Haven: Book Seven of "The Liminality"

Chapter 17: Bleu Nord

The landscape twisted around Urszula's head. Sky became firmament and the ground spun overhead. All of it smeared together as a powerful vortex wrenched her free of Jan's grip and sent her spinning through the voids. A brief but violent journey landed her hard in a patch of coarse, grey grit in a hazy land devoid of all vegetation or color. The air stank of spoiled eggs.

"Jan? Are you here?"

She was alone in the grit, the dull murmur of a distant wind the only sound. The horizon disappeared into mist. Not a speck of moss or lichen graced the stones before her.

"Fuck!"

She never should have thumbed that notch. She should have given the stone back to Jan. He had held the stone in Prague. It was his soul that brought them to that little patch of Heaven. She had simply assumed that thumbing the notch again would reverse the process, an assumption that had no empirical basis. It was just a careless hunch.

Why had Jan had not accompanied her? They had crossed together into that realm, why not this one? It had been reckless of her to toy with something so powerful.

She picked up a handful of warm grit and let it sift through her fingers. Apparently, this was where the stone thought her soul belonged. Not Root. Not the Deeps, because it was no more. Not even Lethe.

Her lazy, slow-witted but lovable Jan was fit for Heaven according to the apparent machinations of the Powers-That-Be. This foul smelling place, wherever it was, was the one true harbor of her soul.

At least she remained clothed and in possession of her daypack. But where was the stone? It had fallen from her grip! She kicked around frantically in the grit to find it partially buried beside her. She held it in her palm and repeatedly swiped her thumb across the notch and groove, first with one hand, then the other. Both directions following the groove. Across the groove. Finger pressed deep into the groove. Floating lightly over the gap. Nothing she did made the rock behave like anything more than a rock.

"Fuck!"

A wave of despair and regret engulfed her. She should have listened to Jan. They could have remained in his little microcosm until the issue of their presence had been forced by the higher powers. Maybe the Argents would have ignored them. Maybe those neighbors with their camels really were just coming over to say hello. She was such an idiot!

She fought an urge to fling the stone into the haze as far as she could, but managed to restrain herself and slip it into her pocket. It was time to keep calm and take full measure of her situation.

She had been stuck in undesirable realms before and had found her way out of them even before she ever met James. No realm was impenetrable or inescapable. That much was obvious. She just needed to learn as much as possible about her present location and that would require finding other souls.

This place looked nearly as barren as the Deeps. It was not nearly as frigid and the air was much thicker. There seemed to be no storms rampaging about and siphoning willing souls into Avernus, but she could only see a few hundred meters in any direction. The haze was so dense, it obscured the source of whatever light was illuminating things. She could not be sure if it had a sun or even a sky.

The haze seemed to be a mixture of smoke and dust and fog. It highly irritating to her air passages. She fetched a green bandanna from her pack and tied it over her face.

She got up and set off across the cinders, choosing a direction where the glow seemed brightest. At least that gave her some sort of bearing that would prevent her from walking in circles. Dust quickly lined her nasal passages and caused her nose to run. She could see herself becoming dehydrated very quickly in this environment. Was there even any water in a place like this? Did it matter? Many realms replaced earthly bodies with simulacra that did not function according to normal human physiology. She looked at her arm and the skin did seem more grey than usual but she could not confirm that it was not a trick of the light.