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.

[Sagequeen]

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

The smell of blood infiltrated the elf’s consciousness, and she raised her head quickly, a single page sticking to it and fluttering to the ground.

“By the gods,” she breathed, “into what have I awakened?” Erissa looked around herself, oblivious to the dried blood that flaked from her cheek. “Someone is injured,” she breathed softly, peering at the maroon-streaked desktop. “Someone needs help.” Her determined eyes followed the splattered trail to the clock, and the elf rose slowly to investigate. She knelt by the foot of the grandfather clock, where the droplets upon the glossy, white tile appeared to end. The elf glanced back quickly at the austere room, the desk obscuring her from a full view of it.

“There is nothing in here,” she mumbled, and turned her attention back to the fine purple wood. “Where...” she breathed, and her eyebrows furrowed. A smear of blood was drying upon the small brass knob, and Erissa pulled open the door of the clock's pendulum housing. A smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. “Enchanted liviol. It figures,” she said. Behind the pendulum, Erissa could see a light at the end of a dark passageway. “Hang in there, whoever you are,” she whispered.

The Ixian wrestled with the pendulum, cutting her hand on the sharp edges, but finally freeing it from the clockwork mechanism. She crawled through the tight space, sideways and wriggling her body to inch forward. The darkness of the passage overtook her vision, leaving her only the vague light in the distance.

[Sagequeen]

The tunnel had narrowed toward the end, tapering until Erissa found herself unable to inhale fully. She grasped the open edges of it, and the elf heaved mightily. Her head emerged into grand hallway, and the Ixian peered out at the rich decor, velvety reds and golden-gilded fixtures and accents glinting from every surface. She slid forward, freeing her hips and legs from the tunnel, and flopped down upon a floral scented rug, woven, it seemed to her, from living greens. Beneath her nose was a vibrant flower, its petals extended in a glorious reach from the ground.

Erissa looked around warily as she gathered her legs beneath herself and stood. She had not caught another whiff of blood since she entered the tunnel, and she was beginning to think she had gone the wrong way.

“Hello?” she called, her voice without echo.

“Ah, Ms. Caedron,” a man’s voice responded. He stepped from against the wall into the middle of the hallway, dashing in his formal black suit. “Congratulations are in order! You’ve found your way to the final challenge. You don’t realize it yet, but you’ve learned some very important lessons for the one who may, one day, wield the Book of Destiny.”

“Have I?” Erissa asked, her head cocking to the side. “I only just followed a trail of blood, found a passage in an old, broken clock, and crawled my way here.”

“Of course you did!” the man replied with a laugh. “And so much more.” The elf shook her head slowly, a look of dumbfoundment on her face.

“Would you care to explain? I came here thinking there was an injured person to help. I am afraid I have no idea of that to which you refer, good Sir,” Erissa said, crossing her arms and shifting her weight to her right leg.

“Now is time for introductions, not explanations,” he said merrily. “You might remember me from when we met in the maze of hedges. There, I am known as Alabaster. How fortuitous and wonderful that fate has paired us again!” Erissa raised an eyebrow and released an audible sigh.

“Ah, yes. The trickster,” she said suggestively. “And who might you be here?” The man laughed gleefully.

“The usher,” he said wryly. “You may call me Pennyworth. Now, Ms. Caedron, to the grand stage that is time. Come,” he said, extending the crook of his elbow. Erissa sighed heavily.

“So I assume there is no one injured here, and I am to accompany you.”

“I do hope you aren’t as slow as you seem, or your final challenge will prove too great,” Pennyworth said slyly. Erissa smiled primly and slipped her hand into the bend of his arm. Immediately, an updraft caught her, wreathing her in the same odd, living fabric of the rug below her feet. The gown it created was a lovely, powdery sage color, studded with tiny, purple and white stitchwort flowers, whose aroma was sweeter and more pure than the finest perfume. The elf looked down at herself in surprise, for as lovely as the dress was, she was still barefooted.

“Shall we?” the man asked. “The show is about to begin.” Erissa nodded once and he led her down the long hallway. The dun colored walls were draped with well-tailored, flowing curtains. To her left, the elf saw a tapestry detailing the events of her life, from her birth to her time with her mentor, Troyas. On the right, Erissa recognized herself, but not the events or scenes she saw depicted.

At the end of the hall, a set of double doors, tall, elegant columns carved into the mahogany wood, swung open as the two approached, and beyond, the elf saw a theater, luxurious and filled with padded chairs. Beyond the chairs was a stage concealed by a fine, golden curtain.

“It is empty,” Erissa said warily, glancing at the much taller man at her side.

“Not anymore!” he laughed, leading her down the aisle toward the stage.

“Besides us, I mean,” Erissa quipped, and Pennyworth stopped short, his eyes meeting hers.

“In that case, yes, it is, and so it will remain.” He winked at her and the elf saw something of the trickster surface in the way his eyes glinted. "Your seat, Ms. Caedron," he said, gesturing to a row in the front of the middle section. It was the row Erissa would have chosen anyway, and with a shake of her head, she side-stepped to place herself in the center of it, giving her the best view of the stage.

Pennyworth turned on his heel and sauntered back to the entrance. The man took his place near the door and waited, hands folded before him.

[Sagequeen]

When she saw the ceiling above her, the elf gasped, taken by the image of a starry night, the points of light twinkling as wisps of clouds drifted across. Erissa thought it strange, but was not surprised when she was unable to recognize a single constellation.

Erissa sat quietly, her right leg crossed over the left, hands still upon her lap. The theater was silent, without even the pre-show noise of an orchestra warming up, nor did she hear stagehands making last minute adjustments to the set.

“This evening,” rang the clear voice of an announcer, “we are pleased to present a new production, entitled The Room. Our feature tonight stars the illustrious Ms. Erissa Caedron.” The elf’s brow furrowed at the call of her name, and she looked back at Pennyworth questioningly.

“What is this?” she called softly, but earned only a harsh shhhhhhh from the man, his index finger placed over his lips condescendingly. Erissa clucked her tongue at him and huffed, turning toward the stage once again. The curtains split in the center, the heavy fabric drawn into an accordion of folds as the gap between them widened.

A familiar sight was unveiled before Erissa, a bare, white room, a desk, a door, and a grandfather clock. An elf lay sleeping at the desk. From her chair in the audience, the Ixian’s head snapped back at Pennyworth, but he was no longer guarding the entrance.

“The lovely elf lays sleeping, unaware of the trials to come! Will our heroine ever find her way out?” Erissa whipped her upper body back toward the stage, and the man was perched there, his arms spread widely as he addressed his audience. He bowed and backed away gracefully into the wings, hidden from her view.

The Ixian watched her first life unfold, aware that the actress was her, but without the understanding that she was, in fact, watching her own actions. She heard her voice lamenting with indecision over the door and its inscription, and watched herself pace the room looking for another way out.

“It is the clock,” she muttered, sinking down into the posh cushion of the theater seat. “How obvious does it need to be?”

The figure on stage sat at the desk resignedly, putting quill to ink for a time before curiosity claimed her. She opened the door and stepped through the threshold. The curtains swept shut, ending the scene.

[Sagequeen]

“And now,” Pennyworth called from the stage, his reemergence smooth as silk, “watch as our heroine begins another attempt at the room, completely unaware of her previous actions! Watch what happens as her mounting failures linger! Will her fear overcome her, or will she be victorious? What will decide Erissa’s fate?”

Erissa shifted uncomfortably in her seat as the curtains drew back once again, revealing the same scene as before, with a very noticeable difference - a body heaped in the corner. The elf watched the flood of emotions her double encountered, down to the arrogance of penning a grocery list.

“What are you doing?” she asked herself, blushing at the spectacle. Moments later, her double fled the room through the door. The elf muttered with disgust as she awaited the opening of the curtains once again.

Erissa watched scene after scene, life after life spent, realizing quickly that she had, in fact, lived each one. In spite of her growing anger, she watched with morbid fascination as she penned a letter with her own blood, babbling incoherently in some foreign sense of insane reasoning. The arcanist watched herself awake again, this time to blood smeared upon the desk, and a warning not to look back.

“Oh no... what in the many names of Hell are you doing?” she all but screeched from her seat in the theater, and she pleaded with the Erissa on stage not to look back, but to see the answer right in front of her, the door of the clock. However, the actress did not listen, and Erissa watched herself, yet again, explore the depths of madness, ripping all but one piece of paper into tiny squares and tossing them over the pile of bodies. The single remaining page she placed upon the desk, and laughed gleefully as she pranced through the door.

The final act in the play was one which Erissa knew intimately, and it was the shortest. The elf gasped as she saw herself awake, the damning page fluttering to the floor unnoticed. That simple coincidence was her saving grace, that and the desk's placement, and Erissa knew it from her seat in the audience. Everything else she recalled, up until her escape through the clock. As they did between every scene, every life, the curtains swept shut and Pennyworth took the stage.

“It has been said,” he spoke richly, his smooth tenor carrying to the very last row of seats, “that a butterfly flaps its wings in New Aurient, and civil war breaks out across Corone. Cause and effect, Ms. Caedron, cause... and... effect. It's easier to see in hindsight, is it not? Some believe that major events govern the flow of history, but the truth is, it’s the simplest of things, a grocery list, spilled ink, footprints, a note, an inadvertent glance, that can alter the entire fate of a person - or a world. How, do you think, do the world-changing events come into being?

“For you, Ms. Caedron, it was the flip of a captain's gold coin. Had it been heads, your brother would have had a different patrol and a long, glorious career as a soldier. You would have never left home, and you most assuredly would not have found yourself allied with the Ixian Knights.” Pennyworth paused for effect, the flick of his wrist a flourish of punctuation. “The flip of a coin,” he repeated, “the flap of a butterfly’s wings.”

Erissa stood abruptly, the pitch of her anger flaring.

“This is humiliating and exceedingly cruel!” she accused, pointing her finger at Pennyworth. The man gave a contemptible giggle.

“Humiliating, perhaps,” he countered. “But cruel? I think not. Cruel would have been confining you to that room with this.” From his coat pocket, he produced a freshly carved reed flute, one with which Erissa was intimately familiar. “Despite my badgering, Mr. Stern wouldn’t hear of it.”

“The faun’s flute,” she whispered, remembering Pennyworth’s offer as Alabaster in the hedge maze. Playing the song of Gabacef the Tender would take her back to the garden, her eternity known and assured, and she would never more walk upon the face of Althanas. It represented the second reality she could choose, and one in which the secret hope of her heart, one she hardly acknowledged herself, would be fulfilled.

“Indeed, Ms. Caedron,” Pennyworth said quietly. He tossed the flute across the room, and it spun end over end toward her. The elf caught it, mid-revolution, and held with both hands. “The offer still stands, in case you were wondering. Think about it, Erissa. Consider awakening into a life with no memory of the past to burden you, and with a future assured.”

“The spirit of a trickster never truly leaves you, does it?” she breathed. “I might as well be one of the statues in that garden.” Pennyworth’s face twitched slightly, his deception undone. “And the truth of it comes to light,” Erissa said, catching the slip. Her voice strengthened as her courage waxed. “You would have me as a lawn decoration!” The elf flexed the reed between her dainty hands, the woody crackle thunderous in the silent theater. Pennyworth cringed at the inevitable snap that followed.

“Gabacef will be most displeased,” he sighed.

“So, that is it then,” Erissa said. “The final test is complete.”

Pennyworth chuckled.

[Sagequeen]

“The final challenge?” The man doubled over in laughter, grasping his midsection. As his chuckles subsided, he lept from the stage and approached Erissa. “That seems a bit anti-climactic, don't you think? No, Ms. Caedron,” Pennyworth said, genteelly wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, “that was just for me. For my amusement, though I daresay I am a little disappointed in the result.”

“Enough with your games, Mr. Pennyworth,” Erissa chided, side-stepping through the row into the center aisle. “There remains another challenge, and I intend to face it.”

“Them, you mean,” Pennyworth corrected with a knowing waggle of his eyebrow. The elf tilted her head quizzically.

“Is there more than one?” Erissa said curtly.

“No, not in a manner of speaking,” he commented, nonchalantly offering the crook of his elbow, which she took grudgingly.

“To which manner of speaking do you refer,” she asked, “because it most decidedly is not the plain sort.” Pennyworth snorted as he led her to the side of the stage where a door to its back awaited them.

“Words, Ms. Caedron, are dicey, and often minced without regard to meaning.”

“True enough,” she quipped. “And you are a frustrating imp of a man.”

“Had you been correct,” he sassed, “you’d have stopped at imp.”

“Dear me,” Erissa said, bringing her hand to her chest in mock surprise, “and here I thought imps were short creatures with horns and a pointed tail.”

“And it was a cherished belief of mine that elves were wise and patient,” Pennyworth said with enthusiastic sarcasm.

“Then I suppose I am no common high elf,” she said.

“Or perhaps it is the company you keep. You’ve heard the saying, lie with-”

“Yes, of course,” Erissa interrupted. “Lie with dogs, rise with fleas. I hardly think that applies, unless of course, you are referring to my time with you.”

“My, my, how you’ve changed,” Pennyworth laughed. “And how much more you will change in the future.” The man swung open the backstage door and held it for her. “I do have a message for you from Mr. Stern,” he said, handing Erissa an envelope. “And through the door you go. Don’t worry! It’s perfectly safe. I swear by my horns and pointed tail!”

[Sagequeen]

Erissa eyed Pennyworth, whose stoic grin revealed nothing. She wedged a slender finger beneath the lip of the envelop and broke the seal; the elf removed a single page, folded in half.


Dear Erissa,

To consider what was or what might be your destiny, and to view it in the present with fear, or any other strong emotion, is to give it the substance to trap you. You become a slave to time itself, which your mind has made real through the emotions to which you cling.

You spend each waking day in servitude of your attachments to things that, in all truth, do not exist. Consider your time in the room. You feared the bodies behind you because they represented both your failures and your possible fate. And for all your efforts to change a future you feared, you only served to make things worse.

So, you understand the danger of owning a book that can allow you to see what was and what might be. The traps and snares that could entangle you are innumerable. To wield the book auspiciously is to understand a simple, fundamental truth.

Time is the illusion, and we only exist in this one, continuous moment of flux, in which we create history, and in which we defy any number of futures that might have been. Consider that, and good luck in this, your final challenge.

--K.S.

“One more thing,” the imp interjected as Erissa folded the note. He removed his hand from his pocket. “The coin that killed your brother,” he said, spining it into the air and catching it. “I went to some trouble to retrieve it because I thought you might like to have it as a souvenir.” He flipped it to the elf who caught it on its downward arc. Erissa grimaced when she opened her hand, revealing the exposed side as tails.

With a cool nod to Pennyworth, Erissa stepped through the threshold.

[Sagequeen]

As Erissa passed through the doorway, what appeared to be a normal backstage setting dematerialized in a spectacular show of color and light. She looked down as the living gown was stripped from her, replaced by her own maroon leather pants and jacket. The leather flexed as she fingered the hilt of the elvish dagger hidden in an interior pocket.

For a few moments, it was as if the elf were suspended in a void, until giant, brass cogs slammed upward, meshing together in their places below her feet. More of the toothy, metal discs swooped from above, then rammed themselves on upon phantom walls, pegs unseen, sending shockwaves of low frequency sonances through the elf’s body.

A second array of smaller cogs arranged and layered themselves in a new wall of movements. Set after set of cogs materialized and whirled around her, in sizes ranging from her own height down to the width of her thumb, each finding its own unique place in the great mechanism. The sound of clamoring chains filled the air, grating as if they were being hoisted through pulley systems. At once, every shining, brass cog jolted to life, lumbering with the groans of heavy machinery. Erissa was nearly knocked to her feet as the gear below her jerked clockwise, and she whipped her arms outward to regain her balance.

From among the spaces between cogs slipped another being, an elf dressed in Erissa’s family’s trademark cloth. She walked at an angle, negating the direction of the spinning cog beneath her, and timidly approached the leather-clad elf. Erissa was not surprised to see it was yet another of her clones. The Ixian turned to keep her front to the approaching elf, holding her position on the cogwheel as it spun.

“Greetings,” Erissa called, wondering if this clone of herself could -or would- acknowledge her.

“Well met,” she called back, stepping onto the cog and taking a place across from the leather-clad elf. The two stared awkwardly at each other for several moments as they spun a circle upon the rotating gear.

“So,” Erissa said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Um... If you do not mind my asking, why are you here?” The cloth-clad elf tilted her head quizzically.

“I had thought to ask you the same question,” she replied. “It was quite a shock to see you - or me, that is, but you cannot be me, because I am right here. I assume you are a part of this place.”

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” Erissa breathed. Her fists were clenched, and she realized she still held the gold coin. The Ixian slipped it into her jacket pocket.

“How can you be sure?” the tailor asked. “I feel quite real.”

“Allow me to explain,” came the call of another voice, clear and ringing from the recess of a cog high above the other two. She walked comfortably upon the thin, circular ledge in the center of the gear as it spun, her elven heritage apparent in the grace with which she held herself. She proudly flipped her silver hair behind her shoulders. “We are here for the same reason: to emerge as the winner, though our motivations are quite different. And the winner, my imposters, will be me.”

“And who might you be to make such grand proclamations?” Erissa asked, crossing her arms over the open front of her jacket. She glared at a very haughty version of her own face.

“I am the Sagequeen, the Knower of All Things, the Only Wise Judge, and Harbinger of Truth and Peace.” The regal elf leaped from the cogwheel, her chainmail glinting beneath a silver-threaded tabard bearing the sigil of an eye. As she approached, she rested her hand upon the hilt of a long, straight sword, whose wooden scabbard was encrusted with gold and jewels. “I should warn both of you now, your endeavors here are pointless. I have read the book, and I know the outcome.” The tailor shifted uncomfortably, the fine cloth flowing with her movements.

“What book?” the young elf asked, looking at Erissa and the Sagequeen. The two glanced at each other, the mail-clad elf’s eyes sparking with a sense of knowing.

“The Book of Destiny,” Erissa said quietly, looking worriedly at the tailor. “That is why I am here - to win it. Are you not here for the same reason?”

“No,” the tailor said. “I am in search of-”

“A trifle,” mocked the Sagequeen, eyes darting to Erissa.

“The life of my brother is hardly a trifle,” the tailor said, frowning. Erissa’s eyes widened momentarily with word of her brother.

“And what about you?” she growled, tugging on the leather jacket in frustration. “Why are you here? And why do you speak of the book like you already have it?”

“Me? Oh, I have no doubt you would love to know,” the regal elf purred. “Although, I must disappoint you both. You will die,” she said, pointing at Erissa. “Then you will die,” she promised, levelling her finger at the tailor. “And then, I will claim my prize.”

“Not if I have any say in it,” Erissa growled, pulling the dagger from her jacket. The Sagequeen unsheathed her sword, laughing.

“I knew you would make this an exercise in futility, and so I must oblige. But be warned,” she said, rotating the blade smoothly around her body, scribing large, invisible circles in the air, “I already know your every move.”

The tailor backed away slowly, hoping to go unnoticed, and as the mail-clad elf approached the other, she spun on her heel and fled among the walls of cogs.

[Sagequeen]

The Sagequeen coiled her body, rotating to her right slightly before leaping forward in a pirouette, her blade dancing with double swiftness around her, creating a barrier of steel. Erissa stumbled back, summoning a shield of energy against which the blade sparked and groaned.

“I can do that as well, and more,” the regal elf declared. The sword’s thin blade began to glow a prismatic white as she channeled energy into it. She whirled the blade in an arc above her head, kicking her left leg out to begin a form that resembled dancing. Erissa could not tell where the spinning blade would circle next, nor when the elf might strike.

The energy trailed the path of the steel, a tattered, flashing banner that Erissa could hardly track through the revolutions. The Sagequeen spun to her left, the sword countering the flow of movement with its own ebbing path to the right. The Ixian heaved her body aside as the the wielder unexpectedly thrust the blade at her throat, the gathered energy streaking from its tip and dissipating against a gear. Erissa crashed to the ground.

“You are outmatched,” the Sagequeen attested, strutting counter-clockwise as the cog spun opposite. Upon the same piece of brass, Erissa struggled to her feet again, desperately trying to avoid being delivered to her opponent. With a nimble leap, the Ixian fled the gear to its mate, and she was hauled away along its edge, putting more distance between the two elves.

Erissa sprang from cog to cog, and on the final leap, the elf spun in the air to face her pursuer. Her dagger flashed through the space between them, telekenetically aimed for the regal elf’s neck. Erissa hit the floor upon her back, and to her utter shock, the blade slowed slowed as it approached her target, and the Sagequeen plucked it from the air as if it were a drifting leaf.

With a condescending smile, the Sagequeen began her form anew, the sword still working its flowing circles while the dagger added another stratum of threat, ready to strike as quickly as a serpent. Erissa crouched briefly before standing, her body tensed for movement.

“Can you believe,” the mail-clad elf mused, admiring the sword as it cut a figure eight before her, “that in my lands they call me the Mad Queen? I have only ever sought to assure that what should happen, does. The people should love me for such sacrifice on my part. I remove their murderers, thieves, rapists and slavers before they ever have the chance to become such. Sadly it is their own ignorance that prevents them from seeing that truth, which brings me to you. This, my dear self, is one of those instances where the greater good takes precedent. Your world is filled to bursting with pain and sorrow, and has no one to set it right. Consider yourself a martyr for the sakes of all.”

Each elf stood her ground upon their respective gears, their paths came dangerously close to crossing.

“I cannot even fathom why you are here! If you are the future me, why do you seek to kill me?” Erissa asked, walking backwards as the gear’s revolution was coming full circle to the Sagequeen’s. “Would you not also undo your own existence? Besides, if you are a future version of me, then you do not even exist!” The regal elf released a beleaguered sigh. She sheathed her weapon and flipped the elven dagger, catching it nimbly before levelling her gaze at Erissa.

“I recall when I acquired this weapon. It was the Red Forest, and I had slain my first sentient being. It was, of course, self defense. By the gods, I was so weak then. So naive.” The Sagequeen flipped the dagger again, and the two elves passed by each other, each of their cogs rotating in opposite directions. “I will humor you this once, because it is quite an interesting tale regarding me, specifically.” The elf could not hide the self-righteous pride that emanated from her words.

“Much obliged,” Erissa said in riposte.

“When the old gods created reality as we know it, they created realities for every possibility that could exist. In short, an infinite number of worlds, some differing only by a heartbeat.”

“The slightest, most insignificant things,” Erissa breathed.

“Yes,” the Sagequeen said. “And this is the best part: it is a unique ability of those like us, psionics, to exist in multiple places at once. What this means is that I have the ability to exist in many realities, bringing peace and justice to them all.”

“And that is your prize,” the Ixian said softly. “You cannot exist in a world where another version of yourself exists.”

“More or less; it is your psyche that is in the way, my imposter. You will continue to exist in the world, but the you that is you will be me.” She flipped her silver hair behind her shoulder. “It was most fortunate,” she said, “that our realities spring from the same branch. The tailor was born to her world some time after you, and even longer after me. I am the eldest, but our moment in time is one in the same, providing this exclusive opportunity.”

“By the Thaynes,” Erissa said, her eyes wide and fearful. “How many worlds do you already inhabit?”

“Not enough,” she said. “There will never be enough. It is my life’s work, and as you know, I have a long life to live.”

“You intend to spend you life murdering innocents?”

“Innocent!?!” The Sagequeen drew her weapon once again, her eyes malicious. “I have lost count of the number of lives I have saved by removing a select few criminals-to-be from existence.” The elves approached one another again, the gears steadily winding beneath them, and the regal elf’s sword was at the ready. Erissa looked around in a panic, but a glinting bit of metal from below caught her attention.

Just as the Sagequeen began her thrust, Erissa stepped forward and fell down through the empty triangle within the junction of three cogs, leaving the tip of the blade to pierce thin air.

[Sagequeen]

Within the clockwork, Erissa darted through more cog-lined passages than she could count, hoping to put distance between herself and the self-proclaimed Sagequeen. She had heard neither footfall nor whisper from the tailor, but was unsure whether she should hope for her death or her safety. Chest heaving, the elf slowed her sprint to a jog, and finally to an exhausted walk.

Multiple realities, she thought, dumbfounded. I have stepped from the frying pan, into the fire! Erissa wandered the seemingly random pathways that filled the void she had seen earlier, her ears perked for every sound that might betray another living being. She came upon a circular wall with several smaller cogs enmeshed, and the elf planted a foot on one of the hand-sized teeth. The gear lifted her upward to another, higher mate, and she nimbly stepped to it before her foot was crushed. Erissa continued that way, passing level after level of boulder-sized hunks of spinning brass, wondering if there were a top, and an end, to the climb.

As the elf scaled what seemed to be a tapering, central support column, she heard crying. Her own voiced sobbed with despair, though it seemed the source of it was trying to be as quiet as possible. The elf peeked over the final layer of gears, and to her relief, it was the tailor. Fearing a trap but being unable to remain on the wall Erissa leaped from the smaller cogs onto the spinning floor.

Her rough landing alerted the silver-haired tailor, and the Ixian could see the relief on the other's face as she recognized who it was. The elf adjusted her robes around her knees and drew them up to her chest, hugging them with fear.

“You again,” she whispered, wiping her moist cheeks.

“Is the other one here?” Erissa asked warily, looking around the large dome that encased them.

“No,” the tailor said with a sob, shaking her head. “At least, I do not think so.”

“Why are you crying? I could hear you before you even knew I was close!” Erissa chided. “She could have heard you!”

“Just... just kill me now. I would rather it be a mercy from you. I am no warrior, and I was a fool to think I could save my brother’s life.”

“Wait,” Erissa said. “Does Tanus still live?” she asked, hope in her eyes. The prospect of another reality was tempting, and she wondered briefly if she, too, would one day be able to exist in multiple places.

“Yes,” the tailor said, searching the Ixian’s face. “But not for long. In two days' time, he will die.”

“How?!? And how do you know that?”

“Well,” she said, wiping away a fresh round of tears, “an old wizard visited me. At least, I thought him a wizard, and he had a kindly face. He told me of Tanus' impending death, and said I had an opportunity to save him. All I had to do was-”

“Just like us to take the high road, eh?” The sound of another voice, a colder version of their own, demanded their immediate acknowledgement. Her mail rattled as she dismounted the cog wall, and the wood of her scabbard muffled the drawing of her blade. Erissa wasted no time, launching a bolt of prismatic energy at the Sagequeen and stepping in front of the tailor. The regal elf dodged the bolt and returned one of her own, which Erissa caught, to her surprise. The pulsing energy was much greater than her own, but it obeyed her command; the Ixian struck back, splitting the orb into a trio and releasing each of them toward her reeling opponent.

There was a look of shock on the Sagequeen’s face, and that minute detail did not escape Erissa. As the cogs had materialized around her once she stepped from the theater, so too did the realization and understanding manifest in her mind. One of the bolts caught the Mad Queen in the shoulder, knocking her to her back near a gap.

“You went through the door!” Erissa cried, stuttering through an idea too big for her to voice at that moment. Her wide-eyed expression was caught in the first trappings of hope.

“What?” the downed elf hissed through clenched teeth. The Ixian shouted as she released another bolt of energy at her opponent.

“That is it! You never saw this battle in your book... you lied!” Erissa accused. “By the gods...”

“So what if I did?” the Sagequeen replied, countering the bolt with one of her own. “It changes nothing. You cannot outmatch me.” She rocked back to her shoulders and whipped her body upright, into a crouch.

“You have already lost, Mad Queen,” the elf said to her mail-clad doppelganger. “You could not help yourself, could you? You saw something in your future that frightened you so badly, you... you went through the door. But what did you see?” The Sagequeen screeched with rage and rushed at the Ixian, her sword spinning and seeking a fatal opening.

"You!" the elf shrieked, and hurled herself at Erissa. The Ixian conjured a shield just as the blade was inches from her chest, but the regal elf’s momentum was incredible, surprising them both. Her sword sparked against the shield, slicing through it. As Erissa toppled backwards, the edge of the keen blade sliced across her cheek, through the ridge of her nose, and upward against her brow to her hairline. The sword slipped from the Sagequeen’s hand and lodged itself between two smaller cogs, bringing them to a grinding halt. The entire structure quaked and groaned, but it held.

The elves landed in a heap of knees and elbows, each scrapping like rabid wolves for the best position. The tailor screamed, a sound to curdle blood, and it echoed from the trembling brass. The Sagequeen’s elbow met with Erissa’s sliced cheek, knocking her to her back. With all her strength, the mail-clad elf threw her leg over the Ixian and went for her throat bare-handed, choking the life from her.

“You worthless bitch!” the Sagequeen hissed. “You were going to take what was mine! You filled the pages that were mine, and I had to act.” Erissa’s face was smeared with blood, and her skin almost as red as she struggled for breath. “I do not know which door you speak of, but I did what I had to then, and I will kill you now!” The world began to fade, splotches of white encroaching on Erissa’s vision, and she beat against her double’s back feebly.

“NO!” cried the tailor, and she flung herself at the Mad Queen, knocking her from atop Erissa. Ever wiley, the regal elf wrestled to the top when they hit the ground, and she punched the helpless maiden with ruthless abandon. The Ixian struggled to her feet again, swaying. She saw the tailor’s legs go limp just as her own vision blackened.

Erissa collapsed again, her arm reaching toward the sword lodged among the gears.

[Sagequeen]

The Sagequeen rose to her full height, laughing smugly.

“So it should be, and so it is,” she said, the trademark proclamation she delivered with every impending death she decreed. The regal elf strode to Erissa, who lay passed out on the ground and spinning revolutions with the cog beneath her. With a booted foot, she shoved the unconscious elf’s shoulder, flopping her to her back. Her maroon jacket creaked, the unzipped front of it whipping to the side and freeing its contents.

The Sagequeen heard the sound of metal, a high, tinny sound above the groaning of the obstructed clockwork, and she was surprised to see a golden coin rolling on its edge toward the cogs of the dome that sheltered them. The coin hit the rim of the gear and bounced upward with its momentum, amusing the elf as it once again landed on its edge and careened toward the wall. With the precision only destiny can afford, the gold piece missed the lip of the final cog in the path of its ricochet and firmly entrenched itself between two small cogs. The gears ground, tiny teeth breaking from among them and sending another quake through the already hampered machinery.

The Mad Queen’s attention was already elsewhere. With all the revelry fit for one person, she paced toward her sword and, with a heft, jerked it from between the gears. They sprang into movement once again but spun wildly, brass teeth flying like tiny bullets. The smallest of the cogs was ejected from the wall, striking her in the midsection. Another cog was expelled forcefully, relieving the strain of the larger brass gears behind it. Her face twisted in dismay as several cogs were freed, clattering to the ground around her feet, and she backed away from the ensuing chaos. As the gears around the coin broke free of it, hell was loosed.

With a quick look at the tailor and the Ixian, far to each side of her, the Mad Queen broke for the support column, meaning to climb down it to escape the disseminating failure of the mechanism. The gears continued falling, cutting a treacherous swath through their larger mates, up the dome to the final, central gear, which, to her great terror, was released with an abominable screech. The man-sized, glinting clog pitched downward, colliding with the support column in a wild spin. The rest of the clockwork slowly came to a halt.

The Sagequeen back-peddled, unable to predict the path of the gear as it careened helter-skelter toward her. She attempted to leap at the very last moment, but the cog bounced on its edge and caught her in the chest, crushing her against the floor before ripping a gaping hole through the dome. The brass pieces dropped through the void beyond in a tinkling shower.

Erissa groaned, awakened by the din and the prodding of several rolling cogs. Her bloody face was alight with pain, and she concentrated on healing it first. She rose to her feet slowly, her mouth agape in a silent O as she viewed the wreckage around her.

“Help me.” The weak voice beckoned to her, and Erissa followed the sound to find the crushed form of the Mad Queen, laying in a pool of her own blood. “Help me,” she pleaded. Erissa shook her head solemnly. “You would let me die then? You are the cruel one,” she coughed, blood trailing from the corner of her mouth. “You are unworthy...”

“No,” Erissa said softly. “If you think that I would let you die to free the many worlds you terrorize, well, that would make me no different than you. But fortunately, I will not be put to that test now. The truth of it is I am not powerful enough to heal your fatal wound.”

The Sagequeen closed her eyes, breathing painfully as crushed ribs ripped at and restricted her lungs. She fought with every fiber of her being to mend the wounds, but they were too extensive.

“Tell me,” she said, fading with each passing moment. “What of the door?”

“A metaphor,” Erissa replied. “You defied wisdom and went where you should not have. You feared your future, believing wrongly it was a certainty. And by your actions, you sealed your fate and made it so. Did you ever stop to consider that I might never have tried to stop you if I did not know of you?” The Sagequeen grinned, her teeth red with blood.

“Time is a tricky thing,” she said.

“Only when you try to circumvent it,” Erissa replied. “Otherwise, it is quite simple.”

“The coin...” she said, her breath leaving her for the last time. “Accursed coin.”

Erissa closed the eyes of the Sagequeen, and along the edges of the piles of gears, she found the golden coin. The elf turned it over in her hands, and it told its story by the square toothmarks embedded in the soft metal.

“The flip of a coin,” she breathed. Another voice groaned pitifully in the silence, and Erissa chided herself for not remembering the tailor. She leaped over the piles of cogs and found the elf-maiden groggily pulling herself up.

“By the Thaynes,” the maiden said, her face red with fresh, angry bruises, “I thought for a moment you were her. Did you...”

“No,” Erissa said with a relieved smile. “She was her own undoing. Let me help you.” Under the Ixian’s practiced hands, her double’s face was mended, her flesh renewed. “One day, Erissa, you will be able to help others like this.” The tailor’s face drooped.

“I could not even help my brother,” she sighed. “All I had to do was...” Her face darkened with sorrow, and the sobs began to wrack her.

“What?” Erissa asked, her heart breaking. “What did you have to do to save him?”

“I,” she began, fighting the tears, “I only needed to find the captain's lucky coin. When I returned home, the captain would find it missing, and Tanus, our brother, would have been sent on a different patrol. He would have survived.”

Erissa looked with wonder at the elf, and then beamed with joy. She grabbed the tailor’s arm and pressed palm against palm. When she drew her hand back, the gold coin glittered in the maiden’s hand. The cloth-clad elf looked at it with amazement, and a smile broke across her face as she embraced the Ixian. Bittersweet tears burnt down Erissa cheeks as the world around her dissolved into nothingness.

It is enough, she thought, that one of us still has him. Thaynes forbid I become like the Mad Queen and try to take that reality for my own.

She fell into magic induced sleep, her face calm and a beautiful smile across her lips. Thoughts of her brother filled her mind.

Some time later, she rest upon a comfortable bed. A figure nudged her shoulder to wake her and she groaned.

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

The End

[Revenant]

Plot: (26)

Storytelling (8) – All of the required prompts were completed for round 3. This was certainly the most abstract of the threads for the final round. There was definitely a mystical/philosophical feel to the thread that was unique to it.

Setting (8) – Despite the interlude in the middle, this thread, to me, was all about the room and the clockwork maze on either end. The sheer lack of detail to the room in the initial post set up perfectly for the gradual, mounting changes that came with each repetition. It lent itself well to the horrific atmosphere that the room engendered. Each little detail that you added pulled me further and further into the story. On the other side, completely different but no less important to the story, the scene in the clockwork maze was pure action.

Pacing (10) – Your varied post length here really clinched the atmosphere, putting me as the reader in Erissa’s place, bursts of frentic energy punctuated by periods that should be relaxing but merely serve to heighten the tension. The break in the action following the escape from the room served to accentuate the point and allowed the characterization to blossom, a masterful was to allow the readers to come down from the high that the room’s horror built up. Finally, the chaotic combat between Erissa and the Sagequeen ramped the action up again to finish the thread off nicely. Every post, and everything within the posts, seemed deliberate in its execution, with no space wasted on extraneous points.

Character: (24)

Communication (8) – Erissa’s notes, her rambling to herself in the room, her discussion with Pennyworth, and finally the interaction with the Sagequeen really brought Erissa’s character to life. The blinding fear of her second incarnation and her descent to madness in her fourth incarnation were especially powerful, showcasing how easily even a mighty figure can quickly be brought low by something as simple as not knowing what’s going on. I liked seeing Erissa railing at her past selves while she watched the show unfold rather than getting mad at Pennyworth or Stern. Finally, you did a good job of showing Sagequeen’s madness through her opening words such that when she mentioned how people refer to her I was thinking “well of course they do.”

Action (8) – All of the actions in this thread really tied together to reinforce the theme that it’s the little things that make the difference. Your constant repetition of this theme through all of Erissa’s doings not only showed growth in her character, it tied everything together.

Persona (8) – This thread really allowed you to explore the full range of who Erissa is and to put it on display for the reader. You even gave alternate versions of Erissa to demonstrate how the things that happen to her shaped her and how different she could be given different circumstances. The “lesson” theme of the story and how Erissa deals with each difficulty put in her path really made me feel that she had, by the end of the thread, grown in depth as a character.

Prose: (25)

Mechanics (9) – Excellently written and flowed extremely well. There was only one error that jumped out at me throughout the thread.

Clarity (8) – You did a good job of keeping this thread clean and easy to understand, despite the areas of action and mounting madness that were part of it.

Technique (8) – Just about everything seems tied together into the theme of the thread, and as I go back over it I continue to find subtle things that you can only really catch if you’ve read the entire thread. There was only one real point that stuck out and not being really tied in, which was Erissa noting that she still had no shoes once she had been clothed after escaping the room. I was somewhat expecting that point, which stuck out as a point of note, to come up later in the thread but it did not.

Wildcard: (10)

Total: 85

Sagequeen receives 2295 exp and 310 gp.