“Entire world? But I have been to every edge and your magic is only present in the Veil.”
Weldir’s entire face disappeared as he chuckled, instead coalescing to his chest to show it twitching.
“There are many lands on Earth across the oceans, and many forests where I dwell.”
Ingram was surprised to learn Earth was bigger than what he could touch or see.
“I am just thankful her soul survived the impact. The sun stone affected Phantoms, but after watching what happened, we believe the reason for that is because we are completely attached to our physical selves through our anchors. The sound it produced touched everything, and it passed through the bonds we share as a vibration that wanted to destroy everything it travelled across. Emerie, on the other hand, had been so close to the centre point that either the initial blast moved through her so suddenly her soul didn’t have time to crumble, or, once her physical self was destroyed, her essence was spared of any damage. If we take your soul from you, you will die. If a Phantom’s soul is taken from their anchor, we fear it will tear both of them apart.”
All Ingram cared about from this knowledge was that Emerie had survived. The rest was irrelevant to him.
And he was growing impatient to have her within his grasp again.
He also didn’t want to hear about her end. He didn’t want to know if she had been alone, frightened, or in pain. He just wanted to think that she’d blinked out of existence, and that he must go save her.
Her soul was his to revive, and he would make sure nothing happened to it, or her, ever again.
“That’s why it had to be her, or rather, a human,” Lindiwe continued. “I would have done it if it weren’t for your young siblings.”
“No, you would not have,” Weldir unnervingly snarled, just as the bottom half of his face formed, and snapped shark-like, razor fangs in her direction.
The sound that the spirit of the void produced was so utterly inhuman that it wasn’t even bestial or animalistic. It rumbled like thunder underneath water, as though it hadn’t come from something living but from existence itself.
Even though Ingram stood upon nothingness, the world around him shook like an earthquake had trembled.
Lindiwe’s back stiffened, and she averted her gaze to the side.
A touchy subject had been brought up between the two, and it left tension radiating within the darkness. It was almost like Weldir’s irritation was tangible enough to change the air here and charge it with lightning; perhaps all of his emotions were.
They were in his consciousness, after all.
He handed the two younglings to Lindiwe. She tucked them back underneath her cloak to hide them with her gaze still averted.
Then he grew his form until he had taken on the size of a giant, with Ingram being no bigger than one of his chalky fingers. The air became stuffy with the annoyed menace that rolled off him now that he was bigger.
Ingram’s head tilted upwards to his towering form, since he and Lindiwe were floating near the centre of his sternum. He didn’t back away, even when his massive hand crept towards him.
“Let us go find your human,” Weldir said.
The pressure that gripped him was gentle enough to not squeeze or crush, but he was uncomfortable being picked up as though he was a tiny animal. Inadvertently, his legs and arms kicked to be free.
He froze up when Weldir parted his fangs as his maw opened. Horrified, he looked past sharp teeth to the back of his throat and saw nothingness.
Then he was tossed inside.
It was cold and tight when he was swallowed, but he experienced nothing else. He attempted to claw into the walls of his throat, or whatever passageway he was sinking inside of, but he was unable to get purchase.
Then, before he knew it, he was spat out from somewhere and began to fall as a white world filled with mist opened up. He spun and flipped through the air, and a roar he was unable to hold back escaped him.
The longer he dropped, the more he could see land coming towards him.
There was no cold cut of wind, and the ground was strange, appearing almost reflective, like the top of a lake’s surface. In the distance, there were ghostly trees that were see-through and didn’t seem tangible. That was all he could make out as he fretted, unsure if landing would be painful.
At the last second, Ingram turned right side up and gently landed on all fours.
The first thing he did was spin in a circle to assess his surroundings. Thick mist shielded his sight completely, making everything beyond a few metres indistinguishable, even with his hyper-sensitive vision.
He could just make out transparent tree trunks and branches, and the mist moved all throughout them.
He didn’t know if he’d turned back around or not, losing his orientation within seconds, but darkness snagged in his peripheral. He faced Weldir, who had materialised in his proximity.
“You can enter your own stomach?” Ingram asked.
“Like I said, Tenebris is part of me, while also being separate. I can access any part of my body as a physical manifestation of my consciousness.”
Physical manifestation? Ingram reached out to see if he could touch him, but his hand merely passed through his form.
“You cannot touch me, as you are not dead. You will also be unable to interact with or touch anything within Tenebris.” Weldir then shoved his intangible hand into Ingram’s torso and pulled a multicoloured piece of string from him. “We must not waste any time. You will begin to notice me consuming your physical form, and once I do, you will be unable to leave here. You will have died and passed over.”
The multicoloured strings separated like someone unravelling twisted twine. A small number of the threads shot towards the sky and their ends disappeared through the mist, whereas many more branched outward around him throughout Tenebris.
Most within Tenebris were white, except for four different strings.
One was twisted with a purple and pink glow, another with purple and orange, and one that was purple and black. The final one was purple and rainbow, and it linked between Ingram and Weldir’s chests.
“What are they?” Ingram asked, tilting his head at them.
“I guess you can call them strings of fate,” Weldir explained as he followed the one that was purple and black. “The white ones are all the humans you have consumed and brought to me. Three of them are your familial bonds. The one we are following is the bride you have chosen and have connected with physically.”
Ingram inspected the black-and-purple string leading their path. “It will take me to Emerie?”
“Yes. It is why I had to come with you. It is the only way we will be able to find her, as I am not connected to her on any level.”
His blue vision lightened from its depressive colour. His Emerie was at the end of this line.
Within the span of a heartbeat, Ingram was sprinting.
Along the way, he noticed multiple things. Firstly, there were no scents here. He could not smell the trees, the ground, the mist, or even Weldir.
Secondly, between the spaces of nothing, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of Ghosts that interacted with each other. They didn’t seem to notice Ingram passing literally through them, as he refused to deviate his path for them.
Their sounds were soft and inaudible with the speed in which he ran past.
Although he was curious about them, about Tenebris itself, he only had one objective. Nothing would stray him from it; it was all that mattered.