Alice looked around with her right eye.
All the Lightbringer saw was a weird brown line. A vertical line.
Something was wrong with the Room she was in. Very wrong.
Alice knew it.
Alice tried to turned around, but found herself unable to. In fact, most of the muscles in her body refused to obey her order.
Alice then realized.
She wasn't breathing.
Her heart wasn't beating.
She... wasn't even hungry anymore.
This was concerning.
"Am I dead ?"
Perhaps she entered a Room which wasn't well-suited for life, and just died. Like that. Or perhaps something went wrong with the Golden Door she picked.
Well, this was kind of unlucky. On the other hand, if this was death, then it was... peaceful.
Maybe... maybe she should have jumped, back in the Forest of Glass. She would have gotten to that place sooner.
"You're not dead. Not at all."
Alice was startled by Killer's sudden appearance.
"How do you know that ?"
"I mean...I don't really know, but let's be honest: do you really think this his what death feels like ?"
"I am not breathing, my heart is not beating... my whole body feels extremly weird... Honestly, yeah.
I think I'm dead. I wonder if Mirror is here."
"..."
"I have my dagger with me, you know. If I..."
"No, no. I know what you're going to say, and no."
"But it's just to verify..."
"Before doing that, it might be wise to explore this place."
Alice agreed.
Moving in the place she was in, whether it be the Room she was supossed to go in, or the afterlife, was really difficult.
Her body was just... alien. Uncapable of doing a lot of thing it was capable of normally. For example, she had an arm behind her back, and the other was in front of her, and she was unable to make them switch places.
Even weirder, when she looked at her arm, it looked thinner than it really was. Thinner than paper. Thinner than what was possible, even.
But the problem wasn't just affecting Alice's body.
The world around her was bizarre too.
Sure, the Forest of Glass and the City of Flowers were very strange places too, but here, it was on a whole different level.
In a way, the City of Flowers and the Forest of Glass felt like they could exist somewhere on Earth. Alice was sure that there could have been someone who created a forest with glass tree back here, humans were strange enough creature for that to happen. And the City of Flowers was pretty much just a small medieval city with a lot of plants in it, and a tall tower.
Sure, there were already things that Alice saw (Nikoletta, the endless stairs, the monsters, sorcery...) , that were in the realm of the supernatural.
But nothing could quite compare to what she was experiencing here. There was no word strong enough to actually explain what Alice was feeling.
It was like her previous encounters with the supernatural were just... visiting another country, whereas now, she was on another planet.
Honestly, the sheer impossibilty of the... Room ? she was in was both terrifying and fascinating.
She walked towards the brown line, which stood in her way. Alice tried to move around it, but, once again, her muscles were unable to obey.
The brown line... was an obstacle.
Alice mustered all of the strenght she could, and jumped above the brown line, landing on top of another brown line. Horizontal, this time.
Alice frowned.
"Wait... Is that just a table ?"
Somehow, the place she was in was so strange the young Lightbringer couldn't even identify a simple table !
Alice got on the other side of the table, which meant that she would never see it again because her body couldn't turn around in the other direction.
And then, she saw it.
"Looks like, I'm not dead, after all."
"Told ya."
A Golden Door was right there.
Just like the rest, it looked incredibly wrong. It was just a huge vertical yellow line. Alice had no idea how she even managed to recognize that this was one of the Golden Door. Maybe her Sixth Sense was improving ?
Who knows ?
And then, from nowhere, Alice understood.
"Killer... I think I know why this Room seems so damn weird."
"Why ?"
Alice tooks note of the fact that if Killer was able to read absolutly all of her thought all the time, she shouldn't ask this kind of question. Unless she wanted to trick her.
"We are in a two-dimentional space and not in a three-dimentional space."
"What ? That makes zero sense !"
"Why would you think that ?"
"I don't know, it's just... how would you even be able to talk ?"
"No idea."
"How would you even... like.... be alive ?"
"Not even sure I'm alive right now."
"..."
"I don't know why the idea that we are in a two-dimentional space sounds so silly to you. Just thinks about the kind of stuff I... we, sorry, saw since that first day in the Sky. A Flying Island. Trees made of glass. A reflection coming out of a mirror. Going inside said mirror. Meeting, and talking, with a monster that looks straight up out of some kind of movie. Finding Doors that lead to... other pocked dimentions ? All linked, forming what Nikoletta named the Sky ? Is thinking that we might be in a two-dimentional space really that wild, considering all of what happened before ? And I haven't even talked about half of it, you know."
"Okay, Alice, but... now what ? You know you're in a two-dimentional space, but how is that even remotly useful ?"
Alice laughed. Or at least tried too. Laughing in a two-dimentional space was... really akward.
"I don't think there is any kind of use to that hypothesis, Killer. None that I see, at least. But at least, we learnt something."
"What ?"
"I'm sure there are Rooms out there, which are even stranger than this one. Maybe... imagine... I don't know...What I want to say is that we should always be ready when we enter a new Room. Anything can happen. This time, the Room was thankfully harmless, but that won't be the case all the time, knowing my luck."
Killer didn't bother replying. Maybe she was just thinking about what Alice said.
The young Lightbringer got close to the yellow line, and pushed it, revealing another line. Black this time.
Before going inside that line, Alice thought of something funny.
It was the fourth Room she ever visited. And, technically, Mirror died in the second.
It looked like not every Room was as challenging and dangerous as the City of Flowers or the Forest of Glass.
In fact, most Rooms were probably devoid of any life, and kind of small too.