Toora felt it first, well before it was visible to the others members of the team, but soon it was evident to all that the darkness was retreating quickly towards the tower. It passed over them, like the terminator line of a new dawn, taking all the dark and gloom away with it. Before long, the forest was nothing more than a normal forest, with at its center the black tower. It was darker than ever, as if all light that touched it just ceased to exist, visible as a point of nothing against the starry sky and dark blue tinted trees.

“Quick, let’s go!” Toora bolted towards the tower.

The rest of the team were ready, having been briefed beforehand about what to do. They discarded everything, from their spare equipment to the still working glowing rods, and ran as fast as they could towards Lightsbane. Toora was at the head of the group, followed by Marcus just behind her. Lisa and Pearson were lagging behind, and she turned to look at them for a brief moment before resuming her sprint towards the tower. Her eyes landed on Lisa’s armor and Pearson’s flowing blonde hair for a moment, and she felt her heat sink. Too far, they were too far back.

***

Back in the day, when the Pylon was still under construction, they used to extract Hume Energy differently: rather than having a complex system that started with a portal to the void and ended with a steady supply of reality gradient, when they did was create two areas where one was too real, and the other was too little real. It was quite the headache inducing thing for most people to even comprehend, and very inefficient in terms of energy consumption, but this was before the discovery of the void dimension from where to extract excess reality and occasionally dump excess non-reality.

The gist of it was to use the difference between the two areas to create a sort of flow, which could be channeled and used much like the more refined Hume Energy that came in later versions of the process. Just before the first Pylon became active, which coincidentally was the one Edmund was at right now, the old technology had reached its theoretical peak of optimization and miniaturization. They had managed to synthetize and produce small devices, the size of a water bottle, where at the two ends reality and non-reality were stored like charge in a battery. By breaking the seal that separated the two, it was possible to gain access to a temporary flow of Hume Energy that an attuned individual, such as Edmund, could use. Each one of these devices had cost more energy to make than a country would use in an entire year.

What sparked his mind, and made him run towards a seemingly forgotten closet two floors up, was the fact that Edmund remembered having a conversation with one of the staff about those very devices.

“What do we do with these?”

“Throw them away, I guess?” he remember replying back then. He shook his head at the memory, right as his hands struggled to open the jammed door.

“Don’t.” one of the engineers, Janet was her name, had interjected, eliciting an eyebrow raise from Edmund. “Why don’t we keep a stock for emergencies?”

Edmund had laughed at the idea back then. Now, he was glad he had decided to humor her and actually stored the Hume cells in a hidden compartment of the closet. He had no idea, at the time. So naïve he was, he thought he could keep everything running without a hitch forever. He was able to change reality itself, after all, and in his mind at the time he thought that he had reached a point where he could never return back to how he was previously, no matter how hard the universe tried to smack him.

He was so wrong.

Finally, he fished out a circular device out of a foam container. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled at the ends and twisted the two caps of the canister. It glowed for a moment with internal light, a signal that the reaction had started. Edmund waited a moment, then entered a combination on the small keypad on the side glass of the container, and closed his eyes.

He felt the power flow into him once again. Its taste was different than what he was used to, rougher and less refined, almost disgusting like a strong medicine was when compared to Coca Cola, but he could work with it. He inhaled, and teleported immediately to the portal room, bringing the device with him.

In a matter of seconds, a second shield surrounded Axiom and merged with it. A rush of air invaded the room like a tornado, as a cacophony of noise came from the momentarily naked portal singularity at the moment the two shields merged. Then, silence.

The new shield was holding perfectly.

Edmund exhaled. Finally, something was going his way. There was still some fuel in the canister, and two more full ones back at the closet. With some luck, that would be enough to fix whatever damage had caused the rest of the machines on this floor to stop working over the years, and he would finally have his prized Hume Energy flow through him once again.

***

They arrived at the base of the tower. From here they could see that all around its base, made of a completely black monolithic substance they could not recognise, there was a huge ring around a hundred meters in radius where there was just nothing. No grass, no plants, just bare stone. Not only that, but the stone was perfectly smooth and flat, as if polished to the point it was shiny, with not a speck of dust or a fallen leaf on it.

“What is this?” Pearson asked.

Toora examined the ring around the tower. “This is where countless people had come to die.” She said. As she was saying that, she noticed a small leaf carried by the wind, falling to the ground from a distant tree. It slowly came to rest on the bare stone.

“What do we do?”

They were all looking at her. “See that?” she pointed at the leaf. “It’s safe now.”

Marcus eyed the leaf warily. “Are you sure it’s safe, boss?”

Toora nodded.

“Look, if boss says it’s safe, it’s safe.” Lisa shrugged, and took a step into the ring of stone.

Everybody held their breath.

The metal clanked. Her right foot made contact with the stone, then her left one, her armor making a metallic noise with every step. Then, they saw her stumble, and fall to the ground with a thud. They gasped. Toora stared in horror until…

Lisa cursed. “Shit, this stone is slippery!”

“Lisa what the fuck?” Marcus yelled. “You made my heart stop for a second!”

“Sorry!” she said from her armor as she struggled to get up.

Toora sighed. “Let’s go. We have no time to waste here.”

They started running towards a square opening in the tower. From there the blackness of the tower seemed to retreat towards the top, revealing bare metal below the cover of the disappearing darkness. The hole had the shape of a small door, and indeed after the darkness vanished it revealed something that looked like a small door, just a bit strange, with no handle and no hinges. They all ran towards it, although Pearson was helping Lisa with her armor, falling a bit behind the rest of the group, while Toora and Marcus were almost at the door.

Meanwhile, unknown to them, inside the tower Edmund was frantically fiddling with a machine. He was studying and examining it with panicked hurry, going over the minutiae one after the other, trying his best to keep a level head. Thirty seconds. The fix he applied to the inner part of Axiom was only temporary without the rest of the machines supplying energy to it, and with the portal now in an unusable chaotic state.

Toora reached the door first, followed by Marcus. He banged on its metallic surface, cursing.

“It’s shut close!” he said, seeing no handle or anything to hint at where he should pull to open it.

Twenty seconds. Edmund passed his hands on a piece of exposed wire, following it all the way across the room, and into the adjacent room. There, it went into a machine, or it was supposed to if it wasn’t snapped in half. Drawing power from his second canister, Edmund passed a hand over the broken cable, and the two pieces joined together as one.

“We need leverage! Use Lisa’s shield, put it under!” Toora yelled.

Pearson helped Lisa down and lifted the hefty shield, running towards the other two with it in tow. It was heavy, but considerably less than carrying Lisa. He handed it to Marcus, then hurried back to help the armored knight back on her feet.

Ten. The machine, as far as he knew, was supposed to be operational already. But it wasn’t starting. Why isn’t it starting?

Nine. Toora kept the shield in place with her hands, placing her staff against the wall just under the dead keypad that would have opened the door with a combination, if only there was power.

Eight. Edmund took out the third and final canister.

Seven. Marcus pulled with all his might.

Six. Edmund pulled the two ends outwards, and twisted them.

Five. The door slid up, but the shield slipped and it closed again with a loud clang.

Four. Edmund heard a noise, but didn’t let his eyes leave the glowing contents of the tube.

Three. Pearson and Lisa joined the other two, and set the shield back into the thin slit. The door slid up again.

Two. “I’ll hold it.” Pearson said, and Toora, then Marcus crawled through the tight passage and into a dark space inside the tower.

One. Edmund finally felt the rush of energy flow from the device, and converted it into electricity for the machines. They whirred awake, all at once.

Zero.

Edmund felt the Hume energy. It was just a small trickle, coming from damaged machines that were operating way past their expiration date, but it was there. And he was still alive.

…

The tower woke up. The dark room Toora and Marcus were in was flooded with blinding white light, and a blaring alarm blasted through the whole space. Red spinning lights made them dizzy, and a multitude of other, new, alien sounds invaded their ears.

“The staff!” she yelled, the words lost in the noise.

Pearson saw her turn towards him and stopped for a moment, right under the sliding door. She pointed at where she had placed her staff outside earlier, and he made to turn his body to look at where she was pointing. She saw Lisa’s feet scrambling towards it, a bit unsure at first due to the slippery stone, then more secure as she leaned on the staff after grabbing it. Toora let herself relax a little.

It didn’t last even an instant. Toora barely had time to process what was happening, when she heard Marcus scream like she had never heard him scream before. His voice was a mix of panic and horror, breaking down in a mad hysteric cry for help. As her eyes went from him to the door, she understood why. Under the door, still held open by the shield jammed into it, the now dead body of Pearson was stuck halfway through. It was still moving, jerking, but the empty look in his eyes told her what her observations were soon about to confirm: he was dead. Half of his body, the half that was still outside of the door when the lights came on, was missing. Not even blood was pooling on the ground, seemingly disappearing into thin air as soon as it came out of the perfect cut that had bisected him.

Looking through the narrow gap, she saw that there was nobody outside anymore.

It wasn’t over. Suddenly and without warning, she felt her magic rapidly drain, then the draining stopped and she felt a force lift her up and around. Beside her, Marcus was hanging in the air much like her, arms and legs held in a crucified position, floating a meter above the ground.

“Looks like you found the Null Zone.” A voice said, and both of them immediately turned towards the source of the voice, coming from a dark stairway half hidden in the darkness.

The alarms suddenly stopped, and the lights dimmed to a comfortable level. Behind them, they heard the door close shut with no trace of the body or the shield. But their eyes were glued to the figure of a man emerging from the shadows. Before they could even speak, he lifted an arm and the forces holding them aloft tightened around them like a vice. He limped towards them.

“Who are you, and why are you trying to force your way into my place?”