Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

Rather than rely on a coin flip to decide the direction we'd travel, we narrowed down our options by process of elimination. Those stardust pieces I left as we passed through each of the branching paths greatly reduced any confusion of which way we'd already been.

In a rather luckless spell, all but one path remained ahead of us. If it didn’t lead to a way out of here, we'd have to resort to drastic measures, potentially blasting our way out. My mana cannon could probably punch a hole through these walls, but that was the very last thing I wanted to try.

Anxiety stalked the edges of our minds, making us question if this final way would lead to a salvation, or more of the metal heck we'd been looping around.

A white light appeared at the end of the hallway, giving us a hopeful taste of a place other than a big room with a damaged silo. I let go of Uncle’s hand and started running, fueled by my desire to leave behind such a spooky facility.

The closer I came to the white light, the more it appeared to be a barrier between us and something else. With the strength of that brightness, I could merely tell minor details of what was behind it, one being that it didn’t look like the big room from before. Anything else remained to be seen.

“Uncle, Uncle!” I shouted down the hall and pointed to the white egress. “I think it leads somewhere else!”

“What did she say?” Indena asked, detecting the hope in my tone. “If that leads out of here, I'll be happy.”

“Let's cross our fingers,” Emily said.

Now that we all gathered in front of the light, it was time for a little experimentation.

Uncle placed his hand through the light, dipping into it like water. It reminded me a lot of the Nalnara portals.

From here though, I could see his hand on the other side, but only just barely. Based on that, it seemed safe enough.

He went further in, pushing his whole body through and inspecting what was beyond, temporarily leaving the incapacitated Marek in Emily’s care.

He stuck his hand back and motioned for us to follow in. I eagerly jumped in first, followed by Emily holding up Marek, then Indena.

Even though the barrier was watery, we were completely dry. That gave us all the more attention to focus on our thankfully new surroundings…

The metal walls here weren't white, but grayish blue with a very muted copper trim. Odd lights ran across parts of the wall as recessed strips, their colour ranging from white to an occasional dash of bright green.

Arches of stone slabs reached up to the ceiling. It didn’t look like they were holding up the wall, but rather acted as a decoration. Between them was a cavity that stretched into a different room.

Just a ways down we heard the splashing of a river of water. It was housed in a channel at the center of the path ahead of us, which those arches stood over.

“Hey!” Indena laughed. “We’re free!”

“We just got out of the loop,” Uncle mentioned. “We’re still stuck in this facility.”

This area was a lot more interesting than the last one, at the very least. My instincts were telling me we should follow that river. There were a few branching paths, but their uncertainty made me all the more interested in the watery way.

“I wonder why there’s a river down here.” I dipped my hand in to check for sure that this was water. Turns out that it was very fresh water. Perfect for drinking.

Indena was all too glad to cup her hands in and drink to her heart's content. Emily followed her example but pulled out a small canteen from her belt, filling that up.

Since they were drinking, I wanted to join in too.

“You must have been thirsty,” I said to Indena, who was still slurping up water.

“You try living with a 45 degree body heat and tell me it doesn't dry you out.”

Assuming she was talking about centigrade, that’s super duper hot for a human. If she were anybody else, they'd probably die from a fever, but mages are just built differently I guess.

“This is a good time for a break, yeah?” Emily huffed, very tuckered out and sitting against one of the stone arches. “A lady's gotta' rest her legs once in a while, you know?”

“I’m fine,” Indena said, actually looking very tired as well.

“Sure you are.” Emily rolled her eyes.

I could have kept going, but a rest might be nice.

Uncle noticed the river continued into a more defensible room, so we pressed on into it in case of an emergency. Even though we weren’t lost, technically speaking, I still made sure to continue placing stardust around just to leave more bread crumbs.

“Hsssss…” Samael perked up on my head and hissed at a wall. As I tried to turn, he'd stay locked on that particular wall and threaten it.

I was making a mental note of his strange behavior when my motion tracker started detecting movement. But based on the location, it was in the walls. Samael was hissing at those very same walls, so something was definitely in them.

I pressed my ear up to the metal surface, listening as closely as I could for any sounds…

Scit scit scit…Scitter…scit scit

Sounded like rats. Big ones. That would explain why Samael wasn't happy. Snakes eat rats.

“I hear rats in there.” I looked up at Uncle.

He took a listen for himself, hearing the same noise.

“Those sound a lot bigger than rats.”

Rats can get pretty big. Could be Lizzarats. Those guys are huge.

Emily perked up at Uncle’s mention of rats. “Any chance we’re in the sewers?” she asked.

“Sewers?” Uncle raised a curious brow.

“Yeah. You mentioned before that these demons can change the way we see the world around them, so why wouldn’t the sewers be affected by that too?”

“That explains the river here,” Indena commented. “But if we’re in a sewer, wouldn’t that mean we’re underground?”

If we were underground, that might explain why there really are no obvious exits. We’d have to go up, rather than go forward. But it's not like we saw any manholes or anything, so how were we going to go up?

Things got a little quiet while everyone searched around the area for a hint of escaping the place.

I rather boredly started marching further down the river, splashing away at the water with a few occasional kicks. Each splash caused a bunch of bubbles to rise up and pop on the ceiling.

Following the flow, all the water was flushing down between four pillars at the center of the room. An eye in the swirling water had formed with more bubbles sudding up and floating away. This point of interest had to have some sort of meaning to it, otherwise, why would it be here?

Round and round it went. My feet didn’t have a problem holding me still while the water swirled.

Now that I was in the center, I got an interesting look at the room. The pillars were set up to block the four middle walls, only showing the corners of the room. Detailed groves on the corners almost appeared to line up perfectly with details on the pillars…if only I moved slightly to the right…

That’s it! A continuous line carried around the whole way. There was some sort of script under the line too, but it looked like a bunch of lines and dots. I couldn’t read it.

The moment everything was connected in my sight, the details started lighting up blue.

BREEEING!

As the light came across a pillar, it made this ringing sound. That’s when it caught everyone’s attention.

“What is that?” Uncle questioned, turning to notice the room's sudden animation and seeing me in the center of the pillars. “Yalda, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” The franticness of my tone quickly changed to curiosity. “It just started glowing when I lined everything up in my sight.” Whatever was happening, clearly I was at the center of it all.

A barrier of white energy spawned between each of the pillars, blocking off every escape and keeping more water from entering in.

“Uh-oh…” I uttered, quietly. “Uncle, I think I’m trapped.”

“Hang on!” He pressed his hands against the energy barrier, but it zapped him away. “What is this?”

A symbol appeared on each of the pillars, one I’d seen once before. It was a circle, with a quarter circle at the bottom of it, and a cross stretching from the quarter circle to fit the rest of the symbol. At the middle section of the cross was a triangle sitting on the horizontal line. This was the symbol I saw when I had a halo above my head back when I first used my Stardust Nova ability.

While contemplating this mystery, large bubbles began to form at the base of the now dry floor. They were so big that one overtook me inside of it.

“Yalda, wait!” Uncle tried to punch through the shield again, but he couldn’t do it.

“Woah!” I started to float up to the ceiling! A rainbow looking water dripped upwards from the ground and pooled above. It swirled until it looked like a portal, very much like the one we saw when entering the area. I went through the strange water and passed out.

~☆☆☆~

Soft grass tickled against me as the wind brushed over it. The blue sky above me was becoming less blurry in my vision, even holding a few twinkly stars beyond its lovely azure colour. In my dreamlike gaze, I noticed a cyan beam of energy streaking across it, its origins hidden behind tall evergreen trees.

My lethargic state began to wane, allowing me to slowly rise up and be greeted with a sharp migraine.

“Ahh…My head…” It hurt enough that I just had to sit still and wait for it to pass.

Slowly but surely, the pain subsided and my view cleared completely. The first thing I noticed was a large field of lush green grass, some tipped with flowers, all of which were waving with a gentle breeze. Just past the field was the edge of an evergreen forest. A few variants were littered among the prickly plants, some more blue, others more green.

My eyes naturally followed the forest edge, forcing me to turn my head all the way around to gaze upon an enchanting vista. A wide open lake, rimmed by a sandy yellow beach. The sky was half blue, a quarter dark and starry like the night, and the horizon was filled with a pinkish hue.

There was no sun here. Three massive petals of land extended upwards on the horizon and emitted large beams that coalesced into the center of the sky above the lake. Where the beams collided was a bright ball of energy that gave this place light.

But I have yet to mention the most intriguing part to me. Under that artificial light source was a sight I was very familiar with. A metallic diamond shaped structure, rimmed with blue and green dots of lights on its edges, hovered gracefully over the lake. Clouds swirled around it as if attempting to cloth the beautifully sharp construct.

That was The Hive. My home. The place I was born and grew up in. Fond memories filled my head, even though I had no idea why it was in this strange place.

I was called to explore by my curiosity. There had to be a reason I was brought here, and my answer might await me there.

-A Dream of Paradise?-