Chapter 14 The Party That Wasn’t #2
Now Graham and I stood in a shimmering blue field, overlooking a lake that could have been Vulcan Lake, only it was covered in faery lights and small canoes, each of them with a lantern hanging from a curved prow.
I saw couples out there, paddling in the still water, and others standing on the grass, talking, holding drinks like Graham.
The stars looked iridescent in the sky, but the view in front of me was undoubtedly familiar, and completely unlike what the vortex had shown me.
I stumbled a little in my heels when I stepped backwards.
Graham was close enough by that he switched one of the goblet stems to his other hand and caught hold of me with strong fingers, bringing me upright.
“Hey,” he said. “You alright?”
I nodded, but my heart still thumped too hard in my chest.
I bit my tongue to keep from snapping at him.
I took the goblet he handed me, mostly for the same reason, and noted the color of the drink inside wasn’t cerulean this time, but a pale, new-leaf green.
I didn’t recognize the exact cocktail, but I didn’t care.
I took a sip, and a sweetness exploded over my tongue.
It was almost too sweet, reminding me of a bad experience I had when I was fifteen, with a bottle of peach schnapps I’d tried at a party, back when I still lived in Overworld.
“What was that?” he asked, as I gasped from the sweetness of the drink and lowered it. “Where did the chimaera take you?”
I frowned. It clicked somehow, that he understood this better than me.
“Why am I no longer there?” I asked him instead. “Doesn’t every vortex go to a different place? I saw different images when I looked into each one… they weren’t all the same. I don’t understand why it changed when you came?”
He returned my puzzled look.
“They aren’t places, Leda… not really,” he said.
“They pull from your mind. From all of our minds. Naturally, whenever someone joins you in one of the constructs, it changes, as there’s two minds to pull from, not just the one.
If your visions are different enough, you end up here, which is where everyone ends up after their initial vision fades.
” He looked around at where we stood. “This one’s more like a dressed-up version of the Malcroix grounds and campus.
There’s thousands of little chimaeras worked into this one…
it’s more like a hub for the rest. Which is why it’s the endpoint, I suppose. ”
I thought about that, looking around where we stood.
The overall concept was brilliant.
Creative, thought-provoking, even educational, like I’d theorized from what I knew of Forsooth, as a professor, at least. Definitely worthy of the mage considered one of the top theurgists and chimaerists in the world.
The idea of using the participant’s own mind to determine where they ended up was absolutely brilliant.
It also excited and frustrated me even more, given what I’d lost when Graham Strangemore stumbled into my construct uninvited. Had the chimaera showed me something significant, after all? Had it meant more, been more, than just some fanciful historical reenactment by Forsooth?
Why on earth would my mind have sent me to Ancient Egypt?
I tried to remember what I’d been thinking about right before I saw the vortex open.
I’d been thinking about Alaric, hadn’t I?
And Dark Cathedral? I’d been worried about Alaric, where he might be, what might be happening to him.
Why would any of that send me to a very dark-feeling ritual in an Ancient Egypt?
Bones connected Dark Cathedral to Ancient Egypt in some way.
Hadn’t he said they traced their own roots back to that historical period?
“Do you want to walk around a little?” Graham offered.
“There’s a castle up the hill. It’s different from the real Malcroix Mansion, of course, and there’s supposed to be a lot to look at inside.
I ran into some of my Skyhunt buddies just now, and they said there’s even a dragon on the roof you can ride.
Forsooth has all kinds of surprises in here… all over the grounds, too.”
I nodded, laying a hand on my belly as a faint wave of dizziness hit me.
It struck me that I hadn’t eaten anything, and I was on my second drink.
Walking would probably do me good.
“Is there food anywhere?” I asked him.
Graham’s smile widened. “Loads.” He offered his arm. “We can find you some nosh first, if you like? Then explore after?”
I slid my hand and arm through his, strangely grateful for the added balance. I probably shouldn’t have, but I dusted off the last of that too-sweet drink he’d given me, and carried the empty goblet in my hand.
“I can get rid of that for you,” he offered.
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine.”
I could feel he wanted it back, that it bothered him I hadn’t let him take it, but I stubbornly wanted to keep it.
I forgot about the goblet a few minutes later, when it slipped through my fingers onto the grass.
I stared around as we walked up the hill and through a tall hedge-maze filled with faeries and animals made of light.
A full-sized minotaur walked past us between the dense, leafy walls, snorting but not threatening us directly, and I saw what might have been a harpy, a woman with giant bird wings a beautiful face, with dragon-like claws instead of feet.
She stared at us as we walked past her, but didn’t speak.
The castle wasn’t in the same place as Malcroix, and didn’t look at all the same.
It was tall and emerald green, with round turrets on four sides, and we had to walk across a bridge and then a drawbridge because it sat at the center of a crystal-blue lake.
I heard roars and screams and laughter by the time we got to the drawbridge.
Light flared overhead as fire filled the sky, and I figured it must be the dragon Graham’s mates told him about.
I hadn’t seen any food yet.
I had started to feel really unwell.
My vision dipped as I gripped Graham’s arm to stay upright.
“I might need to go back,” I said, and was surprised to hear my voice slur. “How do I get back to the main party? The non-chimaera part?”
“Not yet, Shadow,” Graham said soothingly. “We’ll head back soon, I promise. I just want to see the dragon first––”
“You said something about food?” I felt truly sick now, maybe too sick to eat, but my mind worked well enough to know I should probably eat something anyway, even if it was just a piece of bread. My head throbbed, and my eyesight blurred in the lights bobbing around us outside the castle walls.
“I need to go back,” I slurred. It hit me that Graham had an arm around me now, and I writhed away from the muscular hand on my hip. I was suddenly uncomfortable at how close I was to him. I stumbled slightly, and he gripped me tighter.
“Whoa there, Shadow,” he chuckled. “Take it easy. You don’t want to fall in the lake.”
We passed over the last part of the drawbridge, and through the tall castle doors.
Other second-years ran and walked past us, some of them shrieking and laughing, making my head hurt more.
They passed us going in both directions, just like they had out in the gardens and by the lake.
I saw some of them notice and stare at the two of us, but no one I knew, and I was still annoyed at how tightly Graham was holding me.
“I’d really rather go back,” I repeated stubbornly, fighting my uncooperative tongue. “Maybe we could come back after I’ve got something to eat.”
“There’s food inside,” he said, not loosening his hold.
I didn’t believe him.
Why didn’t I believe him?
It reached my fogged mind that I felt more than regularly intoxicated, or even heavily intoxicated in the way I had a few times while out with Alaric on one of his drinking and magical-substances-that-are-definitely-not-alcohol rampages.
I’d never once felt unsafe with Alaric, despite how obsessive he could be about his own inebriation, and even mine. He’d never once put me off when I wanted to go home, when I was hungry, thirsty, tired, annoyed with a situation, nervous, bored, or anything else.
Moreover, my mind had felt relatively clearer at those times, despite my having drunk and sometimes imbibed other things in much larger amounts.
The feeling that swam over me now suddenly struck me as disturbingly familiar. As soon as it did, panic made it difficult to breathe.
I’d felt like this before. Exactly like this.
The costume party. Last year.
This exact same feeling had hit me then.
All of that twisted through my mind and awareness far too slowly.
By the time the pieces had fully come together, Graham was leading me into an isolated corridor of Forsooth’s make-believe castle.
I blinked in confusion at the row of black stone statues, each of them larger than an actual person and dressed in flowing, marble robes.
Their polished, mirror-like surfaces reflected firelight from a low, wide grate at the end of the hallway, but between the statues were alcoves with windows and padded seats where one could look out over Forsooth’s make-believe world.
I fought to make sense of where we might be in the real world, but my mind couldn’t wrap around the intricacies of how the construct worked.
Were we anyplace in the real world? Or were we in some pocket dimension that existed all on its own, neither in Magique nor Overworld?
My mind couldn’t hold onto the thought long enough to make sense of it, or make sense of why it felt so urgent that I understand the mechanics of this now. I wanted to know where I was. I didn’t feel safe, and I wanted to know what was really around me.
Would anyone notice if something was wrong?
Would Forsooth feel it, inside his own creation?
Graham pulled me into the furthest alcove, and that feeling of being unsafe worsened. He sat on a red-cushioned stone seat, and pulled me onto his lap. I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t feel his erection pushing hard against my arse as soon as he yanked me down against him.