Steady Ground | ✔

6 | "Here is here." No, it's Hell

Atlas wanted to yell. What was Arrone thinking, walking into this?

He looked down at the hand he had tried to stop his manager with. He was the one who followed. What had he been thinking?

His fingers trembled slightly as he held them before him, and he wasn't sure if the moisture forming in his eyes was from fear or downright anger, or both.

Atlas didn't yell. He reigned it in, anchoring everything down in the pit of his stomach, and with a brave face he approached his boss.

If Arrone had escaped his own muddled mind too, he didn't show any sign. His breathing was barely there and he stood like a statue. He wasn't rigid like stone, but he sure wasn't reacting to what was around him, like his brain had been shut off.

Atlas clapped him on the back. "Arrone?"

He had to say Arrone's name five times, each with a little bit more desperation seeping into his voice, before he hit him just a tad harder and nearly lost it. "Snap out of it!"

His manager jerked awake, stumbling back from Atlas' touch.

He breathed a sigh that might have been relief. "Oh, thank God," he whispered under his breath, placing his fingers to his chest.

Atlas watched as Arrone carefully looked around, his body tensed. His face morphed into different feelings, and Atlas just let him observe. The sound of blood rushing filled his ears, and the steady thrum of the heartbeat beneath his feet made him wonder if it was his or the thing they stood on.

Arrone swallowed and then gave a humorless laugh. "What did I do?"

"I told you it was like Stranger Things," Atlas said. He feigned a chuckle. Gosh did he want to grill his manager for continuing to walk, but he wasn't any less to blame. He was the one who brought Arrone down there in the first place! If it wasn't for Arrone before, he would have been in this fate earlier, but with the ever-awkward Ashe instead.

Something about his comment made them both fall into a real fit of laughter.

It was absurd! Really!

Where the Hell were they?

"We're going crazy!" Atlas said.

"If Winona Ryder isn't here this is all your fault."

"Me? What does that have to do with anything I did!"

"You were the one who got my hopes up!"

A booming chuckle resounded through the air, and it sure wasn't one of theirs. They froze in place, stepping close enough to touch sounders, their banter halted mid-argument.

If Atlas could describe the chaos of Hell, it would be that laugh.

It made his skin crawl and any retort he had dried immediately in his mouth. It was predatory. It was a laugh promising to rip him apart with glee, one so dangerous it shook the tanned skin-floor beneath their feet and rattled his bones.

Small gray lights started forming in the strips of black above him. His eyes trailed upward as they flickered like little stars.

It's been centuries—

A voice echoed through the world, far louder, far clearer than the laugh that had preceded it.

—Since I've had a human visitor.

"You can't call us visitors if we didn't choose to enter this place," Arrone retorted, his voice far more calm than Atlas could have ever faked.

He peeked at his face. How could he even speak? What he saw was the same focused gaze that he knew he made at meetings and interviews, not the near delirium or stunned stupor that he was moments before.