Call of the Void
July 2023 | by Dani
Fiction | Ittoril
She thinks she was too hard on him. Another month had passed before Cillian returned. It was the new year, and when Belle saw him, he just looked tired.
"I returned the damn painting," he had said, softly, and then he left.
He hadn't come down to Artefact Storage the day after, and he had barely responded on the many times after when she came to knock on his door.
It had been like that for three days.
Now, Belle is sitting in her office with Marlin, the Academy Spymaster.
"So, you're telling me that you sent him off, on a four week trip to Reseggia, to return this painting?"
She sighs, guiltily. "Yes."
"And now, after he came back, he suddenly won't even show up to class. Completely retreated from his studies."
"I've tried talking to him, I really have, but I don't know why he's acting like this any more than you do. I'm sorry, I really am, but I genuinely don't know what you're wanting me to do here, Marlin."
"Well, perhaps, before you sent my student off on a potentially dangerous mission, you should've at least consulted me? or Jan? You say you were worried about this going public? Half of my whole job is to make sure this sort of stuff doesn't. And even then, if you were certain we had to return the painting, you could've asked me to send someone more capable to do it instead of... instead of sending my pupil off blindly!"
"I... I'm sorry," she said. "I realise I should've handled it better, I'll admit that. But what are we able to do about it now?"
He glances away for a moment. "Cillian always was hanging out with you. If something went wrong, it's your responsibility to make sure he's okay."
"Well, clearly something went wrong, but he doesn't seem to want to talk about it." She sighs. She really was worried about him. "I think... I think that, whatever happened, Cillian wants to be left alone right now. And if that's what he wants, then I'll leave him be."
There is silence for a moment. Marlin speaks. "Talk to him."
"Just, give him time, Marlin."
8 Gynae 2030
Dr. Hart,
I am writing you concerning the offer I previously made you regarding the sale of what I believed to be one of Vidius' lost paintings. I am afraid I will have to rescind this offer. It is dreadful news.
In the period since I wrote that letter, I have oft been occupied with the handling of affairs in Milfordshire, and have been away from my manor in Silomouth. With a retrospective eye, I wish I had never left, as, upon my return, I found a terrible sight in my living room. The painting lay on the floor, torn to pieces.
It really is such a shame for such an artefact to have been destroyed so ruefully, and it truly was such a valuable piece. I will be looking into finding the culprit of this act, and I assure you I will be doing so with the utmost effort.
With deepest apologies,
Mr. Pedigree Shrew
Chief Barrister of Standard Holdings, LLC.
36 Whitbury Park
Silomouth, Reseggia
Belle hart knocks on the door.
"Hello, Cillian?" she says, nervously.
There is no reply.
"I'm sorry for being so hard on you. It- It wasn't fair of me."
There is silence for a moment, and then she knocks on the door again. This time, it slowly rolls open.
Cillian's dorm room was small, and it was dark. Despite the fact it was two in the afternoon, he had the window blinds folded up. At the moment he was sitting on his bed, with his knees up, looking at the floor.
She closes the door gently as she can, and sits down beside him.
"I got a letter this morning. From Shrew."
He doesn't look up. "Did you?"
It wasn't really a question.
"Is it alright if I ask what happened?"
"I... I don't know how to explain what happened. You won't believe me. You won't understand."
"I'll try to."
He looks up at her, and she feels as though she sees distain in his eyes for a moment. She feels terrible.
He begins, anyways.
"I... I didn't realise immediately, but the morning I arrived in Silomouth was New Year's Eve. I got in the same way I did the first time. But this time, of course, I was carrying the painting. I remember, I was holding either edge of the frame." He raises his hands and mimes it out. "But I never touched the actual painting. Not in my whole trip here and back had I ever touched the painting.
"It felt darker then last time in that room. There was still nobody home. I set my candle on the table and looked up at that blank spot on the wall above the mantle where the painting had been. I remember climbing that mantle, holding the... holding the painting in front of me. At some point I had to twist around so I was facing away from the wall. And that's when I slipped. I placed my foot wrong somewhere, I think, and I suddenly lost my balance. I instinctually tried to catch myself on the painting below me, and in doing so, I went to place my hand on the actual canvas. I was worried, at the time, that I would break it, that my hand would go right through."
He seems to take a while to figure out how to say this next bit.
"My hand, however, never hit the canvas. I had my eyes closed for a period of time, and I didn't see what happened — but I remember gasping, and feeling my heart skip a beat, as I could feel myself fall farther than I should have been able to. The air around me went colder, and I felt light on my skin, and behind my eyelids. I continued to plummet until I felt my other hand desperately get a hold on to something." He covers his face in his hands. "My eyes were closed for that entire time, but knowing what I know now I can picture it. I can picture exactly what had happened."
He shivers.
"I had fallen through the painting.
"When I opened my eyes, I wasn't in the same room anymore. I was... I was surrounded, on all sides, by a sea of golden clouds looming like mountains in the distance. And then I was there, in the middle of it all, dangling by one hand, from a tiny, floating picture frame.
"When I looked down, there was nothing. No ground, just an obscene drop into oblivion. There was nothing else there but me and the clouds. I..."
He doesn't say anything for a while. Whenever he opens his mouth, as if to speak, he abruptly shuts it again. Eventually, he manages to say something.
"You can't... You can't comprehend what it was like, in there. I was in a place bigger than I had ever seen before. There were clouds there that were more massive than I had ever even attempted to comprehend. I was like a speck in an unknown spot of the universe. A spot that continues forever, that had no beginning, and will have no end. I carried that despicable painting the whole way here and back without knowing, without even knowing what it contained. It's not right for such a place to exist.
"I was so afraid of losing my grip, of falling into that abyss, of feeling my own weightlessness as I dropped, and of the frame receding away until I couldn't see. You can't imagine. I can't..." He pauses for a moment, seemingly unsatisfied with himself. "I can't describe it. I can't."
She tries to place a hand on his shoulder, reassuringly. "I... I think I understand."
"No, you don't." He says, firmly. "You haven't seen the painting. You haven't been inside it. How could you possibly understand? How could you understand anything? You just sit in your ivory tower and collect things others have left behind for you, things which you have no experience of, and yet you pretend that you comprehend anything of which you talk about."
He turns away briskly. They sit in silence for a moment. Eventually, he slowly turns back and looks at the ground.
"I eventually got out. It was horrible. It was like crawling through a window. I don't know how long I had been in there. I don't think I care. It could've been minutes or days. How could such a place possibly care for such a measly thing as time?
"I sat in the floor of the living room for several minutes after, looking around. I described it like this last time, but I mean it now. Everything felt different in there. Everything was unfamiliar, as if, as if the uncanniness of the painting had spread to everything around me. Nothing's... Nothing's felt familiar since. Everything feels off." He glances briefly at the window blinds. "I can't stand to see the sky any more. It reminds me too much of that place.
"I remember feeling, as I sat, that that room felt like the entire universe. That there was nothing outside but an endless dark." He pauses for a moment, and then starts chuckling softly. "It was New Year's Eve that night, wasn't it? It was bloody New Year's Eve. I didn't even realise. When I looked back at the painting, I felt so... so... Ugh, god. It's this horrible feeling. You feel like you're in awe, but you're absolutely disgusted at the same time. I didn't think. I just drew my knife and swung it in front of me.
"In my mind, that thing still looked like a window. I couldn't imagine it as anything close to a painting anymore.
"And yet, as my knife cut across it, the thing split in two."
He doesn't talk after that. Neither does belle know what to say.
So they just sit in silence.
A month has passed. Belle sits in her office, thinking. Cillian had since returned to his studies, but Marlin said he still never seemed fully present.
And he hadn't come back to Artefact Storage since.
She had had an artist try to recreate the painting just how Cillian had described it. When he saw it, he said it wasn't right. It now hangs in the Vidius Gallery, in absence of the real thing.
But what really occupies her mind at the moment is what Cillian had said to her. He said that she couldn't understand. Not that she didn't, but that she couldn't.
She thinks she gets what Cillian meant.
She had never seen the painting that she had heard so much about. She finds herself regretful of that fact, but reckons that, if she had ever actually seen the painting, then she never would've had Cillian return it.