G's Chapters

          I woke up in a cold sweat, after vague dreams of needles and chains, to see Lyria standing at my bedside, staring at me.

          “Nightmares? Yeah, I couldn’t sleep either. Whatever they injected us with must have been nasty.”

          “Why are you here? More importantly, what time is it?”

 

          I leaned over and picked my phone off the charging dock on my nightstand. It was five minutes past eleven in the night.

          “I just felt that talking about it would help.”

          “Yeah. That’s all. It wasn’t at all that she wanted to see you, though I was right next door.”

 

          Lucy stepped out of the shadows, yawning.

          “I – no – nothing of the sort! I just felt that he would contribute something of actual value, not just manga plotlines!”

          “Yeah, all right, if you say so. I’ll leave you alone. Call me when you want to get back.”

 

          My eyes had adjusted to the dark, by then, and I saw her walk back into her Labyrinth, which snapped shut behind her.

          “Well, she’s left. Please tell me you remembered to bring your phone over.”

         “Yeah, it’s in my pocket.”

 

          I got up and out of bed, and turned on the light. Lyria sat on the edge of my bed, and I pulled my chair over from my desk.

          “So, what did you want to talk about?”

          “I don’t really know… Can you think of anything?”

          “Hmm. Say, when we were down, from the tranq dart, what did you see? I know I was seeing things while I was under.”

          “It’s like I was stuck in a bright plastic room, isolated inside a large plasma ball, you know? With arcs of purple lightning jumping everywhere. The box was really tiny, and I remember feeling as if I was in more danger inside, for some reason. Then, a wave of grey smoke hit the box, and it shattered. I remember feeling really… content, as the lightning reached me, like I was whole again. I woke up, then, and those monks were charging in.”

          “So that’s what you saw? I was in this nauseating disco room, like I was in an oil film. I managed to get out of that room, then this shadow me talked about cleaning poison from me and pushed me into a bright corridor. I woke up, still in the Labyrinth, and trapped that acolyte. I think me breaking the straps broke the spell they were holding you in, that’s what released you.”

 

          I told her about the acolyte and his disbeliefs. I had just found it funny, but not her, no. She was silent for a while.

          “Why was it that you got out of the tranq, but the rest of us didn’t? He might have a point there. What if the straps really were warded, enforcing Lucy’s Labyrinth on us, keeping us in a haze, blocking our abilities? This could be a lot deeper!”

 

          I laughed it off, but she was quite insistent, fired up over a new ‘discovery’.

          “Think about it, though! The Labyrinth is supposed to be impenetrable. Most Chosen Gifts don’t work there, because you aren’t exactly in a sane environment. Even my Taze took a lot of practice to get it working there, but you’ve been able to use your Force in here from the very start! You’ve dispelled it with ease, and your powers are a lot more exorbitant than most! What if, you were just a variable they didn’t expect, a power higher than the norm?!”

 

          She was so excited about this, it was cute. However, it was digging a bit too much into the boundaries for my suspense of disbelief.

          “Now you’re going into the realms of fantasy. I’m not some Shonen manga protagonist, now am I? Just some kid with a birthright shared amongst over a tenth of the populace!”

          “Maybe I am. Well, goodnight, Vid. See you in school.”

 

          She phoned Lucy up, and left, leaving me quite wide awake.

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