Falling without the sensation of air flowing past his flesh proved disorienting. It was as though he both moved and did not move. It would not be the strangest thing to come, however. As he fell, the dragon became aware of voices and sights. He had not been alone to begin with, but now he understood that the seemingly empty existence around him was suffused with a variety of beings.

Most of the voices that reached him were of a plaintive nature. The cries for help. Pleas for mercy, and wailing in general, were like an ambient background noise. They could be likened to the theme song of the abyss.

Eventually, he stopped falling and lightly exited the darkness. He alighted atop a large flat boulder at the center of an endless meadow of wildflowers. Among those flowers there roamed the grey and gaunt figures of mindless souls. They held onto the image of humanity, or of a race close in proximity to human beings. These monochrome creatures did not speak, save for a squeaking noise akin to that of a bat. They moved slowly, and with no sense of purpose.

No one suffered in this field of drab unremarkable flowers, but they did not know joy either. Despite the lack of dangers in this the place, none of them seemed interested in leaving. They were wrapped tightly inside of their own self-interest. Even that was small and would not even be worthy of being called mediocre. Bloodless wraiths whose very thoughts were nothing worthy of note.

It took him some time to understand what this place was, and once he did the dragon looked upon the flowers and the wraiths in a new light. “Asphodel,” he whispered.

A scene flashed inside his head, a quick memory of the distant past. A warm and fatherly voice called out to him in the very meadow. He had been different then, his wings had feathers, and he had no horns. That warm fatherly voice has asked if he intended to make a crown of flowers for his mother.

“This place is for those who never amounted to anything in life and have no desire to try to do anything in their lives…” he said softly. It was a place of sadness.

In the abyss, the best way to keep souls who had become this lost in their own mediocrity was to let them wander aimlessly until they finally came to terms with themselves and found a reason to rise out of the abyss. It was a safety net to keep them from falling further, as their only real corruption was the nihilism that gripped their heart. They could not experience the joys of living and existed in a drab grey world of relentless ennui even before finding themselves in this place.

Life was pointless to the souls who dwelled in this meadow, and while these were not the souls of people who committed suicide, they existed within a never-ending desire to simply stop living. That desire followed them from one life to the next. Ultimately, they ended here in this drab grey world of unremarkable flowers. It was not a place of punishment, but it was also not worthy of note beyond its size. Nothing existed here to spur them or force them to come to terms with their own nihilism and as such only they could free themselves.

He hopped down off his rock and plucked a flower. In his hands, the drab grey little flower brightened. Yellow, brown, and pristine white. It was a common little weed, and yet when confronted by a hand that had moved with a sense of purpose, it became bold and colorful.

The flower caught the attention of a nearby soul. Rail-thin and little more than skin stretched over bones. It lifted its hand tremulously.

The struggle to move with a sense of purpose wore the wretched soul out quickly, but the dragon noted that the wraith’s eyes lingered on that spot of brightness in an otherwise endless field of grey. He reached out and gave the flower to that soul.

The color became infectious. A slight hint of it came to the wraith’s cheeks, and the hint of tears began to form at the rims of its eyes.

That splash of color caught more eyes. Soon, several souls shambled over in their exhausted manner. More than a few fell into the flowers and did not move again. They lost the will to move forward now that they could not see the flower.

He became aware of something, another memory. The souls on this level of the abyss were blood-less. They could barely function, much like a desiccated vampire. This was why they could not speak. They could barely acknowledge their own existence most of the time.

Something about these creatures caused his chest to tighten. A strange moisture appeared along the rims of his eyes. The dragon did not understand why, but these poor wretched things made his eyes drip. It took him quite some time before he remembered the words for such a thing. Tears. Crying.

There was little that he could do for them. He did pluck a few more flowers, but in the end no matter what he did these wretched souls would return to their grey world once he left. Ultimately, only they could free themselves.

In time, he left the gaggle of grey wraiths and moved further into the field. He came upon a river and followed it to a grove of grey trees located at a point where another river intersected with the first. In this place, the grey wraiths did not gather. Yet, the grey fog of the world parted at this point to reveal something shocking given the nature of the place. Still somewhat muted in nature, there was color never-the-less.

“Hello,” spoke a gentle voice from among the trees.

The dragon looked to the speaker then tilted his head to the side. There was something familiar about this wraith. Vaguely human in appearance, and evidently female given the curvature of certain parts of her misty body, she made him stop and stare for a time.

The wraith flittered closer. Soon, she began to glow with an eldritch green light. “I did not think that I would see you today, Master.”

The dragon opened his mouth briefly then closed it. He knew this specter. “Wisp…y?”

A slight shimmer in her light pattern signaled her joy. Her master had spoken her name, here in the place of her rest. Briefly, the shadow wisp seemed taken aback. She had done nothing to prepare the place for the arrival of the master of this realm!

Wispy began to flitter about flustered and fussing. There was simply too much to do!

However, as she began to tidy up the rocks and spruce up a few of the flowers nearby, a rush of wind accosted her. A great black shadow covered them. The dragon and the wisp looked upward to see four massive horses pulling a black chariot across the sky. A giant man with corpse-white flesh and jet-black feathered wings drove that team.

The chariot came to a halt with a rumble as the horses touched down. The giant bellowed, “Who dares disturb the sacred stillness of the Aspho—”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried out a feminine voice from the other side of the giant. “No way!”

“Wha—?” asked the giant in surprise. “Dear heart… You promised not to interrupt.”

“But can’t you see who you’re talking to, you great red-eyed beast?” asked the voice. “Shameful…”

The giant looked to his side, within the chariot, and then back to the two interlopers. The wisp he recognized. Their kind appeared in this area on occasion and rarely bothered anything. The other interloper, however, radiated a powerful light. A strangely familiar one at that.

Slowly, the giant’s blazing red eyes dimmed even though they also widened. His dour expression shifted slightly into the parody of a smile. “I did not expect your visit brother. It has been… quite some time.”

The dragon tilted his head to the other side. Whoever could this giant meat be speaking right now? The wisp certainly did not look like anyone’s brother, and he was the only other guy here.