Geela started running before they even began to move. Technically she could have thrown herself through the floor and into another network of the void realm, but she needed to be strategic. After all, she only found herself here after losing control of a void shift, and she hadn’t exactly let herself rest since then. More importantly, she didn’t know how these bug-like entities moved about in the tunnel walls. She didn’t know anything about them, which had been really cool about twelve seconds ago, but now was really dangerous. And Geela didn’t like danger. Some calculated risk was good here and there, but actual life-threatening danger? Geela wasn’t a fan.

Behind her, she could hear the sound of droning grow louder and louder. Not just closer, though they were gaining, but louder. As if more had joined the chase.

A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed this theory. More had, in fact, joined the chase. A whole lot more.

Geela suppressed a groan as she continued to run. She’d been thinking up a bit of trickery to get them off her hypothetical scent, but in case that didn’t work, she’d started building up a small, electric charge. Not that she could even be sure a physical attack would work. The Void Realm had so many weird, janky rules concerning types of magic and how everything worked together, given it was an immaterial world that she was giving material form to.

Take, for example, an apparition. They were normally more-or-less a tangible illusion that shrouded the area your soul was currently occupying. It was bound to you and had to follow you around, while more or less representing what you wanted it to do. If these entities were drawn to Geela’s soul, though, then no amount of visual illusion would throw them off her path. However, since they were, themselves, apparitions, it was possible that they had to follow the rules of their avatars.

It was a shot in the dark, literally and proverbially, but Geela had to try something. So she turned sharply to the left and created two illusions of herself, one running right and one continuing to move straight ahead. Did a damn good job with them too, adding the muted footfalls of running across the soft, cobwebby floor and even creating the illusion of the clingy shadows sticking to the feet of her dopplegangers.

Then, for an extra flare, she added a few illusions on herself, just enough to make her look slightly blurry or out of focus.

The trick worked. Clearly Noire’s subjects weren’t the brightest sparks (or darkest nightmares) in the void, for they beelined directly after the Geela that ran straight ahead. Only a few went to the right and left, meaning there were only about three on her tail. She could handle that.

Once she was a solid hundred feet or so from the other illusions and the various pursuers, she took the plunge through the floor. As soon as she melted into the barrier, her illusions vanished. She’d need her strength to prevent getting caught in the current. Fortunately, the jump wasn’t too bad, and she soon found herself standing in an almost empty tunnel.

As she’d expected, the three pursuing bug things had followed her. Up close, they managed the impressive feat of being uglier than they were at a distance. Huge, bulging, insectoid eyes covered most of their faces, only giving a small amount of space for their protruding stinger. Each had ten scaly insect legs ending in pale, human hands that Geela could probably have gone her whole life without seeing.

They seemed a little confused by the jump, as if they’d simply locked onto Geela’s position without realizing where that might take them. The two on the side turned to look at the one in the middle, and there was more of that chattering sound.

“Hmm, you really might be sentient.” Geela stroked her chin, giving them a once over. “Too bad that still doesn’t make you smart.” With this, she flicked a finger at the one in the center, releasing a small shock of electricity.

The bug evaporated with a small explosion of shadow and lightning. It was so cool that Geela wasted no time disintegrating the next one, not even waiting to come up with another witty line. But just as she turned to the last one, it gave a little squeak and puffed away into smoke. Geela wanted to believe it had died of fright, but void nightmares were probably pretty resistant to fear. For a moment, she glanced around the corridor, as if expecting the bug to reappear. After a few seconds of nothing, she turned on her heel. If it hadn’t died, it’d be back soon, and with friends.

Geela hurled out another soul search and began running down the hallway. She needed a break from wall jumping and she had a lot on her mind. From an analytical point of view, it made a lot of sense that lightning magic would target darkness so effectively. Energy and Celestial magic, while not connected, were pretty close on the magic wheel. Lightning would do a walloping to something so dark and empty. That said, she’d need a whole lot of lightning saved up to make a dent in the bug creatures’ numbers. Which was honestly fine, since she really wasn’t trying to kill them all. That just wasn’t a good way to study them, given their entire bodies vanished into the ether.

Maybe they hadn’t truly been destroyed. Maybe they’d only vanished back to their little home base, to drill up some void sludge into a clay dove’s prison… whatever it is a void being does during its 9-5.

One thing was for sure, Geela did not have time to figure it out now. She needed more clues and, curious though she may be, she wasn’t going to abandon Darkos now to go on a deep void exploration cruise. Besides, she had a month in the void. If these truly were void beings, she’d find more.

Geela didn’t really ever put anything out of her mind. Part of being brilliant was that there was always a pot on every burner, and Geela had burners a’plenty. Her brain had a stove that would make the chefs of the Celestial Academy weep in jealousy. So while she no longer actively considered the void entities, it was still stewing in there somewhere, being tended to by a little imaginary chef who sprinkled in hints of Geela’s already immense knowledge of the void. Just to taste. Just to see what it came up with.

Meanwhile, Geela trudged down the hallway, kicking up cobwebs. She paced herself a lot better this time, since she couldn’t afford to lose Hari. Besides, even he would need to rest at some point. It was taking conscious effort to keep moving, which meant he’d need at least a short ‘nap.’ Geela’s brain was far too busy thinking up strategies for moving through the void, strategies for killing Hari, strategies for fighting Noire, to think of a good way to compare sleeping in the Mortal Realm with sleeping in the Void Realm. Suffice to say, all three of them would still need it.

Of course, it’d be far riskier for Geela to chance a few hours of sleep. But this was where Geela had the advantage on the boys. Both Hari and Darkos were in their natural forms here in the Void Realm. Which meant they needed the appropriate amount of sleep for a void spawn. That’s also why they moved faster. Geela, on the flip side, was fighting an uphill battle just fighting her way through the tunnels, but her body back home was in its natural state. That meant while their bodies were primarily in statis, hers was both asleep and stasised. She only needed half the sleep here since her body was constantly reinvigorating her just by being asleep on the Mortal Realm.

See? Brilliant.

Still, she waited for Hari to stop moving before finding a way to protect herself for a little shut eye. Psychic wards would alert her if anything with thought entered the tunnel up to fifty feet on both sides of where she was preparing a little cocoon. As an extra precaution, she had a little lighting ball sitting next to her. She paired it with her psychic power, so that any dreams she had would power it. That would keep her mind free from the nightmares that were so common in the Void Realm while also building up a small weapon. Illusion magic would keep her more or less visually obscured. Her void magic, actually coming in handy here, thickened the walls around her so nothing could easily meld through. If anything got close, she’d wake.

…and wake she did, about three hours later. Something was rustling down the hallway in her direction.

Waking up was among Geela’s least favorite parts of the day. It was trumped only by actually getting out of bed. So it didn’t need to be overstated how much she loathed waking after only three hours. Even if she doubled that, using her body in the Mortal Realm, she still only got six hours, and that wasn’t enough for a regular person rather less someone who needed as much beauty sleep as she did.

Still, beauty wouldn’t do much for her dead. ‘Die young, leave a beautiful corpse’ had ceased to hold any meaning for her since she’d stopped aging. Now her mantra was more like ‘live forever and bask in their undying worship’. Flowed a lot better.

She hopped to her feet, deft as she was on her boat, and reached out to her wards. The thing that had awoken her was growing closer, and she slowly began backing down the corridor, eyes fixed on the path the shuffling was coming from. The psychic energy was stronger than she’d expected from anything in the void that wasn’t Hari, Darkos, or Noire, though that didn’t really rule out much since she hadn’t expected anything in the void that wasn’t Hari, Darkos, or Noire.

Behind her, the tunnel curved unexpectedly, and she stiffened as her hands came in contact with the filmy wall. She failed to suppress a tiny gasp and then failed to suppress a less tiny swear as she realized she’d given her position away.

There wasn’t room for her to make a misstep here. If she blasted whatever it was that had targeted her and it survived, then she was all but dead. So instead she pulled some void matter from the walls and mixed it with the lightning to form a springtrap cage. Killing her enemy here might not be the move after all. Delaying it while she got away, though less exciting, was smarter in the end.

The noise grew louder and louder until her pursuer leaped around the corner and she blasted the full force of the trap around it.

SQUEAK!

It was a god-damned bug monster.

Geela lowered her arms, feeling foolish the for overkill before letting herself feel anything else. The next thing she did was assess the situation. Yup, the bug monster was trapped in there alright. The last thing she did was assess all the information she had, which amounted to:

“You are sentient!” Her face lit up as she approached the cage. Gently, she reduced its size until she’d trapped the ugly little thing in a small, lightning-walled bird cage. “I heard your thoughts pinging around, stronger than some humans I know.” She paused, reconsidering. “Stronger than one specific human I know.” She reconsidered again. “Okay technically stronger than one part-demon part-human I know. But it was stronger than hers, which means you have the capacity for speech.”

As if to refute her claim, the bug began chattering animatedly in that weird, annoying tone. Geela couldn’t feel void magic, but she could feel energy emanating off the bug against the walls of her cage. She didn’t know any kind of anti-magic and she couldn’t cast celestial, but lightning, with just a pinch of void, was enough to keep this creature’s low magic levels from leaving.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked. “Telepathically communicate with the others?” It stared at her balefully with its big, buggy eyes. “No, that’s not it. If you could communicate, you’d have already told them where I was.” She snapped. “You’re trying to teleport again. Or turn invisible or whatever it was you did.”

The monster began running in tight circles, still making the annoying noise until Geela had had enough.

“Alright alright, stop your annoying chatter before my headache continues to grow. When you speak in this cage, speak a language I actually know.” Back on Earth, cursing someone to speak common tongue would have been beyond Geela’s powers, but since they were all apparitions here, they weren’t beholden to rules like language. Geela wasn’t a denizen of the void and didn’t know the language of its inhabitants, but the creatures here definitely knew common. Noire knew it, its kids knew it, its beings must.

They must.

“You’ll never take me alive. You’ll never never never. I’ll die before I let you hold me captive.”

They did.

“Ah, excellent.” Geela fashioned a little pole out of the void walls and hung the voidling’s cage up on it. “If that’s truly what you’re so afraid of, I’m afraid I must disappoint you.” A wicked smile crossed her face and she slung it over her shoulder and began walking.

“Why I oughta… I oughta… You’ll never get away with this, you foul witch! Let me outta here! Let me outta here!” Its voice would have been cute, if Geela liked cute, which she didn’t. Instead it was simply annoying. Just a little high pitched, not enough to be grating, just a little too soft to be shrill, just the slightest lisps on the Ls. It was terrible to hear, especially with the sound of its hands-feet jumping up and down the cage floor. She preferred the buzzing, but she knew not to say that to the little terror.

“Really? Witch? Is that the worst you think I am?” She gave a little pep to her step so that the cage swung over her shoulder with each footfall. “I’m so so much worse, little one. I’m the stuff of nightmares.”

“Well, I am a literal nightmare,” its voice piped reproachfully. “You can’t scare me.”

“Fine.” Geela lifted a shoulder in an unconcerned shrug. “I’m the slayer of Malevo, Sinistrina, Nefaria, and Terha. I seek now to destroy Noire itself, after removing its spawn and weakening its strength, and I will do so with its youngest child at my side, for I am she who tamed the void spawn Darkos and set him against his siblings.” She glanced over her shoulder at where the bug had gone quiet and was actually trembling in its cage. Its big eyes were filling with tears now. Perfect. “Scared now?”

“What do you want from me?” it asked, voice quivering.

“Simple,” Geela said. “I’ve never been here before. It unfortunately lives up to its reputation of being both confusing and boring. In fact, before I even arrived, no one knew there were entities in here besides Noire and its hellspawn. So that’s what I need from you.”

“I’ll never help you.” The bug managed to cross all ten of its limbs and sat hard on what must’ve been its rear end. “I will, in fact, serve only to hinder you if you do not release me. I will ensure that I am the worst guide you have ever had.”

“Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” Not once during all of this had her smile faded. “You think you’ll be the worst guide I’ve ever had? My poor sweet little captive, you have no idea. I dealt with Jane Arlington as my guide. You’ll never top that. You’re going to lead me to Noire’s nest, like it or not.”