Chapter 216: Getting Trapped (1)
The castle looked magical at night, with lots of colorful glass windows built high up. Starlight streamed through these windows, sprinkling light on the old tiles in the courtyard.
Inside the old and deep castle, soft colorful lights floated around. It was very quiet, with no noise at all. As Kestrel moved around, she couldn’t shake the feeling that a big, old creature was hiding somewhere in the castle, silently watching her with its eyes wide open.
Kestrel looked at Ren, who was walking next to her, his eyes were clear and peaceful, walking slowly in the colorful light. He even smiled at her, acting like there was nothing scary about this place. It seemed just like their usual training sessions or their trips into other Polluted Zones, nothing to be too worried about.
The air had a slight smell of blood, and signs of recent fights began to show on the old stone buildings. The marks looked fresh, as if the fights had just happened not long ago.
Kestrel noticed a cut-off golden braid, with golden hairs spread out in the mud, mixed with blood. She looked at it for a short time without slowing down, her face showing no emotion. She quickly walked past it.
Kestrel was always a calm person. "This situation isn’t too bad," Kestrel reassured herself.
As they got closer, the doors of the castle hall opened all of a sudden, revealing dark golden-red doors that looked like a giant scary mouth, as if ready to swallow them if they willingly entered.
The hall had little light, and Kestrel had to squint to see inside, struggling to see the details but noticing the fancy decorations, a red carpet on the ground, and soft old-fashioned sofas. At the very end, there was a curved staircase, with a big round rose-pattern window at the top platform of the stairs.
The moment the door swung open, Ren quickly pulled her back, lifting his hand to shield her view.
Ren’s hand felt dry and cool, and smelled strongly of flowers from picking many of them earlier. But even this pleasant smell couldn’t hide the strong smell of blood that surrounded them.
Peeking through the spaces between Ren’s fingers, Kestrel saw something she really didn’t want to see.
In that dark room, which looked like a horrifying place, blood covered everything. Looking through the spaces between fingers, Kestrel could only see a mess of red and pale body parts.
The bright red was so intense it nearly hurt Kestrel’s eyes. Every part of the room showed signs of horrible violence, and she recognized the faces of the people who had been hurt.
Despite this, Kestrel felt that she was still keeping her cool. She moved Ren’s hand away and started walking, step by step, towards the terrifying darkness.
She spotted Nicole. Nicole was sitting against a long couch, her arms folded on her chest, eyes shut, like she was sleeping. Her clean white beta suit was completely covered with blood, now looking like a vibrant red dress.
There was no way that a beta losing so much blood could’ve survived.
Behind Nicole, set between a grand pillar and the towering dome, there was a massive spider web. Olivia was caught there, a giant spider nearby eating her brain.
Kestrel gazed up at the terrifying blood-soaked web above her, her foot slipping, nearly falling over because of the sticky new blood on the ground.
Gaining her balance, she spotted Rakan. Rakan was impaled on a sharp wooden stake, a stream of blood running down the stake to where she stood. It looked like he was still in pain, not fully dead yet.
Kestrel wanted to rush over to him, but in a distant corner, she noticed a massive fish tank that occupied the whole wall, filled with cloudy water bubbling incessantly. Raymond was at the bottom of it, his golden hair drifting aimlessly in the water, his wide-open pupils staring blankly at her.
Kestrel tried to grab onto Ren’s arm, because the floor was so slippery from all the blood, and she felt like she needed something to hold onto to stay upright.
But her hand found nothing; there was no one next to her.
Turning around, Kestrel realized there was only emptiness around her, behind her, and outside through the open doors. There was no sign of Ren in the hall, nor on the road outside.
"That’s right, I came here by myself," Kestrel whispered to herself. "The kiss tinged with petal’s scent, the time when our sweats mixed, the gentle touch on my cheek, they were all illusions, just a dream."
Kestrel was drenched in sweat.
She remembered a day from her childhood, the day her mother left her with a orca plush toy. Since that day, she had held onto that toy for a very, very long time, never witnessing the return of her father, mother, or any other family member.
Maybe it was the loneliness that drove her to imagine a psychic representation of an alpha, taking on the characteristics of an orca, always beside her. This imaginary friend was perfect, always meeting her needs, always there when she wanted, forever kind, endlessly understanding.
"But how can such a person really exist in this world? Did I forget? I’ve always been by myself. A lonely, hopeless monster. Could there really be someone so close and understanding?"
Kestrel felt a strange sensation in her stomach, an uneasy feeling that made her want to throw up. She leaned on a leather couch for support, and when she lifted her hand, it was smeared with blood.
"So, Ren isn’t real, he doesn’t exist. All my friends are gone, even though they had once placed their trust in me. This seems to be a regular thing, isn’t the battlefield always this way? Death is the usual thing, and being alone is just what happens."
Kestrel felt like her chest was being torn open, stopped by a burning piece of metal, making each step she took hurt a lot.
"Stop overthinking, the fight isn’t finished yet," Kestrel heard herself say.
Everything in front of her was dark, like a scary bottomless pit. There was blood all over, and the bodies of her friends were there too, with their unblinking eyes fixed on her, the redness of the blood shockingly bright.
Kestrel felt like she was falling non-stop, going down and down, not knowing where she would end up.
"There’s a really tough enemy who is really good at psychic attacks. You have to face them in the next fight, so be ready."
Suddenly, Kestrel’s eyes snapped open and she realized she wasn’t in that gloomy hallway anymore.
She was in a room filled with soft light, with a neat bed and a fluffy carpet.
Her heart was all over the place, beating wildly, and her thoughts were jumbled.
The overpowering smell of blood and the horrible scenes she had just seen still seemed to be no where to be found.
"There’s a really tough enemy, the next fight is yours," this voice she knew kept repeating in her head.
Kestrel took a deep breath, understanding at last that she had faced a really powerful psychic attack. She had been overtaken by fear, stuck in the psychic landscape of a powerful being.
Kestrel closed her eyes briefly to steady herself, then she got up in the room.
Peering out the window, she saw a dense fog outside, a garden, and some blurry shapes in the distance. The place seemed kind of peaceful.
The room’s window could be opened, it wasn’t too high from the ground, she could jump down without getting hurt.
She didn’t recognize this place, and even though Kestrel knew she was in a psychic landscape, she couldn’t get back to her real body, to wake up from this.
Her mind seemed slow, like it was stuck in thick fog, making it hard to think straight. She only knew that this enemy was very powerful, able to mix up what was fake and what was real. This enemy could even find Kestrel’s worst fears and show her the most horrible things she was scared of.
After a quiet, tense moment, the enemy showed her the awful deaths of all the people she loved right in front of her. The sight of the dried blood and the eyes filled with hopelessness made Kestrel unsure, even now, if what she saw actually happened or not.
In the strange room, Kestrel remembered something Kaworu told her once under the Erdtree: "You’re already pretty strong. But I think you still need more experience in fights with other betas."
Back then, Kaworu sighed and shook his head, saying, "They’ll target at the most vulnerable and tender spots in your mind; if you face that one day, I worry you might struggle to cope."
Previously, Kestrel felt that Kaworu had really high expectations for her. But now she realized that he had actually been quite lenient, never truly stern with her.
"They’re all powerful, but I’m not weak either."—Kestrel suddenly remembered these words said by Ren. When she read the notes from Nicole and Raymond, Ren seemed to have sensed the upcoming scenario, conveying these words to her.
"Please believe that they’re not weak. Trust them, trust your alphas. They have to be still alive. The task at hand is to confront the looming battle."
Ren felt so tangible, so alive. Every detail about him, every noise he made, was treasured and preserved within Kestrel’s mental world.
"Yes, Ren can’t just be an illusion, he truly exists in my life," Kestrel murmured to herself.
However, if she couldn’t even break away from the enemy’s psychic grip, the other alphas outside, even though they might be resisting now, would sooner or later face more peril.
