Noe was racing forward faster than he could realize. Streaks of every color flew through his vision as he shot down the blinding tunnel like a bullet leaving the chamber. He would've screamed, but realized he had no mouth to do so with, nor arms or legs to flail as he sped onward.

His mind was blank, a disembodied spirit tearing across the membrane between life and death, at the mercy of fate. Or other hands that might intervene.

A word flashed through his very being, almost engraved into the substance of his soul, just as quickly as he moved. He couldn't quite wrap his mind, or what part of it he had secured, around it. It was too old, too alien for him to understand.

Then the tunnel ended.

He flew headfirst out into the dark, half blind and barely cognizant and curled in a ball.

He hit the cold floor with all his weight, sprawling out onto his back as his body connected. He laid there for a moment in silence, perfectly still.

Then his mouth opened, sucking in all the air it could as his heart began to beat. He shot up, his face nearly slamming into the floor with the force of it. He sucked in breath like each could be his last, almost choking on it.

He opened his eyes, and they burned like someone had shone a bright light right into them, and at first he thought that was why he couldn't see. But as his new eyes adjusted, he found himself sitting in the dark.

His hands clumsily felt out the ground beneath him as he shifted onto his knees, not recognizing what he found. Rough, jagged stone, like it had been blasted out of the earth. It seemed flat and even however, enough so that he could stand up.

It was cold here, something he wasn't familiar with. In the school he had never even noticed the temperature. Then he remembered. The school. His death. Salazar.

His anger returned to him, burning in his chest, threatening to consume him entirely, but there was something else. Something more pressing, at least as of right then. Confusion.

He thought to himself, analyzing internally the events of his arrival, standing alone for hundreds of miles around him.

He had died, he knew that. He remembered it. But after that, almost nothing. Flashes of light, scraps of memories, a half dream of a dream in the back of his mind. But through it all, he knew one thing clearly. He had witnessed some ancient, powerful truth. A law of the universe. The Tao.

He didn't know where he had been, or how he had come back, but it had bestowed him with ultimate enlightenment, even the sliver of it he retained.

Thoughts raced through his mind, a feeling he hadn't felt in hundreds of years: an urge to meditate. He almost sat down when he felt something behind him.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up, and an overbearing feeling of being watched filled him, clearing any ideas he had. His heart beat against his rib cage like an angry prisoner and his stomach twisted.

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He didn't recognize this feeling, it was unlike anything he remembered ever feeling.

Hives ran up his arms and his back straightened, a shiver running down his spine.

He spun around, staring into the darkness. He couldn't see anything, but he was sure it was there, just out of his senses.

He raised his hand, unfurling his willpower to part the darkness! And then... nothing happened. His eyes widened, and panic seized him. Noe tried again, leveraging his mind now, leaning into it with all of his mental fortitude, but nothing came. It was like he had been drained dry.

Stepping back, he tried unleashing his ideal. But he felt nothing, not the familiar click inside of him, or the feeling of its influence expanding around him.

it wasn't even that it was blocked, but like it wasn't even there to begin with. He was completely empty.

The thing in the darkness came forward, he felt its aura of dread come closer, so powerful he could almost seize it in his hands.

It is a primal thing. Something you cannot avoid, no matter how much you'd like to. It crept up his spine like a spider. Its long, spindly legs digging into his flesh, crawling over his cold skin, casting a shadow over his reason. The Fear.

He ran. His legs cut through the air like razor blades, his hands scooping it behind him.

His eyes were wide and his teeth were clenched. He feared what was behind him, and he feared not knowing what he felt.

The Fear.

In front of him he felt it again, from two directions now. He stumbled and fell, scrambling over the ground to get away.

The Fear.

He ran again, this time away from the both of them. It was behind him now, chasing. And beside him. Left and right. All around.

Like a boot pressed against his neck,

The Fear.

He screamed, as loud as he could, all reason lost. Running. He didn't know where he was going.

Then a hand gripped him. He froze, his body stiff with terror. The scream died in his throat as his eyes nearly rolled up into his head.

"Shut the hell up! They're coming now, you've got a lot of them chasing you. Come with me!" A light shouted as it lit up his eye line, blinding him again. Noe felt the hand tug him, and he ran with it.

It jerked him left, then right, then forward as it sped up. His feet dragged behind him, eliciting a string of curses to be uttered. Then it was silent.

Only his breathing and the slap of his bare feet against the stone. He didn't know what he imagined it was following him, but it made no effort to reveal itself. Only the feeling it exerted.

You couldn't see it. You couldn't hear it. Still there.

The Fear.

Then he saw the hole. Light shone up out of it, like a pinhole through a metal sheet. It came closer and closer, until he was falling into it. His escort flung himself, and Noe, through the hole. They must've fallen a dozen feet before landing on something he didn't know. Cold, hard, flat, holes in it. A metal grate.

"You Damn fool! What're you doing up in between all alone! Completely naked and white as a sheet!" Their anger suddenly gave way to one of confusion, "Damn, you really are white as a sheet." He said, scratching his beard with a gloved hand.

It was a man, built wide like an ox with a beard that was almost as wild and bushy as his brow, which hung over his dark eyes as they stared at Noe.

Hovering over his forehead was a small light fastened to an opposable arm which connected on the other end to the contraption held on his back by thick leather straps. A sturdy, iron box with five other arms protruding at five other angles, each with another device Noe didn't recognize.

Noe looked down at his own arms, and hands by extension. Bone white, like the color had been drained right out of him. The same with his legs, chest, and everything else he could see as he tried to fold himself in half inspecting the phenomenon.

"Woah there, relax now. Did they scare you mad up there?" The man asked. Noe stopped to look at him.

"They? Yes, they!" He nodded, "what are they?" He asked. Down here, it was like their presence had vanished.

"You really don't know?" The man asked. Noe shook his head slowly.

"Who are you?" He asked Noe, leaning away.

"I-" he paused, "I'm not sure, right now. Where am I?" Noe asked. The man shook his head, and threw his hand out behind him to gesture.

Below them was such a vast, confusing network of towers and platforms, almost all of it man made and radiating such powerful light. It seemed to all be barely held together by equal parts scaffolding and steel beams.

"The under"