Beyond The Door

He coughed, shaking his head slightly at the dust that rose up from the rusted, heavy wrought iron handle of the door as he explored the mechanism. There was no light for it to catch from the door itself but he saw enough of it in the flickering blues and greens of the magical flame that had seen him through dampness and leaks, gusts of wind down corridors where none should have been. Having spent the last three days following clue after clue, hint after hint, he knew better than to trust his eyes alone for discerning what was present. True to suspicion, he felt raised bumps along the blind side of the handle itself, which made him pause. The partnered key was unmarked but as he traced his fingertips over them again, and the sensation made him hiss slightly in anticipated discomfort as he felt their sharpness.

The last lingering trace of preservation and sense within his mind urged him to return the way he had come, but the decades of his life that he had spent working at the threads of the tightly-woven tapestry of mystery that was now before him weighted on him. Friendship gone by the wayside. A husband he had grown distant from, absorbed in books and ledgers, word of mouth and lore pried out of the willing and unwilling for coin, for trade, and for tasks done in favour that he refused to let weight his compass of morality any longer as he had become more desperate. Still he had persisted, and so he would persist even as some voiceless presence, some animal instinct, pleaded that he had done enough.

Unsurprising. His lips thinned into a line as he regarded the obstruction. Even though he felt the weight of the realisation of what he had to do settle in his gut like the cold weight of a blacksmith’s anvil, he couldn’t help but look to the rest of the door to see if there was another way into whatever was beyond aside from the spilling of his blood. Even the tales told to the youngest of the fledgling city, sanitised from the violence and hardship they would come to know as they aged, spoke of warnings of parting with one’s self in any way. Names should not be given freely, and introductions should be phrased in a way to negate such an asking. Blood was sacred. Cleanliness held the precautions therein of leaving as little trace as possible behind where aspects could be taken by maligned spellcasters. He knew the warnings as he regarded the solidness of the hinges that looked like they would withstand the force of a battery ram. The hardy look to the wood appeared to have at once both defied the age of the stonework around it and grown alongside it, with roots curling out from the planks into the ground itself, in defiance of how any timber should act.

Frowning to himself as he thought, he paused before resting his hand against the surface of the wood, drawing on just a few threads of the weave with a discipline that came from extensive training and mistakes, trial and error, until he had mastered the raw energy that was All, that drove the magic of the world. He Felt the magic within the handle’s construction like the thrumming of a stringed instrument against his senses, like a subtle vibration against his skin.

Then he felt something Else, like the slow caress with teasing featherlight nails down his spine; the touch of a new lover, testing responsiveness to discern where comfort could be given and where it might be rebuked. Only this made the hairs on the nape of his neck rise and his breath catch in his throat, for the sensation was at once both comparable to things known and horrifyingly alien at the same time. Mocking comfort in the attempt. More metaphors to describe what he had felt clashed together and tangled in his mind as he struggled to find footing in his awareness, clawing for comprehension even as he felt every instinct within his body stir at the uncanny sensation coursing through his body. There was an awareness there, beyond the door, beyond the handle that needed to be smeared with his blood to open, beyond the threshold of the corridor that had been walled up and warded against by caster upon caster.

He felt repulsion in the purest sense; with no awareness of why, only the response itself, to the point that it was as though visceral. Disgust. A crawling within his mind as though every fibre of his being wanted to shrink away from that sight. But there was also compulsion. Desire. Want. A yearning that held such a force behind it that he thought it might have crushed his very being if the imposed distance had not been between them as it was. With a shaking hand, he reached for the wood again, after slotting the torch into a sconce. Had it been there before? He did not have the spare focus of thought to regard continuity any longer. Calloused from weapon-wielding, burned from the chemicals of alchemy, grazed and dusty from his scrambling, he set his palm against the heavy knots and whorls of the wood and then sharply gasped.

For a moment, fleeting and yet shattering in its convincing totality, the door had felt like flesh. Warm and supple, overlaying rugged muscle. The kind of body that he had tentatively explored when he had first realised his attraction, and then learned all of the ways of when he had grown to adore his husband, and then yearned for when his persistent draw to where he was now had driven them apart. But his eyes were open, and he saw the wood for how it had appeared in that first impression as he had come down the corridor.

Through that touch, he felt longing, loneliness… acceptance. He was not a fool chasing a quarry of folklore that would never be caught. He was not run ragged, clinging to sanity through stubbornness and a spark of curiousity that had never been dimmed no matter what had been faced, in setback and in circumstance, in delay or in the death of those he had known come close before. Any last sense of reservation at what he knew he had to do was banished by that welcome, even as it felt so alien and did not quite fit how the same from someone of known origin would be given. It felt More and Meaningless, mimicking openly and yet more convincing than anything he had ever encountered before. How long he had stood there, feeling that welcome and warning, was unimportant. Sliding his fingertips down to the handle as though caressing the ridges and bumps of tease-revealed muscle, he then decisively grasped the metal hard, forcing the small spikes to puncture through his skin.

As his blood welled up around the wounds, his hazel eyes widened as the Allness of what was beyond began to find a resonance of root within his mind in the manner of the awful sensation of a presence that was ill-fitting to the very nature of where it was held. Demanding of attention and disorientating, sickening and seductive, wanting and warring against the last trace of will that had fractured the moment he had made the decision. Fracturing and forgotten, reconstructing and remembering as though long forgotten but always there.

The mage did not know when he had fallen to the floor. Only that the cold of the stonework had gotten to the point of discomfort enough to rouse him. Groaning softly on an exhalation, he curled up for a moment into the foetal position at how wrong that alone had felt, how he had been so acutely aware of the process of breathing as to grow fearful of it while clinging to the act at the same time. Pushing himself up slowly onto his hands and knees, lank greying hair obscuring his sight, he made a quiet keening sound in his throat as he trembled at the tingling sensation down his spine, across his skin, in his head, behind his eyes. Like a welcome presence and stranglehold all at once, and yet neither of those, and everything in a state of suspended disorientation and a demand for attention.

Staggering to his feet and grabbing the torch, his movements jerking as though he had been grounded for far longer, he began to work his way back down the corridor. Step by step, echoed within the subtle vibration on the edge of his sense that was discordant and out of time. Forgotten, forlorn, and now befriended… but at what cost?