13 The Vision

The moment his hand touched the orb, Ojero passed out and slumped over the table. At the exact same time, the elderly woman fell back into the couch, similarly passed out.

Ryan turned when he heard Ojero's yell, but could only shake his head as he saw the sight.

He remembered many years ago when he too had sat where Ojero was and had the All Mother look into his potential.

'So many years ago… Am I really that old?'

Sighing deeply, the paladin turned back to the shelves and began to search for the sponsored ticket.

Ojero, however, was not experiencing anything even close to as peaceful.

He felt himself falling deeper and deeper into a black abyss. He landed hard with a clang, yet felt very little pain.

He laid there for only a second before sitting up and panting heavily.

"What is going on?" Ojero wondered aloud.

Due to his initial shock, it took him a moment before he felt a biting chill. Not exactly that of the cold, but something closer to what you feel under extreme fear. He hugged himself and began to shiver.

Breathing heavily, he decided to figure out where he was. He looked all around, but only saw an endless black void.

Turning to look down at the floor, he realized it was made of some kind of inky black metal. He leaned in closer to try and understand it better.

'What is this? It reminds me of obsidian… but smoother and clearer.'

He could vaguely make out his reflection, and reached out to feel it, and realized it felt wet. Yanking his hand back, he saw nothing was on it.

'Huh, strange. Very strange. It felt like water!'

Looking back down, a pair of glowing purple eyes stared back.

Seeing them, Ojero leapt up in fright, falling onto his back.

He stared at the eyes, and they seemed to bounce up and down in amusement at the fall. They appeared to be stuck under the black surface, and began to move towards him, following him.

Ojero tried to move away from them, but they seemed to move faster, and rapidly caught up and moved under him.

"Woah woah woah! Stop! Who are you?"

Turning over, Ojero saw the eyes grow larger and larger, but then he noticed it wasn't actually growing larger. It was getting closer.

He saw the faint outline of a skull appear around it, and as Ojero leaned in to get a closer look, it suddenly lurched up at him, and everything went black again.

Opening his eyes, this time Ojero found himself in a room made of red, with some of it dripping down the walls. He was sitting on the floor, and noticed it felt exactly like the black floor.

'What is up with this place? Where am I? What is going on!?'

This time, however, he was not going to wait around for another skull face. He stood up, and slowly walked up to one of the walls, and saw his reflection in it similar to the floor.

'No, no, no! I remember what happened last time!'

He began to back up, worried about what would happen, but he only managed to make it a few steps before a long boney arm shot out from the wall and grabbed his neck.

Ojero grabbed it with both his hands to try to fight it off, but before he could so much as try he was pulled into the red wall, and his vision turned dark again.

Ojero once again felt himself falling through a black void. He felt for what seemed like hours before things began to change.

The black walls turned a dark green that grew lighter the further he fell. Beneath him, a sea of tan and yellow appeared, and before he realized it Ojero fell into a large pit of sand.

He immediately started to spit out the mouthful of sand he had, but he wasn't very successful. Looking around, he noticed the walls had become glass.

'I'm beginning to notice a pattern here, and this feels like an hourglass.'

The second he realized this, he felt the sand below him fall down a few inches, then a few more, and before he knew it he was falling with it straight down the hourglass.

During this fall, Ojero wasn't as scared. He began to believe this to be some kind of vision and not actually intended to hurt him.

Falling through the bottom, Ojero was shocked at what he saw.

Flashes of some kind of blue and white light everywhere, stars in the distance, falling meteors, tongues of burning fire, balls of ice, and even vials of some kind of green liquid.

All of this and more was coalescing around Ojero, turning into a large sphere of various items spiraling around him. The collage of colors began spinning faster and faster, blending all together in a sea of shining lights.

The sphere then began to shrink, becoming smaller and smaller until it strangled Ojero. He suddenly couldn't breathe, and tried to fight back but his strength simply wasn't there.

He felt his life leaving him, but right before it did a great roar echoed around him. This was followed by thousands of other roars and battle cries of thousands of different beasts.

Although Ojero could not see them, he could sense their power, and it filled him with fear.

This fear began to grow and grow, and as much as he tried Ojero could not stop it. It filled him up with dread, and when he turned around hoping to find the source of it, he saw something that made him shudder in absolute terror.

A large castle made of the inky black material stood before him, the moon frozen in the sky behind its central spire.

A sea of skeletons stood around the castle, standing in perfect rows and wearing black armor that only covered part of them.

Behind these skeletons were great beasts of legends, drakes and wyverns, griffins and manticores, telfores and recula.

The strangest part, however, was that they were bowing. Everything was either on its knees or bending down in a low bow towards the castle, and from the tallest spire a glowing orb of purple began to grow.

More energy filled the orb as it began to grow bigger than the spire, than the castle, than everything around it, before shooting into the sky and filling Ojero's vision with only a purple shine.

And through it all, Ojero could feel nothing but fear.