Kim had done a little too much talking, and so she had caused a bit of a problem, though she did help remedy it.

Though, I do suppose if she was telling the truth about all that she had said, including the want for no conversation, she shouldn’t have said anything at all. Those poor souls had been through so much, and yet she let the ‘place’ string her along as she ran her mouth blinded by the suffering she saw the two endure.

As such, the consequences came in full swing as the two recovered, or rather, they should have. I assume this was her line of thinking; ‘if I don’t awknowledge the consequences, then they don’t exist.’

She would not only think such thoughts; her actions would speak louder than any words. She left the two after they had returned to walking order, and she walked herself. In fact, she was walking even faster than before, almost jogging, running even.

Her actions forced everyone else to keep up with her, and it also kept them preoccupied, especially the two she was supposed to escort. They were short, so they were basically sprinting, and as such, even as they wanted to ask the questions, they didn’t, and not because they were running, and not because they were jumping, and not because they didn’t want to.

They’d keep going for a while, and as they did, because of Kim’s reckless actions, the absurdity began. She thought about all she knew and had seen, about the past and the place, and she surmised that in the way she existed then, that she too could finally control the place.

The grass was green but it didn’t have to be, the sky was a glaring crimson void, but it didn’t have be. The place was a floating mess, but it didn’t have to stay that way.

The eclipse she had always known, the darkness that had always plagued her, it could all become null and void. Those were her thoughts, and so fractures shot throughout the still sky, and within moments the sky began to fall.

The event was instantaneous, but even then the golden cube expanded like a blanket, covering them. Thus, they couldn’t quite see the sight, but I’ll tell you anyway.

The sky fell in fragments like shattered ceramic, yet it looked the same. The distance of the stars, the moon, the sun, nothing changed, that was until eyes were allowed to wonder and find the edges of the fragments. Then the veil would finally be pulled back.

An incandescent white light shot through the cracks and incinerated everything it touched, including the ground. As the sky fell, the shards shook the place like earthquakes of world ending proportions, though I do suppose that’s exactly what was happening.

I’ll be nice and explain it to you. The ‘Abstract’ as Kim had said, is the imagination, when one imagines anything in their mind, it exists as a loaded term, or in other words, it comes with preloaded ideas. Such is the crux of communication, words have meaning.

And so, thinking of the sky falling away would include the idea of the sky, space and the stars, which would be an impossible amount of mass considering the sheer scale of the universe.

As such, she had basically called down the wrath of God, and even with her knowledge, she didn’t realize that until it was too late. It should have been as easy as wishing it away, no? No, no being in the universe apart from ‘her’ could comprehend lifting the universe, therefore, even if they did try, it wouldn’t work.

The simple fact that they do not understand what they seek to manipulate, prevents manipulation altogether. So, she had learnt why there were golden rules for those who ventured into the Abstract, including the one that told them, never to look up.

Those in charge were mad, but they were sane enough to prevent Kim from ever entering the place, that fact was one of their few good ideas. I did not contradict myself, she’d never been there.

It’s time we go back to the survivors though, and their condition is rather dire. The sky continued to fall, decimating the landscape, but thankfully the place is a state of existence more than anything else. As such, they’d live, but if it was the earth, it would have been reduced to molten slag in the vacuum a long time ago.

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The falling would stop almost as soon as it had begun, but the damage was already done. Kim did get what she wanted though, as the sun shone bright across the jagged, mountainous and starry landscape.

The other inhabitants of the place corrected her blunder, as without an atmosphere, they’d all be incinerated.

The golden bubble that housed them would eventually pop, realizing its purpose fulfilled. The cube was content, but that same level of emotional stability could not be assigned to the four, and especially not Kim.

She wore a smile from ear to ear as she witnessed the sight, her eyes slowly becoming bloodshot, and even bleeding, alongside her nose and ears, before she snapped back to reality, realizing that a part of her had died.

There were spires of fractured ground standing straight to the sky at varying degrees, but all were basically piercing it. If the place was a planet, the spires would have reached space.

There were also unfortunate bits of the place, that folded in on themselves and became mountains, unable to reach the sky.

It all paled in comparison to the bodies of ‘liquid’ though. They were basically windows, and doorways into the infinite cosmos. There were pools, puddles, oceans, lakes and seas of the things, vast expanses of space, all at walking distance.

The constellations dotted them, galaxies covered them and some stars were close enough to completely envelope their surfaces, making pools of plasma. It was amazing, beautiful, breath taking, to look at, but they had to do more than look at it, they had to traverse the place.

The broken plains made the journey look meaningless, made it feel mundane, but even then, that was better than what they had gotten. They had visibility, and while the place did look endless, they’d have eventually gotten there, and quite quickly too.

As for what this meant for Kim and Brody, well, they couldn’t decide. The power they held then, what to do with it, tyrants, or fetishes themselves? None of it, they’d die before then; a cost to the borrowed power, that none could pay.

“W-who had the bright idea…? W-who was stupid enough t-to do something like that…?” Bob sounded more like a disappointed father than anything else as he looked around.

Kim thought about murder for a moment, that was before she realized that, no matter how amazing the power was, or how much of a fetish she had become, there existed a pantheon, and she was among the bottom rung.

As such, in keeping with one above her, she wouldn’t dare to try such a thing, especially seeing as the one who had made the request was everywhere, and nowhere all the time.

“I… I had a thought… Okay!? I didn’t know this would happen!” She didn’t look them in the eyes as she spoke, she’d barely see them anyway, a headache tossing her asunder.

“You d-didn’t know…?” Bob looked at her from the corner of his eyes, hands on his hips.

“What are you getting at…?” The woman didn’t like the implicit ideas of his statement.

“O-oh nothing…” He dropped his hands and looked around for a moment, surveying the damage. “W-what now!?” He looked up at Kim.

“Why are you looking at me?! I didn’t do it on purpose!” She still didn’t maintain eye contact.

“F-fine… we’ll go with your l-lie— I m-mean… your interpretation… I guess, w-we just go, we keep g-going?” He’d finally pick up the cube.

“I guess so…” Kim finally mustered the courage to look up, and what she saw was simply put, more problems. “No… no, no, no! No! No!” She ran past the two men of the group.

As they had been having their conversation, talking and even looking past each other, they had left May to her own devices, and in a place like that, well, let’s see.

The catastrophe that had occurred left the monster that stalked them a shadow of its former self, or shall I say, a piece of its former self.

It was strung out on the dirt, its guts dragging behind it as it pulled itself with the one hand it had left on the half torso it had become.

The trail of blood and flesh indicated that it followed them, and it had. As for what it was doing to May. Its head was flat on the ground, its one bloodshot eye focused on her, its hand stretched out holding a flower, a purple hyacinth.

She stared at the thing with great admiration, and then she began to cry. The tears rolled down her cheeks as she remembered the faces of her parents, realizing that she would never see them again. The face of Cali was also still fresh in her mind, the woman’s voice echoing from nowhere, but still being heard.

“Was it worth it? My life…? The pain! As my bones cracked! And shattered at your expense?! Die?! Did I have to die!? For you!? Useless! You!? My eyes! Empty! Because of you! Die!? Why don’t you die!?” That voice was all May could hear for those infinite few tragic seconds.

A cold and heavy feeling pulled her down by the gut, as her breath quickened and she became dizzy, disorientated by the thing’s spell.

She looked around, recognizing no one, not even the woman that was sprinting at her screaming with a voice so drowned out and echoed she couldn’t understand.

And so, in a place like that, what would a confused person even do, what would they be capable of.