Man of Hollows

Rock and debris flew past Hill's head as the larger lava worm charged toward him. It didn't seem to consider Soleil or Lands at all. Its eyeless head was locked onto Hill with a focus that felt unnatural.

Its much bigger size made its spiraling crystalline teeth look all the more menacing. As it got closer, Hill tried darting to the side and out of the way of the gaping maw.

But then he felt the impact.

It wasn't the sharp pain of teeth that he expected. It was the blunt force of something like a freight train. The outer rim of the worm's maw, which was connected to its obsidian-like outer layer of skin, slammed into his chest.

The sound of his own ribs cracking was lost in the hiss of the beast. Before he knew it, he was flying through the air like a ragdoll. His vision tumbled as he slammed into the cave wall. The impact was brutal, shooting agony through every nerve, and then... he began to fall.

His vision seemed to plummet, falling away into a darkness that he couldn't understand.

----

Hill's first sensation was the cold of air moving across his skin. It was a seeping feeling that seemed to pull the warmth from his very bones. The air was much colder than the hot air of the cave, and as a result, he struggled to adapt to the sudden change.

His heart was beating hard.

He pushed himself to his feet, his hands sinking into something fine-grained and soft as he did so.

It feels like sand...

He stood up straight, opening his eyes and looking around. There was only darkness, and it seemed to stretch out in every direction. It was so profound that it appeared to swallow the horizon, which he wasn't sure even existed. It felt like he was standing in a sealed box.

The sensation of the sand-like material under his feet was the only thing that indicated he was standing on something. He moved forward, feeling that the sand sloped up slightly. After walking some more, he found that the sand sloped down.

Continuing in a straight line, he found himself moving up and down over what he assumed were sand dunes.

A desert? he asked himself. Why can't I see anything except for... myself?

Indeed, that was something he didn't quite understand. Unlike the sands beneath his feet, his body seemed to be reflecting light. But this strange sandy material seemed to swallow all light, causing no information to reach his eyes. It looked like he was walking on nothing, but he could feel something.

The sensation was incredibly off-putting.

He looked up, searching for a source of light. The sky was just as black as the sand, but it wasn't entirely empty. Hanging directly above him like a festering wound was a circle of bruised red. It wasn't all that bright, but it seemed to give off just enough light to illuminate Hill's body in red.

And around that strange red disc, Hill could make out the ghostly outlines of other spheres in the sky. He counted ten of them, noting that they were much smaller than the ominous red disc, but they seemed to be arranged in a way that reminded him of the various illustrations of the solar system from back on Earth.

Planets? Then is that red disc some sort of star?

He wasn't too well versed in astronomy, so he couldn't even guess what it was. It was certainly interesting, though.

He looked down at his own body, observing the red light that reflected off his skin and his clothes. He was still wearing the same boat-neck shirt with the gaping hole in the chest area. It made him think: Have I been transported again? Is this some other world?

While the question was ridiculous, it was the only thing that seemed to poke at the confusion that was clouding his mind.

No, it can't be. I was definitely knocked unconscious, so this must be some sort of extremely immersive dream or something. Perhaps I did die, though... and this might be another soul trial that takes me to another world, right?

Damn, that sucks. I was just getting to know Soleil and Lands as well. We didn't even stay together for a day!

Or this is the afterlife, and I'm trapped in this abyss for eternity...

Refusing to accept that as reality, Hill resorted to attempting to find a way out. "Lands?" he called out. "Soleil?"

Only silence answered. There wasn't even an echo, and his voice didn't feel like it was projecting outward. He felt like he was just yelling at himself.

He began to walk as he continued calling the names of his comrades. He continued stubbornly until his voice grew hoarse, but he didn't seem to care anymore about giving up.

As he crested a rather tall dune, he found himself praying that he would see something on the other side.

But unfortunately, there was only more of the same darkness.

Letting out a sigh, he trudged over the crest and continued walking forward again.

He didn't know how long he walked, and time seemed to have no meaning here. It was because of the red disc, which didn't seem to move like the sun would. It was fixed in place.

The whole experience was maddening due to the repeating process of climbing over dunes. He felt himself getting lost in his own thoughts on purpose in order to remedy it.

He thought of his family, the one that had raised him from birth. He hadn't forgotten them, especially Meira, whose death was vivid in his mind. Just thinking about it seemed to cause disturbing images of her dead body to flash before his eyes, but he couldn't look away.

As weird as it was, within this dark void, the memory of her death was comforting. It made him feel real.

Unfortunately, he ended up remembering his father as well. There was nothing particularly positive about the old man in his memories. For as long as he could remember, his father never showed him genuine affection. The man would find any excuse to berate him, kick him, and even choke him.

Yet those memories made him feel real, and they gave him confidence that what he was experiencing wasn't some kind of dream. After all, when was the last time he had remembered something inside a dream?

He trudged up another dune, his calves burning from the cardio. He reached the crest, expecting to see nothing but more of the same endless black.

But this time, there was something.

Far in the distance, so far away it was almost imperceptible, was a light. A tiny pinprick of white light against the absolute black. It was small but it was certainly real.

Hope surged through him like a drug. It burned away the remaining despair, exhaustion, and loneliness. He didn't know what it was—a fire, a settlement, or something beyond his comprehension—he couldn't care less.

He began to run.

He scrambled down the dune, nearly tumbling to the ground as he did so, but he kept moving forward. Because he couldn't exactly see the dunes but feel them instead, it was incredibly difficult to move as quickly as he wanted. The red circle in the sky seemed to mock him, but he ignored it. All that mattered to him was reaching the light in the distance.

It took much longer than he thought. The distance was deceptive in this place. But slowly, the pinprick grew. It became a tiny flame, then a warm glow. As he drew closer, he could finally make out the source.

It was an orb of milky white light. It was hanging from a thin pole that looked like a fishing rod, planted in the sand. A strange smoke seemed to fall from the orb, not rising, but spilling onto the ground like the mists of a waterfall.

And beneath the orb, there were people.

He slowed his pace, his hope tempered with caution. He crested the final dune, and his eyes widened when he saw them up close.

There were two figures, sitting in the pool of light created by the orb. The light wasn't being reflected by the sand, but by the mist it was giving off.

One of them was an old man who had greying brown hair that was in a messy mullet. He had a thick mustache that hung over his top lip in a way that reminded Hill of cowboy dramas. 

The man's outfit was that of a gunslinger as well. The leather duster, the button-up shirt, and dirty brown pants all seemed to scream cowboy to him. The only thing missing was the lasso and the customary hat. That, and maybe a revolver or some other firearm. 

He was sitting ona strange wooden stool as well, the likes of which Hill had never seen before. This was because its legs were covered in strange runic writing that pulsed in the darkness.

The other figure was a woman. She terrified him.

Her hair was a brilliant red that shimmered in the darkness like a blood moon. Her eyes were the exact brilliant red as Hill's.

For a second, she reminded him of Meira. After all, she was the only other person who had the same eye color as him. He bit back tears as the sorrow over his sister's death tried to consume him once again. But the feeling was immediately chased by a sense of wrongness. 

The woman in front of him was much fiercer looking, despite appearing to be his age or a bit older. Her presence was also empty.

She wore a collared, button-down long-sleeve shirt that was colored in a faded pink. Black suspenders held up a pair of simple black pants that had no wrinkles or flaw. Her shoes were also polished to the quality of a mirror shine. 

Unlike the old man, she seemed more sophisticated. That was, until Hill noticed the strangeness of her face.

Her skin was pale like a sheet of white paper. Underneath her red eyes were two upside-down black triangles that trickled off her cheekbones at the ends. It looked like she was crying in black ink. 

Her lips were also painted with the same black, but they were stretched into a clown smile that didn't match her neutral expression at all.

Hill felt rooted in place, unsure of whether to move forward or run away. His heart was beating hard in his chest, and he even felt regret for moving towards something unknown. 

Something felt off here. He knew it.

The old man seemed to notice him. He turned his gaze away from the darkness and up toward Hill, analyzing the scrawny boy.

Then, he cleared his throat. The sound was low and gravelly. Because it was the first sound Hill had heard in this place besides his own, it felt much louder than it actually was.

And then the man spoke.

"Who are you?"