"Going towards the Mountain is overrated. What happens if you defy everything you know and try to go the opposite direction?" -An Elemental Journey Question, also the true summary for this fanfiction.
Disclaimer
No, Journey and the stuff it contains don't belong to me, but to thatgamecompany and Sony. Yes, all the new stuff belongs to me, but no one cares about that. What? Money? No, dear reader, I'm totally not going to make money out of this, or take profit in any way: in fact, I'm just going to spend hours and hours of my life into it for fun. Happy now? No? Well, the chapter is starting anyways...
The wind plays with the sand, making it spin in circles and fly over the endless orange dunes, the phantom of a life that isn't there anymore. A lonely figure walks slowly, under the silver light of a white moon, a long scarf floating behind it and an intrincated pattern of symbols shining over it's cloak.
It's bright eyes scan the nearby valleys of sand, searching for something specific. It stops atop of a huge dune, looking behind as if it feared being followed by an unknown shadow, and then grafecully slides down the other side. All silent, it may look like a ghost of a forgotten past, unable to rest, unstoppable.
Dune after dune, hour after hour, it keeps going. Sometimes it looks around, with a covered fear under the emotionless mask, but nothing moves. Even the wind has stopped, and no clouds are visible. Far away, a mountain shines, but the figure seems to go in the opposite direction... finally, it is engulfed by the sand.
At some point, the figure turns back. It feels so empty, to know the familiar light won't be there all the day anymore. Maybe the cloaked figure won't see it again. All that is ahead is a vast ocean, dust of an ancient civilization. It's not the warm home with pink sand... it's a cruel remind of what happened to the world, a wound too big to heal. If the stories are true, the only thing to find from now on is death, and monsters of a forgotten past that are the nightmare of the lost ones.
The voyager shrugs the sand of it's white cloak. She has to be strong, this is the only way... Looking the stars briefly, the whitecloak corrects the direction, heading for the south-west of the Mountain.
During the night, the wind awakes and starts playing again with the sand, making distant and faint sounds of drums, of a pounding heart, of a gigantic beast peacefully breathing. Maybe this is the way the world lives now: sleeping, waiting for a new day to come. But that will never happen. It's a mirage of what life was, millenia ago, before the world was covered in sand and everything burned.
She remembers the stories: the Ancestors were intelligent and powerful, but they were not wise. They did not know how to control their own creations, and the World paid the price. She has often dreamed about how did it look: unseen jungles of endless Plants, unknown and bright colours painting the land, and all kinds of Birds swimming in the sky. And then, Ancestors, young and playful, using the Guardians to explore the world rather than fighting.
Deep inside her heart she feels something missing. She has made the Journey many times, shared all the tales with the other ones of her kind, met many unforgettable companions. She has even dared to go to the darkest places of the Underground Passage, where the blackcloaks hunt lost Voyagers; she has climbed to the very top of the Mountain, and then playfully jumped down to the beginning.
But that's not enough: there is something, a missing piece in that puzzle; something that doesn't feel right. Most of her people don't realize what is it, or maybe they don't have that hole in their souls. Isn't that how it is suposed to be? The Mountain is always the end, and the beginning... there's nothing more needed to feel truly happy. Or maybe there is? She doesn't know, but it's been a long time since she started wondering about it, and lately she couldn't even think straight.
She knows there is something following her, right from the moment she adventured into the true maze of the Underground Passage, even beyond the blackcloaks. They didn't dare to fight with her, maybe because they saw her motivations, maybe because she is too strong — but the last option doesn't look accurate: she knows Voyagers stronger than her have been hunted and defeated, because no one can beat a blackcloak in it's own territory. She is unsure about why they let het pass without even seeing one of them.
The truth is: she made it to the core of the place, and even if the active mechanisms still protected it, millenia after being left alone by the Ancestors, she found a secret shortcut, behind a stone door modelled by the voice of a Voyager. In fact, the First One. Something felt strange when she approached to it: their energies connected and the symbols lit up, showing her what was behind the door. The First One knew there were dangerous things after it, but he also drew in that rock one true fact: only the ones who truly dared to go that deep into the Underground Passage would get to the door. They would be prepared.
His voice, from a somewhat far past, told her not to believe anything she would see, until she got to the room she wished to visit: there was nothing true beyond that door. Misteriously, she could hear a secondary voice asking if there was anything true at all...
The loneliness of the place was calming, silent. She knew nothing would ever change it: the Ancestors made sure the most important of their buildings would last, even if they never though they wouldn't be there to use them. And she went through the door, and ever since she came back, she feels it: a subtle shadow, hiding behind the dunes or in the dark sky between the stars, never totally visible, but perceptible. The whitecloak feels hunted, and she knows she must hurry if she wants to get to her destination before it's too late.
It's been days since the whitecloak left home, but it's now, without the Mountain in sight, when she feels truly lost. It takes her another two days to get to the place with all the responses, in which starvation hits harder than ever, and the shadow comes closer, and closer, until she feels she's becoming mad. This is certainly a journey without homecoming. Briefly, she thinks about what will happen to her, away from the Mountain and everything she knows. She is scared, because death is no more a step towards a new incarnation, but a pool of pitch-black mistery and, maybe, oblivion.
But now she can't go back, and as the whitecloak sees the sun sinking ahead of her, in a distant and blurry horizon, the wind seems to push her towards the end of the undrawn road: almost shy, the plain roof of a dark grey building awaits her.
With her last energies, she hops from the top of a dune, and then dives in the air, barely touching the ground and leaving a trail in the sand, gaining more and more speed, until she heads up towards the sky and ascends, the wind blowing wildly around her body, landind safely on the roof. She feels the desire of playing for the last time: there is nothing she loves more, besides knowledge — at least, flying doesn't tend to hurt.
There are no visible entrances, but there is a huge hole on the rock. Inside, dust covers the rests of a huge Guardian, pillars, parts of the roof... and a Temple Tower, rising from the darkness, it's Sphynx watching an unknown thing forever. She looks behind for a moment, as if she hoped the Mountain will be there, but only dunes greet her gaze. Finally, she jumps in, and silently falls through the roof, touching the dusty floor with the sharp ends of her legs.
With a single voice pulse, the rocks and the dust fall from the platform, and the tombstones light up again. The whole Tower is shining. Even if it's smaller than the one near the Mountain, this one feels, somehow, more... powerful. The Confluence starts, and a white fog surrounds her. It feels safe, strange, familiar. An Ancestor greets the whitecloak, towering over her, looking akin, yet different. She knows it's just a shadow of an Ancestor; it's not real. Or at least, not real enough to be able to touch it.
At her question, the Ancestor sings one single note, and around her she can see glyphs, showing a path through strange lands, until it ends in something strange: it looks like a plant, but all of the branches are on the top, widely spreading in the sky, and the body is very long, ended with more branches that sink in the ground. She has never seen something like it.
It's the key of all the questions, the final response, though she doesn't know why... Her time is coming to an end, she can feel the shadow trying to enter into the safe bubble she's in. The Ancestor disappears, and darkness engulfs everything.
So, this was it. The very beginning of the story, featuring an unnamed and pretty much crazy whitecloak who went too far. There must be many, many questions inside your head, if you've reached this part. I'm trying not to spoil all the "funfacts" too fast, so you can try to wonder what's it all about (it's the troll vein some sadistic writers have).
I'm actually NOT sure about what the... stuff am I doing with this: it's an experimental thing. I'm not a native English, so there may be some errors here and there, but I try to do it the best I can, and (even i totally says that's what I have to do) I'll welcome any kind of opinion without barking like a rabid dog. I like hearing what people think about my work.
-On the other side... a Journey fanfiction with a character getting away from the Mountain? -Yes. -Why? Are you nuts? -Maybe. The point is: we all know what's on the way of the Mountain (if you don't, go play Journey now, spoilers tend to hurt); I'm trying to build a world about what's in that wasteland surrounding it, and the weird things that live there. And trying to give an explanation for stuff. You see, it's funnier than it seems. -I still think you're nuts. -I didn't say I wasn't.
Interestingly, Journey is an experience without words, and I have to use words to write (amazing, right?), so it's kind of a challenge to try this. I want to describe things just enough so you can imagine how does stuff look, but you have to do the rest (isn't that what all the narrations do? Nope! Some are extra accurate, pointing at someguy surnamed Verne or another dude surnamed Tolkien. Cool guys. But never try to read one of their books if you want a soft, fast experience with literature; it's not healthy); just like, in game, you see stuff but you have to watch to understand what is that dragonfly-like pile of rocks doing in the middle of the desert, and even then you're left to wonder the "why" stuff about it.
I'm actually considering about using dialogue... or maybe, just non-direct dialogue, like I did back there. I'm not sure. I don't know anymore!
Featuring a shadow, which should not be mistaken with The Shadow from Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or any other kind of shadow. No, yours not, either. It's a special shadow: it prefers cloaked figures with pointy feet, so don't worry, the things you see are in your imagination, except that fat, ugly spider who is about to rip your face off.
Enjoy it if you can.