~Chapter 9~
With the air in my lungs now replaced by dark freezing water, I floated in the aquatic abyss unable to die, with nothing but giant icebergs to keep me company and the echoing, muffled sounds of them colliding and bouncing off each other being my lullaby and the only thing I would hear before yet again slipping away. For as many times as it takes the minute hand of a clock to pass the mark of twelve during the day, I drowned and came back to life; stuck in a death loop in the paralyzing cold drink for what felt like weeks.
The muscles throughout my body felt like dried cement as the feeling that I was sinking to the bottom of the deepest darkest ocean trench began to creep in. Although fully paralyzed, my skin's surface could not ignore the liquid frostbite which embraced my entire being, with the water's pressure slowly crushing me on the way down to depths so quiet my heartbeat was audible to my own ears and echoed in the darkness around me.
"Th- this is pr- pr, proper cold." I thought to myself as my eyes, the only things I could move, looked around in all directions they could without me having to turn my head, scanning the soul-crushing darkness around me with my thoughts somehow audible and echoing lowly in the water as if I were whispering into my own ear.
From within the darkness of the abyss, a spotlight spontaneously illuminated a small area ahead of me, and into the heavenly beam of light floated a woman with pearl white skin like a glimmering corpse donning pitch-black hair. Hair like silky strands of the darkest shadow with charcoal black rose petals decorating it and black rose heads bunched together into a hairpin, holding her hair up. Her face was covered by a black veil, matching the long beautiful black gown she wore, whose embroidered silk floated in the water like wispy clouds as she approached me with her left hand stretched out in front of her as if reaching and calling out to me; a hand wrapped in the finest black lace gloves with the skin on her arms sparkling like diamonds in sunlight as she passed through the baffling beam of light coming from above.
Finally, she reached me and cupped my cheek in her palm before lightly kissing my still body with lips as black as obsidian. After the subtle peck on my lips, she looked into my frozen eyeballs and she too whispered that same word that almost drove me mad a while before.
"Qhawe." She whispered. A whisper which echoed throughout the dark water and sent a pulse that emanated from between her lips and mine. Soon after the sudden seismic level shockwave, the icy abyss began to drain away and in the blink of an eye, all of the water that surrounded me fell away leaving me gasping for air in a lavishly decorated medieval library with a blazing fireplace warming up the room and braziers lighting up the entire library which went up for dozens of floors linked by a singular spiraling staircase illuminated by hundreds of spiraling, burning braziers. I stopped gasping for air shortly after realizing I was now in an ancient although superbly-maintained library which seemed to go upwards forever, with its roof like a horizon that knows no end. The library's enormous chambers and endless, perpetually rotating floors made it a legendary, grandfather clock of a labyrinth which I now sat in, wearing dry warm clothes with no traces of recently having been soaked in a frozen ocean trench. My skin and my hands were warm to the touch as though I had been sitting next to the giant elegant fireplace for hours with the aroma of steaming hot chocolate on the armrest of the chair tingling the inside of my nose. My mouth having no choice but to water at the sight and aroma of piping hot chocolate with hints of appetizing apple mint and nutmeg, cradling a touch of sensual French vanilla which sweetly kissed the dark Belgian chocolate melted in silky Danish butter, with a tease of brown sugar and Columbian coffee to caramelize it all into a seductive pas-de-deux of foreign flavors all roofed under a cloudy layer of Welsh scotch cream liquor and gooey toasted marshmallows; and finally dusted by sweet Amazonian cinnamon and a pinch of chili flakes.
Like a lost pup I looked around in all directions to find myself alone in a room fit to be a king's quarters, and worrying too much about that to dwell on the fact that I could smell every single ingredient in the tantalizing cup of hot chocolate. I was surrounded by thousands of books, most of which were in languages from worlds I had never even heard of, and thousands upon thousands of books, scrolls, and tomes written in unfamiliar text and illustrated by strange symbols of which I had never seen. Entire chambers filled with tree-high bookshelves spun in opposite directions of each other as you ventured from floor to floor, like a giant Rubik's cube. I found myself caught in bewilderment and mind-boggled by being in an endless library spinning like a top on an axis, with countless books and scrolls sorting themselves above my head for as far as my eyes could see upwards. Like swarms of busy bees, books and scrolls buzzed and whizzed through the air from one side of the library to the other, from one shelve to another and from one floor to the next; the synergy and synchronicity of it all being reminiscent to the inside of the humble bee's hive.
The walls were decorated by antique looking weapons and shields used by ancient man, along with the trophies of strange-looking beasts, none at all like the animals I was used to, from the color of the furs to the number of eyes they had, which was too many for my liking. One of the big baffling beasts which were mounted on a hardwood plaque caught my eye. It resembled a creature I had only read about in books and heard of in tales before being put to sleep in a past life that I could not remember. Severed and stuffed, the beast's head forever hung above the great fireplace. It had a large dark grey mane like a crown that glistened in the light of the raging flame which warmed the room, a mane as if made from strands of fine silver wire. Three dark soulless eyes without pupils formed a triangle in the middle of its face as if they were black pearls bejeweling a terrifying mask. From the frightening feline's mouth hung humungous horrid fangs too large to fit in its mouth. The razor-sharp almost yellow canine teeth looked like large daggers beneath its snarling nose further demonizing its gaze which seemed to follow me as I tilted my head and rocked back and forth on the hand-carved hardwood throne-like chair. My eyes were then captured by its curiously camouflaged coat which was a glossy light greyish blue with black tiger stripes decorating its reflective water-like fur which reflected the sheen of the dazzling silver weapons that hung nearby.
"That's the strangest cat I've ever seen. Straight up freaky feline," I thought to myself as I stared at the captivating creature.
"I would not enjoy petting that," I pondered as I continued marveling at the mystical monster to which I was giving my utmost attention as if enchanted by the relentless pursuit of the three-eyed feline's gaze.
After about two minutes of staring into the eyes and mane of the stuffed creature, a voice softly although cynically came from the chair on the opposite side of the table which I sat at.
"No, you wouldn't," said a soothing sophisticated feminine voice. One that lowered the temperature of the room and took me by surprise, once again sending chills down my spine while successfully scaring me backward off the throne; making me topple the huge chair, which sent it falling back towards the floor with me still screaming like, well, a startled child.
With the chair halfway to hitting the ground and me bracing for impact with the hard stone floor, the mysterious mistress' voice spoke once again as she waved her right index finger in the air. An index finger wrapped in ebony steel, along with her thumb and middle finger forming a partial ebony steel gauntlet with the same strange symbols I've been seeing all over, engraved and filled in with shining silver. On the back of her hand, set in the center of the gauntlet, was a large black diamond which captured the golden rays of the giant fireplace's flames nearby; a gorgeous, gigantic gem which produced an ominous noise like the rattling of a snake as she waved her finger in the air which somehow but very rapidly pulled the giant chair back onto all four of its legs, stopping it from crashing onto the hard floor and leaving me safe but still screaming on its seat.
"Okay, enough of that dear." She said as she bought her armored index and thumb together, proceeding to perform a zipping motion over her lips followed by a rattle snake's tune which immediately took away my voice, making my terrified screams inaudible even to my own ears although all of the other sounds such as the spinning of Labyrinthine Library itself including the whizzing of millions of books high above and even down to the crackling of the firewood, were still bringing life to the ancient and monumental building.
I began to panic as I clenched my throat attempting to spit out words to no avail except succeeding in looking like a suffocating mime.
"You need to relax. Have some dark hot chocolate, it's your favorite." She said with lips which were as black as the charred charcoal in the fireplace, barely concealed by the black lace veil which she wore over her face.
She once again waved her hand, this time towards the steaming cup of hot chocolate which instantly levitated from the throne's armrest and floated up to my eye level, before she began casually stirring the air with her index which made the marshmallows magically mix the hot chocolate in the shiny wooden handled, metal mead mug.
"I chose this place because it's always been your favorite room in the Manor and for some reason undenounced to me, you'd come in here as often as you could and sit exactly where you're sitting now for hours on end, simply starring at that damned dead Sabrerix, who's significance you always shielded from me until eventually taking it to your grave. Perhaps this time around you'll be more trusting towards your greatest friend, or perhaps not." She said as she sipped on a cup of tea which magically appeared on a saucer in her hand shortly after the black diamond yet again twinkled and chimed like a snake's rattle.
"I suppose I chose this place because of the fancy fireplace as well. You see without the eternal and fabled furious flame, you'd never survive an audience with me without your flesh turning into ice chips and blowing away as if you were a snowman in a blizzard. My presence as you may have already realized can be rather, chilling to the likes of humans such as yourself. Matter of fact you're the only one of your kind to ever set foot on the soils of Never-Realm. Hence the significance of your role in the events yet to unfold, and despite the sheer impossibility of it, here you are yet again. My dear old friend, Beuren the bold, the brave! The brutal." She said to me as she starred not with eyes but with dark clouds of shadow hidden behind the veil where her eyes should be. Shadows that moved and wiggled behind expensive lace, like small smoldering black flames.
"Well? You're just going to sit there without saying a word, Crow's got your tongue? Say something man!" She shouted, which sent her tea and my marshmallows flying from our cups and into the air, before beginning to float instead of splashing onto the ground with the marshmallows gently bouncing off each other as if we were sitting on the moon.
Instead of grabbing the mug, I began gesturing about my inability to speak by subtly pointing at my neck.
"Mmm? What's this? Oi, What's that?" She said as she mimicked my motion by repeatedly pointing at her neck.
"What are you? Oh dear, of course! Hahaha. Ancient brains of mine." She said as she made an unzipping motion over her lips with her armored gauntlet which once again rattled like a serpent.
"There you go. You should be back to normal now." She said in her calm bone-chilling tone once more, as if she hadn't been laughing and behaving dimwitted just a few moments ago.
"Right," I said in a high-pitched voice and a fake terrified smile on my face.
"Firstly I've never had chocolate before, ever, so it can't be my favorite; I do believe I'm a pacifist because I couldn't harm a fly; I'm also not brave I just soiled the big fancy chair," I said yet again in a high pitched voice and speaking so fast that I was barely understandable and stumbling all over my words.
"You soiled a thousand-year-old throne?" she asked with a nearly unnoticeable smile forming behind her veil.
"Of course I soiled the bloody chair, have you seen yourself!? Look at you, you'd scare you if every mirror didn't freeze over and shatter before you got near it…" I screamed in the same high-pitched voice.
The woman in black once again waved a zipping motion past her lips rendering me mute yet again.
"I can't deal with prepubescent you, I won't do it." She said as she waved her hand to the side which made the centuries-old hand carved coffee table between us along with the antique silver and obsidian chessboard which had the strangest looking chess pieces, having mages armed with staffs and blades, standing where the bishops would usually be, along with armored Dire wolves howling at the moon, where the knights would be. Werewolves standing next to what seemed to be the castles which were octagon-shaped colosseums with the tiniest flags sticking out the top on each corner of the colosseum chess pieces; leading the charge was a crowned king with a broadsword sheathed on his back and donning a heavily armored gauntlet guarding his entire right arm but not his left, with a crowned queen standing beside him who had a bow strapped to her back and gauntlets up to her wrists on both hands, small sleek gauntlets resembling the one this dark specter of a woman wore on hers.
All of it, including our floating cups and warm beverages, were swept to the side leaving nothing between me and what I had deduced from Mirella's warnings and descriptions to be the Dark Bride.
With all out of the way she then gave a gesture with her hand and like steel to magnets, the entire throne dragged itself over the stone floor with me yet again screaming as she pulled me into her clutches like a fly caught and hanging on a black widow's silk thread. I flew face-first into her hands which were as cold as a frozen lake, I would know. Like an anointing, she placed her armored thumb on my forehead and grasped the side of my skull, with her left hand over the silver scar on my chest.
"Right, now pay attention. I hate repeating myself." She said as the black diamond began spinning in the gauntlet before releasing an intense flash of light like a solar flare bursting forth from her hand which blinded and disoriented me with bright white light.
"Since the dawn of the first sun, our two worlds, Earth and Neverrealm have existed side by side and yet not at all. Our world is a mere mirror dimension of theirs. Their beliefs, whether good or evil, manifest themselves here, in our world. The courage of man, their righteousness, goodwill, and undying hope give us the strength and power we use to fight the dangers that lurk in the Neverrese shadows. Evil stemming from the seven gates created by the great evil, Apocallyte. An ancient evil born from the first shadows of the first light and creator of the Nightmare Eden; the home of all of man's follies and fears. Seven ancient gateways to the Nightmare Eden are located in each of the great seven regions of Neverrealm and have been guarded since the dawn of time by the Gatekeeper legions of each land; doorways which restrain vilest creatures birthed from the darkest most grotesque corners of man's hearts and minds. You and your soul siblings are of House Kolte, warriors of reincarnation and guardians of the eighth gate, the doorway to the human realm. We, the Neverrites, have fought the evil hordes for thousands of years guided by a single prophecy. The promise of a long-awaited champion, the Divineryte. A warrior unseen or heard of in over a millennium, an all-powerful swordsman to finally end the thousand-year wars by destroying the gates themselves and ceiling them for eternity with the ultimate weapon, The Great sword Silverbane. An all-powerful blade which hasn't been seen since the rise of the first and last Divineryte, Elias Kolte. Only death and calamity will befall all, if the armies of the seven regions were to be overrun and their kingdoms sacked, leaving only House Kolte as the last defense mankind has from being torn apart by creations they could not possibly know to prepare for, their ignorance of our existence will be their Achilles heel. Your mission, your duty whether you choose to accept it or not, is to travel to the far reaches of the seven regions of Neverrealm and master the ancient techniques from the War-masters throughout the realm in order to hone your new power and be able to battle the multitude of Dimension Dweller species which plague every grain of sand on this land. For It is said that when the blood of innocence floods the roads, when the chaotic crimson of war stains the soil in all corners of the land and the champions of righteousness forget their oath only to confide in the word of darkness. Only then will Apocallyte himself will come forth from the Nightmare Eden and lay waste to Neverrealm before conquering and enslaving mankind. Fulfilling his only wish. A creation that rules over its creators. If this were to happen, every living being on earth would suffer ten centuries of a fate far worse than death. Your failure and the failure of your siblings will lead to the end of both worlds; the extinction of all life within our systems and the ascension of damnation!" She narrated in a deep and spectral voice with hundreds of loose parchment, decorative although dangerous weapons, and dozens of other objects in the library flying around us, following the current of the tornado-like wind which engulfed the whole library and swept away the thousands of books forming a twister of novels and tomes which surrounded us as she telepathically showed me the history of the land I was to call my home, and informed me of the importance of my duties and my role in the events yet to unfold.
A thousand years' worth of unceasing battles and pinnacle moments in Neverrealm's history played out simultaneously in my mind as I walked through numerous lifetimes worth of memories as if I were an invisible character in a play, whose only role was to observe.
Like being released from a sling, I flew backward as she let go of my face releasing immeasurable force that pushed me back into the throne I was sitting on earlier, which was also pushed back to where it was originally placed. The tornado force winds that surrounded us immediately ceased, leaving the debris floating in the air; thousands of books, parchments, and scrolls looking like storm clouds which hovered above our heads with antique artifacts and weapons along with dozens of feather pens and streams of ink which soon began to organize themselves as I sat and watched it all from the comfort of the hardwood throne. The swords sheathed themselves as the shields mounted themselves back onto the walls, with hundreds of loose pages and scrolls stacking themselves back onto the library tables in neat piles while small ink bottles set themselves down beside the paper piles before the streams of levitating ink flowed into each, filling them to the brim followed by the feather pens that slowly dipped and placed themselves into the ink wells. From my overrated chair, I watched the library ground floor tidy and clean itself as if it were haunted and inhabited by a phantom cleaning crew until you could barely tell that there was a storm in there, mere minutes before.
Along with the hand-carved antique coffee table, the chessboard also returned to its original place, resetting its own pieces as they swarmed around it while placing itself exactly at the center of the table between the Dark Bride and me. In a matter of seconds, everything in the library was exactly as it was when I first arrived here, quiet and calm with the thousands of swarming books back in synchronicity and flying over our heads once again.
"So. Care for a game of Champion's Chess?" She said as she brought her hands together and dusted them off, as if she had lifted a finger to clean up the large, lavish Labyrinthine Library.
"Knight to C3." She said shortly before the chess piece made of pure silver in the shape of a giant armored dire wolf and posed as if howling at the moon came to life, shook its entire body as if it were wet, and soon after leapt over the pawn piece directly ahead of it in the form of a lightly armed and lightly armored foot soldier with a short sword sheathed around his waist. The wolf piece landed with a short skid before it stopped at C3 and then stared me in the eye from across the chessboard only to growl and bark at me before howling at the moon yet again, while hardening back into a still solid chess piece.
"Your move little one. Come on, come on, I don't have all day." She said with an impatient tone.
I jumped up from the throne and ran to the closest door which was a few meters behind the Dark Bride's chair. With a force that turned the wooden throne that I sat on into splinters and firewood, I took off from the chair, and to my surprise I found my feet causing cracks on the stone floor. After taking my first steps from the chair, I found myself in no time at all hitting the black wooden exit face first like a blind horse running into a wall after having covered at least fifteen meters between here and my chair before I could even blink.
Groggy and disoriented, I slowly turned around after having bounced off the black wood door lined with shining silver and sporting a finely engraved silver wolf head doorknocker with blue gems as eyes.
"You know it helps if you open them before running through, you'll break your face much less often I assure you." She said as she took a sip of tea.
"Arrgh, bloody hell! What'd you do now? What the hell was that?" I said as I held on to my nose and looked to the ceiling while pinching it closed.
"Am I bleeding, is there blood. My face feels wet, is there a lot? There's lots of it, I just know it."
"Oh pish posh, quit your whining. It'll take more than a damned door to break your nose from now on," She said as she held up her left hand which spawned a cigarette from thin air before raising her armored right thumb which then ignited and burned in a small flame which she brought up to her face and used to light the cigarette.
"What's that supposed to mean," I said as I looked to the ground to find several holes where my footsteps should have been. With my recently found and established default look of shock setting in yet again on my face, I saw the remains of the chair that I sat on barely a blink of an eye ago. The giant hard-wood chair was now scattered around the sitting area in countless pieces, some of it even looking like sawdust on the floor.
The dark bride exhaled a large cloud of smoke which carried in the wind and came towards me slowly taking the shape of a skull and two crossed bones beneath it.
"Do stay away from these nasty things dear, they will kill you. Trust me, I know all on the matters of 'Death'."
"It's a bit too late for that. You see I've seen, felt, and have had enough smoke smelling of burning flesh fill my lungs to last me several lifetimes; and all in the past couple of days so a fancy puff of smoke from you won't do me any harm." I said in an exhausted voice as I breathed heavily.
"Ah yes, I know all about that night. I was there. I see why he chose you." She said cryptically.
"And as much as I would like to talk about it with you, I'm afraid we are out of time." She said as she continued smoking the cigarette, inhaling the whole thing in one go.
"Out of time!? I just got here and all you've done is spook me half to death with weird magic and then dropped a nonsense bomb in my head without making it clear what I'm doing here or how I got here, and now you're just sending me away without even telling me where I'm supposed to go or what I'm supposed to do next!?"
She walked over to me and placed her freezing armored hand over the silver scar on my chest.
"You can't stay here any longer. Any longer and I'd have to claim your soul, you must run. NOW!" She said in a cautious voice as if hiding or expecting something sinister.
"Beuren, Beuren can you hear me!?" Called an ominous and distorted feminine voice as if coming from behind the walls.
"Follow me. Follow my voice!" the voice said yet again, this time coming from behind the door I had just crashed face-first into.
"Did you hear that, was that Mirella? It must have been!" I shouted as I looked around the room in confusion.
"I SAID RUN!" The Dark Bride shouted in her deep spectral voice with a strong gusting cloud of smoke escaping her wide-open mouth like an open high-pressure steam valve yelling in my face and screening us both in a thick bubble of smoke.
The Bride pushed me with her armored hand, striking the silver crucifix scar which began to glow red hot and sent me flying towards the door yet again. Instead of smashing my face against it for a second time, my body passed through the door as if I had fallen into a pool of black and silver water. From the inside of the dark glimmering water, I saw the Dark Bride's image rippling and shrinking as I yet again found myself sinking deeper into another icy abyss.
"We will meet again, old friend." She whispered behind her lace veil, although I heard it clearly through the water as if she were cradling my ear and speaking into it.
Her image soon rippled and faded away and not long after, I watched as the door I had crashed into earlier suddenly swing open with a loud and long menacing creek. A shadow in the shape of a large man stepped forth from the darkness of the dimly lit space on the other side of the door which looked like a lavish hallway with red carpeting lined with golden silk which was covering floors of obsidian tiles, and walls of obsidian brick all held together by silver instead of cement, silver which glistened between the black bricks because of the burning braziers hanging from the walls.