Free Web NovelChapter 254: The Door
The door in-front of Belladonna was designed in such a way that it was unassuming. It was simply stone, carved in a standard rectangle, with a slight indentation in the door to act as a handle. It looked like a first attempt at a secret door in a mansion, one that you designed for the fun of a ’secret door’ but didn’t actually make it too secret for fear of losing where it was. There were no special designs or secret messages inlaid into the design.
It was just a door, carved into the wall. Its location and the inhabitants were what made it stand out the most, as well as the multitude of scratch marks that covered the stone.
These scratches populated around the handle, along the edges of the ’doorframe’ and at the floor in front of the door. It looked as if the Grimshawls had been trying to get inside of the door, eventually resorting to trying to dig their way through, but they only left a few scratches.
A quick look over it revealed that it did not have any hinges that she could see, yet a slight tug of the handle revealed that it did in fact move. Even more odd, considering the surroundings.
Taking a deep breath, Belladonna tightened her grip around the doors handle, before yanking it open and raising her fist, ready to smash anything that popped out from the other side. However she was not met with creatures beyond her imagination, nor was she met with a hidden room filled with treasure or a secret man cave just for the chief to do his private business inside. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
In fact, she was not met with a room at all. Behind the door, there was just a wall. The same wall that had been carved out of, perfectly flat and rock solid to the touch, as if they had started carving the room and never got any further than the door.
The only blemish in the perfectly smooth wall, as a phrase carved into the wall perfectly at Belladonna’s eye level. She reached forwards, running her hand over the carving and feeling it underneath her fingers as she traced the cold stone.
"Enter at your own risk."
A hilarious joke, since no doubt the ’risk’ was a headache from slamming head first into a solid wall. Whoever thought of it must have been giggling to themselves at such an amazingly witty joke.
Clicking her tongue in annoyance, Belladonna closed the door before stopping half way as she became lost in thought.
She contemplated a few seconds, reminded of her discussion with the receptionist. How she was supposed to be mad and do idiotic things, because that was the only way to progress. Sighing to herself, Belladonna opened the door again and stepped forwards.
She threw herself head first into the wall, and stepped right through it as if it didn’t exist at all. Belladonna stumbled as she stepped through the wall she was expecting to headbutt, and quickly looked around at the space that she now found herself in.
It was boundless, with a floor that stretched on as far as the eye could see and no walls in the slightest. Mist and fog curled around her feet, obscuring that boundless floor from view, as well as making it impossible to see anything below her knees.
Worst of all, the door that she had just stepped through was nowhere to be seen. Behind her there was nothing but boundless expanse and fog.
Stepping back, Belladonna tried to step through the door again, thinking that perhaps it was just invisible, but her movements were painfully slow, as if she was trying to push her body through treacle with every step.
Clenching her eyes closed, Belladonna planted her foot on the ground after five solid seconds of moving her leg in painful slow motion, before shoving it down with as much force as she could muster, in an attempt to send her flying through his treacle space.
Her attempt worked, a little too well, as the strange force immediately disappeared and all of the extra force launched Belladonna high into the air. Higher than she had ever leapt before. For a brief moment, she wondered if she would fly forever, as the floor retreated from view and she kept climbing and climbing, before finally she slammed into something.
A grunt left her lips as she collided with the ceiling, splaying fully flat against it, and staying there.
Belladonna groaned, coughing a few times as the impact knocked the wind out of her, before she opened her eyes and looked around again. She was laying down and... not falling? Was she laying on the ceiling or the floor? Had one become the other or did she shift her flight path at some point and not notice?
Sitting up, she clutched at her head as it spun over and over, struggling to comprehend the nonsensical nature of the space she found herself in. Up was down, left was right, slow was fast. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just opposites, but the rules kept shifting and changing.
Any sense of consistency went out of the window, and she was simply along for the right. It was like she was in a dream.
As soon as the word ’Dream’ entered her mind, Belladonna couldn’t help but think of the dreams that she had been having lately, with the body of the impossible giant and the five figures. The more she thought about it, the more the world around her started to shift.
Slowly the fog pulled away, revealing blood stained grass beneath her feet. Trees sprouted from the ground, not as if they were growing naturally but as if they were fully grown and being pushed through from the other side.
The fog lifted from the ground, pulling itself together and starting to form five individuals, each holding a different object, as their figures were blurred and hazy. Pun intended. As the fog pulled itself together into the head of the lead figure, a pair of glowing red lights pierced through the fog, and slowly turned their attention to Belladonna, as if the figure was also waking up from a dream. freeweɓnovel.cøm
"I wouldn’t do that, if I was you." A playful voice sounded from behind her, causing Belladonna to whip around towards the only other person with her in this seemingly infinite void.
