Tick
My eyes opened wide.
I stretched my arms up, expecting to feel the gentle sway of the vine hammock beneath me, the rough texture of the woven grapevines against my back.
"Gods, those vine hammocks are -"
My voice cut off. I was standing. I wasn't on the hammock. Hell, I wasn't even lying down. I was standing perfectly upright, my arms still stretched above my head like I was some kind of scarecrow.
I looked around, confusion settling over me. I wasn't even on the rocky beach anymore. The sound of waves lapping against stone was gone, replaced by an eerie silence, which made me wonder if my bad luck had acted up again and Eudoxia had teleported to somewhere else, even worse than the Island of Crossroads, probably something like the Island of Suffering for Julius One and Only.
Instead of the familiar sight of silver trees and grapevine huts, I was in the middle of sand. Never ending, stretching sand that rolled in dunes and valleys as far as the horizon in all directions.
The sand wasn't the normal golden color you'd expect from a beach either. It was almost white, like bone dust. Speaking of which, where was the light coming from? I looked up and saw nothing but an endless expanse of black sky, yet somehow I could see everything clearly.
"Just where am I?" I asked, pondering the question to myself, when suddenly the sand at my side erupted like a geyser. It shot out like a bullet, spraying granules everywhere, and from within the spray emerged a perfect replica of myself.
Auburn hair, the same shade as mine.
Green eyes, identical to the ones I had.
Same height, same build, same face.
But the expression was different.
"AH!!"
The newcomer and I yelled, our voice exactly the same though his tone was different. Our gazes found each other, and I felt a strange recognition wash over me.
"Richter?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
"Julius?" he replied at the exact same moment.
We both stared at each other for a long moment. It was weird, seeing myself but not myself.
This was Richter, the part of me that lived for battle, that enjoyed the rush of combat in ways I never could and probably never would.
"Are we dreaming?" Richter asked.
"I guess so," I answered. "Weird that we're doing it at the same time though."
Wait, if I was dreaming, then maybe I could control things. I'd heard about lucid dreaming before, where people could manipulate their dreams once they realized they were asleep. I focused on the thought of my body leaving the ground, imagining myself floating up into that endless black sky.
Nothing happened. My feet remained firmly planted in the bone-white sand.
I tried again, this time imagining the sand around me turning into water. Still nothing.
Huh, disappointing. Either this wasn't that kind of dream, or I was terrible at this whole lucid dreaming thing.
"What are you doing?" Richter asked, watching me with an expression that clearly said he thought I was being an idiot.
"We're in a lucid dream, we're supposed to have control over it, but I guess we don't," I answered, my gaze shooting up to see the blackened sky more clearly. Despite the darkness, I could make out details that shouldn't have been visible. The moon hung high, beautiful and full. Stars surrounded it, and even a few moved, no, not stars. Planets.
I could even see the faint stretch of light that identified our galaxy, the Milky Way sprawling across the void like a river made from superheated hydrogen.
"This is really detailed for a dream," I muttered, more to myself than to Richter.
Tock
"You hear that?" Richter asked, his body immediately tensing again.
I nodded my head, letting it fall down from where I was star-gazing.
A rumble followed, this time even bigger than the sound that had taken place when Richter got shot out of the sand. We looked in front of us, and the sand began to fall into a pit. Slowly at first, just a gentle depression forming in the white grains, then quicker and quicker as the depression became a sinkhole, then a chasm. The pit grew rapidly, soon reaching close to our feet. I could feel gravity trying to take hold of us as the sand pushed us inward, trying to drag us down into whatever lay beneath.
"Run bro," Richter yelled, grabbing me by the hand. With his strength that surpassed my own by manifolds even though we had the exact same body, he pulled me along.
I stumbled at first, my feet slipping in the shifting sand, but Richter's grip was iron-strong. I wondered why exactly I wasn't as strong as he was. Then however I thought of something else, I could finally ask him some stuff.
"So you aren't going all quiet on me anymore?" I asked as we ran, my voice bouncing with each step.
"Is this really the time to be asking me that?" he replied, not even breathing hard despite our sprint across the treacherous terrain.
"No time like the present, you battle maniac," I shot back, not minding the fact that the rumbling behind us was getting louder, and I could hear what sounded like massive amounts of sand cascading into the growing void.
We ran and ran as the rumbling grew behind us. I tried to look back once to see how close the pit was getting, but Richter yanked my arm hard enough to nearly dislocate my shoulder.
"I couldn't keep you safe," Richter suddenly yelled as he pulled me along. "How could I show myself after that!"
"Oh you big crybaby," I called back. "You heard Lyssa, firstborn are as strong as minor gods. What exactly were you going to do against something like that? Doesn't mean you can go hole yourself up in the corners of my mind like a whiny kid who didn't get the toy they wanted for christmas. You lost, get over it. I lost too, didn't I?"
Richter didn't answer, he only pulled me along.
We ran what felt like kilometers as the sand continued to cascade behind us. The sound was deafening now. At one point, my I just decided to go ragdoll and let Richter pull me along. I couldn't be bothered to keep running anymore.
I just wanted to sleep, for crying out loud. Was that too much to ask for? Why couldn't I even rest in my dreams? A little peaceful unconsciousness after the days I'd had?
Tick
The rumbling stopped suddenly, as if someone had flipped a switch. We stopped too, both of us breathing heavily despite the fact that this was supposedly a dream.
Where the sand had been rumbling and falling, something now stood. Something that definitely hadn't been there before.
A structure. Massive, ancient, and partially ruined.
It was a building, but calling it that felt inadequate. This was architecture on a scale that dwarfed anything I'd ever seen, even in pictures. The building was torn down in places, burnt at its edges with what looked like scorch marks from some massive fire. Pillars of white marble rose like the bones of some titanic beast, many of them cracked or partially collapsed.
Gardens and pools surrounded the structure, though the plants looked withered and the pools were dry, filled with the same bone-white sand that covered everything else. Statues stood scattered throughout the gardens, some intact, others broken and weathered beyond recognition.
The whole place had an air of faded grandeur, like it had once been magnificent beyond imagining but had fallen into ruin through age or catastrophe.
"What is it?" Richter asked, his voice hushed with something approaching awe.
"I have no clue," I answered back, though even as I said it, something deep in my mind whispered that I should know. That this place was important somehow. "But don't you feel kind of-"
"Drawn to it," Richter continued, finishing my sentence perfectly.
The pull was undeniable. Like the building was calling to us, inviting us closer. Or maybe compelling us closer.
"I mean, we are in our own dream, right?" I asked, already beginning to walk toward the entrance that loomed in front of us. "It's not like we can die or anything, so wanna go check it out?"
A paved road led to the structure's entrance, and a word came to mind unbidden, peripatos. I didn't know how I knew that word, but it felt right.
The road was made of the same white marble as the pillars, though many of the stones were cracked or missing entirely. It seemed to circle the entire structure from what I could tell, with gardens flanking both sides and two small rivers, also dry now, separating the garden and the pavement.
"Wait-" Richter said, grabbing my arm and making me stop dead in my tracks. His grip was firm but not painful. "Let me go first."
"Crybabies first then," I said, shoving him forward with a grin.
Tock
He didn't say anything to my jab, instead he began to walk carefully toward the entrance. His hands were curled into fists, ready to throw a punch at whatever might jump out at us. Which, given our recent track record with mysterious places, was probably a reasonable precaution, then again this was a dream, sooo....
We crossed through the main entrance, passing between two massive doors that hung askew on their hinges. One was completely off its track, leaning against the wall.
Inside was what looked like a lobby, though lobby seemed too small a word for the space.
It was enormous, made entirely of white marble. The ceiling soared overhead, supported by more of those massive pillars, and somehow there was a chandelier hanging from above. Not an ancient torch or brazier, but an actual chandelier with what looked like dozens of LED lights.
Yeah talk about weird, right?
Multiple staircases led to upper floors of the structure, spiraling up into shadows I couldn't penetrate even in this strange dream-light. There were seemingly hundreds of doors lining the walls, each one identical to the others and giving no hint as to what might lie behind them.
Tick
Richter tugged at my arm again, pulling my attention away from the weirdness surrounding us.
"Look," he said, pointing toward the side wall.
Hanging there like trophies in some kind of display case were both the Vampire Killer and the Mormo mask. They were mounted on ornate pedestals, spotlit as if they were museum pieces.
We walked over toward the display, our footsteps echoing in the vast space. Richter reached out and took the Vampire Killer from its podium without hesitation. The moment he lifted it, another identical whip appeared in its place, as if the display was magically refilling itself.
We both shrugged. Dream logic, I supposed.
I reached out to grab the second whip, curious to see if I could duplicate the duplication, but my hand passed right through it like it was made of smoke.
"Guess there's only one real one," I said, grabbing the Mormo mask instead. Unlike the second whip, this felt solid and real in my hands. I could feel the smooth, liquid-like texture of it, the slight warmth that seemed to radiate from within. After a moment, I placed it back on its pedestal.
Tock
We felt it then, that same inexorable pull as before. The one that had drawn us into this structure in the first place, except now it was stronger.
The source was obvious, a door at the back end of the lobby that dwarfed all the others. It was enormous, reaching past the second, third, and even almost to the fourth floor through height alone. The door seemed to divide the structure in two, left to right.
Strangely, even though the door was clearly part of the building's interior, I hadn't been able to see what was behind it when we'd viewed the structure from outside. It was as if that entire section was somehow hidden or protected from observation.
We both began to walk toward it, our steps synchronizing without conscious effort. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Guess inhabiting the same body, leads to this.
The massive door wasn't locked or barred. In fact, it swung open at our approach as if it had been waiting for us. Beyond was darkness.
We crossed the threshold together.
The room was dark, and semicircular in shape, made of the same white marble as everything else. It was incredibly vast, with a domed ceiling that disappeared into shadow above our heads.
The darkness wasn't complete, though. There were two sources of light coming from somewhere high above, creating cylindrical beams that illuminated only specific spots on the floor. Everything else remained in shadow.
The spaces lit by those beams contained raised seats, like thrones but simpler in design. One was positioned at the back end of the room, while another sat to its right, they were both at the same height, none seemed more important than the other.
We walked deeper into the room, our footsteps muffled, and that's when I noticed there weren't just two seats. As my eyes adjusted to the strange lighting, I could make out the silhouettes of other raised seats, one after another, arranged in a perfect semicircle that matched the shape of the room itself.
I counted them.
There were nine in total.
A word came to mind, rising from the same deep place that had supplied peripatos earlier.
"This is an Exedra," I muttered, the word spilling from my lips.
"What is an-" Richter started to ask.
Before he could finish his question, I felt something grab me with invisible hands I was yanked upward so suddenly that I didn't even have time to cry out.
I flew straight through the ceiling as if it were made of mist, passing through solid marble like it was nothing at all.
My eyes landed on the constellations above, now much closer than they had been before. I could see details in the stars that should have been impossible to make out with human vision. Nebulae swirled, stars shone, planets spun in their orbits and comets flew at speed's insurmountable.
Then it all began to fade to black. But I could swear, if only for a moment just before consciousness left me entirely, that a chill crept up my spine as I felt two golden eyes fall on me from somewhere in that infinite darkness.
Tock.
A/N: Oh what is all this new stuff, the chairs, the building, whatever else I wrote. Mystery, huh. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter.
Oh and I prolly will have a lot of time tomorrow cause we got two flood warnings here, meaning we're getting flooded most likely and I don't have college.
Send those stones and reviews.
Author out.