Again, and again. Loops upon loops, spirals of time and indecision.
Terrified of what exists afterwards. Of finality.
To stand before the thousand eyes, unfiltered, with no road left.
Complete, stone. Unshifting and unfixable.
But you’ve been here before. Persisted day after day, in hell. Too afraid to leave because to leave was to admit that you always could.
The loop has returned. But you’ve taken a step further. Hell has given way to the slopes of a great mountain. And the failures and regrets are nothing but cobble for the road ahead.
The world is out there.
Strike the Horizon.
Samantha Adalwulf
The distortion hung in the air above Lahrii, the epicenter of the distortion that had consumed the school. Stinjul, the gleaming sapphire, sat across the water, spared the terror and unreality that had torn through the school.
The Sunvaar, Grey and her father, raced up the stairs of the clocktower revealed as reality had stabilized, Conall, the mage, following as closely as he could. At the top of the tower were the remnants of the disaster, and the woman unwittingly at the center, Zelith.
As the stairs grew steeper, forcing Grey and her father back to human form to navigate the narrow winding path, Conall caught up, breathing heavily.
“Do we…have any idea what’s up there?”
“No,” Grey said, growling as her claws flexed. “Erased everything. Made us forget. So we kill it.”
“Can it be killed?” Conall asked, running a hand through his curly hair as they kept ascending. “I mean, it almost destroyed everything!”
No response from either of the Sunvaar. Just steps, and the faint echoing noises of the rip in space and time above them.
——
Zelith stood in a familiar room, glancing around as she tried to take it all in. She was in the top of the clocktower, but there were other rooms here too. Her parent’s house, the apartment in the fancier section of town she’d spent those years with her now-scarred ex lover in. An office, decorated in white marble pillars. Elements of every location meshed together around the ephemeral face of the clock, strange white symbols and grabbing tendrils drifting through the air, avoiding Zelith as she stepped forward like a frightened tide parting before a ship.
“Hmm,” came a disappointed noise from behind her, Zelith spinning on her heels. Behind her, floating in midair, was the warped form of Professor Verin, his blue uniform jacket bleached near-white as his scarf flapped in a non-existent breeze. Where his head should have been, an orb sat suspended, glowing like a small sun. This sun, however, didn’t give off any heat. Instead, it felt like all the warmth in the room was being absorbed into its blinding white surface.
Zelith didn’t hesitate, a red surge firing from her onyx wand as she lashed at the professor. As she did, a band of white fire surged out from the orb, consuming it before it even struck.
“I must say, I did not expect you to persist after encountering it,” Verin said coldly. “Most don’t.”
Zelith shifted backwards, giving herself space as she kept the wand leveled at Verin.
“The voice. The…white text,” Zelith said, frowning. “What, did it get to you? Is that what this is?”
Verin laughed, a hollow sound as he vanished from sight, strange orbs of light drifting through the air before he materialized on the clock face.
“No, dear. I am much worse,” Verin stated. “I’m just the piece that realizes my part fully. The voice, the words that burn so much to hear…they are everything. The building blocks of everything we are. And every action we take, every single movement forwards, is another step closer to the end.”
“The voice wants things to end,” Zelith shot back, her wand drifting to Verin again. “It was trying to make me not care about anything. It tried to eat the world!”
“No, no, Zelith,” Verin said, a cruel grin evident in his voice. “The voice wants things to stop. Not to end. If everything stops, we can change it however we want. We can make it all…cease. Like it never existed.”
He drifted through the room, memories drifting past him. The look of disgust on her father’s face. The woman she’d convinced herself was the only escape she had screaming at her as she stood there like a statue, unable to speak for fear of reprisal as tears streaked down her face. Verin himself, undermining her in that very office.
“Every mistake, every terrible day, gone. Like it never happened in the first place. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Zelith looked at it all, breathed it in, and shook her head, letting out a laugh. New memories flooded in. Of her standing up to her parents. To the day she packed her bags and left that apartment never to look back. As they washed over like a tide, Verin stood defiantly in the middle by the clock face.
“Sure. But I don’t want to erase it,” Zelith said. “I don’t want this to be gone. Life, all of this, the words or whatever we’re all made of. It might not be perfect, but it’s all we have. And I’d rather live, and keep living, and make a thousand more mistakes then to let that damn voice win.”
“It is all going to end! You want to keep living, but if everything continues…everything will stop. The words can’t go on forever, we will become nothing but memories in the dark!”
“Maybe,” Zelith said, grinning as she took a step closer. “Maybe this is the last loop. Maybe everything ends. But until that happens, I’m not stopping. If everything ends, I know where I want it to happen. With her. With my Grey.”
More memories, not bound to the rooms they stood in the scar tissue memories of. Zelith and Grey, from the boat to the alleyways to the depths of the city. Kisses and passionate looks, conversations by candlelight. A thousand wordless exchanges, unbound by the blinding text, floating in the space between the cracks in reality like stars on a dark canvas.
“We’ve existed in spite of the words. Hinted at, like something underwater, cresting occasionally,” Zelith said softly. “And sometimes not. Maybe this voice, these words…maybe they aren’t the only ones. Maybe we can keep going, in that shadow past the end. Just like we always have.”
Verin hissed, rising like a sun into the shattered sky, clawed hands crackling with the shattering white-black light of the spell Zelith had invented. Zelith looked up at him, a grin forming on her face as a few tears leaked unbidden. Verin hesitated for a moment, turning to look at the trace of her eyeline. Before he could, a blur of grey fur and blue lightning shot at him like a bullet, the one projection of Grey that only had eyes for the version of Zelith that wasn’t a memory rocketing towards him.
Claws caught pale cloth, Verin gasping as dust leaked out of his body. Before him, Grey, entirely in wolf form, grabbed part of the professor’s warped shoulder and tore as gravity pulled her downwards. Verin let out another hiss of pain as he was dragged towards the ground. As he tried to redirect the spell, his fury directed now at the wolf clamped on his arm, a bellowing roar shook the entire room.
As the spell shot off wildly, a massive bear lumbered forward like a small hill, slamming its entire weight into Verin’s head. As it smacked into the ground, there was a resounding crack. The divination professor tried to scramble away, to cast something, but his barely human body was already unraveling. He tried to call on his magic, to find a path forward, but all he could see he was blinding white.
As the pathetic creature turned, Conall strode up, looking down at the blinding figure.
“Co…Conall!” the voice hissed, Verin barely recognizable as anything but a tool for it now. “I…I can undo it. Fix it all! You don’t have to feel pain ag-”
Another crack, Conall slamming his boots into the creature’s head. As the splinters spread, the light grew dimmer, the shape of the thing more obvious. A crystal ball, with the professor’s skull fused into the center.
Nothing but a puppet.
As the crystal ball shattered entirely, the area around them shifted and warped, pieces of the room vanishing and twisting back into more familiar shapes. With a quick flash of dark and white, they found themselves behind a shimmering blue clock face, surrounded by the gears and cogs of the Lahrii clocktower.
Tick. Tock. Tick.
Second after second. Finally, mercifully, back to normal.
———-
The sun was setting on the distant ocean, Zelith cuddled up to Grey’s shoulder. Fresh marks on her neck stung with her pulse. It stung, but they were a reminder of her. Almost..grounding, in a way.
“Won’t miss it?” Grey said, looking out towards Stinjul.
“Of course I’ll miss it. There’s always something to miss,” Zelith said, her smile soft and nostalgic. “It’s where I grew up. Even when it was the worst it could be, there were…things that made it tolerable. Even when I was living with that bitch you scarred, it wasn’t like I never smiled. Never had a single nice conversation. It just…wasn’t worth it.”
“Hmm,” Grey said. “Can come back. Always.”
“Maybe,” Zelith said, glancing towards the sky, the faintest white stars in the distance. “Just…need to rest. Take a break from these stars. Let’s see something new.”
Zelith kissed Grey on the cheek, grinning.
“Together.”
Grey looked at Zelith, that cocky grin of hers coming back.
“Damn right.”
————
…Who Knows? ->
—–
UNWOUND was an experiment, one that didn’t always go the way I wanted. I took way too long to get to this, the last update. It was unfinished, unplanned. Messy. But sometimes you need to get through all of that to get your head on straight, to get your footing before you start to run.
I’m not going to go forward without planning. I’m going to keep practicing. I’m going to get better, and move towards that distant horizon. I’m taking the lessons I learned here and applying them.
Dedications aren’t always meant to be at the end, but I feel it’s about time I added one to this:
Dedicated to the person who broke through the noise and panic. Without even trying, you brought just enough light to the pit I was in that I finally saw the darkness for what it was. I thank you, for your unwavering belief that I can be better. For seeing a version of me that I wanted to be.
For inspiring me, and making the stars mean something again. When I reach that horizon, I hope I can find you there. But if I don’t, I will always be glad I met you.
Love,
Samantha Adalwulf
And as for what’s next….
I’ll see you Beyond the Second Sun.
Strike The Horizon 