by J.J. Evangelista
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**Cover designed by Amaimanis**
A YA Fantasy Adventure Full of Magic and Adventure
This preview is from Chapter 2 of Adventures of Rel Rel Malidimus Mages. Chapter 1 is a quiet setup — this scene dives into the action and better represents the heart of the story. Enjoy!
Chapter 2 Muse Realm
They say that the Ephemeral Hero fell from the sky like lightning. One fateful day, she made a wish. One wish, and was hurled into our Muse Realm. Her name was Relene. She found herself in the desolate, unforgiving wastes of the Novel of Rogniall.
-“Remember the Fall” by R.K. Folklore
The glare from the purple lenses shifted her vision. The world changed. Dull heat sizzled into her throat. It was dark. The plain walls transformed into a pink mist. Sloping winter hills stretched into the night. Snowflakes glistened upwards from the ground below and into the moonlit shadows above. The intricate, icy crystals rose into her palm, gliding against her chin, melting into smears of purple when they came in contact with her skin. Vapor twirled from her lips. There was a faint sound of a ticking clock somewhere in the distance. Tick. Tock. Strange. Tick. Tock.
“Mistress? Goodness me, how you have grown!” said a sweet, shimmering voice that was royal and regal, like that of a refined princess, from the direction of where her bed used to be. A tall figure with stout, pointed elf ears made its way through the trickles of snow, parting the mist with light footfall.
“Lily? Freaking twicky, the hunger tickles must be stronger than I thought,” said Rel, rubbing the side of her temple, and shaking her head. “You’re here, and whatnot… Why-why are you here?”
Her pink, puckered lips opened, “Waiting for you, my dear.” Lily still spoke with a sophisticated Everwhere accent. And if television taught Rel anything, it’s that people from the city of Everwhere talked about tea. Crumpets. And hello, Governor. Or hello, Mr. E. Professor.
Lily stood with her head high, shoulders back, arms straight at her side, still taller than Rel after all this time. She had short, cleanly cut, pink bangs and flowing locks that fell down her back’s perfect posture. The blue, puffy-shouldered dress was unwrinkled, immaculate like the rest of her appearance. A skull pendant choker was fastened around her neck.
“So, Mistress? Your wish?” Lily, a mirror clasped between her delicate palms, eased the cold glass slab towards Rel until she took hold of it.
Lily’s large yellow doll eyes watched her, never blinking, never shifting, long lashes fluttering against the yellow irises. Her pale, round cheeks had pink dots painted on them, like a clown or something like that, with a turned-up button nose. Lily simply waited for Rel to make a decision.
Accepting the mirror, she said, “My-my wish?”
On this night, as the city of Nevermore slept, behind the bedroom door of 315 Matcha Tea Road, Rel Rel stared into another world through the purple lenses of an old pair of aviator goggles. For the first time, she saw beyond the humdrum of Nevermore, into a realm that would draw her into the unknown.
It was snowing here.
Rel Rel’s shoes sunk, snow crunching as she adjusted her feet, dragging shallow grooves in the white powder, trying to keep the chill from leaking into her dirty red sneakers. Everything was starting to get cold. Her crimson shirt felt heavy, her blue jeans soaked, a slick trail of melting snow pouring into her striped socks.
Lily, merely a shadow in the moonlight, approached with delicate footsteps. Did she swallow? Rel couldn’t be sure as Lily crunched into the snow before her. All she heard was the doll’s voice. It was uncertain. “What will you wish for, Mistress?” asked Lily, streamers of mist leaving her full, puffy pink lips.
“I wish,” Rel felt herself say, voice trembling, cold reaching through her skin. Yes, that’s what she wanted, even if it wasn’t going to come true. Even if this was some odd hungry fever dream. Even if it was all nonsense. Pressing the slick slab of glass to her forehead, Rel Rel took a breath and said, “…to be accepted for who I am.” A strange surge of exhilaration rumbled down her chest as she spoke the words.
Lily let out a quiet sigh, “Thank you, my dear.”
The reflective glass rippled. Bending. Humming. Then, flecks of shining glass shattered. Scattered! Fragments twisted to create odd numbers and clock hands that danced amid her fingertips. She couldn’t understand the strange symbols, which appeared to be in some foreign language, but realized that they were placed where numbers should go within a clock.
“Lily?” cried Rel, eyes never leaving the rapid pulse of luminescence in her palms. The hands of the clock rotated faster and faster, gusts wildly drawing back her hair.
The hand mirror released a glass thread that shot into the sky, flickering into a raging circle. Sparks tore at the night as an unknown language whispered within the chaos. Flipping grains of sand appeared inside the rolling circle. The grains spun and flattened, reaching till they spread to the sides of the glass, twisting and mixing into a vast, flat, vertical disk as they met the shards.
Intense heat streamed over Rel’s cheeks, the portal in the sky becoming too bright, too blindingly red for her to look at. She shielded her face. Her knees buckled under the enormous force of the rushing wind. It was hard to hear anything, see anything. The foghorn cry of the vortex pierced the air.
Snow warped, trees bent in the wake, and mist and snowflakes scattered into the night. The sky ripped open. Rel Rel peeked up into the light, squinting, trying not to look directly at it. A shadow stepped towards the blistering sand and glass. Lily?
Rel shouted but heard nothing, her voice drowned out, now struggling to stay on her feet.
She could barely see Lily, unable to look up at her. Rel could have sworn she saw her smile. Did she nod? Forcing her feet, Rel took a step. The rushing wind made her lurch back a bit.
No, she didn’t believe it. This wasn’t real. All in her head? It was foolish hunger. Tiredness settling in. Yet, Rel lowered herself, head tilted down, arms pulled above her face, and ran forward, barreling toward the sand. She had to try. “Is this my wish?”
“Wait, Mistress?” came Lily’s voice faintly. “You must not!”
Rel felt plucked off her feet, ripped into the sky, flipping head over foot into the raging torrent of light. She lost hold of the mirror and felt it slip away, tumbling out of her hand. Gone. Sight flashed to streaks of color. Lily called out. Voices. Echoes. Whisked away through nothing, yet through something. She was dizzy.
Pressure rang through her skull, heat rising against her skin. Light, blinding light like she’d never experienced before, engulfed her. Air gushed, screaming over her clothes, weight once again exerting itself on her form. She saw the sky, then sand, then the sky, then her feet, then Lily. All at once. She was falling!
Then she wasn’t. Her head hit something soft enough not to break every bone in her body with an air-stealing thud. Well, so she hoped. Skin stinging, air lost from her lungs, she gasped, trying to swallow, trying to catch her thoughts. She couldn’t. The world was too bright, too hot, and she’d just fallen from, and into, well? She didn’t know. The wind stung her bare flesh, churning across her ears in hot bursts. Dry and scorching.
“That… was not… what I wished for…” Gasping, body tingling against the heat, Rel coughed, dust spurting from her mouth. Hard, tiny particles of something crunched between her teeth, rolling over her lips.
“Must have tripped… flubbed my noggin…” groaned Rel, picking her head out of the dust. It hurt to move. Eyes adjusting, she couldn’t see, only able to make out shadows. And red. So much red. “I wished for something… and this is not that something. Cause… this ain’t real… nonsense.”
“Oh dear, oh dear. Oh my, oh my! What in the heavens have you done?” came Lily’s flustered voice. “Why, Mistress, why did you follow?” Muffled, somehow, but Rel could see her faint outline shielding the bright sky. She sounded unhappy. Frantic.
Covered in Lily’s shadow, the world seemed to cool, heat dulling for a moment. Now, mind settling, Rel Rel could hear wind shifting quickly, rushing in steady torrents around them. “This must be one of those vivid dreamy things. Where it’s all dreamy-like, but not dreamy… A lucid something or other.” She picked herself onto her knees, squinting, hands hooded above her forehead. All at once, the world came into view.
Rel knelt at the top of a rounded hill that sloped endlessly into a sea of twisting, sandy dunes. Twisting? Yes, twisting, swirling, moving, rolling like flames licking against the sky.
The grains glistened and shone like pin-sized red and orange jewels against a sunset. Every twist, every flaming flick sent glints through the air, sparkling like tiny bursts of starlight. It was a shifting desert, flowing in a single direction, like an ocean of small gems, curling and rolling beneath her feet. However, despite the churning sand and wind, she did not sink or fall through.
Rel coughed a spray of sparkles, wiping her eyes. Blinking a few times to remove some dust, she said, “I wished to be accepted, and it sent me into a freaking desert? Twicky. This dream sucks.” She shook her head and wobbled to her feet, staring at where Lily would be standing. It was hazy. Foggy, perhaps. No, how could there be mist in the middle of a desert? A figure floated in front of her, feet hanging against the haze, coming into focus as they moved closer. “Lily? You’re… different.”
Lily was hardly the pink-haired, blue-dressed doll she remembered. Yes, she wore the same blue dress: puffy shoulders clasped about her biceps and fit snugly to the wrists, doe-like yellow eyes, button nose, small, pursed lips, porcelain skin, round face, and circle designs on her cheeks. Yes, she still sported that choker with a skull pendant in the center. Yes, this was Lily. But she had…what were those? Knives on her back?
No, not knives, of course not. Slender bars flowed in a gentle curve from Lily’s shoulders. At the end of each bar were clock faces with crooked hands and numbers. From each clock were blades, which Rel assumed were feathers. The blades beat the air softly, moving enough to allow Lily to hover in place, slowly bobbing up and down. She heard metal screech and the tick of the clocks. Tick. Tock. Wings. Metal wings. And in Lily’s lower back was a wind-up key.
“My princess, you must listen,” said Lily, never allowing her feet to touch the sand. She remained in the air, peering down at Rel Rel, hands at her side, back straight, face tilted. She looked more elegant in this world. More regal. Yet, she seemed unsettled, searching their surroundings with a quiet sniff.
“Oh. Sure, okay. Listening or whatever!?” Rel blurted, staring up at this new, angelic Lily. Nothing made sense. Despite the confusing thoughts, Rel felt herself say, “Say what now, Dream Lily? Get it? Cause you’re, like, a dream, and whatnot.”
“Mistress, there is no time to dally on such things. We must…” Lily was more insistent. The angel took a deep breath into her nose, wings slowing, pointed ears tilted to the side. She gracefully turned her neck, still sniffing. “Clear. If you please, I must have the mirror.” Lily rolled her wrists. Mist puffed from the angel’s fingertips and rose, concealing the two of them in a hazy bubble, cooling the surrounding air.
“Oh. Mirror? Right.” Rel felt the pocket of her pants and padded down the sides of her shirt, able to stand and breathe a bit easier now. It was an act, of course. She knew where it was. Or where it may have ended up. She wrinkled her nose and turned around bashfully, her hand wiping the back of her neck. “Yes. If this wasn’t all nonsense… what if I, maybe, didn’t have it? Say I dropped it. Meta-uh-phosforically speaking. Maybe?”
“I would say that was not good,” said Lily. “Not at all. But you do have it, do you not?”
“Meta-uh-phosforically, yes.”
“Mistress?”
“Well, everything was all whooshing! And I couldn’t see, and you were just running off into the portal.” Rel narrowed her eyes. “You were just going to bail on me? Even in a dream, that’s freaking twicky.”
The wind and sand were blocked, howling up and over the misty barrier surrounding them. Lily’s feathers slid around the clock faces, closing like scissor blades, and she dropped to her feet. She landed lightly, never losing her posture. “You should not have come. You do not understand the predicament you have brought upon yourself.”
Rel Rel lowered her hands, watching the sand race against the outside of the mist, “Sure, trouble. As long as I’m in this dreamy place… do I get my wish, or what?”
“Is this wish all you care for?” Lily’s eye twitched as she circled to Rel’s left, tilting her nose into the distance. “Clear.”
“Well, this is my dream and whatnot? So I feel like a wish is in order… cause I will it into existence, or whatever. That’s how it works?”
Lily opened her palm, holding the pale white flesh up for Rel to see. Particles of glittering snow appeared. Bending her fingers, Lily turned her hand sideways, and the mist began to stretch into a shallow glowing stream. “Mistress, I was hoping that your one true wish… would send me home,” she said, commanding the light to create a trail above Relene’s head. The surrounding barrier moved and shifted at Lily’s subtle command.
Rel watched the mist for a moment. “So it wasn’t even a wish to be granted or whatever?” The realization stung her thoughts as she drooped her eyes and focused on the angel. If she could be considered that. Jaw locked, Rel Rel enunciated through her teeth, “So, a lie, that’s what it was? All this talk about wishes was nothing!”
“Not exactly, Mistress. Perhaps I withheld minor, yet quite crucial, information…” For the first time, Lily did not make eye contact. “Have you ever wanted to return home so desperately that you would do anything to go back?”
“You lied!” Rel threw her fists to the side, resisting the urge to strike. “You told me there was a wish. I believed that. I believed you!” Eyes beginning to water, she tightened her lip and stomped her foot, glaring up at the doll. “What’s the use of falling asleep if the dreams are just going to lie to you?”
“My dear, please…” Lily sniffed the air. “Books? No. Many.” She hastily took hold of Rel’s hand.
“Bunk this dream!” Rel shoved her, taking a step away and putting some distance between them. She didn’t want to be anywhere near her. Not now. “Great, right, yes. I’m waking up now. I’m done, Lily.” She turned to walk away, hide her face, hide the pain and betrayal welling up within her goggles.
“Indeed. Well, I am truly sorry, my dear.” Lily did not attempt to follow.
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