'FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!'
The wave carried Sunless down toward the village.
The harmonica grew louder.
Sunless fought with all his might to avoid falling down. Covering his sprained leg with shadow, he struggled to remain at the peak of this Evergoing White. With each fraction of a second, he was being carried closer and closer to the edge that plummeted downward.
'I will not die. No, this cannot kill me.'
Sunless struggled, gritting his teeth so tight his gums began to hurt, his eyes filled with sheer stubbornness to cling to life.
'Even if no one cares whether I live or die, just seeing the spiteful faces of others after realizing an outskirt rat like me survived instead of their friends is more than enough reason for me to stay alive.'
As he was swept along by the wave, Sunless dug into the bottom surface of the rushing mass with his hands, trying to stay upright on his feet.
'What if there is no one waiting for me? Just my own reflection in the mirror is enough to keep me going.'
Sunless fought to remain where he was and slowly tried to climb back up... Alas, the surface he was holding onto gave way, and he fell down into the depths of this white world.
Since the wave was thicker than water, he was not thrown directly outward. Instead, the same section of the wave that first caught him carried him downward.
With both his hands and legs pointing upward while his back pressed against the slope, an expression of disappointment washed over his face. Closing his eyes, he directed his shadow to move to the back of his head.
As the shadow crawled across his body to his head, Sunless used his shadow vision to see where he was going. A curve jutted out from the wall, designed to throw anything coming down a bit farther outward.
Rolling his body into a tight ball, Sunless ordered the shadow to cover his entire back. When he hit the surface, instead of sliding further along the wave, his hardened body crashed straight through the slide, leaving a small hole behind through which barely any white material fell.
Sunless was now clear of the bumps he was supposed to hit.
Opening his eyes, he began to look around. 'Perfect. Now I just have to grab the wall that should be right in front of me-' Sunless's eyes widened, and he slowly looked upward.
The curve coming out of the wall was strange. The wall itself formed a massive curve that angled away from everything, bending back a hundred meters below to clear a path for another platform.
There was nothing Sunless could grab to slow his fall.
Desperately, he spun his body to look around.
To the right? Nothing to hold.
To the left? Nothing to hold.
He covered his back with shadow once again and broke through another platform.
He looked around once more... Still nothing to hold.
He broke through another platform.
'If... I ride this surface, it will throw me directly on top of the village.'
He broke through the final drop.
Looking down through the shadow at the back of his head, he saw only the white ground, which was connected to the terrain yet stood just a few hundred meters away from the village. The spark in Sunless's eyes slowly vanished.
There was nothing he could do.
His shadow could not manifest a physical body, and the fall was long. Even if he protected his back with shadow, the impact would likely kill him, or at best leave him half-dead.
Sixty meters from the ground.
Sunless's body slowly relaxed.
Thirty meters...
His shadow wrapped tightly around his back.
Twenty meters.
Ten...
'Damnation... [Fated].'
Sunless hit the ground.
The harmonica grew louder.
***
At the bottom of the Evergoing White World, kilometers deep, lay a village made of white... Village might be the word for it, but it did not look like one.
The houses within a village should have roofs, but there were none. They should have proper walls, but the structures here had low, uneven boundaries that were barely tall enough to count as walls.
There were quite a few "houses" in this village, yet not a single "resident" lived inside them.
The Nightmare Creatures were pitch black from head to toe, with nothing to distinguish them from one another except their height. Every single one of them had a default human shape with a rounded head, alongside straight limbs with smooth edges. Concentric white circles sank deep into the center of their faces where eyes should be, but they had no ears, mouths, or lips.
Some of these Nightmare Creatures were scooping up the white substance from the ground and holding it near where their lips should be.
Others were trying to mold the substance into vessels. The only similarity between a real container and the shapes they made was a hollow space inside to store something, while the rest was completely unrecognizable.
Those who crafted these crude vessels brought them close to their featureless faces, tilting them as if trying to drink.
Some just stood in place, staring off into nothing.
The rest simply stared up at the vast drop above, their minds completely blank, as if incapable of holding a single thought.
Thud.
The sound of another body crashing down from above echoed through the village. Instantly, all the Nightmare Creatures turned their heads toward the noise, stepping forward together in unison.
As they walked, only their heads and legs moved. Their arms hung completely still, while the white rings of their eyes shifted within each other.
Step by step, they arrived at the source of the sound, but found nothing there except an indentation in the ground where something had fallen.
Another noise came from behind them.
Turning back, they spotted a small man wearing leather armor sprinting toward the depths of the White World, away from the village.
Something about him caught their attention immediately. That man had a shadow.
Slowly, the creatures walked toward the direction the small man had run, taking it one step at a time.
The depths of the White World stretched far beneath the cascading drops, opening into a massive cave of pure white. In some places, the ceiling hung just a few feet above the floor, while in others, the ground and ceiling met to form giant cones.
As they marched deeper into the cave, they passed countless wall scratches. They were not natural formations, but the marks of humans who had fallen here before, trying to dig tunnels to climb back up.
There were countless scratches left behind, matched only by the countless Nightmare Creatures wandering the space.
Soon, they located the short man with the moving shadow. He was running across the cave, desperately searching for a way back to the surface. That was the last glimpse they caught before a gray blur moved past them, dodging their ranks and rushing back out of the cave.
The Nightmare Creatures turned in unison and walked back toward the village, following the blur step by step.
Exiting the cave, they saw the gray shape weaving around every corner of their crude houses, trying to scale the walls of the White World.
The creatures reached the area and stopped, watching to see what the man was trying to do.
The man's shadow moved into his leg as he planted a foot against a wall and leaped upward. The shadow then traveled up through his body into his hands, giving him enough strength to pull himself higher.
He managed to climb a few meters before coming to a halt. The cascading wave blocked his path at that level, preventing any further progress.
The man looked back down at the rows of featureless black figures below him.
His shadow slowly detached from his body. It glided down the wall, slipped across the white floor, and moved directly toward the crowd of Nightmare Creatures.
The creatures lowered their heads, surrounding the shadow as everyone tried to get a closer look.
Now, every single creature was gathered around the shadow, while the shadow looked right back at them.
The shadow awkwardly waved its hand, greeting the Nightmare Creatures.
The Nightmare Creatures looked down at it. Their eyes, which were rotating clockwise, began to rotate counterclockwise instead.
Sunless climbed down from the edge and walked into the village. The creatures started to turn around and follow him. To stop them, the shadow frantically began to make all sorts of hand movements.
The creatures turned back toward the shadow, which was doing everything it could to keep their attention.
The shadow stopped and sat down in a thinking posture. The creatures began to turn away again.
The shadow moved its hand and made a peace sign.
The creatures looked back toward the shadow.
The shadow stopped once more, and the creatures began to turn around again.
The shadow moved, and they looked back at it. A second later, the shadow stopped, and they began to turn away, only for the shadow to move again to regain their focus.
The shadow was feeling like Michael Jackson or something.
This time, they began to turn away from the shadow, which was sitting on a non-existent chair with one leg crossed over the other, picking its non-existent nose with its pinky finger. It was not much, but it was movement.
As the creatures turned around with their eyes spinning clockwise, the shadow held its head and began to walk in circles, coming up with a plan for what to do next.
A non-existent lightbulb appeared above the shadow's head, and it gave a thumbs-up as if saying "Aha!"
Slowly, the shadow began to sway its body, wave its hands, and shake its ass.
All the creatures looked down toward the shadow without any change.
The shadow kept shaking its ass.
The creatures were fascinated by the movement. Together, they shifted their bodies as well, attempting to shake their own non-existent asses.
***
Sunless walked through the village. Running was impossible because of his sprained foot, so walking was the best he could do.
'Gosh, these walls are only as high as my waist.'
He searched for any clue that could lead him out of this hell and away from these goofballs.
'None of it makes sense. Nightmare Creatures are supposed to be bloodthirsty horrors driven by an insatiable urge to devour living flesh. They should tear an Awakened apart on sight. Yet these things do not possess a single shred of malice.'
Moving from one house to another, he tried to find anything useful.
'At least I do not have to shake my ass here.'
As he moved, he checked through his shadow senses to see what his shadow was doing. All he saw were dark figures shaking their rears in unison.
'If anyone from the Academy sees this, I am forcing them to follow me to the cliff above and pushing them off.'
Looking inside the houses yielded nothing helpful. There were only cheap imitations of clothes and toys. A toy ball was even square - how hard could it be to shape something round?
'Those claw marks back in the cave were desperate scratches left behind by poor fools who fell here before me. They clawed at the stone until their fingers bled, trying to dig a way back up.'
Sunless stopped for a second, a pained expression crossing his face.
'My entire body hurts. If I had not activated [Puppeteer's Shroud] at the last second and covered my back with shadow, I would be dead right now.' He tried to step forward, but the pain only worsened. 'It is not like I am in good shape anyway.'
Stepping out of another house, Sunless froze. A small dark figure, standing only half his height, stared up at him from the doorway with spiraling eyes.
Sunless glanced at it once and walked past, continuing his search.
He looked back, only to see the creature following him.
Stopping near a building, Sunless sat down with his back against the wall and stared at the creature.
'I cannot find a way out of here. I am almost dead, and...'
Slowly, he raised his hands and covered his ears.
'This annoying sound is so frustrating. I walked everywhere to see if there was any silence, but it only gets louder. This instrument is not even here. It is just in my mind.'
Out of options, Sunless watched as the small creature slowly walked between his legs.
'The only thing I have not tried is this Nightmare Creature. It does not seem harmful, god knows why.'
The creature stepped closer, one foot at a time, and wrapped its tiny arms around him.
Sunless felt a faint warmth. He decided to speak to it, thinking that even if it could not understand, its reaction might offer a hint.
'Those marks in the cave, these imitations of the human world, everything leads to one conclusion.'
Nothing came out.
Sunless tried to speak again, but no sound formed.
The harmonica grew louder.
His hand began to tremble, slowly rising toward his lips. He stood up and walked away from the creature toward the cave, his body shaking uncontrollably. He immediately summoned his shadow.
'No bodies of other humans can be seen.'
The shadow glided through the houses.
Sunless tried to make a sound, any sound at all. He tried to scream with everything he had, but nothing worked. He could not even feel his own tongue.
The shadow finally reached him. Looking at himself through his shadow's eyes, Sunless widened his eyes in horror.
The harmonica grew louder.
His mouth was completely gone. His entire head had transformed into the featureless shape of the Nightmare Creatures, and the change was slowly spreading down his body.
'I have to figure a way out, fast.'
The moment he realized what was happening, the harmonica surged in volume, ringing in his mind like a gunshot next to his ear.
Sunless fell to his knees, clutching his head as the noise tore through his skull until it felt as if his eyes would pop from their sockets.
Every thought he tried to gather was instantly swallowed by the pounding rhythm.
He tried to scream the pain away, but there was no mouth left to scream with.
Sunless dug his fingernails deep into the sides of his head, dragging them across his face until he felt a wet stickiness. Yet that physical harm was nothing compared to the agony consuming his inner self.
He could feel his heart thumping wildly. Every blood vessel throbbed, his blood rushed violently, and his vision shifted colors, folding in on itself.
He could not even scream.
A small shape moved into his fading vision. The tiny Nightmare Creature had followed him into the cave, its spiraling eyes spinning silently as it stepped closer. It reached out, wrapping its small black arms around him again and leaning its fragile body against his chest.
The soft sensation of the hug cut through the overwhelming noise.
Desperate for anything to anchor him to reality, Sunless wrapped his arms around the creature and pulled it close, hugging it with all his remaining strength.
He held it too tight.
The small creature was far too fragile, its soft body offering no resistance to his desperate power. Sunless felt his hands tear straight through its form, snapping its neck instantly.
The tiny body went completely limp in his arms as pitch-black blood poured from the tear, running over his trembling hands and soaking his chest.
The harmonica grew quieter.
Sunless laid back on the ground, his wide eyes staring blankly at the white ceiling. He did not think or try to say anything.
These creatures were once people like him who had fallen into this place. Sunless closed his eyes, holding the dead body close.
'I do not have any time to waste.'
Checking through his shadow vision, he saw that his body was still transformed. Only the harmonica had quieted down.
Standing up, he looked down at the dead creature in his hands.
'It was trying to hint that I needed to kill it all this time.'
Looking closer through the spilled black blood, Sunless's eyes widened again.
The white ground was rapidly absorbing the dark blood, but through the pool, he caught a glimpse of something else. He saw red ground beneath the liquid, viewed from the perspective of someone lying down flat. He saw two arms and a bare lower body.
That was his real body.
Sunless moved his hands in this white world, but through the blood, only his fingers twitched. Far off in the distance beyond that bloodied vision, he saw something unfathomably massive slowly moving toward him.
The white surface fully absorbed the black blood, shutting off his view of where his actual body lay.
'I saw something massive slowly moving toward me.'
The shadow wrapped itself tightly around Sunless.
'I am trapped inside a... mind attack.'
The harmonica grew louder.
***********
How was this chapter
Been a while since I last posted. Man, I am really sick.
As I said, just wholesomeness. Such a wholesome chapter, don't you think? Very wholesome. As I said, I have changed. Let's all shake our asses :)
Mannnn, so sickkkkk.
That's it.
Peace.