Herobrine's Legacy (The Wielder Chronicles Book Three)

Chapter 3 || Split Paintings

The world started whirling again, and I slowly gripped onto a hopeful reality that wherever I had found myself wasn't in fact reality. I tried remembering myself falling asleep, but my brain was filled with confused and panicked thoughts of claustraphobia, wielders, blue and white eyes.

More names were washed across my memory - Mikalea Wilkins, one of the oldest paintings I could see, a woman with brown hair and blue and later white eyes;  John Karlet, a teenage-looking boy whose family lay dead over the line; Clare Jones, a raven-haired young girl - one of the newer paintings, and what was weird about this one was that when her image was doubled, rather then having an empty soulless gaze in the latter image, her eyes were blood red. The break in the pattern was enough to pull me back into an uncomfortable but controlled feeling of eeriness instead of a scared one.

When I concerntrated, calming myself down enough to do so, it occured to me that the word McKinnon actually occured a lot more often then just of that woman. I saw it twice, thrice, four, five times, all different people of the same family. Maybe it was a coincidence, but with the obvious traits each of them shared, it didn't seem that way. Iris, I thought. Seriously, what the hell is going on?

While I was reading an inscription on the bottom of another old picture, I heard two small clicks. I had grown so used to the silence of the dark room that I jumped around like I'd just been poked on the shoulder.

At first, I didn't notice anything different, but when I walked over to the wall, stepping around the lava, I realised there were specifically two differences - two new paintings, appearing out of seemingly thin air.

Although I was still a little shaken, not to mention worried about my mum and Iris and whatever weird demonic transformation thing they were stuck in (maybe stuck in, I thought; This is all probably just a big prank. Xavier's be messing with me while everyone else is sitting back and laughing and my gulibility. Or at least, I hope), I sanely managed to recognise that I was in deeper crap then I had previously thought.

Because of the two paintings, the one hung on the left was of me.

The writing below spelt Kai Dare, 15, Wielder, but instead of being a couple of portraits split down the middle, there was only one side to it. If anything, it was the painting next to it that startled me.

Iris McKinnon, it said. 15. Wielder.

Before I could figure out what was going on, the room, the paintings and the lava all became unsettlingly black and my mind switched off.

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I woke with a start, gasping for air, the black I'd been drowned in almost suffocating.

I looked around the room I was in; I was honestly expecting something apart from my own bedroom. I was upright in my bed, cold sweat on the back of my neck.

"Oh my Notch," I sighed, irritated with myself, but relieved at the same time, "It was a dream. I was that scared because of a dream." That is an awfully weak standard set, Kai. What the hell would Iris think about that.

I drifted back into memories of last night's dream - the paintings, McKinnon, mum's name, our names - and then fell back onto the bed, groaning. It was too early to be suffering through a confusing list of events, no matter what sort of reality they fit into.

"Kai! Get your ass out of bed and get ready for school, you idiot!" Tali yelled from the kitchen, followed by a clank of a plate onto the bench.

I groaned again, louder, and she returned the discord with "Now, Kai, or I'll come in there and rip the covers off you!"