Welcome to Sanctuary
Nothing was concrete or solid, not even the winding path beneath his feet. Following Cozy’s lead through the surreal landscape, Ridley felt as though he were walking through the inside of an exotic tropical flower petal. There was an enchanting scent, and the light was soft, filtered through a translucent gauzy tissue that surrounded the path. And even though it seemed like it was right on top of him, no matter how far he stretched, he couldn’t touch it. It was always just out of reach.
The color of the light changed constantly, shifting seamlessly from one extreme to the next. But it felt completely natural here, where back home, Ridley knew, it would be burrowing into his eyes to give him a mother of a migraine.
All around him, gaps in space, like asymmetrical windows, popped into existence and faded slowly away like the rhythmic pounding of breakers on a beach. Each window showed peeks into what Ridley assumed were different universes within the Quanta, but there were so many of them it was hard to make much sense of what he saw.
In one he witnessed only vast reaches of space pockmarked with glassy planetary debris and pulsing violet lights, while in the next he saw mighty, caped figures flying as they chased a demon astride a dragon through the ruins a monolithic arctic city. He staggered back when a window opened up right overhead showing a psychedelic whorl of liquids that solidified into twisty, gnarled barbs, before crackling away into wisps of gas in an ever changing landscape. He turned his head quickly to where an ancient city huddled beneath the lee of a cliff, taking shelter from the tornadic winds whipping the neighboring cherry red sea into a froth. The window faded to be replaced by another where an undersea cathedral of glass hovered above crevices coursing with magma. Another showed gossamer strands of light knotting themselves into tumbleweed-like structures that flitted off into an expanse of dull emerald hills, rough hewn and chalky.
Despite the visual assault, he kept pace with Cozy and Kalend. They paid less attention to the constant flashing than Ridley would to a lousy infomercial. Behind him, Val, Marren and L’Renz escorted a hard light cage with the mammoth creature they’d fought on the beach immobilized inside.
Another Quanta window snapped into existence just overhead showing an asteroid colliding with the dark side of a planet encircled by an artificial ring. The eruption of fire and steaming gasses was instant and devastating. Ridley noticed it caught Kalend’s eye. She looked away quickly, wincing. Without thinking, Ridley put his hand on her glistening blue shoulder, “You okay?” Her crystalline skin was cool, and he marveled at how smooth it was.
She kept walking and removed his hand, firmly but without anger, “I have witnessed such an event once in my life. I had no wish to see its like again.” She took a few more steps then turned to look at him and, like a kid being forced to talk to a strange relative, begrudgingly added, “But thank you for asking.”
Ridley caught the drift of her tone and knew the thanks was only given out of an expectation of social niceties. She was definitely going to be a hard one to get to know. “Sure, no problem,” Ridley replied with a brief and uncomfortable smile, then thought, mental note, don’t touch the blue chick.
Just ahead, blocking the path, squatted a grayish-black yurt about eight feet tall and nearly three times as wide.
An aperture in front of the yurt blossomed open just as another Quanta window popped up next to it making him stagger back. It showed a world that made him cringe. It was populated by giant insects harvesting blue barked trees among towering hives which dotted the rolling landscape. Ridley had been afraid of bugs since he was a kid. It was one of those irrational fears that had stayed with him his whole life. He hadn’t thought to ask anything about what Syon was like, and now he had a pit in his stomach, dreading the meeting and not knowing what manner of creature he was about to meet.