White Orchids {BOOK 1 COMPLETED}

Chapter 44

TW: horror, grotesque imagery

I choose a few soul wanderers and experience their memories. Even if they seem more tangible for each new shape I choose, they're all distorted. In each memory a few things are repeated. Names of cities, creatures or soul wanderers that has withered, the kings and a punishment.

It takes a lot of energy to experience these memories, I can barely stand on my legs as I lower the mirror for the tenth time. When I bring it up again to begin my eleventh shape I fall to the muddy ground.

"Rest," Clover says.

"We don't have time for that."

I try to stand up again, but my legs give away.

"Don't be an idiot," he snaps through gritted teeth. "You're no use if you push yourself to the point of total exhaustion!"

I glare at him before I put the mirror into my mind. Sun slowly turns her face towards me.

"So? Anything we can use?"

"Nothing that can lead us to the mask. But it repeats things. Do you know anything about a creature or maybe a soul wanderer by the name of Kailysta or the Nightguard?"

She shakes her head and grimaces. "No. But those names don't sound like soul wanderers. Creatures? Maybe. The Nightguard," she takes a deep breath, "sounds like a title."

"And the kings? They're often mentioned. You spoke of them in Arkaros, no?"

She glares at me through heavy eyes and barely moves as she scoffs. "The three kings?"

I nod.

"They're a legend." She quiets. "... Or it should be a legend. Are you telling me it's not?"

I can't answer that. I knew nothing of the kings, the possibility of it being just a legend was still there. The kings they spoke of didn't have to be three kings. Besides, the memories were too distorted to trust.

"It doesn't matter, does it?" Clover says and rolls his eyes as he pushes his back further against the tower to not slip down. "The legend is thousands of years old. We need to focus on finding the mask and get out of here before the darkness destroys us."

If it began moving now, we'd likely not be able to make it out. Clover is right. If the kings are a legend or not is something we have to figure out later. We have to find the mask and get out of here.

I focus on the mirror in my mind, and I call it forth to my hand. The same ache moves through my body as it finally appears in my palm.

"You have to rest, Orchid," Sun says.

I sit crisscrossed on the ground as I extend my shaky hand with the mirror. It feels much heavier when I have no energy left.

"I can rest when we've left this fucking world," I mutter and stare into the green eyes in the mirror.

Neither Sun nor Clover stops me.

****

It feels like I've been sitting on the muddy ground, with the mirror in my hand, for hours. I cannot stop shaking. Memory after memory says the same thing. A fear that this world will collapse, that the darkness will come. They had already known that it would be coming before they abandoned it – it had been the very reason why they had left it.

Nine occasionally checks in and asks me how we are and what I've seen. He doesn't know anything about the Nightguard or Kailysta. That Sun who is the oldest of us hasn't heard about it makes me doubt that Sage would know anything either. Yet I ask. Nine gives me the answer I had expected. He had not heard of them, just the legend about the three kings.