Passage denied

Philip was drinking tea in the lower floor.

His partner, Christopher, took to walking around the premises of the manor. Did he realize there was a rite around the manor just as he knew the one on the hospital? Considering how Christopher so deftly evaded being caught in the web, he must have known what rite it was even. Did he possess some method of uncovering spells?

Regardless, that was not Adam’s concern at the moment. He needed to get out of the house and meet with Joseph.

He walked back into the first floor. Philip was sitting on one of the couches. He glanced at Adam. The mask still covered the lower part of his face. He turned away.

“Adam,” John said, walking down the steps. He noticed Philip and frowned.

“Hello, John,” Adam said, walking toward the door. “Are you all right?”

John glared at him. “My brother just died. What kind of question is that?”

Adam nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry for your loss.”

John opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself at the last moment. He glanced at Philip and clicked his tongue.

“I’m leaving,” Adam declared.

“Where to?” John asked. Philips turned around, his still eyes strangely curious.

“To the hospital,” he lied. “I need to see Mary. She hasn’t woken yet; I feel worried.”

John stiffened. A gloomy expression twisted his features. He clenched his teeth and turned away, gesturing at the door. “Goodbye, brother.”

Adam took a last look at him, trying to understand his mind. There was something strange about him. A riddle for another time.

§

The place Joseph chose to meet was a small rented apartment. The owner was an old lady that bothered him with very little except payment. No one knew of this, according to him.

There were books spread everywhere. Jars and bottles on shelves contained liquids, rocks and dust. One bottle contained what appeared to be a continuous rippling in the air.

Adam touched the glass jar holding it. It felt cold.

This was a fragment, a shard of power, aimless power. It could be used in a rite to bend reality in some way, or to call upon an otherworldly being. If not contained it would float away. In his notes, he wrote about them in detail. His methods of collecting them involved simple rites. Apparently he could manifest some by his own will, though that had not always been possible.

Joseph was observing him as he studied the fragment. Adam turned back to him, realizing he had lost himself for a minute. Joseph looked haunted, scared, and suspicious.

“This is good,” Adam said, leaving the jar there.

Joseph scowled. “A piece of magic.” He shook his head. “That is a remain. When the Withering Sun asked me to make the rite, he gave me a piece of power to do it. After I finished, it broke in several pieces. That is one of them. I’ve been trying to figure what to do with it.”

Adam nodded. “So you can’t contact the Withering Sun.”

“Yes,” Joseph hissed. He touched his arm above the wound the spider had inflicted. “I need more time.”

“Can you show me the rite the Withering Sun asked you to use?”

“What for?”

“For seeing.”

He scowled, clearly unwilling, but under the duress of Adam’s gaze, he stood and reached for one of the books lying on a shelf. He flipped the pages, then finding what he wanted gave it to Adam. It was the circle for the rite.

He had expected it to be similar to the rite to enter the dream of the Melodist, and was not disappointed.

He inspected the collection of items on the shelves. What a bad place for storing materials. No subtlety or care about the metallic properties of some.

“We need copper, and...bismuth. You do have bismuth do you not?”

Joseph cocked an eyebrow. “You’re trying to do the rite? It won’t work. You need a large space to work and several days.”

“I’ll do better a rite than this,” Adam said. “It’ll be small, only for the two of us, and then you’ll speak to him.”

Joseph regarded him with suspicious eyes. He clearly did not believe it possible.

Adam ignored him and reached for his materials. Strange, how most rites involved minerals of some kind. Metals, stone, crystals. Purified minerals, mostly. There was nothing mystical about them.

He set the shimmering metal, shaped like small cubes on the floor, put a finger over it and absently willed it to melt. It melted.

Joseph arched an eyebrow at that.

He shaped the soft metal into a single shimmering cube and the copper into a thin wire that dug into the floor; he made pointy stones out of a yellow dust whose name he couldn't remember, and drew triangles and squares with signs whose meaning he did not fully grasp with a chalk, but knew would work.

In the end, the rite appeared similar to the one he used to enter the dream of the Melodist, but more complex. In the first place that rite required no materials. Why was that?

During his work, Joseph had grown quite mute.

“Joseph,” Adam called, snapping the man from his reverie. “Are you prepared?”

“Is it finished?” Joseph glanced down at the drawings.

"Almost,” Adam said, standing and observing the thing he made.

Joseph followed him with his eyes, but did not protest even as Adam reached for the fragment—likely the most precious material Joseph possessed.

He opened the jar, and reached within. His hands grasped nothing, of course, for the fragment was not physical. It could not be held by fingers, and could pass through most obstacles, though not glass for some reason. Yet, he felt something on the tip of his fingers, almost like a tendril extending from him. He did not grasp it, but guided the fragment out instead, like a magnet pulled by a piece of iron.

Joseph stared intently as the fragment floated toward the center of the circle.

It stopped, ripples intensifying like waves upon fabric. Then it burst open as red light filled the room, a cold light.

Adam started, exhaling condensation, shivering at the sharp drop in temperature. The wooden shelves rattled and creaked, though nothing fell off.

Joseph stared at his hands, contemplative. He rubbed his fingers together, feeling them, and stared at the room in wonder. “This is just like when I made the trap,” he uttered, though it seemed he spoke to himself. Eventually, his gaze wandered toward Adam, where it sparkled with fear and awe.

“Reach into it with your mind,” Adam instructed, sitting down, suddenly aware of what he needed to do.

Like a good student, Joseph turned toward the rift, trying to ignore all the weird stuff happening in his room. He might even have succeeded.

This...felt natural. Telling someone what needed to be done. It was like something he had done a thousand times over.

He closed his eyes and felt the rift before him, like a grand open door from which a harsh light escaped and fragmented. Fragments. Those were fragments, flying to faraway places. He felt Joseph, his mind, or spirit, or avatar loosening from his body with difficulty, as if fettered by heavy chains.

With a thought he pulled Joseph loose, surprising the man, and hurled him through the door. He waited a moment longer to see if anything would happen, then entered himself.

He was falling headfirst. His heart beat like a drum and he screamed pathetically. A tunnel stretched before him, impossibly wide and vast, made of almost physical light. Beyond it, he saw ultimate space and vast fields of stars, glowing in the distance.

Fragments of light escaped in the opposite distance, as if longing for the world he left behind.

He fell an impossible distance. Then, he stopped. Although he was not sure stopped was the term. He did not arrive at the end of the tunnel stumbling so much as he simply appeared, standing and without inertia.

The tunnel was nowhere to be seen, and as he looked around a deeply unsettling feeling overwhelmed him.

He expected a field of ice, or something similar. He didn’t expect a desert.

He stood in a field of sand with tall dunes blown by the wind. But unlike a normal desert, enormous spurs of ice jutted out of the ground everywhere. There were more colors around the ice than in the rest of the world, which was pure red.

He walked about, curiously.

It was much stranger than the Melodist’s forest. He felt completely lost.

Sand floated upward in thin spirals. He looked toward the sun. It was closer now.

The sun was jagged and slashed. From these slashes red liquid poured out. Like blood.

Adam felt a chill that had nothing to do with the overwhelming cold of this dream. What he thought was a spire connecting the sun to the earth was blood, pouring endlessly out of ever fresh wounds.

He walked beyond some jagged hills of ice to take a better look at the field beyond. The deserted seemed to stretch into eternity, as well as mountains of ice like angry jagged jaws pointing at the sky leaning impossibly at their sides.

Strangely, he could make out weird reptiles slithering in the distance.

Stranger than all, however, was the river of blood. It came from the direction of the sun, and disappeared beyond his sight.

He walked toward the river.

AWAY!

Adam stopped, the disembodied voice like a physical wall preventing him from continuing. His head hurt like it was splitting.

I smell them on you.

The voice was a rumble, reverberating in his head. Adam fell to his knees.

You have meddled with the bats, brought them back from Oblivion, and dare to approach me? Send them back. And never step in my dominion again!

Everything went dark. Then he saw himself, hurled away through the tunnel of light, being lifted upward by a strange push.

He was back in his body, gulping for air, feeling drained.

The rift was before him, hungry and alive with power, spewing fragments of light.

He looked aside and saw Joseph, sitting cross-legged, eyes closed. He was still in the dream.

He stood with a groan and realized, to his surprise, that frost had covered the room. He left for the walkway outside, unable to bear the oppressive feeling of the red light.

It was snowing. He looked over the rails, and saw that the street was covered in white. It was a strong snowfall, almost unnatural.

Fractals of ice grew along the walls and doors of nearby in strange and mesmerizing patterns.

An agonizing smell tickled his nose. It came from him. The smell of dreams, so thick he fancied he could see it as kaleidoscopic mist.