《Magicae Machina》Chapter 14
Advertisement
I hobbled my way back from where we came. Through the large hall where we were attacked; the vines there were inactive now. Through the doorway at the other end. There was the staircase that I had been thrown down, which Cris was climbing. I followed and called to her.
“Where are you going? It’s dangerous!” I yelled up at her.
“Then don’t follow!” she yelled back.
“It’s safer together than alone,” I countered.
“I’ll be fine, the danger is over!”
“Is it? Which is it?”
Cris tripped over the final step, affording me the opportunity to catch up to her. There was a gap in the vine cover, which had left the fire that had been blazing with nothing to burn, so it had died out.
“Are you really okay? Let me look,” I said to Cris, who was clutching her head. Parting her hair and ignoring her resistance, I could see that the wound she had gotten was bad enough to have bled all down her back.
“I’m not the doctor, but I don’t think this is okay,” I said. Cris sulkily brushed my hand away and said “It’s not as bad as it looks. I’m going.”
“Then I am too. If you want me to stay behind… then tell me what you’re thinking.”
Cris cast me a sulky glare. It was unlike her, but I could tell that it didn’t contain any actual anger.
“… Holly was one of my only friends,” she sighed sadly. “You know what I thought when I learned that she was missing? I thought ‘That idiot. I’ve tried so many things to help her with her addiction, yet she’s probably gone and fallen off a bridge while high’. I really thought something that awful.” Cris sobbed as she continued, “But she did listen to me. She shouldn’t have come here. So why the hell was she down here, why did this happen to her?!”
“The poppies, they… took over her mind,” I said. I didn’t understand how such a thing was possible, but it was the reality I had seen just minutes earlier. “There was nothing we could have done,” I assured Cris.
“You are right about that,” she nodded. “But, you saw Rea, didn’t you! If we can find her, and bring her out of here, then… I won’t feel like a total failure, at least.”
“I saw her,” I said, “but I saw a bunch of illusions. I can’t be certain—“
“Exactly. I don’t know how the poppies did it, but they used a brain… Holly’s mind… to think. To trick us and lure us. It knew how to muddle our perception and confuse us. Maybe it could even learn about Rea and show us an illusion of her. That’s why you stay behind, Syco! Because if Holly is gone, and if Rea is gone, I will have nothing, and I need… at least…” she trailed off, and then wiped her tears away.
Advertisement
I realized that I was rather terrible at consoling. I didn’t want to give false hope, nor did I think it acceptable to let Cris wander around alone in this place.
“Is that enough?” asked Cris.
“I also want to know why the bun had that effect,” I said.
“… There were mostwurm leaves used in it. That plant can be used as a deterrent against some things. Though it seems to be much stronger than I thought. It explains why the poppies have never overgrown out of here, since there are mostwurm fields right above. Now then,” she said as she stood, “I’ll be going.”
“Me too,” I said. “I changed my mind.”
“You mean you lied,” Cris sighed.
“If something kills me, the same will probably happen to you, so it won’t really matter, right?” I said. It sounded like a joke, but it was logical to me. “Besides that, I still have this. If what you said is true, it should clear your mind.” I handed her the bun.
She didn’t eat it, but instead asked me, “So, after all this… What will you do?”
“My plan hasn’t changed. I’ll travel to the capital and search for what I must find.”
Cris cocked her head to the side. “And you won’t tell me what that is?”
“I’m not sure I could, even if I’d like to.”
Cris still hesitated, for some reason.
“You’d prefer to stay trapped in an illusion?” I asked.
“It would be crazy to prefer an illusion over reality… even if the real world is the one where evil is born.”
It didn’t sound like a denial to my question, but she did eat the food. I waited silently until she was done.
“Do you feel better?” I asked.
“Slightly more clear-headed, maybe,” Cris said.
Cris was bothered by something. Not something as transient as the world around us right now, or something that mattered only at this moment in time. I understood that there was an inherent quality of the world that conflicted with her.
To me, the world was as it was. I felt surprise at seeing magic, and felt disgust at the cruelty of nature, but those momentary deviations were quickly incorporated into my world view. There was no event that could happen that would shatter my immature conception of the world, whether that was due to its puny size, or maybe its rigidity? The latter was preferable, but I wasn’t sure.
As such, I was unable to empathize with what Cris was enduring. ‘Your mind is hazy, so fix it with this’; such a basic link between problem and solution rarely truly existed in the world. This I began to understand, and it was only because it was Cris who disrupted this logical progression—a person who I understood to be, somehow, closer to the ‘root of all things’ than anybody else I had encountered. I could then question why I believed this about her, but there was no time for a journey down an infinite regression such as that.
Advertisement
Anyhow. When Cris spoke of the world where ‘evil is born’, I was unable to offer any insight, for I could not see beyond the premise; that this world was the one that birthed evil, because it was the only world, was it not?
It might be possible to say that evil was birthed here because this was the only world. To surmise: living in this world means to live amongst evil.
Unfortunately, none of this pondering served to fulfil its goal, which was to attempt to console Cris who was distraught over this genus of thought. Why did she bring up ‘evil’, anyway?
We had been walking for a few minutes now—slowly, due to injuries. Fortunately for me, there were no signs of Karl’s presence, and Varus was nowhere to be seen either. There was only me and Cris, and the dripping of water. Much of the vines and poppies had become ash, so walking had become much easier.
“I’m starting to get a clear picture of this place,” Cris said. “I almost forgot how it felt to have a clear head. It’s a strange feeling. I wonder if this is what people feel like when they’re waking up from being knocked out for surgery.”
“I couldn’t guess. That gives me a question. What if you get sick, or need to be tended to?”
“Then I’d probably get sliced apart a minute later. And hey, that goes for you too, doesn’t it? Or does that whole madness just work on an entirely different principle to what I thought?” She sighed as she usually did when she had no answers. “That’s basically why I decided to become a doctor, anyway. To avoid the risk of anybody needing to come into contact with me.”
Cris pulled an object from her bag. It was a jagged piece of metal covered in blood.
“You still have that junk?” I asked. It was what I had been stabbed in the side with earlier.
“Notice anything?” she asked. I looked it over again, but it was just a bent piece of sharp metal, covered all over in dried blood.
“Nothing in particular.”
“Mm. Do you remember where you were when you were stabbed with it? Can you lead me there?”
“That shouldn’t be too hard…”
It was just around the corner from the large room with bookshelves in it where we had slept. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.
As expected, after some wandering, we came to a spot that I thought I recognized, and soon after that we rediscovered that large room. Cris peered inside through the soot-blackened doorway, but Karl and Varus were still nowhere to be found.
“They must have left out the top. I can’t believe the daylight reached here this entire time, and we never saw it,” Cris said.
Now that the poppies had been eradicated from around here, the hallucinogenic effect was fully dissipating. The previously green, crawling walls around here especially had been replaced with deep black remnants of an intense inferno. I counted myself lucky that the sheer heat of Karl’s attacks hadn’t downed me.
“Does that mean that our vision was manipulated to even miss daylight that was clearly there?” I asked. “Is that even possible?”
Cris shrugged. “It must be.”
We followed the hallway that circled the central room, and—following my movements from when I had run through the darkness—we turned into another doorway, then advanced through a few connected rooms.
“Ah, this room,” Cris said, recognizing the final one. It was one we had been in before; there was debris and metal strewn all over the floor, and the next doorway was followed by the large staircase that we hadn’t gone down.
Cris crouched down and inspected the floor carefully. After a moment she pointed something out to me.
“Blood?” I said.
“Right. The metal shard in your side was covered in blood, correct? But the shard itself was preventing much bleeding from happening; even moving around didn’t cause any sudden gushes of blood, right?”
I nodded, realizing that it was strange for the metal to be covered in blood.
“So the blood over the rest of it wasn’t mine?” I asked.
Cris nodded. “So the one who stuck it in you either cut themselves on it as they handled it, or something like that.”
“I heard a yell as I was chasing her… She probably stood on one of them.”
It made perfect sense. It had been pitch black, and some of the pieces on the floor had sections pointing into the air dangerously.
Cris followed the trail of blood. It continued on ahead, through the doorway, to the staircase, and then down its steps. I had doubted that this staircase was even real, considering the circumstances; such was its size and apparent depth. But it looked no different to before. Cris made her light shine brighter, and it penetrated deep into the darkness, but the steps seemed to never end. The stairs delved deep into the ground, much deeper than the rest of the dungeon.
“Will you go down?” I asked Cris.
“Rea is down there,” she replied. She took a deep breath, and began descending.
Before following her, I looked again at the message on the wall to the side.
“The ??? of seventy millennia forthward is drawn from thy will within”
It was identical to before, and remained obtuse.
Advertisement
Eternal Fire
Academy of The Gods, a school unlike any other. Students are chosen by one of the four gods to attend. Once chosen you are given a gift and assigned to one of the four houses. When Cleo Norse is chosen to be the first-ever female warrior, how will the world respond? Was it just dumb luck she was picked, or is there more than the Gods are telling them?
8 236daphne pink
an artist x fan au.Because who would ever think that the guy Sakura meets in Omegle is the famous singer Ryosuke she oh-so adores?
8 137My Crazy Hot Interstellar Affair
When Andie Bank agreed to take a job to help save her friend's reputation, it wasn't supposed to end up in a romance-fueled galactic rescue mission with her irresistibly hot boss. *****With a merciless tabloid set on destroying the Hollywood career and reputation of Andie's best friend, Andie accepts a job offer with the same company on the condition that they leave her friend alone. She knew about her smoking hot boss when she accepted the accounting position, but the tabloid failed to mention small details like celebrity kidnappings, alien imposters, camera-shaped ray guns, and their absolutely abysmal knowledge of the American tax system.Unable to deny their atomic attraction, Andie and her boss's kisses quickly evolve into a forbidden affair that must remain secret at all costs. When a certain vengeful ex-fiancé discovers their secret, the laser guns come out and Andie is forced to flee for her life. As time runs out, Andie must choose between love or committing a crime that goes against everything she stands for.Plus hot alien sex! ...[[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]
8 79Girls Talk [Girl x Girl]
When two enemies from high-school are picked to be university roommates, both are left feeling they have been dealt some serious bad luck. When they're told they can not change rooms until the month is up, how will Kate and Victoria survive the beginning of their time at University together?
8 85The First Fae Mate
Visena Sage knows two things for sure. Her name, and that she's part Faery. After waking in an unfamiliar realm with no memories (or clothes), Visena is dragged by the scruff to the Earth realm by two insulting and unusual strangers. They seem eager to take her to their leader, an unidentified enemy with unknown motives. However, in a potentially wonderful twist of fate, she is immediately rescued by a small group who use gibberish words to address one another.Alpha? Beta? Mates?The apparent damsel searches for answers while familiarising herself with the group's deliciously scented, cautious leader: Gideon Steel. Gideon seems intrigued by her blunt, confident approach and keeps a watchful eye on her as she navigates his strange world. Both seek answers to the same questions while feeling an unnatural pull to each other.Who is she? (Who is he?) What happened to her family?And is she really the damsel in this story?Happy reading ;) [Mature content: language, humour, violence and sex. 17 and up] ...~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Top tags to date:#11 Vampire of 209k#12 in werewolf of 198k #38 in romance of 1.98 mil#1 in Witch of 80.5k#1 in fairies of 12.5k#1 strong female lead of 7.7k#1 in faeries of 4.86k#1 in fairfolk of 180
8 388Bestie Boys
Mia met Trevor, Liam and Sebastian in 5th grade. At the time she thought they were sore losers, but they soon turned into her bestie boys. Mia is adored and loved by her boys through the years. They are there for every moment and memory. College is approaching and her boys have secrets they need to share. Will these secrets tear their friendship apart or will Mia decide she can't live without her bestie boys?*****MiaMy dad used to tell me stories of princesses and knights in shining armor. It's one of the only memories I have of him. I'm thankful for those stories because I was able to recognize a real knight when I saw one. I met three on a kickball field in 5th grade. They were sweaty, dusty and clad in athletic clothing instead of armor, but they were real knights. Not the fairy tale kind from books and fables, but the kind of knights that support your dreams and encourage your growth. This is just the start of the story for this princess and her knights.*****Bestie Boys is a full length novel and can be read as a stand alone, but suggested reading order is:#1 Cassidy and Carter#2 Bestie Boys#3 Sentinel BoysBestie boys is a reverse harem #whychoose romance. Mia will not have to chose between her love interests. This book does contain sexual content and is made for viewers over the age of 18. Stand alone, multiple POV, 59,000 words with a HEA🖤
8 74