(no subject)
The water was pleasantly warm and, when she accidentally swallowed it, entirely tasteless. Her eyesight remained utterly clear and she still appeared to be able to breath perfectly as they sunk to the bottom so that the only thing that had changed was the ease of movement and the dappled quality of the light. When Emily realised why she was having no trouble breathing was because she no longer needed to breath, she was more intrigued than afraid. It had all become too unreal and strange for one more odd thing to unnerve her further.
The fisherman swam easily, using his flipper-like foot as a paddle. Relieved of the constraints of gravity, his pale flesh streamed behind him in waxy ribbons. The gentle sloshing of water was broken by a splash as the nightmare creature plunged below the surface and swam towards them. When it screamed, the water seemed to boil around it. Huge bubbles broke at the surface. Through the distorting effects of the water, Emily could see the grass on the approaching shore. It was a very intense green, each stalk picked out in stark colour and shadow. In a strangely detached way, Emily realised that the grass was unnaturally even both in shape and colour. It was as though Salonia was an imperfect replica of this place; the poor shadow of an ideal.
Hot bubbles rushed past them. Emily could feel the ripples from the wings of their pursuer pressing and ebbing against her back. She assumed that this thing was almost mindless and the fact that she was not the fisherman would not be enough to save her. She glanced around and saw that it had opened the black maw of its mouth. She was close enough to see open pores on its hairless skull and she was afraid. What would happen to her if she died for a second time today? Would she return to Salonia, alone and mutilated in the desert? Would she be spirited away elsewhere, perhaps to somewhere even less welcoming than this? If just she could summon the gate… Emily imagined the rectangular opening appearing a little way from them, resting on the large pale rocks of the sea floor. A gust of hot bubbles disturbed the water and swept her a few steps forward. The gaping black mouth of the nightmare creature was almost upon them. Emily felt the fisherman’s slippery fingers squeezing her own.
She concentrated, trying to will the gate into existence. Beside her, the fisherman gave a jump of surprise and his euphoria poured over her like a tide. A featureless black rectangle had appeared directly in front of them. It disturbed Emily; it appeared to have no depth to it at all and it was impossible to see anything through it. It was an opaque, black hole cut into the stuff of reality. The creature pursuing them shrieked with rage and the boiling bubbles wafted them across the stones and through the gate. Emily shut her eyes as she plunged into the dimensionless darkness.
She barely felt the transition but the next moment she was carried across a smooth floor with the momentum of the water pouring through the gate around them. Emily regained her footing just as another wave of water soaked her, this one bearing the sodden, fleshy mass of the nightmarish beast pursuing them.
“Run.” Emily yelled, sprinting through the puddles in what looked to be a promising direction but having no idea where she was going.