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Find me in the shadows, I said quietly in my mind.
Taking a deep breath, I failed to hesitate, and then I jumped from the Mountain.
For a moment, one brief and blissful moment, I was weightless. An intense feeling of suspension as I waited for the earth’s core to tug at my own, but my paradise of death-adjacent was short-lived. I waited and waited more.I never fell.
Instead, my arm was yanked up from the nothingness and painfully twisted until my body was slung into a hard trunk. Not of a tree, but something corporeal. A warm, dampish whisper stroked the crook between my earlobe and neck as a cool sharpness braced the delicate underside of my throat. The limbs that pressed me to the body were unyielding. I felt fragile against the hard iron of its chest.
“If you try to fight me, Gwynore, I will spill your blood onto this very earth. Do you understand?” the being demanded. I nodded slightly against the blade and my assailant relaxed its stance ever so slightly. Expiring a long breath, it said, “You must come with me. Now.”
I almost jerked my head around to look at it, to laugh in its face at the absurdity of leaving this place alive. Up until this very moment, escape had seemed impossible. The stiff repositioning of a blade at my throat made me think better of it. Instead, I kept my eyes on the pillowy clouds frozen in the sky above me.
“Where are we going?” I croaked, near agony in my voice, almost like I had hidden away a hope somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I looked out at the portrait of the World and felt it rip open around the two of us.
“Home,” it said.
When the side ofmy face met with a hard thump against the cool surface of stone, I thought I had died.
It hadn’t been the way I’d wanted to go, but at least it was quick and nearly painless. The being was Death itself, I decided, coming to lay claim to my soul after I failed to find answers to my life and its purpose. The vision, the Prayer, and the endless days and nights, had all been a part of some grand series of tests. And I had failed miserably. This death had frightened me more than the death I had wanted, but at least I wouldn’t have to answer for taking my own life.
My mind clear, I waited impatiently for the peaceful void to sweep over me. I laid still, truthfully rather afraid to move. Surely, I couldn’t move anything if I was already gone. It was possible, I supposed, that a tiny sliver of my essence still clung to the familiarity of a physical world. Damned mortality, always wishing to be anything but itself.
Just to be sure, I tried to wiggle a pinky toe, and where I had thought there would be a disconnect from my body, was a strong and fully functioning tether between it and my soul. Frustrated, I felt my brow scrunch against my forehead.
Oh, no.Please, no.
When I opened my eyes, I came face-to-face with a blinding light. Not the blinding light that you pass through to the other side, but the cold glare that reflects against the even harsher reality of life.
I was still very, very much alive.
But if I really was here—wherever here was—and not lifeless at the bottom of the pit of the universe then that meant...I rubbedmy eyes vigorously, and blinked furiously, begging them to focus on their surroundings. With only the dull ache of my clouded vision, I twisted and flopped around like a drowning creature. My ears adapted quicker than my other senses and finally, I heard it. The shallow breathing of thethingthat brought me here, panting like it had been exhausted by our fall.
It occurred to me that perhaps I should be equally spent, but I had never felt more alive with energy. The tips of my fingers were hot and tingling as I crouched above them, my knees bent at my elbows. Instinctually, I pushed my weight through them, trying to sneak away from the thing in stealth, still mostly blind. It was unfortunate that my balance did not equal the refinement of my hearing. The slight pressure I was forcing on the ground sent me directly into the floor flat on my backside. A small shout escaped my lips in a shrill.
My cover was blown, if not obliterated.
A large, black glob began to move slowly into my line of sight and let out a groan which was quite silly. In the vein of annoyance more than anything. Even still, I braced the ground waiting for...well, something surely terrifying.
“By the Light, Gwynore. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you broke my jaw.” The same voice that confronted me on the Mountain was light and haughty as it dragged out another groan.
The sudden break in the silence brought everything around me into focus. I lifted my chin from my curtain of hair and looked up into the deep cavern of a canyon, with jagged ochre walls gilded from the light that funneled up and into the well of darkness above. It must have gone on forever. I let my eyes follow the warm glow back out of the abyss and gasped. Where I thought there would be a field of stone pillars and impenetrable adamant was a wide chasm gaping at the open sky. Clear and brilliant, soaking every tree of the land below and every cloud above, andall the creatures blessed between the two was the East Bright.
Except it wasn’t—it was in the west from what I could tell. And it wasn’t entirely whole, like usual. I could just barely glimpse the top of the Bright, peeking out from behind the skyline. Streaks of fiery reds and buttery yellows tore through the sky as starry obsidian pressed down onto the day. Rich magenta hues oozed out all over the earth from the weight of the impending night. It reminded me of the way the skins of fruit at my grove split with the crush of my palms, bathing me in their sweet juices. My heart swelled and then quickly deflated.
No, this definitely wasn’t my World anymore.
“A stone to the face isn’t the worst you could have done,” the voice started again, “but you might want to try to control those gangly limbs of yours next time we are projecting.”
My head jerked towards the interruption, and for the first time, I saw him. Yes, it was now a him. A man—the word came to me like a breeze through my ears—hovering right over me, but less of a blob now, and more of a chiseled fortress of an individual. I noticed his hands first. Brute and covered by hardened skin, with long, lanky fingers that reached out to me, inviting my hands to join them. I trailed my eyes to his torso, adorned with an armored vest colored midnight atop a doublet in the same style. The cloth strained against his muscled frame despite his relaxed stance. A crested plate clasped to a brown leather belt right above the waistline of his matching trousers, nearly blinding me as it glinted off the Bright.
Apprehensive, and quite embarrassingly nervous, I let my eyes find his face. The hood of his dark robes was now bunched at the collar of his dress, giving me a clear look at him. His strong features were composed, calm, and intimidatingly reserved, the hard lines of his mouth set and waiting. A flowing mop of dirty blonde waves fell on either side of his shoulders, lighter in color than his brows which crushed together in displeasure. My eyesfound his, and it was such a shocking change in feeling that I almost gasped. I had never seen such eyes—well, I guess that was all too true—so striking, soft and honeyed, and flickering with light, like the power he’d wielded on the beach. After a few seconds of me staring, those lights winked out, cooled to black, and drew into slits.
“Well, are you going to say something? Or at least take my hand? We need to get you out of the landing before the others see you.”
I stayed silent, still lacking the right amount of awareness to think as to what he meant byothers. Besides, I was scared. Before this day, I couldn’t remember a time when I had heard a voice apart from my own during prayer, or any sound that was directed at me, for that matter.His voice was rough and gravelly, but not from underuse like my own. More like consistent use, and where mine was weary and strained, his was rife with confidence. It demanded my attention, and I gave it without asking what for.
“Please don’t tell me you lost your voice and your wits in that place.” The sharp angles of his face softened a bit as he spoke again, his eyes bugging too widely to be intimidating. He wanted me to speak, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Still, I cleared my throat.
“Where am I?” I finally managed.
