The Never-Ending Staircase

She didn't know how she got here. Goddess, she wasn't even sure where "here" was. Sunlight poured in - bright and cheerful - from the tall window to her left, illuminating a handsome, mahogany stairwell. She bent over the railing and craned her neck until it was sore, her stomach pressing against the spindles with every panicked breath at the dizzying sight below. Millions of steps stared back at her, but the bottom was nowhere in sight.

In a daze, she backed away from the railing and turned to the window, her palm flattening against the glass. A gravel roof stretched out beyond it like an ocean; grey, barren, sizzling with heat from the punishing sun. She seemed to be in the City... but there were no other buildings around. Just the sun, baking everything from its perch in the washed-out blue sky.

She didn't belong here. She needed to get down.

Instinct drove her back to the stairwell, but she stopped on a dime. It had changed. The stairs that angled down mere seconds ago now angled up. But she was already at the top. Wasn't she? Undeterred, her eyes cast all around, searching for an exit. Suddenly, it appeared to her right: a blind corner, with a bright green "DOWN" sign glowing near the top of the wall. She sprinted around it, trusting the sign without question. On the other side, however, all she found were more upward-slanting stairs.

Another corner - with another "DOWN" sign - appeared to her left, then once more to her right. Again and again she followed them, clinging to hope like a buoy adrift at sea. Again and again, it deceived her. The sun burned ever brighter, mocking her with its cheerful warmth. All she felt, however, was cold. The chill of a reality she didn't want to face.

There was no way down.

Frightened as she was, there was something in her that refused to let her give up. Like a moth to a flame, she was drawn back to the window. Her shaking, nimble fingers examined every inch of it she could reach, looking for a latch. A hinge. Anything. As her fruitless search came to a disappointing end, movement on the other side of the glass caught her eye.

A figure stood out on that immense roof. Tall. Black. Faceless. Nameless.

She blinked and rubbed her eyes, thinking - hoping - it was a trick of the light. That figure wasn't there before. She was certain of it. When she clapped eyes on it again, she leapt back from the window automatically with a gasp. It moved. In a single blink, it teleported over twenty leagues. Still quite a ways away, thank the Goddess, but noticeably and uncomfortably closer nonetheless.

Her heart hammered behind her larynx, watching its long, tattered robes flutter in the silent breeze. She didn't dare take her eyes off it again; some unnamed instinct drove her, warning her to keep as much distance as possible between her and it. No matter what, she mustn't let it get any closer. She mustn't let it get in.

Why? She hadn't a clue.

Slowly, deliberately, she backed away, feeling for the stairwell. Her hand found the railing on its own, the lacquered wood cool and smooth as silk under her trembling palm. The figure tilted its head as she began to climb backward, watching her the way a child would a beetle on the ground.

"What are you doing, Mercedes?"

That voice. It filled ever part of her, burrowing deep into her bones. Into her mind. She knew it nearly as well as her own. Sickened to her stomach by the sound of it. A presence brushed her consciousness; cold... foul... scraping... searching... Searching for what, though? The feel of it was so sudden - so unsettling - that she took her eyes off the figure. Just for a moment. When she remembered to look back, her heart stopped cold.

It was standing at the window. Scratching the glass with its withered, twisted claws. Begging to be let in like a cat at the door.

"Let me in, Mercedes. There's no point in fighting."

Mercedes shuddered, trying to block out the voice. She had to remember who she was. Who he was. This was her Mind Palace. Her Dream. No one could enter either without her permission. And he certainly wasn't welcome in them.

Nathaniel Vice.

The moment she remembered his name, her training - her memories - all came flooding back. Mercedes shifted into a Lucid State with just a twitch of her finger, conjuring a double-bladed axe into her grip. With a battle cry that would've made her Foremothers proud, she leapt off the stairs toward Nathaniel's Id, her axe raised to strike. In a single blow, she shattered the glass and hacked it in two. Severing it from shoulder to hip. The staircase crumbled, falling away into a pit of blackness at her feet.

Mercedes awoke with a deep gasp, sweat dripping down her pale, elfin face. Cold, wet stone lay at her back and under her rear, the chill of it seeping right through her tattered sackcloth dress. Still in a daze, she looked at her hands - dirty, and shackled in place to the wall on either side of her head. A glimmer of hope filled her when her clever gold eyes spied a streak of fresh blood on her fingernails. Blood that wasn't hers. Slowly, she raised her head, peering through her stringy navy locks at Nathaniel, a triumphant grin pulling at her lips.

He stood with his back to the far wall, shaking with rage and pain in his finely tailored silver suit. A few strands of his immaculately-styled blond hair had come loose from its slicked back coif, a sure indication that she was wearing him down. That, and the fresh scratches trailing down the right side of his gaunt, sunken face. Nathaniel's wrathful grimace rearranged itself into a haughty frown as he smoothed his hair back into place, his lavender eyes glowing red with pure contempt.

"Why must you be so stubborn, Mercedes?" he chided, "We've been at this for weeks. Just tell me what the Sisterhood is planning, and you'll be free!"

Mercedes tucked her legs underneath her and puffed out her thin chest, returning every inch of Nathaniel's hatred for her.

"You're a talented Mindwalker,Vermin," she said coldly, "...but you're wasting your time. Mother taught me well, and there is nothing you can say or do to break me!"

Nathaniel knelt before her, his hand wrapping around the back of her head. She trembled a little as his fingers dug into her flesh, anchoring in five strategic places from the base of her skull to her temple.

"We shall see, Dreamweaver," he snarled, "We. Shall. See."