Five Months Ago…
It was a silent night in the Lord’s Library in the Silver Palace on Heaven. The icy throne room was empty of people. The torches in the staircase behind the throne danced intoxicatingly and threw their twitching shadows on the walls as if in a fervor of emotion. High, high above in the tallest level of the Palace its Lord was hunched over a table, lit dimly by a flicker orb of silver light that floated nearby. It was the only place in the library that was lit. The bookshelves behind Cyril were cast in shadow and their mauls yawned over him in a sick pantomime of some blocky, feral beast. There was a scratching noise and Cyril leaned over his table and carefully wrote down curling words on a piece of parchment. Around him on the table laid the materials needed to bind a book. Cyril looked mildly anxious. The light orb beside him flickered. Cyril glanced at it in annoyance and went back to his work. Below him at the very bottom of the staircase a torch blew out. Then another. Then another. Then another until every torch over the winding stairs had been blown own. A curl of smoke drifted into the library and was lost in the darkness.
“Spilling your secrets so easily, sweetie?”
Cyril dropped his quill and sat back abruptly. He looked around for the owner of the deep, soft voice, but there was no one else in the room. A lazy wind brushed through the collected papers stacked on his desk. The voice laughed softly, “Not very close to completion, perhaps you are not so eager. But I on the other hand, I have one to reveal myself.” The light orb hovering beside Cyril blinked out but suddenly the whole room was bathed in light. Cyril rocked back in his chair and visions flooded his head like rays of light shining their revealing beams on secrets corners of the universe. And then it was gone. The orb of light rekindled and the room darkened. Cyril’s mind, however, remained aglow. There was a faint pull towards the door. Cyril obliged this pull and got up from his desk. He walked down the stairs and as he went the torches relit themselves as if snapping to attention. The pull eventually led Cyril out of the Silver Palace and onto Heaven. He landed on the ground softly.
Cyril looked around and found himself at the entrance to a thick forest surround a solitary mountain. It was night, but the pull compelled Cyril to move on, as if he might miss whatever it was it was leading him too. Cyril walked briskly into the forest and kept a sharp eye out for whatever was calling to him. Cyril looked about as the forest floor crunched beneath his feet. It was a long time before anything showed itself to him in the dark, silent forest. Cyril touched his head as the call intensified. Whatever it was, it was nearby. Cyril looked up and found himself at the base of the mountain now. His head was splitting. His vision began to blur and everything turned sort of blue…
There was a pulse of energy and a woman laughing and suddenly Cyril looked up and found that the mountain was taller than before. And… bluer? That was strange. The mountain had a large, gun iron grey gate carved into it. It was as if the stars were flickering in the sky and the scene before him rapidly switched between the original scene and this new, taller mountain scene. Cyril took a disoriented step back and the original site was before him again. The blue was gone. The pull in his head returned and practically dragged Cyril forward again. The flickering returned. “What the hell?” Cyril muttered. Cyril looked very hard at his surroundings until he could perceive higher dimensions. It had been a while since he had last had to do this.
Everything curled up and away and colors and senses assaulted Cyril. It became immediately clear that he was standing on some sort of ley line between this universe and a pocket universe. There was some sort of forced connection here that wasn’t quite complete. Must have been that voice that opened the way partly and brought Cyril here. Well, if this connection was to be solid and complete, Cyril would have to urge things along a bit. Cyril raised a splayed hand above his head. White shockwaves of ki boomed off his outstretched hand at regular intervals. The flickering slowed down a little bit as Cyril forced the connection to stick. The universe stopped flickering and the blue faded into regular colors. There.
There was a sensation of falling at a tremendous pace and Cyril was no longer before the mountain with the gate. He was right back where he started in fact. Cyril looked around, bewildered. That should have worked…. There was a soft crunching behind him and he spun around. Cyril was walking right up to Cyril. “W-What?” The Cyril continued as if no one had said anything. New Cyril stepped right through and on top of him. New Cyril looked mildly distressed as he underwent a similar process.
“Strange….” Cyril stepped away and felt a mild pull once more in his head. Cyril looked around and followed the pull carefully. Cyril thought as he walked. He was clearly in some pocket universe, this much he could see. Was it some sort of pocket universe that was exactly the same as his own, but smaller and less complete? It wasn’t impossible, Cyril supposed.
“Fool doesn’t even know where he is,” a gruff voice laughed nearby. Cyril looked around. He turned on his magical Seraph senses. Two purple Oneiroi were hunched over some pulsing mass.
“Hey!” Cyril shouted at the two.
They looked up with a start. “Damn, he heard us.” They muttered at once. The Oneiroi didn’t seem too worried about it. “We suppose you want information now?”
“Yup.”
“You are in the Fade.” The Oneiroi informed him, both speaking at once. “A series of pocket universes that mirrors the original almost perfectly. We go back much farther in these pocket universes than any machine could take you.”
Cyril raised an eyebrow. Interesting.
“Of course, the High Oneiroi make their home here. We command the Legion Oneiroi.” The High Oneiroi went on quietly. “You will never make it through this place alive, Lord of Heaven.”
Cyril shrugged, “Pretty sure I’ll make it.” Cyril turned about and found himself staring at a small army of unusually powerful Oneiroi. “Oh.” Cyril sighed. He tossed a white ball of ki in the midst of them and it exploded into shards of ki. About a third of them went down. Before they could even notice their loss they were demolish by a rain of pillars made of ki. “Pretty sure.”
Cyril dug deeper and deeper through the Fade pocket universes. He tore through any High Oneiroi he encountered. Eventually he made it back to the mountain and found the gate once more. The runes glowed as he approached. Hmm, best not to try this without back up. Cyril, newly attuned to the Fade now, teleported out of the Fade and into the original universe. The pull was gone now. He left to summon Riza and his company.
Word Count: 1,230 (35Ibs WTC Used)
