by Ramy Vance
This was a new realm for Suzuki to explore. The dark catacombs were outside of Suzuki’s comfort zone, but to be honest, so was coming to Middang3ard. It was just something that Suzuki was going to have to figure out before it ended up being the cause of his death.
What else was new?
The Mundanes lunched at some point in the dim cavern.
Whatever petals had been growing along the side of the cavern walls were gone now, replaced by slick rock that felt as if it were covered in slime. The tunnels had grown much larger, and in the dim light, Chip mentioned there were dinosaur footprints.
How the dinosaurs had gotten through the narrower sections of the tunnels was not clear to the Mundanes.
They talked it over as Stew and Diana crafted a fire and fumbled for their cooking supplies in the dark.
Chip was doing everything in her power to figure out why they didn’t seem to be able to use their lights. She had opened her operations panel, something she only did because there was hardly any light, to tinker with some of her settings.
Suzuki tried not to watch too closely because he felt like it might be on par with watching someone get dressed. But he was interested, and there was no way to hide that. While Chip worked, she muttered to herself under her breath, her voice occasionally punctured by the crackling of her soldering iron.
The Mundanes huddled in the dark, the light of their fire hardly casting itself against the slick rock walls. The mood was drastically different than any of their meals before. It was like a black cloud was hanging over them as if a darkness that could not be dispelled with light had sunk deep into their brains and wormed behind their eyes.
The inside of the volcano felt unbelievably cold. A stiff breeze blew through and chilled Suzuki to the bone. He could hear the other Mundanes shivering. It made no sense. They huddled as close as they could to the fire, so there should have been some kind of heat to warm themselves with. And they were also in the middle of a volcano. Shouldn’t the magma beneath them have been enough to keep them warm?
With the cold came dread. It was unspoken, but it could be seen on everyone’s face. Once more, it had become difficult to remember how long they had been walking through these tunnels. Suzuki thought this was his first meal of the day, but if he pondered long enough, he could remember multiple meal-related incidents in the tunnel. He remembered having lunch in another section, not too far away. He even remembered the conversation he had with Stew. Did that actually happen? Or was there something else going on?
Suzuki turned to Chip and grabbed her arm. “How long have you been working on your arm?” Suzuki asked.
Chip looked down at their arm and the soldering iron. “Honestly, couldn’t tell you the slightest,” Chip admitted. “Thought it was a couple of hours a few minutes ago. Now it feels like this is the same thing I’ve been doing for the last week.”
Suzuki leaned over the fire and grabbed Stew by the shoulders. Even standing directly above the fire wasn’t enough to bring him any warmth. “Stew, how many stacks of provisions did you bring with you?” Suzuki asked.
Stew pulled up his HUD and yawned, bored with the conversation. “Why do you need to know?” he counted.
“Because if we know how many meals we’ve eaten, then we can tell how long we’ve been here.”
Stew looked through his HUD’s inventory. “So, it looks like we…uh, that’s fucking weird. We haven’t eaten anything.”
“What do you mean we haven’t eaten anything?”
“I mean, none of the provisions have been touched.”
Suzuki shook the plate of food in his hands. “We’re eating right now,” Suzuki practically shouted, fear creeping down his throat. “That’s impossible.”
“Maybe it’s a mistake. You know, an error or something. We can’t have been down here that long.”
“Yeah, but do you—”
“Better than you. I don’t know what’s going on with you guys, but it isn’t hitting me as hard as you. I can still remember things, sort of, and I’m the only one not freezing my ass off. So trust me, we haven’t been down here for any longer than a few hours. This is our first meal. It’s just the darkness, dude. It’s freaking everyone out.”
Diana blew on the flames in front of her. Then she inhaled deeply, trying to take in as much air as she could before leaning back against the walls. “No, that’s not right,” Diana said. “Not completely. This is not our first meal. Nor is it our last. There is something distorting time, maybe the ley line. These places are frail and easily broken. Reality itself is on edge here. We just have to push through it.”
Suzuki didn’t quite understand what Diana was saying. It was like she was talking in another language, yet he remembered having learned the language she spoke. As Suzuki tried to wrap his head around what Diana had explained, he turned and saw that Beth’s nose was bleeding. “Oh, shit, Beth, your nose,” Suzuki said as he mimed touching where she was bleeding.
Beth lightly touched the small stream of blood coming from her nose. She looked down at the blood. “So, you’re saying we just need to push through this?” Beth asked.
Diana nodded and wiped the blood beginning to pool in her own nostril away. “Exactly,” Diana said. “We just need to keep pushing, like pushing a needle through skin. There’s resistance the entire way, but you can pass all the way through.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“I know you aren’t used to the idea of being wrong but it could happen. Maybe that’s why all of this was abandoned and the researchers left. What if places like this are too unstable to even come in contact with?”
“Oh, I am not wrong. And neither are you. We are not meant to be in places like this. It is too unstable. But I have an ace up my sleeve. It was supposed to be a surprise but the situation has gotten more confusing than I thought. But we have some help.”
Diana leaned over the flames and blew them again, harder than the first time. The flames flashed up and tickled the top of the tunnel. There was a flash of heat that faded quickly. Something could be seen in the flames. A figure. As they watched, the figure reached a hand through the flames, which split into dozens of other hands that faded with the rising smoke. It was difficult to make out through the flames, but there was no doubt it was Sandy, and on her shoulder sat Fred.
Stew jumped up, looking as if he were ready to throw himself into the flames. Diana reached out as soon as he started moving and held him back. “It’s Sandy!” Stew shouted. “What’s she doing in there?”
Sandy faded as Diana fanned the flames with her hand. “Guidance,” Diana said. “José sent her to the realm between realms to find the Dark One’s name, and I told her I would help her navigate through the realm. Somehow, Sandy came across a further distortion in the different realities and came looking for us here. She’s been providing a link to keep us from being torn apart by the ley line.”
Beth laughed loudly as she slapped her knee. “So, you were going to get us killed.” Beth chuckled.
“No, I planned for this before we decided to enter the volcano, although I did realize it would be uncomfortable. But we might as well keep moving if you are all finished with your meal.”
“You seem to be handling this pretty well for someone who could have gotten us killed.”
“I’ve been through ley lines before. It’s no more dangerous than mountain-climbing, albeit more confusing and disturbing, and potentially more spiritually enlightening.”
They continued sitting there for some time after Diana finished speaking. No one was trying to make sense of anything, let alone what Diana had said. Suzuki looked at his hands in the light of the flames. Now it seemed as if the entire tunnel was nothing more than a beam of light. Suzuki was no longer cold. He was quite comfortable. But in the light, he could see the walls were not as bare and slick as he had thought. There were black petal sprouts here as well, just not as many as they had first come across.
Suzuki yawned a
nd stood up. He was starting to get sleepy again. The sort of tired that comes after a filling meal. Now that he thought of it, he had no idea what he had eaten. He only knew he enjoyed it. “Thanks for the food,” Suzuki said as he stared down the direction of the tunnel they were heading to. “You guys ready to do this?”
Stew stood and stumbled to the side. Beth reached out and kept him from falling on his ass. “Okay. I take back what I said about not being affected like you guys. I feel like fucking shit. It feels like someone’s stretched me out. Like, really stretched me out. I feel…thin. Like, paper-thin.”
“Same here, dude. And there’s too much on my mind. Like, way too much. I feel like I’ve thought everything that’s ever existed in the world before. Beth, how are you holding up?”
Beth was staring the dying fire. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she was rocking back and forth. Suzuki came as fast as he could to her side. He wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed it tightly. “Babe, babe, are you okay?” Suzuki asked.
When Beth looked up, her eyes were red and her bottom lip was trembling. “I think I saw how I’m going to die,” Beth whispered.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Or maybe it was when I was born. I can’t tell the difference. Either way, I’d like to unsee whatever it was.”
Diana offered Beth her hand. “Come on. We just need to pass the threshold. We’re all getting fatigued from too many realities converging. If we stay here and don’t get through the threshold, we’ll be too inundated with other realities. Come on.”
Beth took Diana’s hand and stood.
The Mundanes didn’t waste time breaking down the small campfire and getting back to making their way through the tunnels. Suzuki still didn’t feel great, but the sense of dread that had been hanging over him was gone.
In its place was an almost warm feeling of positivity.
The journey continued on, fluctuating between moments of intense darkness, moments when it seemed like death was at their heels, like the darkness they walked through was much more than a physical occurrence, and other times, when there was intense light and it felt as if they were walking on clouds. Then suddenly, the Mundanes stood before what could have only been called a portal. It was a hole in existence.
Suzuki had seen portals before.
Myrddin had brought them through one to get into Middang3ard, and the Red Lion had their own fast-travel portal specifically for MERCs needing to get someplace. This one was different, though. All the portals Suzuki had seen before felt as if they belonged where they were. You could tell they were leading you someplace.
This portal was nothing like that.
It seemed as if it had been plucked from somewhere else and dropped into the volcano. There was an odd singing coming from it, and Suzuki realized it was the singing he had been hearing all along. It was coming from the portal.
Diana walked up to the portal and circled it quickly. Then she turned to the Mundanes and motioned for them to join her. “This is the threshold,” Diana explained. “Once we walk through it, we should be free from all of the reality disruptions.”
Beth eyed the portal and Diana suspiciously. “And what’s going to be on the other side?” she asked.
“Ideally, it’ll just send us farther into the volcano. It’s most likely a portal that was being used by someone who traveled this before us. I doubt the ley line created its own portal. It’s highly unlikely, and in the event it did, we would only be transported to another ley line. At worse, it would be mildly inconvenient.”
Stew put his face up to the portal, and a strong wind blew his hair back. “So, we’re not going to get our atoms smashed or anything like that?”
“Not with Sandy watching over us. You’ve all heard the singing, no doubt.”
The Mundanes nodded their heads silently as they looked from one to the other. “Sandy’s song has been anchoring us to this ley line, this plane in reality. From what she’s explained to me, she’s come across a couple of variations of herself in the realm between places. One of those Sandys happens to be well versed in oral song magic. She’s also much older, and very aware of how the realm works. Apparently, in some realities, Sandy is something of a big deal.”
Stew looked away from the portal and to Diana, his face brightening with curiosity. “An old Sandy?” he asked. “I have to see this.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have time to satiate your curiosity. The different versions of Sandy are on a mission, and they’ve been using valuable time to protect us. After this, they’re going to return to the task at hand, and we will return to ours. But I’ll continue to stay in touch with her, although it seems like she’s playing the role of protector more than me. Are you all ready?”
Suzuki couldn’t wait to get out of the tunnels. They had gone from feeling claustrophobic to a funhouse mirror to a hall of horrors. He looked down at his hands, confused by the different after echoes of his own movements. It looked like he was generating new alternate realities as he moved. This was something he wanted to talk with Diana about. If there were alternate versions of Sandy, couldn’t there be alternate versions of the rest of the Mundanes? Maybe that was something they could use to their advantage at some point.
Diana reached her left hand into the portal. “When you pass through, things are going to get very weird,” she explained. “I can’t tell you specifically because it’s going to be different for everyone but be prepared for whatever comes at you. Stay focused on moving forward.” Then Diana stepped through the portal and was gone in a flash of light. Chip followed closely after.
The younger Mundanes’ eyes jumped from one to the other. “So, who wants to go first?” Stew asked.
Beth stepped forward and walked into the portal without taking a moment to slow down. She vanished in the same white, bright flash. Stew nervously shifted his weight from foot to foot before running into the portal, screaming as if he were running onto the battlefield.
Suzuki paced for a moment. He didn’t know why he was so scared, but the prospect of crossing through the portal terrified him. Perhaps it was the fear of the unknown. Or it could have been the fear of the slightly known. The little bit Diana had told him had done nothing to soothe his fear. It didn’t matter now, though. Everyone else had gone through, and this looked like the only way they were going to get farther into the volcano. He took a deep breath and walked through the portal.
All at once, Suzuki’s atoms began to sing. Not that they began to vibrate or Suzuki perceived feeling in a different way. The atoms themselves started to sing a melody. The world around Suzuki was bright, and he struggled to continue walking forward as his eyes adjusted. As the whiteness faded, Suzuki started to be able to make out some of the shapes around him. In the distance, directly in front of him, was a door. Planets and stars and nebulas whizzed past him faster than he could see as he continued to walk a direct path to the black door. It was like walking through mud, though. Each of his steps was heavy and leaden.
Suzuki lost his footing and fell down, banging his knee up pretty badly. As he looked up, preparing to stand, he saw another version of himself continuing to walk forward. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw another version of himself, just a few steps away. When he leaned to his right to get a better look, he could see dozens of versions of himself walking in a queue. Although they were all walking, it did not seem as if they were moving. Suzuki stood and turned around to see a version of himself, still on the ground, holding their knee, which was bleeding profusely. This version of him was covered in the black petal sprouts he had accidentally inhaled before.
Suzuki reached down to help the other version of himself and was surprised when he grabbed onto someone’s flesh and blood.
Deep down, he had thought this was some kind of visual illusion.
But he was holding onto his own hand.
Or something like his own hand.
The other Suzuki smiled and muttered his thanks as he got to his feet.<
br />
Both of them made their way to the door.
Suddenly, the space around them stopped moving. It stood deadly still, and Suzuki realized he was in a vacuum. There was no air, only the coldness of space. As he looked around and tried to regain his perspective, he saw that he was upside-down, not quite floating, but also not quite standing. He turned and turned, looking for the door. Finally, after a few moments of feeling sick to his stomach, he found the door and headed toward it. The rest of the Suzuki’s weren’t faring as well. The only Suzuki who seemed aware of what was going on was the one Suzuki pulled along his side.
In the space above the threshold, or perhaps around the threshold, the space grew darker and darker. The lights of the planets and stars faded until the darkness of the threshold looked to be bright. Out of that darkness came a voice. It was deep and calm like that of the sea, and it filled Suzuki with a terrifying dread.
Suzuki didn’t know where the voice was coming from, but he knew he wanted to be as far away from it as possible. A primal fear surged up through Suzuki, and he found himself running to the threshold as fast as he could. The space broke apart. It was as if someone had reached out and cut a thin slit in the space before him.
The slit opened and a man stepped out.
The man was nearly seven feet tall.
His body had evenly toned muscles, and his skin was so transparent that the blood vessels and technological additions could be easily seen. The same veins covered his face. Long, curling blond hair cascaded down his face, if you could even call it that.
He wore no shirt but had a long black robe that melded with the darkness around him.
“Ah, Suzuki,” the Dark One purred.
Suzuki turned to run.
Before he could get his feet off the ground, he felt something wrap around his legs and hold him in place.
