The well part 2

A cold biting chill assaulted Cyphers nerves, his senses slowly but surely returning. It was unlike anything he had felt before, freezing beyond subzero and yet he did not experience any of the adverse affects one would expect. He shivered under the tugging of Elie and despite this his body was still warm to the touch. It was if the cold was assaulting his very soul.

With a slap, Elie let go of his body and scrubbed back with a red handprint dissapearing almost as soon as it appeared.

"Get a hold of yourself." Cypher caught himself with his hands on the ground, feeling a sharp sensation Peirce onto his skin. His blurry vision slowly but surely returned to see himself on a patch of blood red moist grass, dancing back and forth in the wind beneath him.

"Are we not in the cave? No, that can't be." Looking at the foliage, he had an ominous feeling in his core. The longer he stared at the grass, it was if it was twisting and moving with obsurdity that didn't make sense, like the wind was just a suggestion on where it blew.

Shaking his head, he turned to look at where he had been pulled out from and felt his heart shudder.

Before him lay an endless black sea so thick one couldn't even look beneath it's surface without diving in themselves. The tar like substance stood still, unnaturally so. Their were no tides, no hands to drag them back in not tendrils to attack them. It extended into the distance until hitting a barrier of white fog that stood Luke a wall high enough to reach the atmosphere.

"I... I can't think here, I've seen things that shouldn't exist." Elie briefly gained a moment of clarity from Cypher's slap, seemingly having been under some sort of trance ,"Please, you brought us here so you can get us out right?"

Cypher didn't respond. His breath hitched as he turned away from the black sea to the very land they were standing on.

Ahead of him lay a vast field of that same unnerving crimson grass spread out in all directions like an infection on the land. It shifted in ways visible to the naked eye, the ground forming mounds in a wave like fashion before flowing back to flatness no different to the rising and falling of a humans chest as they breathed. Even as Cypher stepped on what looked to be a sharp rigid plot of grass, it did not break, instead shifting smoothly to adapt to the new presence.

It was not an empty field, but one filled with things that defied comprehension. The land was littered with trees, or, what looked to be a parody of them. Their trunks were thick, gnarled conglomerates of pale white petrified matter resembling cold meat. As they twisted in a way that looked painful, the white material cracked it's bark under the strain of something beneath. Skeletal finger like branches spread through the air, reaching across the landscape casting shadows underneath while sluggish black ichor drilled between the barks cracks and fell onto the red grass below, disappearing soon after.

From behind some of these trees, Cypher saw shadows. They peeked around the corners, laughing at them, mocking them. However the moment he tried to gather more detailes on them, they hid away, gone from sight.

Beyond the trees, great spires jutted out of the earth like broken fangs that absorbed all light too the point that they appeared more like scars in reality itself. Their black Vanta surface pointing skyword beyond low hanging ethereal clouds. Some loomed together in crooked formation, creating an almost mountain like conglomeration as they sucked dry the land beneath them, creating a barren wasteland of dead, withered and grey soil below.

Above them, in the endless void of space, everything was perversely inverted. The blackness of space twisted into an expanse of white so deep it seemed to press into the mind. Their was no warmth in the stars of this white infinity, but black pinpoints in space inverted by this unnatural reality.

They did not flicker or shine but physically moved with purposefull thought across the night sky like a living and breathing being would move on land.

Cypher felt his skin crawl. Their was no words to describe whatever this place was other than a collection of nightmares strung together.

Merely existing in this new place to observe was enough to send a caliber four weaver into a trance of fear.

With a thick and heavy thud, Cypher collapsed onto his knees. Despite staring off into the new reality like a statue, he still managed to reach into his robe and, with shaking hands, grasp the dragon core. Surely, if it had worked before, it will work again.

Nothing.

When he applied his soul power, the dragon core didn't respond. It's energy seemed empty a single usage.

"I...I can't." He answered Elie's previous question in a low tone.

"What do you mean 'You can't' !" Elie had waitwd for Cypher to appear in the black sea for hours. To him, who didn't even know if the boy would ever turn up, it was like torture. To be alone here was a fate he wouldn't wish upon his worst enemy.

He grabbed the kneeling Cypher and lifted him up. With an iron grip, he clasped both sides of the boys face with one hand ,"Either you get us out or die. There is no other alternatives."

Releasing his grip, he let Cypher go.

"I used the dragon core before we were dragged here. Maybe it can take us back?" Cypher took the unassuming crystal out of his robe and handed it to Elie.

Yes!

Elie snatched the core with relief and observed it closely as if it were the worlds greatest treasure. The birth of his child and the first kiss with his wife paled in comparison to this moment ,"This can work! If the core has enough time to recharge, you can repeat whatever happened before!"

Cypher wasn't so sure but didn't voice his opinion. It's not that he didn't think it could work, but he honestly had no idea what he did or if the crystal could respond in the same way.

"This is perfect, we're saved....", Elie's voice died down.

Crackle!

Lightning sounded in the distance, far of inside the mist beyond the black sea. Elie, felt his heart skipped a beat as the red crimson grass seemed to blow in the direction opposite from the lightning, as if to get away. The trees across the landscape groaned collectively as winged creatures kept off the branches and flew into the sky, migrating to any place that the mist was not present.

There was a rumble, a shake in the earth that sent tremors across the earth they stood on.

Cypher and Elie looked at eachother, both heard it. Whispers speaking of change bounced around their skulls in an incoherent mess of thoughts.

They turned to the black sea, staring into the mist ahead.

For a moment, the world felt still. There was nothing, no rumbling or whispers.

Then- lighning

"Haha...ha," Elie, stumbled back from the shoreline, eyes wide.

Cypher simply stood, looking into the mist entranced by what he saw. Small warm drops seeped over his eyelids and ran down his cheeks, falling off his face and landing into the crimson grass of the same colour.

It was their, and then gone. The lightning in the mist lit up for a second, revealing the silhouette of something. A shape, a man, a titan of almost unthafomable proportions. A billowing yellow cloack fluttered in the fog like a wraith at least a thousand meters tall, no, taller.

"l∆au°dat var^ias c§a°ligine."

A whisper spoke with such proximity it seemed to be directly in Cyphers ear.

The lightning dissapated and like a fading memory -when another flash appeared - the looming behemoth was gone. A being of such magnitude simply vanishing without a thought.