Our footfalls echoed more deeply than I had noticed thus far. They reflected the distance from normality and safety we found ourselves at. At some point, even the vines that had become overly-familiar disappeared, and all there was, was barely-treaded stone untouched by even dust. The air grew chilly and damp, then warmer and drier again—it didn’t take a great amount of depth for the ground’s ambient warmth to become noticeable, but considering the successive changes, there was likely a geothermal spot nearby.

“We’re not stuck walking in circles again, I hope,” I said after several minutes of no change to the surroundings. Cris stopped and shone her light backwards, but it all looked the same.

We kept walking.

“Do you think the others got out?” I asked. We hadn’t come across Varus or Karl, and Karl had acted strange more than once. It was better if they were safe, but I more so just wanted to break the silence.

“I’d put their chances at better than ours,” Cris said. “Syco, I’ve been wanting to ask something.” She drew a deep breath. “What do you know of Demon-kind?”

“Hey now, this is me we’re talking about,” I goaded. “Of course, nothing—“

I ended my sentence unnaturally as I recalled the dying figure of a certain person, who I deemed a ‘Goddess’. My certainty of that ephemeral scene scattered more with each recollection, turning it into a disjoint memory that was like a puzzle piece that was included with the wrong set. Only the drive associated with that memory remained strong.

“This may be heresy, or along those lines, but… I think that maybe, the people I have seen have felt too… strongly, about those ‘Demon-kind’,” I said hesitantly.

Cris made a sound like she was surprised, but also, not unlike she expected that answer.

“You’re here one mere day, and you sense that,” she said. “Then, Syco, tell me what you think—but don’t think, just answer. Alright? Is this really how the world is?”

She gestured, making me instinctively look around at the rock encasing us. Nondescript, rocky. Cris shook her head. “I mean outside. The blue skies and white clouds, the green grass and brown bark. Is that how the world should be?”

“Is there something wrong with a blue sky? I see the world the same way you do, probably. It is what it is, right?”

“But you won’t say that about the people, will you? The people, everyone celebrates the defeat of Demon-kind, and you saw that yourself. Of course it is that way, because Demon-kind are evil. That’s the truth in this world, and everybody knows well the evil, disgusting things that they do. Awful things, even as a child I was told about them, so much so that even seeing my father do surgery right in front of me, the first time, it barely affected me. But despite this truth, you just said to me, that people are wrong about that!” Cris glanced at me. “Sorry, it’s difficult to stay calm. In this aberrant world.”

“An aberrant world… then, in the same way that the people misunderstand Demon-kind and embellish their terror—possibly, that is; at least for me it’s just my gut feeling—we are misunderstanding the world, and even the exemplar blue sky is a fundamental misinterpretation.”

“I’m sure it sounds crazy. Live in a boring village for this long and you start rambling, or something.”

“You were impressed upon and thought about this for a reason, so anyone would be wrong to simply deny it… But, rather than a problem with how the world is, it might as well be a problem in the interpretation, or a problem—no, more like an aberration in you yourself.”

“I’m aberrant, huh… At this rate I feel like I really will be chased out of the village, like a monster.”

Ah, so this girl really feels out of place, I thought. But contrarily, I felt no discomfort in going along with her, at least for now. If that feeling was indicative of anything, it might have been as basic as her not being an obstacle. That would be a rough thing to say on its own, but that feeling could have also indicated a many other things.

“Ah, but I remember one thing. The blue sky is a fact of the world, but the sky above Darvaza is still red!”

Cris rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah.”

“Hmm, in other words, the sky changes even for mundane reasons. A red sky doesn’t mean the world has suddenly become nonsense, and closing your eyelids doesn’t make the sky black. To put it another way—to flip the chessboard—even the most incredible occurrence might not change the sky. If all life on the planet were to be wiped out, the sky would still be blue; it wouldn’t change a single shade, as adamant in its conformity as the stars are in their placement in the night sky. What I mean is, something could change in the world; something could ripple through the world that changes everything, but at the same time, nothing would change. If time had flowed the opposite way until just moments ago, would the sky look different, or would the sound of rain pitter-patter with an amended melody? In such a world, I think that—rather, I hope that the most profound change would be that someone might ask, ‘Hey, is this how the world should be?’”

Cris kept walking in silence. Perhaps I had said too much, rambled off-course.

“Now I feel even more creeped out,” she said.

Of course. I lamented my inability to say the right words to Cris.

“But when you talk about things like that… time reversing? Haha, it makes me feel a lot more calm. Why even worry about something that is so out of our control? Even if there is something wrong about the world, does it really matter to me?”

“As much as politics matters to an ant, I’m sure,” I said.

Cris laughed, as though expunging unneeded thoughts. The light changed unexpectedly—rather than piercing hefty darkness, it was now illuminating flat ground.

“Finally…” Cris said. “Come on Syco, let’s find Rea, get out of here, and have a damn meal.”

The floor we found ourselves on was fortunately very basic. It was apparently incomplete, as the hallway ended quickly with a haphazardly crumbled wall. Whatever method had been used to mine out the rock, the work had been left incomplete.

To the right was an unrefined doorway. With it being the only path left to us, I followed Cris through.

This room was as large as the massive empty hall we had encountered earlier, but it was much more rough and, by the looks of it, hurriedly excavated. The ceiling and walls were raw layers of rock, with only the floor being smoothed out.

Otherwise, the contents of the room were incomprehensible. A metalwork jungle. Thick, iron cylinders exited from the rock overhead and split into smaller collections of pipes, which spewed off into the darkness. Wooden framework weaved its way in every direction, establishing a foundation for what I could only recognize as metal and glass formed into a variety of strange, interlocking shapes and designs. The snake-like formations stretched away to unknown depths, with only a thin space between themselves and the wall to walk down.

“What is this… a pile of junk, or…” Cris murmured.

There was something more to it than that. This was the silent husk of something with meaning and purpose.

Nearby, I spotted a round band of metal jutting out from the framework, and curiously handled it. It spun smoothly around its centre, and in doing so, moved something behind it, which then caused a few metal balls to roll into an enclosed pipe. The rattle of the balls disappeared into the maze of metal.

“Nothing happened?” Cris asked.

There was then a dull bang and a clanking sound from somewhere deep within the room, followed immediately by a surprised scream.

“This way!” Cris said. We hurriedly rushed down the path alongside the wall, and half a minute later something appeared in our way.

“Rea!”

Cris fell to her knees and embraced the girl in tattered clothing sitting hunched up on the ground. Same age as Cris, with long blonde hair and a pretty face, and unfocused blue eyes. This was the girl I had seen earlier.

“Rea, you’re okay? Are you hurt anywhere?” Cris immediately tended to her, until her awareness began to set in.

“C-Cris?” the girl said softly. Her eyes, already red and swollen, began to leak tears. “Cris, help me, take me out of here~!” she cried.

In that eerie place, stifled by dead air and darkness, I waited as Cris comforted and checked her for anything dire.

It was a tough return back up the stairs, but by carrying Rea between us, Cris and I forged our way back. It seemed that, though starved and exhausted, Rea would be okay, though she had passed out soon after we found her.

“I’m sorry, about Holly,” I said to Cris.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re not in the clear yet.”

We didn’t share many other words until we reached the top of the stairs and took a short rest. “What is this place, in the end?” we’d ask each other, but no amount of thinking could bring us an answer to that question. I recalled something that Cris had mentioned: something about an insane man who had come here, built this place, and performed experiments. The poppies could explain many of the delusions I had seen, but in the end they were little but an infestation that made use of this place.

Cris and I weaved our way back to the large hall where the vines had attacked, and Cris urged me back to the blocked doorway beyond it. The refreshing sound of flowing water—escape was just beyond here. Unlike last time, Cris put her palms against the heavy stone door without any hint of indecision. She then unleashed a powerful force from her hands; the air rebounding from the wall almost toppled me over. The door didn’t open, but it was fractured, and its top half was easily pushed out.

Evening sunlight…

Cris fell to her knees and panted, but she wore a smile on her face.

“You could have done that earlier?” I asked.

Cris shook her head. “I’m a little selfish, but not enough to leave you stuck in here when I could help it. Magic is… well, I’ll teach you why another time,” she said while breathing heavily. It had entirely exhausted her.

I carried the slumped Rea through the collapsed doorway first, and leaned her against the tree that grew partially in front of the small enclave. No wonder the door wouldn’t open normally. I helped Cris through too, and then we both drank greedily from the stream in front of us. We were at the bottom of a deep ravine; thin slices of bushy land ran alongside the stream, immediately followed by sheer cliffs of dark rock. At the top of the ravine was the wooden bridge we had crossed when we first arrived here.

With the golden sunlight hitting her face from beyond the thin gap of the ravine, Rea came to and was helped to the water by Cris and I. She looked at me curiously but was likely too exhausted to question who I was quite yet. Ah, what face would she make if I said “Hey, it’s just me, the one you stabbed with some dirty metal!”?

“Karl…”

Rea called that name suddenly. I glanced back at her—she was staring upwards, and waved.

On the bridge, up there, was Karl. He stared down at us. He saw me.