Pervenire

(Closer and closer, that voice leads me on this road, tight and narrow, a cave of bleached red.)

I'm back, in that room of books, the home of that chair, the hanging lantern, and the stairway to nothingness. Why? No burns, wait something's different the lantern isn't burning and there's no stairway just an archway of dark wood leading to a hallway swallowed up by the void.

"Hey, could you light the lantern for me? I'm a bit tired" The familiar moves fluently into the lantern and lit it up, such beauty, such light... The chair's whole, the puff in its center looks so enticing, should I just sleep, or is this room just a dream of this warped reality? A why would I care? I need the rest before I find that tower.

I run and it tugs at my flesh, I stand and I'm consumed by its darkness, running I can see someone else by that hill, the hill with the tower, the tower that reaches the cracked sky. The person is fleeing for the tower, from the twisted abominations chasing after him across this hill of red flowers, red chrysanthemum perhaps? Was that the beauty of this lonely hill and its tower? I wonder how do they bloom? Is it the fertile soil? The white sky cracked open by the lonely tower, exposing realms unknown to man? Or was it the feeling? That beautiful solitude sullied by the hills abominations? Faces unseen, six stretched arms reaching out to whatever and whoever's in front of it, walking in an unsightly raving fashion like a toddler trying to make sense of how to walk. Their walking skills were perhaps as precise as a toddler, but unlike toddlers, these abominations were quick, unimaginably so for creatures with those balancing capabilities. The guy fell and swiftly the creatures reached him, reaching out their arms, grabbing, tugging, and pulling until his flesh came apart like a filled grocery bag he tore and spilled out in the beautiful flower field, his spoils nourishing it.

What was it? This feeling of something lost, left behind in this field of flowers, reaching the tower I wonder will I truly find it? Reaching out to its stone walls, feeling its cold spreading through my fingers sharpening the senses, where could the entrance to my answers be? Especially when the key was somewhere beyond, so tall lost, and alone reaching through unknown worlds, will its isolation ever end? The abominations have gathered, drenched, and soiled they have encircled this stone structure.

*Tug* Something pulling my arm? FUCK?! Burn! The six-armed creature falls over engulfed by the flames of my familiar, still stretching its other arms, perhaps, hopefully towards me, is it asking me to end it? Let me be obliged, freeing you from this cursed existence. Yet again this room of books turned into an inferno, engulfing that things remain, turning it to ash, the archway behind the chair has changed form while I slept, it's now a red triangle etched into the room's walls and beyond it an alluring field of red flowers resting on a large lonely hill.

Wandering through the archway to this new plane I can not help to feel its loneliness, here I had this hill this lonely Aphrodite and its only connection to the others was its tower and this archway appearing to then just vanish in thin air, feeling the ground I could define it, I am definitely here, how or why does not matter, all that matters is the objective my goal, my stepping stone for cleansing the world of its pain.

Abomination after abomination they fall in my blaze with no rhyme nor reason, just living torches reaching out in this field of red chrysanthemums. Fire after fire, fall after fall I reach those harsh stone walls stretching upward through the white heavens, looking back there is nothing but this field, its living torches, and a feeling that eludes me from finding the entrance. Could it be there? Out in those fields? Something that makes me feel this terrible longing? Screaming, burning, tearing in my chest, my minds shade wavers for a moment revealing a cold steel pipe, and at its end, another shade wielding it, memories of strikes bruising my flesh prompts shocks through my trembling body, how had those events come to be? Who had it been wielding those actions of violence? Why am I remembering this now? No, the answers are up there I just know it.

Round and round the structure no door meets my eye, how come? Where one not to enter it? Wait, these objects, attached to three separate points of the tower almost buried into its stones, two jars, and a torch. It's a puzzle it has to be, let's see, I guess I light the torch last because it's the oddity, or perhaps the oddity must go first? No, fir has always started and ended things, a flame can be seen as the start of something, and activating catalyst. Okay, looking at the first jar it looks, dirty, remains of earth have latched themselves on the walls on the inside of the jar, it is quite obvious what I will need for this one. The second jar, hmm, this smell? Sweet and nauseating, leaving an iron-like taste in the back of your throat, blood and small shrivels at the bottom of the jar indicating flesh as well.

Wandering the red field I gathered the supplies I needed, flowers and earth, flesh from the scorched abominations, and a tiny sharp rock. Walking up to the lonely tower breaching the heavens I dread what's to come, but at the same time I feel the weight of its necessity at my back, and its weight could break almost anyone. By the tower I start, the first jar gets filled with earth and the red chrysanthemums it was breeding, the second jar I fill with the flesh of the abominations, then I bear my left hand above it, slicing it open with this sharp rock I claimed, squeezing my hand into a steadfast fist glazing their flesh with my own red blood. Walking up to the torch I hesitate a second, this feeling, had I missed anything or did I just not want to progress? Doubting myself again, what am I? Some idiot?

"Light it up"

As the torch-lit, the ground seemed to shake, and the bottom-most rocks of the tower split creating a triangular archway to enter. I put some spare bandage over my left hand squeezing it tightly.

"Here we go"