World behind the world; another shade of grey.

A heavy switch is heard being forced into a metal circuit. The surrounding lights begin to flicker, dull to bright back to dull. Electricity had been rerouted to another point. An Officer stands at attention near a closed door along the wall to the side of a group of sitting folks.

In front, another Officer is standing in front of a seated man, strapped to a heavy wooden chair. Cables danging just above his head.

“Roll on One.”

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Part VI: Remaining among the Living - Borrowed Time.

Struggling to escape, I began moving violently to get myself free. Ignoring the pain, I had to get out, I must. As my breathing began to grow heavy, my teeth clenching as tight as they could without cracking, I manage to squirm free. Taking a sigh of relief, my pain kicked back into my senses. My eyes shut hard as my hands rise to hold my torso.

Moments pass, the pain calmed enough for my sanity to take hold of my perspective. Patting my body, I feel all kinds of wounds. Though, not open. I didn’t understand at first with what happened, but after thinking about it, it became clear: I used the blood. No, the life of these men to spare my own. Realizing this, I knew I wasn’t really alive at this point. Borrowing life in such a manor is like spraying a flammable catalyst onto a fire. It roars at first but in turn tends to die quickly since the fire didn’t get the chance to take root in it’s body.

Not sure what I should do, my mind kept swirling around my now borrowed time. I didn’t want this to be the end, but that is no longer up to me. I wasn’t greedy enough to begin taking everything’s life around me. All I could do, was wait for my time to run out. Since anything I could do would only hasten my end.

Worry finally left me as I sat back onto the ground. Propping my legs upon a corps close to me. I remained, thinking. Of what my purpose was up here, if my banishment was till death, or if it was to test me upon this world. For it certainly wasn’t for me to bring our knowledge to these, people. We were far too different from what I have perceived.

But even those answers never came to me. I felt my mind jumping from thought to thought. It no longer made any sense. My body began radiating with a mixture of pain and cold, starting at the tips of my arms and legs, making their way to my core. I felt myself leaving my body, though I couldn’t comprehend it. My emotions were no longer in my control as my arms and legs began seizing. Behaving erratically, till all stilled.

My spirit ejected from my body. Lifting just above, the energy mixed with it from these bodies separated and blew away. I found a piece of serenity overcoming me as I drifted away, into the natural flow of energy.

Part VI: Paradox.

Snapping to, realizing he was back on his cot, staring out the flap of his tent, the man’s eyes remain open yet throbbing. Having sat there without blinking for hours. His dog next to him increasingly restless keeps nuzzling his arm over its head to get his master’s attention, to no avail. He was caught within a trance. Giving up, the pet roams the ground for a moment before settling down.

The man remained motionless for several more moments, before erupting with a gasp for breath; almost as if he came back to life, taking his first breath. His face looked horrified, body shaking as he slowly attempted to push himself further from the entry way. Falling off the cot and dragging himself next to his fire pit he kept focus, watching the sun set till he felt a rush of heat glove his left hand. Immediately catching his attention, he flung his hand up before he buried it within the soft ground below to extinguish the fire. Breathing quickly, his attention fell to the ground; to his shadow and how it no longer was behaving as it should. Glancing over to the mirror, then shifting back to his shadow, growing suspicious and filling with stress.

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Reading over my records, I came to a passage I haven’t thought about in a long time. The notes didn’t have any location data written, but I knew exactly what they were written about; the time me and a colleague went to look over a possible submerged wreckage. I failed to make such notes because of… what, we found. It wasn’t just a discovery; it was a damning.

From that day, I do not recall much of our preparation work, as we did the same thing every time so they blur together, but what I do recall is what we witnessed after submerging. As well as guilt from that very encounter:

We traveled downward some 500 Meters, not too far down, before we began seeing something irregular from our sonar. The object, or rather objects were protruding from the sludgy covered ground. Assuming the sludge wasn’t just growing off the irregular objects, we got closer to investigate. Light’s shown all over what we could see, we debated amongst our team about what the objects could be. Sending in our diver to get a closer look, we set the systems up to maintain it’s position so it wouldn’t be terribly high maintenance.

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Excerpt from Chapter 6: Old Wounds.

Aldramek had moved towards the Inns back door as Tor was talking with the Innkeeper, distracting most of the others in the group. He lowered his packs right before the door, and as he did so, caught a glance from Calcazar. They exchanged glares for a moment, then Aldramek looked away and left the inn. He was preoccupied enough as it was for the moment.

Once outside the inn, he headed Northwest through the town, through the light rain. Few townspeople walked the streets at this time. He remembered that it hadn’t always been this way. He noted a few sidelong glances and realized that however few people were out and about, they had noticed him. He thought some even recognized him.

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