“Nothing mentioned teleportation. NOTHING! Why is this HAPPENING?”
All around was empty space, peppered with debris. Eternal darkness. If it wasn’t for the handful of small, floating platforms, Kayel probably would have died by now. He was thankful that he and Psivee-En had landed on a particularly large platform.
Everything else in the ritual had gone fine. Their bodies were healed. The horrible scar running down Kayel’s stomach was gone, as were the old bite marks on his arm. Weirdly, the tattoo on his neck indicating that he was a Ksa had disappeared too. Physically, Kayel felt bigger and stronger, his armour was sharper and edgier and the small, ghost-like energy wings on his back had been replaced by a dark, black and gold pair of demonic wings that would make a Thraki proud.
But all that seemed pointless if they couldn’t get of this strange, dark place.
While he waited, Kayel was doing his best to keep calm. But after about an hour, he realised he wasn’t going anywhere. They were stuck there. Maybe forever.
“I read everything. I studied the ritual for months. NOTHING mentioned being randomly teleported into some horrible, desolate realm…”
Psivee-En though had remained perfectly calm the entire time they were there. Mostly because he was still unconscious. Taking ages to wake up was an actual side-effect of the ritual, so that didn’t surprise Kayel. The whole teleporting scenario though, that bothered Kayel greatly.
The only thing stopping Kayel from screaming endlessly into the void was pacing up and down the floating lump of rock they’d been lucky to land on. He must have done about fifty laps around it. On the fifty first, Psivee-En finally woke up.
“Ooer, what happened?”
“What happened? WHAT HAPPENED?” Kayel exploded. “WE’RE FUCKING LOST! THERE’S NOTHING AROUND US FOR HUNDREDS OF MILES. NOTHING BUT DARKNESS AND FLOATING ROCKS!”
Psivee-En sat up straight and looked around. “No we’re not.”
“What do you mean?” Kayel’s exclamation had burned him out. “We’ve been here for ages. You’ve been asleep. You have no fucking clue how stressed I am.”
“There’s no need to be stressed out…” Psivee-En slowly climbed to his feet. He too had changed, but not as much as Kayel had. His armour though was much heavier and his wings much larger. His tail was also incredibly long. He wandered over to Kayel and put his arms around him, before quickly letting go.
“So… where are we?”
“The Umbric Realm!” Psivee-En’s tone oozed with joy. “I spent years trying to get here, back when I was young. It was where the Trehavok believed we were first created. That wasn’t ever true, but we did have connections to this place. The darkest place in existence. The home of all shadows and stuff like that. None of that is true ever, but this place has always existed.”
“I don’t care about that, I want to get out of here!” Kayel growled. “And I want to find the others. Goodness knows where the fuck they are!”
“Then just create an exit,” Psivee-En smiled. “Imagine a door leading to where you want to go.”
Kayel tutted. Psivee-En’s words were stupid. But he had no other ideas so he did as he was told. He imagined a large, wooden door, leading to the tree house that he and the L-Class had settled in. To his amazement, that exact wooden door appeared in front of him. Unsure what else to do, Kayel reached forward and nudged the door open. It led back to the tree house he had been thinking about.
“What the fuck.”
Psivee-En grinned. “We’ve been blessed with the ability to access this realm. Only the most dedicated Trehans made it this far, the ability to manipulate the world of shadows. Yet here we are, a new species, doing so with ease. We can- Kayel, where are you going?”
“We have to go!” Kayel shouted as he leaped through the doorway. “We have to go and find the others. We can talk about all this shadow stuff later!”
Psivee-En sighed, then followed Kayel. He was right, they needed to find the rest of their new species.