The plunge into the Soul Cauldron was different from the first time he entered. More accurately, he was different. This time, he was less injured, much more lucid and just a little more dead. Actually, the more he considered it, "different" didn't even begin to cover it.
Being suspended in the thick, viscous fluid that filled the Soul Cauldron dimension gave him more than an uncomfortable length of time for him to take in his situation. The dark, airless quiet made the unspoken words all the louder. His thoughts took him.
Wasn't he just worried about his resume, submitting his 100th or so job applications to places he knew would never call him back? He was playing video games during the day, eating way too much junk food in the evening. His biggest worries were rent and the dangers corporations posed to truly owning any software ever again.
Could they still charge him rent if he was dead? They would probably find a way. Sometimes he wished he could just move in with Jodie. Not like that, but the benefits were clear: when he got back on his feet, he would be able to help with the mortgage, he could mow the lawn and clean up around the house. Obviously, he didn't want to give anyone the wrong impression about he and Jodie's relationship but he figured it would at least be easier than walking all from his apartment to look after Dylan.
Dylan.
Everything seemed so trivial now.
Death was only the beginning. He'd met angels and demons. Stripped of his body and reduced to nothing but a soul. He'd been to heaven and hell and the in-between. And now he was back to that in-between space.
All to save Dylan.
No regrets.
Dylan is still out there. He knew that. And not a damn thing would stop him from getting that boy back home where it's safe.
Well, where it was supposed to be safe. He refused to let his mind wonder how safe it was now. It didn't matter. Where Dylan was now, he wasn't safe and Zephaniah knew he was the only person who could do anything about that.
He had to.
So he let the Cauldron slowly pull him into its depths.
Entry was met with much less resistance than his first time here. He figured it had something to do with the fact he wasn't attached to a body right now. Or maybe it was rough before on account of the fact he had been eviscerated, impaled and being a literal dead-man-walking.
Nevertheless, it was no mid-day stroll. A wash of sensation came over him as he sunk deeper. It was something akin to a blood rush, if he'd still had blood. Instead, he figured it was the transitive energy being consumed around him. He confirmed it by looking to his empty palm where the two soul coins had been.
The toll was paid, he could see that much. However seeing any further than his own hand was no small feat. He might as well have been floating through space or maybe crude oil. It felt like slipping into shadow itself, still he could tell his vision wasn't constrained to his mortal eyes any longer.
He probably didn't need to, but he squinted out of habit, trying to make out the blurry shapes taking form in the distance. It was still difficult to see, but he could make out something. It was familiar but not exactly comforting. They were teeth.
The mouth of the beast.
Rows and rows of teeth that stretched on to infinity.
Though distant, he started to get the sense of their enormity. They were less like teeth and more like tall pale spires, crowded by one another. A field of white-ish grey points engulfed every direction he could look.
But there was nothing else to use as a point of reference. The whole universe was comprised of thick vicious nothingness and then there were teeth.
As he drew closer, he recognized shapes even more familiar to him. Zeph focused on one of the objects and started to define its contour in his vision. When he could see it, his heart sank.
It was a car.
It wasn't any car he knew personally but it was definitely a car, crushed and chewed up, stuck between the teeth of an interdimensional being. Zeph's eyes found more objects varying from the mundane to museum artifacts. There was a boat, a chariot, a basalt stone sculpture, and even the top few floors of an apartment building, all pulverized in the mouth of the monster.
How could this creature have so much contact with the mortal world and no one ever knew about it?
Then there was a new realization that finally hit Zeph. Call it obvious, but he suddenly couldn't shake the feeling that he was being eaten. Not in the sense of descending into the mouth of a universal beast and tower-like teeth. No, the very space around was trying to consume him.
The fluid he floated through was the digestive fluid of the beast, trying to siphon the energy from him. He didn't give it up willingly.
He paid the toll. Fed it the coins. He must have, there were no more coins to give. No spare energy to cross the void. Still, it tried to take a little off the top.
Zeph instinctively thrashed. His life was being sapped from every inch of his body, tearing apart his existence. It wrapped around him, as if the fluid thickened around his extremities. There was nothing to grab on to, no rope to pull himself free with. No one to save him. No where left to go.
He shook and fought, refusing to let even an ounce of his life force to be drunk away from him. He needed every drop. He couldn't save Dylan without it.
Resistance was met with force. Something grabbed his ankle. A tentacle, its skin as rough as shark's, pulled him by his leg. Then another grabbed his arm, then the other. Dozens of tentacles emerged from the darkness, constricting his arms and legs, tightening around his neck and body until they consumed his body and his vision.13Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL4ou5R3QmF
He had to hold on. For Dylan. He couldn't die again.
Zeph was gone.
But the tentacles didn't take him for their own. The Soul Cauldron worked as advertised. It took his coins, passed him forward, out of it's universe and off to the next:
His own.13Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa1FDf2VOA4
and then Add to home screen.