Stars Of Madness

Chapter 7: The Abyss

We fell for little bit longer as if time was going slower to sink in the fact we were about to be absorbed by some glowing amorphous creature of indefinite magnitude, I closed my eyes ready for death, then without warning right before we hit the water, we hit something else. I after opening my eyes looked down and saw us trailing along the surface of the ocean on a glowing transparent circle that resembled the impossible symbol I recalled from the Necronomicon.

I smiled "You are just full of tricks aren't you?"

"I am a girl of many talents." Aella smiled back at me.

Before I could respond something burst out of the ocean and grabbed onto the ledges of our magical circle and scared the hell out of me.

"Ah! What the hell is that?" What I saw before me looked like a horrible abomination mix between a human and a fish, scales where skin should be, and a fish head where a human head should be.

"Let go of me and take my dagger and defend yourself!"

"What? Against that? I don't even know how to fight!"

"Neither does it! Hurry! I have to keep this spell active! And that creature on here will make me lose focus if it gets to me, and then we will both meet what lies below! Do you want that?"

"No."

"Then grab my dagger and fight as best as you can!" She then looked away from me and looked forward exposing the dagger on her side for me to grab. I seeing that I had little choice grabbed the grip of the blade and unsheathed it facing the creature. It had finally gotten one of its webbed feet on the circle and pulled itself up and stared at me with hunger in its eyes. It then pulled a trident from the air itself and charged at me roaring with a scream that caused me to wince. What had I gotten myself into? I side stepped its first attack and hoped it would fall right off the circle, but it quickly turned and swiped with the end of the trident and grazed my arm. I yelped in pain and saw that the wound was festering with a green haze of some kind. I knew that I couldn't focus on that right now and decided to charge at it with what strength I had, the creature raised its trident, blocked my overhead strike, and used the blunt end to smack me in the face. I nearly would have been knocked out there if adrenaline were not pumping through me right now, before I could get up the creature stood over me with trident and pressed the staff part of it against my neck attempting to choke me to death, the creature looked into my eyes and licked its lips like it was going to eat me after it killed me. I put my arms up against the trident instinctively trying to raise it up but the creature was too strong for me, I tried using the dagger but the creature had its foot on my arm so I could not raise it. I looked around for what might help and noticed below us that the glowing mass was following us at an alarmingly fact pace even though we were already going as fast as some planes do, I would imagine. I had an idea.

"Ae-Aella go u-up!"

"Why?!"

"Just do it!"

"You'll fall!"

"I'll figure it out!"

"Okay here we go!"

As she said that I pushed up with all my might and knocked the creature up and with the circle going up it fell to the side stabbing its trident into the glowing circle as if it anticipated my idea. I too as I slid down stabbed my blade into the circle slightly below where the creature was; it looked at me and then my blade, I without a second thought jumped up towards the trident as the creature went over me and missed grabbing the dagger as I pulled it with me to make it impossible for it save itself. The creature then fell into the ocean and was absorbed by the gelatinous mass below us. I gave myself a silent congratulations before I realized that I wasn't holding onto the trident anymore, I started falling before I could use the dagger to save myself.

"AELLA!"

"I've got you!"

As I was falling, I saw her do a loop in the air and come back just in time to catch me before I hit the water. I landed in her arms, and she looked at me with playful eyes.

"I thought you said you would figure it out?"

"I did! Then it figured me out."

Aella smiled and then laughed, despite all this insanity surrounding us, I'm glad some small bit of humanity still stays with us.

"Well, you can only do so much sometimes."

"What now?"

"Now we just must wait until that creature decides to give up its chase or we will have t-"

Before she could finish her sentence the still hot on the trail glowing mass started to emerge from the water. And before I could get a better look at the monstrosity she covered my eyes and pulled me closer so I was muffled by her clothes

"You can't look at it."

"But I just was."

"That was when it was under the sea."

"What happens if I do look?"

"Do you want to find out?"

"No."

"I thought so. Now hold onto me and whatever you do, no matter how much you crave answers and understanding do not look."

"How are we going to even going to remotely have a chance to escape that?" I muffled.

"You know me, I always have a trick up my sleeve." She smirked.

Suddenly the circle dipped down, and I could feel the wind rush past me as the shadow of the presumably floating creature cast a cold atmosphere around me making me shudder and sending a sickening feeling through my body. And before I knew it, we had crashed into the water, at least that was what I thought we had done. And despite what Aella said I released my grip on her and looked up and saw that we were above the water in the same place but different, like all the colors were inverted and the stars were not there anymore, and the land and islands looked dead despite their verdant counterparts. The only light that existed in this place was what looked like a black hole setting like a sun on the horizon that cast an unnatural color that I could not describe. Before I could see more of this accursed world, we dipped into the water yet again and we were back in the Dreamlands or at least the Dreamlands that I recognized.

"Okay here we are."

I noticed after I looked down that we were on yet another cliff.

"Weren't we just here?" I asked quizzically.

"Somewhat, same place different world. But we had to get the thing off our tails and our unseen eavesdroppers would never try to follow us through the color."

"I still do not know what that is supposed to mean to me."