“I dunno...” She certainly had cause to be uneasy. The door itself, for instance, startled its viewer with a vague sense of bad-ness, such that the immediate intuitions of the onlooker were convinced that nothing like it should be permitted to exist within the natural world. There was a gold engraving upon it of what looked like the profile of a snake, its head facing straight down and its tail first stretching up and then looping around in a circle. The actual features of this serpent, however, far more resembled a dragon, with spines running down its back and a head that was more rectangular than triangular. The engraving upon the door perfectly resembled the key that unlocked it, which Valkyrie presently held in a vice grip out of sheer uneasiness.
“Morpheus specifically told me never to open a door with that symbol on it.”
“And did mean-old Morpheus tell you why you weren’t supposed to open it?” Flip kept his voice down so as not to generate too disruptive of an echo throughout the dimly lit cavern within which they currently stood. Well, in reality they were not in much of a cavern; not a full one, at least. They had traveled through several castle corridors and a large foyer, also lit only dimly by torches bearing an eerie orange-violet flame, before coming to a single tunnel of stone. The tunnel led steeply downwards, with stairs hewn out of rock, and it was at the bottom of this tunnel that the appearance of the locked door flung itself upon the eyes of the wayward traveler; the contrast between the deep black stone – which inflicted downright dread – and the grey-brown wood – which inflicted only a subtle sense of uneasiness – was certain to dissuade even the boldest from traveling any further.
Flip, however, blatantly disregarded such visual cues. Though nothing more than a hoarse whisper, his voice was as jolly as ever. Could he not see what was plainly obvious? Hadn’t he just come through the same hellish corridors and dead-ends that Valkyrie had? She thought all of this and more as Flip continually egged her on.
“No…” Valkyrie said in response to Flip’s prying question.
“Ha ha!” Valkyrie nearly leaped out of her skin as Flip’s laugh boomed throughout the labyrinth in which they were hidden. “Don’t you see? He wants whatever’s behind this door all to himself!”
“I guess that sounds like him…” Valkyrie said in hesitation. Her character judgment was not perfectly accurate. It was true that Morpheus was a prankster, much like her, and he desired very much to find novelty and adventure wherever possible (though being the King of Dreamvale offered very few opportunities for such excursions). But he was not a delinquent prankster, as Valkyrie was, and probably would not be so rebellious as to lie about some mysterious land of adventure hidden beneath his castle (not for all Valkyrie could tell, anyway). Her unwarranted character judgment, then, was more of a way to make conversation with Flip. She subconsciously reasoned that doing so would postpone her having to open the door; a decision on her part which, for some bizarre reason, she perceived to be an inevitability. She was not free not to open the door – she could always delay but never prevent the door eventually being opened by her own hand.
“Yeah yeah, there you go!” Flip said in a tone which might have been reassuring if it had not also sounded so insincere. “All these torches and dark hallways are nothing to be afraid of. He put them here. On purpose! Just to scare us away!” This conclusion did nothing whatever to lighten Valkyrie’s mood. To the contrary, it actually worsened her dread. It was one thing to think of this underground maze as an accident, another to think of it as having been created by someone, and still another issue entirely to imagine the maze as having been designed by someone whom she knew personally. Even if it was fake, it was still frightening, wasn’t it? The illusory nature of a nightmare does nothing to mitigate the terror which it inflicts; not, at least, while the nightmare is being dreamt.
“What if you’re wrong…?” Valkyrie uselessly protested on account of her inflating fears. “What if this wasn’t put here by Morpheus and there’s something horrible behind this door?”
“C’mon, Valkyrie. This is Dreamvale we’re talking about.” Flip’s inductive reasoning was not perfectly flawed. The Kingdom of Dreamvale, the basement of which they currently occupied, was comparable to something out of a storybook. Everything, down to the last pebble, was certain to bear some sort of pastel as its color. Pink, baby blue, lime green, yellow (especially yellow!), orange, among other similarly oriented colors were the staples in the cityscape of Dreamvale, and appeared not only most obviously on the buildings but even in everyday things such as clothing and household utensils. Flattery was the primary method of communication among locals, and it created a kind of lighthearted and superficial air, such that perfect strangers could be acquainted with the place in an instant. All was happy-go-lucky, a land of lollipops and rainbows.
You can imagine, then, how jarred Valkyrie was to discover so lifeless a prison deep underneath the castle of Dreamvale itself. “This?!” Valkyrie made a wide gesture to their surroundings, after which she chuckled a bit, baffled by Flip’s supposed ignorance, “This is not Dreamvale!”
“I’m telling you, Valkyrie, Morpheus is only using this,” Flip mocked Valkyrie’s previous gesture, “To scare us away.”
“No. No, Morpheus wouldn’t do this. Sure he’s funny, but he would never go this far.” Seeing that Valkyrie was adamant, Flip tried another angle. Why he wanted her to open the door so badly remained a mystery to Valkyrie. Had she stopped to really think about it, she might have seen Flip’s urgings for what they really were: temptations.
Flip sighed, partially in defeat and partially to recollect himself before his next argument. “Look. Even if something bad does happen, you have the Royal Scepter! Nothing can stop you while you’re wielding that!” Valkyrie’s attention was directed towards her right side, where a sacred and historical relic was held there by a magnetic force exerted upon it by her belt. This relic – this “Royal Scepter” – was a long staff about half Valkyrie’s own height made of some metal which looked just like gold but which was obviously much lighter. There was fixed on the end of it an orb of what looked like glass, but which bore a kind of subtle radiance which is difficult to describe. It clearly did not possess its own light or even color; what light and color the orb did possess was derived from its surroundings. But to call this a “reflection” would not do justice to the picture of it. If one were to strip from one’s own surroundings everything legal and physical, leaving nothing behind but the ideas and intuitions which those surroundings gave off, and if one were to somehow express this blob of ideas visually, you would receive in return something which resembled the orb on the end of the Royal Scepter.
Valkyrie’s mind was led astray into believing, by Flip’s subtle urging, that without having used the scepter even once, she could effectively wield it in the event that something dangerous really did await release behind the door. This was, of course, a ridiculous notion. But Valkyrie, desperate to escape Flip’s pressure upon her, was thus also desperate to create some personal justification in her mind for opening the door.
“I guess…” Valkyrie’s resistance was now purely involuntary. Flip knew he had her, and so employed his final tactic, which he had saved until the end of the conversation when she was ready to break.
“Well,” Flip said with a deceptive tone, “If you’re not going to open it, I guess we’d better be getting back to your party.”
YOU ARE READING
Nightmares
Viễn tưởng“C’mon,” Flip said to Valkyrie somewhat mischievously (a mood which was wholly inappropriate for the situation at hand), “Let’s open it.” He was referring, of course, to the imposing wooden door which stood before them, some three times Valkyrie’s...
