as though one with the stars. The similarities were uncanny.
She walked down the centre of the room, eyes fixated on an indent in the pristine crystal structures. A cave of some sort had been carved into the ‘rock’, a blue translucent glaze sealing its entrance. Iris approached it, shielding her hand with a gauntlet as she reached out and touched it. The barrier was physical insofar as it did not let her pass. When applying another mite of pressure forward, the barrier sparked and sent her hand flying.
She shook off the light pain, squinting through the sheen for a better look. Beyond the barrier were runes; symbols floating in midair like bubbles in beer. Random in their patterns and sequencing, but Iris could not shake the feeling that it was information of some sort.
She heard footsteps behind her and turned, materialising her armour on reflex after reminding herself just how brutal her visions could be. She stood in a readied position, but it seemed her adversaries had not noticed her.
Two Spirits of variety that Iris had never seen before. Sentient and bipedal, they appeared to Iris as skeletons of jagged, ash-black bone, only vaguely resembling the illustrations she had learnt from in textbooks. They had no heads, only orbs of light radiating Aether and releasing symbols like the flames of a campfire, symbols that were similar enough to the ones behind the barrier.
She watched as the two figures glided towards Iris, unbeknownst to her presence or, at the very least, uncaring. She could feel as they brushed past pulses of Aether emanating from each one, forming connections one after another between the two bodies. Iris released her gauntlet and focused on the pulses, honing into each to the best of her ability until she began to hear things or rather decipher the pulses into words.
“—think that the new barrier will hold?”
“It must. The mere drop we lost from this well has become a global gospel under our noses. If these…pilgrims gain anything more, they might find it an apt excuse to burn down the entire world.”
“A part of me fears they already have.”
The two figures drew nearer to the barrier yet never dared to touch it. Iris watched in silence, all her focus purely on maintaining the connection.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I don’t understand what our forefathers aimed to achieve with this, moreover by making it impossible to destroy.”
“They did not want the world ever to forget its own cruelty. Even I do not know what made the few who read it so compelled to take action into their own hands.”
“Perhaps our forefathers were right, then. If their words are so powerful, perhaps they are truth.”
“Then all the more reason to keep it hidden.”
“Indeed.”
The signals ceased as the Spirits entered a silence. Iris approached them, step by step, cautiously until she could almost touch them.
“What is it do you think the words told them?”
Iris froze, focusing on the connection once more, practically salivating for something to make the vision worthwhile, meaningful, a step forward to learning something new.
“That there is nothing to the world, and that is its fatal flaw. A promise to make things perfect, and the story of a puppet pulled by its strings.
Iris gasped, the words all too fresh in her mind no matter how many years passed. She stepped backwards, the two Spirits noticing her. The signals were no longer readable. Even if she covered her mouth, they already had her in their sights. They marched forward, auras transforming from scholarly to beastly. Iris mouthed words of attack to her beast, but it seemed as though it could not hear her. Paranioa, a feeling she hoped she would never feel again.
They backed her closer and closer against the wall, the silent march silencing her power, voice, and ability to fight back. Panic rose for the first time in years, greeting her after a long parting with a fresh overdose of intense adrenaline. Iris was terrified as she watched the serene chamber turn ghastly, the infinite walls looming over her, bearing down their astronomical weight onto her shoulders as she fell to her knees. Gasping, grasping at straws and tugging on any chance to escape, fall through the floor, fly into the sky, wake up from her nightmare she sorely regretted poking.
The black hands reached for her, aimed squarely at her silent throat crushed by the weight of a thousand suns. Iris watched as her back pressed against the stinging, cold crystal and her body turned to stone.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake—
Iris woke up, quite violently.
“Fuck!”
“Language!” she heard Elliot shout from another room before a pair of heavy footsteps approached down the hallway. Elliot’s head of jet-black hair rounded the corner, and Iris only then realised how long it felt since she last saw him. “If you’re going to swear, keep it down. Mum and Dad don’t like it.”
He threatened her with his greasy spatula, pointing it at her menacingly with his other hand on his hip. “You’re lucky they’re out with your mother right now, or we would’ve had problems.”
“I missed you, Dad,” Iris said through dreary eyes, gripping the covers. Elliot softened and lowered the spatula, retracting his threat of war. He walked through the door and sat by the side of the bed, grease dangerously close to the covers.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Mind Palace stuff,” Iris said, reaching out to catch Elliot’s waist, staying vigilant of the grease on the edge of the spatula as she did so. “Something happened, but I don’t know what it means.”
Elliot nodded, stroking her head. Whenever anything concerned her Mind Palace, it was always Evalyn who gave her the answers, and if even she had none to give, it was Colte through a phone call. Elliot only knew as much as Evalyn told him, but Iris always found herself coming to him first.
“How’re you feeling now?” he asked. “Calming down?”
Iris nodded, and Elliot smiled, patting her head and standing up, the spatula running across Iris’s hand, much to her displeasure. “I’ve got breakfast going, and in a few minutes, everyone will be back with fresh bread from the village. How does that sound?”
“Dad?” Iris asked, discreetly wiping the grease on her covers.
“What?”
“Make my eggs scrambled.”
Elliot sighed as he turned and walked off, muttering something about having to make eggs five different ways for five different people, which made Iris chuckle through a yawn. The way Elliot never seemed to care about what he could not control was what made his presence so comforting. No pity, no problem-solving, just filling every empty stomach he could with kind words and good food.
Iris yawned again, passing her eyes over to the window by her bedside. Only a few metres of short grass existed between her and a dense oak forest. She had gone in with her grandfather once or twice, trudging through thick undergrowth while the green ceiling blocked out most of the sun’s light. Bugs would crawl on her boots while she would walk face-first into spider webs. The only memorable moments were when her grandfather would stop her, signal her to be silent, and point out a Spirit or an animal peeking out from the brush. They’d stand there and wait out its presence, whatever the particular specimen happened to be until it moved on.
Some of the last old growth forests of western Sidos, they had called it, and the people of the village made an effort to protect it, only logging from sanctioned plots of land.
The forest surrounded the village for miles, and never had Iris felt so isolated until she had visited for the first time. They would make the pilgrimage to Elliot’s childhood home every few months, and for a week, Iris would spend it miles from any major city.
There were fields outside their house, the kind farmers would grow crops on. Iris had never seen one until she had paid her first visit.
Now, she did not give it a second thought and hopped out of bed, rounding the corner and straight into the living room, the sound of sizzling eggs from across the way giving Iris the motivation to rub her eyes open and smack her cheeks to attention.
Despite the similar structure, the house was much older than Iris's and more akin to the older buildings near Excala’s centre. Instead of brick, however, many village houses were unsurprisingly made with timber which, although sturdy, more readily showed its age. Deep, rich brown beams and white plaster walls—it reminded her of the illustrations in her fairytale books, where cats would chase mice into holes in the wall and where witches would cook children for supper.
Elliot turned his attention away from the stove as Iris sat at the table. Even the cast-iron pan he used looked at least a thousand years old. “Last day here, so pack your things by twelve if you can.”
“Last day?” Iris asked, slumping onto the dinner table. “I thought we were leaving tomorrow.”
“We were, but Evalyn asked if we could detour and spend the night somewhere else before we head home.”
“Why?”
Elliot opened a cupboard above the stove, its hinges painfully creaking while he paid it no remorse. He snatched a plate from a stack of identical—relatively modern—crockery and laid it on the counter. “Well, you know plenty about my side of the family,” Elliot began. “You like grandma and grandpa.”
“I do,” Iris said. Sceptical at first, she had grown to adore the gentle, soft-spoken yet occasionally sassy woman who was Elliot’s mother, and the gruff yet sentimental man who was his father. Elliot smiled as he loaded scrambled eggs onto a plate with sausage and a side of vegetables. Seasoning it, he walked over to Iris and set it before her, taking the adjacent seat.
“But I know you don’t know much about Evalyn’s side of the family.”
“Grandma died when she was born and…yeah. I don’t know much about Grandpa,” Iris admitted. She had asked Evalyn on numerous occasions, and Evalyn had repeatedly dodged the question, only ever alluding to the fact that she did not think very highly of him. Iris had even resorted to asking Marie whenever she was babysitting for the day, but it would always be the same answer. She would prefer not to say unless Evalyn said otherwise.
“Are we visiting their graves?” Iris asked, and Elliot bobbed his head from side to side.
“No, not exactly,” he said. “Your grandfather left a legacy, and I think Evalyn wants to show you that.”
“Then where are we going?” Iris asked.
“Place called Fort Nevoa,” a voice interrupted from the front door. Iris looked over and was greeted with a flash of striking red hair as her mother entered the room. She walked in, giving Iris a smile as she placed a paper bag on the dining table. “Bread,” she said, as she unshouldered her overcoat, the gun Iris was so used to seeing on her absent. Behind Evalyn were their hosts, her grandparents.
“Finally up, are we?” Elliot’s mother chimed, her eyes wrinkling as she gave Iris a warm smile. Soft brown hair waved across one shoulder, and she seemed to exclusively wear soft beiges and browns, which always suited her perfectly. Her husband followed, his figure a wall in itself while his head only just cleared the doorframe. He was a man of fewer words but expressed his soft spot for Evalyn and Iris through actions alone. Iris sometimes wondered if it was even possible for words to penetrate his thick beard.
Her grandmother gave Iris a hug over the shoulder, before stealing a baby carrot off her plate. “Fort Nevoa?” she said while she chewed, “are you taking a train?”
“Yes,” Evalyn said, hanging her overcoat on her chair and sitting down, unpacking the brown paper bag's variety of sweet and savoury pastries before handing the loaf to Elliot to toast. “It’s technically an active base, but they have tourist trains back and forth from it. Have you or Dad ever gone?”
“No,” Irene shrugged. “We never found the appeal of it. Even if we did, it’s hard to see it as just another piece of history when we’ve heard it from the horse's mouth.” She swallowed the stolen carrot as she walked around the table to Evalyn, rubbed her head and joined Elliot in the kitchen. Kenneth brushed past them, opening the creaky cupboards above the stove and carefully lifting a large plate from the bottom shelf. He brought it to the table and lined the pastries along it.
“Pick your favourite, Iris. We weren’t sure which, and Evalyn wouldn’t tell us,” he said. Iris passed her eye across the selection and came across one with a familiar green mess about its centre. A taste for Spinach was a rarity amongst children her age, surprising everyone she met, including her grandfather. A quizzical raise of the eyebrows and an impressed smile later, he chose one from the bunch and began to eat.
“Are you all right with that, Iris?” Evalyn asked her, and Iris nodded.
“As long as we stay an extra day next time,” Iris said through a mouthful. Evalyn grinned back at her, mouthing a thank you.
Iris’s dream lingered in the back of her mind, but she could not ask Evalyn about it in front of her grandparents. For all they knew, Evalyn’s markings were purely aesthetic, and the faded scales along Iris’s back and arms were but an abnormal skin condition.
A problem for later. Now, was breakfast.