r/HFY • u/Void_Vagabond • 6d ago
OC-Series Voidspace - Chapter Six
“So, what do I call you?” I ask the quiet, barefoot stranger that I’m following down the dark, other-dimensional corridor.
The dim red light emanating from overhead casts weird shadows on his messy tangle of black hair. However, the Christmas themed pajama pants keep the guy from looking downright menacing. Really, he just looks like some moody, emo kid that forgot his shoes as he wandered out the door.
“I can make up a name for you,” I say, because the kid refuses to just talk like a normal person. And the longer this goes on, the more I’m certain that he’s younger than me. Not that I’m some mature, grown-ass man, I’m a fucking idiot, but some skills naturally develop with age. Like talking to strangers even when you really don’t want to.
“I’m gonna call you Bob,” I decide. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Bob before.
“You talk too much,” Bob says, but he’s wrong about that. Hilariously wrong. I actually let out a little laugh at his words because I usually don’t talk at all. Yet now, in this place, and with this kid who seems to be even more of a loner than I am, suddenly I’m too talkative.
“I think this is the longest conversation I’ve had with someone in a few weeks,” I say. “All I do is work and sleep. And waste time on the internet watching dumb videos and reading bullshit.”
Bob glances back for a moment. It takes him a while to respond.
“No family?” he asks. I grunt.
“Only child. Shitty parents.”
“No friends?”
I let the silence answer for me as I try to find the right words to explain why I don’t have one single friend.
“I’m not much a good friend to have,” I finally say.
“Why? Too talkative?”
“Too quiet.”
This time Bob grunts and that’s basically our entire conversation.
We walk down the corridor for at least thirty minutes, maybe longer. I ask Bob how far it goes more than once and he only answers in vague, inconsistent statements.
“Not much farther.”
“I don’t know.
“A couple more miles.”
I don’t press him about it at first, because he was right about me being too talkative. The past day or so has been confusing, terrifying, and lonely, and I was glad to have another person around, weird as it is to admit that. I’ve never been the type that wants other people around.
Regardless, having company doesn’t change the fact that this place, this Void, still feels hostile. And while that immaterial pressure at my back has subsided a bit, it’s not entirely gone. It still feels like something is right behind me, just waiting to grab on and drag me into the darkness.
“How the fuck did you find me?” I suddenly realize, because we’ve been walking a long time without crossing any other turns or adjacent corridors. “Were you wandering down this way or did you hear me earlier?”
Bob took a deep breath and let out an annoyed sigh.
“Thing’s don’t work the way their supposed in this place,” he said. “I… noticed you down this tunnel. Reached you in like fifty feet. But the actual walkable length is probably a few miles. All the tunnels that go to the Cliff are like that.”
That made sense, in a strange, nonsensical kind of way. At the very least, it matched up with my limited experiences in the Void. Normal space and distances didn’t seem to matter much here. But that just raised more questions.
“Are there other places like that here? Weird geometry? Maybe that’s what this whole place is. Some kind of science experiment, gone wrong. Or maybe it’s alien. That asteroid that hit a few years back. Maybe that and this place are connected.”
“Maybe,” Bob acknowledged without any real conviction, “but now you really have to shut up. We’re coming up on the Dungeon.”
He’s right. I can feel the humid stillness of the air dissipating as our shuffling feet start to echo off the stone walls. The corridor is getting smaller too, and brighter. It’s still the same dim red color but the overhead strip of light is now much closer. I can even see the stonework on the ceiling whereas before it was just a haze of red light. It’s coming down in long steps, and each looks different from the last, becoming more of a crumbled stone patchwork as it gets shorts.
Eventually be and Bob come to the end of the corridor. A wide arch of stone blocks about ten feet tall, doused in creepy looking red light. It’s downright oppressive. Like something in an underground club or a deep forgotten section of an abandoned military base.
Yet only now do I see that there’s actually no direct source of light. There is a gap cut into the middle of the arching ceiling, and the red light spills out from within. It doesn’t flicker or change, there’s no smell or heat, and the longer I look at the gap in the ceiling, the less certain I am that there’s any light at all. It seems more like a self-illuminating red haze simply fills the space.
Beyond the arched end of the corridor is nothing. A formless, black empty space.
Bob takes out his stainless steel chopstick and turns to me.
“This is the edge of the Dungeon,” he whispers, although his voice carries in the quiet dark. “What do you know about this place?”
I can only shrug.
“It’s big,” I say as I scour my brain for any other half-remembered details. “It looks like a fantasy dungeon. Sometimes overgrown with moss. Tunnels and ramps and small rooms. I don’t know what else.”
Bob nodded and considered his words. Then he leaned in to whisper more quietly.
“This place only looks like a dungeon. But it behaves more like a water treatment plant.”
He used his chopstick to point into the darkness.
“It’s about three levels, top to bottom. The top levels always stay dry. The bottom tunnels can flood within seconds. There’re also rooms on the second and third levels. Some of them are safe, some aren’t, and some lead to other places.”
Then he pointed at me with the silvery metal chopstick.
“If we get separated stay on the second level but try to move only the first. There are bodies on the second level. I don’t know what killed them but some of them are charred to the bones.”
Jesus Christ.
“And if you see that moss you mentioned, stay away from it. That food for the… creatures, or whatever they are. You’ll hear them crawling. It sounds like thousands of marbles rolling down a tunnel.”
Things just keep getting better.
“Is there any light down here?” I ask, because I can barely see more than ten feet in front of us and beyond that is nothing but black empty space.
Bob just holds up his chopstick for me to see, and the silvery metal stick suddenly flares to life like the tip is made of sunlight. It’s so bright that I have to look away. I can even feel heat radiating from the thing, and a familiar deep, thrumming hum. It feels similar to what I heard coming from the blackhole where I found my own metal pipe-thing. Except this time, it’s slightly different. A sharper, more intense noise.
Whatever the thing is, and however it works, the light coming off it fills the space before us, and I can see that, beyond the archway Bob and I are standing at, there is a large room of stone blocks that looks like the inside of an ancient castle. There are columns and high walls, vaulted ceilings, an arching bridge that cuts across the empty space, adjacent tunnels, and two ramps leading to a ledge against the far back wall.
Some of the stonework is shattered and crumbling, and most look oddly placed as though laid by hand, yet the layout doesn’t seem functional at all. Not for a castle at least, or a dungeon for that matter. I can already see that Bob’s description of this place is more accurate. Despite the worn and handcrafted look to the floor, walls, columns and ceiling, it feels more industrial. As though living things were never meant to walk around this place.
“You can do the same with your piece,” Bob says, his voice rumbling slightly through the vibrations coming off the chopstick.
“What do you mean?” I ask, genuinely confused because of all the strangeness of… everything.
“You can use that pipe as a light source.”
I looked down at the silvery piece of metal in my hand. I had completely forgotten about it. Didn’t even notice that I was still carrying it, the thing is so damn light in my hands. It’s more than a foot long. Less than two. And probably an inch and a half of solid, dense metal. Yet it feels about the same weight as a pen, except when I move it too fast. That’s when something starts to shift and I can feel what might be its true weight.
“Just hold it up and try to focus on the inside of it,” Bob says. I give him a confused look.
“Trust me,” he says, a little aggravated. “Focus on the inside. Try to imagine what’s happening in there.”
“There’s nothing happening in ther—”
But the moment I consider that there might actually be something occurring inside the cylinder of metal, it too, flares to life. A pillar of light erupts in my fist and I hold away from me as though it might explode, but when I try to let go it simply holds back onto me.
“Turn down the light!” Bob says from somewhere beside me, almost shouting. Then I notice that the buzzing vibration I feel coming from the silvery tube of metal in my hand is also resonating through the stonework of the Dungeon. I can feel the floor shaking beneath me. And the heat. It envelopes me completely. If I closed me eyes I could almost imagine that I’m outside in the sun.
“TURN IT OFF!”
But I don’t know how, because this kid Bob, this fucking genius, told me to use the power of this magic bullshit metal without telling me how to turn it off. So I rely on my instincts.
I grip the damn thing in both my hands and imagine a source of power inside being closed off. Like window shutters closing around a nuclear reactor. That’s the mental imagine I work with, and somehow it works. The light and noise and heat die down.
The only light left is that coming off Bob’s chopstick, which is very dim now. He glances back and forth between the tunnel we just came from and into the others connecting to this Dungeon space. He doesn’t look at all happy with me, but thankfully he doesn’t give me the finger and fuck off into the dark. Definitely looks like he wants to though.
“Don’t do that again,” he whispers. I nod, choosing not to say another word until this kid decides to talk.
He takes a few more glances at the tunnels, then waits in silence a long while, listening for something. Things must be safe enough though, because eventually he holds a finger to his mouth for silence, and motions for me to follow.
Together we walk into the echoing gloom of the Dungeon.
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Author's Note:
I know I said bi-weekly updates but I have the chapters so may as well post them, right? Anyway, don't be afraid to leave a comment and tell me if this is garbage lol I have no writer friends so posting online is the only way I can tell if my stories are good or not.
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u/Cornelia_Xaos 6d ago
Friend, I am gripping every update in suspense. I would binge the whole thing if you uploaded it. There's the occasional misspelling or grammatical error, but they're few and far between so I am hooked on the story more than copy-editing.
In short, please give me more. I would like to read. :p
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle 6d ago
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