Robert didn't plummet.
Though he was unsure if air existed in the liminal void, Wind magic still worked as intended and he still breathed. The dimension was partially conceptual so things did what they were meant to do. A glider was meant to fly and was an integral part of its concept. So, he didn't plummet. But despite that, his fright became even bigger.
Because he looked down. More than a dozen miles underneath him and double that ahead, he could see the target island. Then, without anything to block visibility, he could see the target island about three dozen miles below him and two-thirds that ahead. Then another small target island sixty-something miles down and two dozen miles ahead. And then a tiny mote of dust, too small to register in his sight.
But that wasn't the scariest part. Because exactly twenty-five miles straight underneath him, he could see his glider. This realm was a house of mirrors that could inflict acrophobia to anyone. Because if he fell right now, he would fall forever. And if he fell right now in the real world, he would fall forever without seeing a speck of land.
Robert didn't plummet. But he was so scared his shaking hands were causing the glider to tremble. And deviate. His limbs were frozen, his mind locked, his thoughts spiraling. It was one of those cursed places where one would be fine until the moment they looked down.
Perhaps the haze was a blessing in disguise. It kept people sane. Because he was sure that if he looked up, he would see himself. That if he could see through the glider's canvas. He couldn't.
Forget the damn exercise. Robert only wanted to feel the ground underneath him. Find a passage and leave this deranged house of mirrors. He'd rather fight slimes for a whole year than glide to the island after that one.
Robert decided that he was afraid of flying. That he was afraid of heights. He remembered the pain of breaking his legs as they fell down the vacuum realm and into Cerebelon's stony flesh. Because he was sure that realm was also bottomless and Cerebelon was floating in their own gravity.
Fuck this. He wanted to yank the Prime Vestige out of his soul and become a normal person again. He wanted to stop flying. But no. He wanted to continue flying because the alternative was to drop.
He forgot he had a floating creature that could carry him. One he could control through their beast bond. He forgot he had people behind him. Robert aimed at the next island and set his glider on a crash course straight to it. He wasn't thinking. He didn't intend to land the glider. He just wanted to hug the ground and kiss it and eat dirt and get something solid underneath his feet and make his stomach stop lurching and churning.
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He threw up. His breakfast became a stream of particles that would forever mark the path between these two islands in the liminal void.
This realm was deceptively lethal. He agreed one hundred percent with that statement. He was glad he'd used the bathroom before they set out to fly.
The island became bigger and bigger. Robert aimed for the metallic tower in the middle of it. His glider kept picking more and more speed. His constant descent at an angle of roughly thirty degrees converted his potential energy to kinetic and that meant he was going...
OH, SO FAST OHMYGODIMGONNACRASH.
Robert suddenly didn't want to meet the ground. It was going to hurt. He was going to die. The rocks were hard and he was soft. No-no-no-no-no he wanted to go back and keep flying. Yet he didn't pull any of the glider's controls.
Robert just closed his eyes and wished he could just be there, standing next to the tower, skipping the part where he reached it straight to the end. And without the painful part. His eyelids were stuck in the so-open-they-might-be-inside-his-skull position, his mouth was wide open. The ground came faster and faster. His mind could only think about avoiding the pain of the crash.
Then everything went black. The island vanished. Robert felt another thing. The eldritch and unnamable and incomprehensible creatures beyond the veil in the deep void and the edge of reality were there, waiting for him. Would he become a snack? Would he be deleted from existence? Would he ascend and join them? Would he be shredded into strips of flesh but not allowed to die so he would forever lament and regret his choices?
He just wanted to be gently deposited on the ground. His mind was so out of it that he was forgetting how to use language. He wanted to be safe. On the island. Without the pain and the hurt and the fear and the crash and the broken bones and the death and he wanted to sleep and be safe and have his mother come back from the dead to tuck him in and what?
Robert saw his whole life pass in front of him. All of his bad choices, then a few of his good ones but just because he didn't have much good choices because good choices were hard and he was dumb and stupid and why did he try to enter the liminal void while flying he was an idiot and he hated it and he didn't want to feel like that anymore.
He just wanted it to end. Skip to the last page of the book without reading the middle. Go straight to Campbell's magical flight and share the bounty of the quest with humanity. The part most authors left out of the books because the attention-starved readers didn't care about the story after the protagonist killed the BBEG and scored a night of torrid loving with the heroine. Maybe it was the author's fault for not making them care.
It was a skill issue.
Robert's conscious mind blacked out.
He didn't get a cliffhanger. There was no cliff to hang off of. The cliffhanger got him.