Sorry it took so long to get this out to you guys, but it seems like I have so much to do…oh wait… I do have that much to do, I just blew it off tonight to type this up, hope you enjoy.


Chpt. 3 – The Emerald Hall

Her hand closed on nothingness as she lunged forward in her bedcovers. There was a rush of noise and a flash of light as three people came running into the room at an alarming speed, flipping on the lights as they went. The room became a blur of swirling pink and bright lights as the sleep attempted to rid itself all to quickly from Rini's young eyes. Her mind was jumbled, caught somewhere between sleep and awake, it was hard to decipher exactly what was going on. The three people in her room spoke all at once,

'As if I can understand one of you in this state, none the less all of you at once, imbeciles,'

Rini thought to herself as the chaos within her room continued onward. Voices melded together to form an even greater surge of confusion for the young girl as she attempted to sort out dreams and realities.

"Are you…We…There was…Screaming…and you said…then there was this…"

All the voices of Serena and her parents seemed like that of one multi-headed creature attempting to use all it's heads at once. Though it seemed like a small eternity, after a few quick seconds of disorientation, Rini gathered enough of her wits about her to realize that she must have screamed, and rather loudly so, in her sleep. This had then wakened the rest of the household who came a full gallop to investigate and ensure protection of all the family members, including herself.

"I'm fine, it was just a bad dream"

The sound of the young girl's voice seemed to be the saving grace in the chaotic mess that was her room. The second the words had left her mouth all the other went silent as stone intent on hearing her side of what happened, rather than just rambling uselessly as they had been doing so well. Looking up to find the rather disbelieving faces of her family members, Rini found the only thing she could do was reassure them.

"Really, I'm fine, it was just a bad dream; you can all go back to bed."

With a suddenness that seemed only beaten by the way they had entered the room, the three intruders into the serenity of Rini's room stood and made their way toward the door, each wishing her better dreams and a good nights sleep from this point on. She watched them go until, at last, Serena's mother exited behind the others and hit the lights on her way out. The room was once again plunged into darkness, leaving Rini to come to the conclusion that it must still be the middle of the night. Glancing at the luminescent digital clock on her dresser across the room her idea was confirmed by the dimly glowing "12:42 am" on the clock face. Collapsing, exhausted back into her bed, Rini felt the need for sleep slowly consume her again. She dreaded sleep these days due to the painful dreams it always brought, but not sleeping at all seemed an even worse choice, leaving her constantly awake and capable of conscious thought. Slowly, but surely, as it always does, sleep took possession of the young girls body and she once again was swept through the passages of time and space to a world that was all her own.

Rini felt herself falling through a realm unlike any other, the walls seemed to be cylindrical, yet they were black as the night sky and covered in tiny glowing specs that oddly resembled stars. She fell for only a short while until she landed in a hall full of mirrors that looked strangely familiar. Her path was quick, but seemed known to her by some inner force as she moved along the hall, stepping through an unmarked door to the left into a long hall that also looked very familiar. Here the ceiling was many feet above, almost like the ceiling you would find in a ballroom, but this was no ballroom. This was a very elegant hall. The hall itself seemed to be made of a green crystalline material and the hall was chiseled directly into it. Running her fingers along the crystal, Rini found it to be cool and smooth, as if it were worked not by miners, but by fine jewelers who had molded the crystal to a perfect form of symmetry that gave the hall a look of elegance and refined grace. Lining both sides of the hall were rows of doors, all large enough to fit two people through abreast and tall enough for even the greatest of giants. The doors themselves were made of strong wood, and formed in a manner that seemed rather medieval, with large metal bolts holding the beams in place and a great iron ring serving as a doorknob. Slowly Rini proceeded through the hall, trying each door as she went, finding each to be bared or locked, preventing her entry, yet she continued to try. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could sense that there was something of great importance here.

The entire time she traveled through the hall it seemed that Rini could not shake the feeling that this hall looked oddly familiar, yet it seemed very vague in her mind and she was unable to recall exactly where she could have seen such a thing. As Rini walked, she came to a curve in the hall that seemed to slope slightly downwards, the walls of crystal, while retaining their beauty, seemed to turn an even darker shade of green here causing all the light to feel as if it had been removed from the hall. Ahead now, Rini saw a door, the third one on the right. The door itself was just like all the others that she had run across so far, but this one had a ray of light breaking free through the crack beneath the door. As she moved closer Rini saw a small sign pinned to the door of the room, the language was unlike any other she had ever seen,

"noituac: lacitirc yrujni"

Considering that the wording made no sense, Rini decided the best course of action was to enter. Upon twisting the metal ring that served to latch the door, Rini found the door ripped from her hands by a sudden gust of wind. The door flew open and a blinding light came through from the other side. It was then that Rini heard it again, the voice, the voice that spoke in the wind,

"Here…weak…behind the glass…here…you know…the way…"

The voice faded and the light became brighter, suddenly the world around her began to slip into a fabric of torn reality. The light broke into a thousand shards that shattered to the floor with the sound of breaking glass, and once again she shot up amid pink blankets.

Looking at the sun as it slowly rose over the horizon, Rini cursed herself and her bad dreams.

"What could all this mean; won't someone just give me a clue?"

Little did she know that the clues had been there all along…


I know, I did it again, but I had fun with this chapter. I put a good deal of riddles in there, some of which people would never figure out unless I told them, like how I placed the time of day that this chapter was written at in the story. Sorry, it's late and I'm hyper, I hope you enjoy and it's not too awful. Please R&R. Latta.

MK