Equivalent exchange; the things inside that terrible gate seemed to know the rule as well as Edward, and when he offered his life for his brothers, the deal had been struck, human sacrifice offered and accepted.
Edward almost smiled as the giggling things from the gate swarmed out to wrap him in long, ethereal arms, pulling him into their cold, cloying embrace. He heard Al shout something, couldn't quite make it out; he tried to turn to t least smile at his brother, reassure him that all would be well, to give him some semblance of peace, but the iron-strong arms of the things in the gate held him fast, smiling at him from the inky blackness beyond the great stone doors with wide, glowing smiles and brightly shining purple eyes as they took him into the world beyond.
And then he was gone, and the door slammed behind him.
Edward could feel himself being dragged forward, feeling the cold passage of the things in the dark brushing past him, invisible, cold bodies passing him forward, he squeezed his eyes shut and clung desperately to the stubbornly logical pats of his brain, thinking
"There's so many in here…how?" the theories about these things he had read insisted that they were the souls of alchemist who had tread on the toes of god, trying to perform human transmutation, but…there were so many. Hundreds, thousands, all around him, their slim, inhuman ands passing his limp body between them, seemingly with no direction.
Something was wrong. He though of Envy, the homunculus demanding to be taken to Hohenheim as the ghostly arms yanked him into the gate, Edward had seen the shape-shifter being quicky dragged to some bright rectangle of light in the distance but then the gate had shut.
Like it had behind him.
Edward suddenly realized he had no actual idea how any of this worked. He had been reading theories and postulating hypothesis that were based on absolutely nothing. Hearsay and wishful thinking had informed his beliefs about this place, not actual data and evidence. He was suddenly aware that this wasn't a scientific equation, this wasn't equivalent exchange, this was putting himself into the ethereal hands of a quivering hive of eldritch horrors he knew nothing about.
He opened his eyes to darkness, not even the wild grins and shining eyes of the gate children lit this eternal, hungry night.
He couldn't see, but he could hear and he could feel; he felt the tugs on his body going in a new direction and picking up speed as harsh whispers sounded around him in the dark,
"The false gate, it pulls! It pulls!"
"No, no, no fair! No fair!"
"This one is not meant for that place! Not that place!"
"The false gate tethers the flow; it will take this one just as it did the other! It will take all our toys from now on! No fair!"
Edward felt the multitude of grips on his body tightening, tiny hands gripping him tight, but a subtle pressure from behind him started to grow, and a dim light began to shine in the void, showing him the black, slug like shadows that had swarmed his body as the gate children clawed at him to hold him steady, drag him back to their gates chosen destination but as the whisper sounded louder in the dark, and the light grew to illuminate the inhuman horrors in the shape of children that attempted to hold him back, he could swear he began to hear a violin playing in the distance, fast and strident, joined by others. The creatures turned to look in fear as the music swelled into a string orchestra, joined by a thumping kettle drum.
"No! No he isn't meant for this! Dante! Dante let him go!"
"Wait, what? Dante…" Ed said aloud,
"Hohenheim calls for him! No!"
But the music seemed to be enchanting so many of the dark creatures, with many falling still and staring at the light where the music seemed to be coming from, and soon only one of the tiny creatures clung to Edwards auto-mail arm.
It looked at him with wide, sad eyes, purple fading to brown, and he heard a familiar voice sound in his head as crackling blue energy suddenly enveloped his auto-mail.
"Best we can do kid. Hope it helps. You're on the way to a real horror-show."
"Hughes?" Ed demanded, but the creature was gone.
Ed felt a last, sharp tug and suddenly he was standing on solid ground. He looked down in shock at the dirt and gravel below his boots. He looked up and saw the familiar, horrifying edifice of The Gate in front of him, but this was…in an open field. He looked around. In the fading twilight of whatever this world was, he found to his shock that instead of some hidden cavern or secret base, this gate stood in an open field, surrounded by a battered chain-link fence and a dense, encroaching wall of trees.
And that was all…wait. Someone was coming. Edward remembered what the gate children had said; Dante.
Ed knew from experience that alchemy would not work in the world beyond the gate, at least it hadn't in the one he'd seen before. He took step back into a defensive stance, surprised and almost overjoyed to find his auto-mails working.
The thing that lurched at him was not Dante.
Ed's eyes widened.
It was missing an arm, a mirror image to the misplaced alchemist, but as it reached the other out to him, he saw it was missing the fingers from its other hand, bloodless stumps where the digits should be, with greenish, putrefying flesh hanging in ragged strips from the rotten meat and exposed bone of the things arm, it's tattered black clothing hanging from it like the sails of a sunken ship.
"What…" Ed gasped, as he took a step back, meeting the milky eyed gaze of the creature.
It opened its blooded, rotting mouth and let loose a strained, gasping snarl.
Ed heard a chorus of answering noise and he whirled to find three more shambling, torn and rotting corpses stumbling towards him from behind.
For a moment, just a moment, he wasn't in that field on an alien world, but instead he was a child, staring wide-eyed up at his teacher as she crossed her arms and asked both Elric brothers a question;
"If you find yourselves in a fight where you have no idea who or what your opponent is or what they're capable of, what do you do?"
"Try a new fighting technique!"
"Um…see if I can find out their weaknesses?"
Izumi snorted in derision;
"No…YOU RUN AWAY YOU LITTLE IDIOTS!" she shouted.
Still hearing his teachers voice ringing in his mind, Ed thew himself forward while the gap between the four creatures was still wide enough, dashing for the rusted, metal fence around the gate at top speed as he heard more snarling moans and gasps from all around him, but the way forward was still clear.
The alchemist slammed into the fence, scrambling up the links and over the top, tossing himself unto the tangled underbrush on the other side as he heard the things behind him start rattling the chain link.
Not bothering to check if the mutilated beings could climb a fence, Ed rolled to his feet and pushed on into the surrounding forest at top speed.
Ed stared at the pile of debris in the middle of the transmutation circle he'd carefully drawn on the floor of the abandoned school; abandoned by the living, at least.
The slow, rhythmic thumping that intermittently echoed in the dusty hallways told him one of the ever present reanimated was trapped somewhere in here with him.
But no matter.
Of more pressing concern was the feeling of his stomach pressing against his spine; the wayward alchemist hadn't eaten in five days.
He'd been fruitlessly clapping his hands together for the last day of that, after trying to find someone living since coming to this hellish world, finding only the rotting, shambling husks of the reanimated.
He'd remembered something he'd heard going through the gate, something half shouted, half whispered as the grasping hands of Truth dragged him suddenly in a new direction and just before he was given that one last, final shove through the gate, he'd heard a pleading voice shout;
"Return his alchemy, at least! This is not his place to be!"
Another voice had broken with laughter, while yet another had barked,
"We will take what was first given and return to him his natural way, then!"
And then he'd been shoved through the gate and into a mob of reanimated.
It had taken him a day of running to through the dark, reanimated filled wood to reach this empty town where he'd stumbled on the barricaded school he'd found respite in ever since.
After fruitlessly scavenging for food, keeping out of sight of the dead, he'd eventually tried alchemy, sure it wouldn't work, and it indeed hadn't. But he'd remembered what the voices had said, eventually.
And now he was trying it with a circle. The things in the gate had said they would give him his old powers back, that meant, maybe, he could still use alchemy with a circle.
One way to find out.
Edward clapped his hands together, and slammed them to the ground as the chalk circle erupted into sparking blue energy and light, as Ed laughed in triumphant glee.
As the light faded, he gazed in triumph at the still steaming loaf of bread in the middle of the circle; food at last.
"Holy fuck, kid!" A loud, crass voice boomed out from behind him, "That has got to be the coolest shit I have ever fucking seen. And I have seen some fucking cool shit!"
