InsaneJournal

When the light faded, the cage and angels had gone. The room the group would find themselves in now was small. It looked too small to fit the whole group but it did and comfortably. If any of the group were to move the distance they moved away and the distance between them and the room’s walls would not match up unless they were trying to approach either of the two doors. Paintings of places hung from the walls. Some seemed familiar.

“Thou art I, and I am thou.” Continued to echo throughout the room, first in a strange voice until the echo distorted enough that each group member heard it in their own. In the first of the paintings,  a view of the countryside around Iburi, a butterfly moves.

“The enemy you’ve glimpsed will try to break you in both worlds.” The voice continues, now in each group member’s own voice and native tongue and worded in the words they would use. The butterfly has vanished from the first painting and now moves through a picture of a hospital ward, stopping to land on a bunch of flowers that have been left for a painted patient. “And weak bonds will only make their task easier. A human’s true power is what comes from outside, not from within, and no creature can be stronger than the bonds it has formed.” The butterfly moves though a plane of grass that was a little too green and plants too exotic and beautiful to be real. It glitches though the trunk of a tree and into the next picture, a photograph of Nanakamado that the group may recognise from seeing it hung in the school‘s reception area. “And without such bonds, you will surely fall. Continue as you are and there will be no hope.”

The butterfly moves from a grand oil painting of a western church into what appears to be an illustration for a fairy tale. A small gingerbread house in a dark wood. “I cannot do this a second time. Should you encounter a dire situation a second time I can save you but I cannot prevent you from experiencing death and such a thing would not be pleasant.” From the woods the butterfly moves into the remaining paintings but they are unclear and the image moves and swirls like water. Even counting them is difficult, there seem to be a different number every time such a thing is attempted.

“There are two more of you waiting to be found. From today on you will be able to tell someone with the potential to hold your power by sight.” The voice becomes more faint and distorted as the butterfly moves through the paintings that are further from the clear ones. “This place is not in your world and it is not in paradise. It will always be a safe place. Remember this, you may need it in the future.”

And in one of the swirling photographs the dark paint washes over the butterfly.

Both doors lead to a stairway that leads down to the school roof, one in paradise.