Crimson grabbed the jacket she had used to treat her wounds, wrapping it tightly around her hand. "What are you doing?" Jake questioned, staring at her from the corner of his eyes as he tried his best to clean up and sooth all of his wounds. His jacket was soaked using the remaining water in Crimsons flask and he was slowly applying pressure to his burn wounds.
Crimson replied, "Since this room is hot, the door handle is probably hot. I don't want to get more burns." Jake nodded, absentmindedly, changing his focus to cleaning up little nicks and scratches that he had because of flying debris in the explosion.
Crimson, having finished securely wrapping the jacket, gripped the door handle. Not wanting to wait long and have the heat touch her skin, she pushed the handle down. Surprisingly, the door opened smoothly. It swung so well that Crimson almost fell flat on her face.
"Careful there," Jake chuckled, dropping his used jacket on the floor. It was wet and had dried blood all over it so he kicked it into the lava. Crimson shot him a playful glare before unwrapping the jacket. Even though it was dirty, it was her favourite jacket, so she placed it back in her backpack.
"Come on," she replied with a roll of her eyes.
The room they were in was.... unimpressive really. A hotel sized square room with light golden walls. On the other end was a glass circle that went from the bottom to the top of the wall. There were numbers on it, mimicking how a clock face looked like.
The floor was wooden, though it had small grooves lined with gold. These grooves came from behind the walls, slithering as they made their way to the center of the room. They bled into a small depression in the floor, also lined with gold.
Crimson turned her head towards the walls, as Jake walked over towards the glass. He looked through it, staring at light whisps of purple clouds, like freshly spun cotton candy wrapped around the pink sky. A small moon hung in the sky, it's pink light dotting the glass face. Jake wondered how it got so late without him realizing.
Crimson let out a gasp of surprise as her eyes set upon the small squiggles etched into the wall. Her eyes quickly scanned it, the briefest of events flashing before her eyes. It came and went as fast as a blink. Everytime Crimson looked away, she would completely forget what she had seen.
Her hands traced the squiggles, the history of everything unfolding and clasping back up behind her. Her mind seemed so vast when she knew what she saw, then so miniscule as soon as she looked away. "How am I seeing this?" she wondered to herself, her voice a stark comparison to the dead silence in the room.
She kept walking, not noticing Jake watching her with an amused smirk on his face. Suddenly, she reached the end of the room. All the images stopped. But she knew, somehow, history was still alive. History was waiting for the two teenagers to do something. Something that would send it moving again.
Yes, it felt like that. A moment of anticipation. Like the moment between an exhale and an inhale. The moment before the sun's rays crack behind the lull of the night. The moment before an action was taken. The moment before Crimson and Jake had to choose.
Who would go?
Crimson turned around to see Jake examining the little pool. A silence hung between them. Crimson was afraid to speak. Afraid to think of the choice she had to make. "It's the clock," Jake suddenly spoke, using his chin to point at a a little lump in front of him.
"This is the Doomsday Clock?" Crimson uttered with disbelief. "I thought it would be something big and majestic. Like a grandfather clock or something. But this is....."
The clock was nothing special. It looked like a mini, alarm clock sized grandfather clock. But instead of having a bell below the clock face, it had an hourglass. Crimson watched the hour glass for a bit but no sand came out. 'It's probably just like the walls,' Crimson thought. 'Waiting for something to happen before a sand falls.'
YOU ARE READING
CRIMSON ROTH
Science Fiction"We are on Gregorax," his voice cut off Crimson's line of thought. When she stared at him, a puzzled look on her face, he lifted an eyebrow. "Didn't you know? The Doom Clock is setting off soon, so the Equilibris are kidnapping others and using thei...
