Road to Ruin

Lust

A falling sensation followed by an explosion of colors assaulted his senses as he entered the archway. The world around him seemed to warp and twist unnaturally. At points, he felt he was even falling upwards, which was incredibly strange. He opted to close his eyes to bring about some measure of inner stability. At least he could ignore the myriad of colors until the journey was over.

His journey came to an abrupt stop when he fell onto his back. The wind was nearly knocked out of him when he made abrupt contact with the ground. He opened his eyes only to see a beautiful cloudless blue sky above him.

The air around him was stifling hot as a massive orange sun loomed unimpeded in the clear skies. His hands tapped the ground around him, digging into solid sand. He slowly sat up to look around his surroundings for any landmarks, only to see massive dunes of sand.

'The first circle of Hell is a desert?'

Whitley stood up only to frown at the sight of sand clinging to his damp clothing. It was a minor annoyance at best, but it was enough to make his unpleasant arrival even worse. He took another opportunity to study his surroundings. He was surprised to see just how many humanoid wisps or what he knew to be souls in the area near him.

The souls were in various shapes, yet they all carried with them pink hues of essence. Some of the souls appeared to be crawling through the desert sands while others seemed to be wandering aimlessly. He saw a few wisps floating towards a higher mound of sand off in the distance. Without any other landmarks, Whitley figured his best move was to simply head to higher ground.

Moving through the desert sands was just as unpleasant as moving through the waters of Limbo. Not only did the sand cling to his damp clothes, it also found a way to get into his socks and shoes. Every step in the scorching heat was unpleasant, to the point he wished he was trudging through knee high water again.

He struggled his way up the elevated mount of sand before finally reaching the top. Whitley squinted, with his hand held above his eyes for shade, as he scanned the horizon for any noticeable landmarks. Very far to the north, he saw what appeared to be a settlement of sorts. Vague rectangular shapes seemed to be placed behind large sandstone walls. A cloud of pink essence seemed to hover over the entirety of the area.

From his position, he also took notice of strange large pockets of black essence within the sands of the desert dunes. The pockets of black essence would not have caught his attention if the traces of other hues did not seem so limited in comparison. Outside of the large pockets of black essence and pink essence, very few traces of other essence types seemed available.

He wasn't entirely sure of the conceptual properties of black essence as he did not have an opportunity to collect any yet. Considering he was within the realm of the God of Darkness, he could safely assume the pockets of black essence might be points of danger.

'That looks like an awfully long distance to cross on foot. Grimm might be related to those pockets of black essence too. Might be time to see if I can do anything fancy with my Semblance and some essence.'

Whitley still carried a few of the hues of essence from Limbo inside his Aura just for this type of occasion. He willed one of his glyphs into existence, angled towards the north, before empowering it with two conceptual hues of essence.

'Physical effect haste. Ethereal effect energizing.'

As the essence struck his glyph, the glyph warped from its normal white coloring to a crackling blue. He took one hesitant look at the glyph before taking a running leap to jump off of it.

As soon as his feet contacted the crackling blue glyph, he was launched at speeds far faster than he ever expected.

He flew.