Shimmers and Shards

I sat perched in a crystal sphere; listening, waiting, measuring the weight of time in a cross-legged stance, for my predators to come back. I watch the refracted outside world and the bleakness of it all.

Shrrrk

This was the gentle hiss of a blade being drawn. I spun my neck, tracking the muted sound outside my glass sphere. I spotted the source and pivoted to a stand, gracing my hand to the prismal back wall for support, feeling what I imagined to be fear.

My long hair and robes moved in slower waves, caught in the virulence of my life force. The boy outside the walls did not look like my predators. His movements were careful, but not fearful; he did not prowl with the same cruel, timid horror as the uniformed ones did. He wore a mask that covered up to his nose and had a skin that almost camouflaged into the dark room outside, and his hair... It was a ropey texture I’d never seen before, strung up in a rigid ponytail.

I leaned closer to admire it, when the blade he drew from his back pointed on the crystal surface between my eyes. I looked at the blade’s tip and then back to him.

What was he planning to do? If he broke this barrier, surely he’d die.

I rested my palm to his end of the dome, more out of curiosity rather than the notion of telling him to stop. He took a moment to look around the room. Then our eyes made contact. I tilted my head to the side. He held my gaze a second longer then focused on his blade.

He took a step back, keeping the blade’s peak perfectly in place, and flicked his grip to the end of the hilt. He held the sword like it was a cup of sake, two fingers carried the weight from underneath and a thumb angled it all upwards. Next, he shut his eyes and raised his left arm. Movements on his mask suggested he was saying something, though I could not hear it.

From his left wrist, wisps of darkness stripped off and formed a floating orb above the sword that was now glowing an ominous silver. As I watched the orb grow, the strangest thing happened; all the toxins of mana keeping my hair afloat began to die down. The staticky pull within my crystal shell diminished to nothing. The only thing pulling my hair and droopy sleeves now was gravity - a foreign feeling.

After gawking at my own body, I stared back to the boy and began to mouth a word of thanks when both our eyes flicked to the side where a door had open. Two of the uniformed ones slinked into the room. Once they acknowledged the scene, the books in their arms came to a float above their palms and the pages flew forward quicker than any reader could read. Glyph-lite symbols began to dot the air as I heard their muffled chanting.

In one swift motion, the boy grabbed the floating orb and hid it behind his cloak then he placed his palm on the crystal surface. A huge magic circle illuminated the room from beneath me. He made a small push and I fell backwards, the darkness of the room flew up and away while the entire sphere I was caged within started to tumble down a hill that wasn't there before. Down and down I rolled, colours I never knew existed, whizzed by, but I spun and flipped too fast to retain a sole image.

The crystal dome slowed and made one final lurch before it shattered. I made one final summersault and landed on my bum and my knees on a cliff's edge. The momentum threatened to hurl me off, but my hand on the cold rock edge put a sudden stop to my roll. A painted mixture of my long white hair and shimmers of crystal shards whooshed out in front of me and my eyes fell on the sparkle glistened world below for the first time.