Sell you a Bridge chapter 358

July 14th 2016 Hall of Worlds, 9:00 PM EDT

"Are  you sure this is the right way?" I asked Taylor for the dozenth time.  "Because we've been doing this for a while, and this is the twentieth  world we've had to get through." I looked around at the blasted lava  rock strewn wasteland. "This particular world doesn't seem overly  hospitable either."

Zee spoke up. "Well it isn't the worst  one." She chimed in helpfully. "Like the world without any visible  light was way worse. All that skittering in the background. Super  creepy."

"No way." Said Rana. "The one with the giant carnivorous elephants was the worst. No contest."

Artemis snorted. "You're both wrong. It was the one with the flying cannibal babies. I'm going to have nightmares for years."

Rana shook her head. "The elephants were way scarier."

"No."  Corrected Artemis. "The elephants were STRONGER. The babies were  terrifying. Top ten worst things I've seen in my life at the very  least."

I groaned. "As productive as this conversation  is." I said in annoyance. "I'm not arguing about which world is the  worst, though it was the one with the tentacle monsters obviously, I'm  saying that we clearly aren't getting anywhere close to anything  important or useful. Like shouldn't we have seen some powerful  civilizations or at least ruins?"

Surprisingly, Jim was  the one who answered. "Based on the way Pug described this place, no.  Basically infinite doors in that hallway, and we're using shortcuts to  jump around the hall by taking advantage of each world having multiple  doors. The actual connection points are most likely so far apart that  finding any relation between them would be impossible. If we were going  in a straight line through the hall maybe, but as it is, Taylor's gift  is likely the only thing we can count on."

Cursing, I  nodded, before turning back to Taylor. "Right. Sorry. I'm just getting  fed up with all the nonsense in this place. Still, we have a shot at  getting into Scala ad Caelum completely undetected, so that's worth it.  How id using your gift, you still ok?"

"Oh sure." He  shrugged. "My major issue isn't the difficulty of use, it's my enemies  hunting me down. The chances of them being able to find me here are  staggeringly low however, and even if they COULD send the gift being  used, they've most likely been lost in one of the many worlds we've  traversed."

I remembered the Harrowing, despite us having  taken care of the freakish things, the people that sent them were still  around. It made sense for him to be worried. "Alright." I said with a  sigh. "Then what's our heading? Because honestly I don't see any doors  for us to walk through here. Then again the definition of 'door' was  stretched pretty far in some of our earlier jaunts, so why would that  change now?"

Nodding, Taylor pointed off into the distance  and we started walking. It took us about twenty minutes to get through  this one, with time in these worlds varying wildly based on both  distance to travel and natural obstacles like animals and people (we had  seen a few worlds with humans). Sure enough, Taylor led us through the  wasteland to a small hill of obsidian sand and then through a cave  entrance back into the hall.

We stopped on entry, taking a  minute inside the hall itself where things were relatively safe. The  hall of worlds was...a hall. Literally just endless gray corridor line  with doors that were a few feet apart. It was frustrating coming out  because all the doors were identical and had no markings on them, so it  felt like despite traveling constantly for most of a day we'd gotten  nowhere.

Taylor, however, looked  pleased. "I think we're getting closer. I don't really have a physical  arrow pointing in a direction with a distance value or anything, but  honestly in these circumstances that wouldn't much matter anyway. What I  can see is the trail we're following. With my keyblade focusing my gift  I have a more complete view of our path, and as we progress it gets  more complete. At the rate the path is being completed we should be  getting pretty close. Maybe one or two more worlds."

I  nodded in relief, and we headed off in the direction that he was  leading us. When we reached the new door, we stepped through and found  ourselves somewhere...different. Not physically, physically it just  looked like a huge city, but my bloodline started to pretty much riot in  my veins as soon as my feet touched down on the ground, and I felt my  whole body surge with insane amounts of powers before I moderated my  pull.

The  Hole bloodline was connected heavily to the void, which normally  wouldn't matter since it had the barriers between realities keeping that  at bay, but this particular location seemed to be IN the void. I wasn't  sure why we weren't all dead, because sitting in the void we probably  should have been, but if any place was going to have a door near the  center of reality I had a feeling it would be this place. Taylor had  been right. We were almost done.

Suppressing  my bloodline had taken a second to figure out, but it was easy enough  to do once I realized what was happening. Still, the fact that it was  needed told me quite a bit about where this probably was. One of the  only locations of note in the void, the absolute edge of all creation.  We had officially entered the City Forever. Knowing the others probably  wouldn't have heard of this place (it had been covered in part of the  grimoire as an example of peak tier void engineering) I filled everyone  in on where we were.

Zee,  of course, was delighted. "That sounds so cool! Can we look around and  see some of the stuff around here? You could do some studying to prep  for the world forge and hone your void constructs a bit right?"

"No."  My voice was sharp and maybe harsher than it needed to be, but I was  kind of freaking out right now. "I mean...no." I said again, moderating  my tone this time. "The City Forever wasn't just a town where people  lived. It was a prison. IS a prison. There are terrible things trapped  here, and if we run into them they could possibly kill us even without  being able to escape confinement."

Dread  Lords, Gentry, Unversed, the grimoire had told me about quite a few  powerful beings and horrifying entities that used to exist in the void.  Back in the wild days before the multiverse was really formed, the  beings who created the City Forever, the Void Lords, had either evicted  or entombed all the most horrible beings in the void. We needed to find  the fucking door out of here before we bumped into one of them and went  insane or died from beholding some monster from beyond time and space.

I  turned to Taylor. "You need to be VERY careful. Find us the SAFEST  route out of here. Even if it takes us longer, it's worth it. We don't  want to run into anything that lives here if we can help it." Apparently  sensing the fear in my voice (I was self aware enough to realize I  wasn't someone who had a healthy amount of respect for things that  threatened me, so if I was afraid I guess they figured shit was really  serious) Taylor closed his eyes and pointed us in the appropriate  direction.

As  we walked, I looked around at the city. No one really spoke. My fear  made it obvious we needed to be on alert, so everyone was straining  their senses to pick up the slightest threat. This had the natural  effect of being fucking creepy, but it was better than being pounced on  and devoured by cornerhounds or something (naturally occurring  cornerhounds were much less friendly than my little buddy Patches or his  siblings according to the book, so I was happy to skirt around the void  puppies).

It  was because of this silence and my own attentiveness, that I was able  to use voidstep to knock Sindella, the furthest ahead of our group, out  of the way as an absolute fucking monstrosity from a Lovecraft novel  leapt from a side alley and tried to tear her in half. This place was  big and fairly empty, but there were plenty of grey stone buildings, and  even little gardens or mini forests in planter boxes along the roads  that things could hide behind.

This  particular monster wasn't huge, so it had been able to hide easily  enough, but it seemed almost too unnatural for me to focus on. Like it  had some sort stealth through its sheer freakishness. My keyblade lashed  out, calling in an instant, and tore the thing in half, but rather than  DIE like it should have given Thanatos's freakish nature, the thing  turned to black smoke and flew off in a random direction.

My  eyes widened and my pulse started to race. "We need to go!" I'd watched  the aura of that monster as it dissolved, and it hadn't been complete.  Not in a 'this being is unnatural way' but in a 'this is a sock puppet  for something worse' kind of way. Apparently one of the inhabitants of  this place had managed to wriggle at least partly free of its cage, and I  wasn't remotely confident it wasn't not heading this way.

We  took off at top speed, me having to lag behind along with Wally to make  sure the others could keep up. As we ran, I glared at Taylor. "I  thought I said the SAFEST path!"

The  big detective sneered right back. "This IS the safest path! But safer  than certain death isn't that fucking safe now is it? Just be glad we  aren't dead yet." I had to admit his logic held up, so I huffed in  annoyance and ignored him, focusing on running my ass off. Seeing them  lag behind I picked up Zee and Sindella, while Wally grabbed Artemis,  and the group sped up substantially.

I  heard baying in the distance and grimaced. Fuck. Cornerhounds. They  sounded big too. Taylor's eyes lit up as we turned a corner, pointing  off into the distance at a large squat building. "There's our door  ladies and gents." I exhaled in relief, looking back long enough to see a  massive horde of void creatures nipping at our heels. This was wrong.  These things shouldn't be freely running around. This wasn't one void  creature who had gotten loose, it was a bunch of them. Someone had been  here fucking with the cages.

The  reasons for the army of monsters chasing us was ultimately immaterial  though. We needed to get out, then we could worry about what had gone  wrong. As we closed in on the door, I spun and unleashed a massive  gravity blast imbued with as much demonic energy and ectoplasm as  possible. My obsession with protecting my people and my sinful  possessive nature showing their most effective use now that I had truly  burned away my mortality and become a ghost devil god.

A  massive shifting ball of energy touched down, expanding explosively  toward the enemy and not toward us as the ground was consumed by the  conflicting forces of the fires of hell and icy grip of death clashing  inside a churning orb or pure void energy. I didn't stop to watch what  the fuck would happen, we had gotten close enough and we all dove  through the door, slamming it shut behind us as we breathed out in  relief.

As I  calmed down slightly, I took in our surroundings, and realized we really  had come to the end of our journey. The other places in the hall were  corridors filled with endless doors, but this one wasn't. Rather than a  corridor, we were currently standing in a field of grey nothingness  punctuated by a circle of thirteen doors, one of which we had just come  out of. I turned to Taylor and he just nodded, pointing to one door off  to the side. I slumped to the ground, deciding to take a slight rest  while we could. We were here. We had reached the entrance to Scala ad  Caelum.