The In-Betweener
[WP] There is a place. A place between places. It's an actual place but it isn't here nor there. Lost travelers are the only ones who can find the place. Staying for a night, safe from other places and other things, and nothing more. Except you. You were born in the place.
*****
The void. The abyssal shores of the Nevermore Ocean. The quiet forest where night never comes and day never breaks. A thin, strange land that lies beyond the limiting borders of time and space. It is a place of the lost and the bewildered. Where those who truly become lost beyond all maps, beyond any guidance, throughout all worlds, are its only visitors. These lost souls, who have passed not into death, nor back into the warmth of life, but has been misplaced utterly and completely, can find the Voidwood. They come exhausted, often wounded, and confused. They rest for a moment, dress their wounds, and eat the strange pulsating fruits of the trees that grow in between all other things. Then they sleep, staying for a single night of rest, insomuch as they understand what night could be. Of course, such rules apply only to those who can think in the manner that mortals do. Beasts can go here, and many have settled down to live in this place, becoming animals tainted by void. This realm has no ruler, no master, no owner. It is a land that lies within the firmament, beyond the pale, over the hills and far away; it is a land that only existed a long long time ago, and yet it is also a place that one day will come to be, and in many places it is already happening, has happened, and will happen again. It is a realm beyond the reach of gods, but not beyond the reach of stories.
There is only one house in the Voidwood. It is large, with many comfortable rooms, and it is made from the smoky crystallised wood of the voidtrees. It is the only permanent habitation, the only place with proper beds and a good proper meal to be had. And that is where I live. It is the only homely place in this abyssal realm. I am not a traveller. I am not lost in this land beyond the woods that are lovely, dark, and deep. I do not have many miles to go, nor any promises to keep. I am the only person who came here by natural means. And thus, I am the only person who can live here for long. The precise details of my birth is unknown to me. I do not recall who or what birthed me. Or if perhaps I was hatched from an egg. Naturally, an infant would have perished if someone hadn't looked after me. At first the beasts of this place took me in. Night mammoths, fractal tigers, the dream-shells of the Argentavis, all of them have known me, and have never sought to harm me. Beasts like them, they carried me to the only other inhabitants of this realm; The ones who seek to come here and stay. Wizards, scientists, strange priests. All of them come to prove something or escape someone. All of them die eventually.
Having been born here, I grew up with the powers of entropy and dead dreams moulding my body, making me a part of this place as much as the voidtrees, the dead stars, and the ghost whales that I see from the shores of the Nevermore Ocean. But they are all too old to adapt. Too old for their bodies to acclimatize to this twilight realm. And yet, they strive to survive here for a time. They took me in, and cared for me. Taught me language, numbers, and many branches of magic. They were kind to me. Even though I'd already been altered and fused with the strange energies of this unreal location, they loved me. Even as I grew stranger and stranger still, they did not cast me out. My eyes became orbs that shone with a baleful Tyrian purple shine, and they did not balk at my existence. When I was roughly eight years by their reckoning, my ebon skin contorted and pulsed like nothing that anyone can describe, my flesh twisting and turning in a bizarre and unnatural way, leaving me covered in midnight fur, they did nothing but console me, having been frightened by the painful experience. When I was 12, they marvelled as charcoal-grey leathery wings unfurled from my back, where previously there had been no indication of such things. Remarkably useful for keeping warm or flying around the infinite lands of this void.
Yet, it was not to last. As they became touched by the strange powers of this place, they began to get a haunted look in their eyes. Always furtively glancing at the dark horizon, at the starless sky. And mumbling under their breath, about how dark it was, how they had forgotten the sun. Inevitably, it meant them attempting to return. Opening a gateway home. And the single moment upon which they beheld the light of their own world once more, caused them to shrivel and burn into a pile of jet-black ashes. While they burned, they would smile. Smile in joy as they died from seeing their long missed home again. In time, they all died. No matter how I pleaded for them to stay, no matter how much they knew that they'd been altered too much to survive here. They always found a way back. And always burned.
I eventually left, bitter memories of dead caretakers mixed with years of teachings, giving me a unique perspective on this place. Using magic, I built my own home. A large one. Based on the picture of an inn I saw once in a book. Travellers lost in time, space, and reality, come to my house now, and I offer them food, drink, and a night of rest, probably better than whatever they would otherwise had have to have out there in the wide black woods. Out where the dire shadewolves howl endlessly at a moon that isn't there. Out where curious critters of every strange sort can gawk at them. I take in old confused men who have lost their minds and thus have lost the world, the mists in their memory allowing them to wander in. I console small scared children who are confused and frightened, after they found a hiding spot that was too good, during a game of ''hide and seek''. Young couples, fleeing some manner of danger. Very discombobulated families who really should have stopped a while back and asked for directions. They enter, they eat, they calm down, they sleep on soft beds, and wake up back in their own world again.
All is once more right in the world.
Of course, this place is not only for them. It is, as a matter of fact a trap, of sorts. A beacon of civilisation in the midst of a place made from rejected universes, sunken continents, extinct species, and evaporated oceans. How could any scholar ever avoid it? How could anyone who in their curiosity has thrown caution to the wind, and landing themselves here, just not come in for a visit?
I offer them food and drink, just as I would to anyone who finds themselves here in this dark foreboding realm. But unlike those who came here by accident, I explain to these curious men and women of a thousand different fascinating species what will happen should they stay. I warn them of their deaths, should they make the choice to stay, and offer to share all the notes that the people who raised me made about this place. All to get them to leave. To get them to safety. A few have offered to take me with them, but I do not think that wise. I may have been born of a normal world's flesh. But I have lived here in the Voidwoods all my life. I have only eaten the food of the dark lands, such as the black eggs of the docile dark dodos, or apples that are black all the way into the stem. I am of the void now, and I can never leave. Not that I want to, someone has to warn people about this place. To make them stay away for as long as possible.
Some stay for a bit. But when they start seeing signs of the void energies affecting them, they all leave fairly quickly, thanking me for my hospitality. It is one thing to have some sort of chiropteran person tell them that they'll regret staying here, it is another thing entirely to see those same warned of effects on their bodies. Their hair becoming dark where it was once bright. Their flesh showing the tell-tale purple cracks that makes it obvious that the void is inside them. Few are those who've dared to stay long after that. And mostly, they've burned. I thought this was to be my life until death. Helping lost travellers, warning clever and cunning people of the dangers of this place, petting murkbunnies, riding night mammoths around. Not a bad life, but not one likely to change.
But now it seems that this place have brought forth an unexpected change to my life. I am no longer as young as I were. And any potential romance I would ever have with anyone here would be unlikely at best due to my unusual appearance; one that is only accepted by the lost travellers due to how confused they already are. And due to the fact that none could stay here long, even the time it did happen, it would always result in me ending up alone, no family to speak of. Until today. Much like how my large adoptive family of scholars and mages told me, a small horde of beasts have appeared at my doorstep. Fractal tigers grinning gleefully, shadewolves twisting and turning their two-dimensional bodies like crazy. And two night mammoths, their snake-like trunks carrying two bundles in them. Infants. Already bearing signs of healthy adaption to this place. Gently, I reach out my long beastly arms, and take the two tiny things into my hands. They're warm. And young. From the trees I hear the moth-calls ''Two and two. Boy. Girl. Void fed and void born.'' Usually the moths only mutter about the lack of light in this realm. But for them to speak clearly, like this, is unusual.
Nodding to the beasts, who are already on their way to do whatever beasts do when one does not observe them, I walk back into my large home. Born here. Just like I was. If their parents come for them, I shall give them over freely, provided that they are not too bound to this realm yet. I am not as jealous as the void is. But shall their kin never claim them, they will be my kin. They will have a home; and that home will be my home. And unlike those who raised me, I will not leave them. I will not burn as they watch. I will be there for them, until my flesh goes back to the cool embrace of the void, until my soul will depart the Voidwood, the realm-between-realms.
*****
THE END.
