Broomstick - Part Sixteen (+ CONTEST WINNER)

Welcome to Inkweb! I have a few announcements to make before we begin.

FIRST, I have selected a winner for my contest (in the post below this)! I mulled over the choices, and the winner is.....HYPERLINKZER!!!! His blog is Livin' on the Edge and he came up with a fine character. I will use his character as a police officer in my Camp NaNoWriMo July novel! Congratulations, Hyper!

It has also come to my alarmed attention that the mobile template of my blog has a white background! All of my posts previous to changing the template of the computer version of my blog have been in white! Thus, on my mobile template, my blog was completely unreadable. Two days ago, this alarming fact came to my attention. I don't control my blog through a phone, so I didn't realize this problem until I had mulled over my new blog template. I realized in alarm what I had done, but I've fixed it. No longer are any of my posts written in white! They will now be readable on a phone. Anyway, I'm glad I caught that.

Now, on to Inspector Wolfe's investigation, and the Nether World!

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I strapped on my black helmet, protective vest, and belt, attaching a piton cord to the last item, just in case any of the readers was confused and thought I attached it to my vest or eyeball or something.

I looked around and saw a red pyramid-like creature trying to fit on a vest and a belt. Eventually Lox came over and told the little guy he could just have an arm strap with a cord attached to it.

We all processed into the portal room, a circular room lit with soft pulsing blue werelights from the floor. A man stood in the middle of the room, wearing a silver robe and holding a wand in his outstretched left hand.

We came in, and Lox locked the door tightly behind us. “Please tether yourselves to the wall.”

I went over to the wall and stuck my piton in a slot at eye level. Others did similarly.

“All right, please be patient,” Lox instructed, “Lenny’s going to perform the spell.”

I heard a low muttering emanating from the center of the room where Lenny the magician stood. It echoed around the room, a deep roiling tone that bounced around in the acoustics of the space while Lenny moved on to a higher tone in his chanting. This higher tone joined the echoes bouncing around the room, harmonizing in perfect synchronization to create a haunting effect of simultaneity.

Lenny’s arm moved, and the werelights changed colors, switching from soothing blue to unnatural emerald, brightness constantly shifting, shadows flitting about.

Then, we weren’t there in that room.

The landscape around me was desolate and dry, and white clouds sped past like unicorns through a purple sky. The clouds were going so fast I had a feeling of vertigo.

The land was flat for what seemed like miles around. I looked back and saw Lox, standing smugly with the others. I took a tentative step toward Lox, my tether dragging along the ground as I did so. Somehow it was still back at that wall in that room. Lenny was there, in front of me, as I took the step. But the room wasn't there.

My foot hit ground, and the landscape suddenly changed. I was on a tall snow-capped peak, the powdery snow falling sideways, driving into me. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky now, and the landscape was sharp and jagged, mountainous. My tether extended downward behind me.

I took another step, and I was suspended in motion, falling into the magma below in a volcano, but then my tether snapped taut and I stopped. As I swung, the molten liquid below turned into water, sea water, crashing on rocks, and I was clinging to a cliff face. I could still see Lox and Lenny and Spoonella and the others, moving around as well. Did they see the same thing as I did? Or did they experience shifting realities completely different?

I tried to yell up to Lox, who was making her way along a ledge farther up the cliff. But no sound came out of my mouth, except the faintest whisper.

I climbed higher, and the scene changed. I was in a dark cave, and there was a light ahead of me, and something rushed by me. I heard a rustle, and two green eyes peered out of the darkness. “I am the Raven,” rasped a voice. There was a rustle like the fluttering of wings, and suddenly the light was extinguished. I gasped and stumbled forward, and I tripped as my tether turned taut once more. The landscape changed.

I was underwater, but not drowning, instead borne along by a current. I could see the pyramid shape beside me, waving his red arms that protruded out of his triangle-like body. I peered into the water’s depths all around me, but could perceive nothing except the water around and the others on the tour.

I looked below me, but there was nothing except the eventual darkness below. Not even sand. I looked around me, but there was no light source. The water’s light became green, and then red, but it seemed to come from the water itself. I tried to shout to Lox, but only a few bubbles came out of my mouth. I cursed inwardly. How was I supposed to ask questions in this environment?

I stepped forward and was borne out of the current, taken onto the wing of a giant eagle. But it wasn’t an eagle; it was made of paper, which melted away into tiny scraps that became multiple shadows of myself, laughing and pointing at me. I stepped forward across white space and into a tawny canyon, and into a maze of blue columns with different designs, all of them rotating around the base of the structure. ∆˚∫çµΩ, was one of the patterns. Some of them were indistinguishable, and I didn’t think I fully perceived much of the symbols; they were too otherworldly.

I stepped to the side and was upside down walking along the bottom of a blade of grass. I saw Lox above, or rather, below me, and I jumped toward her. The world shifted, and I was pulled sideways into a crumbling house, away from her. I twisted in midair and changed directions, spinning slowly to the ground as I landed on a cubelike platform protruding from a blue plane that stretched ever on into the distance where a pink sun was setting. The others were on similar shapes. I saw Plate-O with eyes wide, groping forward.

I moved towards Lox but the land changed, and I was falling through a dark liquid, and music was playing, a soft music that was dark as well and didn’t make sense. Lox was in the distance. “I just want to ask you something,” I whispered, but she didn’t hear me. The Nether was a nightmare.

I moved forward, and the music turned into the twittering of birds, and I was atop a dandelion in a grassy field, and the other dandelions crowded around me. I saw the others bouncing along them, but I took a step and plunged straight down. My tether seemed to follow me, so I guessed I wasn’t actually moving, but it felt like it. Everyone moved with me, and I retained the same perspective.

Suddenly I passed through fire, and I ran forward. I crossed a desert in one step into a jungle with the next, bounded down a snowy hill into a valley full of cherries and then twisted directions and was falling sideways into a giant dark pit, climbing up out of it and into a mountain range, swimming upward and plunging into a forest of gray. Sometimes the tether tugged, others it bent and moved with me, but always it stayed, and I always saw the others. This was the Nether realm. It was amazingly complex. I hadn’t even gone more than a few feet judging by the length of my tether, and yet I had completely lost myself in the folds of this dimension. How could Alice Shipton even begin to fathom its complex structure? It was clear that she couldn’t have mapped it all, or solved all its mysteries. She may have explained a part of it, but most of it would remain a mystery forever. This realm was not merely that which transported magic; it was magic, the very essence and well of magic, the soul of magic. And Alice was within its depths. Of course she couldn’t survive for long in this, because this was pure magic. There was no way to live here for a prolonged period.

And then there was a shrill whistlelike sound, and it all disappeared, and I stumbled back into reality.

Lenny had brought us back from the Nether world. That sounded funny in my head.

“As you can see,” Lox announced, “the Nether is almost more complicated than one might have first imagined. Every step you take is a step through another world. The Nether’s movements are highly unpredictable, and even Alice Shipton herself once was lost on one of her famous explorations, but using her expertise she managed to relocate her tether and come back to reality. Her discoveries have helped, but the Nether realm is still far too complex for us to navigate without difficulty.”

I nodded and looked around the room, now lit in blue once more. The ducklings were looking around, starry-eyed, at their surroundings, dizzied by their recent experience.

            “All right!” Lox cheered. “Let’s go back to the other room, and I’ll take questions.”