1.7

 

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The water underfoot was ungodly loud in the silence of this place. I was trying not to tense my entire body with each step, and the best I could do was hesitate and flinch every time my foot hit ground.

It was like we were walking through a spider’s web, except I wasn’t as dumb as a fly. I was very aware of the ripples leaving ever foot around me as we made our way forward. This was really stupid. Being aware of what this thing could do through the water, as well as trying to keep my composure by not flinching at every step or breathing as fast as my body wanted, it was going to overwhelm me. I could feel my brain spiraling into that terror-inducing whirlpool that I could never escape from.

Then we hit the direct split in the path, and my breathing silently hitched. I was in front of the group, so no one saw it, but it happened, and my lip quivered when I took another breath in. The forward progress was keeping me fucking sane and now there was this.

This was my hell. A place I’d never been, with zero info on what was in here and how it worked, without any good, solid plan formed before I went in. And now this decision, which seemed a lot bigger than it should have in my head. If it was just Pandora and Ellie, they would have just chose one, because that’s how they worked. I couldn’t do that. Already I was making differences between the two in my brain; left had even more breaks in the ceiling which could imply a weaker structure and who knows what the entity could do with that, and right seemed to have a bit of a slope in the floor, so the water would hit us higher on our bodies. If we got deep enough, would we just be swallowed?

“I didn’t bring a coin. Sorry.” Pandora said from beside me. She’d walked a bit forward as she spoke, and her tone was that wry neutral voice she seemed to settle into a lot. It never sounded serious, and I think that’s how she liked it. It was another wall that she put up between herself and everything else, which was worrying to me. She’d been changing a lot in the last year or so, letting herself put up a bunch of barriers in different ways. I put that in the same box in my head I put all the worries about my friends in.

Regardless, I still let out a breath which almost turned into a laugh. I noticed how tense my face was as I did, and consciously made myself release some of that. I shouldn’t make this decision all by myself, because I have friends here. Dr. Obando would be so proud of me.

“We each say a direction on three.” I said firmly. Looking to both of my friends, I saw a nod from each of them. Good. I could feel the spiral stopping. I counted down evenly, not wanting to rush and seem panicked, even though I very much wanted to get going.

“Left.” Pandora said in that same comically even voice.

“Left.” I said.

“Right.” Ellie said. Before she got the last letter out, I felt my feet slip out from under me and suddenly my back was leaning heavily into empty air. I couldn’t parse what the fuck was going on for about five seconds. The floor became the wall while the hallway we had walked down became a pit, but nothing else moved. The water was completely still and the light outside hadn’t changed or shifted.

When I finally realized I was falling Pandora was an entire hallway length away from me. Then, everything blew by me faster and faster, the hallways we’d already been through becoming brown and white and green blurs until I was pushed back into the pool with so much force I didn’t even need to swim to the surface. Ellie and Lady bobbed up right next to me.

“Fuck!” I shouted, wiping strands of hair out of my face. My transformation had shifted slightly over the past few days, since I’d been annoyed at my hair flying everywhere during training. It sat half-up now, regardless of what style it was in before I transformed.

“What happened?” Ellie asked quietly, although the lack of volume seemed more like shock than nerves. Lady was suddenly out of the water as she answered, shaking her body to get rid of the water still on her.

“The Beast has more control of it’s branch than I first thought. We’ve been booted out.” I stared at her for a second or two, and then turned my head to look at Ellie. Ellie took that as her cue to dive down below the surface, legs stuck up in the air for a moment before she was submerged completely.

She was gone for about twenty seconds, and then came back up, gasping slightly. She took a couple deep breaths, and I could feel my need to know growing with each second she didn’t fucking tell me.

“It’s not working. The door isn’t working.” She said. I stared at her with my eyes set wide and mouth open. Fuck, fuck fuck, this is exactly what I thought was going to happen I knew something fucking bad was gonna-

I cut myself off by awkwardly flipping to swim below the water’s surface. My poor underwater ability gave me a very prolonged silence before I hit the bottom to think about how I knew this was a terrible idea. To feel a combination of intense fear and intense anger, as well as a bit of smug I-told-you-so-ness.

Ellie was correct. It’s not even that I didn’t believe her about it, but I very much needed to check it out myself. If she’d done something wrong that I could have checked out and I hadn’t been there to correct it some way it would feel like my fault. I surfaced and gasped in mouthfuls of air, trying to tread water and mostly succeeding. Ellie was staring at me silently, waiting as I took in a handful of deep breaths, while Lady sat at the edge of the pool.

“She’s right, it won’t open.” I said. The pool echoed my voice around us until it was so quiet it could barely be heard.

won’t open

 won’t open

won’t open

Ellie paddled to the water’s end and pulled herself up and out, and helped me do the same as I got over to her. We stood in silence, dripping onto the tile.

“What are we doing?” Ellie asked softly. I’d been staring at the ground for a minute now, and he voice didn’t really rouse me from that. I was thinking a million different things at once. Thinking about how this wouldn’t have happened if we’d been more prepared. About how I had fucking called this. About how scared I was now, even with all this power I suddenly had. About how my friend was stuck somewhere that I couldn’t get her. About how Ellie had almost died and Pandora may just have died.

My breath was starting to come quicker, and I could feel my eyes prickling. No fuck, no, I didn’t need this right now. But my brain wasn’t coming up with anything useful that we could use, because it was fixating and spiraling now. I was starting to shut down. This was exactly what I’d felt like during that stupid fucking exam.

“Is there another way in?” Ellie turned to Lady in my peripheral vision. I wasn’t paying attention now. I was actively trying not to cry now, trying to keep my breathing even-ish.

There was a pause as Lady thought of her response. Her words brought me back into the conversation a bit.

“Yes, in a way.” My head snapped up to her, and I met her eyes.

“How?” I asked. Lady seemed tentative in the silence.

“There’s a place that exists between the branches and the realms. I won’t go into detail because we don’t have time, but it’s where the things that fall through the cracks end up. The mages refer to it as the Gutter.”

“Why do you sound nervous? Why not mention it before?” I asked. Here was a goal, something I could latch on to. It wasn’t over, as long as I had a way to move forward or had options to consider.

“It’s dangerous. I could use lots of words to describe how dangerous it is, but it wouldn’t do it justice. Bad things live in there. Only a select few mages even dabble in magics relating to that realm.”

Ellie looked from Lady to me, for a moment. Our eyes met, and she sucked her lower lip into her mouth for a moment and chewed it as she looked away. She took a deep breath and her brow creased.

“It touches this branch?” I asked, gesturing towards the pool. Lady nodded.

“It would have to, by the rules that it exists by.”

“And you can find the point where they touch?”

“It will be a fairly recent addition to the Gutter, so I’d be able to navigate by that.”

“Then take us there.” I said. My eyes were still wide, and my fingernails were digging into my palms. I was consciously keeping my hands at my sides and my fingers curled into my hands, as far away as possible.

Lady took a moment of silence, and I was readying arguments in my head in the quiet. She was going to tell us it was dangerous, or that we could die. That possibly sacrificing ourselves for a single person was stupid, and she was going to throw my previous argument about waiting to enter the pool in my face.

“Follow me. The entrance is a few minutes’ walk from here.” And then she turned and walked away. Ellie looked at me and then followed her, while I took a moment to recalibrate and then did the same.

 

We were staring into the dark tunnel of a storm drain, and it was like looking off a cliff into dark waters. I was feeling a bout of vertigo, almost, because of how unending the blackness seemed to be.

The thing was very obviously unused, judging by the piles of trash and lack of water inside it. It looked moist, but in an ambient sort of way, because everything in the forest surrounding this town got moist if left out. Dead plants and leaves lined the walls until they could no longer be seen.

“This is it.” Lady said softly. We had sprinted here, and I was just beginning to catch my breath from the activity. Ellie was already looking like we hadn’t really moved much.

“My mum always told me to stay away from this thing.” Ellie said absentmindedly. I looked at her face, and saw an expression of fear, anxiety, and a bit of sadness. I was feeling an odd sense of unease since we’d arrived.

“Mages must have come through here and inscribed runes in the area to ward people off.” Lady responded. Without another word, she began to walk into the tunnel. Ellie and I stepped over the torn off grate and stooped slightly to follow her.

“Can you two see me?” She asked. Her white fur was so pure it was almost giving off a glow in the darkness. Although I couldn’t see her in detail, I had a vague idea of her and what she was doing.

“Yeah.” I said. Ellie answered in the positive as well.

“Then follow exactly what I do, when I do it.” She stated. I nodded, which I then immediately felt like an idiot for doing.

We walked along for a minute or two more, and I could feel my stomach beginning to drop and my chest beginning to tighten. The sensations were getting worse the deeper in we went, either due to the lack of space or the fact I wasn’t getting any clear instructions or timeline. Fuck, I hated this sort of thing.

“I’m going to be walking up the wall and forward, in a spiral. Follow very close behind me.” I thought I’d be getting used to the odd shit by now, but how casually that was stated threw me for a bit of a loop. Yet when she did so, walking diagonally up the left side of the cylindrical hallway, I stepped on the wall right behind her, first with one foot and then the other. I felt my stomach drop in an entirely different way when I took my other foot off the ground and didn’t fall.

Everything on my person acted like I was upside down; my hair fell on to my cheek and then eventually completely away from me as we ended up on the ceiling, and the loose parts of my outfit did the same against my legs. Despite this normal act of gravity, we all remained stuck to the surface we walked on, even when only one foot was touching it.

The blackness around us grew almost physical as we made our journey, as if it was thick enough it was passing in to the realm of touch and feel. I was finding it hard to breath, and when I turned to check on Ellie, I could see she was hunched slightly, as if braced against a strong wind or moving up a steep hill.

Then Lady came to the right, mirroring the steps she had taken coming up, and I followed behind her. The thick cloud of shadow began to fade around us, and when we touched the ground once again, clothes hanging properly and hair down near my shoulders, we suddenly hit an entrance and were illuminated.

Ahead of us was a pathway walled on both sides by slopes so steep they were almost completely vertical. Trash and strange objects were collected in tiny ditches at the sides of the path, and the ground seemed to be made of purple and black loam. My foot sank slightly when I stepped out into it. A strange light brightened everything, despite the odd dark purple of the sky, like a sheet backlit by some other source.

“Follow me. Very closely.” Lady said. We set off down the path, and when we got the end, opened up into an area so large that I couldn’t see the edges through the light fog that hung around us. It was open and barren, save for odd shapes of stone and wood and concrete embedded in the earth, like they had just fallen from the sky. I didn’t see any plant life or animals around. Only dry dirt and inorganic surfaces.

We walked on, and I could feel something noiseless but physical settle in around me. Like a vibration going off that my ears couldn’t catch, but my body could feel. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and got a firmer grip on my shield. Ellie did something similar, adjusting her hand on the pole of her spear, and began to bite her lip as we continued forward.

I wasn’t too keen to talk here, with the utter silence enveloping us. I had yet to see anything else around us, and with the habit already formed from being inside those ruins before, I was worried about alerting something. I had a mental image of the empty plains being flooded with creatures in an instant, and I didn’t know what I’d do about that except tell us to run.

“Stop.” Lady said, quietly but urgently. Both Ellie and I had ceased moving as soon as the last letter had come out of her mouth, or wherever it was she spoke from. I’d been waiting on any sound or hint of danger to react to without really realizing it, and only now noticed my entire body was wound tight like a compressed spring.

Ahead of us, veiled slightly by the fog, was a very large form. My eyes couldn’t parse what I was seeing at first, and it just looked like a strange jumble of shapes and shadow, but then it moved in a way I recognized as reaching, and the pieces fell together for me. It was a torso ten times the size of even the largest human one I’d ever seen, and the only thing normal about it was the placement of equally huge and abnormally long arms at the shoulders. Everything else about it was like a movie prop. It had human legs, much smaller in proportion than it’s arms, starting at it’s armpits and coming down to where it’s waist simply trailed off, on both sides. It was using the arms to pull and the legs to push itself as it moved, and even from here, I could hear the scraping of dirt as it did so.

“It looks slow, from here. I think we could outrun it.” I whispered.

“Don’t think like that here. There’s usually many other creatures around, considering what this place acts as. If this thing is the sole remaining beast, everything else has either fled or perished.” Lady said.

“This is it’s territory?” Ellie sounded horrified as the realization dawned on her. Or maybe terrified or worried, but it was hard to tell because I was too busy looking directly ahead to spare her a glance.

“Yes. And it could very well be much worse than it looks. Let us go.”

The thing began to arch slightly, stomach away from the ground, like how a dog would stretch. It seemed to lock itself in to place, not moving at all, and then dug its fingers in the dirt as far as they would go, continuing the bout of complete stillness.

“It’s doing something.” I said as we began to pull away. Ellie’s mouth was quivering slightly as we pulled away from where we had stood, trying to make our way as far to the right as possible, hoping to give the thing a very wide berth as we passed. It still hadn’t moved.

The water in the ruins was still fresh in my mind with every step we took, and it was making me tense. I was trying to step lightly, as if pulling back slightly on each footfall would make it so it cut the physical sensation down by any meaningful amount. I know it didn’t, but it made me feel better.

If the beast had been the center of a clock, we were at three or two o’clock comparatively now, having started at six or seven. Lady hadn’t said anything more about where we were going, but she seemed to be trying to stay away while also moving directly behind the thing, by how she was leading us and her body language. I hated this. My worst fucking nightmare. I wanted to be clued in, have all the information, and be able to give instructions if I needed to. I was completely reliant on Lady, and it was getting to me.

We hit the twelve o’clock point and began to walk almost directly forward. We had kept basically the same amount of space between us and the creature for the entire little journey around it, far enough for most of the detail of it to be shrouded by the fog. I gave one last glance behind my shoulder as some weird goodbye and saw it was coming towards us at the speed of a car in complete silence.

“It’s coming!” I shouted, and the noise made everyone flinch before they turned, wasting precious seconds to verify that I was right.

“Continue forward!” Lady responded, and we all began to run. Ellie and I quickly sheathed our weapons to take away some carry weight and I sprinted at the highest speed I may have ever reached in my entire life.

Lady had said that our speed and strength were enhanced in these forms, or however she had phrased it, and I felt it. My muscles didn’t begin to burn almost immediately like they would have and my lung capacity seemed limitless. So I was extremely shocked when I saw the edges of a shadow in front of my toes and a weight dropped down on me. Ellie screamed something I couldn’t hear as I was suddenly walled off from the outside world, feeling the walls of whatever I was in pulse and move me down. The fact that I was being swallowed clicked in as soon as I tumbled into something resembling a stomach.

I almost screamed as something liquid touched my foot, and what did come out was a small whimper. It was dark and my first immediate thought after the realization of being swallowed was that there was going to be some sort of stomach acid waiting for me, and I didn’t think super durability would help much with that. But it wasn’t doing anything to the parts of me it touched, and it also didn’t smell like bile, from what I remembered bile smelling like when I’d had a huge flu a couple years ago.

It wasn’t doing anything to harm me, so I pushed the thought of some strange liquid touching me away from the front of my mind. But what immediately came to replace that was how fucking screwed I was. And how this could kill me. I could be killed. And my friends could be killed. And then the thoughts came flooding back about Pandora, trapped in the ruins by herself, and how our families wouldn’t know what happened to us and I’d never get to do what I wanted with my life, and everything began to cycle and I could feel myself beginning to fucking spiral, continuing that free-fall I’d started at the fucking pool.

I was standing in the middle of some wet, dark space, and my hands had someone found their way to my mouth. I wasn’t biting them yet but I knew I’d start to because I was beginning to move completely inward.  I knew there was shit I should do to stop this, that I could do, because Dr. Obando had given me a fucking study sheet of a few things I should be working on, but my therapy was the only thing I could push to the wayside and not entirely disappoint everyone in my life about. So I hadn’t done much of the fucking meditation or mindfulness shit that I was supposed to and now that was added back into the mix, how I’d failed at that too along with keeping my friends alive.

“If all you can remember to do aside from anything else is breath, start with that. It will never not help.” She said. It was our second appointment and I was hesitant about the medication and even how well the techniques she was giving would work.

My breaths were shallow enough that I may make myself hyperventilate and pass out if I continued the way I was. I was chewing on the space beside my nails now, and I could taste a small hint of coppery liquid on my tongue, and I was still rigid but hunched over into myself. I didn’t even think about stopping any of that, because if I did it would hit me how insurmountable of a task it was and I’d crumble. After a few shudders I managed to take in one deep breath. After another few bad ones, I managed a second, and then a third. This was good for my body, it was something I needed or I wouldn’t be surviving much longer, and my brain latched on to that small, doable task. Just take a deep breath. Now take another. The repetition helped as well, something tedious and mundane enough it didn’t feel daunting.

I could feel my head clearing a bit even though I was still tearing up and biting small bits of skin and the scabs that had previously formed. My second issue was that this wasn’t what I was good at. Second-to-second thinking, in the moment improvisation. Everything about this kind of shit stressed me out, because it wasn’t how I wanted it to go. I knew it was better to plan what I could before I went in, because then I could still have something to fall back on, I could still think two steps ahead and try to save a failed step. When I played chess with Pandora, something she’d decided to pick up and then drop like she always did, I’d beat her more often than not because I could see where the pieces were going to be in three moves, both hers and mine.

I had none of that awareness here. I wasn’t floating omnipotently above the battlefield, looking down at what could be done. I was in what could be close to a sensory deprivation tank, and completely cut off from what was going on outside.

I took another deep breath in, and finally managed to drop my hands in front of me, hands clasped together very tightly. I’d done more damage to them there than I had in a long while, and I felt really fucking bad about it. Without looking at them properly, I brought them to my stomach in a cup shape, and lit a flame in that little hollow. I barely even though about what I was doing because if I did, the dam I had managed to put up may break again. I didn’t have a blade like Pandora or Ellie, so this was the best I could do.

Lady had only made us create small tokens of our elemental control so far in our practices. The biggest thing Id done was fire a ball of flame from each hand during one session, because she was focusing more on stamina than power, as a base. I held my hands up and actively pushed all that power I felt in my core out of my hands, and the biggest stream of fire I’d ever seen, in real life or on the internet, flew out of my connected palms. It hit the side of the things stomach and I heard a sizzle as the moisture immediately burned away, and then smelled burning meat. I held my breath for a few moments and then closed my eyes, and then breathed solely through my mouth when I opened them again.

Fire was a pretty good fucking weapon, because I didn’t know much that couldn’t eventually just be burned away.

The hole it made let enough light in that I shied away from the sudden brightness it let in. I stopped the onslaught of fire and very quickly worked my way out. The thing was still moving, and I fell very roughly to the ground, trying to roll with it but not really knowing how. My armour clanked and groaned against the dirt, and dug into my body in very uncomfortable ways.

“Shannon!” Ellie yelled. She spared me a single glance before taking av ery large step out of the way of the now-flailing beast. The was no sign it had just started that sort of rampage, going by how ragged Ellie’s breathing was, so I didn’t understand how I hadn’t felt any sort of movement in its stomach.

The thing turned way too quickly for a being its size and charged at Ellie again. She’d just landed on her feet not even a second ago, and I saw her eyes widen as she realized she wasn’t steady enough to attempt another dodge. I pulled my shield out again and began to run towards her, taking the longest strides I could.

She didn’t need my help, though, because she used her momentum from the landing to throw her spear behind her back, and then bring it up into an arc that ended with the flat of the blade and top of the shaft slamming into the ground. A blast of air that looked like it could shear the leaves off a tree hit the beast’s left arm, one of the two limbs it was balancing on mid-stride, and it collapsed in that direction and slid for ten feet before coming to a stop.

I didn’t stop running until I was only a few feet from it. I let my shield drop from my hand as I slid to a stop, extending my arms out in front of me again in the same action. I let loose another torrent of fire, pushing into that place of power within me to make it even bigger. I was beginning to feel the exertion from the fear and the running and the magic, now, but I clenched my teeth and continued.

Soon the entire thing was one massive bonfire, but I continued anyways. Ellie lowered her spear and slowly walked up, and then held her hand in front of her face as she reached a certain point. After another ten seconds, she backed up, because the heat was becoming unbearable, I think. I couldn’t feel it, but I knew instinctively that not only was I letting more fire out, but it was hotter as well.

After a couple minutes I stopped, and then immediately fell back on my ass, and let my back and head follow. I breathed shakily and looked up into the oddly dark sky before I closed my eyes.

Ah. Fuck, I was so tired. I sense Ellie tentatively walking around the creature’s still-burning body towards me. A week ago or so ago I was talking to Dr Obando, and talking about how I was starting to manage. The lower-level classes and the new attitude from my parents were making me feel like I’d failed at something, but I was starting to convince myself that maybe it was in fact helping me. And now this was dropped in my lap, something I had to do because I know for a fact my two friends needed me here to help them. And I couldn’t even tell anyone about it. I was back to keeping secrets, and I could feel myself going down that same route as a few months ago. Backsliding. Losing all the progress I’d made.

“Shannon?” Ellie stood a couple feet away from me now, probably afraid to approach like she always was when shit like this happened. I don’t think she knew how to deal with emotionally charged situations. Her and pandora were similar that way. Ellie withdrew and got scared, and Pandora clams up and acts like nothing matters.

I did a pseudo-sit-up and rested my forehead on my knees, wrapping my arms around my bent legs. I so badly wanted to stay in this position and just let someone else deal with this. I knew that Ellie wasn’t going to be able to on her own, though, even with Lady’s help, so without giving a second thought to any of the shit racing around in my head, I stood up suddenly and turned to lady and my friend.

This wasn’t what I was supposed to do, I knew. I was running away from this stupid fucking spiral of negativity in my head, and although it was better than succumbing to it and letting myself freeze and be unable to do anything, it wasn’t what was good for me. I’d been told to just take as long as I need to breathe, and instead of running away or even fighting back, just face them. Like a cliff face against a stormy sea or something, I think. But I didn’t have time for that right now, so everything had to go back in that box in my head I’d been using more and more months ago. I just didn’t want it to break at the worst time like it had before.

“You said this was it’s territory. Does that mean we’re not going to get much resistance from here on out?” I asked Lady. This was the face I wanted to project, the me I wanted everyone to see. Asking the right questions and knowing what I was doing with that information. Someone that could keep my friends from this sort of situation happening again.

“If I guessed correctly, there won’t be any other creatures in this general area. So yes, if we’re quick, we can get out of here before anything comes to explore.” Lady answered. I nodded.

“Then lead the way.” Lady took off, and we followed. It was a few minutes of running until we reached our destination. I could kind of feel what Ellie liked about it, now, with this new strength in my legs and stamina in my lungs. There were those quick moments where my feet weren’t on the ground and my strides were so long it felt like I was gliding.

Lady led us into a small valley, and as we went deeper and deeper, the stone around us began to get exponentially higher. When she eventually stopped us, the cliffs were so tall I couldn’t see the top through the fog.

“Through there.” She said, and gestured towards a point in the wall with her head. After looking at it for a moment, I realized it was a thin crack in the rock, about a foot or two taller than me. Which wasn’t saying much.

“In there?” Ellie asked. When I looked over at her, concerned with her tone of voice, I saw her gripping her spear a bit tighter than necessary. I guess this particular fear had never come up in the real world.

“Yes.” Lady paused and took in Ellie’s stance. “It’s a new doorway, and hasn’t seen much use. The more beings pass through it, the larger it needs to be.”

Ellie stared at it for a moment or two, and then banished her spear.

“Okay.” She said in a small voice. Neither of us brought up the idea of stopping here or finding another way, which I was proud of her for. I followed her lead and sheathed my shield, and then stepped up until I was inches away from the crack. We’d fit, but it would be tight, and thinking of it made my stomach turn a bit as well.

“Do you want me to go first?” I asked, turning my shoulders slightly to look at her. I’d let her decide this, at least, because it gave her some control over this situation I could tell she hated. She didn’t say anything fort a few seconds, and then shook her head and stepped up beside me.

“You can pull me out if I get stuck or something.” She said softly. I took her hand and gave it a big squeeze, and felt her do the same thing back while staring into the opening in the wall. She slowly let go of my hand, turned herself sideways, and slid inside. After a few seconds of wait to give her a bit of space, I did the same.

Nothing about it surprised me, thankfully. I knew it was going to be dark, and I knew it was going to fucking suck. My breastplate was scraping just a little bit where it bowed out slightly on my chest, and I was silently grateful that my costume came with some sort of magical sports bra or binding or whatever that made me just a little bit less chesty, because it was already feeling cramped in here with just my not-especially-small butt to deal with. Ellie’s slim build was very much a blessing for this.

Even though I wasn’t inherently scared of this situation like she was, the couple minutes we spent in the thin, dark space felt at least twice as long. Ellie surged forward a bit when we saw the small slice of light in front of us, and I heard her claw and scramble to push her way out of the exit. I slowly guided myself out, resting my fingers and palms on the stone in front of me, and was greeted with the sight of Ellie hugging herself tightly, her head bowed. I came up behind her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and it became a full-blown hug when she turned around into it.

We stayed like that for maybe ten seconds, and then she stepped away, arms at her sides. We both unsheathed our weapons and looked around. We were definitely back in the Ruins. We had come out at a bend in a corridor, and we stood upon a slightly raised portion of the floor, so the water was only a couple centimeters high. The walls and ceiling here seemed even more decayed than where we had entered, and I could see more of the strange, formless void outside.

“Can you still sense where the entrance is?” I asked Lady.

“Yes.” She responded.

“Okay. Then let’s go.” I said, and we went.