Cherreads

Chapter 21 - Chapter 21: The Rule of the Upside-Down

Opening Monologue

"When you fall, the ground rushes toward you. That is a law.

But what happens when the law is broken?

You stop falling into the abyss, and you start falling into the very fabric of reality."

---

Scene 1 — The Sickening Flip

Lullaby hit the Inverted Wastes (Lore 3.2). The impact wasn't hard—just violently disorienting.

One moment, he was falling downward.

The next, he was slammed upward into a ceiling that was actually the floor of the void above.

Gravity had flipped. No warning. No pattern.

He activated his exoskeleton's Mag-Boots, anchoring himself to the cold, porous metal plate.

He finally looked around:

Broken architecture floated like mangled islands.

Massive fragments of a dead civilization hovered in the dark.

And below him—the true below—was the open void where gravity behaved normally… and would kill him instantly.

Solin, the Orb Companion, panicked.

It chimed frantically, projecting tangled symbols as it struggled to interpret this lawless environment.

---

Scene 2 — The Geometric Trap

Lullaby crawled across the inverted surface, gravity flickering in bursts:

Weight.

No weight.

Slam.

Light.

Heavy.

Slam again.

He spotted his goal: a floating, half-destroyed archway—a portal to the next region.

To reach it, he needed to cross shifting islands of debris.

Then the environment turned hostile.

A section of the platform twisted ninety degrees.

The floor became a wall.

The wall became a ceiling.

The ceiling became a direction that shouldn't exist.

Lullaby lost his grip.

He was flung sideways—straight into the void.

---

Scene 3 — Gravity Riding

He spiraled downward toward the normal-gravity zone where he'd be flattened.

Mag-Boots were useless.

Surfaces were unstable.

Nothing was consistent.

So he didn't try to resist the chaos—he imposed something new.

He projected Memory Resonance, not as frequency or energy, but as Intention.

He forced a single concept into the void:

DOWN.

A tiny bubble of stable gravity snapped into existence around him.

For a heartbeat, he controlled direction.

It was enough.

He kicked off debris, using the chaotic gravity gradients like ramps, riding them toward a safer platform.

---

Scene 4 — The Shadow of the Gearborn

He slammed onto a colossal, rusted gear wheel, thick enough to be a building in itself.

Mag-Boots locked.

Solin steadied.

Then he heard it.

Clank-hiss.

Clank-hiss.

Clank—

Two Gearborn Sentinels crawled into view, emerging from behind the curved rim:

Machine and flesh melded.

Exposed gears spinning.

Eyes glowing on and off, like dying lanterns.

Their directives: Maintain Structural Integrity (Bestiary 2).

One Sentinel lowered its stance to charge.

The other raised its magnetic arm—humming with dangerous power.

A Magnetic Pulse was forming.

If it fired, Lullaby's exoskeleton could survive…

but Solin would be fried.

---

Scene 5 — The Leap of Faith

He had seconds.

"Orb! Hide!"

He shoved Solin into a crevice and moved.

The charging Sentinel lunged forward.

Lullaby jumped straight upward, releasing the Mag-Boot locks and launching himself into the void again.

The Magnetic Pulse fired.

But the Sentinel mid-charge absorbed it instead:

Hydraulics seized.

Gears froze mid-spin.

The massive construct toppled and crashed violently across the structure.

The destabilized gravity burst from its collapse threw Lullaby upward like a slingshot.

He snatched Solin from the crevice mid-flight.

And then—

He shot straight through the floating archway, leaving the Inverted Wastes behind.

The world changed instantly—from harsh, glitching grays to the deep, silent blues of the Choir Caverns.

More Chapters