While reading the timeline, Angar was able to figure out some details of dilation.

  As long as he didn’t intentionally move, time crawled extremely slowly, stretching seconds into near eternity.

  In this dilation, he studied the timeline as best he could, his mind trying to grasp as much as possible, and form the questions he needed to ask.

  His body ached as he held himself still. Despite the discomfort, he learned a lot, such as Spirit being far older than he’d imagined. It seemed she didn’t like to talk about herself, so he wouldn’t harp on that.

  Once he was ready, he moved his arm, ending the time dilation, and all his aches flared along with his movements.

  His lightning-struck arm throbbed, a persistent agony that flared with every slight shift. His finger, still swollen and covered in yellow fungus, pulsed with every heartbeat. His neck and back still hurt terribly, alongside all his old and new wounds.

  “So,” Angar said, “I’ve been assuming Terran, Pleiadean, Reptiloid, and Gray were names of humans from different planets, but only Terrans are humans, and the others are different things altogether?”

  Spirit floated on and yelled back, “Yes. Called aliens.”

  That meant Spirit was half alien.

  “Okay,” said Spirit. “Work on moving meditation some more, please.”

  As they trekked onwards, he intermittently asked more questions, especially about these aliens. Spirit gave only short and terse responses or had Theosis send information by message, but she never once needed to tell Angar to pick up the pace.

  He moved along quickly and steadily despite his injuries. His breathing remained calm and easy as he covered ground rapidly, though he could feel the strain building in his chest.

  Sometime after the questions ended, Spirit began to hum a tune again.

  After a while, Angar asked, “Are there any words to go along with that tune?”

  Spirit turned her head to the side as she floated along. “There are. Lots of them, but I only remember a handful. I think the name of the song is ‘Hallelujah.’ I only heard it a few times before Nexus caught on that I liked it and deleted all traces of its existence. One line stood out to me. ‘The Holy and the broken, Hallelujah.’”

  Angar put some thought into that before asking, “What does Hallelujah mean?”

  “It means ‘praise God.’ It isn’t used anymore in the popular vernacular.”

  “Oh.”

  And the two journeyed onward, mostly in silence, heading south but mostly westerly, deep into the badlands.

  Rather than attacking, the creatures fled from Angar and Spirit. A very strange thing for such relentless predators to do.

  At first, Angar wondered if his newfound power was the cause. Perhaps the beasts could sense it, recoiling in fear of him.

  Spirit ended that fantasy. “I’m driving them off,” she said. “All but the mightiest and most stubborn will scatter. You needn’t fear the wildlife.”

  The closer they went into the badlands, the more creatures fled from them, and the stranger these creatures became.

  With the sky blotted out, Angar could only guess at the passage of time. He marveled that his body rarely faltered, though he wished his regeneration would heal his wounds faster.

  The first time his breath grew ragged, and his pace flagged, Spirit drifted alongside him. She taught him a steadier way to breathe while running, and it proved effective, though his chest still burned with the effort.

  His skin began to itch terribly, a maddening sensation that seemed to crawl beneath the surface.

  At some point, soon after the flora and wild beasts disappeared, and the terrain turned dead, he noticed his shoulder hurt less, his hearing was almost completely restored, his neck and back no longer hurt so much, and his finger, though still very damaged, was almost normal sized.

  But the itching became worse, like his skin was covered in an invisible rash. He scratched at it, leaving red welts, but it brought no relief.

  And they continued on with the brutal pace Spirit set. They passed through cavern systems to avoid climbing over mountains, and every system was filled with petroglyphs he could now read, with many galleries and chambers filled with strange items Spirit didn’t give him time to investigate.

  People lived in these dead lands once, and a lot of them.

  Deep into this strange place, the burning fog disappeared. In the distance, a colossal crater leveled with the earth. Its vastness defied comprehension, stretching beyond the limits of imagination.

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  At first, Angar dismissed it as a shadow’s deception, unwilling to trust his eyes, but as they drew closer, its reality became truer and truer.

  When they reached its edge, his mind reeled at the sheer scale. No matter which way he turned save backward, the immense abyss dominated his vision. There was nothing but this massive hole.

  He couldn’t see far into it all. And that wasn’t due to burning fog. There was none. There was also no life around illuminating the dark. He wondered how he was seeing so well with the sky blackened and no ground-life providing light.

  Spirit answered the unvoiced question. “Your Cognizance Stat is 8.”

  That made sense. Cognizance enhanced both awareness and perception.

  “Ready to start climbing down?” asked Spirit.

  “I am,” he replied.

  Spirit’s body began illuminating. “I can’t brighten like this for too long without needing a rest, so let’s do this quickly. I’ll float down little by little, showing you the way.”

  Angar approached the edge looking for hand and toe holds, and his chest began to beat faster. He tried finding his spine and starting again, but his spine stayed out of reach.

  He hated to admit it, and he did his best not to show it, but the thought of climbing down into this unbelievably enormous hole frightened him. It was so big. It was all there was.

  As he continued making attempts to just do it, his heart pounded, his palms grew slick with sweat, and his mind only panicked further.

  Judging by how big it was up here, he thought this hole had to go downward forever. In the vision Spirit granted him, his planet was a ball. If that was the case, he’d be surprised if this hole didn’t go through the whole thing.

  Falling down an endless hole was not a good way to die. It was a very stupid and the most inglorious way. The Lord would never allow him in Heaven if he died so poorly.

  His injuries made the thought worse. His shoulder weakened, his swollen finger throbbed with every grip, and his back and neck threatened to seize.

  But his injuries were just excuses his mind used to justify cowardice. He wasn’t afraid of heights. He wasn’t afraid of cramped caverns. He wasn’t afraid of dark holes. He feared nothing.

  Besides this massive, endless pit in front of him.

  “Come, we must hurry,” said Spirit after flying up. “Your high Body Attribute will keep you safe from the radiation for a time, but the clock’s ticking. That means we need to rush. Let’s go.”

  Spirit floated back into the hole.

  Angar took a deep breath, but his mind was panicking. He peeked down and became dizzy, the vertigo so intense he nearly collapsed.

  He got on his belly and tried to do the task without looking down, seeing if that was a possibility, but he had to look down to spot some foot and handholds.

  And he couldn’t force himself to look down. It made little sense, as he wouldn’t see anything but the vast darkness. It was just black. But his mind knew it was empty blackness with no end.

  No matter how much he wanted to prove he was no coward, his actions kept proving differently.

  It was like when he was a child, and his mother forced him to offer an arm to the stingervines. He didn’t want to do this.

  Spirit, as if noticing his panic, floated back up and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You can do this. You’re one of the bravest people I know. You come from doughty folk. Here, so close to the Steadfast, think of all your ancestors went through to survive.

  “This world is very unwelcoming to Terran physiology. Gravity’s heavier here. About a quarter more than Terra’s. And the surface pressure’s over twice as intense. The atmosphere is filled with sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfuric acid vapor, and nitrogen.

  “Hardly any sun gets through the atmosphere, but it’s so thick, a greenhouse effect keeps the surface temperatures high. The radiation is too high, and I mean everywhere, not just this area. Temperatures range from 50 up to 100 Celsius at the equator, cooler at the poles but never below 30.

  “All the water is corrosive. Metal anywhere near the surface can't last. Every breath causes pain, skin constantly burns, sounds are muffled, visibility is low, and it stinks like rotten eggs all the time. Not to mention the violent weather, corrosive rains, the sulfuric explosions, and the constant lightning storms.”

  Angar didn’t understand a lot of that. This world was all he knew.

  Without taking much of a breath, Spirit continued. “Your bodies have adapted in amazing ways. You're more compact, have increased muscle mass, denser and thicker bones, larger lungs, stronger hearts, thicker skin, better spatial awareness and complex motor control, as well as improved circulation, sweat glands, and DNA repair mechanisms in skin cells.”

  She removed her hand from his shoulder to place both on his cheeks. He worried that she’d take over his body again, but she just said, “It’s okay to fear. Bravery is overcoming that fear. Let the fear come, but don’t let it stop you. And when Mi Alcyone leads you into the darkness, it’s your duty to follow. Have faith, Crusader.”

  Spirit floated down again. With his heart pounding, his mind screaming in panic, Angar forced himself to make those initial steps.

  His shoulder protested as he gripped the rock, his finger throbbed with every movement, and his back felt like it might give out. He found grips and footholds and forced himself to follow. Then he found the next ones, and the next, and down he descended.

  His muscles strained, his chest heaved, and sweat poured off him, but lower and lower he descended, Spirit lighting the way.

  The fear didn’t leave him – it clawed at his mind, whispering that he’d fall, that the darkness would swallow him whole, but down he went.

  It took a great amount of time and effort, but he eventually reached a ledge with a cavern Spirit wanted him to enter. He sighed in relief, as that massive hole seemed to continue forever, and he had no desire to climb down it further.

  He knew caverns well. All people of this world did. Caves and caverns in the porous mountains were the bulk of their homes, their villages, their towns, their cities. Their safety. Their relief from the burning fog and rain.

  He entered a cavern system unlike any he knew, free of all life. Nothing glowed at all, a pitch blackness, and everything seemed far more dry than usual, free of all moisture.

  And hot. The air was stifling hot, making it hard to breathe, and his skin itched terribly, the sensation growing worse.

  Spirit led him through the strange cavern system, always downward, and for a long while.

  He had a mind for stuff like this, but if Spirit left him, not only wouldn’t he be able to see anything, but even if he could, he doubted he’d find his way back through this twisting system, know when to climb up a rift, or which to take.

  After hanging from a hole in a large chamber, he let go of a ledge, and his feet landed on something strange, something much harder and far smoother than the rock of all the caverns he passed, and what he stood upon should still be – pumice, scoria, or tuff.

  As he glanced down at the strange surface beneath his feet, Spirit said, “Welcome to the Steadfast.”