I didn’t press anything, nor did I pull any levers sticking out, or tug any cables. No. I did none of those things, and yet as soon as I stepped into the temple-like ziggurat, the floor moved from underneath me, and I dropped down into a spacious chamber. I managed to land on my own two legs, keeping my balance while briefly supporting myself with one hand, as Lio darted alongside me through the shaft and circled around me as I touched down in this new place.
While the outside pretended to be thematically coherent with the jungle and its expected motifs, the inside was a completely different story. I had basically moved from some fantasy setting set in a lush, bleak rainforest into a futuristic room, where the walls were replaced with rows of what I could only guess were servers, casting shadows through dangling cables thanks to the luminescent blue lights installed on their backs.
The floor was clean of any liquids and made of tiles, but it was dusty and riddled with occasional small rocks and debris—probably fallen along with me or from others who came this way. Calling it a “floor” in the first place might have been a stretch and gross abuse of the word. Those tiles? They stretched at most three feet in diameter around me, then the floor dropped significantly to a point where I wasn’t sure I’d survive the fall. And to top it off—literally—spear tips were sticking out of the pit below, so even if I somehow survived the drop, I might get the pleasure of admiring the removed flooring with a few too many holes in my body. Thank you, no thanks. I’ll pass.
“What do you think?” I asked Anansi and Lio as I looked in every direction around me, without needing to turn. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any clear exits. Server?like walls surrounded me on each side in some kind of octagonal shape; if I wasn’t mistaken and counted the walls correctly.
[Seems like it’s finally a trap.]
“You’re saying it like I wanted to fall into one.”
[No. But you anticipated one outside, didn’t you?]
“You don’t have to rub it in my face. I was ready to teleport out as soon as something deadly came my way. Be it a spiked floor, hidden dragon, or some other crouching beast. But fortunately it was a normal floor I was getting close to, so I decided to stay and see.”
[You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I heard all your thoughts.]
“You could pretend from time to time that you didn’t. It would make talking to you less awkward, girl.”
Lio twisted his body so the surrounding walls became the “floor” to him. He jumped and ran along their surfaces, trying to find anything hidden inside.
I, on the other hand, kneeled by the edge of my little podium and started running my hand through the air beside it, trying to check if something invisible was hidden there.
[Wouldn’t the eyes of the Shattered see anything covered by some illusion veil?]
“I don’t know that. I know they see through their own illusions, but nothing more.”
After just a while of doing that, it became apparent to me that nothing was hidden from my sight; at least in the immediate vicinity of the platform I’d landed on. And while Lio continued his run, trying to touch every square inch of the walls, I turned to the floor instead, checking if any of the tiles were loose. I pressed my fingers gently into the crevices between them and tried to lever each one up until one finally gave way and let itself be moved. Underneath it was a small cavity containing a cup and a dispenser with a button.
Then came a brief consideration of whether I actually should press that thing. One of my brains was working overtime, insisting that there was nothing else in here and I’d definitely lose out if I didn’t at least try. The second one was more measured and proposed a solution I liked much more.
I moved to the edge and unfurled the scarf from around my neck, letting it fall evenly, dragged by gravity. When it looked like a metallic plank, I asked it to become one. It stiffened up immediately. I used that makeshift tool to press the button while standing at the very edge of the platform, ready to jump away at any second.
But the only thing that happened was a click, followed by the sound of two small round objects dropping into the cup. I unmade my scarf back into what it was supposed to be and wrapped it around my neck again as I moved closer.
What the cup contained now were two pills: one red and one blue.
“I saw a movie like this once,” I said aloud as I poked the two pills. “It was about being surrounded by a fake world, and the only way to shake off that false reality was to swallow the harsh truth in the form of the red pill.”
[What was the blue one for?]
“Blue one would let you stay in blissful ignorance and accept everything at face value,” I answered.
[You think the same would apply in here?]
“It was heavily computer?themed. That other world was a perfect simulation, so I guess if Ideworld was to borrow some influence from it for a splinter that plays to the same tunes, it would fit perfectly.”
[You are afraid to swallow it.] Not a question, just her stating the fact. And yes, I was fucking terrified. I wanted to see what was out there, to venture forward, but at the same time I feared the worst. Poison, crippling death, or anything of the sort gave me pause.
Liora came toward me, jumping through his own invisible platforms like it was the most obvious thing to do. I dropped to the floor and stared at the ceiling as I lay there like that. He moved onto my chest and showed me his teeth.
“No, Lio. I will not force you to eat it,” I answered, prompted by my human brain. But the other one was reading it differently. It saw the sharp draconic teeth and connected them to the ones painted on my mask.
It’s worth a try, I thought as I stretched the mask and sucked part of the material into my mouth. Then I asked it to become my own mouth. The mask accepted the authority without any issues. I took the red pill and placed it inside my faux mouth.
As soon as I did, the world around me swirled and changed. Instead of rows of servers and the flooring, I was in a corridor made of some black material that looked like screens. And through those screens, columns of weird pictograms began falling down, just like in the very movie the pills referenced.
I reached through the space and grabbed Lio—who somehow was still within my aura—and pulled him toward me into this strange place, while I kept my mouth shut around both the material and the pill.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
It worked, Anansi! I swallowed without swallowing.
[An outstanding achievement, Alexa. You better keep it in, or you might get thrown out due to your cheating.]
That’s why I am thinking to you, and not speaking. Oh Reality, the people I have to work with, I thought, and I could swear I heard her giggling back. I asked her to make Lio follow me while I carefully made my way toward the turn I saw ahead.
**********
Around five minutes later, it became obviously and painfully apparent that this place was a maze meant to get people lost. Corridors seemed to stretch and bend in a very user-unfriendly manner, and I decided that enough was enough. I took some white spray paint to leave a trail behind me. Just a few breadcrumbs here and there to make sure I wasn’t walking in circles. Then I chose the right wall and kept walking with my shoulder close to that side. Even when it was clear I was walking toward a dead end and would have to turn, I continued walking like that. First, to make sure I didn’t pass any hidden exit, and secondly so I would be able to throw it in Peter’s face that I do in fact walk pretty often.
Lio was my silent companion throughout all of this. Silent, but present—very much so. He constantly shifted the hues of his scales and mane like an octopus or chameleon trying to blend in, but in reverse. He wasn’t trying to hide; he was making his best effort to stand out from the black-and-green bleakness of this whole place. And he was doing a fantastic job of keeping me sane through this whole ordeal.
After one of the turns that I was damn sure I hadn’t walked through—there was no paint of mine on the wall—I came across a corpse. A half-rotten body of a person wearing something akin to guild armor, but much older-looking, made from what I think were linen and silk fabrics, with padding not of Kevlar but some kind of resin underneath. The clear five-moon logo of the guild was on the front, but it was worn out, suggesting the armor had been used extensively. A standard guild short sword lay nearby as well, its blade stained with dried blood.
I carefully stripped the armor from the body, unbuttoning where necessary and unknotting the ties, then sent what I could to my Domain. In the shirt pocket I found an old-style wallet with even older dollar bills inside and what I think was a guild badge. No personal ID, but there was a ring on one of the fingers. I took all of it, along with the sword, and sent it away as well.
While searching the body, I also found the apparent cause of death, and the reason the wakizashi was bloodied. The person had cut their own wrist to end their life. I wondered how they had ended up in a place that shouldn’t have existed in the time period they were from, judging by the items they carried. But nothing offered me any answers, so I moved on.
[Maybe what is here now was different back then. Changed to match the times.] Anansi offered instead.
Maybe, spidey. Maybe. I just don’t get how people without any escape skills could wander into places like this. If I couldn’t teleport out, I would probably never enter without extensive research beforehand.
[Some people are just wired differently. Not everyone is like you.]
Yeah, most aren’t. Even I’m inconsistent, right? I didn’t think twice about entering, but putting a pill in my mouth set off every alarm in my head.
[I wouldn’t call that inconsistent. You said it yourself that you could’ve escaped easily. Everything up until you had to put something inside your body was fine, because you wouldn’t be able to undo that. And it’s not like you rushed into the temple. You made sure you could cross that wall of fire, and you watched your footing on the steps.]
Thanks. It’s nice to hear some praise.
[Do you feel underappreciated?]
I rarely think about it, I answered as I kept moving. My thoughts drifted again toward Malik; the one person who always insisted I was a hero. The memory tightened a knot in my stomach.
I’m sure people value my opinions and abilities. Some probably even enjoy the time spent with me. But most don’t know me well enough.
[You could change that. Open up to them. You tried it with the other DeLonge.]
Yes, and I liked it. She turned out to be great, that Soph. But I still feel like sharing too much would put both hypothetical them and me at unnecessary risk, and I don’t have the tools yet to mitigate that.
[So you plan on sticking with the people you already know.]
Exactly, I answered, right before the maze finally opened up, revealing a vast round chamber with other corridors leading into it, just like the one I used. At the very center stood something akin to a theatrical stage, or maybe something out of an opera. On it, various puppet-like humanoids stood, each with strings made of the same green pictograms I’d seen everywhere on the walls. Strings leading upward but disappearing into thin air.
And according to my two real, biological eyes, they weren’t there at all—just the puppets, frozen in place. Which meant the Shattered’s eyes revealed more than their own illusions; they peeled back layers my true sight couldn’t touch.
Above the scene, clinging to the ceiling, was something my regular eyes couldn’t perceive whatsoever, yet every painted eye saw it clearly. A tear-shaped mass, the size of a small house, like half a cocoon reinforced with vertical bars or ribs. Light bled through the gaps in uneven pulses, as if something inside kept releasing it… then slamming it shut again.
And in the very center of the room below that strange construction was a fox-like being, curled up and sleeping. Its fur moved and swayed as if stirred by a breeze, but the longer I stared, the more obvious it became that parts of the fur flickered and disappeared, as if blown away. It sizzled, shifted colors, and moved like tongues of flame.
This was a fox made of fire.
This creature seemed to be pretty big, right?
[Yes.]
I sighed. It felt like something made for Peter to fight, not me. The last time I fought someone with fiery Authority, he almost killed me and that one was only partially fire-based, with all those cooking ingredients flying around. This one was pure, sleeping fire, and there were those puppets as well. I sat down at the entrance to the hall, opened my spellbook, and began painting while keeping an eye out for any details that could help me deal with this.
The stage looked like it was made of wood, but it had to be fire-resistant, because the beast didn’t ignite it at all. But that could also mean the fox itself wasn’t actually made of fire, that it only looked that way. A theory I liked twice as much because of the whole opera motif in front of me. Maybe he was just pretending too.
So I painted his fur to look like fire, but left a few vague hints of its true nature: some strands of hair falling down instead of rising, others lying on the floor without burning anything.
It was a big monster, but it seemed very calm. Its chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm, and otherwise it didn’t move at all. The puppets, though? They did move. Made out of wood, if I wasn’t mistaken, strung on those numerical strings that reached into the air just to thin out and vanish… they twitched and shifted, standing from one leg to the other or moving their arms to reach for something that simply wasn’t there.
In my painting, I gave them an illusion of movement.
Please send Lio up there so I can see what’s that structure above.
[Of course.] Anansi replied, and my lóng launched into the air like a ribbon of colors. He reached the thing in just seconds, letting me see everything through my painted eye.
Hanging plastered to the ceiling was a cage made of some kind of metal. Its bars were wide and deep, and between them yellow light flared again and again whenever the creature inside stirred. The static stored in its feathers sent arcs of electricity jumping around its body. It was a bird, roughly the size of the fox beneath it. Entirely blue, with its wings spread wide around something, as if cradling eggs or shielding something precious. The inside of the cage was like the walls of the corridors I had just passed through: black screens with columns of falling green pictograms.
I added the yellow lightning bursting through the bars onto the page as a finishing touch and closed the book while assessing my situation.
The fox was most likely the guardian and would wake up and attack as soon as I reached the stage, probably with the help of the puppets, which were being steered by something else. Maybe the place itself. Maybe the bird hidden above, just like the strings.
Fighting would be a fool’s errand with so many unknowns, but I could at least prepare to face them if it came to that and try to sneak around. I just needed to borrow Zoe’s eyes for a second.
First things first. I spat out the pill I’d been holding under my tongue, and the world snapped, dropping me right back into the very first room of this whole ordeal. Liora, still caught somewhere inside my aura, remained wherever else I’d left him.
I did the most natural thing in the world and teleported straight to the memory anchor I’d painted moments before. Reality folded, and I reappeared at the entrance to the hall with the cage suspended overhead.
So much for swallowing hard truths when you can bend space itself.
[Time to prepare.]
“Exactly,” I whispered back, checking whether my jaw still worked.
Who's your favorite side character (from Alexa's closest circle)? (You can write in the comment's why; I'd love to know)
