Moans rippled through the walls.
I halted and waited, but they didn’t return, so I continued along my original path. I couldn’t let Janan intimidate me just because he was a powerful, incorporeal being older than everyone in Range. Just because—by all accounts—he held dominion over life and death and reincarnation.
Right. None of that was intimidating.
There were no stairs at the archway like last time. It just opened into another room, and when I crossed the threshold, the archway vanished, cutting me off from the original chamber.
The new room was smaller, with archways scattered across the walls that made gentle ripples like curtains. They did nothing to create shadows, but successfully conjured a headache behind my eyes. I pulled out my flashlight, gave it a few twists, and shone it across the room.
It wasn’t perfect, but at least I could tell how far away things were, judging by the size of the beam.
I couldn’t trust my perception completely. The last time I’d been here, I’d found stairs that looked as though they went down, but actually went up. Nothing in this place was what it seemed.
The key’s weight in my pocket suggested I could make things easier for myself while in the temple, but I had no idea how to do that. Too bad Meuric hadn’t left instructions.
Determined to stop wishing for things I didn’t have, I slipped through another archway and lurched into a sideways room.
I yelped and dropped my flashlight. It flew left and shattered against the wall—or another floor.
My feet stayed planted on the floor where I walked, but my weight pulled to my left, as though I stood on a wall. The other floor was shiny and lumpy, bubbling around the shards of my flashlight like an unfortunate batch of cheese soup I’d once made. All the cheese had coagulated and the milk scorched; the house had smelled terrible for hours.
In the temple, there were no scents, save for what outsiders brought in.
Awkwardly, I sidled through the nearest archway and staggered as gravity righted itself underneath me. My stomach flipped, and I swallowed repeatedly until I was sure I wouldn’t throw up.
The room was small, only the size of my washroom. An empty white box with no archways, not even the one I’d come through. Only the occasional groan and gurgle shivered through the tiny room.
Suddenly, the air grew sharp and crushing. The heartbeat pulsed louder until it rattled in my ears, and my chest ached with the fight to breathe. It seemed all the air was being sucked away.
“Now what, Janan?” I could barely speak.
No answer.
I withdrew the door device and jabbed at random symbols. The silver box swirled in my fading sight until I wasn’t sure I was actually pressing buttons, just hitting and jamming my fingers. I felt right side up and upside down, and on both of my sides. All at once. Acid crept into my throat.
My body ached as though I were being ripped apart, and my lungs burned with all the air pushing and sucking and swirling around. Vision grayed, and the only thing I could hear was the incessant weeping and moaning.
Janan’s hollow whisper silenced everything. “That is not for you.” It came from everywhere and nowhere. A place on the nearest wall rippled as though something moved beneath the stone, or inside it. I tried not to look because it made my vision worse, but it was impossible to ignore.
“Let me go.” I gasped at the thinning air. “I’ll keep pushing buttons.”
Pressure gathered around the lump inside the wall. For a moment, it looked human-shaped, though its proportions were wrong. Limbs too long, waist too narrow, head too wide.
Then the shape scattered in all directions, ripples smoothing into the glowing stone. A black archway shimmered where the shape had been, and noise returned in waves.
Whispering.
Moaning.
Weeping.
The air remained stifling, but I could breathe. My vision returned to normal as I replaced the key in my pocket and staggered toward the opening. Losing the key would surely end with my being trapped forever.
I’d gone through a black archway before. It had been as quick as stepping into another room, like any other archway, though they looked frightening.
This time, I stepped into ink and starless night. The blackness coated my skin like oil and made breath…what I imagined it would be like to breathe liquid and not die. It sloshed through my nose and windpipe, and I felt ever nearer to drowning.
Three more steps and I still wasn’t through. I stretched out my arms to feel the walls, but there weren’t any. The archway either led into an empty black room, or I hadn’t made it through before the portal vanished.
That meant I was trapped in the walls. With Janan.
Groans and whines pursued me like sylph. There was no telltale heat or strange singing, only the heartbeat and pressure, and what might have been my hair—or someone’s fingernails—brushing my arms.