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fandomweekly2025-10-10 01:28 pm
badly_knitted) wrote in fandomweekly2025-10-10 01:28 pm
Entry tags:
[#277] Illusions And Truth (The Fantastic Journey)
Theme Prompt: #277 – Abandoned Mansion
Title: Illusions And Truth
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 1000
Summary: It had been a beautiful home only hours ago, but now it was a crumbling ruin.
No more than a couple of hours ago, this had been a beautiful house, in a picturesque woodland setting, a place of grace and elegance, perfectly maintained, tastefully decorated, and furnished with carefully selected antiques from earth’s past. Everywhere had been spotless, and planters of ferns and other greenery had enhanced every room, but now…
It was as if time had leapt forward fifty years or more, and those decades of neglect had taken their toll on Krysta and Kedryn’s once pristine home. The drapes at the windows were mouldering, the furniture crumbling, afflicted with woodworm and dry rot, a thick layer of dust covered everything, along with huge swathes of cobwebs, where large, black spiders scuttled.
Paint was peeling off the walls, lumps of plaster dropping from the ceilings, leaving the bare laths visible… how long would it be before the upstairs floors collapsed? Scott had been up there, looking for Willaway, and he’d said it was like a mausoleum up there, the condition of the rooms even worse than here. There was an air of abandonment over the entire place, like no one had lived there in forever.
But that couldn’t be, because they’d dined there last night, eating off fine china, in a formal dining room packed with some of the finest antiques Jonathan Willaway had ever seen, liberated from their time periods by Kedryn and Krista, collectors with impeccable taste in such things. They’d spent the night in a comfortably furnished room, only now it looked as dusty and unused as the rest of the house.
Their bags, bedrolls, and other belongings were as covered in dust as everything else, but still seemed out of place, too new amid the time-worn surroundings. Shaking the dust from groundsheets, and retrieving their bags and backpacks from where they’d been left overnight, the travellers set about gathering everything they’d brought with them, intent only on getting out of there before the entire house could collapse around them.
Now that they had the stone they’d come here to find, there was no reason to stay anyway, although there was still the question of where Kedryn and Krysta were right now. No one had seen either of them since Scott and Fred had been separated from them on the morning ride, and the only person they’d encountered in the caves below the house had been the mysterious old man, with his cryptic warnings and veiled threats. The caves had been so full of echoes and shining, reflective surfaces, that not even Varian, with all his abilities, had been able to sense anything with any degree of clarity. It had all been a frustratingly confusing jumble to his senses.
Back inside the house, however, leaving it was proving more difficult than it should have. First, Jonathan found himself locked in the closet when the doorknob came off in his hand, and despite calling for help from the others, who were only a few feet away, no one seemed to hear him. Certainly no one came to his rescue, and then the closet’s back wall started to move, making him even more eager to get out. He didn’t like enclosed spaces!
Then Scott heard his mother and went looking for her, only to have her tell him she didn’t have a son. He missed her so badly, wanted nothing more than to get home to her, but now she didn’t even KNOW him!
Fred heard Scott shouting for help, but Varian didn’t seem aware of anything, just continued to pack his bag as if nothing strange was happening. Still, if Scott was hurt, Fred couldn’t just leave the boy. He was a doctor, and responsible for Scott’s safety, even more than Varian was. He was friends with Scott’s father, had known the boy for years, thought of him almost as a kid brother…
Varian, despite his mental abilities, wasn’t immune to whatever was affecting his travelling companions. Abandoning his packing, walking as if in a trance, he entered the dining room, approached the windows, reaching for one of the painted panels depicting flowers. They reminded him of the lilies Gwenith had picked for him the day he met her, sitting in the garden beneath a tree. The flowers he’d placed on that very spot two days later in memory of the woman he’d wed and lost only the day before.
It was only when he found himself falling endlessly that he’d understood something was playing tricks on his mind, and not just his but the minds of his friends as well. Illusions, built of their own nightmares… The stone: it had to be. Nothing else had changed since the previous day. Was it testing them? Determining whether or not they were worthy?
What had the Rider said, the riddle he’d given them? Approaching, see with other eyes. Had the house always been this crumbling building, and they just hadn’t seen it that way because they didn’t have the stone in their possession? But now they did, and they had to break these new illusions, reject them, accept only the truth…
And then get the Hell out of there!
They had what they came for, the stone the Rider had told them they needed to find if they wanted to get off the island and return to their own times, but in finding it, they’d taken some kind of magic from this place, reducing it from an elegant home to a crumbling ruin, and stripping the illusion of youth from their hosts as well.
Krysta and Kedryn now looked as old and broken down as their home, and Varian would have returned the crystal to them, even knowing that without it there’d be no way for him and his companions to return home. But illusion was not reality, and their hosts had hidden from their own truth for long enough. Sometimes, however harsh, reality was better.
As for the small band of travellers, they still had many miles to go, trying to get home.
The End
It was as if time had leapt forward fifty years or more, and those decades of neglect had taken their toll on Krysta and Kedryn’s once pristine home. The drapes at the windows were mouldering, the furniture crumbling, afflicted with woodworm and dry rot, a thick layer of dust covered everything, along with huge swathes of cobwebs, where large, black spiders scuttled.
Paint was peeling off the walls, lumps of plaster dropping from the ceilings, leaving the bare laths visible… how long would it be before the upstairs floors collapsed? Scott had been up there, looking for Willaway, and he’d said it was like a mausoleum up there, the condition of the rooms even worse than here. There was an air of abandonment over the entire place, like no one had lived there in forever.
But that couldn’t be, because they’d dined there last night, eating off fine china, in a formal dining room packed with some of the finest antiques Jonathan Willaway had ever seen, liberated from their time periods by Kedryn and Krista, collectors with impeccable taste in such things. They’d spent the night in a comfortably furnished room, only now it looked as dusty and unused as the rest of the house.
Their bags, bedrolls, and other belongings were as covered in dust as everything else, but still seemed out of place, too new amid the time-worn surroundings. Shaking the dust from groundsheets, and retrieving their bags and backpacks from where they’d been left overnight, the travellers set about gathering everything they’d brought with them, intent only on getting out of there before the entire house could collapse around them.
Now that they had the stone they’d come here to find, there was no reason to stay anyway, although there was still the question of where Kedryn and Krysta were right now. No one had seen either of them since Scott and Fred had been separated from them on the morning ride, and the only person they’d encountered in the caves below the house had been the mysterious old man, with his cryptic warnings and veiled threats. The caves had been so full of echoes and shining, reflective surfaces, that not even Varian, with all his abilities, had been able to sense anything with any degree of clarity. It had all been a frustratingly confusing jumble to his senses.
Back inside the house, however, leaving it was proving more difficult than it should have. First, Jonathan found himself locked in the closet when the doorknob came off in his hand, and despite calling for help from the others, who were only a few feet away, no one seemed to hear him. Certainly no one came to his rescue, and then the closet’s back wall started to move, making him even more eager to get out. He didn’t like enclosed spaces!
Then Scott heard his mother and went looking for her, only to have her tell him she didn’t have a son. He missed her so badly, wanted nothing more than to get home to her, but now she didn’t even KNOW him!
Fred heard Scott shouting for help, but Varian didn’t seem aware of anything, just continued to pack his bag as if nothing strange was happening. Still, if Scott was hurt, Fred couldn’t just leave the boy. He was a doctor, and responsible for Scott’s safety, even more than Varian was. He was friends with Scott’s father, had known the boy for years, thought of him almost as a kid brother…
Varian, despite his mental abilities, wasn’t immune to whatever was affecting his travelling companions. Abandoning his packing, walking as if in a trance, he entered the dining room, approached the windows, reaching for one of the painted panels depicting flowers. They reminded him of the lilies Gwenith had picked for him the day he met her, sitting in the garden beneath a tree. The flowers he’d placed on that very spot two days later in memory of the woman he’d wed and lost only the day before.
It was only when he found himself falling endlessly that he’d understood something was playing tricks on his mind, and not just his but the minds of his friends as well. Illusions, built of their own nightmares… The stone: it had to be. Nothing else had changed since the previous day. Was it testing them? Determining whether or not they were worthy?
What had the Rider said, the riddle he’d given them? Approaching, see with other eyes. Had the house always been this crumbling building, and they just hadn’t seen it that way because they didn’t have the stone in their possession? But now they did, and they had to break these new illusions, reject them, accept only the truth…
And then get the Hell out of there!
They had what they came for, the stone the Rider had told them they needed to find if they wanted to get off the island and return to their own times, but in finding it, they’d taken some kind of magic from this place, reducing it from an elegant home to a crumbling ruin, and stripping the illusion of youth from their hosts as well.
Krysta and Kedryn now looked as old and broken down as their home, and Varian would have returned the crystal to them, even knowing that without it there’d be no way for him and his companions to return home. But illusion was not reality, and their hosts had hidden from their own truth for long enough. Sometimes, however harsh, reality was better.
As for the small band of travellers, they still had many miles to go, trying to get home.
The End