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Jen

With her eyes shut against the wind battering her face, Jen felt for the edge of the door with a sense she didn’t fully understand. She felt her hold on the rest of the group slipping and let go of the door to hold on tighter.

Somewhere beneath the violent wind, she heard a voice–an ordinary, human one. She couldn’t make out the words, but it didn’t sound like any of her companions.

The wind went still.

Jen cracked her eyes open. Everything looked the same–almost completely dark except for the light emanating from her own skin.

The new voice spoke again.

“Stella, what on earth are you doing? Stop it this instant!”

“They intruded on your sanctuary,” the booming voice replied. “I could not allow them to live.”

“We don’t know that they mean any harm! Put them down at once and we can talk to them like civilized people!”

“As you wish, my love, but it is not I who is holding them up.”

“Whatever do you mean?” said the new voice.

“There is something unusual about these humans. At least, a few of them. See this one? How the light shines from within her very skin?”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to talk about people in the third person?” said Jen.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” the new voice addressed her now. “Where are my manners? My name is–well, there will be time for introductions later. Dearest, could you please give these people some air to breathe so we can talk this over?”

Wait, there wasn’t air?

That explained why most everyone was unconscious, but what about her and Sam? And how long had they been in this airless void? Were the others going to suffer brain damage?

“Whatever you wish, my love,” said the booming voice.

Jen gasped in a breath, and realized it was the first breath she’d taken in at least a few minutes. The light coming from her body was extinguished, plunging her into darkness. Her head finally stopped spinning.

“What happened? Where are we?” said a voice that was either Lachlan or Mahender based on the speaker’s accent.

A moment later, a dim, red light illuminated her surroundings. She looked up to see the source and saw a red and orange marbled orb glowing above them, about the size of the sun in the sky but nowhere near as bright. They weren’t in an endless dark void like she’d thought; they were in a massive tube with dark-colored walls made of a material Jen couldn’t identify. The tube was so wide Jen couldn’t see the furthest side of the its wall if she looked straight ahead; she only knew it was a tube because she could see the circular walls extending down far below her. She thought again about the pipe she’d crawled into as a child.

The others were regaining consciousness now, normal color returning to their faces and hands as they looked around, groggily voicing their confusion. Jen watched as Lachlan, still in Sam’s arms, blinked himself awake and found himself face to face with Sam.

“Hey, there, Samurai.”

Jen looked away.

They all begin to float downward, but this time, Jen wasn’t in control of her descent.

“I’m terribly sorry about all this,” said the new voice. “Let’s all get settled on a solid surface so we can straighten things out.”

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Jen

Jen could see the otherworldly door beneath her, at least a mile wide and thousands of feet below her. It was so big the idea of physically lifting it was laughable, but it didn’t matter. She already knew how to open it, even if she didn’t understand it.

The buzzing inside her head grew, spreading through her whole body and paralyzing her as she fought to keep everyone floating.

A low, deep sound came from beneath her. It was a big sound–not a loud sound, but a sound that came from something impossibly large. It made her think of whale sounds, or sounds she’d heard trucks make passing over bridges, but neither of those sounds came close to this one in scale.

A long, curved glowing line appeared at the door’s edge, expanding into a crescent like a massive moon waxing beneath them.

She was doing it. It was opening.

“What’s happening?” said Sam.

“I command you to stop that at once!” boomed the strange voice.

She ignored them both.

The door was almost fully open now; the crescent had widened into a full moon, and she could make out the garden inside. The fountain and tiles surrounding it were nothing but a tiny, colorful dot in the center like she was looking at them through an airplane window.

When she’d been a little girl, she’d spent a lot of time playing in the creek behind her childhood best friend’s house, a friend who’d been eccentric in a way that Angelina reminded Jen of. One day, her friend had led her to a large pipe draining into the creek, just big enough for a seven-year-old kid to crawl into. ‘Look!’ the friend had told her. ‘There’s a planet on the other side!’

Jen had crawled into the pipe and looked, seen the tiny street and cars on the other side contained in a tiny orb surrounded by pitch black, but she hadn’t understood it at the time. Now, looking down at the immense sphere lit up in the dark below her as though suspended in space, she knew exactly what her friend had meant.

Not entirely sure how she was doing it, Jen shifted the colossal door to the side and placed it beside the opening. They were hovering thousands of feet directly above the garden now.

Well, that had been easier than she’d thought it was going to be. Almost too easy.

The wind picked up into a roar, thrashing at her clothes and throwing her hair into her face so it obscured her vision again. She could hear the big sound again, and she shook her hair from her eyes–she wanted to brush it out, but she was terrified that if she moved her hands, everyone would plummet into the garden below.

Shaking her head dislodged enough of her hair that she could see the door sliding back over the opening.

No!

She’d been able to open the door on her own while keeping everyone in the air, but she didn’t think she’d have the concentration to play tug-of-war with some mysterious entity without dropping everybody. She had to get everyone through the door before it closed.

“Drop!” she screamed at Sam.

“What?”

“Drop!! Freaking drop!”

Jen plunged downward, taking everyone with her. She was hurtling down, but she wasn’t falling. She was in total control, using gravity as a tool without being at its mercy.

The wind picked up even more, until her hair and clothes lashing against her skin became painful, and her eyes burned with tears that had nothing to do with her broken heart.

“You shall never escape!” thundered the voice. “Never!”

She couldn’t see the door at all anymore, but she could hear that massive sound of it being pulled closed. No, massive wasn’t a big enough word to describe it. Illimitable, she thought. It was one of the last vocabulary words she’d learned in high school English, and it meant something so big, it didn’t have limits or bounds. The sound was illimitable.

Even with her eyes squinted against the wind, she could tell the light from the garden below was fading.

Then, with one last long, low, illimitable groan, the door slid shut and everything went black again.

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Hi everyone!

I hate to skip over another chapter so soon, but unfortunately, I have a big commitment on Thursday and won’t be able to work on the chapter or update as normal that day.

After this week, I’ll get back to regularly-scheduled Thursday morning chapters.

I know I don’t have a lot of readers, so I really appreciate everyone who reads and enjoys this story, and I hope you stay tuned for more updates.

Thank you for reading!

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Jen

Jen’s eyes burned as they filled with blinding light and hot tears.

The light was coming from her own eyes, she realized, and reflecting off the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

Tears, along with blood from her nose, balled up and floated in front of her, only for the wind to send them splashing back into her face.

Her face was so wet her hair was sticking to it, but she resisted the urge to wipe it. She couldn’t break concentration and risk dropping everyone, losing them to the abyssal darkness below. Her head spun like she was on the world’s worst carnival ride, but she held everyone steady. She wasn’t going to let them fall like Sam had let her fall.

The thought conjured up another round of tears in her eyes that floated away, then crashed back into her forehead.

How could he have done this to her? How could he have basically sacrificed for someone he’d met a couple days ago?

She’d had a crush on him for months before they’d dated, and she’d worked so hard to get him to notice her, trying to be smart enough for one of the smartest guys she’d ever met. It had been almost fun in a strange way; he’d been hard to impress, but not impossible, so every time she’d managed to make him laugh or say something clever, she’d get a little dopamine hit like she was playing a video game.

She’d finally been feeling like all her effort had been paying off, like he’d finally been starting to fall for her like she’d fallen for him.

Then they’d ended up in the Pit with Lachlan, and it was like she was invisible. There was no competition. She’d invested months into this metaphorical Sam-themed video game, where Lachlan had breezed through it in a few days.

She hadn’t realized what was going on at first, but she’d seen the way they looked at each other, even if they were both too boneheaded to realize it.

“Well,” boomed the otherworldly voice. “How interesting. It appears some of you are not what you seem. But it matters not. You will never escape the all powerful–“

“Shut up!” screamed Jen. “Would you shut up? Nobody cares!”

“You dare speak this way to the almighty She-Who-Wears-The-Stellar-Crown?”

“Jen!” Sam shouted over the wind. “Maybe you shouldn’t make her ang–“

He floated nearby, his arms around an unconscious Lachlan, clinging to him like he was the most precious thing he’d ever held.

“You shut up too! You let me fall!”

“Jen, I could only grab one person! I only had a split second to make a decision!”

“Yeah, and you didn’t…” She tried to shout her reply, but another round of tears broke her voice “You didn’t choose me.”

“Jen, come on! Are you seriously getting mad at me right now?”

She took a deep breath, though she wasn’t sure there was even air around them. She wanted to make sure he heard her next words loud and clear.

“If we survive, it’s over between us!”

“Jen, come on, please–“

“Enough of your paltry human drama!” thundered the voice. “I tire of this! Prepare to meet your doom!”

“No!” said Jen.

“No?” said the voice. “You think you have a choice? You think you can defy the all-powerful…”

Jen stopped listening. As her eyes cleared of tears, she realized she could see so much more than she had before. Her vision was so sharp now, and she didn’t understand how the darkness around her could have ever looked like a blank void. It was full of impossible shapes, full of incomprehensible angles that made the inside of her head buzz. An onslaught of dizziness wracked her mind and body, begging her to close her eyes and block it out again. She kept them open.

She looked down, and saw a door.

Well, it wasn’t really a door, exactly. She didn’t know what to call it exactly, but a door was the easiest way to conceptualize it that didn’t make the her head buzz even more violently than it already was.

She had to get to that door. She had to open it. She had to save everyone.

Even the two stupid jerks floating in front of her.

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Hi, everyone!

I’m going on vacation next week, so there will not be another chapter next Thursday as usual.

I’ll resume normal updating in two weeks on February 11.

Thanks for reading!