Mirror Sky. Part 1 - Blissful Nemesis

32 - Yellow Light

Alexander's mind raced.

Where am I going? Somewhere up. Can't see a thing.

He looked back. Nought's glowing met him. Her hands remained open. Her head was tilted, and her posture was unnatural and distorted. As he walked further away, the last bits of her human appearance eroded: her arms and legs were getting longer and bonier, and her figure thinner and taller.

Nought's silhouette was blurred by the dark. However, her white eyes stayed as crisp as ever, staring into his soul. He looked away.

Should I try to run past her back to my room? No, she's in my head. She can make me doubt my feet, and I'll roll down the stairs. I seem to be safe here. Unless she's playing me? Is she sneaking up on me?

Alexander looked back again. Nought was where he left her.

I should wait for adults. Just need to get away from her eyes...

He promised himself not to look back anymore and pressed on.

The darkness was clearing. The walls around Alexander were getting shorter. He looked up and saw glimpses of a tall ceiling. He soon could distinguish a familiar stone insignia on it: an even triangle with a hexagon in the middle. A symbol he learned to fear.

Oh shit, that's not where the Enlightened live, is it?

He felt the knife in his pocket. Reassured, he gingerly emerged from the floor in the middle of an enormous dark hexagonal room. There was no light there, but he could see the bluish outlines of everything well. However, the room's glass walls sloping inward hid nothing but thick darkness. Was it Twilight or more rooms beyond? Impossible to tell. Twilight would probably not be so dark, but he had never seen Twilight from so high up.

Alexander looked ahead and saw a staging area made in the art-deco style.

Valentina taught me art styles...

He discarded the depressing thought of nearly abandoning his caretakers and focused on a huge sculptural backdrop, dozens of rows of tables going up, and a tall tribune in front of it all.

The stage and the whole room silently judged every move Alexander made. He felt tiny and insignificant. It was also hard for him to breathe. The air was dusty and dry, making his throat scratchy. He made a few measured steps forward and saw rows of seats on both sides of him, all pointing at the stage. He looked down the nearest row and saw it filled with something white. He squinted and went closer.

As he approached, his imagination recognized all sorts of things in the white mass. Blankets, bricks, timber, skulls and bones. Skulls and bones. That image stuck and did not go away.

Now there was no doubt - the row of seats was packed full of skeletons, situated amidst knocked-over, rotten carcasses of furniture. The dead froze in their attempts to get ahead of each other, stuck running from something forever.

Alexander stopped short of the row. He was standing in the spot all these people were desperate to reach. A dozen yards away, the skeletons jealously looked at him with their dark eye-sockets, their mouths opened, their hands stretched forward, broken in a struggle to survive... what?

He looked around and listened, rows and rows of seats spread before him. There was no movement, no sound. He was the only living thing. He looked down the next row and saw more skeletons, one just a foot away from him. It lay on its back, looking up. Its fingers were buried deep in its eye sockets, with scratch marks around them.

Freaked, Alexander pondered on the sight.

He tried to get something out of his head. Did they have visions like me? Except, my vision couldn't follow me here...