The dark lady told me Khalid would be fine, that he would wake up, but I’m starting to wonder if he will. We’ve been on this train for at least an hour now, and he’s still, well he looks like he’s asleep. Come to think of it, I haven’t slept in a while either, well not since I woke up in that house. My house? I should figure out if that was my house, there might be some clues about where my family is, or who I used to be in there.

I get jolted again, every few minutes the train seems to bounce more than usually, and send me into some sharp rock next to me. When I pictured a train ride to the city, I was imagining a nice passenger train, with a bed and complimentary meals. Not lying on top of rocks in a cargo train. It’s cold and uncomfortable, but I guess it’s the only safe option. Taking a train would have to many witnesses, we can’t risk getting caught by the sergeant. There should be less people who are looking for us in Talsin, maybe it will be a bit less risky to show our faces there.

The dark lady told me that she learned from Khalid’s mind that it will take at least half a day to get to Talsin. I need to rest up, I can’t make any mistakes once I get there or I’ll be locked up before I can find my mom.

“Go to sleep. You need to rest. But I want you to sleep here.”

She always just drags me in here, it still feels weird to be suddenly surrounded by darkness. And then be out of it the next second.

“Sleep here? I think I misheard you.”

“No you didn’t. I’ll keep you here while you sleep, the longer you spend here the stronger you’ll get, the braver you’ll get.”

Braver…is that all that’s changed about me?

“Yea but what if I get stuck in here? I don’t want to risk it, I can get stronger some other way.”

No way I’m getting stuck in this hell hole.

“We have to find a balance, if your too weak we won’t be able to accomplish our goals, but if you spend too much time here you’ll get stuck. An interesting problem. When we first met I thought you would be a capable soldier, so I wanted to avoid as much time here as possible. But now that I see how much damage I did saving you, how weak you’ve become, we need a new strategy. Strengthening you up is a must now. So sleep, it might be hard at first, but the more you sleep here the easier it will get.”

I wonder if I even have a choice. Its not like I can leave here on my own. Besides, she’s right. If that sergeant catches up to me….I need to be able to get away from him without relying on cheap tricks. It might not work the second time.

“How do we know if I’m getting to close, that I could be stuck here? I need to know the signs so I can stop it from happening.”

“Hmph”

Every time I’m here I can see her smile more and more clearly.

“You’ll start to change on the outside too. Not just the way you act, but even the way you look, as you get more connected to this world than yours.”

My look? My personality too…I noticed it myself, just one day with her and I’m already this different.

“Will my skin…darken?”

How could this place change me?

“Darken no, the changes will be more complex than that. Your skin will pale until you look sick, the white of your eyes will go black, your pupils will become a pure white. Your hair will go grey. Khalid spent enough time with me that those changes started to happen to him, but at the rate your changing….we do need to be careful.”

…..What the hell, she’s describing a monster. Will that happen to me? But Khalid looks fine, maybe after he went on his own he changed back to normal. How am I supposed to fall asleep now, I’m going to just have nightmares about looking like that.

“Close your eyes, and think about sleeping. I’ll make it easy for you.”

Dammit, why can’t I just sleep like a normal person. I close my eyes. I….I feel…..

….

Huh, what the hell? Am I in a…a desert? Did the train break down? Did Khalid bring me here? Or the dark lady? And the clouds, why is the sky full of black clouds?

“Try not to panic, were insulated here, from her, but if your emotions stir too much she could notice something is up.”

Khalid? How…wow I am having a dream about him. Insane, I guess he’s affected me more than I’ve thought. But this feel so re-

“This is not a dream, now that I’ve been re-connected to the dark, my connection to it is stronger. More importantly, were both connected to it. That allows me to do a few things that only I could do.“

Is this real?

“You’re here to kill me aren’t you. Is that what your plan was, let me capture you so you could kill me in my sleep?”

I was right all along. After I kill him I’m going to have to have a talk with the dark lady.

“No you misunderstand. I can’t kill you here, even if I wanted too. If you started to feel like death was upon you, she, it, would detect us and that would be it for me. I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to teach you.”

“Teach me? How can I trust you to do anything, you’ve been trying to kill me this whole time”

“And who tried to murder who first?”

Got me there.

“Yes, I thought the best solution was to kill you at first. But now that your too strong for that, I understand that the best way to stop you from helping the dark is by teaching you how to combat it.”

Combat..the dark?

“Is that even possible?”

“Yes, but it relies on the power of the mind. Which my miracle lends itself too. Your original miracle, transmuting, does not. But there is something special about you, you can control the darkness too, just like they can. That means you might be able to do things even I couldn’t do.”

This all sounds almost too good to be true. Could I get rid of the dark lady and find my mom on my own? Not waste anymore time finding some kid.

“Show me some proof, if your wrong and the dark lady finds out I tried to do something, she could abandon me. And I need her.”

“This very place is proof. You are asleep in the dark, yet I am here and she is not. I taught myself how to create this place to give myself some privacy, when I realised that the dark was starting to affect who I was.”

Wait!

“So I can just stay here instead of the dark, and then I won’t turn into a monster?”

“Monster? Hah, I see that thing finally told you what will happen the longer you’re here. The changes seem to be affecting you a thousand times faster than they affected me, so I would be worried if I were you. But no, this place will give us some privacy, but look at the scenery, even in this mind palace I can’t get rid of the dark clouds, the dark is still here, affecting us.”

So that’s why the sky is full of dark clouds. But why a desert?

“What is this place supposed to be?”

“It reminds me of where I came from, before the dark took me to your country.”

Took him here. That reminds me, when we first met he said the dark told him to wait at that hotel on this exact day, at that exact time. How did they know…

“Can she, it, whatever they are, can they see into the future?”

“I am not sure myself. I have some reason to believe they can, but some to believe they can’t. My best guess is that they can tell something about the future of people who will be connected to the dark. But that’s only a guess, they would never reveal too much about that to people like us.”

See into my future? So does that mean the dark lady knows how this all ends, if I meet my mom again?

“Enough questions for now, she will wake you up in a few hours when we get to Talsin, and I’ll be kicked out of your mind when you leave this place. We need to maximise our training. Time passes differently in my mind palace than in the true dark, its slower but not as slow. Still, a few hours here should be a few days worth of training. But only if we actually use that time properly.”

He hasn’t convinced me yet, this could be apart of some plan. Maybe he wants the dark lady to grow suspicious of me, so that she’ll leave me on her own. Maybe he’ll teach me something that could kill me.

“Focus all your energy on cutting me.”

…What?

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, you were in pretty bad shape last I saw you.”

“Hmph, that thing crawling through my mind did take a lot of effort to fight off, but I was regained my consciousness shortly after the train started moving. But I needed it to think I was still weak, so I hid my energy away and pretended to be dormant still. In here you can only attack my mind not my body. And my mind compared to yours…. you could try and cut me a thousand times and I would feel but a scratch, but one punch of mine and you would feel like I dropped a boulder on you. That’s the difference between me and you in here, for now. But we’ll change that, you’ll learn how to fight it off like I can now, we just have to learn how to use the dark to do what I can do with my miracle. I believe that as your control of the dark increases, you’ll be able to use that new control in our world too. Become stronger, mentally and physically. And that’s something you want right, to become strong enough to find your mom?”

Find my mom…. Wait that’s right, he saw the boy in my vision, but he must think that boy is my brother or something, someone related to me and my mom. The dark lady said that wasn’t true, her explanation made sense, but….I need to find out the truth. I need Khalid’s help to do that.

“So why do you want me to cut you?”

“I want to see how much of the dark you can control. Sure you can cut things, but the dark lady walked you through that I’m sure. Let us see what you can do on your own, what sort of things you can use the dark for. And since you seem to be inclined towards violence, cutting me might be the easiest way to do that.”

Okay, here it goes. He’s standing only a few feet from me. Since I won’t really hurt him, according to him at least, I’ll try and do a controlled close cut. I won’t always be able to spend couple sending focusing from a distance, I need to be able to hit someone close and fast without cutting myself like I did before.

I raise my fist in front of Khalid, it goes black instantly. Using my powers in the dark feels different, easier. I see the black lines starting to form around me, there mostly in his direction, but a few are still on me, just like last time.

“Wait, before you cut me, try and control the lines. Move them towards me.”

I’m struggling as hard as I can, I’m just focusing on the image of the lines moving to where I want them to go, but they won’t budge. At all.

“I can’t”

“Hmph, it may indeed be impossible, but we’ll never know unless you really try.”

“I am trying.”

I’m trying so hard its starting to get hard to maintain this conversation, I feel like every ounce of energy in me is trying to move this damn lines. Just move a little dammit!

I see a blur in front of me and then an intense pain in my cheek, my legs give out under me and I crash onto the floor.

Khalid is standing on top of me know, his right arm outstretched.

“If you really want to try, I need to give you proper motivation.”