The Wanderer: The Story of James the Gray

Chapter 5

I hung up the phone. Standing up shakily, I looked around. The man was gone, and my target was deceased. The evidence of his death noted by his limp body and the blood on the wall. I walked to the entrance, taking a deep breath, and stood outside. I waited for Fang to approach me, so that I could talk to someone that wasn't involved with what had just happened; either great tragedy.

Fang finally came out of the trees, after what seemed like an eternity had passed, and walked over to me. "James, you're pale." she said, uneasiness an undertone in her calm voice. "What did you find in there? And is the job finished?"

I looked into her eyes, that were now a bright orange color. "Fang, something happened in there I didn't expect. I need to talk to Alex, but before I do, I have personal matters to attend to." I looked to the sky, noting the emptiness of the blue sky, no clouds to be found covering any part of the sky. "Please tell Alex that I'll be seeing him soon."

She nodded and smiled. Attempting to console me from whatever atrocity I had just bared witness to, but the only thing accomplished by her kind gesture was the deepening of my feelings of self loathing and panic. As much as I wanted to deny that I felt it, it was there... oppressing and crippling panic. "Thank you." I said coldly.

Fang left the way she had come, back through the trees, and left me alone in the small clearing. I composed my emotions as well as I possibly might, and concentrated solely on Divinity. Everything about her, the smallest details, was the sole concept on my mind. I focused all my attention on this thought, and with that, felt myself shift into a new plane of existence.

White had done this before, I'm sure of it. She had no inkling of where I resided in my world, and so she had to have done this the first time she came to me. However, when I expected that it may not work for me the first time I tried it, I didn't expect to find myself in a place that seemed entirely otherworldly. Maybe someplace I had seen or been with her before, but where I found myself now was beyond the definition of unforeseen consequences.

I was in a dark place, even to my eyes. There seemed to be no natural light source in the world, at least, from where I was in it. There were two windows to me left, but they were windowless and made into the stone wall. There was a single chair facing the windows, about 2 meters from them. The room I was in was about 16 meters from wall to wall, and, aside from the chair, was completely bereft of decoration.

On the wall opposite the windows, I noticed a large door. Whether it had been there before, or had just appeared, I was unsure. I knew that I had to get to Vin as soon as possible, but I had a feeling that I couldn't leave this place yet. It felt as if something was telling me to stay here, or it might've been that it was telling me that I couldn't leave. Whatever it was, it urged me to look for whatever may lie hidden in this place.

I opened the door with no difficulty, finding that it wasn't locked. It wasn't wooden, but at the same time, it wasn't made of anything that I was familiar with either. As I stepped out of the room, I found myself at the top of a spiral staircase. Very finely carved stonework, from the stairs, to the smooth walls, to the single window I saw from where I stood seemed to be what this place was constructed from. There was also a black carpet, with red trim, that spanned most of the width of the stairway, and went all the way down, I assumed.

I descended the stairs slowly, cautious of what may lurk in this unnatural darkness. As I had thought, the carpet continued to the bottom step. I reached the bottom to find another door, which I opened and went through as easily as the first. I seem to have teleported myself into a castle somewhere/ But as I stepped through the second door, I had a feeling that I shouldn't be here anymore.

The very air around me felt denser here, as if it was trying to strangle me for my intrusion in this place. The voice telling me to stay from before, turned into a feeling of imminent danger, accompanied by a new voice telling me that I would die if I stayed here. I felt my strength begin flowing out of me, as if this place was feeding on it.