Chapter 2

The Edge of Nothingness

Kyja was sinking. That's all she knew. That's all she felt. Deeper and deeper into the depths of eternity, her soul spiraled head over heels until all sense of gravity was lost. She saw the surface of the black sea. It shimmered with the image of the last thing she saw before she died, Marcus' sobbing expression. It pained her to watch for more than a couple of seconds. If that was the surface, why did she feel like she was floating instead of falling anymore?

All at once, the enchanted feeling of weightlessness fled and she collapsed onto the ground of what she assumed was the afterlife. Looking around, she saw...nothing. Kyja wasn't quite sure what she expected. The flaming gates of Fire Keep. A molten mote of lava with a drawbridge of embers bridging the gap. A castle made of brimstone and ash. None of her assumptions were anywhere in sight of the foggy clouds of black. Even the ground she stood upon was barren of any detail save it be the shimmering of a glassy surface.

No light radiated from any discernible source, but despite it Kyja could remarkably see her reflection perfectly in the polished obsidian. Only, it wasn't the reflection she was familiar with growing up all her...well...life. This reflection was different, though it felt just as familiar as the one she'd lived with. It was smooth. Not just her skin, but her every feature. It was like her entire body had an eraser go over every detail, wiping all distinction away. No blemishes pocked her face. No harsh lines etched themselves into her skin. As far as she could understand, she was more of a shadow or silhouette of her previous self. Was this what her spirit looked like? Did this mean she was actually dead?

The thought made her blood run cold. No. There was no blood anymore. She put a hand to her chest. No heartbeat. There was no anything anymore. It was just this shadow figure she was now confined to...what? Live on as? For the first time, the full impact of the fact she had actually died took effect. She was dead. She had died. She had passed on. The words all sounded the same, but the meaning behind them all seemed to have undergone as much of a drastic change as she had. This was what it was like to simply not be alive.

How long had she been here? Eternity? It felt like Kyja had just got here but it also felt like she had been here for hours. Days. Weeks, months, years, and decades. A millennium could have passed by! The more she thought about how much time she had spent here, the longer it seemed conceivable that she had.

Had Marcus already moved on? Did he continue with his life? Did he die an old man, forever waiting for her to pull him over? Did he somehow open the drift without her, or was all of Farworld destroyed because she had never returned to help. Did the Dark Circle now parade around all of Farworld and Earth, ruling the citizens of both worlds with unrelenting power?

A horrible thought suddenly dawned on Kyja. If she never found Fire Keep, that meant she would never be able to leave this place. Even worse, if she couldn't leave, how could she push Marcus back to Earth? He would get more and more sick as the other half of his body stayed in the shadow realm before he would finally give in and die, just as she had. For the first time, Kyja realized the consequences of an action taken too quickly. She had been impatient and rushed to a decision, not willing to let anyone else impede her like Master Therapass had in letting her bring Marcus to Farworld. Granted, back then it was a good thing, because had she not, Marcus would have stepped into the Void of Unbecoming and all of their adventures would have been for naught. But now, her actions had no time sensitivity whatsoever. Kyja sunk to her knees, despair overwhelming her ethereal form. She may have doomed the entire destruction of both Farword and Earth to be set in stone.

—«•»—

"You shouldn't be here. You should be there, at her funeral." He waved his hands at the dripping dungeon walls. "You don't belong here. Master Therapass told us everything and no one blames you for what happened.

"This is where I belong. The law against murder is clear. If you let me go, you'd have to let every killer go too."

Breslek knelt before the cell and gripped the iron bars. "Did you do it?" he asked rhetorically. "Did you kill her?"

"Yes," Marcus repeated the words he'd heard twice before—the words he'd sworn he would never have to say. "I did it. I murdered her."

"Master Therapass is placing powerful protections on the coffin," Breslek said. "Nothing will be able to open it until she returns. Her body..." He wiped his eyes and sniffed. "Her body will remain just as it was the moment she stopped breathing."

The high lord offered a few more words of condolences, but Marcus had stopped listening. It had already been five days. Five days without a word. Without any tug in his stomach or any kind of signal at all that she was still out there.

"I trust you, Kyja," he whispered, "I do. But please come soon."

—«•»—

Kyja was lost, though she wasn't sure if one could be lost without ever knowing where they were attempting to go in the first place. She just dived in expecting to have the Fire Keep standing before her. She should have known it wouldn't be that easy. Which direction was she supposed to head? Did it matter? Every direction was just as similar to the spot she was standing in. She needed a map. A compass. A guide.

Oh of course. A guide!

The second she thought of it, the name sprang to her lips automatically. As a creature of pure magic, she knew that he wouldn't be able to appear in Fire Keep, but this wasn't Fire Keep. "Mr. Z!" she called.

The name echoed across the plane of non-existence. "Mr. Z," she tried again. Much like the first, there was nothing. She didn't understand. Why wasn't he showing up? Did this mean that even a creature of pure magic didn't have the ability to cross over to "the other side?" Kyja sank to her knees. For once, she was truly alone. She had no one. In her life, there were always people, though she never had friends. But at least there was people. Now there wasn't even a fast talking, confusing, and altogether lovable little man to be there for her in her isolation. She could try pulling Marcus over, but she wasn't sure if that was a safe idea. If she did, would she be able to send him back? Would part of his body remain in Farworld, like a part was left in the shadow realm? She didn't even have the library back at Terra Ne Saric to find any form of answer to any of her questions. She really just wanted someone to talk to, but she didn't want to risk bringing Marcus here. She had taken a large enough risk without needing to mess anything else up. She didn't know what to do.

Huh?

There was something there. She heard it. Felt it. Like a sudden spark in her mind, Kyja knew...something. Something was different about her understanding of the situation. She didn't know what, but something had definitely reached out through the void and given her something. A message of some kind. What was it?

It was... It was... Nothing. That was it! Nothing! There was absolutely nothing! There was nothing and that meant there was something! Something wrong. Something missing. Something she needed to do right this second. She danced, or thought she danced, at the sudden revelation that didn't really offer her anything other than a different understanding of the same situation. But at least she had received some sort of answer to a question she wasn't sure it belong to. Kyja treasured it up, nonetheless. Then, she immediately went about pondering what was so significant about nothing. It was like a riddle in her mind that was desperate to be solved.

Kyja started dissecting every single "nothing" she could speculate. There was the nothingness of the place she was in. There was the nothingness of the air, how it didn't blow or shift when she walked or moved. There was the feeling of emptiness. A second understanding entered her mind, but when she tried to grab hold of it, it retreated like trying to catch smoke.

Smoke. Was that it? Where there's smoke there's fire. All she had to do was find smoke, and she would find Fire Keep. But how was she supposed to see smoke when the entire void was dark. Would she be able to smell it? Now that she thought of it, she couldn't smell anything. She couldn't hear, see, or taste anything.

Maybe that was the clue? She couldn't sense anything, so she instead needed to try and sense nothing? That didn't make sense.

Ugh. This was getting her nowhere. Without anything to go off of, her mind couldn't expand to learn or understand anything. Frustration boiled up inside her. Directing her anger towards herself wasn't going to help, but there was nothing to take it out on. She swung her fist in the open air, simply wishing and imagining it connecting with something hard. What happened instead only added more questions to the pile.

—«•»—