Itfut had left was her gorgeous dark-blue, velvet dress with the diamond-studded collar, and the crystal ring that she wore on her left hand.
“You won’t get anything more out of me, you, half-wit reality you! Just because you’ve lost the plot, doesn’t mean that I have to. I’m not afraid of you anymore. Give me back my shoes! You hear?”
Meanwhile, after the tilting of the hourglass, the landscape acquired a new detail. In the distance, Matilda began to make out the contours of a city.
“You see, Itfut, priestess, you priestess, now you have somewhere to go. So, let’s go. Let’s get a move on. It is high time we put an end to all this nonsense. I just hope it isn’t a mirage.”
She shook the sand from her dress and strode in the direction of her goal. The sand creaked beneath her bare feet like glass although it was soft to the touch. To the priestess it felt like she was walking on cotton wool. But she was more puzzled by a phenomenon, no less peculiar. It seemed to her as if, rather than her walking ahead, the landscape was coming forwards to meet her, while she had barely placed one foot in front of the other. Moreover, the goal was approaching with unnatural speed.
“What kind of trick is this?” said Matilda indignantly. “Do you want to shock me or frighten me again?” she said, talking to reality. “That’s not possible! And there is no point in being afraid of something that is not possible. I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid! Not at all, at all! Get it?”
Reality meanwhile continued to change ignoring the priestess. Within a few minutes the sky was gray. The waves of sand turned into a rocky wasteland and the outlines of the city grew larger before her eyes. For some reason Itfut could not feel the stones beneath her feet. Strangely, they did not bother her at all despite walking barefoot. It was surprising but she was tired of being surprised by now.
The priestess entered the city, if you could call it that, an abstract conglomeration of cubic structures and niches, and wherever you looked, endlessly interweaving flights of stairs. A sepulchral silence reigned, only occasionally interrupted by the sound of falling drops as if an invisible, giant clepsydra was measuring intervals of time.
“What awful quiet. It’s just a-a-awful quie-e-t-t.” repeated Itfut, lost in a maze of structures and formations. ‘It gets worse by the hour. Surely this isn’t a nightmare that’s only just beginning?’
“Hey, is there anybody there?!” she shouted, and a resonant echo carried her shout into a multiple ‘body-body-body’.
“Ts-s-s,” she hissed, switching to a whisper. “When the awfulness is quiet, you have to quiet, too.”
She gingerly opened the door to one of the houses and peeped inside. There was no one there. The interior consisted solely of a table, a chair and a bed of boards. Nothing more. The same scene was repeated in each of the houses Itfut looked in. She examined them one by one but there was not a soul to be seen.
Itfut plucked up the courage to climb a high stairway from where she could get a better view. It turned out that the stairs did not lead anywhere but just hung in midair after several turns. Itfut did not bother climbing right to the top of the stairs because her head was already spinning from the height. She stopped somewhere halfway up and looked about her in both directions. Between identical roofs, she spotted a black, ominous-looking structure towering close by.
The priestess went back down the flight of stairs and decided to make for the megalith, as far as that was possible wandering through the bizarre maze. She went from one house to another, from stairway to stairway being mindful of where she placed her feet, until she almost collided with a gray figure.
She leapt backwards in surprise, her heart beating furiously. The figure stood motionless but in such a posture that suggested it might be just about to take another step. Clothed in a shapeless, hooded robe that hid the face, it was not clear whether the figure was a human being or a statue. Recovering her breath, Itfut walked to the side of the figure and took a peep under its hood.
Glassy eyes burned in the shadows staring into nowhere. Itfut thought as if the eyes reflected signs of life but the rest of the face was a deathly gray, frozen in an indifferent expression. “Hey!” Itfut called quietly.
The figure did not move an inch. The priestess warily touched the hood which was sewn from a rough material. She ran her fingers up the figure’s arm and touched its cheeks… At that moment, something unnatural happened. The priestess’ fingers passed freely through the skin on the face as if it were a ghost.
Deciding to test her hunch, Itfut tried passing her hand through the figure’s body and sure enough, her hand passed right through. The priestess took a step back in complete amazement, and suddenly found herself falling through the staircase behind her as if it were made of air.
Panicking, the priestess zig-zagged from side to side, falling through walls and stairways like a phantom. She could no longer tell what was ghost-like and immaterial here, herself or everything that surrounded her. This was too much. Reality was continuing to weave an ominous web of illusion in a game that the priestess appeared to be losing.
Itfut eventually managed to calm down a little and began to explore new properties in herself and her surrounding reality.
“Wonderful, super-wonderful! I’m dead! No, I’ve gone mad! Which is better, to be dead or to have lost my mind? Or which is worse?”
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