Journey Ch. 2 Pt. 2

Argus explained that she would start her studies about the history of mystic and the kingdom in the morning and left the room with a bow. She walked over to the window and looked out to see the lushness of a world untouched by the technology of hers. Winding rivers and birds soaring. They must be atop a mountain because the view was expansive. She could see miles out towards a range of mountains that were topped with snow guarding the horizon. The small villages in the distance were the only thing breaking the forest, appearing like islands in a vast ocean of green. The sprawling rivers disappeared and reappeared around the trees and hills with intertwining roads paved in a grey stone. The view was breathtaking, she could stare for hours and find new things wherever she looked. She turned around to see the hooded man she met in the dungeon standing just by her door. Startled, she backed up to the window.

He bowed his head and said, “Please do not be afraid Lady Arelia. I am not here to harm you.” She scoffed at him. “I am here to tell you that I will be teaching you of the mystic arts. I heard of what you did in the royal chamber and I’m very impressed. Not many can do what you did, and even less on the first attempt.” He told her, still bowing his head.

She snapped at him, “Who are you? And what did you do to me?”

“I am the Court Mysticism but you can call me, Mave.” He started. “I didn't mean to harm you, just to teach you of our language and customs. I apologize for the pain that it caused you, I had never performed that mystic before but knew it needed to be done.”

“Fine, I understand,” she said warily, sighing and taking a seat in the chair by the window, “-but a warning would have been nice.” She said this defensively, knowing full well that even if he had warned her, she would not have understood him anyhow.

“As you command.” He started with his head still bowed. “I’ll see myself out.” He glided over to the door, shutting it softly behind him as he left.

She sighed, wondering what exactly this meant for her. She wondered if there was a way to go home or if she was stuck here, but she also thought to herself it wouldn’t be so bad to in fact be stuck in such a place. Here, she meant something. Back home, she was just another person working a dead-end job at a convenience store, yet this world was beautiful and had magic. This excited her. She couldn’t wait to learn what he meant by “mystic” or what it meant that she had this power. She could only imagine what her life was going to be like. She got up and went upstairs to her bed. She gently touched the covers, they were softer than silk and felt good to the touch. She undressed and got into the bed and a wave of exhaustion hit her. She felt her mind going blank, and with a wistful thought of both longing for her home and a tinge of excitement, she drifted off into a deep slumber.

That deep slumber didn’t last long, she woke up in a cold sweat and her heart pounding. There was a dark looming feeling that haunted her. The room felt darker than it should have been, the light seemed to be drawn out of the room. Fear spread through her body. She could feel it creeping from the deepest part of her soul. Keeping her paralyzed making her even more afraid of whatever was going on. It didn’t take long for her to feel the grip on her loosen and she felt that she needed to get up out of the bed. She looked around briefly and saw the light being drawn towards the window once more. The desire to find out what was happening despite the feeling of fear was overpowering. She felt something calling out to her, a power that she could feel in the distance growing stronger and stronger as the seconds drew longer and longer as if time was slowing down.

As she drew closer to the window her heart beat faster and faster. Her fear turned to excitement as she got to the window and saw that the light from the window wasn’t the only light being drawn away. The soft, pale glow of moonlight was being sucked towards the mountains.She watched as the light grew dimmer and dimmer and noticed that the sea of trees broken by islands of light were growing dark. There was a tinge of envy. She looked up into the sky and to her surprise there wasn’t a moon, but in the sky was another planet, large and beautiful with 3 rings around it, intersecting in the most interesting ways. She couldn’t believe it. It was like nothing she could have ever dreamt up. This made her love this plane even more than before, the stars grouped together in the most intricate designs.

She saw a shimmer in the far mountain range where the lights were being drawn to in the mountains. The shimmer was dark in nature, as if something evil was just born. Her body shuddered and she heard a distant boom across the vast space between her and the mountains. The trees gave a bend as a gust of wind travelled across the distance. Originating from the shimmer in the distance, she could see a dark cloud wisping it’s way through the trees and the gust blew into the window. A wave of euphoria and energy hit her. She felt stronger and she grinned, but as soon as it came it disappeared. She was left with a feeling of dread and tiredness. She knew that this had to do with what the king was referring to, but what and to what degree she didn’t know.

Suddenly the feeling of tiredness grew more intense. She felt light headed and needed to lay back down. As she laid down into bed she felt the grasp of sleep taking her. She fought it and wanted to stay awake to see more of the landscape, but the tiredness drew her back into a deep slumber.

She woke up to the sound of knocking on the door down the staircase. She got up to answer the door, not caring that she was still in her nightwear. Walking down the stairs she stumbled out of tiredness, nearly slipping down the stairs.

“Why is someone at the door so early in the morning?” She thought to herself?

When she got to the door, she pressed up against it and asked, “Who is it?”

A familiar voice answered back, “‘Tis Argus, Lady Arelia. I have brought your breakfast and a change of clothes for you.”

“No one has ever called me ‘Lady’ before,” She thought to herself as she opened the door.

Sure enough Argus stood there, as tall and tough as she remembered him, carrying a platter of food that seemed different and a beautiful dress slung across his forearm. She motioned for him to enter her room and he walked in. He walked past her with a nod and went to the table by the window and carefully placed the platter onto the table, obviously not accustomed to serving.

As he was placing down the platter she noticed that he was built like a bear. He would come in handy in a fight, she thought to herself, still watching him. She noticed a large scar that drew from the back of his left shoulder and around the right side of his neck. She came close to him and brushed her hand across the scar, mesmerised by the way it bent around his neck. As soon she touched him, he jumped and a loud clatter of the dish hitting the table filled the room as he swiftly grabbed her hand, pulling it away from his scar. The motion swift and accurate, unexpected from his size.

With a low growl he said, “My Lady, please don’t touch that.”

Even with his face covered by his shoulder she could see a pained look on his face. She asked, “What happened?”

“‘Tis an injury from a battle long over.” He replied mysteriously. “A mark of dishonor for a warrior that lived when he should have died.”

She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him up the stairs. He was quite easy to control. She sat him down in front of the vanity in the bedroom and positioned him in a way that he could see it in the mirror. She ran her finger down the back of his neck tracing the scar, wishing that it would go away and as her finger passed over the scar, it vanished, as if her finger were an eraser removing a mark on a paper.

Argus’ complexion became white, and she could see a sense of relief pass through his face. She placed a hand on his back and could feel his life force. This startled her but she kept her cool and withdrew her hand. After saying, “You are a good man, Argus. Don’t let the past mark you.”

She could feel that loosen him up and she turned to go back downstairs, feeling hungry all of a sudden. It didn’t take long for him to get up and follow her.

She sat down at the table where he left the food, which looked vaguely similar to what she ate back home but was different. There seemed to be eggs, but she was unsure if they were from birds as they had a slight blue tint to them. There was some meat of an animal that looked like a steak. Deciding that she didn’t want to be rude, she delicately picked up the knife and fork that he had provided her and started to cut into the “steak”. It was soft and tender and the knife just glided through it with ease. She put it into her mouth and the taste was very unexpected. It tasted like a cross between bacon and eggs. It was quite unusual but to her surprise was exactly what she would have wanted for breakfast. She tried the blue eggs next, these were not as easy to cut.. They were tough and seemed rubbery. When she finally cut it and tasted it she was taken aback. It tasted like fruit, but not any fruit that she had eaten before but just a sweet.

As she continued to eat she could see that Argus had brought the dress upstairs but had not come down for some time. She heard the sound of water and became slightly confused. She didn’t remember there being a bath or any running water in the room above. She quickly finished her meal and went upstairs. Argus was leaned up against the wall with his hand pressed against one to the stones in the wall. The stone had receded into the wall slightly and a bathroom had opened up behind the wall. Inside there was a bath and what she assumed was a toilet but was really just a box on the ground with a hole in it. She stood by him in awe as she looked into the bathroom. The bath was filling up without the use of plumbing. Water was raining down into the tub out of thin air, a thin layer of steam drifting ghostly across the top of the water. She stood in silence as he finished filling up the tub and when it was done he tilted his head down in respect to her and with a slight grateful smile on his face he left the room. She could hear him close the door downstairs as she walked over to the bath. It felt like forever since she had taken a bath. She stripped her night wear off and got into the tub. Despite the steam indicating that it was boiling hot, the water was the perfect temperature. The water felt good against her skin, warming her up and washing away the feeling of morning grogginess.

She bathed for what seemed like forever. She found soap, and rags to clean herself on a table beside her tub. She didn’t realize how dirty she was. The dungeon really did a number on her skin and hair. After she was thoroughly finished cleaning she looked around for a towel which was nowhere to be seen. She got out of the bath and when she stepped out onto the floor the air around her warmed up. This surprised her and she almost tripped back into the tub but was soon comfortable and let the warm air dry off the water dripping down her body. This only took a few seconds and she was completely dry. Astounded, she walked out of the bathroom to find that Argus had brought her dress up for her and she got dressed, whipping her hair to get it all out of the back of the dress. She looked at herself in the mirror of the vanity admiring herself. Though she would never have worn this before, the dress was slimming and covered most of her skin with its long sleeves and dress. The color was a light purple that complimented her hair, though her hair was a tangled mess. Sitting in front of the mirror of the vanity she saw a brush and sat down to do her hair.

When she finished her hair, she went down the stairs, exiting her room. She remembered that there was a magnificent library just down the hall and went looking for it. Reading was a pleasure to her and she wanted to know more about this world and how exactly it worked.

As she walked down the hall she realized that she didn’t notice all of the doors down the hallway that she came through yesterday. There were doors on either side of her. She wondered if they were just more rooms like hers. The hall had no windows that showed the beautiful landscape that lay just beyond those doors. She realized that there were no torches or light fixtures inside this hall but it was well lit anyway. She wondered about that as she made her way down the hall. When she came to the door that she thought was the staircase that led her up here she turned to the door just before that one. This is the door that she remembered seeing the library through. She opened the door and sure enough there was a grand library. Filled with so much natural light that she had to shade her eyes until they grew accustomed to the brightness. She wandered through the first aisle and could smell the pages as she walked, such a comforting smell. It almost made her forget that she was in a completely different world than her home. As she passed through the aisle she saw where the light was coming from. There were large windows all across the back wall revealing the beautiful landscape. There was a large balcony that could be accessed through doorways that opened for her when she approached them.

She marveled the scene again. It was so breathtaking that she had to take it all in once again. She leaned up against the parapet with both arms and just lost herself in the beauty of the land around her. With a tinge of excitement coursing through her she turned back towards the library with a skip in her step and walked back into the library. There were no markers that she could make sense of on the aisles but she didn’t let this get her down. She went to pick a book off the shelf to be greeted with a high pitched noise when she started to pull the book off of the shelf, startled she jammed the book back into it’s place and stumbled back, her ears ringing. She could hear shuffling steps of someone rushing beyond the shelves. She panicked and looked for somewhere to hide, feeling as though she had done something wrong and didn’t want to be thrown back into that disgusting dungeon again but she didn’t make it anywhere before a woman popped up at the end of the aisle.

“Who’s there!” She screeched as she rounded the corner. The bespectacled woman that appeared was tall and very skinny. Her face scrunched in anger and a dark red robe, which was clearly too big for her, trailed behind her several inches. In her arms was a large book bound in leather. When she saw Arelia the book fell to the floor with a loud thud. Her jaw dropped almost as far. The most perplexed look of astonishment came across her face. “W-w-w-what? No, it’s simply not possible.” She stammered as she shuffled her way toward her. Arelia took a step back as the woman came up to her. She slowly reached out and took hold of Arelia’s brown hair. “Thank god I washed it,” Arelia thought to herself.

Arelia grabbed the woman’s hand and detangled herself out of the woman’s grasp. The woman took a step back, her face turning slightly pink. Arelia asked, “What’s your name? Mine’s Arelia.” As she did a small curtsy.

“Oh!” She exclaimed embarrassed. “You can call me Margot.” She finished, with a deep curtsy.

“I’ve only heard the tales of the mystical savior, I never thought that I would ever meet her - er - you.” Margot stated sheepishly. “What is it that I can help you find?” She asked, obviously trying to brush away the embarrassment.

Arelia grinned to herself, starting to like the royal treatment. “I was looking to find out about the history of this fine kingdom. Do you have books that tell the stories of the past kings?” Arelia asked with a smile.

“Yes, of course! Right this way.” Margot said chipperly as she shuffled off to show her where to find the right books.

Margot showed her to an aisle a few rows down, quickly ducking behind the shelves. When Arelia turned down the aisle Magot was there holding a book, this one bound in leather like the one Arelia had tried to take earlier but having golden trimming.

“This is the story of the first king, Odigia. The ones here,” Margot said while motioning to three other books, “are the rest of the kings and their adventures, trials and movements. Was this what you were looking for?” She finished.

“Yes, thank you.” Arelia replied, taking the book from Margot. “When I am done reading how do I take another book?” She asked.

“Oh!” Margot said. She turned to the bookshelf and waved her hand and a barrier glittered and disappeared. “Now you can take any book you would like from this shelf.”

“Thank you, Margot. You have been a great help.” Arelia said to her with a smile.

The librarian blushed and turned to leave her to her reading but before she left Arealia asked, “Is there somewhere that I can read this in here?”

Margot said, “Of course!” Showing her to a lounge area. “Is there anything else that you need Lady Arelia?”

“Actually, yes. Is it possible that you could tell Argus that I am here if he needs me? I don’t want him to worry.” Arelia asked

“Yes, of course.” She replied with a bow of her head and walked off.

Arelia went to sit down. She marveled as this was the perfect spot to read a book. There were several couches and lounge chairs encircling a table made of the trunk of a tree. She chose a chair that was facing the window so that she could look out into the sky whenever she wanted to.

Arelia spent the next several hours reading away. She was glad that the translation spell Mave had cast on her allowed the words on the page to be translated too. If he hadn’t told her that’s what he did, she would have thought it strange that these people spoke the same language as her. She learned all about the grand tales of the last few kings. She learned in more detail how King Odigia conquered the land. She tore through book after book as they were quite short.

“This civilization must not be too keen on recording history.” She muttered under her breath after the 4th short “history” book she took off the shelf. The books read more like fantasy to her. She would get engrossed and before she knew it the book would be over.

After she had her fill of “history” she felt like she knew a bit more about the way this world operated and what the history was all about and started wandering around the shelves, gently running her hand against the leather bound books that lie inside. She heard the all too familiar shuffling of Margot’s steps inching their way towards her and she stopped to let the older woman catch up.

“Is there something you’re looking for Lady Arelia?” Margot asked as she turned from the corner.

A small smile tilted Arelia’s lips. “Actually, yes.” Arelia answered, trying to hide her excitement. “Where are your books on magic?”

A confused look swept across Margot’s face. “Ma-jick?” She inquired.

Arelia’s hand went to her chin inquisitively. “Oh… What did he call it again? Mysticism? Do you have books on Mysticism here?”

“Oh! Yes of course! Follow me.” Margot answered, shuffling off past the shelf out of sight.

Arelia had to increase her pace to catch up to her. Margot led her up a spiral staircase to the second floor of the library and down the halls of book to a gate where she again waved her hand and a shimmer of light disarmed a barrier. After which she took out keys from her robe and unlocked the gate. She led her down the hall waving her hand before every hall of books.

Margot stopped suddenly, which surprised Arelia who almost bumped into her, and turned around sharply asking mid turn, “Did you find out your Mystic?”

“Yes, the king said it was illusion?” She replied almost as if it was a question.

Margot nodded and turned back around and whipped around the corner. When Arelia turned the corner she was just able to see the faint glint of the spell being dispelled. Margot grabbed a book off the shelf and blew the dust off the book into a thin cloud and handed it to Arelia saying, “The Mystic of illusion is quite a rare ability. Not many people can use it so these books gather quite a bit of dust.” Handing Arelia the book. “Do please be careful, I don’t want to try and tell someone like you how to use the mystics but I do want to warn you to be careful.”

After Arelia took the book Margot whipped her robe and shuffled off. Arelia put her back against the shelf and slid down it and onto the floor. She couldn’t wait to get started.