Terror. A dimension mirroring the living one--but morphed to reflect the imagination of its Overseer. And the current Overseer... has refused to relinquish her power for centuries, tormenting her souls--"terrors"--into becoming... zombies.
Arielle f...
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To Arielle's luck—or maybe her detriment, she hadn't decided yet—the guy chose not to slice through her with his dagger. Its jagged edges and pointed tip returned to its sheath, in the dude's bag, and he relaxed his worked-up stance.
"Yeah, okay, you definitely look new," he said, combing his fingers through his thick, black braids. They stopped at his shoulders, and were bent in the middle, kind of crumpled, as if he'd had them up in a ponytail recently.
"How can you tell?" Arielle released the tension in her position, allowing her arms to droop at her sides. She'd been prepared to raise her fists and fight—but how would she avoid getting stabbed by this guy's oversized knife? She had no training, no weapons, and little energy to spare.
"Because you remind me of myself from not that long ago." He winced, his eyes glowing orange from the fire still raging on behind Arielle. "I do have to inspect you, though. Make sure you're not... infected."
"Infected?" Arielle tensed up again as the guy strode up to her and crouched a little, peering under her neck. She held her breath, hesitant to let him touch her, but he gave her no alternative, invading her space. He was easily two inches taller than her, and up close, he smelled like campfire smoke and marshmallows. Not unpleasant.
"Sorry." He straightened up and stared into her eyes, probing, as if reading into her mind. "I was taught to do this when coming across other humans. It's not so much an infection as it is a disease, I guess." He shrugged as he backed out of Arielle's space, and dusted off a few chunks of dirt from his ripped jeans. "They say there's blood in your eyes and you have a weird scar on your neck if you're... one of them."
"One of them," repeated Arielle, peering down at her own jeans—in color. Not the faded charcoal she'd become used to in the Void, but the actual color of a regular pair of jeans, with a few dark brown spots she imagined were blood. "Well, I'm not. I'm another lost soul in this sea of fire."
"That's poetic." He smiled, and reached out a hand. "My name is Oscar." He waited for Arielle to offer her own hand, and when she did, he squeezed it, the warmth of his palm soothing. His skin wasn't hot and heavy like everything else she'd touched so far; it was dark, calloused, but comforting. "I've only been down here for about a month, but I'll tell you now, it's hard to keep track of time."
"I'm Arielle." She stuffed her hands into her back pockets, ashamed at how sweaty they must have felt to Oscar. "And what's here?"
She knew the answer—of course she was aware where she'd landed, and more or less why. But she needed to hear it out loud, to be assured she wasn't dreaming.
"Oh, fuck," Oscar cringed, "sorry, again. This is Terror."
Ignoring a stab of pain jabbing in her abdomen, Arielle pirouetted towards the barrier of fire, its intensity lessening as it zipped back into the ground.
"Why couldn't I go in there?" Her gaze zeroed in on the fiery front-door, and she was desperate to run up to it and yank it open. Yet she had no doubt that if she took a single step in that direction, the wall of fire would reanimate. And this time, it would catch her in its depths and char her to a crisp.
