Moving forward, he took a step onto a unsteady, big, makeshift raft, ignoring the complaints coming from the back of his mind completely.
The planks creaked beneath his bare feet, slick with the cold dew that the murky air seemed to conjure. The wood felt rough under his fingertips, splinters threatening his skin, and the faint vibration of the shifting boards traveled up through his legs.
The raft was swaying more than one would expect for its size, each movement producing a low, wet sucking sound as the edge dipped dangerously close to the thick, black liquid that seemed to suspend it. A strange, bitter tang drifted upward from the lake, mixing a scent like burnt iron with a sharper note of decay, forcing him to breathe shallowly.
In front, nothing but the still lake was in sight, obscured by a thick, dark mist, letting only a few golden sparks of light escape. Somewhere within the mist, barely audible, came the occasional echo of distant plops and faint hissing, as if the lake itself was breathing or whispering secrets through its oily veil.
A specially vehement voice blasted through his ears, trying to dissuade him from this foolish endeavor throughout it all.
"There are other ways! This is simply suicidal! Taking risks with little return is madness!
If we simply wait for the realm to retaliate, we should have a chance to get some of the scraps!!"
Ignoring every word, he pressed on, swept forward by a compulsion to explore, a need to move onward—and, most of all, to escape the memories that clung to him.
There were things behind him, heavy with regret, shadows of old failures and faces he had let down. Moving forward was the only way he knew to keep those ghosts at bay, even if just for a moment.
The feeling, primal even, originating deep within and not letting him escape its grasp, was spurred by old memories.
Kicking off the riverbank roughly, the raft shook lightly, yet it did not fall apart—the sail, placed in the midst of it, caught a weak breeze of wind, and a slow, silent, arduous journey forward began.
The raft was not truly floating in the corrosive black gue, merely touching it from time to time, the distorted gravity holding it above sea level.
Sitting down on a log he had fashioned into an uncomfortable seat, Noctis held the sail on track with his one hand, holding something else, something unseen in the other.
His hand seemed to hold nothing, yet he kept it steady, his fist clenched, a few indentations visible on his skin, as if something was wrapped around it. His arm as a whole seemed like it was being pulled back and upward.
Grasping whatever it was so tightly, unable to let go, what pulled him back. He did not want to let go.
The raft was of substantial size, and the logic of its construction was as peculiar as the environment itself. It seemed like a giant piece of wood carved out of a tree of the fitting size. The raft was too large to be carved out of a mere branch, clearly having been cut from a substantial part of the trunk of a giant tree.
Feeling his body lighten by the second, Noctis's gaze couldn't travel far, obscured by a thick haze.
In this realm, gravity was no longer a simple, downward force but a series of shifting vectors that could change their pull at the whim of what governs it.
Noctis, as one of the few beings less affected by these gravitational disturbances, had to balance his weight, fastening unececarlily many things onto the raft, making his weight irrelevant.
By all humane standards, the raft should have been sinking, but it was not. After all, this world did not work by humane standards.
This would hold the raft afloat, at least long enough to reach the center, where the disturbances were strongest. That, of course, only applied if the beings living below did not discover him first.
He was slowly being swallowed by the mist rising from the sludge below as he traveled farther and farther, the land soon no longer in sight, obscured by a wall of fog. The golden guiding light, his only trailkeeper in the darkening environment.
It was weird. Noctis had known that the mist, that lay so heavy in the air, would have neither sent nor taste, yet experiencing it himself was still quite a unique experience. What was literal nothingness supposed to smell or taste like, other than nothing itself?
This did not mean one couldn't sense its presence, especially someone like him, an Authority Wealder who had enhanced senses and noticed the smallest discrepancies in his surroundings.
There was a certain heavy, suppressive air pressing down on him, similar to how one felt when speaking to someone of a higher rank, greatly limiting the use of his ability.
The strings of fate he witnessed all too often were all but gone, absorbed by the dark sludge.
This left him with a certain loneliness. They had accompanied him all his life, even if he could not see them for most of it.
Of course, he did not think of the humane hierarchy when thinking about the suppressive force, a construct clumsily created to give people something to strive for.
To give them something to feel superior about, to give them a certain meaning in life.
A meaning that was all so absent in its vastness.
A clumsy, twisted imitation of the natural order.
No, not such meaningless ranks whose only value was determined by the people who strived to get them.
It was the far more mystical kind, whenever one met an individual multiple stages above oneself, the kind where one's very being craved to submit to it, become part of it.
The kind, where a far bigger authority suppressed a smaller one.
Having fallen into thought for quite a while, Noctis noticed the voice of Ouroboros had fallen silent. Resigned to his fate, maybe?
A bit of guilt arose in Noctis at the thought of having dragged Ouroboros along his whims.
Was this how it felt to have authority, making others simply submit to one's own will?
Poor fellow, has to go along with my every whim. Speaking in a hushed tone, in an attempt to ease some of the strain on their complicated relationship, or maybe simply to feel less guilty.
"Dont worry about it. The plan is well thought out. It will go as smoothly as our first cooperation."
Getting no answer for a few long moments, making him contemplate speaking anew, he heard a quick-witted reply fly at him, coming out of seemingly nowhere, the contents more logical than emotional, the complaints from before completely forgotten.
"Be quiet, or do you want the Formless to awake!?"
Chuckling inwardly at the quick change of moods, reminding him of Darron to a certain extent.
Noctis had grown used to Ouroboros over time. Even if the invader got on his nerves from time to time, his thoughts and contemplations, a mystery.
He was an interesting guy with a few quirks deeply ingrained in his mannerisms. Quirks he tried to hide, but at last failed miserably.
Maybe this was a reason, Noctis had grown used to him so fast. His suspicions towards Ouroboros quickly having vanished. Some of them had persisted to this day, with his distrustful nature. They had yet to become a problem, however, so their relationship had relaxed, unlike their early days.
Back then, Noctis had started frantically searching for a way to deal with Ouroboros, going through every book he knew. He even asked Trisha for advice! Sadly, his search was fated to be fruitless.
When Noctis first met Ouroboros, he had been constantly on edge around him, but over time, he grew to like the guy, even when his actions and mood swings did not seem to make sense to Noctis and did not fit with any other human he had ever observed.
Not to mention the guy's hobbies, at the thought, a shiver ran down Noctis's spine.
Even if Ouroboros was comical and a bit too cautious at times. But he had a point.
Thinking back, when he first met him, Oroborus had been completely careless, trusting unconditionally, having made a complete turnaround on that fateful day.
Maybe it's the result of staring at alternative fates all day long, using Noctis life like a movie franchise.
As Noctis took a look at that silent black sludge below, the atmosphere was so utterly different from everything he knew, truly goosebump-inducing.
And what slept within did nothing to improve his feelings towards the sludge.
The void creature… the formless, was more of an instinctual hunter, simply following its instinct to return everything it sensed to the state it itself was in: nothingness, formlessness, the void.
Any disturbances could attract it and awaken it from its suspended state.
So staying silent and disturbing the surface as little as possible was key.
Watching the surroundings with a tranquil expression. Small mounds of liquid began forming around him as he closed in on the crater's center, the liquid parting and floating upward, creating columns of the tarry substance of differing sizes.
In the process, it releases more of the dark, misty smough into the surrounding air.
Feeling his gaze grow heavier, the negative effects of the mist surrounding Noctis were taking their first toll.
It was common knowledge among Authority Wealders, and even the mortal population was quite aware of this fog and some of its effects.
The fog's origin, after all, was the void which people had to best, if they dared to cross when migrating realms, and this here was a lesser version of the void, a mere fracture of the greater whole, an entity older than humanity itself.
The effects, however, were still quite frightening, even if the density of mist was far less than what could be seen when traversing realms.
Normal people would start hallucinating after a while of exposure, and the more they were exposed, the more their minds would start to dull.
They would be lulled into its embrace until physical effects like body parts starting to darken and liquify would show themselves. Until in the end they would simply cease to exist, assimilated by the void, returned to nothingness or formlessness.
For people like him, the physical and mental effects were considerably reduced, since the Call, the bane of all Authority Wealders, was pulling at their being, interfering with the assimilation into another force, pulling them towards the assimilation with another great cosmic entity.
In a certain way, they had already been claimed.
How Ironic it was that something that was slowly destroying and devouring him was now protecting and nurturing him.
Having traveled for an hour at this point, Noctis started feeling the negative effects of inhaling the misma. The growing density was becoming a more serious problem by the second.
Noctis had not expected the spatial abnormalities to take such a turn.
Was the realm not only weakening gravity but slowly reversing it as well? The mist surrounding him was comparable to that seen in the lands between realms.
There were many ways to at least partially protect oneself from the sickness that was slowly taking root in him.
Developing over the ages, humans made great progress, but he did not have access to any such methods for obvious reasons, pulling up a makeshift mask bandana covering his mouth and nostrils.
The usual way would be to put on a fully hazmat suit, protecting the skin from the mist, since one did not have to inhale it to become susceptible to the consuming effect of the void. Protecting his lungs from it was still worthwhile, since it would slow its effects.
Originally, Noctis thought it unnecessary, taking in the golden luster with as much skin as possible. After seeing the columns surrounding him, however… with black droplets floating upward on all sides, he quickly changed his mind.
Feeling his mind swaying towards reminiscences, Noctis sighed inwardly at his own curiosity to experience the adverse effects of the void.
To add on to the entire situation, he would now have to focus on dodging the rising and falling columns of tar.
The reversal of gravity seemed to strengthen and weaken in increments, showing the voids' struggle against the realm's interference.
Watching his with great effort created raft brush, one of the columns, his subpar sailing skills to blame.
The wooden exterior corroded at the point of contact, a small part of his raft breaking off and falling into the ocean, making a small sound as it plunged into the water and disappeared from sight.
How was he supposed to become a good sailor? He was not from the time realm where water was abundant.
No time to mourn the loss, Noctis swayed in the turbulent, growing waters, dodging and weaving past newly arising columns, barely holding it together. His raft flying higher and higher, the changing phenomena not only affecting the Void, but him as well.
At this rate, Noctis would expect the formless sleeping below to soon awake, everything that crumbled of the ship, and fell into the waters, creating tiny ripples in the sea, fueling his fears.
But that wasn't even his biggest problem, no, his raft would soon succumb if it took a few more hits of the void sea. The changes in the sea were growing in strength, making it impossible to say where and when a new column rising from the sea would appear, leaving only a matter of time till everything went up in flames.
Something had to change, or his beautifully disfigured raft would inevitably capsize, with the captain having a similar fate.
Wasn't it an old saying of the time realm that the captain should go down with his ship?
Noctis did not fear death in particular.
This did not mean he did not desire to live, but he had little to live for and had found things quite pointless for the longest time.
Sucumbing to the void, however, was something else, a far more harrowing fate. He would lie if he said he had no interest in finding out how the sensation of being one with the void felt.
Luckily, he wasn't mad enough to try it. Even if his curiosity was his main driving force, suffering an eternity as part of the void did not seem worth it.
Feeling the golden light grow ever stronger, Noctis knew he was almost there, just a little more.
Just a few more moments without disturbance!
Bang!
"Shit!"
Feeling his body grow considerably lighter, lifting off the ground by a bit, Noctis was confused for a mere moment before he jumped upward, making a split-second decision.
A mound of dark liquid had quickly arisen directly underneath the raft, hitting its center.
Suddenly, the raft started rising far faster than it had ever before, the center first, the entire construct breaking apart the threads holding it together, quickly disintegrating before his eyes, the connections cut, never to be reconnected.
Small debris flew in all directions. The further they moved away from the rising column, the slower they moved.
Noctis was floating directly over the newly arising column, still holding something in one hand while throwing threads one for each finger in all directions with the other.
He gathered the non-decaying pieces, planning to hold himself up with them to continue his journey, using them like a hot-air balloon.
Before fully realizing this, the situation worsened. Before achieving his goal, a particularly big part of his raft collided with the sea of void. Thrown to the side by his own actions while collecting the untainted parts, the big piece of wood that had once been part of his sail flew towards a collapsing column sucked in by the force, and collided with the sea.
A ripple spread through its surroundings, a far larger one than the ones the flightless bird created when roaring at the sea, something that cost it its life.
A sound spread through the sea, a plunging sound of something breaking the surface, a sound far louder than the bird ever created, while screaming, an action that cost it its life.
The world seemed to fall silent for a few long, long moments. Noctis held his breath, making not the slightest sound, held in place by a few white threads thick enough to catch some of the wooden pieces.
Splash!
Surrounding him, every column that had been built out of the dark liquid fell at the same time, breaking the silence the world had upheld, taking with them a few of the fragments floating near the liquid columns.
"Blup"
"Blap"
"Blup"
"Blup"
"Blap"
"Blup"
"Blup"
"Blap"
"Blup"
Replacing the silence with a sound he did not want to hear.
The sound of thousands of bubbles rising and popping, this part of the sea of void seemed enraged, as everything in sight began to bubble up, preparing for something.
The oily sea trembled beneath Noctis, a slow, thrumming pulse echoing through the black expanse as if the lake had found its voice, whispering promises of oblivion.
The air thickened, pressing in heavy and suffocating, sour and iron-scorched, so dense with malice it stung his eyes.
A knot of cold dread twisted in his gut as the churning tar began to bulge and fracture, cracks etching themselves across its surface and releasing shudders of cloying vapor.
Beneath the surface, something immense and formless strained upward, a shadow dragging its hunger through the world's lattice. Soon, even the golden motes flickered uncertainly, smothered by the growing wave of night rising to meet him.
Something had awoken!