Ali So Far: The Goddess Prison

Act I - Chapter 9: The Voice of The Philosopher's Stone

I found it difficult to believe I'd nearly tried to kill myself by leaping from a waterfall two days prior. A rift of near infinite time seemed to separate me from that moment now. The Vinny that could humor that idea as clearly as I did before—I still shared that same bitter sense of humor that helped him to that point, but he currently seemed intangible, like I had actually been forcibly separated from him under those falls. Surviving attempted suicide, now walking Itallis alive, and in the home of the mayor of Medea no less. I'd just watched my sect, who I remained convinced would kill me, get washed down a cavern by a single Ali Alhaven strike—a casual swing to wash away all of my troubles.

Though, beyond all that, I'd never been the sort of person that could absolve myself to any sort of loyalty.

'I should feel debited to these treasure hunters somehow,' I thought, but in front of all of that: 'the guild shaped my entire life. If anything, I should feel a greater debt to them.'

"This doesn't make any damn sense, Dahlia," I said, leaning into the couch, as I looked away from the fire—my exact words from a day I spent lying in a gutter in a city halfway between Ill and the Wishing Well Waterfall. I'd fallen from a roof after that day, after fleeing my guild. Latching on to clotheslines and balconies, I managed to survive the fall. After hours lying in this alley, concentrating on every swell and throb of physical pain, I decided: "the best answer is to leave completely."

I rose to my feet, fully prepared to leave Hise's mansion and finish my journey back to that point.

"Vinny, live, treasure your life," called a voice, a woman's voice, echoing nearly as much in my own mind as the walls of the room. 

I paused in place, turning and checking every corner of the illuminated room in search of the source; nothing more than the crackling fire looked back to me.

"Must have lost more blood than I thought," I said, turning back towards the door to walk away from the light of the fire.

"The best answer is to leave completely," called the voice again, a soft wind seemed to take the room from nowhere; to ensure I didn't mistake it as madness, it wavered the flames on the fireplace as it pressed cold across my skin. "Words like that, spoken so casually, I will never believe them to be truth." 

Her voice seemed to pervade the entire room, and a rush of the sweet scent of flowers followed the wind.

"Hello?" I called, somewhat to the ceiling, somewhat to the walls, somewhat to the light of the flames.

The voice did not reply, but a violet colored substance began to seethe through the gaps in the ceiling. I watched a single gathering of the ooze, like droplets of colored water teeming through tiny pores in the roof—the purple liquid collected until it reached a mass that threatened to fall into the room. The moment a drop left the ceiling, it pulled into an odd form—a lavender flower petal that specifically floated down in the light of the fire and touched the palm of my hand with the feather-light weight of any real flower. Removing my attention from that one, I realized that the room now rained with them, and the ceiling itself was now completely covered in this purple cream.

I backed up against the wall in the sort of fear you had to admit to: sweat in cold bullets. I reached for my gun by reflex, but when I realized there wouldn't be anything to shoot, I noticed that I felt a heat emanating from my pocket. I fumbled through the fabric and drew out the Philosopher's Stone. A flower petal touched down on the back of my neck, and I dropped the stone in shivered shock then quickly shot down to pick it up as if it would protect me from the strange vision, but holding it, I realized, if there would be any sane source of this voice, the stone would be to blame.