Phantom Chained

Chapter 39. Where the wind blows from. Ingrid.

The perfectly smooth shroud of snow stretched into the horizon marked by two stripes, one red and the other white. The latter shined brighter as the light came from under the snow, filling it with volume and a deceptive feeling of life. The surface, evenly covered in frozen ripples, glistened with myriads of fish scales, blinding everyone who gazed upon them. Snowflakes burst like sparks from within the frosted expanse.

They fell up.

Snow, but not quite snow.

It bent beneath my invisible legs as if I was wading through jelly. The incubus got the worst of it; it was ankle-deep in the snow, sometimes even deeper, and\ made sure everyone knew its struggles by swearing every second of the way, mainly in Italian. I even unwillingly memorized some of its favourite phrases.

My invisible legs were freezing and my toes twitched with painful cramps, but the snowflakes burned hot.

Snowflakes, but not quite snowflakes.

At about the height of my chest, the air started to waver with warm haze, and a few meters above our heads flaming twisters whizzed past. We walked for hours against this wind that pushed us against our goal like a sturdy wall.

The goal that the incubus simply summarized as "We go where the wind blows from."

The snowflakes did not obey the wind. They slowly flowed upwards, dissolving into the fiery sky.

I could no longer see my body, despite feeling the cold, the painful numbness in my feet and the Incubus' grip, tightly holding my arms; or the space where my arms were supposed to be. Just when I thought this couldn't get any weirder.

Following the rules of insanity, the wish to wake up from a nightmare like Alice in Wonderland shifted my hallucinations into another phase. Except the rabbit hole was a fiery pit, and now I was following the white and fluffy Elm, not resembling the rabbit in the slightest. Alice's rabbit was an adorable helper, but this...

I remember how for a while I even believed that the incubus was my ally and I could eventually stop hating it, but boy was I wrong. To deal with the sheer irritation that this creature caused in me was impossible! I swear, I even started to understand Clara, especially the moments where she wanted to crack its head open with an axe, which I wish she did... Even the fact that I broke its leg was enough to make me give a single fuck.

I was exhausted... impossibly so! Although the lack of strength was still sort of bearable; it was my brain that felt like it was wrung out. Then you also had the constant sarcasm coming from the Incubus, who hasn't thought once about cheering me up or saying something positive for a change!

On the previous layer, or 'level' as he calls it, my body began to get more and more transparent, but I didn't notice it at first and got really frightened when orange light started to shine through my tightly shut eyes. The light grew with every passing moment until it drowned everything around me and I couldn't see farther than the tip of my nose, although even that was getting harder to make out.

Remembering the Incubus' warning that I shouldn't open my eyes, which now was quite troubling considering my eyelids seemed to have evaporated, I started to panic and quickly explained to him what was going on and it... It just indifferently explained that my eyes leaking out was just a joke and suggested that I climb down until the next crossing.

And then added, as if mocking me:

"Quite an interesting effect of incorporated levels. Just marvel at the iridescent fibers... they emanate from just the harmonic game of delta-waves and the soft flexibility of infrared radiation, but still so magnificent.