A twig breaks.
From under the arms of a dancing willow stands a deer. Majestic. Proud. Great powerful antlers hang above both ears. He looks up at me fearlessly. Takes a step closer and is caught at the hoof by the sickness. The buck yanks and pulls, but it’s no use. The sticky blackness inks up the hind of the deer and throws itself over, devouring all it touches. The sound of the buck’s cry is one you only hear in nightmares. It screams for generations until it falls to the floor. Its carcass decomposes into a sphere of oozing, cancerous death as it shrinks and powders into black grains of sand. The grains begin to multiply. Leaking in from everywhere. They flood in, little at first, but now in every direction. It’s all I can see for miles. The sand begins to turn, rotating slightly. Spiraling faster and faster with every rotation. Faster it spins. A whirlpool forms in the sand, sucking me to its center with a force that can’t compare. I claw and fight it, but it becomes steeper with every failed attempt. Faster it spins. It pours over me, crushing me deeper and deeper. Sinking further, I drift into the heart of darkness as it swallows me whole.
The pressure is too much.
I can’t breathe…
Seconds later, I burst out of the bottom landing on a much calmer pile of the same sand. A clear bright barricade surrounds me, perhaps, a glass wall contorted out of shape. I’m trapped within. Sand drops in from a tiny opening between the clear walls above.
I mash my face to the glass, peering through to the other side. To my horror, it’s my eyes that stare back. In a mirror the size of small skyscrapers in Olympia, on a cherrywood desk of equal proportion, rests a giant hourglass. Sand trickles from its top, under which I am imprisoned. No sign of life anywhere, or escape. Only a chilling promise is written in blood, dripping down the mirror.
The time is near.
Chapter 14
My eyes open. My lungs burn as they gasp for breath. The warm air is thick. It’s painful. Every bone in my body feels shattered. Every muscle, torn. Rays of sunshine pour through the open window painting the stale room lively shades of yellow and orange. Trying to claw my way back to reality I lift myself from a squeaky, metal bed. One I don’t remember seeing before. What is this place?
My sluggish brain struggles to distinguish between what I know has happened and what I think I know. Noticing the cuts and gashes buried deep in my bruised arms and legs, I attempt to inch myself to the edge of the bed. Those are real. A few drops of blood seep through a bandage on my arm where a droid bullet pierced me. I’m wearing clothes from Olympia, but they’re certainly not my clothes. Nothing around me looks familiar. The short walls appear to be adobe or some type of hardened dirt. There is no door, just a carved opening leading into the source of the chatter that fills my enquiring ear. People talking. Their words echo off the walls of this place in an accent I’ve never heard of.
“You’re probably wondering where you are,” asks a voice from outside the doorway, same accent. A short elderly man staggers into the room, hunched and wheezing. The sun has spotted his bald head, except around the sides where his thin, silver hair floats weightlessly. He is armed with a thick metal cane, repurposed pipe, but sturdy.
“Am I dead?” I ask vulnerably.
He laughs, shaking his head no. “The Taker will take you when He is ready. It is not yet your time, brother. Although, your aircraft… was not as fortunate.”
“Who are you?” I ask. The rhythm in my chest picks up tempo. Eyes dart left and right, scanning the room in search of anything I can use as a weapon. Always have a plan to kill everyone around you. The first lesson in banned Olympian literature, A Survivalist’s Guide to the Outlands.
“I am Elder Thestor, humble servant of the Giver and the Taker. You’re inside the temple of Cau, where we lay you after we dragged your unconscious body from the fire, saving your life. You should be grateful to the gods. Honored to be gifted with another breath from the Giver.” His tone’s scornful like my existence is offensive to him.
“We are extremely grateful,” interrupts the same little boy that I know I saw die in 34.
His words ring throughout my mind. The room narrows. Thoughts become hazy. I watched him die. I know I did. There was blood… and the gun.. and they shot him, but now’s he here.. he’s standing right there.. and–
“You look as if you’ve seen a spirit,” speaks the elder, but I don’t immediately hear him.
Is he a spirit?
How is this possible?
“Are you all right, brother?” asks the elder insistently. He must sense something isn’t right.
“He’s fine. He’s always been a little spacey,” chimes Athan wiping the sweat from a deep scratch across his forehead.
“You were dead. I saw you die,” I murmur, unable to shake the reality my eyes gaze upon. My words stumbling from my mouth. My orientation, gone astray.
The old man snaps to the boy.
But Athan replies, “He must’ve hit harder than I thought. We should probably let him rest,” and forces a nervous laugh like I’m crazy. I know I’m not fucking crazy. Am I crazy??
The skeptical old man dismisses himself from the room as the boy shoots me a threatening look behind the elder’s back. One that told me to keep my mouth shut or else.
As soon
