spears of Uu'kata (CLEAN(ish) Version)

Chapter 44 - Emptiness

Charlotte knew she couldn't avoid Ahnekk forever, but she also couldn't seem to stop teleporting out of the castle every time she saw him. It wasn't out of fear. No, she wasn't afraid of him. It was anger. Betrayal. She didn't feel much better about Echnar, for that matter. Since, not only was he all in on the plans to murder of innocent people, but he'd just stood there and watched as Ahnekk strangled her.

"Okay, focus," Gondroll said from directly behind her, his breath tickling her throat. "We don't want to go far. Just across the room. See where you are, know where you are, then imagine the place you want to be and pull that image to you."

Charlotte tried to follow his instructions. She really did. But instead of a gateway opening, which should have happened, she was just suddenly across the room.

"Ah!" Charlotte yelped in surprise at suddenly being nose-to-nose with the far wall.

"No! No, no, no!" Gondroll scolded. "You need to make a gate. Teleporting is dangerous. You could have ended up inside that wall, Charlotte!"

Charlotte took several steps back and turned to him. "I didn't mean to," she said. "It just doesn't work that way for me."

Gondroll sighed and pulled off his round spectacles. He used the hem of his shirt to rub away a smudge that probably didn't even exist, then plopped them back onto his deep gray face.

Looking at her, he licked his lips and said, "Let's try again."

Sighing, Charlotte walked across the room. When she was close enough to touch, he reached out, his fingers lightly brushing the side of her neck as she turned around and faced the open room again.

"Okay, don't imagine yourself being there. This time, imagine... opening a door to there," Gondroll said. "Are there any of these Poke-things you keep going on about that... open doors?"

Charlotte grinned. She'd tried to help her lovers understand Pokémon but it seemed beyond them. The very idea that pictures could move made them laugh and look at her like she was crazy.

Then she'd tried to explain the card game. That hadn't gone over well either. Apparently Uu'k'asht didn't play cards. She planned to change that. But one thing at a time.

Charlotte closed her eyes, dipped into the distortion, and imagined reaching out, taking hold of a door handle. She turned it.

When she opened her eyes, she was still standing in the same spot.

Frowning, she closed her eyes and tried again, once again imagining the door.

Nothing.

Charlotte rolled her eyes and groaned. "This doesn't fucking work. I can't think of any cartoons that make portals other than that fucking hedgehog but that cartoon is so faded in my brain I can't summon him."

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she sifted through her limited knowledge. She liked ancient cartoons, but she'd watched most of them when she was a young child. Several Pokémon could do it, but she couldn't get them to work. Maybe she wasn't at a high enough level to use them...

No, that was stupid. Maybe it was mechanics. She knew she wanted to make a portal, but she didn't know how the portal worked. Like the doors in the castle. She'd grown up with doors opening automatically when she was close enough, but in the castle, you had to actually grab the door handles and turn them, then push. It was simple, sure. But if someone didn't know that they needed to take those actions to open the door, they risked running their face into it, as she'd done so, so many times.

Charlotte kept trying to open the door, and kept failing. An hour passed, then two. Her frustration grew.

"It's not fucking working!" she finally snapped, rounding on Gondroll with her hands balled into fists at her sides.