Force, pure and brutal. That was how they died. Even now, their empty eyes gazed lifelessly upon the river of blood that trailed away from their bodies, adorning metal, grass, asphalt, and brick with its crimson lustre. 

But it was not darkness that greeted them. When his eyes opened again, Jules found himself on his back, staring up at a blue sky between strange… crystal branches? He shifted his gaze, finding that the branches emerged from the tall trunk of some kind of iridescent tree. His eyes widened in confusion.

Jules racked his brains, trying to remember what had happened. It had been a pretty bad day for them both, he remembered. He’d had just finished a grueling engineering exam, and Nia’d just survived a full day of classes. He’d propped her up as they meandered down the sidewalk towards their house. The setting sun beat down on them as they struggled to claw their way through their door. 

And then he remembered the horn, blaring a warning which had gone unheeded. His breath caught in his throat as he remembered it, a flicker of terror rising as if he was facing his death all over again. Nia’s panicked screaming indicated that he wasn’t the only one remembering it. 

“HOLY FUCK. WE DIED. THAT WAS US. WE JUST FUCKIN’ DIED,” Nia screamed, “THAT TRUCK J-JUST RAN US OVER.” She stared, wide-eyed at the ground, before deflating as her emotions turned to numbness.

“... I never got to say goodbye to mom,” she whispered, “or dad.”

Jules nodded along, his face blank. He knew he had to simply be there for her. It was what he’d always done in times like these. Of course, though not as expressive of it as Nia was, he too was in shock and turmoil. Regrets swarmed him, gnawing at his insides. There had been so much left unfinished. He’d wanted to finish that mechanical engineering degree. Jules bitterly remembered a half-finished suit of armor he’d left in his family’s garage, now never to be completed. But he didn’t let it show. 

He examined his own regretful thoughts, in the same detached fashion a mortician examines a corpse. Waste, he realized, and chaff. There was no time to worry about those sorts of things, he realized. Time was precious, every second spent wishing for some different past was a second wasted in the here and now. Jules threw away his regrets, sweeping them away into a corner of his mind.

He turned his mind towards the fact that they were lost. He forced himself to focus on figuring out where they were. Jules stood, looking up towards the sky. His jaw dropped as he realized the sky.. had no sun.

It was a vivid blue, with not a single cloud in sight. Jules lowered his gaze and saw that the earth was dry and cracked with thirst. Strange grey ruins dotted the landscape, stretching out to the horizon. There was no way, he thought, any of this could exist. There was no way a place like this could have such bright light without a sun. Nor, as far as he knew, could any land feature a song-without-sound. He turned towards the source, and saw that it emanated from strange, twinkling, jagged crystals off in the distance.

“Wait,” he realized, as this anomaly caught his eye, “what the fuck?”

He shook Nia gently.

“Sis, do you feel, or rather, hear, or ... whatever, do you notice that thing too?”

“What? What do you m-”

Her eyes widened, as she registered the melodies reaching out to her. She looked up, gazing on the twinkling crystals in the distance.

“... Y’know, this is a pretty weird afterlife. Empty. Weird Music. Like a big elevator for the soul, for all eternity.”

“I’m going to go look at it,” Jules said, “maybe we can get out of this place and find peace or whatever this place wants us to do after we die.”

His eyes glimmered with interest, betraying his true motivations, of base curiosity.

“Oh god, you die and the first thing you want to do is poke what you see with a stick.”

“I don’t have a stick,” Jules said solemnly, “I'll have to use my hands instead.”

He got up from his spot amongst the tree-roots and walked over to the crystals. After crouching down to examine them closely, he found that they formed a rough circle, about a foot high, around a smooth, fist-sized, multi-colored orb. Jules noticed that the crystals flashed in alternating colors, and was about to touch them when Nia arrived at his side.

“So we’ve got weird crystals. You’re the nerd here,” she snorted as Jules rolled his eyes, “tell me what you’re seeing.”

“Well,” he replied, “If they are crystals, they’re fucky crystals.”

He pointed to several out-growths, before continuing with his explanation.

“Different crystalline structures. That’s a hexagonal crystal, that one is cubic. Either they're different similar-looking materials put together in one piece, or it’s one material with weird properties.”

“It’s found in the afterlife around a glowing sphere, of course it’s going to be weird,” she snorted.

“Now let’s see here…”

Jules pulled a tissue out of his coat pocket, before slowly reaching out with it towards the crystal. The orb suddenly started moving, rising up into the air before stopping about two feet off the ground. He kept going, and there was a sudden spark between his hand and the crystals. Out of shock, he dropped the tissue, and watched as the spark somehow ignited a chain of purple lightning that spread up his arm quickly. It fanned out across his entire body, leaping across every inch. Rather than fear it, Jules’ expression was one of wondrous amazement as he stared at the discharges. Jules’s mind raced, trying to understand what he was seeing. He was far more fascinated by the exotic properties of the lightning, than he was concerned about its possible effects.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Holy shit.”

Nia reached out to grab him instinctively, before stopping as she realized what it could do to her.

“Jules, you alright?”

“Yeah. It feels kinda… tingly. But that’s i-”

The orb, unnoticed, had begun to split. It began to flow into two streams of light that circled around one another at a frantic pace, one regal purple and one burning green. Suddenly, Jules wasn’t the only one receiving the strange lightning. A fork of emerald fulmination reached out to Nia, causing her to crackle with power as well. 

“... I may have fucked us a little,” Jules admitted, as he looked at Nia’s predicament.

“You think?” Nia muttered, as she stared with wide eyes at the sparks dancing across her palm.

Both of them turned their attention back to the dance of light in the crystal circle, just in time to watch the streams of light merge back into a single whole. Instead of an orb, they seemed to coalesce into a single point, only visible by the bright glow it emitted.

And then it exploded. It wasn’t a very fast explosion either, even as it filled their vision with light, they had the time to react. Nia reached out to block it helplessly with her hands, while Jules extended his arm to grab her and run-

And then they were somewhere new yet again.

There was a sun in the sky above his head once again, warm and inviting. The light filtered through the green leaves of the gnarled oak trees, revealing a picturesque forest. It was as though they’d stepped into a century-old masterpiece of a painting. Jules could hear the twittering of birds, and when he stepped forward, the crunch of leaves and dirt underneath his shoes.

It was... normal, for the first time since he’d died. Something he recognized, something he could make sense of. Jules breathed a sigh of relief, taking stock of himself. Nothing felt painful, broken, or missing. He counted that as a win. He slightly regretted not being able to see more of that strange lightning.

“You alright sis?”

Nia smacked him on the head lightly, just to prove how alright she was.

“Yeah, all in one piece, no thanks to you and your reckless bullshit.”

Jules shrugged.

“Well we’re somewhere normal-ish now, so it’s fine. Or at least, it looks normal.”

His sister rolled her eyes as she started walking forwards, quickly finding a trail through the woods and following it. Jules stepped into place behind her, lagging behind slightly, content to follow her lead. She’d been the most devoted to their Scout meetings, after all.

“No doubt there’s some wacky bullshit going on here still,” she muttered.

Jules watched her take stock of her surroundings as she walked, a careful eye examining every leaf and tree. 

“This looks like a rather well-managed temperate forest. A very old one, though. Not much underbrush and clear trails. A lot of these plants I’ve absolutely never seen before, but I’ve only really hiked around the Bay, so we could just be in some Earth forest.”

She didn’t very hopeful about it, Jules noted. Nia glanced over her shoulder at her brother.

“You remember the essentials, right?”

“For wilderness survival? Yeah, water, warmth, food, in that order.”

Her head turns to send him a withering glare over her shoulder.

“Shelter, Signalling, Water and Food. You really didn’t pay attention, did you? Oh, right, that scout meeting you were too busy flirting with Isabelle.”

He scowled, his expression souring at the mention of the name. Isabelle. It tasted like ash on his tongue.

“Didn’t we agree not to bring her up after the breakup?” 

“Yeah, but we also agreed not to have to deal with your bullcrap again, and look where we are! Stuck in the woods, god knows where.”

“... Okay, fair enough.” 

Jules scoffed, sullen for a moment. He’d never liked it when people brought up his love life. Nia stopped for a moment, realization dawning across her face.

“Crap, I forgot. What do you have on you? I’ve got a pocket knife, some tissues, a phone… Oh I really am stupid. Should have checked the phone first.”

She searched her pockets only to find her various items missing, vanished, as if they’d never been.

“... Alright then. Never mind.”

Jules checked his own pockets, and swore. His tissues were also missing, along with the lighter he was supposed to return to their roommate, that would’ve really helped for a fire. He supposed they'd gone missing in the explosion.

“Let’s just… find a nice place to rest for the night,” Nia sighed, “no one’s going to be looking for us so we’ll have to hoof it to civilization on our own.”

And so, they continued along the trail. It wasn’t long before he heard the sound of bubbling, splashing water, behind a tall hedge. It filled him with a quiet satisfaction that one of their needs would soon be met. They pressed through with difficulty, earning scratches all across their faces from the thorns for their troubles. But they eventually made it to the other side, earning them a clear view of a beautiful, bubbling waterfall. It poured into a still pool that fed into a stream, which lazily trailed off into the distance.

But rather than be at ease, Jules’ heart pounded and his blood screamed adrenaline. For at the banks of the pool, were a pack of wolves. Or rather, wolf-like creatures. They had horns, curling like those of rams, emerging from their heads. They were facing the source of the disturbance, eyeing the newcomers warily. Jules counted almost a dozen of them, staring down the siblings with wide eyes and bared teeth.

“Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Jules said under his breath.

“Oh, shut up,” Nia hissed, as she tried desperately to figure out their next move.