Saga:-Journey to the sunrise
Arc 2:- INDESCRIBABLE STEPS
Chapter->30
-->The strings showcase—fading beauty of good old days.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The curtains over the open door's patch started closing layer after layer.
A melody, a luminal sound crawled into Zarita's ears causing her to listen it calmnly.
Dundundundun...do...
Dundundundun...do...
The piano-like intrument's sound was echoing as the source was still unseen and unknown.
Click!
The light in the centre lit up. Another trap? Or a trial? I must stay calm and notice everything to make up for the latent losses I might stumble upon.
This seems like a circus trick or an event sorts and as much as I know—it works on a set of rules. The haunted house was about not to go insane, the door was not to go back. What about now...? Don't tell me.
Her eyes observed every corner of the room while faintly luminated objects were in her sight. Then she made out something..
Dolls?
There were puppet like statues everywhere surrounding her while wearing unusual mix of outfits like of a clown or a jester and icon. Statues of a lady with broken faces and rimmed borders of the open crack with gold, clown statues with a face of an animal or exaggerated noses and smiles. They all were connected by strings originating from something in the top.
The light started to flicker. Gasp.
Dundundundun...do..
Dundundundun...do..
The music started as Zarita heard rusty, crackling noises from her behind. It wasn't too hard to guess, that these dolls only move it they weren't in her sight. She looked back, the statues of angels and devils stopped. The broken-face ladies and clowns were closing in as she looked back and the statues retreated a bit. The heavier the gaze the far the distance. From sides were snake statues on pedestals with scorpion tails and a griffin beside it with dragon's scale-like tail.
Rumble! Rumble!
From every direction they were coming so Zarits started spinning on her on place maintaining them on a neutral stance. It's no good. If I fell from dizziness I'll...
Red strings came from around and wrapped around her neck, wrists, feet, waist, knees. The strings were loose. So loose that Zarita stopped and moved an inch experiencing dizziness, it was bad. The strings were dipping slowly into her body like her skin was a pond. Without piercing violently the magical strings were sinking in her skin adjoining with her nerves.
This feels so gross.
Flick! The light stopped.
Rumble! Rubmle! Rumble!
The sound started being more audible and more near than ever. This is bad they're coming, I have to do something.
RUMBLE!
The statues were just around her, surrounding her whole area just then the light flicked and her vision recovered. Her jaw was shivering from fear as the statues were barely touching her with their hands open but they were frozen even in the music.
She looked down, as her fear was slowly fading away because of past experiences. This was nothing to be compared with, a little shock at first but it faded real quick.
The charred dust from the statues were making Zarita uncomfortable as she noticed her surroundings with inanimate objects like broken palm-sized gears, straws, shattered glasses, broken monocles, stacks of strings.
As a memory resurfaced her mind making her eyes teary.
Her brother used to fear horror movies alot, especially with clowns and circus stuff. He either just hid his head in pillow or in her lap trying to adjust like a loaf of bread.
She inhaled and exhaled a breath to calm the wobbly feeling inside her neck. Now what? She moved a bit but the strings inside her body were moving weirdly that made her uncomfortable as she frowned, squeezing through the statues. As all the strings were tight and were only pointed in the centre of her chest. The lights turned orange as, a secret side in the tent opened its curtains and inside was something...
Suddenly biting cold started creeping her out as the darkness was crawling in slowly from the borders of the tent.
She was frozen for a moment looking at something, someone inside.
Dark messy hair, size of a small boy. Weeping eyes, some little cuts on the white and big t-shirt covering his whole body with his legs hugging his chest and he was poking the music box in front of him.
Dundundundun...do.
The statues started moving.
Rumble!
Closing the distance near Zarita. As she couldn't contain it anymore. How could she. Seeing such an existence in such a state, anyone's heart would cry. She started running towards the boy. Her little brother.
He was only some steps far away from her, his eyes deep sinking in slumber and melancholy. Zarita was slowed down to such huge extent that the strings were tearing her skin apart from behind. Her back was revealed as the hands of statues reached her trying to grab her.
"Grr.." blood dripped down her corners of lips as she stomped her feet and pushed her body. The statues in desperation to stop her grabbed the strings attached to her back and started pulling them back. Zarita's body was like of a doll, her cheek skin fell and broke like porcelain. But her cheek wasn't bleeding, all the layers in her body were like of a doll now. Her tears had dried, as beads of red crimson were falling and breaking on the ground from her mouth. Her back was being broken from inside as her whole body was entangled with threads and her heart was completely pulled out of her body hanging in the air in the restrains of the strings. The statues had stopped like they had served their purpose.
Their hands covering her heart in mid-air like a box. And slowly their fingers were closing into it to crush it. Zarita's eye balls were blood shot as her crimson hair strands fell a bit didn't affecting her stature at all.
Her right side of face and ear fell on the ground and broke as she kneeled and pushed the music box aside, held her hands close and hugged the boy flimsily.
Her heart was beating ravageously, echoing with the turmoil and aghast of pain wretching every nerve of her.
While in the constraints of strings as she could feel every ounce of pain. Her vocal cords were already crushed inside broken like glass such that she couldn't speak to her brother nor could she let out a cry. Her eyes were of a doll which could neither bleed nor cry.
As slowly her brother's body started crumbling into dust, she felt as if it was touching her soul. She couldn't feel anything as if her body had gone numb but her brother.
The statues' fingers were deep inside her heart as Zarita's fingers' fell on ground breaking one by one. The music box was letting out steam as if it broke itself.
Is this the end? I c an no t th ink strai ght. W ill I b e co ns um ed by t his for e ver?
The darkness on the edges of the tent that were solid like obsidian broke one by one, So did the statues.
E very t hing is f all ing a p a r t. I. . .
As Zarita reflected on the pond of her life, certain birds flew by. Those birds represented her fleeting humanity, however akin to those who tend to forget their humanity as themselves, Zarita could still recognize a familiar figure reflected in the pond. The pond was all of her subconsciousness, her memories. As her figure reconstructed within it and dissected.
—O fleeting light of this realm, I am harbouring the very depths of you. In this sanctioned library of fate, which page do I dwell onto—
She lastly repeated a phrase that was beyond her in any other circumstance.
Her pupil had been surrounded by cracks as it was dialting. The Ink of her surreal eyes had drowned her whole pupil into silver moon.
I C An sE e i T. The h a z y f i gu r es. W h o?
As her vocal cords and neck had been cracked entirely.
Her soul was speaking, echoeing in the lost and abandoned circus she stepped into. Her aether body was denser than ever.
"Vocal cords? Aether...?" Her voice questioning the murmurings leaping into her aether body, whose senses were heightened to otherworlds. A fear achieved not even by of a god. Her will had fused with her aether body as her broken pieces emitted a faint glow. Archon of aether she was now. "Archon?" She could hear the murmurings transcripted in every fibre of her body, every drop of her blood, every piece of her dust.
"...." In her silver sea, a deep crimson pupil under white shadowed robe appeared, as her crackling mouth moved, her body froze in time as the vibrations moving her body's energy levels had completely frozen. She was neither living nor dead.
"Who are you? Who are these people looking at me?" As she became aware...
I—
"I am the watcher of the realms. The writer of fate, the one who holds the diamond of fate."
"And who am I?" Zarita asked.
"You are just a replacement. For the last run. Ruler of hell, Ruler of heaven, Ruler of cosmos, Ruler of essence.
They all come, conquer this world and take their places. Thinking it was their own will
It wasn't.
This loop, the candidates are rather murky. They need a fast replacement because they could not reach the pinnacle they were supposed to. And you, your batch. It is an anomaly.
You and your brother, that reaper. Will soon fall.
As for your awareness about me."
You are not supposed to...
"Why?"
"Zarita, was just an illusion, it doesn't ex—ist."
"I, am. Za..."
An illusion faintly painted by the minds of those who believe in the morality of a god, ignore the true nature of creation and sail their boats in the sea of dilemnas and delusion.
"...*Sigh*.."
CRACKLE!