Dimensional Descent

Leonel could practically feel the laughter in his bones. He frowned and looked back up to find that the old woman was still looking at him, her eyes were far brighter than before, her irises practically taking her even her sclera.

"Brat, my name is Mo''Lexi. If you can manage to remember it-"

That was all Leonel heard. In fact, he didn't hear anything after "Mo". His eyes dulled and his mind seemed to shut down. He felt a trembling in his very soul and when his vision finally cleared, all he saw was death and destruction.

The blood came up to his shins, and yet it didn't feel like liquid. Rather, the flesh was so numerous, so minced and blended within that it felt like he had stepped into pudding, as though much of the liquid of the blood had been evaporated, leaving behind a dense glob of death.

He stood frozen in place. It wasn't that he couldn't move-though that might very well have been the case-but rather that he couldn't even muster up the intention to do so.

He could feel the very psyches of each one that had died. The sludge that wrapped around his ankles and calves, seeping into his toes and clawing into his flesh, feeling like the bony hands of those the dead.

Then the clawing began at his very soul, ripping him to shreds, piece by piece.

Had he known destruction? Had he known death? Had he known the heaviness that came with it? The pain, the horror, the sick and disgusting smells that twisted your gut?

These people had probably sacrificed themselves for what they felt was a worthy cause. Maybe they had hoped that once they were gone, they would be remembered as heroes, that their tales would be sung across the generations and that their will would impact the future into forever.

And yet this was the reality. There was nothing beautiful about this dense land of rotting flesh. Not the sight, not the smell, the feeling...

from this, even the skies

out of it. When he awoke, he found plumes of smoke and ash coming from his feet and eyes, his

it wasn't

their own vomit, their eyes rolled back, their skin pale and the last vestiges of life slowly leaking from them. They released their bowels and the last

majority. Tens of

Many of them may never wake up again, and those that could would find themselves

ground, also unconscious. They frothed at the mouth, and tears and snot streamed down their faces, but

to the ground, clutching their chests, some of them kneeled and prayed to Gods they had maybe not even thought of in the last year, and

in one hand and grabbing at her chest and rubbing it with the other. It was as though she was hoping that the pain would go away as though it was a stubbed toe rather than a

only one standing, the only one that seemed to be clear-headed, and

shocked by

day. It's been half a day and

didn't know was that it had indeed been half a day, but what had happened in that half

everyone had come out of the illusion

only one that had experienced the illusion so clearly and for so long. For everyone else, they received just a brief flash before collapsing.