12. Purple Ridge
Prompt: Thought
After finally gain a corporeal form and control over her actions, much has not change after getting out of HER mind for Badeline.
Ugh, the mere thought of her name still left a bitter taste in her mouth.
But her statement was true, as always, of course. Much has not changed in her routine, which was to observe and influence.
Observe to keep an eye on her other self, and to influence whenever she was about to do something irrationally stupid.
Like the gondola Madeline was watching with a maddening curiosity.
Badeline tried to tell her. Tried to warn her not to get on that rusty old antiquity. If something so old broke apart and Madeline fell to her certain death falling countless meters off the ground, would Badeline save her then? Hell no, right?
Right?
As soon as Madeline stepped into the gondola, Badeline tried to convince her to get out of there in the only way she knew.
Inducing thoughts of fear. Screaming to the void Madeline's mind was and be left hoping this would be one of the times Madeline heard her.
But it didn't work. She would opt for more direct communicative methods like she did in that old site place, but there weren't any mirrors or reflections nearby. She could only be the intrusive thoughts Badeline has been her entire existence.
Badeline could only do as much as Madeline's mind allow her. Fear was one of her main means to act and for such actions to be effective; Effective meaning Madeline did as she implored.
Once the gondola started to raise up, Badeline sat over the ceiling sitting on the gondola's edge. Badeline didn't really need to be…there. But she has been her entire life without a physical form she wanted to use it as much as she could, even if her gateway for such opportunity was Madeline's fear. She had a thing for these. It gave her a subtle hit of adrenaline she enjoyed much.
As ever expected, the gondola had problems midway when it shifted heavily in the cable it hung on.
Badeline found the opportunity she was looking for. She could feel in her body and in Madeline as well. A window.
At first she gave Madeline an itch. One not too strong to harm her, but neither too weak to let her ignore it. After being a though, that was all Badeline was used to be. An itch. A constant, persistent itch that never went away, resting in the back of her mind, always overseeing and never-resting.
The gondola shifted harder. Both Madeline and Theo almost lose their balance if they hadn't grab onto something for support fast enough.
Badeline could hear them talking. Shortly after, Theo tried to stop the gondola by pulling the lever back, but it broke and it flew off the abyss below them after he applied too much stress on it.
Even without the small, quick and suppressed screech Madeline gave off, Badeline could feel her fear growing, followed by every what if question about what could go wrong.
Badeline was going to teach her what could truly go wrong.
Through the connection they had imbued with the power of the mountain, Badeline could see what Madeline saw. And she changed it to her design.
White clouds turned into dark, foggy walls. Golden rays of sunlight turned into purple tentacles and the pit below them turning a pitch-black abyss, one in which if Madeline fell into, she would never climb out of.
This was what happened when she didn't listen to HER warnings. When she didn't do as she said. What Madeline knew anyways?
Right, nothing.
This would teach her to—
"Wait, what is that guy doing?" Badeline asked.
Why was he kneeling next to Madeline?
"What he thinks he's doing?!" Now she shouted, even though she knew it was in vain, they wouldn't listen to her. They couldn't.
The turbulent atmosphere Badeline had created for Madeline vanished away by the second, all thanks to some cheap breathing exercise Theo was teaching her to do. Badeline could only watch in a growing exasperation. "Hey! Stop!" The sky was getting brighter and the dark clouds drove away.
Madeline was sitting on the floor, eyes lost in thought, at everything and nothing at the same time while controlling her breaths very, very slowly.
Badeline shouted. Screamed. Wanted the world revolve around her, but her efforts quickly vanished into nothingness, just like the eureka feeling when one had the greatest of ideas, for it to be immediately forgotten the next second.
Badeline was being reduced to nothing but a thought again, and then even lesser than that.
She hated it.
She loathed it.
A silent yet untiring dread that consumed her being, she wanting nothing but to get rid of it, but she had no way. While her counterpart was back on her feet, literally and figuratively. She was left in the dark, again, literally and figuratively, left, in the depths of the prison her mind was.
When her screams were not enough to break free. She tried to break her body and hit the walls of her prison trying to find a mirror to break through. Every hit shook the dark purplish world around her. She carried on until the numbness engulfed her fist, Badeline did not quit on her effort whatsoever. Her violet hair came to life and raised like tentacles striking down the wall.
She was so blinded on her abhorrence when the wall broke. She could not see it, only feel it, if ever so lightly like a feather touching her hand. Then, instead of letting herself go free into the unknown, Badeline fell into it.
And fell she did.
Badeline only realized she had hit the ground once the adrenaline and rush wore off.
The new walls she found herself in were as familiar as they were unknown. Purple and lonely, but never alone. Not for the other part of herself and the guy who accompanied her. They were long gone.
Or was she the one long gone?
Mirrors. Mirrors all around her. At every direction she turned to, she saw her every move replicated countless of times by countless copies of herself overlapping each other and merging until they were unrecognizable. A deformed kind of jellyfish with as much tentacles as Badeline had fingers. Despite she did not know what she was looking at, she was inclined to get closer.
Unlike the rough force she used early, this time the mirrors splintered with a mere touch.
The creature immediately spotted Badeline with its multiples eyes and charged towards her with a chirring scream.
Badeline did not faze at its approach, and when the two purple beings made hostile contact, Badeline absorbed it. A shiver runs through her backbone that slowly turns into a small tickle.
For a while, Badeline feels nothing different, except for a strange sense of something living inside her. The very same creature she fused herself with. She could feel it at the very top of her fingers. As if she could summon them.
And summon them she did. Many of them.
Summon them, command them, bend them to her will and make them near perfect device and make them be an extension of herself.
Next Badeline would reform those dark and wild surroundings onto her image and likeness. Along with whoever dared to invade her newfound domains, such as her counterpart standing on the entrance of that temple, perceiving her so small she might have passed as an afterthought. Badeline would make sure to transform her into just that until she was nothing but a memory, distant and dim.
Just like Badeline herself had been forced to live for nearly the entirety of her existence.
Until today.
My first idea for this chapter was to give the main POV to Theo. I believed it was about time since I had ignored him for a while already. But soon I realized doing that would be little more than Theo reacting to the accident in the gondola and Madeline's panic attack.
I tried to balanced it giving this chapter to both Theo and Madeline. And while that was not such a bad idea, about 85% of the way done, I realized what I was writing was nothing you couldn't think or imagine for yourselves in fifteen minutes and that would be boring. So I had to get rid of it and start over. Hey, at least starting over is better than starting again, am I right?
Anyways, for a short time I considered skipping this part altogether and go straight to the mirror temple, but that didn't set well with me.
Now that it seemed giving Badeline the point of view in this chapter the best idea, I still have a few problems with it.
Main one being, I can say pretty much the same about the next chapter, and the next one, the next one not, the next one, the next one, the next one, the next one, the next one not, and the next one and some more, to not spoiler the things I have planned away.
What I want to say is, How can I give you something new you haven't seen, and at the same time follow Madeline's journey? And Madeline herself? Sure, technically I'm doing that, but at the same time not, you know what I mean.
Again, I'm ignoring the word limit and I'm still undecided whether that's good or bad or something I should be more strict with. In one hand I'm exploring a new side of the game otherwise we might have never see, at least in this format. On the other hand, i'm ignoring my own guidelines.
Still, with all of my complains, I liked this chapter, if this was one of my bed stories before sleeping I wouldn't mind.
I think that's all for now. As usual, fav, follow, comment. See ya.