What happens when you wake up in a place where waking up or even falling asleep is impossible? Well, simply said, don't think about it! That is the one rule I've learned about Void. Very few things here make sense and laws and established facts change about as often as the direction of the wind in the mortal world. However, at first, I didn't know that, so as I opened my eyes and found myself lying on a relatively soft material, the first thing that came to my mind was a stream of questions. How did I get here? What happened? And where even was I? I looked around and just at the first glance I would guess that I was inside that big metal sphere I saw not too long ago. It was massive and filled with all sorts of objects, which only remotely looked like furniture. Then I realized something - Where was Shade? I could not see him anywhere, and the silence that filled the place was also quite unusual since that bastard always loved to talk.

"Well well, looks like I fished out a thinker," a rasping feminine voice came from somewhere behind my head. I did not recognize it. Could it be that there were people here? I wasn't alone? Without a moment of hesitation, I wanted to turn around, but as soon as I moved, this unknown person placed a sword on my throat.

"What is your name, when were you born, and how much is 247 times 768?" she asked.

"What?! Hold on! I'm not an enemy here!"

"Yeah, I bet. But any crazy person would say that. Now answer!"

"You won't scare me. I can't die here. This is..." I remember stopping in the middle of the sentence, and then all of sudden, I woke up again in the exact same place.

"Great, you're awake again," the person said and threatened me again with their weapon too close to my head.

"What is this? Some time loop?!"

"No, but it can be. Prove to me you are not gone by answering the questions. If you won't, I will kill you again, and before you regenerate and wake up, I'll toss you into the depths of Void. So? What'll it be?" I had no more intentions to disobey her. The idea of being alone again with nobody but Shade scared the hell out of me.

"Edward Wright, 19th of September 2039, and... what was that last bit again?"

"How much is... 527 times 692?" she asked, but I could tell the numbers were different, at least in the hundreds.

"How the fuck am I supposed to know?! Do I look like a calculator to you?"

"Good, you're not insane," she replied and put away her weapon."

Only now was I allowed to turn around and look at her. She was a tall woman with long blond hair and green eyes. Her face had quite a few scars, namely on her forehead, cheek, and lip, which had taken away quite a lot of symmetry from her face. Her clothes were torn apart. Quite literally. The shirt she wore had barely been kept together, tied around the chest by what seemed to once have been a coat. Her trousers were missing a single leg, while the other was torn open around her knee. Her boots were mismatched in a similar way. One turned into a sandal by missing its front part, and the second with its upper portion completely gone, looking more like a shoe.

"So, tell me, my not-so-insane friend, do you have any idea how long you've been in the Void?"

I quickly collected my thoughts, not to make it seem as if I'd been staring at her in an inappropriate manner. "Well... it couldn't have been long..."

"Really? No offence, but you still look like shit." she pointed to my own apparel, torn in places, cut open, or burned. Only now did I notice that my tunic had been missing its right sleeve, had a massive tear around the belly area and that my pants had burn and scrape marks all over.

"Well, you're not any better!" I defended myself.

"Of course I'm not! What, you think there's a tailor in this bloody place?!" No clothing can last forever, so I'm using what I can!" She was making a good point. If she had survived in this place for an extended period of time, it was only natural that she wouldn't look all pretty and proper. However, the lack of a tailor reminded me of my curiosity about this place.

"Where are we anyway? Is this the Void too? But how come it's not... empty?" The moment I said it, she rolled her eyes.

"Ah, great, you're a total newbie. Well, I can explain how stuff here works a bit. Would help you keep your brain intact too. But you need to promise me that you will not think about it too much. Just accept it as if it was a normal fact, okay?"

"Why?" I asked, and in the very next second, got hit with the pommel of her weapon so hard my entire vision shook.

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"Idiot! I just told you to not think about it!"

"But..."

"Look, this place was not made for us mortals, okay? The information about how it works can literally drive you mad. This is why you should not try to think about it with rational logic. Got it?" I only nodded, afraid of another such hit.

"Excellent. So, imagine a big cube built out of many smaller cubes. Like... A FUCKTON of smaller cubes. Let's say... a million on each side. You got it?"

"Well... it's a pretty big number. A million times a million... Just a single side of such a cube would have..." another strike hit my head.

"Yes! It's a lot. That's all you need to know. Well, the big cube is the Void and each of the smaller cubes is one of the Void's Rooms. You've seen a different scenery before you came here, right?"

"Yeah. A different Room, I assume?"

"Exactly. However, the Rooms don't have a fixed size. Some are bigger, some much smaller. However, they are never... complete, so to speak. What you see is often just an illusion. Do you remember what you saw in the previous Room?"

"Many bridges. And a... building, I guess?"

"And? Did you go inside?"

"No, you teleported me before I could get there."

"I didn't. You just reached the edge of the Room. You see, only something in the Room is real. The rest is just... a background. The buildings seemed to be there but were most likely just an illusion. They could never be reached."

"Oh... So that's why it felt like I wasn't getting any closer?"

"Exactly. Because there was nothing to be closer to."

"Right, okay, I get that, I think."

*BAM!* Another strike.

"Don't think! Just accept it!"

"Okay, okay, I accept it! But... what about this Room? How did I get here if you didn't somehow teleport me?"

"You walked. Each Room has sort of... an invisible wall. Once you reach it and cross to the other side, you are in a different Room. However, it felt terrible to cross into this one, right?"

"Yeah, I... I am not going to recall it."

"Excellent, you are already learning, that's good. Do not recall painful events from the Void. They will only hurt you. Because crossing the line between Rooms overloads your senses. Normal brains simply cannot process the sudden change in everything. This makes us emotionally overcharged and... well, even insane if left alone. Which is why I quickly killed you."

"Yeah, that's another thing. I am not thinking, just asking, can I die here, or not?"

"Yes and no. You can only die if your brain is crushed or severed from your body. Then, until it regenerates, you are unconscious and pretty much dead, since you simply cannot function without it."

I was trying to follow everything she was saying. It was quite a lot of information and not thinking about it too much was unimaginably hard, but I was trying to focus on nothing but her words and accept them as if she was just reading me a story. "Well... it's kind of hard to understand, but alright, I accept it. No thinking and all that."

"Great, then I can move on to the actual complex stuff."

"It gets worse?!" I couldn't believe something like that would be possible.

"Yes, very much so. You see, the Rooms never stay in the same place for too long. From my experience, once each 15 000 seconds, they change and switch places with different Rooms of the Void."

"So..." I gave it a moment to imagine how exactly it would work before the blunt side of her weapon hit me once again.

"So that means two things. One - the layout of the Void is never the same. And two - always return here before the Rooms swap, or we'll never find each other again. Understood?"

"Not really..."

"Good. Don't question it. Accept it, deal with it, live by it. Simple."

"But... why would I return here if I can't even travel?"

"You can travel, but you must do it... carefully. I will teach you. There will be an opportunity for that. After all, we've got all the time in existence," she smirked at me.

"I have a question though," I said and immediately saw her grabbing her weapon again.

"Not about Void! Not about Void!" I screamed and quickly covered my face. Her weapon stopped far too close to my face.

"Oh? Then about what?"

"You! I mean... how come there is a person in the Void? And... you have a weapon? Do you live here? How did you even get here?"

"Ah... Right, well, it's not a comfortable topic, but better if you ask personal questions than those that would drive you crazy, so I'll give you your answer. Shall we sit?" She pointed to a set of blue, metal bricks in the middle of a room. One of them was massive, serving as a table, with many smaller ones around it. I followed her to the place and took a seat she offered me. "Sorry, but no refreshments. Food doesn't exist here," she gave me an insincere apology.

"That's fine. Some answers will be refreshing enough."

"Alright then. My name is Flic. I came from a world called Ezma. I'm guessing that just as your home, mine too was invaded by a Resident of the Void. It was our own hubris that allowed them to enter our world. We fought it, bravely, but... nobody really stood a chance against it. Our home would be wiped out, but then... she arrived. Eigam, our goddess. Magic incarnate. With the power she had, the Resident has been driven away and back into the Void, but at a crazy cost. Our goddess is gone now, and as the invader left our world, he took as many as he could with him. There used to be hundreds of us. Now, I'm the only one that remains. Magic doesn't work here unless it is stored in an object, like my sword. But even that is already running out. When we came here, the greatest wizards of our world were suddenly not too different from the farmers and soldiers. We all travelled and fell by the hands of the Void and other Residents, one by one. Until only I remained. Heck, I don't even know if my world made it. For all I know, it still could've been destroyed. And I guess I'll never know anymore."

She went silent for a moment, avoiding direct eye contact. I wanted to tell her something encouraging, but she sprung up and continued before I could even start.

"Well, no point in thinking about that now. My home is gone and there is nothing I can do about it. So I'm just gonna hold on to the little bit of existence I have left. And what about you, my newfound friend? What is your story? How did your Resident get in?"

I tilted my head to the side a bit. Her story was not making complete sense to me. "What's a Resident?"