Ifrid roused awake from the discomfort of oversleeping.
It seems like he must have knocked himself out trying to do something.
He was trying to do something, 'but what was it?'
Getting out of bed, Ifrid observes his surroundings.
The soft cushion where he lay felt so familiar.
He pushes past the rosewood frame and translucent bed curtains.
The style of the room is that of his home.
Red curtains hid the window, framed by carved lacquered walls and wooden beams interlocked in serpentine patterns.
Perpendicular to the bed, his reflection is clear in the body-length mirror.
His features, still distinct, of sunset hair and eyes of the sea, not lost like in children's tales.
Wooden desk that blends so well into the rest of the room, almost as if it was naturally there, yet.
'I don't have a desk in my room.'
A desk that should have been in his study was in his bedroom.
The same black ebony made the table, the grain flowing like ink.
Glancing over, he saw, resting on the desk conspicuously, a marble book.
Even with burry memories, he knew the book was problematic.
While Ifrid no longer felt the same disgust and hatred toward the book, he was still apprehensive about dealing with the book.
Returning it was the best option.
"Arick!" Ifrid called for his butler, wanting to have the book removed.
He waited.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four, someone should be here any second now.
Five,
Six, nothing but silence.
Seven,
Eight, not even the sound of footsteps?
Nine,
Ten.
'Arick!' Seeing his call heard by a deaf ear, he called again.
Not only did his call go unanswered, but he also didn't even hear his own voice.
Like speaking mute tongue, he tried again.
'Arick! Aurora! Anyone!'
As he called out every name to a soundless void, Ifrid tried to figure out what was happening in this weird situation.
'A loss of voice, table being moved on its own.'
'All this happened in the time I spent blacked out.'
'Time. Let's determine how long I was out for.'
Walking over to the window, he peeked outside.
A vast plain of the night sky, domed by depthless darkness, surrounds him.
'Curses.'
Going down the hallway, Ifrid met with the same predicament: repeating rolls of windows and railings leading to endless darkness.
His sprint led him to a standstill, getting him no further than he was in the previous steps.
Back in his room, he noticed that his study had disappeared, replaced by a blank wall.
Trapped in unnatural circumstances, he walked back toward the crux of his predicament.
Least unnatural out of all the weirdness, the book became a lighthouse amidst the ebbs and eddies of the paranormal.
Ifrid sat down before the open book.
Only one page of the book was of any substance, recording the times since he picked up the book to the moment before his fantastical encounter.
He grabbed the conveniently placed dip pen on the desktop and moved it to the page.
Held barely just above the page, he plunged it into the book.
From the tip of the pen, the same inky darkness expands outward.
The pen itself pierced through the fabric of reality, the darkness a transient state of spatial displacement.
As his consciousness lapsed, he found himself floating amidst a sea of stars.
Stretches of light like sea foam drawn across a black canvas. The firmament reveals its secret before him.
Physical constants manifest themselves in fields and fold in webs of interaction drawn and strung themselves in fractional seconds to the millennia.
Multiple suns birthed in the cloud-like nebule, sailing away to become stars that dotted the night sky.
They are God's cradle and lifeline, whose birth and death are part makers of the machine — whereupon the gods hung on the stage.
Anthropomorphic, anamorphic, amorphic, and polymorphic. Gods squirm in their star's wombs with their angelic cohort in attendance to their master.
With a vision that expanded to reach the end of the infinite time, an audience to the choir of the universe's creation.
The world that rose above the other and the chasm between these, all like thin sheets of paper before his eyes to be read.
They are strung by the strings and ink of a pen.
And darkness.
***
Ifrid found himself awake again—
"That's the third time that has happened. Why do I keep being knocked out?" Ifrid got on his feet and began observing his surroundings.
Umbrella of trees and tall stalk-like trunks surrounded him with the humidity that hit him like a wall, the air thick like being drowned in a quagmire.
Next to him was the marble book again; the culprit behind both his displacements was sitting there, taunting him.
Yet he knew it was also the solution to his problem.
After an embarrassingly long search, all he had to show for his effort was a pen and the book.
'I'll have to look for an ink then.'
Brushing off the dust off his body, lost in the woods with nothing in hand, he follows the path before him.
The paved road was a mosaic of identical blocks weaved together through the seemingly uninhabited forest.
'For someone to put such effort into a road, it must be a major road.'
'If I follow this road, I'll probably get to a town or find someone.'
Gallop, gallop, gallop.
On cue, the sound of a horse came from the distance; with the creaking of wood, a carriage came into view.
A short, stocky man seated on the driver's seat whipped the horse to move forward.
Walking to the side of the road, Ifrid waves his hand about, shouting, trying to get the man's attention. "Driver! Stop!"
But they continued, ignoring him; the man tsked and whipped the horse again, quickening their pace.
Dodging into the foliage on the side of the road, he looked at the back of the carriage, kicking up dust as it passed.
A rustle deeper into the woods alerts him.
Figures dressed in clothes from all walks of life.
The only thing common between them is the mask they wear.
The only thing they have in common is the mask they wear.
A mask that covers the face perfectly; on it is an inverted triangle overlapped by an eye that gazes at everything.
With light steps moving faster than the wind, one by one, they pass him in a blur.
'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven…'
A man brushed a hair breath past him, hands held on an object by his waist.
The danger glinted by the ray that broke the canopy of trees flashed his life before him.
Frozen, Ifrid kept still as the man passed.
His breath held for what felt like an eternity; he exhaled what could be his last.
Once he turned around and saw no one, he let out in a chilled breath, 'Twelve.'
He fell to the ground with cold sweat trickling behind his back.
Ifrid felt warmth return to his solid body, and heat left his warm head.
Fear of death, a touch with the end, experience, foreknowledge of unavoidable conclusion.
Dread-like veins creep up his body, held by the scythe blade and hung by a sword.
Ahhhh!
My arm!
Ack!
His ear rang with words he had heard before his death.
The countless scenes played before his eyes.
He's just one person!
Blame yourselves for your death, child!
I'll see you greet my friends in hell!
'What?'
The discrepancy between the voices he heard snapped him out of delirium.
He's fast!
Everyone! Together!
Just focus on the target!
A fight was happening in the direction the group of masked figures went.
Demon.
Get away from me!
Spare me, please.
And it was no more.
Eerie silence followed the massacre; a picking reversed, the tide turned, failed murder.
Sneaking over to the scene of the murder, Ifrid almost threw up at the sight.
Limbs torn, spilled organs, headless corpses, ripped fingernails.
Rivers of blood flowed through the cracks in the road, the stench of those who peed themselves mixed with that of open intestines, and blood made him nauseous, but he held on.
Seeing only the mask removed and the clothes intact means they must not have looted the body.
Going over to the neatest corpse of the bunch, he searched for anything useful.
'I wouldn't do this under normal circumstances, but this is special.'
Justifying to himself, Ifrid tried to think of where they'd keep their stuff.
'Under the hood? Tunic? Waist? Boots?'
A dagger, some coin of foreign denotations, scraps of meat, and trinkets.
Doing the same to the other corpses, he found they carried similar things to the first.
'They must've left all their stuff elsewhere.'
In total, he gathered 120 coins and 11 daggers.
Then inspiration struck.
With bloodied hands, he pulled out the marble book, opened it to a blank page, and wrote in bloodied letters.
Ifrid returned home.