Chapter 1391 – Within the Sanctum part 1

Alis went to scream, but something was placed over her mouth, preventing her cry from escaping. She struggled, but it was useless, she was gripped tightly by invisible forces.

Were they invisible? Or was it that she had gone blind?! There was nothing but darkness around her, so total and complete she couldn’t see anything of herself, not even the nose in the middle of her face.

A scent reached her, so soft that it almost didn’t exist, a breath of pheromones.

“You must be silent here. You are safe.”

Alis concentrated hard, trying to use her newly awakened ability to interpret the scent-based language of the Colony.

“Am I blind?” she asked, desperate for an answer.

She got a reproachful tap of an antenna on her head, and again the whisper-soft scent reached her.

“Of course not, it is simply dark. Speak softly here. You are within the Sanctum. If you are calm, rise, and follow me.”

The invisible forces binding her in place vanished, and Alis shakily rose to her feet. She wanted to ask the nearby ant where they were, what was happening, but they were already moving. How exactly she knew that, she couldn’t say, but there was no doubt it was true.

So, step by step, she followed, staggering into the darkness with her hands waving in front of her face.

She hit her head more times than she could count, but the ant was patient, waiting just out of her reach until she was recovered and ready to follow once more. It felt like they travelled for days, but it could have been only hours, or perhaps minutes. Alis could feel her sense of time stretching and becoming thin as she wandered through this seemingly endless tunnel of pure darkness.

“Stop.”

It was the first time the ant had spoken to her in… some time… and Alis felt as if she could detect the words more clearly than before. Was the ant speaking louder? Or had her ‘hearing’ adjusted due to being unable to see?

“It seems you are still unaware of it.”

Alis frowned.

“Unaware of what?”

There was no response for a moment, as if the ant were weighing its words.

“You are no longer hitting your head as much as before.”

It was a simple observation, a statement of fact, but it hit the Templar like a thunderbolt. It was true, she was hitting her head less, but how?! Walking through the dark didn’t necessarily make one better at walking through the dark. No matter how practised she became, she still couldn’t see.

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She inhaled deeply through her nose.

It was there, ever so faint, words, messages, guidance. The scent had been so tenuous she hadn’t even realised it was there, but subconsciously had begun to follow it, reacting without knowing.

“You’ve been guiding me this whole time.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Follow me.”