12 | moonlight mirage

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When I couldn't take the hollowing pang in my chest anymore, my body succumbed to a heart-sickened sleep.

With the lull of sleep came the end of the trembling, and with it, a dreamless blanket of darkness. But once it turned heavy, a faint light like a distant star brightened in the distance. My feet unconsciously approached it like a beacon I needed to reach.

When the faint light took shape, I stopped, standing only a few feet away from a wispy illusion of a woman.

The wisps swirled around her face, obscuring her features, giving off a mesmerizing appeal like a liquidized opalesce galaxy.

Her dress, like a silken midnight sky, matched the abyss surrounding us, flowing into it like endless night.

I had an urge to ask for her name, but something ominous about the stranger kept me from saying anything at all. Her presence alone shoved my instincts on edge. Like how it may feel if I found myself standing in front of a dangerous predator who hadn't yet decided if she had an appetite demanding enough to pursue me.

Even though this was a dream, I didn't belong here. I walked into this woman's domain. She held power here, no question.

Just like before, nothing accompanied me in this dreamscape. Nothing to defend myself with, nothing to wear. It was like the being wanted me to be in a vulnerable state as the cobra did, at her utter mercy.

When she turned to walk further into the darkness, I fell into step behind her.

Every time I thought I caught up, she grew further away, forcing me to play an unending game of catch-up. Unintelligible whispers hugged my back like an enticing wind, urging me on. She pulled me along like a puppet on her enchanted strings.

Something about how the woman's hair held a moonlight iridescence reminded me of how this whole mess started, with that cobra.

A fresh burst of realization rushed through me. There was a connection between the two beings. There had to be. Was the cobra trying to tell me something new, show me something important? But why would it take a new form?

I picked up speed, but my shoulder knocked into a solid, invisible force. I fell back a step from the sudden impact. It caused the surrounding darkness to begin to fade away like a sunrise slowly casting away the night.

"Wait-" I reached out to the strange woman. She noticed our connection dissipating, and she quickly reached an outstretched hand toward me. Like a moon reaching out in the night, she didn't want me to leave, didn't want the sun to rise. Her fingers stretched, desperate to make contact. But she was too far. Her form warped into silvery tendrils, evaporating with her domain.

The intangible strings which previously held me in her trance were gone, but I couldn't let her leave without figuring out why she came in the first place.

"Stop!" I yelled. "Don't go yet!"

I bumped into something else. But I shoved past it and tried to grasp onto the wisps. My fingers glided through her outstretched hand like mist. Yet before her top half vanished, I caught a faint glimmer where her eyes would be behind the guise. It was cold and gripping.

~By the Fates, my head hurts!~ Nox stated profusely.

The last of the cloaked darkness and wisps rushed away.

My eyes widened. It was as if someone had turned the lights on in a pitch-black room. But the kicker was that I was no longer in the room I fell asleep in. I wasn't even in the lab.

Holy hell.

Clusters of amber rocks lit up an underground city.

A mixture of taupe, pink, and gray quartz structures inhabited the vast cavern, like a clandestine market with a dystopian-stellar twist. I peered down the side of the bridge I found myself standing on, where I saw several similar layers traveling down until reaching a dark bay at the bottom.

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