Inside the hollow living room of the dirt-built residency, the kitchen of dirt block countertops on the left, stands Ekitai patiently. At last, over his brown overcoat’s shoulder, through the far bedroom doorway Dana enters the hallway with a straight elegant posture, closely followed behind by Kokei whose head is down low covered by her long pink hair as she trudges along nervously.

The two walk up the corridor towards Ekitai, Dana immediately noticing him and flashing a soft smile while Kokei remains reserved. They approach Ekitai from one end of the corridor to the other, and upon entering the living room Dana’s calm expression becomes puzzled as she starts glancing around the room and kitchen while Kokei presses her fingers together anxiously.

The two reach Ekitai where Dana continues to inspect, her green eyes flashing gold as Kokei raises her head up and begins, “I-uh…just wanted to say-,” yet her apology is interrupted by the very person who requested it, as Dana interjects, “Where’s Medit?”

Somehow Ekitai is startled by that very question, his eyes expanding before turning his head to his side where Meditat was but no longer is, and upon the realization he stumbles backwards in complete mystification.

Kokei stumbles too from Ekitai’s intense reaction as Dana completes her survey before reverting her eyes to green and turning back to Ekitai, who blinks twice before mustering up, “Wait, swear to god if he were real but he was right here! Like, right next to me just now, he was with me, like I didn’t hear or see or like at all sense him going anywhere like-....”

Both Kokei and Dana’s expressions warp into dread simultaneously and they turn to each other as Ekitai remarks in a mixture of amazement and worry, “God damn he sneaky. I have no idea where he went.”

For it was at that very moment that the admission had come to them all together: Dana was right, and they had a whole new problem.

For far, far away, in the dark depths of a completely different cavern, haunted too by stalactites along the ceiling but substantially smaller and in a much more potent darkness that is only combated by the gentle white luminescence emitting from the two chrome disks hovering above the dark flat water that spreads for infinity into the black horizon of the cavern, a bright blue light flashes over the upper disk.

The light vanishes just as quickly as it appears, and on that disk which has a matte black central platform covering half the radii of the surface it’s embedded into surrounded by multiple curved holographic screens which flicker on, although the second pad appears to have nothing on its own surface.

Through the curved displays steps a single man, to which all the holograms are relinquished, and the man ambles slowly to the very edge of the pad where he is then met by the projection of a translucent blue narrow bridge that extends from that very vertex all the way to the edge of the other pad. While the bridge is only a couple feet wide and equipped with no railings nor signifiers of safety systems, the man promptly steps on the bridge and continues all the way down from the first pad to the second, walking over dark waters far far below, waters with no letting of its depth below the razor sharp stalactites that stalk every movement.

In a perfect line the man reaches the other end of the bridge where he walks onto the next chrome platform, but in doing so his body strangely vanishes as though being snipped out of the world.

Truthfully however the man has not been displaced anywhere, for upon closer inspection he is on the chrome pad, his four white locks waving from the cavern’s breeze as his sharp blue eyes analyze the space with slight head turns to assure his privacy.

Strangely enough the chrome pad is no longer empty but rather bustling with furniture, one end housing the complex machine of silver pillars, chambers, ovens and such all connected by tubes to lead to the chamber exhibiting plates all of which carry the injection sticks all filled with the same blue substance.

Silently the man walks down the machine, passing the huge chambers and chaotically wired rods, all to reach the end retrieval station where he swiftly picks up one of the injection sticks from the table, and with it he walks to the other side of the pad through the heavy heap of empty sticks, his feet kicking piles which thus scatter amongst the surface, litter in an otherwise clean base.

Entirely insouciant, the man kicks a few more sticks before reaching the other end of the pad where he’s met by a levitating table accompanied by a hovering silver chair which he instinctively walks up to, but pauses behind its back, instead just blankly staring forwards with deadpan, fatigued eyes. He pauses for a few moments as though braindead, his body slightly leaned forwards entranced, but he snaps out of it with a soft blink before sighing to himself and placing the stick down on the table in front of the chair.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The man then lowers his head down to his grayed leather biker jacket, placing his hand over his heart and closing his eyes for a few moments of meditation, almost in peace.

Just then from the center down the jacket suddenly splits at the black line seeming to stand in as a zipper lining, the detachment process smooth and instantaneous, both sides brushed to the outer sides to better reveal the plain black shirt being worn underneath.

The man then grabs at the lapels, lifts, tosses back, and slips the leather jacket off of his body, revealing a sliver of pale skin past the short sleeves of his black shirt.

He then completes the process by shaking his arms to get the jacket fully off his left arm before grabbing it from the right and pulling it off where he’s then able to wave the jacket once and place the jacket over the back of the chair, revealing both his white arms to be absolutely covered in scars of slits from the shoulders to the wrists, innumerable scars all compacted together disturbingly, always hidden in the sleeves.

The man then walks around the chair and seats himself against his jacket, now only wearing the short black shirt, and he scoots the chair forward to bring himself closer to the table’s edge where he then easily grabs the stick with his right hand, and stares at the transparent casing where the blue gel liquid is on display, and he releases a heavy exhale.

He then places his left arm on the table with his palm up and plunges the black end of the stick right above the elbow joint, to which the stick hisses as the substance gradually is depleted, although the man shows no reaction to the injection, completely numb to the sensation with a deadpan face.

Instead he just waits until the entire stick is entirely depleted, and once it does he pulls the stick off his arm and carelessly tosses it behind him, letting it join the rest of the stack with a loud glassy clang before it is then amalgamated into the cluster.

Enhanced by the injection, the man then holds out his right hand as his eyes flare blue, and from his hand emerges azureous flames which dawns a box-like shape in his grip before fully transforming into what appears to be a sleek silver hilt of some kind which projects a small hologram of a widget resembling a thermometer, initially dim white.

That changes however as the man clenches his teeth and arm as his eyes once again flare blue, and suddenly a blue plasmic blade projects from the hilt in the shape of a pocket knife, the blade at first rather dim as a blue meter gradually fills the thermometer from the bottom before the blade becomes increasingly brighter and denser, the counter rising rapidly before the blade itself isn’t even translucent but rather fully opaque, and eventually the thermometer is entirely filled by the blue meter, so powerful that it emits its own audible soft hum.

His eyes still radiating azure, the man then tilts the hilt with his wrist, observing the blade for a few moments with the same miserable expression, studying the intensity of the energy.

The man then brings the blade to hover above his left arm by the wrist still resting on the table, and with much slower, precise movements, he gradually brings the sharp tip of the blue blade against his pale skin to which it’s first suspended just barely off of the skin, a blue outline appearing over his skin from his suit’s shield, attempting to ward off the perceived assault.

Carefully the man pushes the blade harder against his skin, it slowly inching deeper and deeper in before the blue outline becomes red and the sharp edge makes contact with the leathery pale skin, causing the man to slightly wince before dragging the breaching blade a few inches down, opening up a slit as fresh blood starts to gush out of the wound before he comes to a stop and lifts the blade off of his arm, forming a new cut surrounded by the rest of the scars.

As blood continues to seep out of the cut on his badly scarred arm, the man brings the blade up close to his eyes for closer inspection, nodding his head to himself in confirmation of the calibration, knowing of its capabilities now.

With those capabilities understood, the man then lifts his left arm and reinforces the grip of the hilt with his other hand, holding the blade upright with both hands. He then leans forwards on the table, placing both of his elbows on the table’s surface as he rotated the hilt to point the blade straight between his eyes from little distance.

With those very same eyes of misery that he’s had from the first day in the bar, he stares straight at the tip of the blade, his arms rocking back and forth very slightly, gearing up to pull it back as another breeze just slightly nudges his locks.

He then squeezes both of his eyes tight shut, and drives the blade straight into his head just as the hilt around his hands dissolve into azureous flames causing the blade itself to evanesce the instant before impact.

Immediately after slamming only his hands into his head, the man suddenly collapsing forward with his hands falling onto the table padding his head face down, his elbows spread out on the table and his locks draping to his sides as he rests in silence on the table, awake or unconscious whichever it may be.

Thus instead the man’s head lays on his hand laying on the table hovering over the pad levitating above the underground lake inside the colossal cavern below the Earth’s surface where the silver triple tower mansion stands dark in front of the peach driveway situating the oval garden decorated with the pool filled by the circular fountain embellished by the lightning bolt-shaped rod, all of it standing in the expansive green fields and forests of the remote area with minimum gray road networks all of it below the dark night’s clouds that sit under the atmosphere of the Earth which hovers in the black void glittered in white stars and patched with purple nebulas, isolated in its orbit fifty worlds away.