Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Read online

  The diary entry ended there. Thorn sat back in the chair, letting everything that he had just read sink in. It was Ella that had drawn the map instead of Stanwood. Somehow Ella knew that she wouldn’t live long enough to do the spell herself, so she gave the talisman to the slave, Nala, to hide. That was why it was in the tree at the slave quarters. Family lore insisted that Ella had hung herself, but Thorn felt positive that she hadn’t taken her own life. Why would the diary entry end so abruptly?

  He looked at the talisman that sat outside of its box, next to his computer. The spell is in the box, Ella had said. And it sounded like the spell had to be performed on a full moon. This is so cliché, Thorn thought, just as he realized that it was a full moon that night. Just like your typical horror flick. He picked up the wooden box and searched inside. There was a piece of paper stuck against one side. Over the years, the paper had turned a yellow color that made it barely discernable from the wood of the box. He picked up the paper and unfolded it. The creases were brittle and caused Thorn to be extremely careful to not rip the paper in the process. He laid the paper out flat on the desk. It was in a fancy, cursive handwriting, the same as what Ella’s diary entries had been written.

  Go to an empty field where you will bury the talisman in the ground. Perform the spell at midnight on a full moon. It will take three months for the creature to mature into its final form. Then it will go into Fractus and begin eating everything that is there. It will not stop until its reason for being is fulfilled. The reason being, to end what Stanwood and I created. Every part of it.

  On the bottom of the paper, below Ella’s instruction, was a handwritten spell. It was in another language. Thorn thought that it was Latin. Everything about what was happening seemed so stereotypical, but it was real.

  He stood from the desk, picked up the talisman, and got in his car. He drove out of town, turning down back roads and onto a dirt drive until he felt like he was a safe distance from anybody that would halt what he was doing.

  He parked the car at the edge of a cow pasture. With a flashlight and shovel in hand, he climbed through the barbed wire fence and walked across the pasture, careful not to step in any cow patties. There were several fat cows that watched him pass. It was the type of place that he could easily imagine drunken teenagers driving out to so that they could go cow tipping or searching for shrooms. After finding a flat area of land, he plunged the shovel into the dirt. He dug a shallow hole and dropped the talisman in. He shoveled dirt back into the hole, stomped it down with his feet, and stepped back to observe what he had done. Standing over the makeshift grave, he recited the words to the spell. Midway through, the ground began shaking. It was a rumble. The freshly turned dirt began to bulge upward in a pregnant sigh. Thorn stepped back, afraid that the entire thing could explode at any moment.

  After the final words were spoken, the ground was a mound of dirt several feet tall. Thorn walked through the pasture and got back in his car.

  PART THREE

  Unraveling

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THREE MONTHS LATER…

  ASIDE FROM the numerous plantation houses that had been created to be exactly the same as one another, deep within Fractus there was a much larger building that had been constructed in the year of 1796. It was a palace. It was The Master’s home.

  After being placed inside Fractus, it hadn’t taken long for him to grow tired of the house that had been intended for him. Even though the plantation house was nice and had served his needs to a T, he knew that he could have more than that. He understood that whatever it was that he had ever desired was out there for him to claim; he could make the new world of his anything that he wanted it to be. He began to dream of something grander, something more suited for a king, and so he had directed the first members of The Primordial to build what he envisioned. He drew the sketches for what he wanted and left the hard work for them to do. He simply stood to the side and watched as the Durori lifted and pieced together what would become his castle. The construction was a sweaty and grueling process, but eventually it came into fruition. In his eyes, the end result was a masterpiece of architecture and beauty.

  The palace was built out of enormous slabs of the quartzite that made up the rocky edges of the sea. Each piece of the stone had been buffed to a shine similar to that of fancy, marble countertops. At certain times, the reflection of the moon could be nearly blinding. It wasn’t a wide, sprawling estate like many of the royal castles that he had heard extraordinary things about, seen pictures of, and dreamed about over the years. Instead, it was tall. The height was much more than its width. It was so tall that the top of the building was well into the clouds. Each floor consisted of only a few small rooms, giving the entire structure the appearance of a modern tower or skyscraper. This is where the imperfection lay. Somewhere in the bones of the building, something had not been constructed evenly and the entire thing seemed to lean to the right. It looked like it could collapse at any moment, but it had stood the test of time. In fact, it had remained intact for over two hundred years. There were four windows on each floor, one on each wall, thirty two windows in all. Inside, there was an elevator that had been added in more recent years. It was an old, metal elevator. It was the kind with a lift gate on the front, the kind that was commonly used as a freight elevator in shopping malls or as set décor in scenes from a Hollywood movie that take place in a big city loft. The mechanism that was used to pull the elevator up or lower it was nothing more than an old pulley system of heavy chains and gears that could be heard rattling within the wall any time that it would move even an inch.

  Sometimes, late at night, The Mistress would be woken by the horrible, rattling sound of the elevator and knew that The Master was up, that it was another night when he couldn’t sleep. On those nights, she would usually turn over onto her side and stare at the empty half of the bed. It was where he had been when she had fallen into slumber not so many hours earlier. And now he was gone without any warning or explanation. She hated those nights.

  This was one of those nights. She reached her hand out and placed it on his side of the bed. Both the soft, blue sheet and the firm mattress underneath were still warm from the weight and heat of his lean, muscled body, indicating that he hadn’t been gone long. Like so many nights before this one, she could hear the rattling of the elevator chains within the walls and knew that he was on the way to the top floor. The elevator was what had woken her up. It was what usually woke her on these nights.

  The top floor was The Master’s governing room. It was where he met others to discuss important matters. It was where he made plans and enforced rule. The top floor of the palace was where the laws of Fractus were written and changed. It was where decisions were made, orders were given, and justice was served.

  The Mistress’s eyes scanned around the sleeping chamber. Above her, an enormous, sparkling chandelier that was full of the finest crystal hung from the center of the ceiling. A starkly white and extravagantly carved medallion full of twists and curving leaves that must’ve been several feet in diameter was the centerpiece from where the light fixture hung. On romantic nights, lit candles in the chandelier caused orange light to shimmer and dance around the room in a dizzying display of elegance. Now, the stone walls were bare except for the open window to her right.

  A wooden vanity sat against the far wall. Like most of the wooden pieces in the home, it had been constructed out of the wood from a fig tree. Figs were a symbol of wealth and The Master had insisted that most of the furniture in his home be made from the wood. The vanity is where The Mistress sat just after waking, staring at herself in the large, oval mirror, contemplating her life.

  She stood from the bed and made her way there. A clear, glass vase that was full of blue hydrangea flowers sat on the vanity top. Next to the large, ball-like clusters of flowers, there was a cleanly polished deer antler that had been fitted onto a piece of smooth wood and stood upright. A mask hung from the antler’s upmost point. With a long bea
k that jutted out front, the mask was the likeness of a hummingbird, a symbol of love. The entire mask was painted blue. The Master had said many times before that blue was a color of royalty and that he thought that she deserved the best. After tying her hair up, The Mistress lifted the mask and placed it over her face. She tied the ribbons at the back and studied herself in the mirror.

  Next to the vanity, there was another antler. This one was attached to the wall. A blue dress hung on a hanger from its pointed tip. A pair of black leather boots rested on the floor, standing upright just below the bottom hem of the dress. She removed the dress from the hanger that had been made from the bleached hip bone of some sort of animal, presumably a lion or some other large feline. The dress was an elegant ball gown. She slipped it on over her white chemise and tied it at the back. She pulled her boots on over her feet. The boots went well up to her knees. She pulled the thin, leather laces tight. It was all motions that she had performed so many times before that she could now accomplish them with ease.

  After dressing, she stepped across the room to the open window. The thick heels of her boots clomped with every step. Above her, she could hear the elevator finally come to its screeching and grinding halt. She could hear the door as it opened up.

  In stark contrast to the horrendous industrial sounds that were above her, outside the window, except for the soothing sound of the waves, everything was quiet. Behind her, the door to the sleeping chamber opened and one of the cherubs fluttered in. His buzzing wings caused a pleasant breeze against The Mistress’s skin. The cherub carried a sterling silver carafe of hot coffee and a single mug. Somehow the cherub always knew when The Mistress was awake and it was time to bring in her coffee. He handed the mug to her, poured the black coffee into it, and placed the carafe on the window sill.

  “Anything else, Mistress?” the cherub asked with a purr as he was still hovering in front of her.

  The Mistress shook her head. “I think this is perfect,” she said.

  The cherub zipped away, flew across the room and exited, gently closing the door behind him. At the window, The Mistress was taking her first sip of coffee, savoring the aroma, when outside there was a rumble. The sound was terrifying. She had never heard anything like it. She brought the coffee mug away from her lips. Did a large piece of rock break away from the mountainside and fall into the sea? Behind her, she heard a small rattling, and when she turned to look, she saw that the glass vase on her vanity was shaking and wobbling dangerously close to the edge. Was it what the people of Earth called an earthquake? She had never experienced one herself, but had heard tales of them. She had seen pictures of the destruction that they can cause. As far as she knew there had never even been one in Fractus.

  She placed the mug next to the carafe on the windowsill and began to walk in that direction, to move the vase into a safer position, when the rumble came again. This time, the noise rattled her. It caused her head to throb with a sharp, piercing pain. She had to stop in her steps and reached her hands to her head. The pain was terrible. It was like no other headache that she had ever experienced. Aside from the pain, there was a jolt of something that flashed through her mind.

  In the vision, there was a woman that she didn’t know. As far as she knew, she had never even seen her before. The woman was close to her, in her face. Her eyes were red. Her face was smeared with blue. Her hair was a wild tangle of curls. “Indescribable,” she whispered.

  In front of The Mistress, the vase fell to the floor and shattered on impact with the stone. The sound of the breaking glass tore her out of the revolting vision that she had been experiencing. What was it? What did it mean? Was it a prophecy? Was the woman that she had seen her? These questions ran through her mind, but more than anything else, the vision had terrified her. It couldn’t be good, she presumed. The single word that the woman had spoken was surely a portent to the end. She knew that she had to talk to The Master. Maybe he would have an idea of what was happening to her, why she was having the headaches and the visions, what had caused that terrifying rumble, and what it was. She walked across the room and pressed the button for the elevator.

  Way above her, the old, metal gear began to turn and the chain rattled behind the wall. For the first time ever, the sounds were grating to The Mistress and caused the ache in her head to become a thrashing misery. The pain shot through her, and she had to brace herself against the edge of the vanity. Her boots crushed the sharp pieces of glass into tiny pieces and slipped on the spilled water and the smooth, delicate petals of the hydrangeas. When she walked away, the tiny pieces of glass caught the light and sparkled like diamonds.

  When the metal grated door of the elevator screeched opened, The Mistress stepped inside. The inside of the elevator car was fancy. The walls were plated in sheets of real gold. Elegant sconces were on each wall. The buttons were lit with a green glow. Instead of a red suited bell hop, one of the cherubs was in the waiting elevator.

  “What floor, Mistress?” the cherub asked.

  “The Master’s suite,” she said and leaned against the wall.

  “Is everything OK? Is something wrong?” the cherub was genuinely concerned about The Mistress’s obvious display of agony.

  “I’m fine, I just need to talk to him,” she said from behind the mask.

  After closing the door, the cherub pushed the round button for the topmost floor.

  As the elevator made its way up, the rattling of the chains seemed louder than they ever had before. The ascension was grueling. What it was doing to her head was nearly unbearable. By the time that the elevator stopped with its usual and familiar jerk and she emerged from the inside, she was so shaken and in so much pain that she was only able to take a few steps down the impeccable and spotless grand hallway that stretched out in front of her before she had to stop. She flung her right hand flat against her forehead where it rested against the mask that covered her face. Out of all the pain that she had experienced so far, this was the worst one yet. This one in particular pounded against her cranium. The jabbing pain was so bad that she fell to her knees and the deep blue dress that she wore pooled out around her on the black and white marble.

  At the far end of the hallway, not so many steps from where she was kneeling on the floor, was The Master’s meeting room. She knew that he was currently discussing an important matter with Miles, the leading soldier. She knew this because she could hear each of their muffled voices behind the pair of large, intricately carved doors that were closed tight at the end of the hallway. A mounted fox head hung center above the doors. At some point in time, each of the doors had been carved with one half of a tree. When the doors were shut, like now, the two pieces fit together seamlessly and formed a wide stretch of branches and limbs. She knew that it was the likeness of the tree that grew in the Garden of Power that was said to be behind that tall, stone wall. She had never stepped foot in The Garden herself, but had heard The Master talk of it so often that it seemed like she knew it as well as she knew her very own tomato garden that stood behind the palace.

  Every pulse of her own heart caused her head to throb. By then, any sound, even the slightest, was causing a racking reverberation within her skull. On her way up, the rattling of the elevator’s gearshift had been horrendous, nearly unbearable, but was nothing compared to now. The hallway was silent except for the crashing waves of the ocean that could be heard through the large, open windows, but even those had become an unpleasant cacophony. In addition to the voices that she could hear coming from behind the massive oak doors, she could also hear the occasional click of footstep. All of these things were grating to her.

  As much as those sounds upset her aching head, she knew that they were not the prime catalyst. It was that distant rumble just moments earlier that had set the whole thing into motion. And now it was happening again. It sounded like thunder or an echoing explosion. An earthquake, she thought again. Like before, each time, the rumble would only last a few seconds before it would stop, but just when th
e pain began to ease, it would start up again, like now. This time, the rumble had brought her to her knees. She had both of her hands against her head, trying to ease the pain.

  What was making the matter worse was that through every moment of pain there were those jolting visions that she had to contend with. In the one that she was experiencing now, there was that same woman from before that stood in front of her. This time the woman was neat and clean. Her eyes were not red; instead, they were a harmonious sky-blue. The woman smiled, opened her mouth, and spoke. “Carolina,” she said, “the angels will guide you. Let them.”

  Everything around her began to spin out of control. She was starting to understand. The things that she had been seeing were not visions or prophecies. They were memories, her memories. She had been at one time, she was, she is Carolina Rimbault, she began to understand. And the woman that she was seeing was her mother, Ella Rimbault. She knew and understood these things with such shocking clarity that it was an awakening.

  She knew now that it wasn’t portents of doom that she was experiencing. It was long forgotten memory that was assaulting her. It was history coming back to her, her history. Every throb within her head caused her begin to remember that she had had a life before she had come to Fractus. She knew now that from the very moment that she had come there, from the moment that she had become this person, The Mistress, lover of The Master, her memories had started to fade until they eventually disappeared into nothing. Now she knew that she had been someone else at one time, that she had had a name, and that she had a life before this. She knew now that as time had passed, everything from her life as Carolina Rimbault had faded away piece by piece until she could remember nothing from back then, until now.