Chapter 2 - Whole Again

A faint smell of wood permeated the air. No surprises there, really, as the entire interior seemed to be made out of wood. On the walls were fixtures with crystals inside that emitted light. They were bright enough to light up the entire hallway, which allowed us to see what it looked like.

Surprisingly, it didn’t look like the insides were carved out. It seemed like a regular room, with wooden panels on the walls and ceiling, and a proper wooden flooring. We assumed many people would have had to work on it to make it look this nice.

There were no doors, instead it was just a long hallway. After a while, the entrance was nowhere to be seen.

“This is pretty exciting,” I said.

Em nodded, a slight smile showing on her face. She was clearly enjoying herself. Even behind her glasses, I could see her eyes twinkle slightly. This was definitely something I haven’t seen before, but I didn’t care, as she seemed to be quite content.

We could see a door in the distance. It was an arched doorway, with a blue door. The door wasn’t big, just the size of a regular door.

Em let go of my hand and headed towards the door. I quickly followed her.

“What do you think is behind this door?” Em asked.

“If this is like any of the manga I’ve read,” I said, “it’s either a boss or some random treasure.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Not really, so far we haven’t encountered anything, and I doubt there’s actually going to be a boss behind this door.”

She nodded, though a faint frown was seen.

“You’ve felt it too, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know what this feeling is exactly, but whatever it is, it seems as though this feeling is connected to this tree, and it’s beginning to fade away.”

“I don’t think this tree has long to live. Anything that’s lived here surely wouldn’t be able to survive.”

We stood in front of the door, and looked at each other, silently nodding, before opening the door.

The room wasn’t really that interesting. It was rather small, though it had enough room for several people to stand in. We both entered, and as we did, the door closed behind us. We tried to open the door again, but it seemed that it trapped us inside.

There was no time to panic though, as the room started to move in a certain direction, slowly speeding up until it reached an ideal speed.

“It’s an elevator,” I said.

“Yeah, I already assumed it was,” she said. “Is it taking us to the top?”

“I guess it is.”

We looked around the room, trying to find some indication of how long the trip would take us. The small space made it hard for me to concentrate, though, as the one I still loved was close by. I briefly looked at her, and immediately looked away. Her face reminded me why I fell for her in the first place.

Finally, though, we reached the top. Once the room stopped moving, we were able to open the doors again. We were outside again, and, like the surface, the top was fairly barren, the only difference was that we were now walking on wood, and, right there in front of us, was a large structure, a temple. It was designed like either a Greek or a Roman temple, I couldn’t really remember the difference between the two. This temple was completely made from stone.

Despite it being abandoned for seemingly a long time, it was still in good shape. There wasn’t any foliage growing, though that was to be expected, considering nothing seemed to grow anymore, but more than that, there didn’t seem any structural damage, not even water damage, which meant it didn’t rain up here, at least not in the time it was abandoned.

“Can you feel it?” I said.

“You mean like someone is calling us?” she said.

“Yeah, that.”

“Should we…”

“I think we should.”

I took a step towards the temple when Em held my hand again. We looked at each other, and it was clear that we were both a bit anxious. It coincided with the feeling that whatever we were feeling was slowly fading. In fact, after we reached the top, it felt like the tree was dying much sooner than we’d expect. Somehow the tree gave us the feeling of security, that we were safe, but now that its protection was fading, our fears began to take over. What used to be just a regular cloudy sky became something ominous.

We carefully made our way inside the temple. It was still warm inside, but slowly a chill began to come over us. The lights were getting more dim now, but it was still enough for us to see what seemed to be a sphere, broken in half, and with several pieces lying on the ground.

I let go of Em’s hand, and walked over to one of the pieces. This sphere seemed to be made of a glassy material, though it was completely opaque. Meanwhile, Em held another piece in her hand.

“What do you think this is?” Em said.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

I looked at the piece. It seemed to be chipped off one of the halves of the sphere. I looked for the place where it potentially could have chipped off from, and when I held it close to the sphere, it began to snap together.

“Woah,” I said.

“What happened?” Em said.

“I just held that piece in my hand near the sphere, and it just snapped onto it.”

Em looked at her piece, then looked around on one of the two halves to see if hers would do the same. Sure enough, once she found the place where the piece belonged, it began to snap.

Immediately, we began to search around for the other pieces, and slowly, the sphere became more complete, until we ended up with two smooth pieces.

“What now?” Em asked.

“Now we’ll put the two pieces back together,” I replied.

Now the two halves were both pretty heavy. The diameter was about one meter wide, which was quite big, and we both struggled to push the two parts together. Eventually, though, we felt the two halves snap together, and we ended up with a large sphere.

After we took a step back, the sphere slowly began to glow. Even though the sphere appeared to be opaque, it was transparent enough for us to see a light appearing from the center. Slowly, the entire sphere began to fill up, until it began to levitate.

It then began to float over a large altar, where a panel began to light up. I wasn’t sure why I did it, but I walked up to it, and reached out. It seemed that Em was thinking the same, and as we both touched the panel, we fell unconscious.

Next chapter (Ch. 3 - Incomplete)

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