Sometimes in life there are moments where we find ourselves inexplicably lost for no readily apparent reason, whether figuratively or literally. And as it just so happened, one day Rae found himself stumbling into one of those moments, or maybe that moment stumbled into him...

"How did I get here?" Rae asked himself. "I can't remember... what is this?"

A pitch black void encapsulated him, with seemingly no up or down; he was falling or floating, but in what direction he did not know. A sullen silence cradled his ears; nothing could be heard in this place wherever this place was. As with the absence of light, likewise was the suppression of sound. But in a way, Rae could still see, and he could still hear; though, what he sensed were not sights or sounds. Rather, they were some other external notions projected into him, much like a tome had flung itself open and flown into his mind.

And so Rae fell, limbs flapping aimlessly through intangible air, mouth shouting inaudible screams, eyes glancing towards unknowable destinations, mind racing, and heart humming; until, in an abrupt gesticular motion he felt a tug through the back of his shirt. The smothered Cat's head pensively turned to look and see, and what he saw frightened him further. An enormous disembodied hand was reaching up through this unknown void and clasping him.

There was a sudden rushing current, like air gushing into an opened vacuum, as the boy's torso and limbs were scrunched up into the shape of a 'U'. The hand pulled him down towards it at an indeterminable speed; though, to Rae it resembled more the velocity of a rocket, as if he were being shot from a cannon. The boy's bright eyes released long teary waterfalls, which flew from his face before vanishing into an incorporeal river, as he was sucked flailing, cursing without speech, through this dark empty space. The golden specs within those eyes shined brightly there, as do flickering flames of two candles dropping upon a floor in the night. This tug turned into a jerk, then a pull, then a haul; before too long, it became a torrential rending rupture, mimicking a star crossing the event horizon of a black hole.

And just then as Rae thought he would surely die, his eyes blinked shut to avoid the flashing of his life before them, but then shortly opened, and he was not dead. Instead, the boy found himself sitting beneath a bright blue sky, ruled by an oppressive sweltering sun, slapping him across the brow with yellow jurisdiction; so bright that his hazel irises nearly collapsed around his pupils, resulting in a stark heady sting of pain shooting through them as he squinted.

"What the fucking he—?" Ray said, but then stopped startled, as he realized he could hear his speech.

"Where am I? What the hell is going on? I don't even remember where I was before this..."

"The fuck? Sand?" Rae asked aloud, as he pulled some up and looked at the granules sifting through his fingers.

Indeed, he appeared to have been placed upon a gigantic dune of sand. He looked out across the beige landscape, hand shielding his forehead from the sun. This place seemed nearly as endless as the void from which he came, though at least here there were a few discernible features; such as, the sandy ground, the deep blue sky, and hints in the far distance of strange flora, resembling giant palm-trees but certainly were not. As well, there were far away mesas with jagged clay-red rock formations jutting out from the earth in all manner of directions. But for the most part, there was little before him but rolling mounds of sand.

As he wondered of his current whereabouts, he heard a thunderous rumble, resembling the sounds of a giant tuba lodged within a gurgling stomach, echoing from beneath this unknown barren-scape. Accompanying the cavernous noise was a quaking of the sand dunes below, as the pale specks began to slither in wavy patterns, before suddenly rising up in great heaps and taking Rae along with them. And as he rose through air, he clung to the surface of this tumbling sand, watching the tiny pastel pieces slide down rapidly, like drops of wine shinked from their glass, falling faster and faster as the goblet tipped over.

But what came next immediately caused a panic in the Cat. As more and more sand fled back towards the ground, he realized he was clinging to the surface of something organic. He blinked then blinked again, as in disbelief; he noticed the thing he clung to looked eerily similar to skin. As well, there was a fleshy feeling below the palms of his hands and between his clasping fingers. He turned his head sideways and saw that he was slanted at a steep angle, but more surprisingly he believed he was approximately level with the top of the closest mesa. He then carefully looked down over his shoulder and, indeed, he was high up in the air.

Rae gulped and felt the sweat begin to form across his brow. "HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!?" He screamed, ears standing on end in electrified fright, tail quivering in anxiety.

Looking up, he could see even more pearly pink wrinkles of flesh-like mass extending far above him. And then... there was a thrust as whatever this thing was began to wave back and forth. More guttural tuba-like bellows blasted out across the landscape though the sounds' amplitude was more akin to that of thunder, following a nearby lightning strike. After which, Rae found himself falling yet again, for he had been shook loose from this creature merely by it's movements and sonic reverberations. Whatever it was, Rae could clearly see, as he fell down away from it, that it was titanic in its magnitude.

The shaken boy held his breath in terror, anticipation welling up within, as he imagined hitting the ground. For the second time in such a short period, he thought he might die. But yet again, die he did not; somehow instead, he landed safely on the pale silky soil and surprisingly without pain. And as he sat bewildered about his living status, he looked up and could now plainly tell that this thing was both living and massive.

"Ohhh.... fucking shit... fuck me..." Rae muttered, through hushed tongue and pursed lips.

To his terrorized amazement, it had the likeness of a gigantic worm reaching up into the sky, wriggling back and forth betwixt the hills of sand, with more of its body certainly lodged below the surface. This was evidently not a creature from Terra; such a gargantuan beast would have been readily known across all corners of the globe. Rae was sure; there was no such worm that was as tall as a mountain mesa and as thick as a sky skyscraper. No... this was a horror beyond comprehension, like a leviathan god amongst an ocean of sand rising up from the depths to herald the coming end of creation.

The writhing pink tubular titan began to dangle the top-half of its body until it resembled the shape of an upside-down 'J', enveloping the horizon and eclipsing the sun. Ears sulking flat and tail tensing long, Rae could now succinctly see the upper portion of its form. The curled sock looking monstrosity had an equally monstrous mouth to crown it's top-end; it was a gargantuan pit-like orifice with large protruding triangular bones girding all about the interior, much in the likeness of blades lining the inside of a blender. Those jagged disorderly teeth were dripping with what the small boy assumed was saliva; but additionally, there appeared to be some other substance oozing out alongside. Thick, gooey, maroon-colored ropes ran from its hideous maw, slovenly stretching down its stout body, some of which were like cataracts drenching the desert floor in large putrid puddles.

Though the beast did not seem to notice the tiny fleeing Rae, as it was looking well past him, it was definitely still a hazard to the Cat. One of those peculiar vines of unholy ooze dripped down and flung about wildly with the undular motions of the beast, and coincidentally landed nearby a swiftly scrambling Rae, nearly hitting him.

"AHHCK— SHIT!" Rae cursed, as he watched some of this fluid splash against the sand in front of him and slowly melt a hole there. He stumbled back on one leg, eyebrows raised, tail curled, and ears on end, as he avoided more of those raining, liquid, melting pellets which in effect could only be compared to acid.

The scared Cat ran fervently, barely dodging each time, as more and more acidic sludge was falling down upon him. But soon the strange substance stopped landing so close, like a rain shower passing overhead due to a change in current. The beast had turned its head nearly 180 degrees from Rae, seemingly focusing on something in the opposite direction. As he became slightly more relaxed, knowing that he was not about to be chemically burnt to a crisp, Rae took a look back to see if he could tell what caught the creature's attention. And when he did, to his astonishment he saw what appeared to be a certain black-haired Warrior Prince standing precariously close to the megalithic worm.

"Das...?" Rae asked softly, trying to comprehend the scene before him.

But his Alien friend was too far away to hear such a faint whisper; indeed, he must have been nearly a mile off (1.61 km), across the other side of the huge worm, looking up at the beast. Curiously, however, Rae felt something was off about Dasnir's appearance, while this was clearly the boy he knew there were some altered details. Namely, his hair was cut much shorter, resembling a relaxed Mohawk with the trimmed sides of his scalp and some hair-tips dyed a frosty-grey. Furthermore, he was wearing a never-before-seen apparel, a kind of blue tunic-looking shirt that slightly overlapped light-grey baggy trousers, tied together at the waist by a long strip of dangling black fabric. And lastly, because the Cat had exceptional vision, he could tell the Prince seemed somewhat shorter than expected.

But perhaps most interesting of all, was the slender yet sturdy looking object the Warrior held in his right hand. Its length had the form of a staff which was at least 3 ⅓ feet (1 meter) longer than his entire body, and affixed to the tip was a long, thick, curved blade, similar to that of a scimitar. He was holding it at a downwards 40-degree angle with the staff portion braced against his lower arm and running behind his back. Being an A+ student of history, Rae thought this object resembled a polearm weapon from one of his textbooks.

Rae blinked in disbelief as he took in the bizarre sight, and when he opened his eyes he was suddenly much closer, no less than 20 feet (6 meters), to the Warrior Prince and unfortunately the giant worm as well. At least from this distance, Rae could easily see Dasnir's expression, which was akin to his usual cold gaze but there was an additional element this time...

"He's crying???" Rae thought, ears sulking in unexpected empathy.

Of all the things he had just witnessed this was the most unsettling to the cat-eared boy, more disturbing than floating without senses through a pitch-black void, more disturbing than his great fall across a boundless direction, and more disturbing than the acid spitting giant worm nearly melting him. Perhaps it was so unsettling, because Rae thought the tears looked so intense, yet the typically emotionally-lacking boy did not have a grimace or any other indication one might attribute to distress. It seemed as if they were forced out against his will; almost like, the Prince could not hide these tears even though he had tried. They just flowed there, from eyes which did not match their sorrow and across cheeks where they did not belong. Simply put, they were out of place with the rest of his face.

"Das, are you ok?" Rae called out to him. "What's going on? Where are we?"

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His questions were met with silence, but it did not seem as though it were a rebuke or an intentional dismissal; rather, for some reason it seemed as though his words did not even reach the Warrior. And during Rae's curious questioning, the megalithic pink sand-beast hunched itself, arching at an even steeper angle, and bent over towards them in a slithering cork-screw motion; until, its maw was just mere feet from the stoic Prince and scared Cat. The Prince stared up at it unfazed, though still crying; conversely, Rae nearly wet himself as this sand-scion-of-death loomed over them. He whimpered and quivered in fear at the thought of being scooped up with the entire dune and devoured whole; he found himself speechless and unable to move, like the sight had caught his tongue.

Just then, there was a throaty croaking rasp which seemed to shake the ground, and following it was a violent vehement vociferation, so loud that Rae thought his sensitive ears might burst. Shockwaves blew over the boys; they were both moved back several feet with the wind. As the pressure grew, so too did more viscous maroon-rain blow out sideways like a torrential downpour. The droplets littered the hillside bubbling sand into smoke. Along with them came a stench, so horrid and vile that one might compare it to week-long-expired rotting bodies floating in a river of sewage; the smell escaped the beast's gurgling gaping aperture and flooded the air. It was so intense a sensation, that Rae instinctively gagged and hurled. Though the Prince did not move at all, as if stuck in a solemn trance gazing into a toothed pit of despair.

And at that moment as Rae was looking up through this fielded Armageddon, beneath the Prince's legs a force began to build, wind shirking about feet, land sinking from bended knee, hair flapping in supernatural splendor, and muscles bulging beyond realistic comprehension. There was an instant release of something akin to steam or mist seemingly flowing from the Warrior's body. Thinking back to his training with Fulbrik, Rae thought this could possibly be Dasnir's Eniris manifesting.

The mighty Lion crouched back on his haunches, ever so slightly, before springing forward from the ground and through the air, ascending along the light flash of a camera about to capture the face of death; he leapt upon his prey without mercy. The place where the Warior had stood presented as a small crater in the sand, about 30 feet (9 meters) in length. Staring through startled eyes, Rae barely managed to follow the hasty motion, if he had been a normal human his eyes might have lost it. The Cat jolted his neck along with the instantaneous movement of the Prince, and saw him whirl through mid-air, pole-arm swinging like a fan off its bearings, before landing skillfully onto a tooth of the behemoth with just one foot.

As if it had seen a vision of its own impending demise, the creature shot up into the air slinking more and more of its seemingly endless body from the sand, until it crested the sunbeams of the desert sky. There it shook and shuddered, roaring and belching, in all manner of directions, as it attempted to reject the dangerous intruder it sensed within its mouth. Though this desert denizen was, perhaps, a god in this domain, to an Asgeeri Warrior even gods may fall. And so its instinct had been too slow, as a noise of metal meeting muscle, flesh, and bone rang out to accompany its pained whale-like screams. Rae saw a brief, bright, shining, yellow-white reflection, resembling a light striking a mirror, atop the corner of the beast's mouth. And then in a single smooth racing motion, like a zipper flying down fabric, there came a Prince and his polearm riding along the splitting side of the writhing worm as it parted in two. Crimson blood, translucent saliva, and maroon mucus shot out of the slivered pearly-pink carcass, like a ghoulish geyser, as the Lion's teeth split open his prey, long-ways down to the ground.

Shimmering with supernatural heat, Dasnir landed on the sand with the grace of nature, while the titanic had-been-god flapped frantically. And as he turned from the shrieking beast, without even turning to look at his prey, he seemingly swung the polearm in a wave, like a lightning strike sundering the air above a tall mountain. There was an apparent crack in space that cut through everything in the direction of the swing, much longer than the polearm itself. After which there was a small pause, and the butterflied worm stopped its convulsions; before, an angular split formed horizontally across its tube-shaped body about a third of the way below its mouth. Then this upper portion entirely slid off, separating from the rest of the corpse before crashing into the dunes below.

Rae could not believe what he just saw. The cat-eared boy rubbed his eyes as if he needed to look through them freshly, but when he opened them what he saw was more sorrowful than the impressive. On his knees in the sand, the Prince sat, drooping and motionless body, grimacing and mouth agape, streaming tears down his face, seemingly crying out into an unseen oblivion.

The human boy had never seen his Alien friend show such emotion, and so his heart nearly stopped; he had not even thought Dasnir capable of crying let alone in this forlorn way. He remembered the lesson about Asgeeri culture he had received from Fulbrik, and thus found this to be even more impossible. For surely the Prince was a trained Warrior, perhaps, even more than most. So how could it be that he had violated to a great extent such a strict cultural norm? Rae thought it was the strangest thing he'd ever seen, even since making his new friends.

So Rae thought to get up and go comfort the Prince, even though he knew Dasnir might be angry if he tried; a caring compulsion moved him anyways. As he walked across the sand towards the Prince, there was a sudden strange feeling that came over Rae. The entire space about them seemed to warp; mass, light, and color flattening out and vanishing into a single horizon-point before fading into nothingness. Rae found himself again in a pitch-black place with no bearings for direction, except the still crying Prince. There was also apparently a floor this time, as they were not floating, and there was also clearly an atmosphere, because he could still hear Dasnir's cries.

But the Cat was not startled by this sudden shift this time around, all he could think about was hugging his hysterical friend. He touched Dasnir's shoulder, but the Prince did not seem to notice...

"Das?" Rae said soothingly.

As Rae tried to comfort his friend, before his very eyes, the Prince's tears turned into streams of crimson.

"What the hell? Dude, you're bleeding! Das, can you hear me?!" Rae pleaded. He shook his friend by the shoulders, but there was still no reaction.

After a few seconds of this, Rae heard a loud, quaking, cracking noise and looked behind him. The black floor of this place was opening up, splitting in two and heading directly towards them. Rae's eyes went wide with anxiety, but he did not want to leave his friend there.

"DAS! We have to leave now!" As Rae spoke this he noticed his voice echoed, as if he were in a cave, but when he turned back to pull the distraught Dasnir up and run the Prince was gone. Rae lost his vision for a brief second though he had not blinked. The Cat's eyes dilated to their furthest extent, and his ears twitched as he heard faint dripping noises. Then he could tell that he actually was in a cave, but he hadn't seen how he had gotten there, wherever there was.

The boy shivered and grasped his shoulders. "D-Das-s?! W-what-t the F-fuck?! I-It's so f-f-fucking c-cold..."

Rae's body shook but not from fear; rather, it was a drop in temperature that gyrated his frame from ear to tail. He began to walk at a steady pace; he knew he could not stay there long or he might freeze to death. However, Rae was still more worried about Dasnir and how the Prince had disappeared.

"N-None of t-this-s m-m-makes any d-d-damn-n s-s-sense, g-give me a b-b-break..." He spoke through fastened freezing lips, misty breaths escaping them.

It was not long before Rae began to feel tired from the cold, but after a steady pace of searching several minutes for his friend; suddenly, he saw something significant —A long tunnel shooting off from the side of this huge cave.

"There's something down there..." The Cat's curiosity and lack of options beckoned him to try the tunnel, from which the only light, dim as it was, that he had seen in this place was shining.

Only several feet into the tunnel, and suddenly cold became warm.

"What the actual fucking shit is going on with this place? It's warm here now..." Rae squinted to see clearer. As he approached the dim light, he could see it was apparently red in color. "Is that a Door?" Rae was almost upon the source of the strange red glow. And when he was no less than 50 feet (15.24 meters) from the ominous light pouring out from around the blood-red painted wooden door, he began to feel a strange kind of pressure encroach upon him.

Along with the pressure was a foreboding sensation and a most surreal sight. The door began to buckle and flap against its hinges, and as it did the red paint flaked off revealing a black door instead. But most bizarre of all when it had finished peeling its skin, a lengthy crack about its midpoint appeared and began to widen, curling the corners of its new found orifice into the shape of a disturbing uncanny smile. The black wooden lips of the door bulged to resemble a mouthy human facade, and opening just slightly in the middle showed red teeth which set off the feature quite clearly from the rest of the surface.

"We have been alone for so long... Open us... Come, little cat, do not make us wait any longer..." The door spoke in a husky supernatural grumble, as it continued to smile at Rae.

"NOPE!" Rae immediately turned tail to leave.

The door frowned, as Rae fled faster than he, perhaps, ever had. He stumbled slightly over the jagged rocky floor a few times as he ran back down the tunnel towards the cold cavern. And just as he was within view of it, a tremendous vibration resounded through the tunnel, knocking Rae on his tail-end. The entrance to the tunnel collapsed directly in front of him; he was trapped. But he was not alone... Rae heard hundreds of gushy creaky noises and looked up along the surface of the tunnel; as with the manifestation of the mouth upon the door, but many times over, there appeared a thousand eyes or more all along the surface of that buried place. Large eyes painted with milky-white Sclera and red bloodshot Irises all staring down at the boy.

"HOLY SHIT! FUCKING FUCK THIS FUCKING PLACE!" Rae screamed, heart racing and legs clambering, to avoid stepping on more and more eyes as they formed along the floor.

The frowny face, that should not have been, unhinged its non-existent jaw until its red teeth were practically touching both the top and bottom of the door. A sickening facsimile of a human tongue blasted out from between gaping black lips; swooshing, slurping, and flying through the tunnel, before wrapping around Rae's waist and drenching him with spit. Before Rae could even curse or protest some more, he was traversing back towards the black door, as the tongue quickly reeled him in like a hooked fish. But just as Rae thought that he would die for a third time since finding himself within this bizarre place, his journey to be eaten was cut short. The tongue dropped like a felled tree as a mysteriously reappeared Prince cut it off with the swing of his polearm just before Rae could be consumed. A wailing of shrieking lips, a gnashing of reddened teeth, and a trembling of twitching eyes filled the tunnel as a misty plume of blood drenched the rocky surface.

But Rae could not focus on this fetid phantasmagoria, he was more alight with Dasnir's returned presence. More specifically that, this recurring Prince was exactly as the one he knew, right down to the gifted black and yellow hoodie. Not to mention, this one was not crying, and his face was clad in his typical Dasnir-esque expression. That is to say, it was hard to read, but shortly there was a hint of what appeared to be anger being directed towards Rae, through beady eyes and furled brow.

"Das, what the hell is going on here?! What the ever loving fuck is that thing?!" The Cat fervently motioned to the shrieking spurious door.

The Warrior did not respond; he stared blankly at Rae before pushing him with the palm of his free hand. But instead of stumbling back upon the cold hard tunnel floor, the cat-eared boy found himself flying away from a disappearing Dasnir, whose hand grew tremendously until it resembled the disembodied hand that had tugged him through the void before. Dasnir was quickly obscured by the huge pushing palm, as Rae began to fly back through the tunnel. Faster and faster the palm pushed the Cat until it slammed against the caved-in entrance, but rather than returning to the cave itself; instead, Rae was rocketing back through the pitch-black void once again. Only this time, he was not floundering or flailing about; on the other hand, he was being firmly flattened against the proceeding appendage. And then there was nothing...

Sweating, panting, swearing, and panicking, Rae shot up from the couch of the 30th floor Roan Maxis Presidential Suite, disturbing what had been a deep sleep, but certainly not a pleasant one. "Holy... Fuck—" The boy clasped his head as it spun. He had never been drunk before, but he imagined that this might be what a hangover felt like. He did not yell because he knew his friends were sleeping, and even in this surreal moment of nightmarish misery he had not lost his considerate nature.

Though he did swiftly get up... and creep to Dasnir's door... pressing his ear against it, so as to reassure himself that it had been a nightmare and the Prince was ok. Sure enough...

"GGGNNNOONNNGGKK SHOOOO—"

Rae's brow lowered in a mix of amusement and irritation. "He snores so fucking loud..."

"...I suppose it was just a dream after all. Stop being an idiot, Rae."