The Orb Of Hidden Maps (Chapter 11)

The shorelines began to creep up, the crew were finally passing over the sea of Hebbura. But what lay ahead was even more stark than the sea itself. Though it didn't appear as anything other than flat land as far as could be seen, there was a very powerful dread hanging over such a realm.

 

"What to say about this? What tales could possibly be told?" Deba asked looking out at such a bleak landscape. It was darkened as if no daylight could be seen, but in all directions the horizons were illuminated by what could have been starlight or a rising sun, but a dawn that would never break. Just a long static glow of light outlining the far off distances.

"Take a few steps in the Hollow Flats and you'd feel you been here for a long time." Pacno stated. "There's a prophecy about this place. I don't know what it is in your worlds, but here and from what I remember of Arca, it was an evil tiding that the life of a world would come to be subdued and lost to what all had been forgotten."

Rainier stirred from his quiet mood at the sight of the land before him.

"There's a prophecy about that, back on Cova. But it describes a lost sea. Something like; The life of the world came to be covered in death. The sea that once filled its territory rolled out and stretched to form another sea leaving all hope shattered."

The land that stretched out before them was more than just a vast dead zone, it held an emptiness that could be felt as nothing less than dread, but there were no signs of anything to dread. Just the very grip of dread itself.

Rainier adjusted the ship's lighting and navigated slowly enough to get a closer look at the grounds. Staying just above the thermal layer that the land was giving off.

"Fiodian prophecies speak of this dark land, as well." Zoic muttered. "But there was something else. A mystery really. Abandoned lands that shield against all outside influences."

Nackendara and Ackea exchanged glances, remembering such prophecies and tales of their own knowledge.

The craft began picking up strange sound patterns. Repeated tones but they would vary, as if there was a message within them. Rainier amplified the sounds and the ship's reading gave a structural graph of what the sound patterns showed visually as a three dimensional construct. Then another layer merged, and then another while also repeating the same structures.

"This is a collapsed realm", Nackendara stated. "It's collapsed underneath this layer of land. There's more here."

"I believe you're right." Rainier agreed.

Hovering now well within the border of the area showed that the light decreased almost ten percent and going further inward toward the desolation would eventually become pitch black save for the ship's lights and whatever light was brought with them. They would not go further and kept the distant lining of light within sight. But the tones remained. Zoic suggested a theory he had, but he would have to set foot onto the deadly ground. No signs of life were detected and he embarked after the crew set the ship into close hover mode no more than a couple of feet.

"Keep all engines burning! We don't want to anchor to this place, we keep her running as to not align with the tonic flow that seems to permeate here!" Zoic called back as he stepped out onto the surface.

It was at this sudden footfall that the ground gave way enough to pull Zoic down with it as it sank a subtle few inches. Rainier and Ackea reached out to pull him back up into the ship, but they were unable. Stumbling out onto the ground as well. The pull was so strong that they fell to their hands and knees. Nackendara secured herself to the ship and followed holding extra tethers. Pacno sprung into action and kept the ship in hover while activating the power beams to surround the ship with light. In the few moments that it took to secure the crew and help them re-enter the ship, the ground shifted in sections as if shattered glass. Although being secured to a line each, they were separated and with that the sound of a snap as they moved along the now mobile ground. At first, it was only a couple of yards away, but soon they were lost to view.