Of Realms and Relics

Of Spirits and Death

Yandi awakened, but wasn't awake. There was nothing, yet everything, even though he couldn't see it. It was more of a feeling.

"What in the world?" He said aloud, his voice echoing all around him. Everything shimmered around him with the echoes. A golden haze, encompassing the vast blackness he awoke to.
He couldn't comprehend what was happening, or even where he was. His last memory had been searing pain and his body becoming dust. Had that been a dream? It all felt so real. Is this still the dream?

"Boss?" Another voice rang out from the golden haze.

He recognized it. Goddi. He had watched him die. He was sure of it. However, he was unsure of what or where he was.

"Goddi? Can you hear me?" He called out.

"Where you hide? I no like this." Came the answer back from the giant mountain oruck.

Yandi held his hand out in front of him, it was...translucent. Completely see through. Even his robes.

"Goddi, are you....see through too?"

Goddi's voice rang back, "We dead, boss. I tell you. Not read scrolls. Bad magic. You make us dead."

It was all coming back to him now. He had spent years researching the scrolls of binding. From learning the ancient binder mages language, to actually finding the clues that led to where they resided. The legend had said that where the scrolls were, Shathari was as well. Only in a different realm.
He had read the scrolls. He couldn't stop himself. It had felt like something or someone had taken control of his body and made him finish despite watching the unfolding horror of his friend die and then lastly, himself. Unleashing the beast that claimed worlds.

"Goddi. We aren't completely dead, somehow. I think, perhaps, this is the spirit realm. Our essence still lives in Vale."

He spun, looking for anything besides endless nothing.
"Boss, me feel like maybe we dead."

He had to track the voice, it wasn't completely coming from all around him but more from...his left?
"Goddi, keep speaking. I want to find you."

He looked down, his sandals and feet seeming to float on nothing as he appeared to be standing so high above whatever this was, that there was nothing below him. Gods, how could anyone get their bearings here?

"You are correct Prince Yandi. You are neither dead, nor alive."
This was a new voice. One he didn't recognize but it almost seemed to sing to him with a beautiful crystalline ringing.

"Who else is here?"
He knew Shathari's voice and this was not it.

"I am the creator, the bringer of life. The one you call Cor." The voice answered back from all around him.
He gasped. The act of which seemed alien. He wasn't breathing, he noticed. He still gasped though. The act of a living body.

"Can you help me find my friend?"

There was no response for what seemed like...minutes? Hours? How could one even track time here? Did time even exist in the spirit realm?
He felt a rumbling in the nothingness around him, a vibration of the air. Air? That wasn't quite right either. Spirits didn't need air. A blur of hundreds of pale blue shapes appeared around him. They spun and surrounded him.

He calls. We go. Our bodies have been summoned.

The voices rang in his head, or was it his mind? He heard them and they spoke all at once. Distorting his vision. A cacophony of sound.

"Cor, what is this?"
Stillness, no answer.

The shapes screamed in unison and in their swirling dance they zipped straight up until Yandi no longer saw them.