Oroa, the water

A few steps further into the procession, Charlotte feels something breath on her skin. Like an invisible person whispering from his fingertips, lightly touching her. A tinge of passion, the fireworks break the sky, and she’s lost in sensation. The strange feeling burns, like her entire skin is at the same time incredibly erogenous and also doused in acid. She falters and almost falls to the ground before stumbling on a bench a bit to the side. The songs creepily fade in the distant memory of an old instantaneous picture. Charlotte feels her consciousness drift slowly as her body lightens, lightens, as light as a feather… She falls. Lying on the bench, the party continues before her eyes, behind her, around her. She’s completely surrounded. Surrounded by sound, sights, she feels the entire procession touching her, poking her as if a wounded animal, curling up in distress to hide from the acidic sensation of the rain falling atop her damaged skin. One two, one two, seven steps later, she brutally awakes. The procession isn’t there anymore. There’s no one. No one in the streets. At first, she thinks she met her end in the street. Poisoned by something? Maybe when someone touched her earlier tonight.. But no. She’s alive. Brutally so, even. Her body is not decaying but pulses with a new life… The night has devoured the entire city. Streetlights don’t shine anymore and so, she stumbles to get up and tries to leave… Disoriented, she walks in circles, unable to discern the correct path… Where is it? Where could it be? Where is it??? Panic sets in. Once. Twice. Thrice, Seven whole times she ends up at the same bench… Trapped? Is she trapped once again? Trapped… Trapped.. She falls to her knees. Her first reflex is to check for some kind of magic tempering. Did she fall prey to a rogue sorcerer? She examines her repertoire, looking for some kind of spell to disable any kind of enchantments… Her whole grimoire is empty. Is it a dream? An immense sense of melancholy and despair immediately fills Charlotte as she’s looking at her fully blank spell book. Nothing is right. She’s all alone in this mirage.. Is it a dream? Is she dead? If she indeed fell into the trap of an experienced wizard, she’s basically done for. What could she even do? She doesn’t have the spark of magic anymore. Nothing. Her whole body fills with nothingness, and she lies down before beginning to softly whimper.

The scenery changes. She feels like she’s drowning… She is drowning!! Her legs are fully submerged in thick, black, twisting water.. The whole city is nowhere to be seen… She’s sinking. There’s nothing to behold but the vast expanse of the sea, or a gigantic lake… No one in sight, nothing. Absolute void. Panic once again. She drowns even faster. Quickly, before she even realizes that she shouldn’t drown in such a vast and open-ended body of water, she’s submerged to the shoulders and only her arms and head are above the surface… And then, she sees a light from beneath. At first she thinks she’s definitely done for. “ Great. Now I’m gonna be devoured before drowning. ” But then she feels herself slowly getting lifted. A small platform under her feet rises above the ocean and pushes her out of the water. The light beneath the surface begins to take form and a shape appears, made of pure light in stark contrast with the black waters. A voice echoes from the deep, like a low-growl of an old being, extremely stoic but with a tinge of hope and relief behind the coral accents : “ Meet me at the clock tower at midnight. ”

She wakes up. The procession is long gone. Dread fills her when she’s aware of her surroundings as she fears being trapped once again in a never-ending nightmare, but she sees a small child poking her face with a twig. “ Is you dead, miss? ” His mother arrives, panicked and takes the boy into her arms before bawling out at him to stop talking to strangers, especially those that are less savory… Great. She sits up, dusts herself before looking up. There are not many huge buildings in Rosaria. There’s the old watchtower up north, looking towards the open roads towards the Sunstorm desert.. There’s the city hall’s bell tower, signaling the daily prayer at five in the morning… And there’s the clock tower. Literally towering over any sights she could see right now, it has an otherworldly appeal. The edifice cuts the moon in half, rising above everything and everyone, mystical and full of wonders. A huge clock backlit with a few gas lanterns slowly ticks.. It’s a quarter to midnight.