The Pheonix Dimension

Chapter 24

As the two girls were having their moment, Laurance was wondering the forest, his mind full of crazy thoughts. 

"Hey!"he heard a voice close him. He turned around, only to see the last person he expected. Cali. The girl was sitting right in front of him, her face as white as ever, with the bandanna covering the horrific sight that he saw at their last encounter. He was going to ask her what did she want, but she was faster.

"I just wanted to inform you that I'm going to need your body for a few moments." and before he could react, he felt a some cold air around himself, than somehow started seeing his own body from the outside. He had switched places with Cali, and now he was a ghost flowing around her. He noticed that the eyes of his body had changed colors, and were now replaced with Cali's cat-like eyes, that were now scanning the area. 

" I forgot what it was like to have a real body." she said with his voice, but in a really low tone, that, in combination with the new eyes, made the body that was staying before Laurance, was a whole new entity. 

"Let's go." she said. And Laurance had no other choice than to follow. As they were walking, Cali kept messing up her steps, forgiving that she was no longer floating and that she couldn't move as swiftly as when she was in her ghost body, so she would fall every 10 feet, leaving wounds on Laurance's body. After a while, Laurance ended up taking back his body so that they would arrive at their destination without any deaths. 

"So..." Laurance tried to start a conversation. "Tell me about you."

"I am really old." she said, back to her sweet voice. "And you used to know me. We were friends."

"Huh. I don't remember you. Did we meet when we were kids?" he asked, actually curious of when they met.

"Not exactly..." she told him, leaving him with even more questions than before. 

"Hey Kei. Do you happen to know someone named Lucinda?" Laurance jumped at the question. 

"You know her?" he asked. 

"You don't?" she asked confused.

Laurence sighed. Of course. 

"We were friends with her too. We got along really well." she explained to him. As they were chatting, the view around them started changing. The trees started to dissapear, as well as most of the plants. The only things left were rocks and the burned ground underneath their feet. There were no signs of animals what-so-ever, not even bugs. The sky itself was darker, as if the light was scared to touch the black dirt, in fear that it will dissapear at it's touch. And in the middle of it all, was a huge building with dirty white walls, some of them crumbled down on the floor, others barely standing. The smell around the building was unbearable, a combination between burned wood and corpses. 

"We're here." Cali told Laurance, who had forgot that they were actually going somewhere. He raised his head and saw the horrific view before him, than threw a questioning view to Cali, who just touched the place where his heart was peacefully pumping and exchanged bodies with him.

"This..." she gesticulated to the place around them "...Is the institute. Or how those who don't remember call it, the academy."

Laurance jumped. This was the place were Lexy spent a good part of her life. The one place that she despised.  The place that Laurance wanted to visit the most. They entered the building, Cali suddenly able to control his body. 

"This is the only place in the world where you need to be careful where you step. Because you can't ever know what memory you'll find." she explained. And for the first time, Laurance thought that she sounded like a normal person.