Chapter 63: Aptitude Test (15)
Lucien floated.
Not fell, not flew, not even drifted in any meaningful sense, just floated, as if the very laws of gravity and physics had shrugged and decided he wasn't worth the trouble anymore.
The world below, blurry, scorched, fragmented, spun in slow spirals of sound and light.
The pain was gone.
So was the heat, the fire, the tension in his lungs.
He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
Then came the voice.
Light as mist.
Clear as a bell.
And soaked in the sort of sarcasm that came with centuries of cosmic detachment.
“Ah. So this is where you ended up. Hm. I would’ve bet on unconscious under a rock, but this is much more entertaining.”
Lucien startled.
Or tried to.
His body, if he still had one, twitched uselessly in the weightless void.
His voice cracked like an echo through a dream.
“Who’s there?! What- what is this? Where am I?!”
“You, dear Lucien, are currently having what I like to call a loose soul moment. Very ethereal. Completely unintentional.”
Lucien spun, trying to locate the source.
“I- I’m dead?!”
“No, no. Not dead. Not yet at least. Although I wouldn’t say you are alive either. Merely slightly misaligned. Your soul has… well, let’s say it took a brief sabbatical from your body.”
Lucien blinked.
“A what?”
“A sabbatical. A little wander. Seeing how your soul isn't tethered as well as it should be…You know how it is. Bodies are noisy, painful things. You were on fire. The soul panicked. Up you went. And since you aren’t exactly deceased, this is the farthest you can go.”
Lucien’s mouth opened.
Closed.
He shook his head.
“That’s not how this is supposed to work.”
“Oh, forgive me, I didn’t realize you were an expert in metaphysical soul anchoring,” the voice said dryly.
“Shall I fetch you a textbook and a cup of tea?”
Lucien growled, “Okay, then what is going on? Who are you? How do you know all this?”
“Ah.”
The voice paused.
“That’s a very inconvenient question for you to ask.”
“…What?”
“I could tell you, but last time I introduced myself, it ended up creating a minor cult, a series of accidental civil wars, and a situation involving sentient soup. So, for everyone’s sake, let’s skip that part.”
Lucien's eyes twitched.
“…Fine. Then why can I hear you but not see you?!”
“Because you are in the middle of death and life, if you were entirely dead you could see all of it, but as you are, this is all you can and should perceive. For your own shake my boy.”
“And…those are trivial things compared to what you should actually worry about. Your soul is currently floating like a balloon full of bad decisions, and you’re more concerned about acoustics than, say, getting back into your actual body. Which, might I add, is rapidly cooling below you.”
Lucien followed the voice's cue and looked down.
His breath caught.
There was movement, tiny figures on a ruined battlefield, running across scorched stone and shattered debris.
He saw people shouting, crawling through rubble, frantically searching.
Balt, Corin… the others.
“Wait- my body’s still down there? I’m not dead?”
There was a palpable silence from the other side.
“Yes…I know you lack conventional ears and… a brain. But please try to understand what I am saying. "
“I am not dead???”
The voice gave an exhausted sigh before speaking again.
“Though you’re working very hard to fix that.”
Panic surged.
“Then, then how do I get back?!”
“Ah, now we’re asking the right questions,” the voice said cheerfully.
“Answer: you fall.”
Lucien blinked.
“That’s it?”
“Well, there’s also the bit where you realign your essence, resist spiritual inertia, and ignore the screaming instinct that says falling is a terrible idea. But mostly, yes. You fall.”
Lucien looked down again.
The ground was swirling closer now.
More focused.
More real.
A flicker of motion below, was that Corin lifting rubble?
Balt calling his name?
People moving rocks.
Looking in puddles.
None of them had moved on towards the end point.
He felt his throat catch.
“They’re looking for me…”
“And you’re up here. Floating. Like an indecisive feather.”
“I need to go back.”
“Then stop flapping your incorporeal lips and move.”
Lucien didn’t think.
He braced his limbs, soul-limbs?
Spectral limbs?
And dove.
Sort of.
What he did was more of a full-body flail that lacked any of the grace associated with celestial descent.
He wiggled like a worm.
A glowing, panicked, airborne worm.
“…Are you trying to swim?”
Lucien yelled through gritted teeth, “I’m trying something!”
“You look like a flying fish having a panic attack.”
“I didn’t ask for your commentary!”
“And yet you continue to receive it. Quite Curious.”
Lucien kicked.
Thrashed.
Tried to pull himself down with sheer will.
The world grew louder.
Closer.
“Ten points for effort,” the voice drawled.
“Now try aiming. You’re veering toward the wrong mountain.”
“I know!”
“Do you, though?”
“I know!”
The battlefield was slowly coming up to meet him now.
He could see the spot, the crater of broken stone where he had once stood.
Where he should be.
He let out a breath.
Or at least, something that felt like a breath.
“One last thing,” the voice murmured, sounding softer now.
Almost... wistful.
Lucien blinked.
“What?”
***
“You own me one for this,” the voice murmured, sounding softer now.
Almost... wistful.
Lucien blinked.
“What?”
He never got an answer.
Because the next moment, something grabbed him, an unseen hand?
Tentacle?
Or perhaps a cosmic sarcasm made flesh, latched onto his spectral ankle with all the gentleness of a pissed-off physics professor and flinged him towards the ground with speeds that could and most likely would break the sound barrier.
“What the- WAIT-”
There was no time to finish.
He barely managed half a curse before the world tilted, and then.
He plummeted.
Screaming.
Twisting.
Swearing so loudly and so creatively that the very fabric of the void might've taken offense.
“YOU COSMIC JACKASS I WAS LINING MYSELF UP-!”
“Oh hush,” the voice called sweetly after him, already distant.
“You’ll thank me later.”
And then Lucien hit the light.
Not light, the fluffy, go-toward kind.
No, this was light like a hammer.
Like a glacier.
Like the soul equivalent of being dunked into an arctic river lined with screaming banshees.
Cold.
Bone-splitting.
Lung-shriveling.
Soul-wringing.
Cold.
It slammed into him all at once, a tidal wave of icy agony that shoved him back into the prison of flesh and blood he had so briefly escaped.
The warmth of the soulscape was gone.
The detachment.
The calm.
Now there was just-
Stone.
Pain.
And suffocating silence.
He was back.
Back in his body.
Back under a slab of something impossibly heavy, jagged, and cruelly placed across his chest and legs.
The world pressed in on all sides, too tight, too dark.
Each breath was a struggle against his own ribs.
He tried to move.
Couldn’t.
Tried to scream.
His mouth wouldn’t open.
It was frozen shut.
Not just from cold, though the chill clung to him like wrathful frost that had some kind of personal vendetta against him, but from something else.
Some lingering frostbite of the soul, as if his return hadn’t been properly sealed.
His jaw trembled.
His lips barely parted.
His lungs spasmed with the effort of drawing breath through clenched muscles.
He thumped his head weakly against the stone.
Once.
Twice.
‘Think, Lucien. Think.’
He could hear them.
Muffled shouts.
Movement.
Clattering boots.
Someone calling his name, faint, but growing louder.
‘Balt?’
He tried again to scream.
Managed a low, guttural groan that barely crawled past his throat.
‘Useless. Pathetic.’
He slammed his fist against the rubble above.
Once.
Again.
It was feeble.
A whisper of a sound against the cacophony above.
And then.
“-Wait -shh! Did you hear that?!”
A pause.
Lucien stilled, praying whoever it was hadn’t imagined it.
“...Lucien? Lucien!!”
‘Yes! Yes, I’m here! Down here, look here, under this brick pile! Turn this stone over! Here!’
He groaned again, louder this time.
Pounded his fist against the slab until a sharp bolt of pain shot through his shoulder.
But it was something.
It was enough.
“I heard that! He’s down there, he’s under the stone!”
“Corin- get over here, now!”
Voices.
Hands.
Scrambling.
The heavy scrape of stone grinding against stone.
And somewhere in the freezing dark, as blood surged back into limbs and fire replaced ice in his veins, Lucien exhaled.
Barely.
But he did.
Light beamed through the dark as debris was slowly lifted off of Lucien's-Almost-Tomb.
Lucien could hear the voices of his rescuers more clearly now.
“I see him! Quick! He is in a really rough shape!”
“You heard him! Faster!”
“Make sure you don’t move the boulder, be careful when you pick up lodged stones. Be-”
Lucien could finally breathe easy.
And in the back of his mind, where the voice had once lingered, a final whisper echoed like the fading ring of a bell:
“Welcome back, Lucien Crowley. Try not to float away again, hmm?”
