HavenGuarde

Chapter 16 - In the Mind

Chapter 16

In the Mind

- Turn off your mind and open your eyes -

"Close your eyes child," said a gentle voice. It belonged to a woman. Thonavar blinked.

"Mother?"

As his vision refocused, he saw the source of the gentle voice, but it was not his mother.

"I am not your mother, child," she said smiling. She was dressed in black robes.

He looked around him and found himself in a room that was white, similar to the courtroom of justice. He was also strapped to a kind of chair that was tilted backwards at an angle. Huge spotlights glared at him directly from above and he squinted for the light hurt his eyes. He could just make out through a blurred vision, some sort of machine or console by the side of the white-washed walls. There were connective wires and hardwires piled up in a corner.  

Where am I?

After they had left the houses of court, Felix had spoken quietly with Mirya and Jesse at the platform where they had first boarded the sky train and Thonavar had been made to stand to one side as they spoke in low tones. Then Felix had told Thonavar that it was time for him to take the entrance examination. Jesse had been stern-faced the whole time but nodding at Felix, he had, though seemingly reluctantly, allowed Thonavar to go with him. Waving goodbye to Mirya who smiled sadly as she waved back, Thonavar had left his mother and father and followed Felix aboard another train. Upon arriving at their destination and following Felix, Thonavar found himself once more inside the old citadel, the massive building that Felix had brought him into from the City Below. Thonavar had walked with Felix down a maze of white-washed hallways, each lined with a series of doors on both sides. Bright white lights embedded in the hallway ceilig blinded him each time he looked up. Everything was coloured white. It then occurred to Thonavar that he had been reunited with his mother and father in one of these rooms after the escaping from the prison wardens. That had seemed like a long time ago. Felix had then opened a door and brought Thonavar into a room slight. Thonavar was told to wait. A woman had come, and after talking to Felix Vanyaga for a while, he had left but not before saying a few words, imparting some words of wisdom to Thonavar that he had trouble recalling at that moment.

Thonavar guessed that the woman in front of him, who was now mixing some strange green and light blue liquids into a vial, was the same one that had spoken with Felix. The woman had asked Thonavar to follow her and he had. She escorted him down another whitened hallway. As he had turned around the corner, Thonavar found himself looking down another hallway though this time, Thonavar saw men and women in black robes passing through doors on each side of the hallway. As he walked down, following the black figure of the woman who walked straight down the hallway, some of those men and women in black passed him as their walked from door to door. Some smiled at him from deep within their hooded cowls as they walked across, while others, with looks that had seen death, moved quickly, shooting Thonavar dark looks as they moved gracefully past him. The woman never stopped to wait for a moment but walked continuously onwards at a measured pace, those moving across her path never bumping into her. Black ropes swirled around but never touched. Thonavar found the whole hallway experience strange and unnerving. He knew not where those men and women in dark robes came from. He could only guess that the doors that lined each side of the hallway did not lead to the same place but to a multitude of other places.

Finally, the woman had stopped to open a door on her right. The door had led to this room. The woman had made him drink something that made him pass out. A plan of escape formed in his head as he tried to visualize the route back out. It was going to be impossible to find his way back out. The hallways outside were a maze.