Chapter 18: Reality Flight

As the lotusland’s rumbling compounded, and the very ground began to violently vibrate, I charged after Noam who had turned to run for Vidal. The oaken weave and its many limbs crumbled and receded, clearing the way for our retreat. Vidal met us in the middle and we moved together in Noam’s shadow as he led us in some direction through the brush.

I’d guessed that he cut through the first opening his eyes landed on to bolt in search of some means of exit, or an area potent enough to allow escape from the realm’s locking effect. If it even had a locking effect, that is, as I merely fancied a guess. Reality bending to this extent was well beyond my own repertoire, an all-too-clear fact becoming readily anxiety-instilling thinking of all the time I’d spent perfecting my brawl and influence.

To know that such power lay at our feet, pulled from our souls, was dually awe-inspiring and depressing. To think that late-Rodrigo knew a taste of space and time, and attempted to leave me cascading in a realm of ever-down darkness, to suffer an eternity of cutting breeze rending flesh. An absolutely monstrous thing set against the wonder and beauty of this quasi-divine plane.

And who was the new Mother? The old Mother? Original, or were they both original and one simply won out? Naivety of the good, I think, could’ve caused a winning outcome, especially if the divinity of the two can be called into question, insofar as it’s understood as possessing no omni-qualities.

Whatever it was, I couldn’t suppress the overwhelming sensation that something significant had passed over my head. Thanks to Noam, our own survival was being called into question and the reality of Yhov’s teachings was hinted at being mired in falsehoods and fabricated doctrine bolstering rewritten history. A lie upon lies shielding us from a truth of myriad colour.

Whatever the case, my consideration of all that’d just gone down was cut off by a deja vu of splitting spacetime as Noam drew again his two-handed sabre and cut up from the ground and into the sky. Reality tore itself in twain and revealed again the room in the west wing from which we’d initially come. We stepped through and fell a good few metres onto our backs.

Painfully standing amidst groans and discomfort, I looked around hurriedly to find situated just inside the wide-open doorway the mutilated corpse of Mair resting in a pool of his own blood and brain matter.

“That was discourteous. I’d think an Astray, even at his age, would pay us the respect of first giving warning prior to capturing us in the realm of his mind, yet here we are now free from that bath of lies.” Noam observed whilst standing and dusting himself off, checking over his scarred clothes for any serious injuries or damage.

“What? Noam… what?” I asked twice as I also came to stand. “What were we just put through? Did you hear what he was trying to say to me, what he was trying to explain? Why didn’t you humour him?”

“We don’t humour heresy; we don’t humour evil; we are Her hammer and we strike. What of this confuses you, Jacobi? What of Her will is troubling or confounding?” Noam addressed me straightforwardly as he began a renewed sweep of the room, pilfering through drawers in the table and cabinets against the walls.

“It seems like an unreasonable step to not at least hear out the heretics and, respective of their words, use the information to gain an up on their thought-processes and activities. It is intelligence, albeit mired in doubts and discord, that could prove beneficial to later attacks and coordinations. Do you disagree?” I asked him, but before Noam could reply Vidal piped up.

“I think Jack’s right. Obviously this nonsense about a new Mother probably came from his fucked-up head. After all, he pulled us into a story book.”

Noam paused to straighten his back, turn, and glance over Vidal before moving for the door where he hugged the left side and peered into the hallway. “No one’s beyond. We can keep moving.” He instructed and then gestured for us to follow whilst leaving the room.

I looked back at Vidal who threw up his hands at me in a show of frustration prior to following Noam out. My only reply was a meagre eye roll and a quiet grunt, suggesting, hopefully, that I acknowledged the rudeness of his neglect but sought only to press on, knowing this wasn’t the time or place–especially not after whatever we just went through.

The hallway outside of the war room was similarly decorated, with the sparse placement of lavish furnishings and tapestries alongside paintings and carpeting over stone floors. Although the hallway continued both left and right, Noam had opted to go right towards an ajar door through an archway that appeared at a distance to lead into a spiral stairwell. The opposite direction rounded and disappeared off to the left. Distant torchlight was the sole indicator of what lay beyond, a sign telling little to nothing of potential dangers.

He held his ear to the near side of the door before pressing in with the light touch of five fingertips, easing an otherwise squeaky door into a passable position without alerting any nearby and unseen guards. So far all had kept still, I reckon whatever troops were stationed here surrounded the Lord’s quarters and Adorjan’s treasure cache.

Noam took a moment to careen to the left, leaning around the bend of the spiralling stairs where he merely grumbled, conceding something, and retracted to ascend. We followed close behind, low and with our shoulders brushing up against the medial stone column that braced the steps. At the top we found we’d reached the last floor and beyond the final step peered into a short and decorated hallway boasting vibrant red and gold.

A runner carried one from the archway to a dark double door with intricate geometric designs carved into it. A set of curvaceous floral handles lie vertically, presumably keeping the doors latched, and on either side a pair of brutish, brooding, and broad-shouldered men had rooted themselves into the floor. In this sense, they looked mean and ready, prepared with hands on swords to do battle with whomever would trespass here.

“I’ve got the scent of an Ascended tickling my nostrils.” Noam commented as our trio of six eyes hugged, by way of our chins, a hidden position lying on the stairs. “But it’s meandering from under the doors. The guards are clean; nothing more than stocky chattel. I will dispatch them and you two will make an entry. Do it quickly and do it loudly, I want them to know we’re here.”

Without hesitating or allowing for questions, Noam pushed himself up and moved very swiftly down the length of the hallway. He reached the watchmen before they could fully draw their blades, or properly react, and extended out his arms to grab hold of their necks. Together, he pulled them back and flew up, off of the ground, to move in unison, as if they were extensions of his own body, over the railing blockading a fall to the lower stairs.

There, now behind us as Vidal and I stood to charge the door, we heard cut-short screams and the sickening and squishy splatter of blood on stone. I sped up and braced to strike the left door with my shoulder while Vidal did the same with the right, and together we managed to emit enough natural force to shatter the locking mechanism, destroying the latch, sending the doors swinging inward with a great thud against the side walls.

The room therein stood in stark contrast to the surrounding castle. The dreary multi-shades of grey and black that dominated, in all their stoney glory, all other corners of the estate which we’d seen and been told of, completely left. Soft brown hardwood had been layered atop the stone, in parts turning so light as to step into the sandy territory of colour, while a host of furs, in the form of rugs, hanging décor, and on display, dotted the room, adding in a pleasing range of darker earthy and animal tones.

A great big fireplace and dining table drew together the back wall, with doors on its right and left leading off into adjoining rooms. Our persons of interest, however, seemed to be standing in wait beyond the table, with the flickering hearth behind them. It created for them an aura like a halo that clung to their borders, differentiating them from the background not only in their stature but in actual light, coloured yellow, orange, and red, that made them out to be godlike. Without it, I think, they’d have been like any other man, as mundane as the door-guards regardless of their being Upyr.

Furthermore, it led me to believe they knew we were coming or at least knew we were here. Noam had been hasty to continue our pursuit of the Lord after our lengthy and successful duel with Mair. He’d have been a fool not to alert the others of our having broken in, and in all likelihood that battle was a martyr to prepare for us. Unless I was giving them too much credit?

“Like scum in the dirt…” The figure on our right shot at us as we entered the room and fanned out into a vague arc. “…mocking my leathery boots. The time is now to kick you off.” I hadn’t heard his voice before, its newness was distinct from those before him, because it carried itself rather dryly, in a wispy and forlorn way.

He separated himself from the cagey light and its surrounding darkness to float forward into the light of the foreground. His feet hung a few inches off of the floorboards, and my eyes, scanning up therefrom, saw a lanky, sinewy, and pale husk of a man dressed loosely in flowing pants and an overshirt, tan in colour and linen in make. The aura he exuded reminded me of that which whipped around Noam upon our first finding him, an ancient and unhindered thing, long free from any mindful thoughts of self-restraint.

Unlike our friend’s heat, however, I felt only ice seeping out of the ghoul. A flesh-biting cold that came to life in the form of a pair of snow-white axes, one for each hand, which, like Noam’s katana, materialised out of thin air. In time with the arrival of his weapons, the man’s eyes released an eerie white glow out of which faint pixels of sparkling light floated and vanished. It was from that light that I got a good look at his face, and saw thereupon crackling flesh, flaky and grey, and a ravenous maw of two sets of razors stained with blood.

“Filthy fucking bender.” Noam spat back without hesitation and in rather a dismissive way. I glanced over and saw that his gaze hadn’t left the other figure to whom he then proceeded to address. “Our fight isn’t with him…” He said with a quick hand-gesture at the freakishly cold ghoul. “…and I have the feeling it isn’t with you, either. Whatever you may be, you aren’t our Astray, so let us pass through to find Adorjan or his pocket-prince and this showdown can be left as a distant memory.”

To my surprise, as Vidal and I drew our swords and moved near each other defensively, the pending battle remained pending as the distant and shadowy figure responded in time to Noam. “How can I have something true with someone hazy? How can we parley this problem when we see it so differently? How can either or any of us conclude rightness when we are already so engrossed?”

Noam was quick on the trigger and replied, almost rudely, before the figure had finished uttering their final word. “All it takes for a connexion is shared ground. We share land insofar as we share souls. This difference is manifest in our ability to speak and think clearly amidst manipulations and influence, without the witchcraft of the chattel. You’re with him–why?–because he is keen to offer you power? Is protection his bid? I am offering you freedom from Her hammer.”

“I want to hear it from your King, from your crown who leads and who I feel shall lead.” The shadow said as it also floated forward. It carried with it that masking darkness that shrouded and suppressed the natural light of the fireplace. As it crept forward that light returned, and left the three of us and that ghoul enveloped in its surrounding night. Despite its closeness, the figure was no clearer to me than before as it stood merely vaguely humanoid and possibly amorphous. Looking at it was like looking at something through fogged-up glasses, unclear.

Noam turned to look at me and I saw cast upon his face a look of concern and displeasure. The edges of his lips tilted down deeply and I could almost sense the muscles of his face straining against some stirring hate. I had no time to think to blame him, perhaps I’d blame me too if I was seen to supersede his experience and position. I felt the shadow’s gaze fall upon me and so felt compelled to reply.

“I care about peace from order. Until Adorjan is cut-off or beaten-down, we cannot achieve that. I don’t care about your rebelliousness or your aims insofar as they don’t get in the way of my peace. If you step aside for us and leave, all the better. I shan’t spend a moment pondering you, you’ll be a memory, not a problem.”

“A lost thought. Some dancing images become ever muted by the breaking gears of time. You’ll have only that anxious readiness, that preparedness for war.” The shadow ceased speaking there, leaving me with a clear answer: they’d be leaving. That belief was shown to be true as cascades of darkness leapt out from its body and carefully enveloped the ghoul whose icy aura was cut off simultaneously. In the following moments, light returned and the pair vanished from view in a steady and paced kind of way. They faded by flaking into the air, taking their time to disappear from view–theatrical, if impractical.

Once gone, Noam immediately moved to the right of the two back sets of doors, leaving me and Vidal to exchange a brief and exhausted look before going forward to the left doors. In tandem we inspected the portals, discerning quickly that they were effectively identical, and found that, even with heightened auditory senses, no sound escaped them.

“Let’s go in yours.” I said quickly and decisively, leaving out room for wishy-washy discussion on direction with respect to its triviality. Noam gave me a singular nod and put his two hands on the door handles, pushing at once and finding the doors unlatched. Beyond we saw a short hallway that culminated in a windowed wall, the window was ajar, and doors on either side, the right was wide open and flush against the wall.

We moved with haste down the length of the hallway, slowing only to glance into the open room, it was an exceptionally messy bedroom with clothes and items strewn about the floor. At the end we poked our head out through the open glass and saw in a small courtyard below a circle of soldiers leading two men away from the keep. At the same time as the realisation dawned on us, the Lord was fleeing, we heard from behind a loud crash erupting and sets of metal boots rushing in from behind.