Archeia's Atheneum (The First Shift)

Episode Nine: The Etherial Youth

On the first day, I was restrained in a steel chair--and it cramped brutally. The Cask didn't bother me.

On the second day, I couldn't feel my legs anymore, and I was getting really thirsty. The Cask bothered me.

On the third day, I finally slept, though the thirst and hunger pains were getting worse. The Cask started unnerving me, and I couldn't look at it.

I started calling for help on the fourth day, but no one came. I was starving, and my head ached every time I looked at the Cask. The pressure was increasing.

By the fifth day, I was emaciated. I knew it, but could barely feel it. It didn't matter if I looked at the Cask, the pressure was everywhere. The more intense it became, the less I felt the world around me--the less I felt.

I started crying on the sixth day. The pressure was inescapable. The Cask was absolute.

The seventh day had come. I screamed until my voice wouldn't let me. Then I was still. The pressure was all. The Cask was all. And I was alone. I was in a room. The floor was made of tile, just as I remembered it, just as most floors in that place were. The walls were made of tile too. Those were the testing rooms, kill rooms; wet rooms. The ceilings in those rooms were an array of metal parts, pipes, vents, and the like. It looked industrial, it smelled industrial.

I was restrained in a steel chair. A seven-foot cylindrical stone stood before me. I don't know what it was made of, but it looked like a kind of crystalline marble, and from white parts of marble radiated white light. This thing was sustaining me. It connected to me the moment I got here--and was connecting deeper with each passing moment. It eventually became so that I didn't have to look at the stone to see it. I didn't have to touch it to feel it. And I could feel the grain in the black and white crystal--the energy circulating within. Two distinct resonant vibrations; positive and negative. Two personalities; a pair of truly powerful beings. I'm with them. It's like I'm in this crystal room with them. The two beings are curled up but sitting apart from each other. I'm standing between them, and the first contact I have comes in the form of images.

We saw ourselves in the testing rooms. We could see the rooms were housed at the very bottom of the cylindrical complex, deep underground. We saw fifteen floors up, passed the labs, passed the archives, and passed the armory and security center. Now above ground, we appeared to be at a mental institution. There are people on the first and second floors. Patients wore jumpsuits, orderlies as well. Some patients wore red, some wore blue--and all the orderlies wore white. The interior of this part of the complex is elegant and fine. Redwood floors, green carpets, gothic carpentry. We saw the top floor, the penthouse--a large, curious, and luxurious place. How many years and days did Dr. Hicks spend there? What did he do there? Why did he do it? We saw passed the penthouse, we began to see the world around us. We saw the three floors of the complex, administration and emergency, employee housing, and the penthouse. The circle. We saw the greenhouses, one on each corner of the complex. The square around the circle. We saw the rehab center, a triangular building behind the complex. Two other triangular buildings lie south of the first. This is where the patients lived, both kinds. Beyond that, we saw a cast iron fence--that which drew the border of what Dr. Hicks owned and what he did not. The circle which frames the symbol. The edge of the Iron Forest invaded the border, as it had for so many years prior. This formed the circle around the triangle around the square around the circle. We saw the design Dr. Hicks intended. Then we saw the whole of that cursed land. The asylum on the mountain clearing, the decrepit town at its feet, and the forest that eclipsed them both.

The name of this place was in my mind. It was called St. Lucia--it is called St. Lucia. The administration floor of the complex bears a grand staircase. It leads to the Second floor and facing the one who walks these steps is a grand portrait. It depicts Saint Lucia. She is painted in a grotesque fashion. She stands front and center, holding; leaning on a sword with her right hand--and raising a plate with her left. Saint Lucia was blinded before she was killed. The portrait depicts Lucia crying tears of blood; her eyes are on the plate she raises. What she sees is of great value, but her sight is used for others and not herself. I wonder why this image lingers with me.

This is our home. She/it welcomes you. This is the Void being? Yes. What are you? I am a who not a what. I am the Dread Queen. Who are you? I...I'm not entirely sure anymore. Maybe one of the four hundred thousand children that go missing every year. One of the thousands that just vanish without a trace. But now you are here, with my sister and I. Yes, it appears that way. Why? I enter--entered the realm of time again. I'm here because I'm dangerous; that's what I told her. Dr. Hicks says I'm an intuitive empath. That's what I am. I'm not the only one though. There are tons of us, everywhere--your one yourself. We're highly sensitive to emotions and feelings, of both ourselves and others. Dr. Hicks told me if you're I.E. positive, you've been given a choice: A, you can stay as you are--or B, you can grow further. Some of us make this choice consciously, some make it without even realizing what's happening. I took the ladder.

If you choose to grow further, you'll inevitably begin to notice yourself change. These changes can take many shapes and sizes. I started seeing crows, more than you usually would. I'd go to school and a few would follow me there, I'd go to bed and one or two would stand on my window-sill. They were always watching when I played outside, and there was always some flying around when rode my bike. I thought it was strange at first, but then it became commonplace.

I, like everybody at one point or another, was picked on at school. It was nothing out of the ordinary: name-calling, exclusion, gossiping, and so on. One damp morning at school, someone pushed me into a mud puddle--and that was it, the straw that broke the camel's back. I was too afraid to do anything myself, and that made it all the more infuriating. If looks could kill, the fury in my eyes would've swallowed the one who pushed me like a wildfire. Unfortunately for him, I wouldn't lean that ability for a few more years, because what happened instead was much worse. It was the crows, the ones that had followed me for so long. At once they all took off, cawing and screeching with malice. High in the sky, they circled a dark ring above the one who pushed me--then the murder came down on him. The boy shrieked in pain and called for help, but what could anyone do? The enraged Corvus flock covered the boy head to toe, tarring him apart without the slightest hesitation. By the time a teacher came to stop the ravage, the boy was already seconds from death. His eyes and tongue had been pecked out. His stomach, liver, and intestines had been ripped from his torso. He'd been so thoroughly slashed and cut, that his all vitals were severed--breaking the earthly seal that is the human body, and breaching the bloody dam. Now the shredded child lay in his own puddle, gargling in his essence.

Thus I experienced my first major change. I would come to learn that I'd unconsciously undertook what many refer to as alchemy, more specifically, a kind of alchemy known as ornithomancy. This is sometimes described as the control over birds, or in my case, crows. I had unintentionally impressed my hatred of one person onto all the crows following me at the time, and they acted on their newfound hatred. That's what Dr. Hicks taught me. I met him a few days after the incident, and he persuaded me to leave everything to come with him. It wasn't hard; I was in a fragile state of mind, and he promised nothing but hope. So I went with him. He drove me away from home, and after a day and a half, we reached the Iron Forest. We drove through the forest and arrived at Lillum. We passed through the town and made our way up the wooded hill. The road to St. Lucia extended from the Iron Forest, curved around the cast iron fence at the edge of a cliff, and stopped at the gothic fashioned gate. The gate guarded the driveway which led to the facility. The Doctor dropped me off at the foyer of the administration and emergency building. From there I was oriented by an old man named Robert Oaks.

It didn't take long for Dr. Hicks to begin working with me--not long at all. One morning he brought me to a room that was empty, save for a steel chair and a large radiant stone. On the first day...