Herobrine's Legacy (The Wielder Chronicles Book Three)

Chapter 3 || Split Paintings

Chapter 3 || Split Paintings

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- Kai's POV -

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Paintings were hung over all four walls of the room, no windows letting pale light into the cold stale air, the only source of heat errupting from the hole in the ground filled with sizzling lava that hurt to look at for too long. I'm not sure how I got here; nor do I want to be. I was shivering even standing so close to molten rock.

It wasn't so much the fact I was in a cold yet lava-occupied room that gave me a dull feeling of confusion, but more so that the paintings all around me were amazingly detailed and all of the same things. Faces - faces of people I'd never met, with names below them I'd never heard of before.

But half of them were phantom portraits - each image was split in two by an almost invisible line, each portraying different versions of the same person. The second picture . . . was always of the person with white eyes. Sometimes there were burning houses behind them, or a forest fire. Their faces were ghostly and empty, just like their eyes - I'd never seen of white eyes before, never read about them or heard them being mentioned in the conversation across from mine. They were cold and dead and hollow, staring through you like you were glass, and they were everywhere, reflecting nothing and seeing all, glaring at me from painted portraits.

I gained comfort in looking at their preceeding images. They were usually of the same people doing something typically ordinary, like reading a book or playing in a garden. They were smiling, with bright eyes and red-tinted cheeks, very much unlike their . . . other forms.

How they managed to change so dramatically and . . . strangly, I have no idea. Mum had told some weird stories but nothing like this - not people turning evil, their minds wiped and morals replaced. And she definitely did not mention white soulless eyes.

I tried re-tracing my steps, wondering how in the world I got into this position, being stared down by a whole bunch of painted strangers, but realised pretty quick I could not remember a single thing about how I ended up here. But that was probably just be being forgetful again; at least, I hoped.

While my gaze scattered around the room, occasionally picking up on a new name, a certain colour caught my eyes - an ocean blue.

I stepped forward, a little further away from the light of the lava, and narrowed my eyes curiously at the painting. It seemed like a newer one, the colours of the canvas brighter and harsher, almost like it were begging to sieze someone's attention. And thanks to the its modernity, the painted face's eye colour stood out like a becan against a blackly lit night sky.

The face was all too familiar. It was younger, sure, but there was absolutely no mistaking those striking blue eyes or that wide smile. It was Mum - hung up on the wall, like an object of a collection, a mismatched room full of unique faces, half of which were demonized. I tried tried tried not to glance at her reflection across the line, but my gaze traitorously trailed over towards it, and before I could stop myself all I could see was my mother white-eyed and pale, wearing a dress of red and an expression of pure ice, her hair dark in the red light of the background. The image looked warped, twisted, and I didn't know what to think - what had happened, what was this place, why my mum, why is she here on this wall, why are these people with her, why was any of this happening right now, why was I here?

My mind felt scattered and scared, and I read the plaque under her picture possibly out loud, I'm not sure - Nya Analove. 18. Wielder.

Words and faces starting flying at me randomly as I started to panic - I was trapped here, there was no way out, only paintings and paintings of humans and demons - Johan Lively, 28, Wielder, a man with brown bushy hair standing beside a wheat farm with a smile on his face, a sword and fire in the picture reflection beside it;  David Harrison, 24, Wielder, blonde hair and tanned skin, turned pale in his demonic and white-eyed formation; Jones Parker, 45, Wielder, a shyly smiling older man with a woman sitting beside him, gazing at him happily - the same woman was dead beside him in the other image; Elaine McKinnon, 34, Wielder, a white-blonded woman holding a baby while gazing proudly at another child playing in the forest next to her. I don't think about what came of the same children after whatever happened to every other victim hung up on the walls of this room happened to their mother. But after a small-lasting calmness of the storm raging inside my head, I realised that the reason the woman struck me as important was her last name - McKinnon. As in Iris McKinnon, my best friend of fifteen years with eyes whose turquoise arcanely matched those of Elaine.