Ryan had attempted to rest his hand against the door of the fated Janitor's closet, having forgotten the incorporeality of his current being, and fell right through it. He hardly had time to take in the chaotic energy within the small confines as an overwhelming force pulled him into the epicenter distorted reality. He felt his Astral Form undergo a change, as if the line between real and imaginary that had been blurring these past few days suddenly became distinct. The weightlessness of projection he had felt on the other side was suppressed by new physical laws. A torrential storm of energies swirled around and through him, imbuing his soul with a bit of its substance, before coalescing into a new reality.
Ryan found himself crawling through a tunnel of sheets and blankets, his hands and knees sinking into a floor made of soft mismatched pillows. A slight glow of incandescent light seeped in through the fabric overhead as he navigated his way through the labyrinth. Sometimes he would come across a section held up by tall chairs and he would have to flatten himself out to crawl between their legs. Other times it was unclear how the arch of the tent was held up at all. It took a while before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. When Ryan finally began to question his environment, the incongruities started to add up. Sheets melded into blankets overhead, the change between the two indistinct at best. He picked up a pillow below him to find more pillows underneath. He tried to pry up those pillows as well and the whole thing fell apart. Gravity shifted and he found himself rolling along a pillow avalanche. The blankets flew up and away and plastered the walls around him.
He found himself standing on the beige carpeted floor of a square bedroom. The only source of light was the silver rays of the moon piercing through a large window on the wall opposite a door which was slightly ajar. There was a ceiling fan overhead that wobbled slightly as the blades spun lazily around, causing the chain dangling from it to clink against the glass in the middle. In the corner under the window was a bed, comforter and sheets pushed off as if someone had just climbed out. Ryan considered heading toward the door, but as he turned, something under the bed drew his attention.
Crouching down he peered into the darkness below the mattress. Where the wall plate of a power outlet might have been he saw a keypad, backlit by a soft yellow glow. There were four rows of three buttons protruding from the surface, like the number pad of an old phone. Each key had the number “3” on its surface. Ryan contemplated pressing the buttons when he heard a skittering sound that made him start. He jerked his head towards the noise and thought he caught the glimpse of something rushing out of the room into the darkness beyond the doorway. A creeping anxiety spawned in his chest as he strode slowly towards the door. It creaked as he opened it wider, sticking his head through the gap to peer cautiously outward. What he saw was just a bland hallway made of the same beige carpet and off-white painted walls. Ryan stepped into the empty hallway, practically tip-toeing as he forced down the dread that was trying to rise up his throat. The further along the hallway he walked the longer it seemed to stretch out before him. There was a door at the far end, light seeping out through the gap at the bottom. He could feel in his gut that what he sought was just beyond that door, but he wasn’t sure if he could ever reach it.
As if out of nowhere, and yet feeling like it had always been there, a boy appeared, curled up and hunched over on the side of the hallway, whimpering. He was wearing a black sweatsuit, with red lines running along the seams on the sleeves and pant legs. His body shuddered with his sobs.
“H-hello?” Ryan said. “Are you OK?”
The boy sniffed one last time and then glanced over his shoulder at Ryan, a mischievous smile on his face. His dark brown hair was in a long bowl cut that somewhat veiled his dark glistening eyes.
“I’m not sure if I can get there alone,” he said. “Maybe we could go together?”
“Go where?” Ryan asked.
“Together,” the boy repeated. “As one.” Ryan stepped back as the child’s body crumpled inward like a sand sculpture collapsing under its own weight, disintegrating into a thousand tiny hands that scrambled away like spiderlings hatching from an egg sack.
“What the hell!” Ryan screamed as he scrambled away, the walls, floor and ceiling crawling with the tiny things, all scampering towards him, tiny tattering sounds echoing through the hall. He tripped over his feet and fell, rolled over and began to run back towards the bedroom. They were too quick, swiftly overcoming him underfoot and overhead. He could feel the tiny bones of their fingers cracking under his feet and he tried desperately to get away from the swarm.
An indescribable feeling lanced into his legs and he looked down, seeing the hands crawling up, fingers sinking into him. His astral body was still translucent, but as they pierced him fleshy color began to spread through his form like an infection crawling up his veins. Ryan let out a cry of terror.
“No! No! Get away, get off, get OUT!” he shouted, his desperation and pain forming a chimera with the anxiety in his chest. A field of blue light warped into existence around him, cutting the hands already on him in half, while the ones within close proximity were repelled back. It crackled and shuddered as it came into contact with them. Ryan could feel what little control he had over the field slipping from him, as it drew on the energy of the link between his astral and real self.
The hands withdrew and began to pile atop one another, coalescing into a gyrating fleshy mass, growing larger until they had become one, rising up before him. The index finger of the monstrosity drew back and slammed itself down, causing his shield to crack and then shatter, launching him back down the hallway, splintering the door as he crashed back into the bedroom.
Ryan groaned, rolling over onto his stomach, and began to drag himself across the floor towards the bed. He hid underneath, turning to watch the door as a slow, methodical thumping came from the hallway. I didn’t think this through, he admonished himself. Am I going to die here? What is that thing? How do I get back out of here? His thoughts raced as panic mounted. He looked down at his solar plexus, where the faint whisper of his soul tether was barely visible. It should be leading towards…thud.
The panel on the wall under the bed. It led directly towards it. Thud. Was that his way out? Crunch. The sound changed, Ryan turned and saw a large finger the size of his head grinding the remains of the door into pulp as more digits moved past it, one curling around the door frame as it pulled the rest of its mass through.
Without taking his eyes off the nightmarish creature, Ryan reached towards the panel to start randomly pressing buttons, but the moment he pressed the first key the creature turned its entire body in his direction. Ryan started mashing the keys frantically as it lurched toward the bed. The middle finger wedged itself under the frame and began prying upward. A small throw pillow fell down from somewhere. It was ugly and green. The creature hadn’t seemed to notice, flexing its joint to get better purchase. Just as the legs of the bed began to rise there was a flash of blinding light. The distal phalange dropped away from the hand, a geyser of blood jetting from the opening of the severed limb as the room was filled with an inhumane shriek.
A pair of feet wrapped in white split-toed tabi alighted upon the ground in front of the bed as the hand scrambled back. With a rush of wind and a trail of electrical arcs the blade of a sword came down, sending a streak of red arcing away from it. The feet moved forward, undaunted by the abomination, revealing a figure clad in luminescent robes designed for battle.
“What is this?” a distinctly female voice spoke with a quizzical tone. “Anomalies don’t bleed inside the Astral.” As if in response the hand began to splay out its fingers, which divided and curved away from each other like a gross interpretation of wings, more hands spread out from the palms forming a torso, legs and arms, the skin writhing all the while. When it answered it was with the voice of a thousand echoes retreating into the far recesses of unseen caverns.
“If I command it, the moon will come down, and night will remain as a crown upon my head.”
“What did you say?” the woman’s voice was cold rage as sparks began to reach out from all around her. Ryan couldn’t really comprehend what he saw after that. She was standing there, bringing her sword to bear one moment, the next she was gone and with a blinding flash the hand creature exploded into a million charred pieces. He saw her then, standing on the other side of where the creature had been, her emotions emanating from her so strongly that Ryan could feel them infecting him. Sadness? Betrayal? Who was she?
“Where is this damn Locus,” she said to herself, heading out into the hallway.
Ryan stayed under the bed. With the immediate threat of an unimaginable end suddenly gone he was starting to experience the shock of it all. He’d almost died. He should never have come here. He looked again at the faint light of his soul tether and thought of what Lisa had taught him. Though he didn’t necessarily breathe in this place, he focused on the rhythmic pulse coming from the tether and began to expand his senses throughout his body, attempting to increase the densification of his current form. He felt vitality returning to him after a moment, and with it, the courage to follow that mysterious woman who had saved his life.
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First, however, Ryan wanted to spend a little more time with this weird number pad, in case he needed to make another desperate escape, he didn’t want mashing buttons randomly to be his only recourse. He studied the panel again. Something had changed, a number of the 3’s had gone upside down or sideways. He pressed a button in the middle and the 3’s adjacent to the one he pressed all rotated 90 degrees.
“Interesting,” he thought. “I think I know this puzzle.” He soon realized that once a 3 had made a full rotation it would disappear entirely. He continued working through it until there was only one button remaining to push for it to be finished, deciding to leave it for his return in case opening it would pull him out. He slid out from under the bed, got to his feet, and headed into the hall.
The door at the end was opened all the way now, the woman must have gone through already. It seemed easier to walk the hall this time, that sensation of it stretching on forever was gone. Now it was just like walking through a normal house. He couldn’t see what lay beyond the door as the light was so bright compared to the dark house that he couldn’t make anything out.
Ryan stepped through and into a cave covered in amber hued crystals. He looked back the way he had come, but the door was gone. The crystalline structures pulsated with a faint oscillating energy that seemed to reach out to something within him. As it was drawn to him, his hand was drawn to it, reaching towards a lattice that jutted out closest to him.
Before he could make contact, something else that had been crawling inside him reacted. He dropped to the ground, grasping at his leg as a sharp pain lanced through his calf. Where that fleshy stain had been growing the tip of a finger that had been cut off crawled back out of him and smacked onto the floor. He rightly freaked out at that moment, jumping up and stomping down over and over until there was nothing but a stain on the ground. His moment of wonder forgotten Ryan rushed through the crystalline cavern after the woman.
The stain on the ground moved like the mucus trail of a slug as it slowly slid into a crack in the cavern floor, disappearing into shadow.
As Ryan traveled deeper into the rocky hollow, he contemplated the change that had come over the astral space. It had started with a distinct theme of an old house, but the moment he went through that door he was suddenly in a cave. He wondered what the impetus was that caused this place to take the forms it did. From his understanding of what he had read, the astral was largely metaphorical, much like a dream. There was what the woman had said as well. Astral Anomalies were not supposed to bleed unless they had broken into the real world. He had read that in Joshua Neuman’s book.
There was also the matter of how solid this environment was. As far as he had read, it should have been in a constant state of flux, like a realm of quantum possibilities. The reason for this was that the Superficial Astral was a product of the thoughts and dreams of the people that lived in that area. If the world within the fissure was feeling as real as it did to him, then what did that mean for the psychic energy that was supposed to be feeding this pocket of astral from the surrounding people in the real world?
“I really should have finished that book before diving in here headfirst,” Ryan muttered to himself. He ducked under a rocky dip in the ceiling and rounded a corner, coming upon a cavernous expanse that stretched away into dark shadow beyond. It was lit by the soft yellow glow emanating from more of those crystalline structures that rose up sporadically across the room. The ground was littered with mounds of rock in various stages of erosion, some looking like molten lava, others as if they had been carved from eons of trickling water.
In the middle of the expanse rose a massive stalagmite, reaching up to the corresponding stalactite. Where they were about to meet the tip of the stalagmite was carved into the shape of a throne. Upon the throne sat a child, carving something into his seat with a witling knife. At the foot of the column stood the woman in white robes, hair floating around her as if underwater. She held her sword out at her side, face staring up at the child on the throne.
“What are you?” Ryan heard the woman demand, her voice echoing across the large space. He began to sneak his way across the cavern, ducking behind the rocky protrusions as he went.
“Become one,” the child said before letting out a laugh of pure jubilation. “We’re almost there, so close.”
“So close to what?” she asked.
“The awakening was halted. He can do it right this time.”
“He,” she repeated. “You mean –”
“No, no, no,” the child said, but each word became deeper, and more distorted, as he melted off of the throne, dissolving into tiny hands that skittered over the surface of the stalagmite. They seemed to multiply in number as they cascaded down in a fleshy avalanche. The woman raised her sword, lightning trailing it in an arc as she brought it to bear in a defensive posture before the swarm. Ryan forced down the panic attempting to override his thoughts and kept pressing forward. He didn’t know how, but he wanted to be able to help if he could, and for that he needed to be closer.
Some of the hands had gathered to form larger hands that sprang from the rock, flying towards the woman with breathtaking speed. She neatly dodged them, while using their momentum to counterattack with her katana, ripping large gashes that were semi-cauterized from the electricity of her blade. She stayed focused on the main swarm however as it approached rapidly. When it almost reached her, she shoved her blade into the air and a rain of lightning lanced out, arching amongst the hands followed by crackling thunder that reverberated throughout the cavern. The swarm burst into a cloud of charred ash, white flakes drifting slowly in the air.
Behind her the two hands she had slashed melded into one, a splay of ten fingers bending in her direction before jutting backward from the force of launching their nails at her back with a rapid shucking sound. Ryan reacted, instinctively drawing on that sensation from before, and a force field of blue aura interposed itself between the projectiles and the woman’s back. She turned her head, resting her startled gaze not on the nails clanking to the floor but on the field that had formed to protect her.
“Aegis,” she whispered, her eyes suddenly darting around the cavern. Ryan froze as her gaze rested on him, unsure of what would happen if she caught him here, but then she kept scanning the room, as if she hadn’t seen him at all. He looked down at his poorly densified form, still all but transparent, aside from the fleshy tone fulminating in his legs.
In that moment of distraction, the hand creature had turned towards him, apparently having no issue seeing him at all, and began to rear up, new nails sliding into place. Ryan glanced towards the woman to see if she was going to intercept the creature, but she had vanished from where he’d last seen her. Shuck, shuck, shuck, the hand launched its nails towards him, and Ryan dove behind cover as they whizzed overhead. One bounced off a nearby stalagmite and shattered one of the glowing amber crystals near his head.
All Ryan wanted at that moment was to run away, and that was when he realized that his planned escape route was cut off. He had no idea how to get back to the bedroom with the panel, the woman had abandoned him to his fate, and he was probably going to be turned into one of those horrible things.
Calm down, Ryan. Think. Panic won’t get you anywhere. What can you do? He took another deep breath and tried to let his mind think. If he couldn’t go back the way he’d come in, he would need to repair the locus somehow. But he would have to find it first. If that creature was trying to prevent him from accomplishing his task, then it was most likely…
Ryan looked up towards the throne rising in the center of the room. He saw the woman standing atop it, peering down at the seat. What was she doing up there? The hand had noticed as well and let out a shriek as it scrambled towards her. It reached the base of the mighty stalagmite and was about to start climbing up when it was violently pierced by several arrows that emanated an emerald light. It seemed to be trying to split apart and multiply but something was holding it in place. A ball of flame sailed through the air and struck it, causing the thing to burst into flames.
“Took you long enough,” the woman called down from atop the throne. Ryan turned in the direction the fireball had come from and saw two more people at the entrance to the cavern. One was a large, well-built man, who’s skin looked like burning embers. Beside him stood what to Ryan looked like an elf maiden, glowing with a verdant life force. The girl looked sheepish, but the man’s face was impossible to read with cracks of fiery light shining from random locations all over him. They both leapt into the air, sailing over Ryan’s head, and landing at the base of the pillar.
“Sorry Mae,” said the elf. “Something was preventing access to the astral tear.”
“A strange energy I haven’t felt in a long time,” the ember man elaborated. This seemed to hold a certain significance for the woman, Mae, as she nodded before turning back towards the throne.
“Speaking of strange, there is a symbol on this seat that I haven’t seen before,” she tilted her head towards the throne and the man jumped up to see for himself. They spoke in hushed tones, and Ryan saw the man's body language change. I need to get out of here before they start really looking for me, he thought, reexamining his surroundings before turning again towards the throne. He had a sense that the throne itself was unnatural, and the two pillars were meant to be joined, like some kind of giant hourglass.
That was the image he held in his mind as he attempted to superimposed it upon the stalagmite and stalactite. What he was attempting felt a lot like densification as he clarified the image in his inner eye. Absently one of his hands wrapped around a broken fragment of the amber crystal, the faint pulsating energy flowing slowly into his core. The world began to warp around him, tremors shaking the foundation and causing rocks to tumble down from above. Unconsciously Ryan formed a shield over his head like an umbrella, the stones bouncing harmlessly away from him.
“There it is!” someone shouted, and he felt the forceful gaze of three individuals pressing on him. “It doesn’t even have a full Astral body!”
“Whoever you are, stop what you're doing,” came the commanding voice of the man.
“Too late,” said the woman. Ryan opened his eyes to see the pillars had joined. The three other travelers stood together at its base, staring in his direction. A seam split along the ground, not cracked and volatile like the Astral Tear, but smooth and seamless, like an edgeless horizon that he could just…slip into. And he did, without effort or intention. He felt a tugging sensation in his solar plexus as his soul fell along his own Soul Tether.
