AC: Round 3 - Sagequeen

[Revenant]

This thread is reserved for Sagequeen. The thread will open September 30th and will be closed after two weeks.

Good Luck!

[Sagequeen]

“Not now. I am having the most lovely dream...”

Erissa Caedron, a high elf of the Ixian Knights, awoke alone behind a desk in a hard, wooden chair. She blinked groggily before raising her head from the short stack of paper below it, a single sheet sticking to her cheek. The page fluttered to the ground with a crackle and a whisper before coming to rest on the glossy tile. A quill and ink waited in its recessed tray at the right edge of the fine liviol.

Before her, the dark, purple wood of a solemn grandfather clock was the only relief from the blindingly white walls that enveloped her. The clock stood in suspended vigil over the arcanist, its pendulum defunct behind snowy, acid-etched glass. Erissa stretched her arms upward, groaning as the the knots in her neck and shoulders slowly released. She looked around the room, wondering what the final challenge in Kenneth Stern’s repertoire had in store.

“A maze, an old, dead tree... now what?” she wondered aloud as she gazed at the bare walls to her sides. A blotch of color snagged her peripheral vision, and Erissa twisted in her chair to get a better look at the far end of the room behind her. Her hand instinctively went to her mouth, covering the shock as if there were someone to see it.

The clock’s pendulum began to swing, the subtle tick carrying through the silent room.

The high elf’s breath caught in her chest. She pivoted her head wildly, searching for danger, yet the room was empty save a desk, a clock, a door...

And a body.

Erissa swallowed hard, the lump in her throat as real the body in the corner, and she froze in systemic indecision. With a cursory glance to the door, the elf took a deep, stabilizing breath and pushed her chair back, the smooth, worn wood on tile producing an ear-piercing shriek that interrupted the cotton-stuffed sensation of silence.

The elf’s feet swept against the tile as she approached the body. She sniffed the air, hoping her superior senses might reveal something meaningful, but all Erissa could process was the absolute lack of any scent aside from the wood, paper, ink, and herself. She leaned over the unmoving body, taking special note of the silver hair, not unlike her own. In fact, it was the very same shade and length.

Erissa knelt by the body, slipping two trembling fingers through the nestle of hair to the neck, checking for a pulse. She waited a full minute, but there was nothing to indicate life, not even the lingering warmth that would declare a recent death. Her stomach twisted into knots as she gripped the cool, slender shoulder. With a gentle heft, the elf rolled the body from its side to its back. As the tresses slid from the obscured features, Erissa Caedron found she was peering into her own wide and unseeing green-blue eyes. She was face to face with herself.

Her dead self.

Her posterior hit the ground with the force of pure shock, and Erissa retreated, scuttling like a crab, until she had put several feet between them.

“It is me,” she stammered dumbly. She looked down at her own clothing, a thin white gown that tied on the side. The body was dressed in the very same garment, every detail perfect, including the frayed ribbons that secured it.

Erissa rose slowly, backing across the room as her heart thrummed against her ribcage. She bumped into the table, sending the ink into a tumble through the air. The tiny, pitch black globules freckled her feet and the pristine tile, and the chink as glass hit the ground jolted through the elf’s nerves. She caught herself against the side of the desk, and let it bear her weight. As the bottle finally came to rest, ink pooled from it, cold and oozing around her heels.

The entire desk shook with the force of her tremors.

There must be an explanation for this, she reasoned, the weakened voice of her mind echoing and repeating in eerie syncopation. Erissa looked from the body to the door on the side wall, and from the door back to the body. The elf strained with her legs, steadying herself with trembling arms against the desktop. With a few deep breaths she stood fully and made her way by the shortest distance to the door-bearing wall.

With every step, her fingers trailed the painted, white surface, and Erissa drew nearer to the door. Each movement forward gave her strength; it was the way out of the nightmare. She all but fell against the eggshell colored wood, and the keyless, ladle-type handle was oddly warm as she gripped it. However, what she saw stopped her; at eye level were five words, routed smoothly into the wood.

Do Not Open This Door

Erissa blinked several times in succession, reading the words time and time again. The elf raised a dainty hand, extending her index finger, and traced the concave, painted ‘O’ several times to ensure it was truly engraved there and not a trick of her mind. Perplexed, Erissa took several steps back, daring a glance at the body, which, to her relief, had not moved.

“Is this a puzzle?” Erissa asked no one in particular, her voice echoing slightly against all the flush surfaces. “Yes,” she reasoned. “I am in a contest, and this is just a puzzle meant to frighten me.” She breathed deeply for a few minutes, relaxing herself with every exhale. With renewed intent, she retreated to gather her thoughts at the desk.

The elf retrieved the toppled ink glass, nearly empty, and the quill. With a heavy sigh, she sat down and scooted the chair forward, her legs hidden beneath the desktop. Always the good student, Erissa took the quill from the reservoir of ink and held it poised over the short stack of paper before her. A stark, black drop hit the page with an audible tap. After a few moments, a dawning of hope brightened her face, and Erissa began writing in her delicate, flowing script.

Please open the door.

Almost in a jog, the elf crossed to the door. She slid the page through the small crack below it, peering as hard as she could to catch a glimpse of what was on the other side. However, all Erissa saw was darkness; not even a single shaft of light peeked through the slit. Her face full of hope, the elf stood up and crossed her arms, waiting expectantly.

Erissa’s thoughts came relentlessly until hope faded to neutrality, in whose fertile soil doubt was seeded. The proper elf began rocking back and forth before the door, impatient.

“Hello!” she asserted, her voice shrill. “Hello! Is anyone there?” she called loudly, but silence was her only answer, silence and the ticking of a clock. “This is ludacris,” Erissa spat, her initial terror faded. “Ridiculous contest. It is no more real than my last death.”

The grandfather clock chimed once, the melodic bell reverberating in its harmonics.

She tensed slightly, realizing for the first time a thing she had subconsciously known all along. The clock was keeping time. Erissa thought feverishly of the first time she looked upon it, and to the best of her memory, it was unmoving. However, the pendulum sliced through the air in direct affront to her memory.

“Odd. Perhaps I was wrong, and it was keeping time all along.” A chill passed through her bones, and the elf rubbed her bare arms as she stood before the door. She avoided thinking of ‘the body,’ as she mentally referred to it, considering it a very well-done prop in the various playthings belonging to the Adventurer’s Crown proprietor, Kenneth Stern. Considering the gifts he was willing to part with, surely the man had the ability to create what lurked in the corner of the room, much less clocks that stopped and started on their own whims.

Resigned to the idea that her plan of politely asking whoever was on the other side of the door to open it had not worked, she paced back to the desk and flopped down in the seat. Erissa tapped her fingers on the desk, her mind wandering freely to conclusions of which she wanted no part. Hoping to occupy herself, she took the quill in hand, meaning to write or doodle, though she increasingly found herself eyeing the door.

“Do not open this door,” she mocked, her tone condescending. “I have half a mind to do just the opposite.” Defiance seeped into her consciousness, pressuring out the fear and dread of a situation that, more and more, seemed feebly contrived to Erissa. “Might as well write out a grocery list while I wait, I suppose,” she jabbed obstinately, and marred paper with ink.

Milk
Eggs
Cheese
Root of Ceravy
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Trail Mix
Venison loin
Butter
Flour
Raiaerian Red
Magedust ink

Her list written, Erissa sagged to the side and rested her jaw in her palm. She stared more intently at the door, more often.

“Ludacris,” she confirmed again. “Why can I not open the door?” she wondered aloud, brushing the black and brown striped feather against her cheek and lips. “There must be another way out,” she muttered, and set to searching the walls for hidden levers or releases, or even a seam she might not have seen from a distance. She searched the large tiles, tapping on them and testing the grout every few steps. Erissa peered at the body, still convinced it was very good reproduction, and even rolled it again to check beneath it. With a sigh, she looked at the clock across the room.

The stoic face seemed to look past her, the glint against the mother of pearl moving with her as she passed by the desk toward it. The clock was emotionless as it counted the moments, destroying them as soon as the next was made.

"Perhaps you hold some secret," she said, and wrapped her fingers around the back corner of smooth, lacquered wood. With some effort, she pulled the grandfather clock toward her slightly. She peeked around the vibrant liviol; the same wall existed behind it that could be found elsewhere in the room. The elf clucked her tongue, genuinely annoyed as she struggled to push the timepiece back into its place. As a last ditch effort, Erissa searched the ceiling, her neck craned upward as she wandered the room.

“Is there nothing?” she demanded of the room. “Nothing besides that accursed door? Ugh,” she huffed as she sat down. “I forgot carrots.” Near the pool of ink she spilled, she noticed a paper that had fallen when she had awakened. The chair groaned mournfully as she bent to gather it. To her intrigue, there were markings on the page.

And to her dread, they were her own. Confused, the elf studied the page.

Milk
Eggs
Cheese
Root of Ceravy
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Trail Mix
Venison loin
Butter
Flour
Raiaerian Red
Magedust ink
Carrots

Side by side, the handwriting was a perfect match. She gripped a paper in each sweaty, shaking hand, trying to discern the meaning. Erissa looked fearfully behind her at ‘the body.’

“No,” she whispered, standing so suddenly the chair careened to its back against the tile. “It cannot be me; here I am! Whoever -whatever- that is... I have to get out of here!” Erissa bolted for the door, both lists fluttering to the ground behind her.

[Sagequeen]

“Not now. I am having the most lovely dream...”

Erissa Caedron, a high elf of the Ixian Knights, awoke alone, seated behind a liviol desk in a hard, wooden chair. She squinted and blinked at the brightness of the room before raising her head from the slim stack of paper below it, one of the sheets sticking to her cheek. The blank page fluttered to the ground with a crackle and a whisper before coming to rest on the glossy tile. A quill and ink waited in its recessed, metal tray at the edge of the fine liviol.

The elf peered before her at an old, large clock, a clean-lined structure of dark purple against the white walls. The pendulum hung immobile behind frosted glass, and the hands were set at twelve. With a stretch, Erissa gazed around the room, wondering what challenges awaited her.

“A maze, an old, dead tree... now what?” she wondered aloud, remembering the horrid ending to the last round of the contest. As Erissa cast her gaze behind her, toward the back of the room, she was met with a very unexpected sight, and the prim elf covered her mouth to hide the shock.

The clock’s pendulum began to swing, the subtle tick carrying through the silent room.

The high elf choked on a breath that would not come. She looked around in alarm, searching for danger, yet the room was empty save a desk, a clock, a door...

And two bodies.

Erissa rose reluctantly, the prolonged screech of the chair against the tile grating against her newly roused nerves. She had been trying for several seconds to swallow unsuccessfully, and as she crept silently to the bodies, the young elf noted the silver hair that was the same hue and length as hers. Tapping her superior senses, she smelled nothing out of the ordinary, which struck her as odd, since she should have been able to smell the nearby bodies.

Erissa knelt by the two demure figures, feeling for a pulse on the first, but finding none. She grasped the shoulder, turned it slowly, and she cried out in her utter shock. The elf recoiled to see her own face gracing the body she flipped, and upon the other, the foreboding spectacle of the same clothing she currently wore. A morbid sense of curiosity demanded she learn the identity of the second. As she gingerly rolled the other body, what she saw set dead panic in her.

“They are me,” she choked, backing away. “No, this cannot be,” she murmured. “No, this, this is a trick, a cruel jest of Kenneth Stern.”

She thought of the door and spun quickly to make for it, her feet slapping against the cold, impersonal tile. The handle was oddly warm to the touch, and she noticed the words routed into the wood.

Do Not Open This Door

Erissa pulled her hand back, considering them. After a few moments, she timidly raised her hand and traced the 'O' several times around, testing its realness. Rebuked for the moment, the elf took a step backward and her foot slipped on a page strewn carelessly on the floor, and she saw another closer to the desk. Hesitantly, she retrieved them, but it was the ink-stained footprints on the tile that set her to truly wonder.

The darkest of the footprints led from the desk to the wall, then along the wall to the door. From there, they led directly back to the desk. Another set of prints, much lighter, faded just as they neared the door, and she could see no others. Erissa’s sense of reason dropped from below her as she finally read the pages in her hand, and she stumbled to the chair behind the liviol desk.

“Footprints... who... I need those... groceries...” she said weakly as she flopped onto the hard, wooden seat. “Groceries? Alright, Erissa. Think rationally,” she commanded herself. “This is all part of a contest; therefore, what I am seeing is just an illusion.” The creeping realization threatened her, and the arcanist attempted to push it away, but it was all too clear to deny.

Two bodies. Two lists, she thought reluctantly, her stomach producing enough bile it threatened make her physically ill. She looked behind her, hoping by some miracle the bodies had disappeared, but they both lay motionless, blue-green eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

“A grocery list?”

The elf’s head dropped into her hands, her heartbeat an audible thump out of time with the ticking clock. She squinted her eyes, walking the mental path of every possibility.

“There must be another way out. There has to be,” she mumbled. Erissa searched the room, top to bottom, and finally, grudgingly, went to the bodies once again. The tale-tell ink stains on one of the sets of feet was a dread-filled portent. Her search revealed nothing more, razing what hope the elf could conjure. She had seen where the footprints led.

The grandfather clock chimed once, and the elf almost jumped out of her skin at the unexpected sound. The clock, as far as she knew, had been unmoving when she awakened, but Erissa could not be sure. She had not paid enough attention to it. The arcanist shook her head, the oblong room closing in on her. She crept back to the desk and sat, running her fingers through her hair and massaging her temples.

It is a puzzle, she thought. Several times she rose from the chair, pacing the width of the room. An idea took root in her mind, and her posture sagged as she considered it. Head hanging and the look of fear plainly distorting her refined features, Erissa nodded fidgeted with the blank pages stacked before her.

The high elf tentatively plucked the quill from the reservoir and hovered the tip over the paper. After the first few strokes, she quickened her pace, stopping only to rub the worried creases upon her forehead.

“Now or never,” Erissa whispered. With a frown and a determined glare she straightened the pages, then folded another crisp parchment and wedged it beneath the strap of her brassiere. She flung a final, wary glance at the two bodies in the far corner, then padded to the door, gripped the handle, and walked through it.

[Sagequeen]

“Not now. I am having the most lovely dream...”

The high elf awoke, still smiling sweetly as she savored the fleeting memories of her sleeping fantasy. The remembrance of the hellish contest Erissa had entered robbed her of the dreamful bliss as she sat up, and a piece of paper stuck to her face. It fluttered to the floor.

She blinked several times in succession as she saw what appeared to be a grocery list - her grocery list - on the desk before her.

“How odd,” she mused, lifting the page. “Did I write this in my sleep? Or perhaps shopping is my final challenge,” Erissa laughed sarcastically, rolling her eyes. Her grin lingered until she flipped to the the next page in the stack, her distinct, flowing script hastily scrawled upon it, as if in anger.

Dear me?

I do not know exactly what is going on here, but I intend to find out. Or, perhaps, you will. Please, keep yourself calm and remain sitting.

First, the clock in front of you - is it keeping time?

Erissa flashed her gaze upward to the grandfather clock’s mother of pearl face, and the hands were frozen, pointing upward. The gilded pendulum encased below hung lifeless. She shrugged, seeing nothing important about the broken clock.

Second, and I am so very, very sorry, but you will, no doubt, discover this on your own, so I will simply tell you. There are dead bodies behind you. Before you panic, know that I went through the same thing, without the warning you now have, and I managed to calm myself enough to reason through some of this. So can you. Take a look now and count how many bodies lay there.

If there are two, I am wrong, and hopefully by now enjoying a glass of wine and soaking my feet whilst I thumb through a certain book. But if there are three, I might have solved part of this riddle, and at great cost.

Erissa frowned with confusion, and then fear, as she slowly twisted in her chair. Sure as the page she held in her hand, there were prostrate forms on the floor near the back of the room. The elf’s hand went to her mouth to hide her gaping look of shock.

The first tick of the clock caught her attention. She looked at it with tear-dimmed eyes, watching the second hand descend, separating and quantifying the moments of her existence. Erissa’s attention was wrenched back to the page. The elf was horribly enthralled by its words in the increasingly grim room around her.

I awoke from a lovely dream, to find a desk, a clock, a stack of papers, and a quill with ink. In addition, there was a door on the wall to my left and two dead bodies in the back right corner. I was horrified, as you surely will be, to see that they were me, or at least exact copies of me. As terrified as I was, I bolted for the door, but before I could leave, I saw the etching in it:

“Do Not Open The Door”

The knob was warm to the touch, and I hesitated. Moments later I found two sheets of paper on the floor. They were both grocery lists, but the most important thing I saw were the footprints. I stopped thinking this was a sick joke when I saw the ink-stained feet on one of the bodies, and the spill, heel prints still in it, to the right of the desk.

I have to be certain. At least, you will be certain. If there are only two bodies, then I have no idea what is happening. If there are three, you must, MUST keep your composure in the task I give you now. You must check them.

I intend to go through the door, and it may be possible that I am -was- one of those bodies, and it truly is, or was, me as I live and breathe. You will know because I will be the one with another note on my person, bearing more details.

--E

Erissa’s hand never dropped from her mouth as she read, nor did the wide-eyed look of horror leave her face. Her eyes darted nervously to the pool of ink she had not yet seen, and she noticed another page lying on the floor. It was, she recalled, the one that had affixed itself to her face when she awoke. Erissa picked it up gingerly and found it to be the second grocery list, and she held it alongside the letter with sweating, shaky hands, knowing what she had to do next.

The elf fought to swallow the lump in her throat, and each incessant tick of the clock was a perfectly timed explosion. Ten minutes past twelve and counting. Erissa closed her eyes tightly as she stood; indeed there were three bodies, all laying neatly aligned, their positioning identical. The wall to her left was home to a single door, ordinary except for the barely discernable words routed into it. She already knew what they spelled.

Erissa approached the bodies in a near crouch, the experience as out-of-body as she had ever felt, and for that, she was grateful. As she reached an arm out over the first, it was as though she were detached, watching over her own shoulder. There were no marks or indications of trauma on the first, and no letter. The second was just as perfectly preserved as the first, mouth hanging open and skin as pale as porcelain, but her feet were stained with splatters of ink. The third, as Erissa rolled her over, had a bulge in her gown just below her left shoulder.

She cringed as she pulled the gown back to reveal a letter, wedged behind and held in place by the strap of her brassiere.

“This cannot be,” Erissa mumbled as she fingered the creamy paper. Backing away from the bodies, she unfolded the paper and beheld her own script.

If you are reading this, it is as I have feared. I went through the door and I am dead. The burden of this riddle passes to you. No doubt you have no memory of this room or my own struggles; I can only assume you awakened as I did.

I went through the door, and I died. There must be another way out.

Do not open the door. And please, write down everything you notice. You might not make it either, but at the least, you may reveal another piece of this puzzle for the next of us to awaken.

-E

There was no point denying the situation Erissa was in; the truth of it was laid plainly before her. The door was not the way out.

“There must be another way,” Erissa said, looking at herselves sadly. “You never even had a chance, did you?” she asked the first body. “You awoke here without knowing a thing. You made a grocery list, biding the time. I imagine you searched every inch of this place for a way out, only to find none. So, eventually, you went through the door.” A tear slipped down her face as she looked to the next.

“You were the first to find your dead body,” she said to the second. “But of all things, why did you copy the grocery list? I cannot fathom, unless you did not see the other list, and for whatever reason, you wrote one of your own.” Erissa rubbed at the creases in her forehead as she gazed toward the smudges along the tile leading to the door. “I see the very footprints that spelled your doom.”

“And you,” Erissa said to the most recent addition, choking back a sob, “you found both lists, and then sacrificed yourself so I could learn.” The elf crumpled the paper, her fist shaking as her anger rose. “They all lived as I do. They all felt the fear and dread I feel. How many times must I die?” She muttered curses under her breath as she straightened the gowns of her former selves. “KENNETH STERN!” she screamed. “This is MADNESS!” Her voice echoed for a half second, and all was silent, save the ticking of the clock. “Your deaths will not be in vain. I swear it.” Erissa took a moment to slow her breathing, and her fingers twitched as she released the steely grip on the page in her hand. “I cannot bury you, much less find a sheet to cover you. Forgive me.” She tenderly closed each of the three sets of eyes.

Her slow-building anger finally rose to volcanic fury and roiled for release. Erissa went to the door to see for herself the dispassionate villain that had claimed her three times prior.

“Do not open this door,” she hissed. “Hello! Is anyone there?” Erissa knew she probably was not the first to yell the words, nor to beat against the wood as she did. The lack of acknowledgment that followed only served to anger her more, and as she lost control, she attempted to telekenetically hurl the chair against the door, but found it unmovable by her will. Acerbated, Erissa picked up the chair and, in a stumbling charge, smashed it against the false exit. Sadly, she was robbed of even that small victory. The enchanted wood unexploded as soon as the first piece clattered to the floor. Once it reassembled itself, the chair slid neatly back to its place at the desk. “Accursed contest!” she screeched.


The grandfather clock chimed once.

[Sagequeen]

Erissa paced the room from side to side, and when that seemed too short a distance, from end to end. Her bare feet slapped against the tile as her mind worked, draining her tumultuous reserve of anger. When her legs became weary, the young elf sat in a corner of the room, head lolled back against the supporting walls, and she stared up at the ceiling, void of expression.

“Why did I agree to this?” Erissa mumbled.

You know why you agreed to this, she answered herself. The Book of Destiny. It holds the answers he will not give you. It holds the knowledge of what was and what will be. The bittersweet mix of emotions was a welcome distraction from the arrant and distressing room.

Every time Erissa closed her eyes, she saw a face. At times, it was of her mentor and friend, Troyas, who took his leave of her very unexpectedly. Other times, it was her father, whose anger was still as real and fresh as the day she walked out of Caedron Hall, refusing to be his pawn any longer. She saw her mother’s tears for her lost children as she must have cried them in those rare, scattered moments of solitude.

The face of her brother haunted her often, his robust laughter that would never again grace the world. He lay rotting in the ground, a thankless sacrifice as a casualty of petty warfare between unjustified parties who sought control over a people - a people who would have been more than satisfied to be left alone to live their lives. Erissa saw the face of her servant who betrayed her, and also of the mercenary who captured her rapport, both who fled Raiaera in the end.

But most often, she saw the face of one who had never broken his promise to her, had never forsaken her. In her mind’s eye, Erissa saw the pained expression replacing his characteristic grin, and it broke her heart over and over again.

“Jensen,” she wondered aloud, “what did I do? Why will you not tell me what happened?”

The grandfather clock chimed twice, each bong an admonishing blow to her sensitive ears.

“Well, I have gone and wasted another hour,” Erissa groaned, and she shook herself from her inactive stupor. She went about the tormenting room to collect the pages left by her former selves, and once back at the desk, she arranged them at the edge of it. With nimble, graceful movements, the elf retrieved the quill and began to write on another page, recording her own experiences.

Life number four:

There were three bodies when I awakened. The first and second ‘me’ left a grocery list (of all things), and the second also left a trail of footprints from spilled ink, leading to the door. The third began to understand what was happening and left two letters for me, one on the desk and one tucked in her clothing as proof.

To go through the door means death, and another me will wake up here with no memory of the others who came before. It seems an endless cycle.

We have searched the room top to bottom and found no other way out. In addition, knocking and yelling at the door has no effect.

I intend to attempt a few more things and will keep track of the results here.

Erissa sat back in her chair and stared blankly at the clock as it wound away the minutes of her life, not that it really mattered. She was not deeply concerned with time, for she would never age. She could, however, die, by blade, or accident, or even door, it would seem.

“Perhaps the cursed denizens of the dead tree did kill me, and this is my eternity,” she mumbled. “My life after death.” The prospect of being trapped forever was terrifying, though she had read in the fine print of Stern’s open invitation that all dead combatants would be resurrected. However, he did not say to what.

I could be stuck here... forever, she thought acrimoniously. “That gods-be-damned door will drive me insane, until it is a blessing to pass through it, and even that over and over again! But no... this room cannot hold an eternity’s worth of my dead bodies.” Erissa shuddered at the thought and quickly refrained from such morosity. “Why is it even there if I cannot find a way to open it?” The surviving bitterness vitiated the last of the anger to which she clung. Erissa dipped the quill in the rapidly depleting ink and wrote.

Please open the door.

She took the page across the room and slid it through the small, dark slit beneath the door. The elf waited dejectedly, not expecting an answer. When none came, she began chewing her lip, rubbing her bare arms as she paced back to the desk and recorded the effort. Erissa began writing another message.

If you will open the door, I will

“And what bargain can I even make?” she said, exasperated. She crumpled the page and tossed it at the hands of the clockface; the paper bounced to the floor unceremoniously.

How much time do I have? Erissa wondered, glancing at the rich, purple grain of the wood, mesmerized by the swinging pendulum. And what was so important about the clock that she -that I- would ask if it was keeping time? The elf recalled hearing it come to life as she turned to look behind her, and she added that small piece of information to the impromptu journal before reading the whole thing over a second time.

“Well, that is not right,” Erissa said, her words traveling upon a weary breath. The elf scratched out part of the message. “Do not open this door,” she muttered, correcting in black ink the mistake her previous self made. “The etching said ‘Do Not Open This Door,’ as if there were another. What an odd choice of words.”

Erissa’s downcast face slowly twisted and morphed into a look of questioning.

“There is not another door. I have searched this room, several times over, and found nothing hidden,” she breathed, but an answer fluttered at the edges of her awareness. Erissa knew she was missing something, and it mocked her from just beyond the fuzzy boundary of cognizance.

The grandfather clock chimed three times, each bong more insolent than the last.

“Another hour gone, and I am no closer than the others were,” the elf sighed as she rested her head upon her arms, the desk steady under the weight of her bleakness. “I shall be stuck here forever, with nothing but my memories and my failures to keep me company.”

Another hour and Erissa passed once again into sleep, the utterances of a name guiding her from consciousness. Her dreams were vivid and ominous.

[Sagequeen]

Fingers.
Fingers in a void, fingers upon hands unrelenting.

Grasping for her, from behind and in front of her, so many hands connected to as many arms.
They pulled her in two directions, yanked her hair and body and clothing.

Fingers upon hands connected to arms, and every arm belonged to her.
She was ripping herself apart, pulling from behind and from the front.

She found herself chanting, the words flying from lips upon the many manifestations of herself.
Every face pale, pearlescent, every mouth moving in unison.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock...

[Sagequeen]

Erissa Caedron awoke with a start.

She sucked in a breath, remembering the prison around her, down to the last ink-smudged detail. Her ragged sigh was an oil and water mixture of relief and disappointment. The elf’s arms tingled down to her fingertips, numb from resting upon the desk for so long, and she dropped them to her sides, shaking them to regain feeling.

The grandfather clock pealed five times, and Erissa counted each.

Timidly, wistfully, she began a song, her voice carrying and echoing against the oblate surfaces of the room.

“Barrum will roll the drum, at the morrow’s first light,
Barrum, the call will come, a thundering war to fight...”

The spell singer’s voice fell flat on every note, and she could not conjure a single pitch that would resonate with the magic of the song.

“I give up,” she whispered, and her forehead struck the paper with a muted thud. The elf rolled her head to the side and stared at the door, a wash of blackness flooding her mind.

[Sagequeen]

Erissa paced from the desk to the clock, and back to the desk again, reciting every story, poem, and song, every scrap of memorized line her memory held. She could not overcome the rhythm set by the pendulum, and so easily settled into its repetition. The elf babbled mathematical formulas, fables, and the like in a failing attempt to drive out the room around her, to combat the growing despair she harbored. The elf tried to keep her eyes from the door, yet each time they betrayed her, she was drawn to it, as a moth to light.

“The door is the only way out for me,” Erissa whispered as she found herself standing before it, her hand working on its own accord as it slipped around the warm handle. “No!” she growled through clenched teeth, and willed her fingers open again. “There must be another way out,” she asserted, and padded along the wall to the nearest corner, the furthest away from them.

Thirteen bells chimed, and the elf found it quite hysterical, her braying laughs echoing in her head long after they had ceased erupting from her throat. The sound frightened her to tears, and eventually, even the burning hot tears gave way to a chilling numbness. She objectively considered and calculated exactly how long it would be before the clock's chimes filled each hour without respite.

"Three thousand and six hundred hours," she said hollowly. "One hundred and fifty days." That was, of course, if each bell lasted a second. Erissa made a mental note to check the fact when the clock struck fourteen. She cawed with laughter again.

“Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock,” the elf chanted, staring at the clock and keeping time with it. “Tick, tock, the grandfather clock, ticks the time away, before me a certainty, and behind me I lay.”

How appealing the door looked, with its shiny brass handle. With its well-oiled hinges. With its mocking words, daring her to defy them.

“How appealing indeed,” she muttered, her eyes resting on the ‘O’ as she traced it over and over again in the air before her.

Paper lay in crumples around the desk. Upon the liviol, page after page bore the same circle, traced until the very parchment tore from her fervent efforts. The last of the ink had long since dried in the reservoir.

[Sagequeen]

Red. The color is red but it will turn brown in time...

It is all a matter of time.

The door is false. It is a lie. It is not the way out.

The door is the way back in.

Tick tock...

Tick tock.......

I will join them soon.

Behind me, my past and my future.

I will die alone and I will wake up not realizing it.

She dipped the quill into her newly refilled ink reservoir and began writing once again.

[Sagequeen]

“Not now. I am having the most lovely dream...”

Erissa Caedron lifted her head slowly, the coppery scent of blood wafting up from below her.

“By the gods,” she breathed, “into what madness have I awakened?” The elf’s face hung agape as she processed the stark, white walls and the desk at which she sat. The fine liviol was streaked with blood, handprints and smears of dark, flaking maroon on blue that made her nauseous. It was as if a child were fingerpainting. A single, creased and wrinkled paper rested on the left edge, the handwriting vaguely familiar, and they stunk of death adorned with hastily babbled insanity.

“By the gods,” the elf repeated as she saw the quill in a full reservoir, the feather caked and matted with reddish brown gore. “What is this?”

You are reading this now. Good.

Do not look behind you.

I found another way out. Another door. But it was useless. I cannot get past the Time Keeper and it took my fingers. I put them back on, but not before I refilled the ink. I spilled it - or she did, you see. The Time Keeper wields a double-edged sword. And behind is your present and future. Do not look there.

You can pass the Time Keeper. Just do not look back. The way out is now. Now.

The door in the wall is not a door. It is death. The other door is the way out, beyond time, right in front of you.

Just do not look back.

“What madness,” Erissa murmured, setting the page down in front herself with frightened reverence. She looked up at the solemn face of a grandfather clock, its pendulum defunct behind acid-etched glass. The elf’s green-blue eyes cut to the left spied a door, the carving on it she could not quite discern. A presence loomed behind Erissa; it was as palpable as the chair below her. She saw a pool of dried ink, but what was more, a splattered trail of blood leading to the grandfather clock.

The arcanist knew she should not look back. She knew it with every fiber of her being.

With a slight hesitation, Erissa looked back, and her hand went to her mouth, hiding the shock as if there were someone else to see it.

The grandfather clock began its keeping of time, the subtle tick marking the beginning of the end.