Ok i've just been connecting up the parts of this jigsaw and i'm guessing that i have something now. You'll have to excuse any mistakes in sentences, repeating words and missed words etc if there are any, i'm a bit smashed and have only checked it twice. I usually have to check it about three or four times. Anyway :
Version 2 :
The First Circle
Bren walked into the living room, took a sip of fresh orange from his glass and put it down on the coffee table along with the plastic bag. He then took out the remainder of his giro and counted it. 15 pounds 72 pence. About 90 pounds still in the bank from the job he'd left two months ago and then he was broke. He wasn't even sure what he was doing anymore and it was at times like this that packing household appliances in a factory felt like something that would of been worth having to go through just to escape feelings like the one he was going through now. A job that he was sick of anyway in favour of a journey into the occult, something that should of given him answers by now, but he was further away from himself than he'd ever been.
He put the money back in his pocket and sat down. The sun shone through the window behind him, picking out particles of dust floating through the air and sending a thick beam of light onto the wall in front of him. Hot weather had never bothered him too much, just the almost relentless noise of someone else in the street starting up either a grasscutter or a hedgetrimmer, as if quietness on a sunny day was an enemy that needed to be attacked without mercy.
He sat forward, reached across and took the book out of the bag. It was old, brown, slightly worn at the edges and had looked completely out of place among the other mostly glossy books in the shop. Recalling the puzzled expression on the face of the man at the till Bren presumed the guy had wondered where it had come from. He'd looked at the inside cover, found the price and gone to the till before staring at it again for a few seconds and handing it over to Bren.
He put the plastic bag on the coffee table and opened the book, finding the title that had caught his attention and made him buy it in the first place.
'The Essence Of The Elementals'.
After thinking about beginning to read it, he decided to turn on the tv instead and put the book on the couch next to him. The next bout of mind games could wait until he'd got his head around the almost naive decisions that had looked like taking him forever further from the glimmer of reality he was looking for. He woke up 2 hours later. The cheering and clapping of a gameshow audience bringing him out of his sleep and ringing around his ears. As he picked up the remote and turned it off he looked over his left shoulder and saw the day fading as a band of dark grey clouds began to take away the last of the light.
Seeing as it was 6:00pm on his watch he got up, splashed his face with cold water in the bathroom and then entered the kitchen wondering what was left in the freezer to cook. He stopped and let out a sigh as inertia took hold of him and decided against it, making his way back into the living room.
He sat down and reached over, picking up the book and turning to the first page.
Over the next few hours he read through most of the text, skipping parts that he wasn't interested in and trying to take in what he'd bought it for in the first place. Knowledge of the Elementals and where they'd come from. He didn't even believe most of it, but parts of it had began to have an effect on him. The ancient places of power, the trails of the first guardians, the eight tests, or demons, as he was sure they would of been labelled now. The parts he read where starting to join together in the back of his mind, unlocking perceptions of planes of existence that he'd never even got close to imagining before. Chapter 8 : The First Circle, Chapter 6 : The soul cleansing path of the three fires, Chapter 12 : The waning of the energies and the fight with the 12 rivals, representatives of the unconscious of the solar system as it was made before the Elementals had entered creation, images and patterns could be sensed in the background making connections at speeds he wasn't sure had been possible just hours ago. He'd picked up the book expecting to be fobbed off with mystical illusions, but his mind was the illusion now, and something other than the illusion was trying to get to Bren, attempting to show him why he'd been indoors for too long searching for something to grasp in the shadows of his own maze.
The text had been awoken, and the first human to read it was starting to trip out in the wrong direction.
Bren put the book down. He was beginning to feel lightheaded, faint, and sicker by the minute. The last two chapters had taken him to somewhere he'd never been before and given him a feeling that he could no longer continue to read with. His body felt like it was glowing and charged with an energy that started to get more and more intense, speeding up the sickness, twisting his mind around in his body. The book had acted like a drug, and now it sat there closed on the table in front of him.
His perception of the room he was sat in had completely changed. Looking up at the wall in front of him on the far side of the room he began to see more and more specks of some type of light crackling and bursting. Gold and silver energy danced in his mind, starting to take hold, but flickering dark patches had started to appear on the edges of his vision, as if it was failing. He was getting the impression that as the energy was building up and the darkness was becoming more visible, starting to move in the flickering spaces, and the energy kept on building. Panic began to flood through every area of his body.
He had to get up, clear his head, put the book away. Put it somewhere out of sight. Fast.
Going into the kitchen he put the book in the bag, walked to the junk cupboard beside the cooker and placed it as close to the back as he could reach. Past various cardboard boxes, a broken kettle in one, another filled with dusty plates and cloths, a half torn box with old shoes and a jacket he could barely remember. Just as he moved further and began to place the book down he tripped over more forgotten belongings and fell against the ironing board. The book was on the back shelf and out of his hands as he struggled to push himself out of the darkness.
Stood up now and beginning to feel faint, the glowing, pulsating energy still just as intense, a slow, drunken looking lurch towards the bedroom was put into motion, turning lights out on the way.
How the hell could a book do this?
Didn't his mind have any strength?
Bren fell onto the bed and hoped, prayed for sleep.
He woke up twenty minutes later, the feelings of sickness came rushing back to meet him. Then as if he wasn't in the room no longer he could feel grass at his feet, looking around he wasn't at home any longer, he was in a field in the dark, one of four people stood on the inside edge of each quarter of a circle, flames rising up from the edges. He was asleep, his dream was more lucid than anything he'd ever felt or experienced before, the wet grass on his bare feet, the wind blowing at his back. A woman stood opposite him surrounded by an aura of white flames, the same colour as the flames making the circle.
He was asleep. He was half asleep. He was awake. He was travelling.
He could even see the shapes at the edges.
No. Where? Where had the shapes gone?
He was tugged by the head turning sickness and floating backwards, away from the group. Something shook him violently and he was back in his room laid on the bed. His vision flickered and he started to pass out again.
"No, don't stay there. Come back."
"Wait here a while. A few minutes, a few seconds.........."
He was back in the field, in the darkness. Stood in front of her again.............glowing. |
