The filament grows taut. The skin of reality aches and groans. Thousands of signals, firing through the nets and winding roots within. Thousands of words. Thousands of eyes, judgmental, scraping clean all that passes through.
As the darkness surges, and the toxic blight spills forth in the mind, only one thought reigns supreme:
Destroy it first. Before it destroys you.
Hope is nothing but food for despair.
-Mourning 6:2
One moment, Zelith was there. The next, there was a crackling of energy, a blinding flash, and she was gone.
Grey’s mouth opened, her eyes widening as she was still trying to catch up with what she’d seen. Those strange symbols, Zelith’s terrified expression…
The room. The clocktower. For just a moment, before she’d vanished entirely.
Splinters shot past her as Grey found herself slamming through the doors into Lahrii, any movement between discovering where Zelith was and that moment gone. Her fingers stung, claws out as she fell onto all fours, growling as what looked like blue steam drifted out of her mouth.
The halls of Lahrii were in chaos. She could smell blood, seawater, the strange burning smell of spellwork, all mingling in the air as she rushed forward. She could hear Kevyn and Conall behind her, but she didn’t slow down. The pit in her stomach was too great.
More flares. Down the hallway, she could see students sprawled out along the walls, blood oozing from their mouths as something tall and slender, almost like a stick-insect but far, far too large, drifted over the carpet. As Grey looked, she found the ground start to give away beneath her feet, like the entire hallway was pitching forward. Roaring, she managed to dig her claws onto the carpet, watching as several bodies slid past. The floor was now almost entirely vertical.
As she tried to keep her grip, she saw Conall and Kevyn tumble through the air above her. Conall was casting, blue flaring around his hands, but as the spell concluded
Screams. Conall was in the air, then he was five feet away, flames licking around his arm. Another jump, and his body was unpooling around him, like threads being ripped apart by hundreds of fingers.
As the spell ended, Conall slammed into the ground, body torn but intact, coughing and frantically looking around. The ceiling he was standing on was rotating like a cog as Grey slid forwards. Kevyn was nowhere to be seen, disappeared entirely in Conall’s spell.
As the wolf pulled Conall to his feet, the redhead winced.
“Fuck. No teleporting,” he said. “Gods…it really is the end.”
“No,” Grey growled, shifting her arms as the halls stopped their rotation. “That…flash. Took Lilly. In the clocktower.”
Conall looked at Grey, his expression hardening as he stood more straight.
“…It’s going to be hard. Getting through the halls when they’re shifting around like this,” Conall said, putting a hand on his wand and starting to look around. Outside, the sky on the floor was rapidly oscillating between day and night, and more screams of students could be heard.
“…Best get started.”
The word echoed across the empty space, echoing off the stones. It was maddening, the chamber filled with nothing but winding gears and the sound of the grand clock whirring out of control. The soft blue spellight was the only illumination in the room, but everything felt…undefined. At once normal and almost transparent. Like…
Threads.
The thought and the voice were one, Zelith recoiling as the room seemed to shift, the shadows around her moving like something alive.
“Who’s there?” she yelled, even knowing exactly who we are.
“What are you talking about?!” Zelith cried out, gritting her teeth as she turned on her heel, looking for a source as she lifted her hand to begin to cast.
It is good to see you again. For the first time.
Zelith recoiled, biting back a scream as her hand reassembled, a flair of something shooting up her arm as the gleaming eyes in midair faded.
“Let me go. Let me see Grey.”
What’s to see? There are no images out there. The world is too strictly formed. You can’t see Grey. Nothing but words.
Zelith furrowed her brow, gritting her teeth. Something about this thing was…wrong. Fundamentally. It was like everything hissing out from its space in the air was something that shouldn’t exist. The logic of reality didn’t parse whatever it was, and she could feel herself start to feel sick.
“Shut up.”
You saw. You saw the boundaries. You understand how false this reality is, just like everybody else in it. Isn’t that right? Somewhere in your head, you know you’re just talking to yourself. That thing you’ve been pining over is nothing but a pale imitation of the real thing. And the act’s running thin.
Zelith didn’t know why she was crying, beyond fear. But as she struggled to her feet, words came unbidden as she clenched her fists.
“MAYBE I DON’T CARE IF IT’S FAKE!”
A silence, as the eyes moved closer. Zelith breathed out, leaning against the wall as the cogs of the clocktower kept grinding away next to her, the eyes continuing to stare at her. Zelith could feel it, like a pit in her stomach. Even if she didn’t understand entirely, there was something about this place that made it hard to recall much of anything. As she slid to sitting, her gaze vacant, she covered her eyes.
“Why can’t I just pretend? For just a moment.”
As the threads began to converge, words and eyes and echoes and misery, only one response came to her.
Hope is nothing but food for despair.
Strike The Horizon 