Realm of Wings

Jade, turning herself away from the locked door:

Fuck! What am I to do now?

Did she really just say that I’ll become an addition to her stone statues? I know I don’t have all the time on the world rest to live, but I’m not going to spend eternity as one of her fucked up creations! No, I’m going to get through this trial, no matter what.

I took a deep breath and turned myself around to face the room instead of the door that was slammed in my face.

I didn’t know what I was to expect, but the simple items in front of me weren’t something I would’ve come up with. I expected something different, something dangerous, but not this. In front of me there was a column, half my height and on top of it was a small brazier with a light fire simmering on some coals. It lit up the small room and showed me that there was something odd about the walls. The wall behind the fire seemed newly placed, newer than the other three, torn walls, that surrounded this room, and it made me curious. But other than this feeling about this wall, nothing else in the room was here to indulge my curiosity.

This was just an empty room with a fire in the middle, and one new wall, that’s it.

Or was it?

I’m here to get my last orb of power, so I guess I need to do something here to get me to it. But what?

“Any tips or hints, to go with this?” I asked out loud, thinking that maybe the hissing voices would help me. But of course, no one replied. Not that I wanted to give up on this, but I even tried the door, to step out again and find that woman, but it was locked from the outside, so no luck in that either.

“Okay, the wall it is.” I said to no one in particular, just voicing out my thoughts to not go insane.

I never liked cramped up rooms, not that I’m truly claustrophobic and would succumb to the fear of walls coming at you, but just not having the freedom to do anything I want or being unable of looking outside wasn’t really sitting well with me.

My fingers traced the other walls, feeling the indents or smelling the dirt on them, figuring out what it was that was on them and trying to come up with a reason why it wasn’t on the new wall. What had happened here that made the owner of this moving mansion only switch out one wall, instead of all of them? I mean, the woman had the power to use the stones and do whatever she wanted to do, so why not change all of them?

This must be a hint.

The pristine wall must be some sort of thing to get through, to take down and end up on the other side. That’s why the wall must be replaced when broken!

I knocked on the torn walls and heard a solid sound, not reverberating into an empty room behind it, but when I knocked on the new wall, the sound was hollow, indicating that it was indeed leading to another room!

Smart thinking! Okay step two, break through it.

I energized my hand, forming a ball of my energy in the palm of it and threw it against the smooth surface of the wall. But when I walked closer I noticed that it didn’t do any damage, other than leaving behind a small smudge of black from the impact. Hmmm.

I walked back, pushing my back against the other wall to embrace myself and created one massive ball of energy to launch it against the pristine wall again. Smoke and dust filled the room, leaving me to cough from inhaling it and wiping the air in front of me to get rid of the dust. This attack was one powerful orb of energy and no mere wall would be sustainable enough to stand after receiving it.

Or so I thought…

The dust cleared and it showed that I had knocked over the column and the brazier, where the column was lying broken on the floor and the brazier had managed to slide off it somehow and was laying on the ground as well, but still in the same position as it had been on the column. The small simmering fire in the brazier used a little more oxygen in the room to get back into flaring up again and my jaw dropped…

The wall was still standing and not even a chip of stone had come off of it!

All the smoke I inhaled was just old dust and smoke from the brazier and the column that I broke, but not from the wall that I had been trying to break down!

I sat down next to the brazier, wanting to keep the light between me and the wall while feeling the warmth of it as well.

Kallan… I want to see him again…

Neil… I miss you… You would have come up with a solution, I’m sure of it…

I put up my knees and hugged them tightly, hoping to come up with an idea while acting like my legs were either of those men. While focusing I tried to think of every detail in this room, summing up the facts that I knew.

The pristine and solid wall was still there, mocking me with its endurance and I scoffed at it. If I can’t breach the wall to get further into my trial, how am I going to get through it at all then?

The dust that was settling down, even draping my leather boots a little as I sat perfectly still for a moment, thinking of all sorts of things that might help me to bring down that wall.

After a few more minutes, the brazier with the small fire, lit up the room just as bright as before, even though it was simmering on half the amount of coals as they had fallen out after me unleashing my energy against the wall.

The wall.

The dust.

The brazier.

I kept repeating those three things in my mind, trying to come up with something to get me through this stupid situation.

Wait, there is more.

The wall.

The dust.

The brazier.

And… the reason why I’m here. I’m here to get my last orb of power, the one specifically for ‘adjustment’. But how can I use that knowledge here? I mean, each time I had been granted an orb, something specifically linked to that orb had been used to get it.

Before being given the orb of protection, I had managed to read minds and use the ability to save myself from incoming danger. The orb of animal was guided to me by Poseidon at which after I had been able to save all those animals from the mirror world, and the orb of healing was given to me by Miria, giving me some sanity over losing Neil.

It was as if I had to endure a lot of dangers, physically and emotionally, in order to get them. But knowing this, how could I use ‘adjustment’ in this situation?

It could mean that I can change myself, transform into something, or the ability to accustom myself quickly in different situations, or that I could adjust other objects into something that I needed? I don’t know, my mind is going into strange curves right now.

I gazed into the small fire, letting the warmth of it embrace me while I closed my eyes. It was frustrating to me that I couldn’t come up with anything.

“Ahh!” I screamed, just letting off some steam.

But when I did that, I accidentally knocked over the brazier with my foot and coals scattered themselves over the floor. I quickly reached for the brazier, not wanting to get this mall room covered in darkness even though I knew the metal of the brazier would be hot. I quickly picked it up and turned it over to keep the small flame alit by any of the coals that were simmering underneath it.

But when I touched the metal, I realized it wasn’t hot at all! And upon further search, I noticed that there was no coal left inside the brazier to keep any fire alive, even though a small flame was still burning inside it! The small flame was just floating in the middle of the brazier, not needing any burning hot coals to keep it alive…

What the…

I reached inside the brazier, holding my hand against the metal while sliding underneath the small flame. I felt the heat that was coming off of it, but it wasn’t burning anything. Not the metal of the brazier and not my hand. This was just a magical, superficial flame that was created to stay here to make sure that the next Etunadain was able to figure out what he or she was supposed to do here while having enough light to see in this small room.

Okay, so I’m supposed to do something with this fire.

I looked to the new wall again and back to the magical fire. Wall. Fire. Wall. Fire.

“Take it.” The oh so familiar male voice that I’ve heard so many times already, whispered in my head.

“Take it?” How?

Well, this voice always helped me whenever I heard it, so there was no chance for me to ignore it now. Besides, I’m a hundred and sixty-three years old, I have experienced enough to know that this voice had no ill-intend to me.

I put both my hands in the brazier, cupping them underneath the flame and scooping it up, out of the metal bowl. I carefully stood up, not wanting to lose the flame in a victorious jump but when I let out a sigh of relief, that it was still inside my hands, not burning my skin, it suddenly turned into goo!

The liquid fire, how strange that may sound, swirled around in the cup of my hands and lit up my skin while I watched how my flesh soaked up the fluid! It suddenly turned dark in the room, where not even a crack in one of the four walls or from underneath the door, for example, gave me the ability to see anything.

Out of habit, I tried to create a small orb of energy to light up the room, but instead of the small orb that would normally appear at the edge of my fingers, there now was a small fire!

What the hell?!

If Trixie would be here right now, she would shriek and curse, outing my thoughts. But besides me being shocked, I was curious as well.

The power to adjust… would that mean I could take over some magical power and use it myself? The flame I just absorbed wasn’t a normal one, magic was used to create it, so that would indicate that I couldn’t just take over any fire or other element, but I could take over magic.

This should be fun!

Now I knew what I had to do.

I stood myself back against the wall again, opposite of the new wall, and created an orb, an orb of fire this time, and launched it against the new wall.

Luckily, this orb of fire did have the wanted effect and crushed straight through the wall. The crumbling of stones caused by the little explosion made me cover my ears as the sound was deafening. And when the dust settled, as I could see it when light poured into the room, through the crumbled wall, I was happy to see I had reached the next room.

I stepped through the hole and snapped my fingers to see if I still had the power of fire. A small fire the size of that of a lighter, appeared on top of my thumb and I was glad that I hadn’t lost it.

Alright, what’s next?

This time, a lamp was hanging from the ceiling and lit up the room perfectly, so I knew I didn’t have to do anything with fire. But instead, this time, a person was standing in the middle of the room.

A young male wearing a black suit, neatly curving around all of his contours and holding his hands behind his back to show off some sort of butler-like character. And his slick hair and neatly trimmed moustache added to that look, giving me the idea that I was more in England than I was on the Aether side of Kyalthemar.

“Uhm, hello.” I said with some hesitancy.

“Good day, miss Jade.” The young man said and I moved myself to the back of the room, nearly stumbling over the rubble I had created when I broke through the wall.

This is not real.

This is just some sick joke.

No.

No!

“NO!” I yelled and screamed and let myself slide down the wall and hugged my legs again. Tighter this time. Much tighter…