[Tyrana]: 64.Xaadn.Chapter Six

Xaadn’s head spun. She felt dizzy, then sick, then… angry. The white room twirled around her head, casting green shadows behind her eyelids. It enraged her.

She started to see images. She thought at first there was a film being shown, for when she looked between her half-closed lids, the images were just projected on the screen. At first, these were images of the room she was in. The desks. The chairs. The people. The cylinder.

Then the images became more and more obscure. A pie. A window. Birds. Trees. Water… Then star carriages. They stood upright, there was a great fire beneath them, and they rose majestically into the air. Xaadn closed her eyes. The star carriages were there behind her eyelids as well. They rumbled, shook the ground, and roared into the clouds.

The audience mumbled to each other. Some of them shook their heads. Some of them laughed out loud. Others simply got up, and left the building. Nalnsyr panicked, raking his fingers across switches and buttons on the switchboard, calling out to the audience, dismissing the ridiculous images to the lively imagination of a youngster.

Xaadn was just angry.

Nalnsyr eventually got the place back under some control. Of course, the screen continued flashing bizarre images. Something that looked like a cat… sort of. With tall ears, huge back feet, and a small tail. The audience knew it was ludicrous. Xaadn knew it was a jackrabbit.

With every flick of the projector, the scenes became more fantastic. There were images of huge buildings that reached the sky, to bridges that spanned entire oceans, to cities underwater, and cities above the ground. They flashed steadily on the screen. The audience was appalled.

Xaadn was angry.

The images grew faster still. People with wings, flying up to meet the sun. The one sun in the sky. People bringing themselves together in the sky, creating light. Creating suns. The screen flashed over and over with scenes of this sun-building. Of these people with wings… The images weren’t even visible anymore; they just filtered onto the screen as one big mass of color. Xaadn saw all of them. She knew all of them. Her head felt as if it would shatter. Her breathing became faster. Nalnsyr desperately flicked switches and pushed buttons. He turned the machine off. It didn’t matter. The projector kept going, fueled by some sort of outside energy, it seemed. It was the only explanation. The audience became disturbed and frightened. They left in bunches, or stared in horror as the electric lights burst, sending sparks, then leaving the room in complete darkness… Save for the screen, which flashed even faster, if at all possible.

Xaadn let out a cry, then howled and screamed. The switchboard made terrible noises, and then let out a fireball, sending Nalnsyr clear across the room. The papers on the desk lit, and proceeded to send up embers, which landed everywhere, spreading fire and smoke. The screen played on. Xaadn was still angry.

The screen slowed down momentarily. There were scenes of dark hallways, and wheelchairs, and lanterns. There was a strange woman in one of these wheelchairs. Her mother. She drooped over in that same way. Her eyes absent, her mouth open, crackling. She turned and stared at the scene on the other side of the screen. Then she was wheeled around the corner, that metal shard in the back of her skull.

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She was dumped in the stream in back of the castle. Just dumped there. She lay for a moment, then got up, and stumbled to the bridge. She settled herself under it, and reached up to the shard in her neck. She pulled it out. Looked at it. She forced it into her shoulder, and down her arm, butterflying the flesh on the way down. Then under her arm, all the way down to her ankle. Her blood poured over the ground, melting the snow, filling the stream.

She went down her other side in the same fashion, but stopped at her hip. Here, she removed the spike, raided it at arm’s length, then plunged it into her hip-bone with amazing strength, causing it to crack, then forced it apart, and proceeded down her leg.

Taking the shard in hand one last time, she pushed herself against two of the pillars under the bridge, reached around one, and cut from the bottom of her throat, down her chest, separating her ribcage. She stopped when it reached her abdomen, and her intestine spilled into the brook. She then gave one final push, and forced herself between the pillars, and stayed there in the flow of the stream until death.

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The ceiling began to collapse. Rocks fell through it, crashing into the white floor. A beam fell in front of the exit leading out of the glass box. The individuals were trapped. They weren’t looking at the screen any longer. They panicked. The fire spread quickly, igniting everything in sight. The people behind the glass screamed and cried, and threw themselves against the glass, all in vain. Most of them fainted from either the heat or the smoke. The rest were beaten alive by the screaming hoard of people. Either way, they all lay dead in the end.

The ends of Xaadn’s hair, as well as much of her clothes, were already up in flames. She didn’t notice. She was just angry. She didn’t remember standing up. She didn’t remember finding her way out of the room, and down the hallways. She didn’t remember escaping the castle. And she certainly didn’t remember picking up that damned cylinder.