“Everyone? There is more from the princess of purity and sweetness.”
The fog stirred once more, when it took shape, it showed me and Gustav walking towards the school, on several occasions where I yelled at him or treated him badly.
That little spider showed who I really was, a not-so-good person. I always thought I was a model of education, love, and kindness, despite the way I was raised, but my mask of illusion was falling. Zyba and Dakota were looking at me, as if they didn't believe everything they saw. Kenzo didn't move.
“Lola, is this for real? Why did you do these things?” Zyba asked in a disappointed tone.
“But these are things that happen to everyone in the first dimension!” I answered with burning eyes, I did not want to cry in front of them.
“So, you are like everyone. Not as good as you think” said Tyra.
As soon as the fog broke up one scene, it came back with another. Now I was in the hospital bed, shouting at everyone around me as I cried.
“Hang on! This didn’t happen!” Nobody listened to me.
The images didn't stop. It showed another day while I tried to make Rodrigo stop crying, I rocked him angrily and said things like, ‘Shut up!!’
As these scenes appeared, my heart was being crushed by a sense of shame and guilt. It was getting harder and harder to hold the tears back in my burning eyes.
“Lola! Calm down,” said Zyba.
My breathing grew heavier, it was like being naked in front of my friends, so embarrassed to be exposed. My bad thoughts came back hard from where I had kept them. I thought myself as correct as a prism, but I wasn't a good person. I could be worse or equal to the snake Helga from before. I started to think the battle was already lost, that this could kill everyone that came to help me, I panicked to the thought of not deserving my father back.
At that very moment, lightning clouds began to appear in the gray sky. Koda came back under my cape again.
“I'm not a good person, this spider is right. Please forgive me.”
They wanted to comfort me, at the same time they were frightened by my actions, their faces were confused.
“It will start to rain ... Come in, my dears! You don't have much time.”
The hourglass appeared next to the spider, showing that our time was half gone. Tyra took advantage of our distraction and threw a web on each of us, pushing us down the well. We fell into that cold, dark well that seemed to be very deep.
I felt the cold ground shortly after the fall, it was shallower than I thought. There was still some light from above, but it wasn't enough to see what was around me. It was a cold, wet place, made of stone. I tried to find Koda on my cape, but he was gone, along with everyone else. I called for them, hoping someone had fallen next to me, no one answered. I heard slow footsteps, my heart pounding again, someone was approaching. I squeezed my eyes, but the darkness didn’t allow me to recognize the figure. That's when a baby cry tore the silence of the well. From the spotlight above, I could see who was approaching, it was my mother Jessica, with Rodrigo on her lap, crying a lot. I was so scared that I could only shrink into the stone wall a few steps behind the spot where I fell.
“You always treated us badly, Lola. How can you do this to me? And with Rodrigo? He's just a baby.” My mother spoke with tears running down her face, while lulling Rodrigo, who cried in despair.
“Forgive me, mom! I didn’t mean to,” I said in tears. When I started to run toward them, they disappeared.
My mother was no longer there, I was alone in a silence before an explosion. I heard grunts, whips. Another person appeared in the dim light of the well, now it was my father. His clothes were soaked in blood, lying on the floor, he was screaming to stop, and someone was whipping him without a break. He was crying for me. The whipping ceased. Still down, he raised his head and saw me in the light.
“Lola... I'm dying. Why? Why did you have to wear the necklace? You destroyed me.”
“NO DADDDDD!” My desperation was spilled into tears. I couldn't move, so I covered my eyes. I didn’t want to see that. As I sobbed, I heard my name coming from a distant voice. I knew that voice ...Dakota ...- I stopped crying. It was really her.
The image of my father disappeared. The floor opened beneath my body, I was falling again and I didn’t know for how long. After a few seconds of free falling, I found myself on a pipe that spit me out of the well like fireworks on a celebration day, falling into a heap of dry leaves, in another corridor of the maze where there was a fountain of pure water. Dakota and Zyba jolted me out of there. The storm that was forming when we found the well was gone. Koda flew over my shoulder giving me licks of joy with his tiny parakeet tongue. I was not used to seeing him bark like a bird, even in a land like this.
“But ... I swore I was falling. How was I thrown up? This is not the exit to the city, that spider fooled us.”
“At least we found water. Are you ok? Why were you crying?” Dakota asked as she tried to get me up.
“We heard your screams, but you seemed far away. Where did you fall and stop that wasn’t the same as us? Where is Kenzo?” Zyba looked inside the tunnel.
Before I could answer, Kenzo was spit out of the pit into the mound of leaves, and almost ripped off Zyba's head that was peeking there.
“Kenzo! Are you alright? Did you get stuck somewhere, too?” asked Dakota.
Kenzo was also in tears, scared.
“I’m fine. I fell into a shallow part of the well. I had a vision of my father being dragged by the jackals. It was horrible,” Kenzo explained as he wiped his face and stood up shaking off the leaves from his cloak.
“And you, Lola? Why were you crying?” asked Zyba.
“The same thing happened to me. I also fell into a shallow part. First my mother Jessica appeared with my brother on her lap, then my father, being tortured. My father!” I replied, still with that image of the torture in my head.
“Calm down. It was a dream. It’s over. Let's find them,” Zyba tried to calm me down.
“It seemed so real. I couldn't let fear dominate me,” I said out aloud trying not to despair.
“But what about you two? Didn’t you see anything?” asked Kenzo.
“We fell straight, we saw nothing,” replied Dakota.
How strange, I thought. But they are prisms and prisms are not bad, so they fell straight. The weirdest thing was Kenzo, having to face those visions like me.
We replenished the water canteen, recomposed ourselves, and restarted our journey. The image of my father being tortured hit me like a punch in the stomach, I was still feeling contractions reminding of the scene. I never thought I'd say that, but I missed him, I wished I could hug him and say that everything would be all right.
We walked in silence, each with our own thoughts, when a good surprise happened.
“Hey guys, the compass is back in business! See!” exclaimed Dakota. “We must go in that direction,” she said, pointing to the northwest of the maze.
The orange sky darkened much faster here than in Lumen, especially because here there weren’t two suns, in fact I saw none.
“We can't risk, it's getting dark very fast. Let's stop here and rest, tomorrow we continue,” said Kenzo.
“No! I want to meet my dad as soon as possible, I can't waste time!” I replied.