CHAPTER TWO
The strangeness of the air, the feel of the earth, I was an interloper here, having played many parts, the assassin, the whore, the prince, and the pauper. Yet this ward was mine, and I had not come home the prodigal son, expecting to find a welcoming feast, nor chastisement, my death being an even more distinct possibility. I had fled this world never to return, choosing exile millennia ago, and only now returning because of that one voice that cried out across the realms, like a perfume from a first love, never forgotten nor ignored. My twin-sister whose minds private voice I was more familiar with than even my own, before our lungs had taken their first breath.
Snapping back to an unpleasant reality her minds soul screamed and cried out in diminishing waves of pain, at first thinking it was a clever ruse devised to trick me back into a sphere where my control and allies were few, yet her life was measured at this instant in moments and I must
find her now, or never. Let the hunter come, he would find more than he expected if he returned here. Moving through what was once the Opalescent, city of dreams, with its beautiful curving towers rising beyond the scintillating clouds. Crystal chapels of prismatic light, labyrinths of mirrors one could get lost for days in, flowing living waters, dancing to the music of minds and feelings, gardens of exotic plants and flowers collected from across countless worlds as far as the mind’s eye could see, living vines growing and molded by our art to change their shape and color completely rebuilding their nature to the point where they could almost form ever changing images of living wonder, having become nearly sentient themselves. All was rubble now, a charnel pit filled with an ever-present stench of death and decay.
What had happened here? What could have brought low so many Noble houses? A world so well protected with armadas floating both in space and sea, militias and allies, dragon armies, and treaties with nations, and worlds? Much less agreements’ with other less tangible things, as the elementals having served us since time began, the beast lords aided us when they chose, but we were favored, even by the Lords and Lady of Chaos, we commanded countless guards and wards, as well as darker, meaner powers, these things of the mysterium are much more ephemeral, still without my hearing a single word, nor whisper, not a even a ripple in the fount of my travels did I here of the desecrations of my world.
I must hurry, for each second her touch becomes more tenuous, in moments it would be gone. Around the corner, ahead was the plaza built around a beautiful fountain fashioned of rare crystal which glowed and gloried mimicking the light of day. Changing the color of the water as the days light changed and at night the water would move and dance, its colors and movements coming from the thought and feelings of the people walking in the plaza. My sister and I snuck out of the house, a severely punishable crime, death for me endangering one of the daughters of the blood, yet we had come out often in our naive youth lost in more halcyon times not realizing our jeopardy, though the fantasy of the danger making it all the more exciting. Almost as dangerous as our secret journeys to the dragon caves where she would climb up into a hollow in there wings and doze among the bejeweled scales and powerful muscles.
I found the plaza filled with a dense scintillating fog at the end of my journey. Do I dare enter it? Once again it could be an incredibly crafty and clever trap, one I might try myself in the future if needed, but in that moment of moments time stood still forever stretching out in front and behind me I realized I have many options but only one choice, she was my sister, my twin! I never had any decision at all, exerting a small fraction of my own formidable power, still weakened severely by my rapid transport across the cosmos back to my mother’s world; a wave of my own kinesthetic power began to shower the prism, an energy that is almost like a fingerprint. Only one being to my knowledge has learned the mastery of altering this energy to the frequency of another, and I do not fear him, for it is me. A pinprick of color flows out like dust bonding and blending with the others, until the blues and the purples swirled and eddied forming a circular hole leading into the plaza. A slight grin lifted the corners of my mouth.
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