Chapter 94

Chapter 94: 94 Bran raised a hand to catch the tiny specks of falling snow. He felt them land lightly in his hand but they weren’t cold. He closed his hand into a fist then let it drop to his side. He no longer felt cold in just his t-shirt and jeans, though he wasn’t sure if the ease at which he was able to change the rules of his surroundings was a good thing or a bad thing. He took his glasses off, closed his eyes, and told himself that he could see properly. He opened them, and the fuzzy world came back into view again. So his ability to change the world was limited. This was good to know though it brought him no closer to determining if this was just another illusion or an actual coil that he was stuck in. Bran looked out at the mountains. They were tall, jagged, and mean looking with snow falling eternally on them. There were no trees, not that he’d seen anyway, and there was a thick mist that made looking down into the possible ravines impossible. He’d been walking for ages, but they still looked about the same. Had Misha been here, he’d have been able to tell him if he’d made any progress getting anywhere but as he wasn’t, and Bran’s sense of direction was as bad as usual, he could only hope. And regardless of whether this was an illusion or coil, if he jumped off the cliff, he would die, or at least, get seriously injured. He sighed and got to walking again, stomping slowly through the snow. Probably the most eerie thing about the place was how quiet it was with all the snow absorbing the sound. He remembered his Aunt once taking him to scale the mountains in the western parts of the country. It hadn’t been all that long since he’d woken and he’d been in an awful mood, but the stark beauty of the place pushed all that aside. It was cold and dangerous and incredibly beautiful. Bran wasn’t sure if this was the reaction other people had to these kinds of encounters, but he’d felt the same way when seeing Misha’s dragon form for the first time. He’d spotted him in the airport earlier and thought he was good looking, but it was seeing the scales and fangs that really startled him, really made his heart skip a beat. Bran paused and rubbed his face with his hands. He didn’t want to be thinking about these things right now. Sure, he didn’t have much else to do other than think, but he knew this line of thinking would only make it harder for him to go on. He took a deep breath, letting just an inch of the iciness of the air touch his nerves in an effort to clear his head. There was a muffled scuffling sound and a garbled chitter and he dropped his hands and opened his eyes to find a welcome visitor. The cat with wings and a raven’s head chittered again and Bran crouched to give it a scratch on the neck. On that trip to the mountains with his Aunt, she’d taken the opportunity to show him how to craft a familiar for himself, similar to the archers she used to guard her Coils. Bran’s first few attempts had failed until finally this strange cat-bird creature had emerged from the ashes. Appearance-wise, they were from a story Bran had heard long ago, one he’d long forgotten the name of but could remember the feel of the sun shining through the window as his mother had read to him. Had it been a long book? A short one? One with pictures? Had she been the illustrator of it? She’d still been a professional children’s book illustrator at that time, so perhaps. "Hey, Clover. Find anything?" The bird beak opened and a small stone fell out. Bran picked it up and saw that it was the same as the last one his little familiar had brought him. He sighed. Then the creature gave a wrenching cough and something green fell from its beak onto the ground. It was fresh, green shoots of some plant. Bran smiled and gave the creature an extra scratch. "Alright, show me where you found this." Maybe there was a way out of this place after all. -- Ah-Boon and Helen touched down onto the snow-filled plain a few minutes after I had and quickly started rubbing their hands together, just like me. Or at least Helen did. Ah-Boon was wearing a pretty large jacket so he was fine. "Is this a Co-?" I began to ask but Helen quickly covered my mouth. "Maybe," replied Helen then let go of me. She then got out her phone and started taking pictures. "I’ll send these to Tuesday and see what she has to say." Still a little shaken, I took out the phone too and used Shengnü to record some data too. There was no network connection here, but since Yidi had installed a local version of the program on the hardware, I thought I’d just let it chew on things for a while and see what I got. Plus I wanted something to do while scolding myself for not remembering such a basic thing about Coils. "Okay," said Helen, putting her phone away. "Let’s take a quick look around. Five minutes, then back here, agreed?" Ah-Boon and I nodded. "Good. Let’s go." There wasn’t much around and we together concluded that our best bet was to head towards the little patch of jagged darkness on the horizon that looked to be trees in the distance. We talked a little as we walked, but nothing of any real substance, just things like how work was for Helen and area of study for Ah-Boon. I didn’t know what could or couldn’t be said so I mostly just asked questions to keep the flow going. It made me wonder how narrow a tightrope you’d walked while we’d lived in the Walled City. Had you always been second guessing everything you said? Somehow I felt not which made me more nervous. Clearly Helen and Ah-Boon were erring on the side of caution, but that meant that whatever this thing was, or however large it was, it was, well... massive. We walked for ages and Ah-Boon was starting to complain when a light shimmering caught my eye. I stopped and cocked my head to the side to check what I’d seen. "What is it?" asked Helen, coming to a stop ahead. "I think... I think there’s a spell here..." I stepped to the side to gauge the 3D position of the glimmer then walked towards it. As I did, another flickered to life, and another, and another. Soon I could see a trail of spell sparks marking out a path. My companions came up to me and Ah-Boon even stood behind me to get the right angle. "What do you see?" asked Helen. "Sparks," I replied. "I, uh, tend to see them when there’s a spell or something like that?" Helen looked to Ah-Boon who shrugged. "Yeung Serng Yin mentioned something like that. Said Misha’s perception was special or something." "Neither of you can see it?" I asked. Helen shook her head. "No, but it’s at least something." She took a step back and surveyed the snowy plain. There was nothing out there, not even a hint of trees. "Misha, you go first, then I’ll walk five seconds behind you, then Ah-Boon, you five seconds after me. Any objections?" There were none. "Alright. After you." At first I had to strain my eyes and tilt my head to keep the sparks in view, but after a while, I seemed to get a sense for where they’d be next and could anticipate it. Because of this, progress was surprisingly fast and we quickly saw changes in the environment. After the first minute of walking, the snow plain shifted and became less snow and more rock with even a few dead-looking tufts of grass, then after another minute, the world turned autumnal with large, brown-grey stone slabs and reddish leaves on the gnarly trees. There was still snow, but it was lighter, barely enough to carpet the ground and even the temperature seemed warmer. We were still walking spaced out in case anything happened to any of us and I heard the pair behind me give a short start each time the world shifted. It was when the castle emerged that I finally stopped and waited for the others to catch up. I thought we should approach this particular thing together. "Oh, wow," whispered Ah-Boon when he finally caught up. The castle wasn’t especially big, far smaller than the big houses up in Scotland, but what it lacked for in size it made up in character. Tall but crumbling spires, charred black stone, and mean looking gargoyles atop each roof staring down at us. I’d gotten so used to the little Asian dragons and such that are put on the rooves of traditional Chinese houses that even I was a little taken aback. "What is this place?" asked Helen. None of us knew and there was only one way to find out.