The soul feels what the mind ignores.

- Stace Morris

Seph’s fallen body shot down way faster, and within a minute he had already reached the ground.

He felt like his body fell into something that had the consistency of a swamp. It felt like heavy, thick water, and he felt himself sinking in.

Realizing he wasn’t falling to his death, he finally opened his eyes, but he might as well have left them closed, because all around him and above him was dark.

The only spot with any light at all was where he fell.

All around him there was this heavy, thick black liquid, and hands made of that same liquid, pulling him down into what looked like a hole. He didn’t know what was happening, but he wouldn't let them do as they please.

The entire area outside the hole was pitch black, only the hole had any light, and he wasn’t sure what was the source of the light.

Seph started struggling against the grasping hands that were pulling his prone body under.

He started boxing the hands, closed fists punching left and right.

At first that worked, but then the hands became more stubborn. They didn’t let him go when punched.

So he started wrestling them open.

They felt sticky, and they left traces of the same black substance on his palms, but they were really strong.

Seph eventually pulled himself free to stand on his own two feet, but the hands caught his legs instead and started pulling down.

He then heard their voices, voices moaning with pain, miserable cries. Their heads weren’t visible, but that didn’t stop their voices from drowning the silence.

Their voices made him feel a deep sense of melancholy almost immediately, and he wondered why he was fighting them?

Why didn’t he just allow them to pull him down to the depth with them?

It probably wouldn’t be as horrible as his continued state of existence.

If it’s death that their grasping hands promise, would it be really horrible?

If it was a convergence of souls in eternal suffering, was it really different from slugging your way through life, without a goal, without friends, without a family?

At that moment, he remembered his family; he remembered his mother; he remembered his goal.

And he snapped out of the melancholic state of mind that they put him under, but he was knee deep inside the black hole already.

He started punching them again, wrestling them free, but it wasn’t helping.

Seph was drowning without hope of survival. He was adamant about surviving, even though there was no hope for him.

The hands were grasping his chest and pulling him under already, but at that moment, something most wondrous happened. A spirit version of a monkey holding a wooden staff appeared.

The monkey looked around him in wonderment, not really knowing how he got here, but there was nothing to see except the black hole.

The monkey was standing right outside it in the dark, but his spirit glowed with a blue hue that made him visible to Seph.

Seph looked at him questioningly for a minute, before something in his mind said, Sun.

Sun started stabbing the hands with his staff, over and over, trying to help Seph from his predicament. Seph was frozen by the surprise.

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The monkey screeched at him, snapping him from his absent-mindedness, and they both started working together to break him free.

Seph had gotten a lot of his body free from the hole. It reached only his waist now.

Seph could feel himself smiling already. He was sure of his survival now, and Sun gave him one of his big smiles as well, his pearly white teeth almost lighting the dark.

But their brief victory changed rapidly when the hands started pulling Seph from inside the hole. His body descended faster. Sun thought of how to save his friend with no hands to stab now, and the only solution he came up with was to extend the staff to Seph and try to pull him out.

Seph did just that, but Sun was a quarter of the weight of Seph, and Seph continued going down, anyway. At one point he thought if he kept holding the staff he would start pulling Sun down with him too, something he definitely didn’t want to do.

When the black hole reached his chest again, he let go of the staff, but Sun screamed at him to hold it again, furious at his friend trying to give up.

Seph gave Sun a deep look. He didn’t want to doom him, but he didn’t want his last memory to be of him giving up, too.

He held the staff, but without pulling on it, and he continued to descend.

The hole was up to his neck, and it looked like there was no way out.

A minute later Seph's entire face was inside the hole. He couldn’t see outside anymore. He was thinking of letting go.

Sun gave out a primal cry, something he didn’t know he was capable of. Just when Seph was about to let go of the staff, he was pulled up.

The pulling strength from the other side was significantly stronger.

His face came out of the hole, and he looked at Sun, and saw how he was pulling with all his strength, but that wasn’t what saved him.

Behind Sun was a much bigger version of Sun, another spirit monkey standing on two feet, his body the size of an adult human but much stronger. He wore advanced protective armor and there was a crown on his head.

He looked like he was the shadow of Sun, and he held a much bigger and longer staff that extended down to converge with Sun’s staff.

While Sun was exerting such effort to pull his friend free. The other monkey was pulling Seph free with no effort.

Sun didn’t seem aware of his majestic shadow that was making this all possible, but Seph saw it clear as day.

When the hands came out of the hole again to grasp Seph’s body to drown him, they got burned by the faint blue light coming out of the enormous shadow of Sun. They disintegrated immediately.

Seph knew it was only a matter of time before he got out now.

A few minutes later. He was completely out of the hole. He had survived.

Seph was elated to see Sun and went towards his friend to greet him, but before he could say anything, Sun disappeared.

Seph looked at Sun’s enormous shadow, and he was still there. He stuck his tongue out at Seph and laughed before he also disappeared.

A deep voice ringed out from the surrounding darkness saying only one word.

Soul.

***

image [https://imgur.com/GCoiLPW.jpg]

Outside of the three tests, Sun was in some place dedicated to the companions as they weren’t legacy challengers.

He was in deep meditation and looked to be in distress for a while.

At some point, a tear even dropped from his eye down his cheek, but a few minutes before he came out of his meditation, he didn’t look stressed anymore.

He even had a smile on his little monkey face. He got out of his meditation and wondered if what had just happened was true at all.

He suddenly heard a voice that he knew too well from behind him, which made him jump.

“You interfered with the trial.”

“Eek!” Sun looked at the hovering spirit of Scorn scared, he knew then that what happened was real, and he didn’t give a fuck that Scorn might be mad about it, but he was still scared.

“How did you do it?” Scorn asked.

Sun thought for a second, then raised his shoulders, signaling that he had no clue.

“I wonder if I should disqualify Seph because of your interference.”

Sun screeched at him angrily, then hid his face with both of his palms when Scorn looked at him in feigned anger, only he didn’t know that Scorn was playing with him.

“Relax, I only came to tell you that Seph just won the trials. He is about to take the last parts of my legacy. All the other parts he shared with whoever made it to the soul trial like him, but the last and most important part will only be his to know. I just hope he makes the right decision with the information that he is about to learn. You won’t have to wait much longer. At least now you will enjoy your wait, knowing that you helped your Master beat these trials, and your role was perhaps bigger than he even expected it to be. I brought you these assortments of fruits and nuts to enjoy while waiting for your master to reach the prize room, where you will accompany him once more.”

Saying those last words, Scorn waved his hand above an empty table in the middle of the room and big plates of fruits and small ornate plates of nuts appeared out of nowhere.

Sun screeched in happiness and jumped on top of the table and raided the nut plates since Seph had only fruits to give him for most of the trials.

He made a mental note to make Seph buy him nuts, because they were delicious.