The light from the three stained-glass windows all seemed to converge on the sword. Alexandra felt like she could almost cry tears of joy. After all of the travel and pain, the sword she had searched for was in front of her. It was real, and everything she went through might have been worth it after all.

  It was not unlike the sword that Alexandra already carried. It was a one-handed sword with a straight, double-edged blade and a crossguard, though unlike The Eagle’s Shadow, the hilt was far less ornate. The cross-guard was just a cross-guard, a piece of metal that ran perpendicular to the blade. Even though Alexandra had no real knowledge of blacksmithing, she could tell that whoever made the sword’s hilt had no intention of ever placing gemstones into it. The only two non-utilitarian features on the weapon were an inscription on the blade and a picture of a burning tree engraved into the pommel. The engraving was written in Reman, which Alexandra was able to roughly translate as either “Deeds not blood” or “Deeds instead of blood”.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind. I can still take you back,” The boy-thing offered. Alexandra shook her head.

  “No. I’m not leaving without the sword,” Alexandra responded. The boy-thing frowned.

  “Okay, but I will warn you that, once you touch it there is no going back. You will… experience things that you’d rather not,” The boy-thing warned.

  “If I don’t get the sword and save my brother then I will experience a life that I’d rather not…” Alexandra replied.

  “A life you’d rather not experience?” The boy-thing repeated. It then turned away from Alexandra and sighed. After a moment it turned its face back towards her.

  “I will wait here until the deed is done. When… When this is over, I will guide you back to where you came from. Your friends will be waiting for you, but I cannot cannot guarantee that you’ll be the same person they entered the cave with,” The boy-thing warned as it looked Alexandra in the eyes.

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Alexandra said. ‘It’s okay if the girl who came into this cave doesn’t come out’, she thought, ‘She’s not the person who matters; She’s not the person that the world needs’.

  “Before I touch the sword, is there anything else I should know about this place? Anything that I need to worry about besides the sword?” Alexandra asked. The boy-thing shook its head.

  “As I’ve said before, this is not a place… we are… Do you remember what I said about the cottage in the dark forest and the hole in the wall?”

  “Yeah…”

  “This… room, for lack of a better word, is like a cork stopper placed in the hole in the wall. It is not as strong as hardwood or stone, but it can keep certain things from entering,” the boy-thing attempted to explain.

  “This place doesn’t exactly look like a piece of cork…” Alexandra commented while taking a look around the ‘room’. She tried not to let her eyes linger on the stained glass windows, lest she be caught in another torrent of emotion. Still, she was able to catch glimpses of the two other stained glass windows. One was of a young woman with long dark brown hair and fair skin. Alexandra instantly felt a twinge of regret before moving her gaze to the next window. The third and final window depicted a young man wearing a dark brown hooded robe. She looked at this window a little while longer. She quickly felt a mixture of anger and pain. She felt like this man hurt her, betrayed her. She wanted to tear the window out from the wall and smash it into a million pieces before she forced herself to close her eyes and turn her head away.

  “I didn’t mean to say it was actually cork,” The boy-thing responded.

  “I know. It’s just that this… ‘room’... it’s not like a piece of cork. It was clearly made with purpose. The placement of the sword at its center, the stained glass windows. It was made according to some design,” Alexandra retorted.

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  “And what if it was?” The boy-thing responded, “Why does that matter?”

  “Because, I want to know what’s going on here,” Alexandra replied. The boy-thing frowned.

  “I… There are things I cannot tell you, but I will try to say as much as I can. You are right, this ‘room’ was indeed made deliberately by… by someone. The wound, the hole in the cottage wall, it has hurt people in the past. Things from the dark forest entered the cottage through the hole. Someone wanted to put a stop to that, so they made this ‘room’, this cork. The ‘room’ is a sort of mechanism. You can think of it like a potter’s wheel, you’ve seen a potter’s wheel before, right?” The boy-thing asked.

  “Yeah,” Alexandra said while nodding her head.

  “The cork’s existence, its ability to act as a barrier between the cottage and the dark forest, is sustained by the sword much like how the spinning of a potter’s wheel is sustained by a potter working the pedal of a potter’s wheel,” The boy-thing explained.

  “Are you implying that if I remove the sword from this ‘room’ then it will disappear and we will both fall into the dark forest?” Alexandra asked. The boy-thing shook his head.

  “No. Much like how a potter’s wheel keeps spinning for a little bit after the potter steps away from the pedal, the cork will remain in place for a little bit of time, more than enough time for you and your friends to get to a safe distance,” The boy-thing responded.

  “But, what about the hole? If the cork goes away, then doesn’t that mean that the hole will be completely open once again?” Alexandra responded. The boy-thing did something that almost appeared to be a smile.

  “The someone that put the cork in the hole already thought of that. They thought someone might be able to remove the sword, so they put a temporary solution in place for if and when that happened,” the boy-thing answered.

  “A temporary solution?” Alexandra repeated.

  “Yes. It is a much cruder way of doing things. It should seal the hole for two or three hundred years. Hopefully, that should be enough time for someone to make a new piece of cork…” The boy-thing explained.

  “Okay, but you still haven’t explained why the cork looks the way it does,” Alexandra said. The boy-thing nodded.

  “Well, I wasn’t sure if you will understand, but if you insist, I guess I will try to explain. The truth is that there are basic rules about how the inside of the cottage works and how the dark forest works. These rules are not the same,”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “In the cottage, two stones of the same volume and shape will always fall to the ground at the same speed. The length of a hypotenuse of a right triangle will always be the square root of the sum of the lengths of the triangle’s legs after they have each been squared. There is always a temperature at which water freezes and a temperature at which water boils. There are tangible objects that can be touched and shaped with hands and ideas that exist only in minds. In the dark forest, none of these rules apply. The cork, the ‘room’ that you’re standing in, is just as much of a tangible object as it is an idea from someone’s mind.”

  “You mean like how a painting exists in the painter’s mind before it is put to canvas?” Alexandra asked. The boy-thing shook its head.

  “No, not at all. The paint and canvas is just a medium by which the painter’s idea can be rendered as a tangible object in the cottage. This room was made with no such medium, something that is only possible because it is in an estuary of sorts; it is an estuary where the dark forest meets the inside of the cottage,” the boy-thing finished. The boy-thing and Alexandra stood in silence for a moment as she let everything sink in.

  “I’m still going to take the sword,” Alexandra declared, “but, for what it’s worth, if I do save my brother, I will do everything in my power to get you a new cork.”

  “For what it is worth, I think you believe in what you’re saying. I would prefer if you did not have to come here, but I will still pray for your success,” The boy-thing said.

  “Thank you,” Alexandra said. She paused for a moment and then smiled, “If I don’t succeed; if this sword kills me and I die here, I want you to know that I think you are a good thing.”

  The boy-thing smiled.

  “Thank you,” it said.

  The two of them looked at each other and understood that there was nothing left to say. The boy-thing’s smiled faded away as it watched Alexandra walked up to the sword and place her hands on its grip.