Grasidi and Herbesco both walk evenly beside me, but Grasidi grasps my arm like an excited child. We walk through the blinding gates and my jaw would have dropped if not for my extreme training. I still can't help my eyes darting all around, taking in the sights of foreign plants and animals and glowing creatures. Different colors are vibrantly displayed, and the air smells simply fresh and sweet.
After a few moments I feel like my mind is going to explode, but Grasidi giggles and ties a blindfold around my eyes.
"Whoops! Almost forgot that mortal minds cannot process our world. Do not worry, after your transformation you will be able to see everything," Grasidi murmurs to me, and I can imagine Herbesco glaring at her with my senses. I then notice how they speak perfect English, from what I can hear, and completely without an accent. It is perfect, but too perfect, and doubt swirls in my mind while a sense of calm rests in my gut. My heart feels restless, waiting for something to happen.
I notice the lighting get darker and the ground beneath my feet become more solid as I guess we walk into the castle.
Different smells mingle in my nose, the scent of freshly blooming plants along with strange cooking spices and the warm fragrance of sweets baking in an oven. We walk for what seems like an hour, but my senses tell me it couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes. With every step, the sense of dread grows withing me, battled by a deeply buried gut feeling that tells me where I am headed is safe. I overrule myself and decide that I won't show what I am capable of until it seems I am endangered, slightly putting both my mind and heart at rest.
"We're here," Grasidi whispers to me softly, lightly touching my elbow and instilling the foreign emotion of ease within me. I relax and almost let go of my awareness and senses. Almost. I tense back up before I hold myself back, just enough that it isn't exactly noticeable, but Grasidi steps back and has a shocked air around her.
"Please," I say in a dangerously low voice once I know she knows, "Do not influence me," I finish, and I notice the area around me getting brighter through the blindfold. Rage and adrenaline flow through my veins, burning, but I hold back with my years of experience. The glow from my blindfold subsides but I notice someone coming toward me and hold my posture loose but secretly ready to strike.
"Well, you're progressing through the Transformation quite nicely," An old man's voice says. His voice, too, is perfect English, without any kind of accent, but unlike with Grasidi and Herbesco, this man's voice holds a deep sense of knowledge or wisdom. I sensed many other creatures or persons in the room before we entered, but him speaking to me still surprises me. I stay quiet, trying not to give them any leverage over me.
The old man who spoke steps in front of me, as I see his shadow through the tight blindfold. My senses, on high alert, pick up that he doesn't seem to breathe like a regular person. In fact, he doesn't seem to take in oxygen at all. I panic and feel my heartbeat quicken a little, but I calm down and think with a razor-sharp mind, analyzing everything.
"Who are you?" I bite out, keeping my tone level and vaguely polite.
"Ah, my girl, very nicely done. I couldn't detect anything in your tone," The man says, and I feel the weathered skin of a hand tilt my chin up and to the side, as if they were checking for something on my neck. What does he mean by well done? Ah, he knows that I am skilled, yet he said he couldn't detect anything. Wait. He couldn't detect anything in my tone. Dang it, my heartbeat obviously gave it away, though I don't know how he could hear it.
"My name is Cogniton, I am the male twin elder spirit of knowledge," He says. A lengthy title for one so old and not strong enough to take off my blindfold. He puts a hand on my elbow and leads me carefully up about three flights of stairs, exactly 301 steps. The air is less homely and more stately, important. The lighting seems more artificial now, and the floor beneath my feet is much more expensive and smoother.
Sometime later, I feel a presence directly behind me, I think it is Grasidi. The blindfold comes off and I notice it indeed is her behind me, with Herbesco behind her and an old frail man beside me.
I scan my surroundings and look around in wonder. The room I stand in is as twice as large as my room, which is pretty big, with an arched ceiling around thirty feet high. Mosaic patterns of strange creatures and plants decorate the ceiling, with the border a series of images that vibrantly twist and move. The ones at the far side of the ceiling are much older and some of them look like the images I saw while falling off the roof. The ones nearest to the entrance are blank and the closest images show the back of a girl…looking around in wonder at a room exactly like the one I am standing in. Shocked, but not showing it, I turn around to scan the rest of the room.
The cream walls shine with a gold glittery finish and white pillars decorating the edges of the room. The floor is a white and gold marble, and the room is bare except for a dais with different levels with many different thrones on the far side of the room, where the images are not as new and a large bronze pot with a flowering plant as tall as my body, leaves as large as my forearms, and a closed red flower the size of my torso.
The thrones on the dais are each unique and have different decorations, though the same exact size. On the highest level of the dais stand only three thrones, one made of silver and crawling vines filled with thorns, the middle one with a larger seat but smaller arm rests and made of the same silver, with long glowing swords stuck into the back, and the third one at the front, made of gold and no decoration except for a flower that looks like the one in the bronze pot engraved into the back of the throne.
I notice Grasidi and Herbesco settle into two thrones made of a large polished green jewel and the same blades of grass climbing up the legs and curling toward the arm rests on the lowest level of the dais. The only difference was Grasidi's also had green flowers growing out of the grass. Cogniton, I assume since he is the only other old man, sits in a throne made of steel-like material on the middle level of the dais. He sits on two gray cushions, one for his neck and the other for him to sit upon, that seem to be made of the same cloth as his robes. Books levitate and rotate around him, turning to specific pages or snapping open as he commands with his fingers.
I scan him for a moment, curious. He takes form of an old man, with a wispy white mop of hair on his head and a deeply lined forehead and slightly sagging, wrinkly skin. His silvery eyes hold intelligence and cunning, signaling to me that despite his weak and weathered exterior, he is very powerful and cannot be outwitted easily. His gray robes have strange words crawling and running across the hems and borders of the design.
I look behind me as I sense a presence just entering the room. An old woman who looks like the twin of Cognitonis sits on the throne next to him, but instead of books long scrolls levitate around her, and she has much thicker, healthier hair braided down her back.
She looks toward me and we lock eyes. For a moment, I start to see images of bloodshed and war take over my mind before I wrench my gaze away. I look down and notice my body has started glowing. Unnerved, I shake my hands and feet until someone lightly touches my shoulder.
I turn around abruptly to see a middle-aged man a little taller than me looking at me with something like…pride. He has brown-black hair with a few strands of white in a military cut, and deeply tanned skin, like he lives somewhere with a lot of sun exposure. His gray eyes have wrinkles in the corners, and though his eyes are filled with warmth and joy, I can sense fear and relief radiating out of him just the same.
He wears silver robes the color of the throne on the highest level of the dais, and a silvery crown that glows with a white light. The man stands with a regal air, as if he is someone important, but there is also an intelligence to him.
"Who are you?" I ask, curious.
"I am the Most Powerful, higher Spirit of the mind," He says, and I look at him, confused. He looks at me in understanding then puts an arm around my shoulders, walking me toward the dais, but the length of the room seems to have doubled. The more we walk, the farther away the dais becomes, until I cannot see it anymore.