The Cycle

Chapter Eight

A slow and heavy silence descended. It cocooned her in a bubble of quiet stillness. Myra's near hysteric voice, Abigail's placating, yet on-edge tone; both were distant and dull mumblings to her ears. The smell of choking rot swept through her nostrils. And the faded world with sketchy molds of black sands, swept by whistling wisps of wind, assailed her mind with the terrible embodiment of a soul-prison.

Myra shattered Mabel's cocoon of quietness: grabbed her by the collar, probed with wide questioning eyes; a face marred by confusion; and a voice that formed broken and disconnected words.

"Where... where did...Mabel what..."

Mabel was just as confused, if not more. The failed crossing wasn't her doing.

"I don't know what happen. I truly don't know," said Mabel.

A sense of self returned to Myra, and she let go, backpedaled, closed her eyes; and calm returned to her in slow breaths. When she opened her eyes, her presence was sharp steel.

"We don't move an inch, until we understand what just happen," said Myra. The blood persona was awake.

Yet Mabel ignored the command. Her feet moved with hesitant steps, eyes peering about, searching for a way out. A veil of light, a shimmering space, anything. There was none.

"Mabel, get back here. We need to stay together."

"The presence of this place crawls with unseen foes."

They didn't understand. To them, this was a strange turn of events. To her, it was the shutting of a door against her face. A door she must walk through. A door that blocked her from the reaching hands of three souls.

"Holding a position, does nothing for us. We must move," she said.

"Who died and made you queen."

"Really..."

"You two, shut your mouth. This is not the time nor place," said Abigail. "Mabel, I beg you, follow Myra's lead. She's after all, practical and battle experienced. Something you and I don't have."

"I know that. I just proposed, as you said, something practical. That we should move. And she read meaning into it. If anything leaps out the shadows, I know where I'll be. Behind her, while she fends it off. I don't like it. But it's the truth. A wicked one."

"I'm sorry. I'm just... On edge."

"Will Anshul see or hear us?"

"Probably, if this place falls under his domain, and he actively reaches out in search. Which he won't, not now at least," said Abigail.

"This has never happen at a crossing. No records whatsoever. There are no grounds on which I can base a plan. And I can tell, this place lacks the life through which we can open another pathway."

"Even if we find a way to open one; what's to say we don't walk into a more terrible place, or fall off the edge, into an endless pit."

"Didn't know you had a pessimist in you. I'm usually the one uttering gloom and doom."

"Dark situations reveal darker nature. But yet, they push us to test the limits we have lived by: how far we'll push to escape them," said Abigail. And her face took a strange turn as she stared at Myra. Then she stared at her palms, in open wrestle with herself.

"No way!" Myra said forcefully, "we've not tried anything yet."

"I was just -"

"You weren't - just anything. It was clearly written on your face."