Blank. Nothingness. A vast white expanse in every direction as far as the eye could see.
Linoor awoke comfortably to a warm light that permeated the void from everywhere and nowhere at once. A soft and soothing white liquid pervaded the space and engulfed Linoor’s body below the neck. Though she was suddenly nude, she did not feel cold, nor did she feel the liquid against her skin. A silent peace occupied the odorless white void that extended indefinitely all around her.
Raising her arms from the pool, Linoor pushed off from its surface that suddenly became solid beneath her fingers. The liquid dripped off like viscous white paint to join the larger pool beneath her without a ripple. She stood carefully on cautious toes, not trusting the floor to support her weight once she established herself, though it held easily and gave no indication it had ever been a liquid to begin with.
Linoor wrapped her arms around herself as she checked for the wound the excisor had left. It was gone without a trace. In fact, every scar she had ever received during her time as a duelist had disappeared.
In the midst of the white nothingness, Linoor found herself wondering if she had ever lived, or if her life had all been an elaborate, torturous dream. She remembered receiving the scars, but the proof was nowhere to be seen. The words of a long-dead philosopher rang in her ears: I awoke from my dream as myself, remembering the idle nighttime fantasy of my life as a butterfly. Yet, I could not shake the feeling that perhaps I was a butterfly, only now returning to my dream as a man.
“This is not a dream, child,” a voice boomed from behind Linoor. Though it was a loud and powerful voice, she felt no malice in his words, and was not scared by the sudden intrusion. She turned to face her new visitor to find a massive crab standing before her, his purple shell covered in hairy protrusions ending in clear spheres.
“Hello,” Linoor said with a smile. Though she somehow knew the massive creature before her could obliterate her in an instant, she felt comfortable and free here. She was free of her past, of her expectations, of any preconceptions. It was a wonderful place.
“Most do not associate the liminal region with happiness,” the creature said, as if it were reading her thoughts. “You are a peculiar one.”
“What is this place?” Linoor asked.
“This place is beyond death, yet before the return. I am the Deep God Cantimorelius. You donned my ring in death, and have been delivered to me. We are now bonded.”
Linoor stared down at her fingers. Curiously, a deep black band now encircled a finger on her right hand. She vaguely remembered someone placing it on her at the keep - their hands were slick and smelled of blood - though she could not place who it was.
“As the ancient Bargain requires, to return to your world you must provide me with knowledge,” boomed Cantimorelius, continuing his explanation.
“What would you like to know?” She asked the deity.
“Tell me something that you know is true,” he answered. The endless words from thick tomes of knowledge flowed through Linoor’s mind unbidden as she struggled to choose her gift for the god. Histories of Rolakkhad and Temul and Iv, the proper conduct of a gentleman at the royal court, the mythical stories of heroes in times bygone... Ioren’s words disparaging the classical authors came back to her for some reason, and she suddenly felt them too vulgar to offer to the god. Instead, she chose something closer to her heart.
On a beautiful summer day in Capira on the banks of the River Dendalure, Linoor sat in a sundress and awaited the arrival of her fleeting love, Markus. Butterflies flitted through her stomach as she sat in the grass, her unadorned feet dipped in the cool flowing water. The sweet aroma of late-blooming flowers flowed lazily past her from the shops just up the hill.
Memories of a perfect day.
The crab-god creature chewed in delight at the offered truth. Linoor felt him experience it through their mind’s connection.
“An excellent offering of truth, child,” the god declared loudly. “I shall offer a valuable truth in return: Duke Venit of Capira, father of Ardenel Venit, is dead.”
Linoor stepped back in surprise.
What?
Before Linoor could question the words, a loud rip echoed through the peaceful space, causing her to cover her ears. Wind rushed past her face violently as her hair flapped around wildly. The white liquid below her feet began to flow backwards, pulling her with it toward the rip. A hole to the black sky had been opened in the void, the white liquid falling into it like dripping wax on a plate.
"Wait! I don't want to leave yet!" She shouted, though her words were swallowed by the raging winds.
The ground beneath Linoor broke away, and she began to fall through the black sky toward Vanodel far below.
She soared through the cloudless sky over Danet, higher even than the Continental Divide. The cold wind tore tears from her eyes as she fell through the air, a thermal current directing her westward toward the Barrier River. Voleons that illuminated the night fled from her as she invaded their territory above the world. It was a fantastical experience, but now she approached the end of her fall as the incoming ground loomed before her. Linoor braced her arms over her face, unsure how else to protect herself from the impending impact, and closed her eyes.
The rushing wind stopped, but the impact never came.
Instead, she opened her eyes beneath a thick canopy of trees.
---
Onep reached out tentatively to caress the small waxy leaf of a plant growing from the forest floor. He had seen similar species in the forests of Temul during his trip west to Danet. Yellow spores beneath the leaves would release in a cloudy puff whenever the plants were disturbed. The one before him seemed as healthy as any he had seen before, and that fact had brought his mind to the brink of a crisis.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
In the Hallowed Records, Yasha, the bringer of light, the omniscient savior of humanity, had described the land beyond the Divide as a lifeless, forlorn wasteland. Those who had once resided there were idolaters - their worship of false idols and unholy items had driven them from the light and destroyed their world. Thus the true disciples of Yasha’s light rid themselves of their worldly possessions and worshipped none but the matronly spirit herself. Onep’s first excursions into Danet had confirmed Yasha’s teachings, and upon viewing the wasteland, had caused him to question his motivations in coming to the cursed land.
The Red King was a blasphemer and an idolater who had used the cursed powers of Danet to forsake the Ivan people’s faith and conquer Havan. Onepath Acothley had sworn to strike down the traitor of his people, thus he sought the solution to destroying the source of his powers here, in Danet. Yet, until now, he could not shake the feeling that even the Red King’s blaspheming and his conquering of the continent were no more than trials beset upon his people by Yasha herself. Everything in his life up to this point had been just as Yasha described it.
All his life, Onep had been the epitome of piousness. Not once, even in the dead world of Danet, had he skipped the Ainekas, the ritual of nude worship at sunset that pious Ivans performed. Every sundown he bore himself sincerely to Yasha, adorned with no false idols to distract him from his faith. Even now, after just having escaped death by the skin of his teeth, Onep sat alone in the forest beside his pile of stripped clothing.
Yet, he could not bring himself to worship. The greenery swayed happily in the breeze on healthy, pliant stems. Their silent mockery made Onep want to extirpate the verdant forest entirely.
Yasha had been wrong.
This paradise of healthy and fruitful plants lay just beyond the Barrier River, and stretched as far as the eye could see. He had seen ants and mice skirting away beneath the underbrush; beetles and worms thriving under fallen trees; hand fruits of pink and yellow colors hanging from high up in the curved trees. This was no wasteland, and it was not a land destroyed by man’s hubris.
If Yasha could not see past the Barrier River, where else did her blindness lie?
Earlier, in Riverstop Keep, a child had tossed him as if he were nothing more than a doll. How had the idolaters acquired such power against Yasha’s will? Was this the strength Redden had found during his visit to Danet?
Onep cursed to himself and searched for his breathing rhythm, but it did not come. His mind was in chaos. Anger and betrayal bubbled just beneath the surface of his stone face.
The blaspheming Finder, Ioren, had saved him from the excisor using the same powers as the idolaters. Nay, he had become an idolater himself, utilizing the strength of the Danetian artifacts just the same. None of the other blasphemers even joined him for the Ainekas, though the two blonde noblelings at least expressed regret over skipping it.
Onep thought once again about Ysmena’s words at the inn. Every event was, by definition, as Yasha intended, for the light belonged to her. This was why he had helped them escape the inn. Yet, he had seen things here that clearly went against Yasha’s teachings. Why did she allow them to happen? If he committed blasphemous acts, were they truly blasphemous if Yasha allowed them to occur?
Once again Onep attempted to return to his breathing rhythms, but they did not last more than a few moments. Sighing frustratedly, he donned his clothing and walked back toward the others, his mind still swirling as a battle raged within.
---
Elune stared out across the bone-white Ivory Bridge toward Riverstop Keep. A massive group of Greys had amassed at the bridge, though all stopped just short of the midway point over the river, as if an invisible line only known to them had been drawn on the bridge.
When they had first crossed, everyone waited at the edge of the bridge’s landing and watched the Greys behind them with bated breath, mesmerized by their inexplicable halting. Only moments before the horde had relentlessly chased them from the keep, threatening to kill them should they fall behind for even a second. She remembered the fear in Dal’s eyes as the horde approached ever closer while he struggled to sprint over the slightly upward-sloping bridge.
Yet now they merely observed from afar, governed by some unseen rule that commanded them to stay on the other side of the river.
After nearly two hours of observing, after the others had long since lost interest in the horde, Elune still sat at the edge of the bridge alone, watching. Their tacit understanding fascinated her. From where did this understanding originate? Were they commanded to defend Riverstop, or did they fear something here on the other side of the bridge?
She wondered, too, if she were affected by the same invisible impulses. On its face, her fleeing to Danet would seem illogical as well, as if commanded by the same hand as these Greys to abandon all reason and act only according to orders.
Life was good in Deornis. Her meals and boarding were provided by Ysmena’s father, such that she never wanted for food or safety. She was well-educated and tutored daily by the same governess that taught Ysmena. Their outland state had not even been affected by the Reunification War years prior. She enjoyed safety, warmth, comfort and status, and yet she fled here to a dead land with her ambitious cousin.
Her father had his vices, of course. He was a man haunted by drink, dice, and dames, as Ysmena’s father had once said when he thought she was out of earshot. However, more often than not her father would be away from the house, only returning for money or a comfortable bed to sleep. He at least spared them that much.
Elune’s mother was not much better. Born as a peasant, Elune’s mother experienced the luck of a thousand lifetimes in being chosen as a noble’s wife. She was beautiful in her youth, so Elune had heard from townspeople. She had only ever remembered her mother as a pale, melancholy figure that wandered the gardens every day, rarely leaving the confines of the Deornissian estate, and even more rarely engaging with her daughter.
It wasn’t an ideal life; Elune had recognized that long ago. The stark comparison between her family and Ysmena’s haunted her daily. Once, as a youth, in a fit of envious rage Elune had run away into town to escape her home life. She was gone for two entire days, though her parents had never sent anyone to look for her. If it weren’t for a kindly crustacean peddler who took her in she would likely have starved in the streets, or would have been kidnapped from an alley somewhere.
The peddler sold crabs, prawns, and other creatures that she scoured from the mountain rivers around Deornis. Though it was a meager living, she seemed content with her lot in life. She was unmarried and middle-aged, but it never seemed to affect her cheerful attitude. Elune had learned much about gratitude while staying with the woman.
On the second afternoon, as Elune was helping the peddler sell crabs in the central square, the woman suddenly removed a crab from the bucket and held it out to Elune unprompted.
“Do you know how to kill a crab?” She asked.
“Boil it?” Elune guessed, not privy to the details of crab anatomy. She guessed that if boiling water could scald a man, it would likely be enough to kill a crab.
“Sure, ya could. A lot faster to just cut ‘em here,” she said, pointing at a spot beneath the crab between its eyes. “Just chop the soft spot right there between their eyes an’ they’re done - kaput. Less painful than boilin’ to death slowly. I reckon all things should be like that, don’tcha think? Fast and violent.”
Elune was surprised by the woman’s true demeanor hidden beneath her kind eyes. Though, truth be told, she was much the same.
In all this time, not a single Grey had stirred from its place on the bridge. They would need to find another way around. Elune sighed and finally turned away from the frozen Greys to face the massive forest that stretched out behind her. The grey tips of buildings stuck out from the canopy in the distance, as well as the occasional spire of grey rock. It was completely different from the land east of the Barrier River.
A new world was a perfect place to start a new life.