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Nothing.
Another pair of feet, sounding much more relaxed than the first, made their way to me. A young man stepped out of the dimly lit hallway and onto the center of the crest. He threaded his fingers through a whorl of red hair, basking in the sunlight. A stiff draft of wind lifted the linen panels of his tunic and flapped at the wool of his pants. Smiling, he turned, looking right at me, or right through me? Then he was gone, walking swiftly down the hall. I watched him go, all the while baffled.How had he notseen me?
I looked down, the Light oscillating over my body. Almost as if I had soaked it all in and began to push it back out. Magic. The Light that bent itself to every curve and angle of my body must have reflected my surroundings to whoever saw me, blinding them to my presence. Whichever way it worked, I was thankful, hating the thought of anyone finding me who wasn’t supposed to. Not because of what they might do, but how Kalen would react.
Despite now knowing that I was invisible, there was no need to stay any longer out in the open. I gathered myself, and let the Light pull me quickly through a maze of halls and stairs that snaked through to different caverns. The intricate networking of them made it seem impossible that the armory was anything other than an enormous labyrinth. Without my guide, I would have surely been lost.
After walking for thousands of paces, the tension that moved my body finally eased and the tingling energy of magic fizzled out. Inspecting myself once again, I found the light had gone, leaving me at the entrance of a room, seemingly empty with its door ajar.
I entered, checking around each corner before fully stepping into the room. An enormous round slab of oak separated the space into two halves. Papers and wooden baubles littered the log’s face. A discarded dagger was standing upright, stabbed into the wood, the sun glittering through a clear gem in the hilt.
Behind the massive centerpiece were two lounges upholstered with brown leather, sitting on either side of a large mirror in the back of the room. A girl stood in the center, gawking. When our eyes met, she shrieked.Ishrieked. The truth struck us both simultaneously. The girl was me, only recognizable by the outfit Rebekah had picked out.
I sprinted towards her, to see myself clearly for the first time inmy whole existence. When I reached out to run my fingers down her face, I gasped at the cold touch of some sort of thick material. Like in the watery reflections in the brook behind my grove, I watched myself move in real-time, but when the I swirled the pad of my finger around, I did not ripple the surface. Instead, a foggy smudge was left behind on the other Gwyn’s face.
Even with the smudge, it was a beautiful face. Heart-shaped, draped with long, unruly, platinum waves that stopped at the curve of my hips. I was tall and my muscles were lean but shapely from all my wandering from Mountain to Sea.All of my World was written so plainly on me. The Bright had even sent splashes of freckles across my skin, some dotting around the edges of my wide lips. Then there were my eyes. Like crystals, clear as the water that laps onto the shallowest part of the beach, wading around my dark pupils. There was an oddness to them, something missing from the place where the color was meant to be.Odd, I thought. But I liked it. A smile cracked like ice hitting water, breaking out as I took myself in.
“Immortality is a wonder, is it not?”
The greeting startled me, and I yelped into the reflection. I watched my cheeks redden in the glass before turning around to face him. He looked beautiful too, although I could be sure he didn’t bother admiring himself to know it.
“I can’t say I blame you for staring.” The corner of Kalen’s mouth pulled arrogantly to the right. “You do look significantly better than the last time I saw you.”
It seemed as if all of the kindness he had offered up at our last meeting had expired. I ignored him because nothing,nothing at all, could have overshadowed the enormity of what he’d just said. Not even slighted compliments from a roughly handsome man.
“Immortality?” I asked, choking a bit.
“Yes, Gwyn. Of the Old Language, I believe. As in immortalis.”His tongue curled around the “s” as he turned me by my shoulders back to the reflection. Brushing a section of hair over my neck slowly, he brought up my right palm. In a flash, the exposed flesh of my hand was ripped open by a blade. I cried out at the searing pain tearing through my wrist and arm. Then, just as fast as it came, the fire was put out, and I watched in disbelief as my hand sewed itself together again.
“Not mortal,” he breezed.
“Mongrel!” I shouted. Snatching my hand away from his wrist, I moved to...to do what? Hit him? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter because Kalen had already slipped away. He walked back over to the stump and slugged the knife into the center of the log beside the dagger.
Bullseye.
“Don’t be dramatic. You wouldn’t have believed me unless I showed you,” he said, then quickly changed the subject. “How was your stroll through the halls today?”
I was still seething.I want to drown him in the Sea, I thought, and then immediately felt ashamed. Kalen had saved my life on the Mountain yet I couldn’t grasp the feeling of wanting to lash out against him. The guilt came, pressing down on my heart in such a way I couldn’t tell if I wanted to yell or cry or break something.Emotion. In my whole life, I’d never been so overwhelmed with emotion. I closed my eyes briefly, counting and trying to settle myself enough to give him some sort of answer.My reply came out sharp and agitated.
“I saw two men, but they didn’t see me at all.”
“Mhm,” he grunted, looking down at the oak table.
“It was strange,” I added with an adjustment of tone, but Kalen seemed to drop the subject completely. With quick and calculating movements, he began to spread the tiny wooden baubles across a miniature scape of land that rose out of the table.
“Who were they?” I drove on.
“How should I know?” Kalen was still shuffling. “One of the many Guardians, to be sure. Don’t throw yourself into a fuss over it.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
He looked at me now, directly, face coated in ire. It was a subtle shift, a slight hardening of his features, but the change felt so drastic that the whole room seemed to shrink around it.
“Because they will never know you are here,” he explained. “Or that you even exist for that matter. I’ve made sure of it.”
I knew he meant the magic that concealed me today. It must have been him conjuring it. Without another word, Kalen shifted his attention back to the small world below him.
It wasn’t much of a world, actually, more like a specific section of it. A misshapen chunk of land divided into four sections that were nearly proportionate to one another. There was a raised texture on the western seaboard, little bumps of deep browns and green, like dirt and trees. Splitting the center with it was a mountain range, tall and proud, capped in powder. Below the center, in the southern quadrant, was a deep orange clay. The northern section was blinding white. Rings of teal surrounded the whole thing, a stretch of water that separated the main land mass from a small island of coal grey.
