Voices From a Distant Land, Part 3
So screaming, Kyle rushed toward the mirror and fell into a sea of nothingness. Startled, he exhaled, expecting to suck in water. But nothing happened. And when he turned to look back, not even the mirror could be seen.
For one long moment, Kyle panicked and screamed into the darkness. Did he just step off into an eternity of THIS?
This is a trick, Kyle told himself. A trick. Like the mirror. Luca Blight did wreak destruction on them all, but a voice that might be Geddoe told him otherwise. If they lived and somehow won, he had to find out. He had to seek the truth.
Without any guidepost or marker in the gloom, Kyle picked a direction he thought "up" might be and started swimming. The voices had told him to follow to the way out. His armor did not bog him down in the depths of...wherever he found himself.
Somewhere far to his right, a light shone. It arced and fell downward, in the opposite direction. Finally! Some indication of direction! Powerfully, Kyle cut through the water, breathing in the darkness. More and more he saw tiny sparks of light falling gracefully to someplace deeper down.
Up, and up and up! Each stroke seemed to be a victory, a fight against the darkness. One of the lights passed near enough that Kyle could discern a form. And stared.
It was a person. Battered, tired, beaten, it fell, the light streaking to the sides of it like a pair of...
Kyle's eyes grew huge. The world was filled with the lights of spirits, falling to the earth like a heavenly shower of comets. He -knew- then. The mosaic told the truth. The Guard caught these falling souls and guided them. Oh. Awed, he watched as men and women, some normal people, a few in armor of nations he could not name, were motionless as they fell.
It'll all be right for them, Kyle realized. The Guard would take them to safety. And it would be all right for himself, for one day he'd come back and do the same. Just...not now. He had to try, first.
Up, and up and up! The water grew lighter, had touches of blue. The spirits falling seemed so far below him. His chest ached. Just more...one more..a little more...
Daylight! He could see it right above the surface of the water!
Kyle's head erupted from the water, coughing and wheezing for air.
"Damn, Kyle! You really DO go to any lengths to impress a woman!" someone teased him.
"Wha-hunh?" Kyle responded. He coughed up more water and shook his head.
"Yeah, way to go, Kyle!" cheered someone in the livery of the Sol-Falena local soldiers. "You saved that lady's dog!"
What? Belatedly, Kyle did realize he was, in fact, holding a rather waterlogged specimen of the canine persuasion. It looked pitifully straggly and wet.
"But...I don't," Kyle started, more than confused. The fields? The Guard? the Tower? The sky filled with souls like stars falling to earth? Didn't everyone realize what was going on?
"We saw you clock your head during that plunge into the Feitas. No wonder you look addled," said another solider. "But I bet this'll cheer you up!"
"Oh, Fluffy!" squealed a woman's voice. A very attractive woman wearing quite revealing clothing. "Oh Kyle~ you saved Fluffy! You're my hero!"
Kyle coughed up a bit more water and preened. "Well, I wouldn't say that. I just was at the right place at the right time."
The images, the falling souls, his mind struggled to hang onto them, trying to tuck them away even as he lost a hold of them, slipping through his mental fingers like the darkness that covered the realms between here and the Borderlands. "I'm sure we can come up with a good way for repayment, dear lady," Kyle said smoothly. "First, I need some warm clothes. And damn I feel like a drink. I'm buyin' boys, who's with me!"
"Right on, Kyle! You always were my favorite Queen's Knight!"
Cheers and relief all around. Even as Kyle allowed himself to be led away by the soldiers, he knew one part of him would somehow remember the place he'd been. And go back to one day, a proud member of the Guard.