Abyss In Rebirth

[Alex Silver]

"Tsk... I can't believe they actually managed to find us." the deep sung, rugged baritone uttered, dropping at his feet the now recently deceased assassin he had only mere moments ago choked the last breath from. The harsh reality of life was that when you're facing a proverbial giant, range has this nasty tendency of trumping agility. This man - the co-leader of the 'Raven's Abyss' sought after by the Ichorian military police as one of the highest bounties found on the planet, the fallen heir to the Silver family of noble arch-knights whom had sworn fidelity to the precious noble family, the last true vestigial ally to the righteous heir to the thrown and other leader of the group, archprince Raven the VIth, and the fabled 'Bloodless Carnage' of whom tales send cold chills down the spines of the corrupt nobility - happened, unfortunately for this assassin, to have both.

This man was none other than Alex Silver, tenth of the name. The imposing individual buried his hand into the pockets of his leather coat and pulled out both a silver lighter and a pack of cigarettes. With his sheer mass, the coffin nail he then dug between his lips almost appeared comically small. He lit the cancer stick, took a long, slow, drag, and then exhaled a ring of smoke before turning to the few young men and women that had gathered at his side. The group had been split in half as they'd all escaped the burning building that was now collapsing in the horizon. It had been their base - to some, their home even - and now it was just a pile of rubble. Out of respect for the legacy that the building represented, for the people who died in the attack and to those companions from which they had been separated during their escape perhaps to never see them again, Alex took a minute of silent before ultimately uttering on a bitter tone; "What's our status?"

It took a few moments for one of the fellow rebels to turn to him and finally speak. "I... We lost contact with the others. The fire fried our communication network so we can't reach them without risking that the military might be tapping into it. There are seventeen confirmed deaths on our side and nearly double that in injured. Forty percent of our effective is out of commission and that's granted both of the escape groups made it out alive. At least we took the assassins down with us, but the dreadmore is still on the loose." The dreadmore. Alex had no idea what kind of sick and twisted individual thought it was a good idea to combine an ogre, a behemoth class dragon, a gazer, 500 pounds of cybernetic armor and an Enzeek laser cannon, but someone found a way, militarized it, and sent one of the pieces of crap after them. To be honest, Alex wasn't so much terrified by the whole 'mad science' aspect of it all. He was just mildly frustrated that he didn't get the chance to think of that first. He had to settle for Kaiser, the monster hound he'd summoned some years ago.

"Fuck..." He grunted, the cigarette between his lips having its filter crushed under the pressure of his tightening pout. "Alright, let's go find the others and regroup. No point in wallowing. We'll wait until the fire dies down and recover our funds, the buy a new place. Nobody will have to sleep in the streets tonight." With that, the group seemed to find a moniker of hopefulness and, gathering around the tall man, started circumventing the fiery building. It was only logical that the others would still be somewhere within its circumference as well, so it was only a matter of time before they were reunited with any other survivors.

At their walking pace - which was all they could muster given the fact that nearly half of them were injured - it took them half an hour before finally reuniting with one of their own. A small group of seven which had been split from the two main groups, were sitting around the corpse of an assassin. Alex, personally, was not surprised by this; if they weren't able to do this much he would not have let them join the Raven's Abyss to begin with, but still, he gave a pat on the head of the youngest and offered a thumbs up in praise to the rest of the lot. "No injured here? Good. Have you seen any of the others?" The young adults looked among themselves and finally, one of them came forward with a somewhat bitter expression before ultimately speaking out. "N-Not a-any that a-are still a-a-alive... boss." He managed to finish before sniffling slightly. Alex grimaced at this. He would've preferred a yes or even a flat out no. This was just more bad news for their casualty count. "Alright, come with us, we're circling the base to find the others."

This form of reunion happened a few more times over the course of their walk around the base, which just seemed to burn brighter and brighter as time passed. If he and Raven hadn't specifically asked for a fireproof vault, he would be worried for their funds, but even in that case the life of his underlings and friend were of a much more pressing nature.

As they walked, Alex couldn't help but take the occasional glance at his leg all the while. One of the assassins had managed to ram his dagger through it during one of the earlier altercations. He'd managed to remove the blade and cauterize the wound on both sides by using the fire hot muzzle of his gun, but pretending it didn't hurt would be a bit more than even he could muster. Letting this injury happen had been a stupid mistake. He would not let one like it happen again.

"Boss!" One of the younger kids - a teenager named Alice whom had clung onto him since he ran into her three years ago - yelled out, pointing forward to what Alex would soon see to be a large accumulation of their numbers sitting around a pile of... a pile of what? It did not matter. By estimate, he could easily see that they were still over fifty in total. For a group of one hundred people, that meant the casualties were less than half. "More than fifty percent is a passing grade, right?" He thought, trying to reassure himself. Still, the way in which they were gathered was unsettling. One of them turned around and his eyes widened in what seemed to be legitimate terror when he saw Alex. Alex knew what that face meant when it was directed at him; they knew he would not like whatever he was about to see. The fact that the young one seemed to to be altogether traumatized and had already been shaking like a leaf only further aroused the suspicions of the Bloodless Carnage.

Alex left his group in a dash - said group having almost reached the latter group regardless - and entered the circle, slowly moving towards the center. They were all encircling what seemed to be the damaged remains of one of the Dreadmore's arms. This made Alex more nervous rather than less. As much as he believed in his comrades in arms, he knew that there were only two people capable of actually injuring the Dreadmore, and he was one of them. The one that was left, thus, could only be...

"R...Raven...?"

Alex paused once he finally reached the center of the circle. Raven was sitting, his back against the severed arm, covered in blood. Now, knowing Raven, being covered in blood wasn't that big of a deal - there was no way of knowing if it was his blood or someone else's, after all - but he seemed like he was asleep... unconscious even. Raven would rather be caught dead than have to sleep lathered in the blood of traitors, so this meant... this meant it had to have been a very fierce battle. Alex placed his hands upon Raven's shoulders, lowering down to his level. "Hey. Get up. You're freaking out the others." He simply uttered. His eyes ever so slightly widening from their usual half-glare. "Come on... I know this had to be rough, but you can't let yourself look like any less than a king."

Looking back, he didn't know if he was legitimately believing that Raven was still alive, or had simply been in complete denial of the situation. One thing was for sure however; at the time, Raven's death was too terrifying to even contemplate. "Raven Alister Mandrake Pyro Axel Gregory Everfall the sixth. Stand up." He uttered, and shook the body. Raven's corpse reacted by spitting out what seemed to be a literal gallon of blood, and collapsed against Alex whom - wide-eyed perhaps for the first time in his existence - wrapped his arms around him to prevent him from falling, frozen in place by the realization which slowly dawned upon him.

"H-he fought the Dreadmore." Some random captain obvious uttered. "We would've only gotten in his way so he ordered us to find cover and launched against it. We were panicked. He had it on the ropes and even managed to rip off its arm, causing it to flee but... the injuries he sustained in the process were too much for him." Alex's fingers tightened around the still cooling corpse at those words. "He kept muttering your name as he just sat there. Saying we shouldn't worry. That you'd take care of everything." Those were finally let Alex remove his digits from Raven's frame and let him rest back against the arm. He looked upon the face of his closest and oldest friend, which somehow seemed to smile.

The words resonated within his mind as he contemplated them, reverberating to the core of his very being until they finally returned to the outside in the form of a paraphrase. "He said you shouldn't worry and that I'd take care of everything... huh?" He took one last moment to look upon his dead friend and slowly rose to his feet. The second he was completely up, in a complete breach of the tempo which had been set until now, he started barking orders. He wasn't yelling, but his naturally strong voice and cold tone somehow made up for it in a way that let everyone present hear. "Alice. I want you to find a place to bury him. I want a proper burial. Use this stupid hunk of metal as the tombstone, take the men you need." The young woman nodded, wiping back the tears that came as she too had realized the death of Raven. "Kaiser." He uttered, turning to the hound. "Round up the group and go back over what I discussed as we were getting here. First let the fire burn out, then recover the money, then find a new base. You remember the combination." He uttered, and the beast nodded. "Leo, Cain, Xion..." He uttered to a group of three young men which seemed slightly bigger than the rest. "Gather the corpses of the assassins. I want you to make a display of them. The crueler the better." He then turned around and started distancing himself from the group until he was interrupted by Alice; "Alex! Where are you going?!" She yelled out in worry.

He paused in his steps, brought his hand to his pendant and out came in a burst of crimson flames his gun. "Don't worry I'll take care of everything." Without another hint, he then made the same motion, summoned his bike and left.

The events that followed, the complete carnage of the legions of the king, would be a tale for later. What mattered now was that Alex was standing before the very archking Lionheart the first, gun in hand, the smoking barrel pressed against the man's forehead. "W-What do you want?!" The king asked as he tried to hold what little of his composure remained, though in truth he was paralyzed by fear, fear only furthered enhanced by the sight of his men's corpses sprawled across the main hall. "I have money! I have power! I... I have wives! Dozens of them! They're all beautiful! I have castles and fortresses, titles, empires upon empires, drug rings, prostitution circles, an entire fleet of spaceships! I have everything a man could want on this planet! Ask for it! It's yours! Really!" He uttered, trembling in his seat.

Alex merely removed his gun from the man's forehead, pointed it back, and fired three rounds into the man that was slowly creeping up behind him, ending his life. The king immediately went from his panicked facade to implacable rage. "You worthless scu-!" He yelled, and was about to move forward, grabbing the sword he had at his side when a violent kick forced him back into his chair as he gasped out. "Oof!" Once more, the barrel pressed itself against his forehead, this time hot enough to seer the flesh.

"I don't want anything. You getting to be alive just rubs me the wrong way." Alex uttered. The first time since his childhood he'd spoken at a tone any higher than his usual, and pulled the trigger. He couldn't believe it had all been that easy. All along, he alone would have been enough to take down the entire Ichorian militia, fight off the mages and assassins of the king's personal guard, penetrated the main hall of the citadel of fire and fired a single round into the skull of Lionheart the first, the traitor archking. It had been so easy... ...To paint the throne with the blood of a king.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

It all went black. Slowly, but surely, Alex opened his eyes to what was nothing more than a complete void. An obscurity he was uncertain he could even grasp the depths of. Amidst this void was only himself and... another figure, grinning, observing him. He wanted to ask; "Who are you? Where the hell am I?" but the words refused to come and, no later, the exposition began. Omni, as he had done with all other primes before him, told him of himself, explained that he was now found in a place known as the omniverse, described to him the rules about Omnilium and death, then the void faded, as too did Omni, and Alex found himself by the fountain.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

"So..." Alex finally uttered, and realized with mild surprise - bringing a hand to his throat - that he was now able to talk once more. "...this is the omniverse, huh?" He asked to nobody in particular, but the fact that there was no response confirmed to him that this 'Omni' individual was now out of reach.

[Alex Silver]

Alex could not help but be ever so slightly underwhelmed by the appearance of the Nexus. It certainly had quite a bit of a minimalistic vibe going for it. There were people abound… most of whom were so small he frankly had to take a double take and look down to his feet in order to reassure himself of the fact that he was very much standing on firm ground and not several feet higher than everyone else. This made him come to a realization that was – indeed – quite unpleasant for him; the floor was virtually indistinguishable to the skies above, or let alone the horizon. It would’ve caused a bout of seasickness if his feet were not firmly floored nonetheless.

Despite the fact that most people were smaller than the Ichorian average of eight feet of height, he had to acknowledge the fact that some were indeed as big as he was and some – to his surprise in light of this established norm – were even taller. Size was, of course, not the only difference between all these individuals. He was pale and tall by the standards of his people, but all of them – like him – had horns, claws and tails. These people did not all fit this norm and many of them seemed to come from different worlds altogether. “Different worlds… Oh. I see.” He uttered once more, and concluded that all of these people had likely been brought in the same way he had. In truth, many among them were secondaries and were thus brought in by other primes like himself, but seeing as nobody had brought this information to his ears he had no way of knowing that and could only presume based on what he knew. As he looked around, he became aware of the structure behind him; the fountain. This time around, it appeared like a gigantic monolith of darkness atop which sat a statue of Omni which spewed from its mouth a thick, constant stream of water into the small pool below. He would come to realize later once he would return again that this was not the constant reality of the ever shifting fountain, but for the time being he did not have a way of knowing that, nor did he need to. It was a flavor of the Nexus he had no time to truly get accustomed to.

Seeing that some of the people around him were armed, the tall ichorian had the reflex of reaching for his necklace which depicted a unicursive hexagram and attempted to call upon his revolver. This attempt was, however, fruitless. He tried to call upon many of the other objects stored within the trans dimensional devise but this too appeared to have little effect. Perhaps, if he’d focused on one of them for a long enough time, he could have ended up summoning it through the odd commodity that Omni had shown him beforehand; omnilium, but seeing as he was accustomed to the effect of the pendant being instant, he did not bother with a more elongated attempt and simply concluded that the arcane device had lost its effect. “So it seems the immutable rule of the arcane does not apply in this realm. This is going to be fun…” He let out – once again to himself – on a tone of relative disbelief impregnated with sarcasm. To his knowledge, the one stable thing about his universe was that the arcane forces were an immutable constant; regardless of where he found himself, they had proven reliable and ever ready to be called upon. This gave him a nasty feeling. If this was the kind of plane which held such power that even the arcane could not reach him, this ‘Omni’ person was a lot more powerful than his unassuming form let on. Then again, he could have reached that conclusion simply by the fact that he’d summoned him to this world on what appeared to be nothing more than a whim.

“No arcane force… no weapons… I’ll just assume right away that I have no access to-” He paused as he formulated that sentence, raising his hand to try and conjure an orb of energy, but this too seemed fruitless. “…yep.” No way about it, this place was quickly revealing itself to be dampening every single one of his abilities. With this much in mind, he decided it was likely for the best to assume his physical abilities were also dampened here and opted to save himself the embarrassment – and possible pain – to try to lift something larger than himself or, worse, ask one of the denizens to have an arm wrestling competition with him. For now, he would simply make use of his massive stature and hope that his imposing nature would be enough to ward off any would-be attackers. “Rule number one of weird ass places you know sweet fuck all about; assume everyone’s an asshole.” He reminded himself. At this point, the last thing he needed was to assume the first person he came across would be willing to help him only to lure him into possible death. He knew that – according to what ‘Omni’ said – he did not truly need to fear the possibility of death – but he wasn’t about to just take his word for it. Any being sociopathic enough to willingly summon someone like him into their world right after he’d shot a king at point blank range into the skull was definitely not an entirely ‘good’ entity and the fact he did not know the individual’s motivations simply did not sit right with him. There had to be a reason he had been brought here and until he figured that much out, or died and was indeed brought back, he would take everything Omni had said with a grain of salt and would assume for the sake of his own survival and sanity that he was still very much mortal. Besides, the fact that this ‘Omni’ person had appended “so long as you interest me” as a condition for his reincarnation meant that it was very much possible for the being to lose interest in him and let him die for good once he kicked the bucket. Between relying with the whimsy of a potentially omnipotent being whom had brought him to this world from his own without giving him a precise reason or relying upon his own instinct of self-preservation, he chose the option he was by far most comfortable with; the latter.

But there was another issue that came to mind; whatever it was this ‘Omni’ individual – this quotation mark thing was starting to bother him, he would just mentally refer to him as Omni from now on – wanted, it clearly wasn’t for him to just sit still in this big blank space until he eventually died of boredom or someone did the killing in boredom’s stead. So he looked around for something to do. It took him a while to discern – seeing as, after all, the gates were merely twelve feet tall and he was standing over two kilometers away from every single one of them – but he eventually managed to make out some gates in the distance. By walking around the fountain, he realized quickly that there were eight of them and that’s when he made a very interesting realization; interesting to the point he felt the need to speak it aloud; “I may have lost my powers, but my innate sense of direction is still intact.” How exactly he realized this was anyone’s guess, but the fact of the matter was that it was present, and therefore he knew in which direction each of the gates were. It was difficult to completely make them out and – honestly – he had no freaking idea what was on the other side, but people were coming in and out of each of them so it could be assumed to a certain extent that he wasn’t going to die by walking through one of them. Much more importantly however, it meant he would be able to leave this boring place. If he had to stay in the middle of the Nexus any longer than was absolutely necessary – he suspected – he would have an existential crisis.

The gate up north simply seemed like a bad place to head towards first; he had no idea what was on the other side, but the fact of the matter was that after watching his headquarters burn down to the ground less than ten hours ago, he was very much unwilling to intentionally head towards anything which emanated such a steady output of smoke. The door to the west, for entirely different reasons, was his first ‘not a good start’ spot; it was guarded by men in – as expected considering the world as a whole shared that feature – unfamiliar armor and holding rifles. He mentally reminded himself of the first rule of unknown places – also known as the ‘asshole rule’ – and crossed that one from the mental checklist. Logically, if he went by process of elimination, he would eventually find the gate that seemed like the best option.

The eastern gate was third to be eliminated as it seemed to have a steady input and output of individuals wearing cloaks and carrying weapons. Scouts, perhaps, by the looks of it – he could only assume without actual knowledge after all – but the fact that so many came in and out was rather off-putting. He might give it a look eventually if only because the gate was aesthetically pleasing, but for now he needed something which looked like an ‘obvious first choice’. The south gate – last of the primary cardinal directions – was also eliminated simply because in spite of the fur around the neck of his coat Alex had little love for the idea of freezing his rear end off in what he could only assume to be perpetual winter. His race had a high tolerance for the cold, but that did not stop him from disliking it. If one of these gates looked like the entrance of a shack with a fireplace, he would take that over this one.

Now came the secondary directions; the northwest gate was eliminated purely by the fact that it seemed worn and eroded; too much so for him to be willing to pass underneath it. He was not going to die via collapsed archway; he had too much self-respect for that prospect. Northeast was eliminated for reasons similar to the ones which led to the South’s elimination; it’s appearance’s weather implications. With his outfit mainly consisting of leather – a material which was not renowned for its ability to breathe well – he had no love for the hot and humid weather of what he could only guess would be a tropical forestation. There were thus only two gates remaining. The southwest did not even get much more than a quick glance. By the same logic which had eliminated the seemingly tropical northeast, going to a beach was simply not a good idea in light of what he was presently wearing. Following his trail of logic based on first impressions, he would thus decide. “I guess I’m heading southeast then.” A direction which would later reveal itself to house the Pale Moors… whatever those were.

He was about to head off – and, in fact, had already taken his first three steps in the appropriate direction – when he remembered the words of Omni; “This is Omnilium. It’s what ties the Omniverse together. Without it, you are nothing. With it, anything you desire can be yours.” This brought him to take hold of the Omnilium he had been given and gaze upon it in vague curiosity. Maybe… maybe the reason he was unable to use his arcane force was because this omnilium was to be used in its stead? That would be a logical assumption and a theory worth testing. He wasn’t too sure how exactly he would go about it so he simply did as he would have when using his pendant; he took hold of it and began to summon the motorcycle.

Unlike with his pendant – which had set a precedent of immediacy – the Omnilium’s rules, limitations and capacities were completely unknown to ABYSS, so he was a lot more patient with it. Taking all of his concentration and slowly focusing on the item of his desires until it slowly began to form. By the time he finally had a solid motorcycle, it had taken him a solid five minutes of constant concentration. On the bright side, he’d managed to pull it off and the bike did look exactly the way he expected it to. Still, the time this had taken was inconvenient and he hoped that at least he’d get better and more efficient at this. Sadly, he would realize later that the time this took was not due to his lack of practice, but rather due to an immutable law of the Omnilium’s function.

Another inconvenience, which he realized upon climbing onto the large chopper bike, was that its speed meter apparently went no higher than eighty miles per hour. “What? How even…” He uttered in a mix of irritation and disbelief as he tapped upon the small metal window which revealed the speedometer. It was now self-evident; this world was literally created with the sole purpose of pissing him off.

But… no use crying over spilled milk. He revved the motor and started heading towards the gate at moped speed. It was so slow he suspected that if he came across a bug he would actually have the time to physically dodge it before it even hit him, but this was indeed a faster way to reach the gate than a steady jogging pace, let alone walking, even while factoring in the fact that making it had taken a whole five minutes. For that reason, and that reason alone, he thought better than to get aggravated over it and simply leaned back as he rode forward. There was, thankfully, a convenience to this limited speed; he was able to let go of the handle, pull a cigarette out of his jacket, lodge it between his lips and light it without any danger to himself, the bike, or his surroundings. Smoke pouring from his lips as he headed slowly but steadily towards the pale moors, Alex rode forward with anticipation.

[Alex Silver]

Sweet smoke curled through the thin white skies of the Nexus and billowed in dense clouds of sickly scents into the blank skies of the verse. Tendrils of it swirled up into Alex's lungs as he breathed in deeply and burned invisible holes of foreshadowed diseases there. The rich benignant cigar smoke eddied coolly down his throat; he puffed it out again in rings which breasted the air bravely for a moment; blue, circular then began to wobble into hour-glass shapes and taper away; odd shapes they take, he thought. He took a deep drag and exhaled the smoke into the air once more, watching it disappear in the white abyss above his head. Slowly, gradually, he indulged in the taste and in the varying shades of smoke which offered themselves to him as the motor of the cycle spewed out its own brand of tumescent air. Decidedly, there was simply no leisure that was not unhealthy in some way or another, not in this world or another.

In that moment, as he continued to ride ahead towards the Pale Moors in what was too straight a line to require any real focus, he let himself wonder to poetry. He remembered Alice, that sweet kid, back when she was going through her angst ridden phase. All teenagers had one - he thought - at least he remembered having one of his own. Nevertheless, for some reason he never truly understood, on one night she brought him a poem. She wanted him to read it and tell her what he thought. At the time, he didn't know what to say and - thinking he'd have forever to go back on it - he never really bothered to have another conversation on the matter. Things had moved on. But now that, he thought, he would not be seeing her again anytime soon, his mind drifted back to it.

Why do you only come around when you wanna feel high?
Saying I'm your drug, pulling my skin between your lips like a cheap cigarette
A few minutes of heaven for you to forget everything, all the songs of pain you created
And I hold on to the hope that maybe
You began regretting every breath you took,
Every moment wasted on a cheap cigarette
Because the thought of you hating me,
Your hands built to torture me,
Is much easier to swallow than the idea that maybe you loved me,
You could not have felt anything towards me because
I am a disgrace, a fuck up
I'm completely out of luck
I am another thing for you to regret,
I'm nothing more than your cheap cigarette,
And that's why you only came around when to lie,
You only showed up when you wanted to feel high.

He chuckled in melancholy as the words he'd - by now - known by heart finished rolling through his mind in the way he imagined the young woman would pronounce them were she ever to read the poem aloud herself. In the end, even after four cycles, all he could think about was this little bit... but - failing telling her in person - he felt he would at least say it aloud once. He'd done so, in fact, to the data block he'd planned to give her on her eleventh cycle... shit, Alice's eleventh cycle. She was going to be an adult soon, and he was going to miss it because some punk ass deity decided to just warp him ever to weirdo land. He dug through his pockets to see if the data block was still there and - to his surprise, seeing as the items he'd stored within his pendant had to this point refused to show - it was, indeed, still there. Perhaps out of melancholy, or perhaps out of boredom seeing as he was driving through the proverbial equivalent of a blank canvas on his way to some hole in the wall, he decided to set it up on the handle of his bike and press play. It was weird, very weird even, to see yourself in a three dimensional hologram - perhaps weirder than it was seeing yourself on video, Alex didn't know since his birth did not predate the technology - but for some reason hearing his own voice being fed through the device did not appear to bother him. Some words just ran through perfectly regardless of the way through which they came.

"Hey Alice. If you're hearing this, it means it's your eleventh cycle. I recorded this a little while back so I might've already caved in and told you what I'm about to say but... heck, I still had to hand this to you." At that, Alex couldn't help but cringe a little bit, then offer a light chuckle. He'd recorded this still hungover from a night out celebrating the first military base successfully taken down by the Raven's Abyss, so he was not in perfect shape, but he was afraid he'd forget to do it otherwise. "...when you gave me that poem to read... I don't know if you remember it. Heck, I didn't know what to say at the time and just bringing it back might be a bit cringe worthy seeing as you're not in that phase anymore but... I finally figured out what I wanted to say about it so I thought I'd just say it right now... so sit down and brace for it 'cause it's probably gonna be kinda pathetic." He sighed and ruffled his own hair as he saw this. God, he really needed to make a new data block if he ever got around to returning to his world. "That poem. It was good. Great even. Pretty deep considering you were eight cycles old when you wrote it. I was shocked really. It was deep. I mean... I couldn't relate or anything - never felt that way about a person - but your words were good enough to make you understand the feelings that were on the page, you know? I hope that was the intent..." The hologram Alex and the real Alex both had the reflex of coughing into their fist at this point. He just wasn't that good at speeches at the time, he knew this. "I didn't know what to say then 'cause... well, it was a bit awkward, y'know? I mean... I was afraid those words were aimed at me- God this is fucking awkward to say..." Alex, the real one, smiled faintly at this, but the hologram on his part was awkwardly scratching the back of his head, looking away. "We're like... ten cycles apart, you know? I thought what we had going on was more of a... family kind of vibe. That poem shook that belief. I know, that's fucking stupid... it took me a while to realize how fucking poorly I interpreted that." The real Alex chuckled lightly as the hologram approached and leaned forward, extending a hand and patting him on the head. It was a bit weird to have his holographic hand stroke his own hair but, that was the way he'd intended it to be when he would give it to Alice. "Anyway, that's what I thought about your poem and why I didn't say anything at the time. Happy eleventh cycle, Alice! That means you're legally an adult! There's three hundred Kors and some change in this data block, don't spend it all on your first drinking night or you're gonna have a killer hangover... So... yeah. Have a good one." With that, the hologram faded, and Alex put the data block back into his pocket. Just in time too, as he had just arrived at the gate. Funny how convenient timing had a way of working itself out in his life...

Steering himself so he would be perpendicular to the gate, he tried to peer inside. Funny; from up close the gate to the Pale Moors was a lot, and that's not an exaggeration, a lot less inviting than from afar. What didn't help was how blurry the interior seemed to be. Not to mention that within ten seconds of observation, he could not help but hear what seemed to be a dragon's roar. At that point, images of the Dreadmore which had killed his close friend Raven ran through his mind and his eyes narrowed bitterly. Synchronously, Raven's words to the remnants of the Raven's Abyss crew rung through his mind in their usual paraphrase. "Don't worry, Alex will take care of everything, it'll all be alright soon." That was enough to make Alex grind his teeth in frustration and slam his fist against the top of his bike. "Guess I shat on that promise you made the others, huh Raven? I don't even know where the hell I am right now..." With that said, Alex focused his eyes on the gate to the pale moors once more. It was exactly at that moment that whatever monster - he continued to assume it was a bloody dragon because, at this point, why would there not be a dragon on the other side of that portal - decided to roar anew even louder than it had before. "Yeah No, That's not a dragon, that's a nopefish. A nopefish from the never gonna go there river and I'm just gonna start assuming that gate leads to screwthatistan." He thought to himself, having the mental presence - or simply having recovered from the forced silence Omni pushed upon him earlier - to keep that string of thought to himself.

Now that the concept of choosing a gate through common sense had proven fruitless, and seeing as he was unwilling to drive to each gate one after another until he found the one that was most pleasant, he decided to take off his pendant and chuck it in the air. Whatever direction the pendant would point, he would head there no questions asked. The logic was sound enough; it saved him the problem of making a decision, it meant he could blame whatever happened next on dumb luck, and he would not have to worry about the next gate. Why not worry? Simple logic really; if the next gate looked more pleasant, it was a no brainer that he should enter it. If the next gate looked just as unpleasant, nothing pointed to the possibility that the other gates would not be just as unpleasant and - in the end - trying to go for third place would just be wasting his time in the grand scheme of things. He was already a little over twenty two cycles old, he did not have time to waste on riding along the Nexus picking a gate. At least the eighty miles per hour this bike allowed him to go at definitely beat a walking pace, so he did not have to worry about the procedure of getting to the next gate taking two to four hours depending on the direction. By simple math - considering the average walking pace is of three miles per hour - it would take him a little over 4 minutes to get to another gate if it was close by and a little less than ten minutes to cross the nexus.

As luck would have it, his next destination was the Endless Dunes. Somehow, that actually seemed like a pleasant destination - just by the looks of things, since he had no way of knowing what the place was actually like - in contrast with his current location. "Alright Lady Luck. Alright. I let you pick, this one's on me." He uttered in an effort to build his confidence somewhat and headed in that direction.

The drive, as expected, was much shorter than his first. In fact, in his anticipation, Alex had little time to think about the situation he was in at all, more focused on what he would be meeting once he entered this gate. He would finally be leaving this white abyss of featureless terrain that - if we were going to be completely honest - was so bland and blank that he feared it might very well be driving him slowly but surely towards his own little personal pit of madness. He'd even begun humming to himself just to actually get a vague sense that something was going on around here. He was about halfway through highway to hell when he finally made it, and this time, rather than peek into the arch way, he simply drove right through. It was time to see what this world had in store for him.

End of Thread, Continued in "Through the sea of land".