Candlelit Shadows

Chapter 11

She woke, feeling the softness of the bed underneath her. But before she would truly open her eyes, she tried to recall her mother’s bedtime stories, the one thing that kept her sane in this mad world.

      Nothing. When she forced herself hard enough, she could just see a hint of chestnut hair, bright blue eyes—

      --open wide in terror. Hair matted, limbs sprawled over the bed. And blood, blood on the floor, on the sheets, everywhere…

      “Cera.”

      She opened her eyes.

      “Good morning,” Avian smiled, though the joy did not quite reach the sorrow in his eyes. “Or at least, I think it’s morning.”

      For a second Cera just stared. At the velvet dark sky, stars twinkling mischievously at her. The moon was barely a sliver in the air, hiding bashfully behind a summer cloud. Crickets chirped softly, and the grass –no longer her soft down mattress—felt moist and soothing underneath her fingers.

      It sure did not seem like morning.

      “I think there’s a hint of sunlight that way, if you squint a little,” Avian was saying wistfully. “Reckoned you’d want a breath of fresh air, so this was the next best thing--”

      “We’re not outside?” she managed to whisper. He shook his head sadly.

      “We’re not allowed to leave without the Master’s permission. You know, with the time loop in the cave, just stepping out will do funny things to your brain—if you managed to keep yours in your skull, that is. It’s almost dimension-jumping. Even the lesser members dare only come during a new moon when Solis’ residual power here is strongest. And then they can’t stay for more than five hours without being fried on the way out.”

      Avian sighed, the sound heavy and painful in Cera’s ears. “It’s like we’re being held prisoner here, despite the fancy titles and hero-worship.”

      “But there is a way out, right?” Cera asked, her voice raising a few octaves in panic. “I have to--”

      Have to what again? Go somewhere, meet someone—

      “Home,” Avian finished for her fiercely. “You can’t forget! You have to go home. To your family.”

      That’s right. Family. Her brother—she could not remember his name yet, but it was nice knowing she had one, for now.

      “This damn place is cursed,” Avian swore darkly. “I remember what it felt like when I first got here, with Allie. Don’t remember when we met, where we met, how, or why we got here. A few months in here and you forget everything, except the one thing you think about the most. That one thing is heightened, until you can’t seem for the world of you think of anything else. And well—for most people, the thing they remember the most is the thing they regret the most.”

      Cera jolted, the image of her mother’s mangled body materializing once more in her mind until Avian shook her roughly by the shoulders.

      “You can’t let it control you,” he barked harshly. “Look what it did to Allie. Look what it did to Lord Galeo. Kanis. Nyctea. It’s ‘cause they keep living in the past. Snap out of it!”

      She did. “W-what happened to Allie?”

      But even as she said it, the world around her began to change. The moon vanished and the sun pelted mercilessly at them for a second before disappearing off the horizon. And then the moon was back, the sun—Time seemed to flow like a stream into a waterfall, and then the grass was wilting, snow began to fall before melting away just as quickly, flowers began to bloom in all the wrong places--