Chapter 12 - Chapter 12

I spent the rest of that day going through speech training. I hated it. I just wasn’t good at motivating people. I continued to see the disappointed and scared faces in the illusions and Ted kept yelling at me outside of them. But I never once lost my temper. I was proud of myself for that at least, I reflected as I sat in my couch that night, Mark’s cloak wrapped around my shoulders. I breathed in deeply and massaged my head.
‘Just get through each day and cry at night…” I whispered to myself. I didn’t like being yelled at. I hated it actually…Back when I was alive if anybody yelled at me, I would just snap and would have to defend my pride. It got me into a lot of trouble at school especially. But I was getting better at it. I hadn’t yelled at Ted at all yet.
I slid under the covers on the black couch and spread Mark’s cloak over me again. I fell asleep almost a soon as my head hit the pillow.


It was hot. Really hot. I glanced around and took in the burning midnight black staircase below me and the equally dark path leading though an otherwise fiery field. The sky above was pitch black with a few red stars piercing the blackness. As I watched the flames on the ground flicker and glow crimson against the deep black behind them, a figure appeared at the top of the stairs. The figure wore a black cloak that covered its entire body and a hood that hid its face from my view. It started climbing down the spiral staircase, gracefully avoiding the burning railing and patches of flame that dotted the black stairs themselves. My focus shifted and suddenly it seemed as if I was floating behind the cloaked figure rather than floating above it. It continued to walk down the stairs and I followed the figure, drifting a good few inches off of the ground. The cloaked figure followed the flaming path, as I followed, glancing around every so often to take in the flames and noticing how odd it seemed to see no other people on this path and yet feel like every time I glanced in another direction, some shadowy creature slipped out of my sight and back to the darkness.
The figure soon came upon what it was looking for and paused in it’s confident walking to give a deep curtsy to three other cloaked figures sitting in three different black thrones, inset with blood red rubies.
“You’re Highnesses…” whispered the figure that I had followed here in a woman’s voice, “I have brought it.” She continued.
The figures gave no verbal response. The figure in the far left throne stood up and walked to the woman and stretched out a hand. I shuddered at the long, dull green beetle claw appeared from under the cloak, and grasped the small felt bag that the woman held out to the figures. The beetle creature handed the bag to the thing in the middle throne. The figure on the right of the middle tossed a few coins to feet of the woman. I shivered again as the figure’s bull hoof hand slithered back into the cloak. The figure in the middle reached out to take the felt bag from the beetle figure. I was surprised to see that the middle figure had a normal human hand as opposed to a tentacle or something. Somehow though, that human hand was far more unsettling than the the first two. The middle cloaked figure opened the felt bag and eagerly drew out a small lock of light brown hair.
“I have done what you said. Now please, hold up your half of the bargain: Give me back my brother.” the woman asked in a trembling voice that overflowed with hope.
And then the middle figure spoke. Its voice was deep and low and although one being was speaking, it seemed as if millions of other voices were screaming along with him.
“And indeed, Emily, you have done very well. But we have more for you to do before we give your brother back to you.”

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