Winter 2045 ~ Underworld
Lucas Adair
“And there you have it.” Amber began. There’s not much more I can say on the subject.” She was staring at the rest of the group. “Things have just gone so far off the rails…not that they were really on any sort of track before coming here…but there it is.”
The tension that emanated from one person to the next was so heavy that they couldn’t help but gravitate toward her. Even as they jogged they felt their attention pull toward the center where she jogged beside them. Roderick was the first to speak up. “I’m very sorry to hear you’ve had to go through all that,” he said. “I didn’t know it was even half that bad.” He was jogging at their pace beside them.
“Don’t be,” Amber said. “Things were trending downward for a time anyway. This just cut the cord which should have been cut already. It needed to happen. I just wish it could have been sooner...so much sooner.”
“That’s right,” Laven said. “We’re not here supporting men who can’t understand what’s actually important to them outside of themselves.”
“Yeah, not to dog on,” Roderick began, “but it seems like he would have absolutely ruined you.”
Amber said nothing after this, merely focusing on her pace as they continued on. It was a message of its own that they had respected.
Lucas was thinking on how he knew Laven wasn’t talking about him when she had said what she did to Amber—it was all in an attempt to cheer her up, but he couldn’t help but think on his own personal failings—those which he was determined to not repeat. His dedication to being better is what helped keep him moving. He caught up to their pace and exhaled and took in a breath through his nose. He would be better.
Their path in front of them lead out toward the thickets past the fields out of the castle’s outskirts. Just like it had the last few times they’d gone on their runs—the further they got from the bounds of the castle the more the air seemed to feel lighter on them. There was a noticeable difference in how gravity affected them—Lucas figured that the heavier weight was what helped the accelerant particles build their muscles during their combat sessions. It had also been what had tired them out so much more when they were working to exhaustion.
Laven turned back to Tabula. They were jogging with their eyes closed, but then they opened and saw Laven looking at them. Tabula nodded and signaled they were okay, and then Laven nodded in return.
Laven smiled and began to sign out, before speaking aloud, “We’re going to be coming up on the fork soon,” she said. “We all good?”
Lucas nodded and felt the initial burn start to form in his lungs. It was at this point when he would normally stop—that is if he were running for pleasure. He knew though here pleasure was secondary to progress. This was but a wall to overcome—that satisfaction would come when he was able to overcome that burning sensation. Even though they were traveling farther and farther away from the castle—away from the accelerant particles, his body still seemed to carry memories of that weight and the soreness it would feel.
Still, he looked up, making sure to carry his head high as he started, “It’s going to be new ground and we’re not going to have someone who knows the area to help, so we’re going to need to be on our guard.”
The others were in agreement, and so they continued on. Their environment started getting rougher as the ground started getting bumpy and rocky. The long stalks of grass started to thin out as the sun hung overhead—casting its golden rays down toward them. If they were continuing out this way they were going to be seeing less trees and varied flora—the methodology was to keep the field as open as possible. They continued until they reached the bluffs—the run had taken them to the eastern coast where the azure seas lapped on each other.
They had each stopped over the cliff side—taking in the sight as the wind started to blow behind them. To Lucas’ right was the way forward—the path continued down the edge of the bluff—he saw the edge continued past a narrow slip where it looked like they would need to travel one by one—sidling against the cliff face as they continued on.
“Is this a bad time to say I’m afraid of heights? We haven’t had to deal with that yet so it hadn’t become relevant...but there it is.” Amber nearly spat out.
Tabula came up and placed a hand on her shoulder—Amber turned at their touch and Tabula nodded her head. She signed, and Laven translated, “We are all scared of something. Do not let it paralyze you. I will go right behind you and can steady you if necessary.”
Lucas could tell it wasn’t enough to fully placate her fears—he doubted there would be anything that could fully help outside of not having to do it.
“Realistically,” Roderick said, “We could just head back the way we came. We’re probably at the apex of our journey length-wise. We can avoid going across here and save on the stress.”
Lucas thought this sounded like a good idea—but as soon as she saw Amber’s face he knew she voiced her fear as a first step of overcoming it. She had the burning embers of challenge in her eyes and knew what she was going to say right before she said it.
Amber shook her head. “No, no, I should face my fear. It’s not exciting—far from it, but I’ll fear it until the day I die. I understand that, but I can experience the worst of it here and have a baseline for the next experience. Have something I can call back to say that I’ve done it.”
“That’s very brave of you,” Lucas said. “I can see you mean it.”
“No need to prop me up,” Amber said. “It’s as dumb as it is brave. I understand that.”
“Probably dumber,” Laven said, laughing. “But that’s how you know you’re human. Because it’s important to you.”
“Because you can overcome it,” Tabula signed, and Laven translated.
Amber took in a deep breath and arched back, stretching. “Ye, it’s going to be as fun as a dog in a hot spring...but I do think we have to do it.”
“I’ll go first,” Roderick said. “Set the baseline for all of us,” he looked right at Amber and then went to each of them in order.
Laven nodded in response and then turned to Amber, “I’ll go next, and we’ll each help make sure that it’s safe for the rest of you.”
To this, Lucas turned to Laven and raised an objection. “No...no I want to make sure it’s safe for you.”
Laven cocked her head and smiled softly. “I appreciate the words, but as they used to say in the old world...dibs.” She placed a hand on his face and caressed it smoothly.
“Okay,” Luke blushed. “I’ll go next, then Amber, then Tabula take up the rear. How does that sound?” he turned, making sure Tabula could read his lips.
The both of them nodded and they filed into a line as Roderick placed a hand up toward the cliff face—he took a step out and placed his left foot on the edge—the space he had to walk was just barely enough to fit his foot facing sideways. The total length of the stretch was about thirty feet—it didn’t look like much until he took a deep breath and saw it stretch out into what seemed like ten times the size.
“Take your time,” Laven said.
“Got it,” Roderick said, and he took his next step, sliding his right foot next to his left. There was a sound out in the distance—everyone seemed to freeze as they tried to deduce the source of the sound.
“It sounded far away,” Lucas said. “I can’t quite tell what it was.”
Tabula questioned Lucas on what they had been looking around for.
Laven signed back to her, “There was a sound—like something echoing in the distance.”
Tabula nodded as they understood. Roderick took another step and Lucas could tell his breathing had steadied. He was taking in breaths as slowly as he could, all of his attention on slowly sidling toward the other side. He got into a rhythm and then he was halfway across. And then just as quickly he made it to the other side and nodded, letting himself deflate as he started breathing normally again.
“All right!” He called out across the gorge. “It’s stable—I didn’t feel anything untoward—so long as you match what I did you should be--”
He was cut off by the sound again—it was clearer this time. It was closer. It sounded like the downing of a tree and its ultimate collapse as it hit the ground. They had passed the mass outbreak of trees long back near the castle—so they had been far and few between. Just what could be making that sound?
“Amber, I think you should go next,” Lucas turned to her. He could see his request freaked her out more, her eyes looked as wide as dinner plates.
“What?” She asked, he could sense the tremor in her voice.
“I think something is coming,” Lucas said. “Whatever is making that sound. I hate to say it, but I think it’s headed this way. If it comes to it, I don’t want you and Tabula to be the last ones that have to go over.”
Laven looked from Lucas to the other two, and she too noticed the looks in their eyes. “Yes, you both go on ahead of us,” she motioned and signed to Tabula—who was too busy looking past them to see what Lucas had said. She repeated it to them and they both were looking at her now.
Lucas knew it was because Laven was a natural born leader—he had felt it from the first. There was something about the way she operated—she had a fire that inspired others to listen to her.
“Okay,” Amber nodded. “I’ll go,” she turned to Tabula, realizing they were just as afraid as she was. “I want you to follow right behind me, and we’ll keep an eye on each other.”
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Tabula nodded, and they took in a deep breath. The sound crashed in the distance—it was much closer now. They made no short effort and started taking their first steps out. Amber placed both hands on the side of the cliff. She took one step onto the cliff and took in a deep breath, her hands shook and she tried to swallow it down.
The source of the sound revealed itself finally. After the torture of hearing it approach closer and closer Lucas saw in the distance a mass of black tar that was approaching at a speed unknown to anything he had known. As it approached it seemed to shrink in size—its sludgy mass seemed to glow with an ethereal light that seemed unnatural—inhuman. He then recognized that the light was spilling from its cavernous eye sockets and what looked like a mouth—a human mouth that was spilling amber-orange light.
The fetid form sauntered toward them—its movements looked alien—as if it were piloting the body remotely. Lucas turned and saw that Amber was starting her travel against the cliff side—she had made it about a quarter of the way across as Tabula joined right behind her.
Tabula had just started out—they had looked back to see the creature coming toward them, they saw Lucas and Laven assume stances that came to them second nature—and in that moment they admired the two that clearly had a history of defending others.
Lucas shifted his gaze quickly to Laven and saw her eyes shift to him. There was a look of acknowledgment behind both of their eyes as the words of Tomorrow ring underneath their subconscious. Run for your lives.
They had no weapons, and they had no knowledge on what these things were capable of, and all on a cliff side with nowhere to run. They each understood their situation and what had to happen next.
Even if we had turned back around, it would have met up with us. This was the thought they had decided on in those final moments as time felt like it slowed down. At least this way they could assure the others could make it back. Lucas doubted that anything that moved that frenetically could make it across the gorge.
Of course, it was possible that it could, if at least slowly. If that were the case, then they had an obligation to slow it down as much as possible. If they could make it back to the castle, they could reach Tomorrow. They could have backup, they could take care of it.
“Take the right, I’ll take the left,” Laven said, and Lucas nodded, not looking back to her—knowing she had taken off and he could see the azure filigree glowing on her skin—and he was glad to know her abilities seemed to be working in fine order here.
Laven had formed a pact with a being much stronger than anything they had known. It was a spirit Lucas had seen with his own eyes through her memories—it looked like a mix of an elegant dragon and a white butterfly—its power was immense and it gave to Laven a channel through the marks on her skin in exchange for reliability—for her to give up her own energy each time she needed to use the power.
It was risky, but given the situation he perfectly understood why she decided to take it.
Lucas was not equipped with any weapons—and his abilities from the other world were strictly tied to his old body—but that wasn’t going to stop him from helping as much as he could. He has been practicing in hand to hand combat and while he wasn’t proficient—he certainly had a confidence that he hadn’t before against a lone foe.
He reached the figure first—one advantage of his lighter frame was he was faster on his feet—even compared to his old self he felt so much more agile.
The figure turned toward him and he could smell the black tar-like substance that oozed down its body—it smelled of a hot acrylic wax that was burning to a melting point. He hadn’t seen it from a distance, but it was clear that heat was emanating off of it.
“Back off,” Lucas called out--”It’s a hot one, refrain from physical contact.”
Laven held her distance as she scanned it up and down. “How do you want to proceed?” Her body was tense—she had maintained a prepared stance as she asked.
Before he could answer he felt the figure overwhelm him—the shadowy black arm grabbed his and he winced—expecting the sharp and blistering pain, but it was noticeably cool to the touch. He tried to pull away, but found it was stuck to him.
“Okay, I expected it to be hotter...sticky son of a…” He called back. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Amber had just made it across, Tabula was nearing the end herself. He felt a relief in the pit of his chest, that feeling was quickly pushed away as he heard the creature move closer to him.
He turned to see the figure’s decrepit face right next to his own—he could feel its acrid breath against his skin and he shuddered. He brought his foot up and tried to trip up the creature so he could gain some leverage, but he felt his head grow light as those cavernous eyes began to glow with their haunted light.
He felt his body begin to float and his vision was bled into a yellow light that bubbled into voices that were bleeding themselves in the distance. He felt a swimming feeling and suddenly he was looking elsewhere—far, far away.
~...~
There were sounds in the background that were rising in volume—it was a consistent hum that was coming to the center of his vision and the skidding of tires to his immediate right filled in his vision that he was in a car—traveling fast in a straight line. Some other car had veered out of the way to avoid being slammed into. He was sitting in the driver’s seat—this feeling instantly made him sick as it reminded him of the car crash that had crippled Abel all those years ago.
He remembered Donovan who had been racing to his death on account of that desire drawn out by GODSONG—the fragment of the great machine that was controlled by—
His thoughts ended as the car slammed into the back of a truck and his head was thrown forward against the dashboard. He felt no pain, but he saw the blood spray across the windshield as it fractured—the airbag had failed to deploy, and he felt his body dragged downward—deep into the seat. It continued sinking into the floor and through the bottom of the car. He was phasing through the car and sinking below the ground now—as if his body no longer existed in the world.
He looked around as the earth started to hum around him—there was a deep humming below him—much deeper as he kept sinking down below the surface. He felt the hum inside his core—there still wasn’t any pain which was a blessing, but he was still ultimately confused on what was going on.
There was a voice that was echoing from down below, but he could not immediately hear what it was saying until he broke the surface of the ground. There he felt the tremors within himself start to hum a thicker sound—the kind that made his heart jump as the reverberations synced with his heartbeat.
“And now you too shall join us in the underworld,” the voice finally came clear enough for him to understand. It was a familiar voice, he had heard it before—and recently. He felt his arms go numb and they stiffened by his side—as did his legs. There was material forming on them—combining and collecting that made it impossible to move them.
“Now, you are mine, and you shall sow the chaos you so ineffortlessly sought on the surface world. Now, a prisoner to your inhibitions...Partying and clubbing like your high school days,” the voice continued.
This had confused him. Partying? Clubbing? What had that meant...the last thing he remembered he was just driving...or...no, he wasn’t driving. Of course not. He was out in the field—he was training with the others—he was trying to save the others.
But “he” was driving. He who this shadow used to be. There was something deep inside his brain that understood this fact now, and in looking through its eyes he was weightless as he was experiencing his “before”. That was why the crash was painless—he was an observer, floating through the remnants of memory left in whatever remained of this person.
Person. It was a person. The shades—the monsters of the wild...was a person.
“’Danger Dorian’, that’s what they called you, right?” The voice called again—its timbre was much deeper than he expected, and then he remembered where that voice came from.
Two amber eyes opened up in front of him in the shape of the earth as he continued dropping down closer to the core of the planet. The eyes burned like two balls of fire—they bore holes in his wake.
“Four DUIs and a suspension of your driver’s card. No matter how many layers deeper I bring you…”
Images play out in front of Lucas’s eyes. He sees another crash—this time he jackknifed a car who was turning from an intersection. Then there was another fatal collision where he slammed into another car head first, and then another where he did not break in time and his car began to swerve before its collision.
“...you keep finding ways to kill people. Looks like you could do with some time in the underworld.”
He broke the final layer of the ground, and instead of a molten core like he expected to see, he had been floating upside down from what looked like the depths of space. Stars glowed brilliantly as he passed them—cosmic patterns that painted the sky.
He righted himself as much as he could—the light from the stars revealed that black substance that had coated the Shade was now covering his arms and feet—it had bound them tight to his body. He saw he was falling—and in the distance as large as a sun he saw the face of the king he knew the voice to belong to. Projected as large as a star itself he saw the face those eyes belonged to—Gardov, the Onyx King of Blackwell, and the dragon that gave the kingdom its magic.
He started falling faster as the dragon smiled—and he felt his head start to wane again—his breath was getting short, but the last thing he had seen was...no, that couldn’t have been...it almost looked like another body was falling—it was higher than he was, it had come to this place later than he had, but there it was. Then...ah! There was another. Shades in large amounts were falling to the world, and Lucas blinked and saw the figure in front of his face again.
Or rather, he would have, if it was all there. His hand was raised—and his hands were stinging hot—the kind of heat he expected to face when the Shade had made contact with him originally, but he realized that was not the source of the heat. Instead, it was because his hands were glowing white—as bright as a sun. Light had been fired out of them in a concentrated beam and had obliterated half of the face of the Shade—Dorian’s face.
In the new cavity created by the blast, he saw Laven’s face, who was as confused as he was at the turn of events.
The Shade tried bringing up its other arm, but it was noticeably delayed in its movements with the damage to its body. Lucas felt the body ripped from his grip as Laven approached—the lights on her own body were glowing and she tore the rising arm clean off the body—tossing it off to the side. As the figure recoiled, it dropped to the ground and died.
“What the hell was all that?” Laven asked.
Lucas was still staring at his hands, they still glowed just as brightly. “I...think I saw the Shade’s last memories of when it was human.”
“Human?”
Lucas nodded and looked up to her, “They’re from our world. Remember how Tomorrow explained how they started coming through those tears in the world?”
Laven nodded.
“They’re people that died in our world. This one here was a drunk driver—something about it seemed off—like he died more than once—given multiple chances or something like that. I’m not sure on the specifics, but it seems like this world here,” Lucas motioned his arm in a grand fashion, “...it’s all underneath ours.”
“Underneath...how could that even be...and...this,” she moved to touch Lucas’s hands. If it were anybody else he would have backed away—fearing that he would have burned them solely by touch alone, but he knew Laven was careful enough—and strong enough to handle it.
“I’m not sure. I felt myself being grabbed and dragged through the Earth—dragged deeper than anything I’ve ever seen and then I saw the Creature of the Night—the King.”
Her look was now pensive, she was analyzing it to herself quietly. “So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he would be behind the influx of things like that here—I guess that answers if we need to take care of him here. And this,” she looked over his hands delicately, raising them and with her touch he felt the glowing start to fade—the heat had started to normalize—a feeling he was grateful for.
“It’s possible that if they do come from our world—the tar-like substance they were covered with could be some sort of...physical manifestation of their death—the remnant of material from the other world. Maybe that connection to the old world reawakened some of the abilities you had back then.”
“It’s not exact,” Lucas said. “I gathered my old power from electricity. It functioned enough like light in some circumstances, but this here,” he held out his hands and extended his palms. A ghost of the light slowly spilled out in an arc. “This feels like...well, light. Natural light, the essence of light. It feels like the natural opposite to the shadow—like it was a natural reaction.”
“We’ll have to keep an eye on that,” Laven said, and she breathed heavily as her own lights started to fade. Lucas reached out to grab her as she faltered, and she thanked him for catching her mid stride.
“Sucks I used that for such a non-threat,” she chuckled.
“Well hey, it very easily could have gone awry,” Lucas said. “And we should keep the same level of caution should we come across more of them. I think I would have been in some trouble if I didn’t happen to come across this,” he raised his hands. “And until I can learn to control it, or learn its limits, I shouldn’t rely on having it.”
“That makes sense, and I agree with it. I guess I was just so used to being the stronger of us two that I almost feel a little jealous.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucas asked. “Of course you’re still the stronger of us two.”
Laven smiled. “I know, I just wanted to hear you say it.”