Chapter Text
John was... nowhere. Or at least he thought he was.
He couldn't see anything in the distance, nor hear anything besides his own thoughts. He couldn't smell anything either, but that was less of an issue since he didn't rely on his sense of smell that much.
He couldn't even tell up from down, something he always could to usually, even given how abstract these notions were when floating between celestial bodies in the Medium. As far as he knew, he truly was in some sort of void. Or at least his current body was.
This body was... well it didn't seem like a decent body at all. Even the projected bodies he could unwillingly create when visiting dream bubbles while asleep felt more complete, and they were literally empty shells that expired when he would wake up. This, on the other hand? It felt like he was 'raw'. Like this was what he was at its core, unshielded.
Because of that, this 'body' he currenty had felt far more precious than anything else. Somehow he knew that if he died now, he would die permanently. God tier or not.
Speaking of god tier, it looked like he was wearing his God Tier jammies they were part of him, and... Yes. He could indeed use his powers somehow, even if they behaved very weirdly without a notion of 'down' to anchor the way some of them moved. He could even turn into wind himself.
...
However, no matter how far he tried to reach, there didn't seem to be any boundaries to this place. He would have cursed, but he couldn't speak either. A quick search also told him that his sylladex was gone. No pesterchum, phone calls or vriskagram for him either. Not that phone calls were an option when he had no voice anyway. The was also a force, barely there, that was slowly... feeding of his energy? It was very weird, but not much of a concern since he could very easily push it back.
...
Now that he knew what was currently going on, he would need to understand how it came into being, and how to get out of it.
The last thing he could remember was... the Lilypad. He was standing on the Lilypad, reaching towards the door to open it. His friends (well, eight human teens, three trolls, a cherub and a human adult. The sprites weren't there for some reason) were there with him, cheering. And then... nothing. Afterwards, he just started being here, without as much as a warning. He didn't faint and wake up either, he simply stopped being in one place and started to be in the other. And that memory felt so far...
But why? Was that the "reward" the game had in store for them? Or maybe just for him?
Why not earth C? Why not what they were actually promised? It didn't make sense! Was he going to be here, floating in the middle of nowhere for who knows how long? Were the others dealing with the same thing somewhere else? Would thigs have gone better if he didn't open the door? Probably. If only he knew what would happen when he opened the door.
He needed to stop himself from opening it. Maybe if he could manage to tell himself to not do that, he...
No. His retcon powers were not there anymore.
What could he do, then? He couldn't retcon out of this place, and he couldn't travel to the edge, he was sure of this now. He... he never felt this powerless about something before. He was he heir of Breath -of freedom, in a sense!- and he was just trapped.
Just... what was this place and how could he be stuck here?
...did it matter? No.
He had been here for what, half an hour? At least he could still feel time flying by.
He couldn't do anything like this. Anything useful that is.
Maybe, for once, he should wait.
Why keep trying if it wasn't going to do anything?
He would push that mysterious force away for as long as he could, but at this point, anything else was useless.
So he stopped trying anything else, and simply kept pushing.
The longer he pushed, the less he thought,
untill, eventually, he could only think about how hopeless this was,
and then, slowly, fell asleep,
pushing
less
and
less.
Then he woke up.
He gasped as he was already starting to sit up, shaken from that too-real nightmare.
Before he could process anything else, however, his various phones, computers, and other electronic devices in his buzzed several times each, still in his sylladex. From the sound, he had a big number of pesterchum notifications at once, as if the devices got turned on when he woke up. Weird.
He went to grab one, but instead, he only managed to grab a single sheet of paper, covered in light blue ink. Jane?
It read:
Hello dear brother.
I don't understand why, but it feels like you were getting weak fast, in those last ten minutes.
For your sake, I would hope you get better. "Would" being the keyword, as you probably noticed.
I doubt this change on your part is deliberate though, so I assume that the time is approaching.
A few days, maybe?
Enjoy those last days before I am complete.
- Your sister
What in the world?
This could not be Jane. Not the Jane he knew anyway.
Shocked, John crumbled the paper and threw it away.
It was at this point that he saw his own hand.
A hand similar to what he had only seen on a single person before.
A deep green hand, that ended with claws.
In other words, a hand like Calliope's.
He barely noticed when he swore, with a voice that wasn't his.
"Oh no. Oh hell no,"