Rising Shards

At the end of the weird wavy hallway, there was a transition to a bridge made of white stone. Looking back towards the hallway, there actually was water all around it. The water flowing around the fabric feeling walls made a tunnel around the bridge, whirling all around in a majestic display. I could see all sorts of strange fish-like void monsters swimming through it.

It looked more like a magic castle from a fairy tale than a dungeon.

“It’s incredible,” I said. “So…are we going into this?”

“Nope, sorry,” Dr. Diast said, clicking her pen and putting it back on her clipboard.

“Huh?” I said.

“Great work, guys,” Diast said. “But we’re gonna call it here for today.”

“But we’re right at the freaking, actual temple!” Kalei said. “It’s right there!”

“And you’re all worn out,” Diast said. “And covered in sludge that smells pretty rank. And we’re out of time today.”

We all groaned.

“We’ll be back soon, don’t worry,” Diast said. “This gives me an excuse to show this off, too.”

Dr. Diast searched through her bag, and handed us each a small, white disk with plastic casing. They each had a ridged design etched onto one side that looked kind of like a mountain.

“Don’t eat these,” she said as she reached Aira.

“I wasn’t going to eat it,” Aira said.

“Fine, don’t taste it to see if it has that nasty tasting solvent on it designed to make people not eat it.” Diast said. “I’ll just let you know now that it does.”

“Well, that takes some of the fun out of…whatever this is,” Aira said. “What are these things, anyway?”

“You’ll see in just a second,” Diast said as Aira tasted it anyways, her face squinching up from the nasty tasting solvent on the disk. “Everybody stand like two arm lengths apart, then put your disk on the ground with the little design side up.”

We did as we were instructed. When I placed the disk on the ground, it felt like it was being magnetized to the ground, which was strange with the stone feeling of the material the bridge was made of.

“Now, press down in the center like so,” Diast said, demonstrating with her own disk, which clicked. I clicked my own, and a beam similar to the one the tiles in the imagination room made came up from it, and we were all back in the entry room with the shower things in the real world.

“So, what was that?” Kalei asked.

“That allows us to jump right back to that spot here next time we need to,” Diast said.

“We won’t have to use these nightmare elevator showers again?” I asked.

“Yep!” Diast said.

“No,” Kalei said. “I wanted to use them again...wait!”

Kalei suddenly got super giddy and started shuffling around.

“These are…they’re like, ah, they’re like…!” Kalei said, barely able to get the words out. “Like checkpoints! Or save points! Video game!”

“Yep, exactly!” Diast said. “These are pretty new, but they’re gonna make our lives so much easier even if there are some glitches with them.”

“I absolutely do not like the sound of glitches with new teleportation technology.” Laenie said.

“I feel like we were all just lab rats there for you to test out this new equipment.” I said.

“Kind of, yeah,” Diast said. “But you all lab ratted swimmingly well. And that’s not just a pun with all the water around us. You get it.”

“Not really,” Kalei said. “A lot of what you say goes right over my head.”

“Terrific, Kalei, thank you for letting me know, I love hearing that you aren’t learning anything from me.” Diast said.

“You’re welcome!”

Diast only sighed at Kalei’s smirk.

“Hey, then what are these big gate rosin-y things we each got, then?” Aira asked, holding up her lump of the strange substance. “And I’m not gonna eat them, I already tasted them and they tasted just like gate rosin.”

“Oh, those we can use to make your bloodsabers stronger,” Diast said. “I’ll show you next time, there’s a special technique we use to get the powers out of ‘em and into your blades.”

“Powers…” I said, staring into my chunk, wondering how something like that could charge up my bloodsaber.

Freshly showered (in the actual showers of the locker room in the void entry building, not the nightmare elevator showers), I took my bundle of still relatively dirty adaptive gear clothes and shoved it into the dirty laundry chute. The suction inside sucked up the bundle with a satisfying “THWUMP” sound. Now changed into more a more casual shirt-pants combo, I waited at my usual spot between the doors to the locker room and the doors leading to a long hallway that led back around to the front of the building where we always regrouped with Dr. Diast after a void adventure.

“Yes!” I heard Oka say as she approached me.

“Yes, what?” I said. “Something good happen?”

“Uh huh, usually Laenie’s done getting cleaned up first or second, and I never get to see you solo here.” Oka said. “So very good for me!”

“Wait, why?” I said. “Just to spend a minute or so with me here?”

“Yeah, I never spend solo time with you after a void mission!” Oka said.

“But the others will be here in like…thirty seconds–"

“Stop using your logic here, let me have this!” Oka said.

“Fine,” I said, not wanting to give away the butterflies messing up my guts. Honestly, I was more surprised she said something that sounded like something I would say.

“Now I’m overthinking this and wishing I didn’t say that out loud,” Oka said. “It’s not super odd for me to want this minute of time, is it? I’m feeling a bit embarrassed.”

“No, don’t be embarrassed! It made me happy.” I said.

“Cool, OK good,” Oka said.

Now I was making this awkward because I started staring at Oka. I didn’t want to waste this minute of time with Oka that had newfound importance, so I scrambled for something to say.

“Hey, check this out,” I said. I whipped my hair to the side and it slapped onto the stone wall, sticking to it for a second.

Oka giggled. “You should probably dry your hair more if it’s still doing the spaghetti thing on the wall there.”

“I dried it enough,” I said. “You saying spaghetti makes me kinda wish I tried that void pasta though.”

“Hmm, maybe we can get some after this,” Oka said. “But maybe not so spicy we nearly burn our mouths up in some strange challenge."

“Yeah, like normal pasta!” I said.

I felt a sting of guilt that I wasted the moment as Kalei, Aira, Laenie, and Lillia all left the locker room together. They weirdly surrounded us, with Kalei, Laenie, and Lillia looking incredibly serious.

“Alright Zeta, cmon,” Kalei said. “Oka, you too. And Aira, you can come with if you want to.”

“We’re making you watch Ladder: Story of a Horse Who Climbed a Ladder.” Laenie said.

“I’ve seen it, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.” Aira said.

“Is this movie really that good?” I asked.

“It’s required.” Lillia said. “If you expect to remain friends with me, you have to see this film.”

“Same here.” Kalei said.

“Yep.” Laenie said.

“Wow.” Oka said. “Guess we don’t have a choice, huh?”

“Guess not.” I said.

“Wait, we have to meet with Dr. Diast again, don’t we?” Oka asked.

“Fine, after that we’re watching Ladder.” Kalei said.

Dr. Diast was paging through her notes on her clipboard as we approached her in the front room. Other groups were getting back from their own void adventures as well. I slumped down a bit when I saw Ovie’s group, not wanting her to even look my way.

“Hey, Diast,” Kalei said. “Let’s make this quick, alright? Zeta and Oka have to see Ladder.”

“Sure, sure,” Diast said. “Like I said before, good work everyone. You showed excellent team work in spite of some challenges with not very obvious or unclear meanings. I personally do not understand the point of casting away your childhood dreams, I think that is a bit stupid, but maybe there’s some deeper meaning we all can get from that room. In the future I think we are gonna work on your fighting tactics and general movements with your bloodsabers, you’re all a bit scattershot with that stuff right now. Outside of Lillia, that is.”

“Thank you,” Lillia said.

“And that isn’t a ‘you are all terrible and Lillia is good,’ she’s just clearly had a lot of training,” Diast said. “And if she hasn’t, then I don’t know what to say, other than that I hope you remember me when you’re rich and famous. Alright, any questions?”

“Can I go now? I want to set up the movie.” Kalei said.

“Yep, sure, glad you got a lot from my pep talk there,” Diast said. “Though I did learn to appeal to you with video games so that’s a win for me.”

“Thanks, bye!" Kalei ran off.

“You go pretty easy on Kalei,” I said.

“I go pretty easy on all of you, all things considered,” Diast said. “Or did you forget about the Fang Fair?”

“I’m still trying to get all the fur out of my room…” I said.

“I was a total Kalei when I was your age, so I think it’s cosmic justice that I have to go through what I put my teachers through.” Diast said.

“You were a total Kalei?” I asked. “Wait, actually that makes a lot of sense.”

“Yup,” Dr. Diast said. “I was probably worse than her, I ranked up a lot more detentions and suspensions than the whole pod has combined by this point. And I turned out alright, so you all will, too. Now that I think about it, maybe a mix of all of you. So it works out that I’m your advisor, you know?”

Diast went to go chat with the other teachers after she dismissed us. I wasn’t sure where Kalei wanted to watch the movie, so we were a bit aimless walking back to the dorms.

“Crap, Laenie,” Aira said. “Do you think one of us should check on the…you know?”

“Oh, you’re right!” Laenie said.

“I can go, you enjoy the movie,” Aira said. “I’ve seen it already, then you won’t have to worry about the you know what.”

“The you know what?” Oka asked.

“It’s nothing!” Laenie said. “J-just something…for the garden club! That needs regular watering. It’s a special plant.”

Lillia squinted at them. Aira left and ran in the direction of the beach.

“Usually you have some kind of comment for Aira with a thing like that,” I said.

“Normally I would,” Lillia said. “But showing you and Oka Ladder is far more important.”

“Is this movie really that good?” Oka asked.

“Normally I’d be defending Aira from Lillia, but the movie is really that good. You will be crying. I guarantee it.”

“That…doesn’t sound fun.” Oka said.

“You’ll understand soon,” Lillia said, sniffling a bit.

“Are you…crying already?” I said.

“N-no,” Lillia said. “And I’m definitely not thinking about letting go of a perfect purebred Jecruible stallion…”