Iridescent Spirit - Chapter 57 Inner World

“Hey.”

Jae Farely mindlessly trod through the path. With no direction or path in sight, he simply moved within the fog ceaselessly.

From his body, eleven strings of different colors stemmed from his chest to the sky. However, he was not aware of what was on the other end of the lines.

“Hey, I know you can hear me.”

With no idea how he landed himself in here, the boy continued to roam inside the trail. Since he could not feel a thing, the boy wished to find something. Something that he had always wanted to find. But, what was it again?

Why exactly was he here?

“Hey! For the Goddesses’s or whomever above heaven’s sake, won’t you just pay attention to me? Godd*mmit!”

Jae’s head was knocked by a boy with a lanky appearance. With an uncannily identical face to his one and the same silver eyes, the boy glared at Jae.

“Yo, finally willing to take some notice of me? You’re so d*mned rude sometimes,” the boy smirked, “So, back here again?”

Jae opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“Huh? Cat’s got your tongue? Well, I’ll do the speaking this time and you could just sit back and listen,” the boy shrugged.

“So here’s the situation, which is quite bad if I say so myself,” the boy made a couple of gestures like forming a circle with his arms. From the middle of that circle, a cat with a piece of paper jumped out.

“Hey, aren’t you familiar with this whole dreamland or inner conscious situation yet?” The boy rolled his eyes while taking the paper from the cat, “I’m sure you could come here anytime yourself if you weren’t so incompetent.”

Jae wanted to retort or even ask why should he create a cat if he could simply produce the paper alone. However, a vocal block, like a cork clogging a sink, obstructed the boy from speaking.

“I honestly don’t need to write on this paper and could just tell you what’s happening, but you see, we were hijacked or mindjacked,” the boy snickered at the pun as he flipped a page from the notebook.

“Remember how we heard about specters and possessions near a lake from the auction master dude, er, was his name Allen or something? Nevermind about that. So the specter he was talking about basically entered our mind space and boop. We’re all going to die in a few seconds.”

“Well unless we do something about it,” the boy grinned. From the paper, he wrote a couple of notes and held the paper in front of Jae.

“What are we going to do?” Jae’s eyes seemed to convey after reading the note.

With no real magic other than reinforcement, the children could not combat the specter. After all, their enemy this time did not have a physical body.

“In truth, we could die from this incident because I have no idea how to use magic. While we can consider Melody’s illusions as a form of magic, it won’t help much in this situation,” the boy shrugged.

“Oh, what’s with that look you’re giving me?” The boy asked, “I’m actually trying to help you with my own decision for once?”

“Wait, let me guess, you’re trying to ask me why the hell I’m helping you this time? Especially when I didn’t help when everyone died?” The boy wrote on the paper and showed it to Jae.

“This world seems more interesting than the previous one and I still share your thoughts despite being so different from you,” the boy waited for Jae to finish reading.

The boy made another gesture with his hands. A dog on a unicycle with a spade popped into existence.

“Dreamlands are fun right? Not unless you have to spend years in here,” the boy sighed, “F*** it, it’s my fault and yours that we’re stuck like this. Anyways, we will have to fight the tumor, I mean, specter or something like that with our soul bodies.”

On the next note, Jae read, “Actually, you should specialize in smashing stuff more than me. So, while you preoccupy what’s going to come out, I will work on my own thing.”

Jae nodded while trying to search around his body. But then, he realized that he could not move a muscle, er, not that souls have muscles.

“How am I supposed to help you if I can’t move a single finger?” Jae conveyed to his identical counterpart.

“Imagine doofus. This isn’t the physical world, but a soul realm. Our inner world. I’ve been experimenting here for years, but you should have more power here. So, you got to step up in place of me and fight the godd*mn tumor. Step it up, boy!”

While flashing an indignant expression, Jae read the paper and began imagining as the boy had directed. A koi made of transparent jelly appeared and entered the boy’s mouth. As the koi shared the same vision as Jae, it searched under his skin.

After swimming for a while, the fish detected a black lump protruding from his chest area. In order to expel that tumor, Jae needed to aggravate it.

The koi slowly swam through Jae’s soul body and poked the tumor with its fin. In return, a single slit opened, revealing a large eye that made up most of its body. The eye blinked at the intruder. A hole opened from its side. Screeching, the specter shot out of Jae’s chest and dropped onto the ground.

“Oh look, you actually did it,” the boy muttered.

Disgusting aura squeezed out of the black mass. From a single glob with an eye to an inflated tumor, the creature continued to grow exponentially.

Jae coughed several times out of a reflexive response before remembering that he was not controlling his physical body right now.

While clutching his chest, Jae realized he could move and vocalize again.

As he faced the abomination, Jae materialized a familiar mace in his right hand. Considering the small size of the critter, Jae hoped that he could just swat the darn critter.

“Wait, don’t touch it,” the boy stated, “It will possess you again and we totally want something that ugly thing parasitizing this body again.”

“Screech! Skraw!” Incoherent shrieks sounded from the specter. Its body reformed into a jagged skeleton of an uncanny beast.

Three heads, four tails, and tiny arms in contrast to its thick legs. The creature reminded Jae of the tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that he had seen in a museum once before.

“Doesn’t a skeleton make you think of an undead?” The boy commented.

“And undead races make me think of Sazroth. Sounds like a coincidence to me,” Jae shrugged before sprinting toward the specter.

“Before you go too far, grant me some authority!” The boy called out.

Since Jae was currently a soul without the physical limitations of a real body, he could dash at speeds far greater than the speed of light.

However, the specter could do the same.

“Screech!” The specter stomped on the boy. But, instead of squishing a puny child, it did not crush anything but air.

“You better exit my world,” Jae muttered while swinging his mace at the creature’s leg. Its bony leg shattered, however, it soon recovered from that fracture.

In this realm, which was similar to a dream world, the soul could do anything.

Therefore, Jae materialized a bunch of puppies to pile on top of the specter.

“Woof. Woof. Woof.”

Afterward, he created more blunt weapons to use against the specter. Since Jae had a limited imagination and soul, his limits were simple objects and hollow animals.

“Seriously? Dogs?” The boy sighed. Snapping his fingers, a document and feathered pen popped into existence.

“With what little I have, I can at least expel it from this body,” the boy wrote several lines on the document.

“Are you going to help anytime soon?” Jae whelped from under the specter’s foot. After it got rid of the puppies, Jae was trapped by the specter.

“Oh, done,” the boy remarked at his masterpiece, “From this treaty or law, which I have no idea how politics or constitutions work, but whatever. I declare that specters with bony bodies and at least three heads to disappear from his realm.”

The paper irradiated in a silver light as it flashed within the boy’s hands. A silver laser shot from the paper to the specter, eliminating its existence from Jae’s inner world.

“Is that it? Was that all I had to do?” Jae observed the boy’s smirk.

“It’s actually more complicated than you think, you know,” the boy sat on the ground.

Like glass, the foggy surroundings shattered. Instead of a neverending path, the world became a small, dark room, similar to the room Jae was in back in Ialantha’s prison. However, unlike the vines and branches that made up that prison, this room had dull, homogeneous walls.

A milky white full moon illuminated the room as if it were the only thing left to witness the lonely soul within.

“I’ll stay here as always,” the boy waved, “Tell Iris that I said ‘hi’.”

“Alright,” Jae nodded as he began to leave the inner world.

“Oh, you still owe me. Now twice over. Actually, your debt hasn’t decreased at all,” the boy frowned, “That won’t do. I’ll come out spontaneously someday, just mark my words.”

“Wait, n-”

The world collapsed while the boy shut his eyes within the enclosed space.

“I wonder if I could ever…Nah,” the boy shook his head.

———

“Jae!” Scarlett pounded her fists onto the boy’s chest, pulverizing his organs and bones within his build.

Grey ash invaded his mouth. Jae spat the garden’s ash while grasping Scarlett’s forehead. For some reason, the residue tasted like iron and ivy.

“Are you alright~?” Wendy crouched next to Jae as she checked for any wounds.

“Yeah, so what was that?” Jae asked.

Allen closed his book. Sitting on the carriage, he answered filled with disbelief, “I gave you one warning and you didn’t listen. This place is the Motionless Lake! I even warned you all a few minutes before you guys entered.”

“Luckily, you were the only one to enter the ash lake and one of your companions dragged you out quickly, otherwise, we would all be dead!”

“But, didn’t everyone fall asleep before I got tossed out?” Jae asked.

“No, silly. You were the only one asleep and you fell into the ash when the carriage bumped a rock,” Melody mentioned.

“Aw, shucks.”

“Why are you all relaxing?” Allen reprimanded.

“What do you mean?” Jade turned to the man.

“What I mean is that this is only the beginning of the Motionless Lake. Now that we entered, we have to continue fighting specters until we reach the end of the maze!”

After hearing those words, Jae observed his surroundings. With a fog made of ash, he could not see the end of the garden. The specters’ laugh echoed to his dismay.

“Couldn’t we just give up?”

“Nope,” Iris smiled.

In response, he whimpered.
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