Icarus's blog: "Augurs, Martyrs, and Agnostics"

The floor was sloping, creeping up step by steeper step. He was guided to a change. A wall, a door. His hand felt for a handle and pulled an iron ring with a great groan the door opened to musty gasp of the bodies and stillness in the next chamber. It was here that he stopped, here where the lonely, cold, hungry thing left him. Slamming the door shut behind him.

The traveller lit another bunch of moldy rags and found that he was again standing on smooth stone, but what puzzled him was a painting of an upside down horseman some 20 feet away.

He turned his head, held the light high and was disturbed to find that the painting and as he stepped closer he saw that it was bolted at the top and base, it had not slipped, jostled, or dangled to be in this ludicrous position, and it made no sense to hang a painting this way. He deduced that he was somehow on the ceiling.

Upon that realization, he felt his feet hooked by a familiar yank as his body tumbled and was flung to the room's floor up above.

(It's a very odd sensation to fall up. I recommend you try it at least once.)

The still smoldering lump of rags went skidding from his grip, as he felt the dull smart of landing on the floor, a delightfully matted carpet in contrast to that brief eternity he had spent crawling along dull, cool cement. He was however, not sure when up would be down again, so he took a few careful steps with his tip toes, wondering if he had sprung some magician's ancient trap, or if the realization itself that he was upside down were enough to topple him.

He was fortunate enough to find a table set for dinner with an ornate glass lamp at the center, which he lit and carried delicately with him- not for the merit of its beauty and fine patterns woven into the face of the glass, but for the fact that it was the only sustainable light source he had found in hours.

For some reason it twisted his heart to see the table set only for one. One cup, one fork, one knife, one plate. A known emptiness crept into him. Such an extravagant hall, end to end a long sprint, hanging portraits of lords, nobles, knights and saints, no doubt the progenitors and previous masters of the tower, gilded lamps, glittering baubles, plauqes, cabinets, and dusty tapestries, and a pitiable solitary table for one.

What had struck the last lord of this tower? He had obviously been a man of great wealth and influence. The traveller meandered about the room, searching for some standout clue, some portrait of the lord himself, perhaps covered in pox, or deformed by birth, or mishappen by plague?

But no instruments of healing, no well kept knives for bleeding, no vials, no potions, no quicksilver, no balms or ground up bones.

Perhaps such things had been kept in his chambers, which might not have been too far from this room, he tried several doors. A few were held fast by locks, he was afraid to try the door he had came from. He could not muster the strength or brazen curiosity to place his hand on its handle. At the end of the chamber was an unlocked door which, with a few moments to accumulate his nerves, he pushed open and stepped into a hall of doors. More numerous than he could count or comprehend. The space within this corridor was impossible, like some trick of mirrors into infinity.

He turned and went from a brisk walk to a full run, and doors on each side went blurring past him until he was out of breath. He stopped to let the stitch in his side work itself out, and looked down the corridor only to see more doors. He looked back, expecting to see a pack of unnamed horrors swarming toward him, or a jet black void, but more horrible than either of those, to his surprise, were doors.

All the same. Red varnish. White border. Large red diamond carpet. He took his sword from off his back and left a deep gouge in one of the doors and walked onward, counting his steps aloud on the way. Expecting after a few minutes that he would encounter that same gouge, but that moment never came.

He doubled back, counted his steps back and found the gouge exactly where it should have been.

"Up is down" he said aloud, cradling his head for an impending crash against the ceiling.

"Down is up?" Again, nothing.

"What the hell is this place?"

He tried the door with the mark. The handle turned but the door did not budge. He kicked, hacked a few times, and even slammed his aching body against it. The frame gave a slight wiggle, but the door stood fast.

"I don't suppose you'll just let me in if I ask?"

The door gave no response.

Of course, seeing as it was a door.

"Who would leave so many doors locked?" ... unless he was working under the mistaken impression that they were all locked. He resumed walking down the hall, first trying every handle, eventually skipping a few here and there, finally going long strides and only occassionally remembering that he was trying to open these doors as his mind continued to churn to solve the obscene oddness of this place.

Up was down.

...

and this hall is impossible.

A stone was a portal.

and...

He bent down to look at the red and black diamonds on the floor, he placed his fingers upon them and pulled them back, completely unsurprised by the ripple and jiggle they made. As if he had placed his fingers in a pool of water.

When the ripples subsided he could see his reflection in the floor.

He watched, as the image very confidently strode toward one of the doors and knocked smartly three times- the door in the reflection swung open.

The traveller looked up and found that the door corresponding to the one in the image, was now ajar.

"Where will this take me?" He grumbled at the vision, but he found that he was no longer reflected there, perhaps his reflection had already stepped into the next room.

He didn't see any struggle, or bloody chunks of meat on the door frame, so he was certain his death would be slow, violent, and painful if he stepped through this door.

Anything was better than this weirdness, he thought.

And he stepped through the open door.

Up was still up.

Down was still down.

For the moment anyway.