charm(less)

quattuordecim

—— q u a t t u o r d e c i m ——

KOREY WOKE UP suddenly with that sensation where you felt like you were falling seconds before jolting awake. It took him less than a second to realise he actually was falling.

They were hurtling through the air, wind tearing at their clothes and hair, at an alarming speed straight down towards the ground. Panicking was instinctual and it was only then he realised something was pinning down his arms, preventing him from flailing helplessly. He twisted around to find what was holding him and was too busy freaking out at their imminent death to be surprised at the sight of the skeletal warrior. Park was falling alongside them, unconscious, and Korey squirmed against the skeleton's iron grip to grab him.

"Get off me!" he yelled, his words ripped from his mouth and lost to the wind. "I need to get to Park! Let me go!"

The skeleton was either immune to charmspeak or Korey's words were too broken up from the high speed velocity to be heard. Either way, it showed no hint of loosening it's grip and Korey looked around desperately at the fast approaching ground. They were high up enough that the air was bitingly cold with bright moonlight illuminating the clouds around them and he guessed they had at least a minute, maybe a minute and a half, before they splattered into messy pancakes. In the dark, he saw fields of various shades of green spread out below them to form a patchwork quilt and what looked like tiny huts, dotted within a green valley bordered by a hill topped with a towering pine tree.

Korey barely registered any of that because he saw the sea, a glittering expanse of deep blue that appeared black under the night sky curving along the west coast of the Long Island Strip. He wasn't sure as to their chances of survival if they fell into water from this height but it was more than the certain death if they continued on their current path, the wooded area surrounding the valley on the north and east.

"Park!" Korey called, his throat aching from how loud he had to shout to be heard. He wasn't sure whether his ability was powerful enough to rouse him from his unconscious state but he didn't have a choice but to try considering the alternative was death. "Park, you have to wake up! You need to direct us to the sea or we're going to die! PARK!"

He channelled every ounce of desperation and panic and fear into his name, letting the feeling and familiarity of it course through his body to spill free from his mouth. His heart leapt when he saw Park's eyes flutter and he pressed hard, shouting his name with repeated intensity until his eyes finally opened.

"What...?" His expression was dazed confusion slowly fading to alarm. "Where..."

Korey wriggled against the stupid skeleton holding him, resisting the urge to kick it in the kneecap, and settled for fixing his attention intently on Park until his gaze finally found Korey. "You have to Shadowtravel us down closer to the sea," Korey said desperately, hoping he understood the urgency of what was being said despite his unfocused exhaustion. "I know you're tired, but we're going to die if you don't — "

Park grabbed his hand and the world was suddenly sucked up into a vortex of black shadows. Korey clung to him lest he get lost in the creepy other dimension between dimensions and squeezed his eyes shut against the icy darkness closing in around him, twisting and turning with nauseating speed. He felt the exact moment they were no longer shadowtravelling — the air seemed to lighten around him and the air pressure dropped so quickly his ears popped. Korey barely had time to register the sea right below them before they plunged into the cold waves with a loud splash.

The cold shock of the water was enough to freeze his muscles but he forced himself to kick despite the chill sinking into his bones, breaking the surface of the water with a loud gasp. He whipped his head around but there was no sight of Park or the skeleton, only the endless sea which stretched out towards a beach no more than thirty feet to the let. Korey dived down under the water, blinking against the sting of salt in his eyes, and finally made out Park's murky silhouette as he sank deeper into the sea. He fought against the currents as he swam down until he brushed Park's cold hand and yanked him up, hooking his arms to pull him towards air.