Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 59: Anomaly

Toren Daen

I didn't know what to expect when I stepped through the portal. I was feeling off-kilter from the can of coffee, each step taken robotically. I tried to maintain a mask of confidence, but my thoughts were spiraling out of control.

And so it was that when I stepped through the portal, I wasn't paying enough attention. I bumped straight into Jared's broad back, stumbling as his bulk offset mine. I shook my head, desperately pulling myself back to the present.

"Sorry about that," I said to Jared. "I wasn't paying atte–"

Jared's look of shock stripped me of that forced calm. He was staring at the zone ahead of us, his jaw slack. In fact, Alandra and Darrin were much the same.

Why?

I found the answer for myself a moment later. Stretching in front of us was a road, leading straight toward two portals not a hundred feet from us. Except the roads were paved in familiar asphalt, with white lines painted in the middle to delineate lanes. The asphalt road stretched beyond the portals into infinity, an expanse of rolling hills and grass as far as the eye could see. A few trees dotted the endless hills like a child adding tiny dots of trees to a painting. Unlit streetlamps loomed over empty sidewalks.

But the true difference was along the sides of the road. Strange structures grew from the ground, blocky and misshapen things resembling buildings. They looked like someone attempted to draw houses and shops from memory, the fudged lines and blurred paint marking where their recollections failed. They looked wrong, a twisted and divergent display of architecture. Walls were too high or bent in almost cartoonish displays that defied physics.

The colors hurt to look at: browns, yellows, purples, greens, and a dozen other horrid mixes meshing together like someone stuck them in a blender and threw the contents on every surface.

But I stared for an entirely different reason than the ascenders. For all the strange colors, physics-defying walls, and strange roads, I could recognize parts of these buildings. It was an attempt at imitating 21st-century architecture, the wall paneling and shingled roofs familiar to my mind.

What is happening? I thought to myself, my eyes darting across the zone. There were no monsters that I could sense. Is this some sort of illusion? A twisted reflection of my mind?

I remembered the ruin Arthur reached where an entire illusion overlaid the djinn crystal's room, hiding the place in plain sight. Was this similar?

"Okay, keep close," Darrin said, stepping forward. There was a sun in the sky, but it didn't beat down on us relentlessly as the last zone had. "This zone is odd, but we haven't been attacked yet. Keep an eye out for traps or beasts."

I swallowed, taking a shaky step forward. The group began to move down the asphalt road, Alandra sending baffled looks all around us. "I've never seen a zone where there were buildings," she said breathily. "I've heard of them, though. They almost always have relics!"

"Keep together," Darrin scolded as Alandra looked longingly toward one of the buildings. "We'll explore these buildings one by one. The exit portal is close by, but that shouldn't let us be complacent."

The group shuffled toward the first house on the right. The similarities to the architecture of my previous life were starkly apparent, even if they looked painted on. My heart beat in my chest as the lead striker of the Unblooded party approached the door, settling a hand onto the knob. Darrin's turned the handle of the door, pushing it open.

It was empty. The entire inside was a large open space, white walls reflecting the light perfectly. No shadows were cast from any point, adding a feeling of standing in an endless rush of white.