“Good.” Cain squeezes my hand. “Now I want you to let it all go. I want you to turn away from it all and turn into your mind.”
“How do I do that?”
“Imagine that you’re literally turning away from all that you see, turning inward into where it’s dark. You’re just staring into that darkness.”
I envision myself as a tiny person, a miniature version of myself, standing inside of my head and staring out of my eyes. I imagine myself turning away, toward darkness.
“Keep breathing, in and out. Relax every part of you. Relax your toes.”
Cain leads me through relaxing each part of my body, up through my feet, my legs, my chest, all the way to my head. I do feel really relaxed. Meditation always seemed like such crap to me, but this actually seems nice. Maybe it’s that Cain is guiding me.
I can feel an odd sort of tingle in my fingertips. I feel like I’m starting to fall. Into what, I’m not sure. It feels soft, but it also feels like nothing.
“Don’t tense up,” Cain says, his voice still soothing and calm.
I realize that I was starting to get tense, scared of falling into the nothing, and I relax again. How is this so hard when it happened instantaneously last time? I just felt a strong emotion, strong lust, and the next thing I knew, I was back in time—or forward in time, I’m still not sure.
But now that I want to do it purposefully, it’s taking work.
“Don’t think about anything,” Cain cautions. “Just keep visualizing.”
I keep visualizing, and I start to fall again. This time, I let it happen. Down, down, down, into softness and nothing. It’s dark, but I don’t feel scared. I know, somehow, that this is just happening all in a second, even though it feels like it’s taking hours.
“Picture Roanac,” Cain guides me. His voice sounds very far away and soft. “Remember how he smelled. What he felt like when he touched you. Hold on to those things. Keep visualizing them. Not the rest of it. Not where you were or what else was going on. Just the parts about Roanac. Follow it like a string.”
I can’t feel the couch anymore. I can’t feel myself breathing, even. I can’t hear the men or feel Cain’s hand. I picture Roanac in my head, his stupid horrible face, the feel of him grabbing me and moving me around—
And I stop falling.
This part feels exactly the way it did before. Like I’ve blinked, and I’m in a new space and it all feels so real, but at the same time I don’t feel in control at all. I can’t change anything. I’m not the one making myself move, or making myself speak.
It’s fuckingfreezing.
Wind howls outside. There’s a small window and when I peer through it, all I see is snow. Damn, we’re really in the middle of nowhere. It’s not just the crazy amounts of snow, it’s the fact that that’s all I can see. There’s nothing else, no covered buildings or trees. We must be close to the tundra.
That really narrows down where we could be. We’re either way up north in Canada, or Scandinavia, or… no, something tells me we’re in Siberia. Russia.
I don’t know how I know that. I just do.
Turning away from the window, I look at the room itself. I can’t look down at myself. But oddly enough, I feel invisible. I justfeelthat way. I can’t explain it, especially since I can’t look down at myself to confirm any of it, but I just don’t feel substantial anymore.
The room itself is old. It looks like some kind of shitty bunker. Some kind of relic from the Cold War that’s been abandoned and then repurposed. It’s bare. There’s not really any furniture, but there are magical charts all over the walls.
I can’t tell what kind of magic it is or what it means. But I can see that it’s definitely not science, and I recognize a few symbols as ones I’ve found on magical items or spell scrolls that I’ve stolen.
In the middle of the room, there’s a large table with a bunch of harnesses attached to it. Underneath the table on the floor are more symbols painted onto the concrete. Some of them I recognize from Roanac’s big machine he tried to use on me. On top of the concrete is a huge plastic tarp.
And that’s never good. That means you might need to wrap up a body.
On the table lies a man. He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him. Something in my stomach curls up and shies away when I see him, partly out of rage and partly out of fear.
Standing over the man is someone who’s obviously a mage. He’s got some tattoos, kind of like the guy in the market that we went to, but this man’s much older and is heavyset. Wrinkles cover his face, and he seems to be missing several teeth. His eyes are cold and watery.
He’s chanting, using magical words, his voice harsh, and the man on the table begins to twitch. Then his muscles bulge and shift under his skin. The man on the table opens his mouth and starts screaming, and I feel sick. His muscles are moving, they’re growing, and I can’t even imagine what kind of pain he’s in right now. What is happening? Why would anyone do this to themselves?
The man stretches and transforms, screaming in pain, as the mage above him continues to chant. I have to close my eyes. I can’t keep up. It seems to go on forever.
Then it all falls silent.