Nowhere

Freyya stands up and takes Yiirkavar's hand. He clasps her fingers tightly… and before she can even blink, all of her surroundings are completely different.

She didn't even feel a wisp of mana from when this God teleported them both, nor did she feel a spell being cast. There wasn't even the typical green light that comes from casting Yiir spells.

After she gets over the initial shock of being moved somewhere else, Freyya takes a closer look at where she's been moved to.

The ground she's standing on is ashen grey with a few patches of brown, dying grass. The clouds are grey puffs of gloomy ash with green light shining through.

…And the clouds, along with the entire landscape, abruptly ends at one point; the ground drops off into nothing, and the clouds seem to be pushed back by a subtle wind, despite Freyya not feeling any breeze.

Carefully peering over the edge of the precipice, Freyya sees that the ground she's on is floating high above a deep blackness that she can't help but stare into.

"CAREFUL!" Yiirkavar shouts angrily as he yanks Freyya back. "Don't look into the Void right now, and don't fall in! If you fall without being in contact with me, you'll be lost to this universe forever."

Freyya gulps and steps away from the cliff. "Where is this place?" she asks.

"The Edge of Nowhere – the Fringe – whatever you want to call it," Yiirkavar replies while picking his nose.

"No, I mean WHERE is this place?" she asks again. "As in, why have I never heard of it before?"

"You see that over there?" He asks while pointing in the far distance away from the cliff.

Freyya stands up on her tip-toes, and she squints hard. "I see the World Tree. Oh, we're still in this Plane."

She then has a moment of wonder. "I've never been this far from the World Tree before."

Yiirkavar coughs. "Well, yes, about that… The World Tree is infinitely large, and the plains beneath it stretch infinitely far away."

"Oh?" Freyya cocks her head to the side and acts confused. "That makes no sense. I see the World Tree over there. If it's branches reach infinitely far out, then why does it look so far away?" She looks down at the cliff. "And why do the plains end here, despite them not having an end?"

Something infinite can't end, after all.

"I told you that Nowhere is a place that shouldn't exist…."

Freyya isn't satisfied with this, and Yiirkavar is always eager to talk to people. So, he tries to help her understand.

"Hmm…," Yiirkavar hums while thinking of the best way to respond. "Have you played any video games before?"

"…What?"

"Oh, sorry, I forgot those things haven't been invented yet." The man looks down and taps his foot thoughtfully.

He WAS going to say that the Edge of Nowhere is like a place on a game's map that you can't fast travel to, nor go to normally. The only way to get here is to be taken here by the game's plot, and never return to when you leave.

(A/N: Imagine Sovngarde from Skyrim. It's a place on the map that you can't get to unless the story takes you there. You can't fast travel there, and you can't walk there. Yet, it's still there. The Edge of Nowhere is like Sovngarde.)

"Well, whatever!" Yiirkavar announces suddenly. "Let's get going!"

He extends a hand to Freyya. "Don't you DARE let go… Got it?"

Despite him sounding so casual all the time, she can feel how serious his tone got. "All right," she nods solemnly. "I'm ready."

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The next moment, Yiirkavar grabs Freyya and yanks her forward in a leap off the cliff.

Out of instinct, Freyya freaks out and tries using a spell to teleport back up the cliff…, but she grows doubly terrified when she doesn't feel her magic working.

Her next thought is, "Is this man pranking me and trying to kill me!?"

Her last rational thought before she's pulled into the Void is, "Well, and Elder God could've killed me without resorting to trickery, so I'm probably safe."

Her thought is validated when she falls into the Void and feels herself… not die?

"Don't let go of my hand," Yiirkavar reminds her as they drift further and further into the blackness.

Freyya looks behind her at the cliff they fell from. As she sees the light up above growing smaller and dimmer, she has the illusion of sinking into the deepest trench in the ocean. Soon enough, everything is dark, and she has the feeling that she's somewhere unfathomably deep.

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As Freyya feels herself falling deeper into this bottomless Void, she starts to freak out[HC1] . It's not necessarily a fear for her life, but an existential fear that she can't describe.

Plus, everywhere she looks, the eerie black Void is haunting her mind…

"Stop thinking about whatever you're thinking about," Yiirkavar reminds Freyya sternly.

"That's not how it works," Freyya chuckles nervously. "Telling someone to not think about something will just make it harder to forget the thought."

"Shall I tell you a story to distract you?"

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After Yiirkavar prattles on for a while longer, Freyya still can't get her mind off of the foreboading feeling in the back of her mind.

The more she concentrates on this feeling, the more she thinks she hears it.

It's like… she hears a heavy soft drum in the back of her head. If she looks just hard enough, she can feel the black space around her rippling. It's like she's surrounded by a black canvas, and something is poking at it from the outside.

"Don't you get the feeling that something is there?" Freyya asks nervously. "I feel like we're not alone out here. It's like…"

"STOP THINKING NOW!" Yiirkavar shrieks furiously. Without hesitation, he clobbers the Crow goddess over the head and knocks her out.

Right when he does this, countless glowing bronze eyes open up in the Void around them, and Yiirkavar closes his eyes tightly. He spends a few minutes clearing his mind.

As his mind is filled with other thoughts, the Bronze eyes fade away and disappear, as if they never existed.

Of course, This Kindred God would've told Freyya how to defend herself against this being, but knowing about it actually makes you more vulnerable to it.

You see, Arkala is, by definition, a creature that doesn't exist. Something that doesn't exist can't hurt you. However, thinking about it and even knowing about it gives it Existence.

This is precisely why Yiirkavar will never tell Freyya what it is she was almost devoured by, nor will he tell her how to protect herself against it.

While Freyya floats unconsciously next to Yiirkavar, he pulls out a few spell scrolls out of nowhere and uses them to look into her mind.

There, he extracts all memories of this encounter. He then looks deeper and finds that memory where she heard about Fina's encounter with the Faceless One. He makes Freyya forget this too.

'It's best for people to treat Arkala like it doesn't exist. We'll let Freyya believe that this Void has nothing dangerous in it.'

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-An unknown amount of time later-

"How are you feeling?" Yiirkavar asks Freyya with concern. Of course, she doesn't remember being knocked unconscious, nor the time she was almost erased.

"I feel… scared… and alienated. It's very uncomfortable being in a forbidden place like this. I have the feeling that no one's ever been here before."

"Hmm… Why would that make you uncomfortable?" the Yiirkin asks, puzzled. "Being in places no one else can go is exciting! It's like we're explorers!"

"What are we doing right now?" Freyya asks. "We've been floating around aimlessly for hours now."

"Time means nothing here," he says. "Be patient. I'm just looking for a path I hid.

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-An unknown amount of time later-

"Ah! Got it!" Yiirkavar exclaims.

Right when he says this… a white landscape starts materializing out of nothing around them. For the first time in forever, Freyya feels solid ground beneath her feet, and she feels air in her lungs again.

The sky is still a starless, moonless, black night. Yet despite there being no light sources, she can still see the landscape clearly.

The ground beneath her bare feet is fine, white sand, and the land around her are rolling, white dunes.

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Freyya spends a moment to look carefully at the land around her. She thought the Void was completely black and empty, so why is there stuff here?

"Yiirkavar… What is this place?" Freyya asks.

"Oh, it's a version of the universe Mora was thinking of Creating at some point. Before he invented outer space and planets, he imagined the entire universe to be a single, flat world that extends forever."

Yiirkavar shrugs. "In the end, Pops went ahead and scrapped the idea – said it was too boring and uninspired. When he thought of gravity - making planets instead, he forgot about making this realm entirely."

The man looks down thoughtfully. "These rolling dunes is the possibility of what could've been made, but never was."

"It's kind of lonely and sad when you think about it," Freyya sighs.

"It is," Yiirkavar nods. "Come. Follow me. Oh, and don't let go of my hand."

"Stop saying that."