Nowhere To Go But Up

Ambiguity

The sun rises every morning, regardless of how poorly it may represent those it shines on. Funerals in movies often have rain accompanying them, but symbolism isn't so lucky to appear in real life. The world moves on from the pain of those it contains, and so too did Another Dimension move on from the agonizing events of mere days prior. Like always, the unstable clusters of abstract shapes that made up the terrain shifted rhythmically to make it all the more dangerous to navigate. Like always, the vaguely spherical crystals floated amidst the distorted purple sky.

One large chunk of terrain had a small, rectangular hole set in the side of it. He lay inside the hole, out cold, clad in a charred, tattered cloak. Magolor. He'd expended all of his energy several days ago, and had been here in a pitiful state since. However, today would go differently. His ear twitched slightly, and he quietly emitted a pained groan before his consciousness returned. Magolor couldn't exactly recall why he was here or what had happened to him, but it was clear he'd made a grave error. His whole body hurt, and that made it a challenge to to do things he'd taken for granted before, like shifting into a more comfortable position. The situation wasn't entirely unfamiliar to him, but the pain was new. He examined his surroundings for anything that might jog his memory, but he couldn't tell if it was working at all. Clearly, it reminded him of something, but Magolor couldn't tell if that something had happened recently or long ago.

The severe headache made it difficult for Magolor to notice, but it was quiet. A rarity in Another Dimension. He took out the notepad he kept in his cloak to try and figure out what happened, but it was completely destroyed. He could only make out a few of the words, like "crown", "ship", and "the". Well, at least he still knew how to read. Scanning the pages for anything that might help yielded no results. He hoped he had logged the contents in the Lor before it was destroyed. Speaking of which, where was the Lor Starcutter? Why didn't he know? Did it do this to him? It wouldn't have, right? Why had Magolor felt like whatever happened to him was deserved? Did he do something bad? When he realized he was overthinking his way into a downward spiral, he began looking for something-anything to get his mind off that thought.

Naturally, there was nothing. Maybe he could find something to eat? It didn't appear naturally, but sometimes he found a stash of food that a gang of Sphere Doomers had taken. Some of his earliest memories are stealing from them. There was no food. Even all the Sphere Doomers, which usually never left him alone, seemed to have vanished. It made the atmosphere pretty ominous. Being all alone in the middle of literal nowhere, injured pretty much everywhere and losing his grip on his sanity more and more every minute, he decided to try floating elsewhere. It was agonizing just to get to another object, and took much longer than it should have. Clinging to the abstract terrain in front of him, He tried to conjure up everything he could remember about the situation.

He remembered his name - Magolor. He remembered his passion for archaeology, he remembered the Lor Starcutter, he remembered his early life in Another Dimension, he remembered going to Planet Popstar, crashing the Lor, meeting the heroes of Dream Land, taking them on a trip to Halcandra, thanking them when all was said and done, and then waking up back in Another Dimension. He considered that it may have been a time loop like in that one movie, but thought it was much more likely that something had simply gone horribly wrong. After all, he had remembered the number of logs he'd entered into the Lor's database - 458. However, he couldn't even begin to remember what was in most of them. He should know that, right? Maybe he had an interest in a particular subject or object and his brain had purged all of his memories of it as a defense mechanism? Maybe he'd simply gone into a blind rage, started killing people, and been exiled? Hopefully not. Magolor admitted to himself that he had a lot of unresolved issues, but he hoped that he wouldn't be capable of doing anything that bad, and why did every train of thought lead to fear?