Rivers of the Night-Chapter 855: FUCKING BITCH!

Theron couldn't see a single thing. He was as helpless as a baby in his mother's arms. The only thing he could barely control was his instinct to cry.

It was so very pathetic. He wanted to be over this; he wanted to grow beyond the point where a single moment of weakness wouldn't just collapse everything that he had worked toward.

The irony was that maybe he would have already failed had he not been so dehydrated that he couldn't form tears in the first place.

He had to stay awake; he had to focus.

"YOU FUCKING BITCH! STOP RIGHT THERE!"

Theron barely heard the words, though they were said with a roar that could have shattered planets. Maybe his eardrums were too broken for him to hear much of anything clearly at all.

His consciousness faded in and out, and then he heard it.

The sound of gears turning, of a gate creaking open.

It somehow felt like the start of a universe, the sound of ramping up not just mechanical parts, but life itself. It formed a symphony that fused into his heart and plucked at his blood veins, twinkling to match the synapses of his very brain.

And then the gates shut.

…

"FUCK!" Kenton balled his fists, his body curling in the air and then suddenly uncoiling like a spring. Even Bamby, who was some distance away, found himself being sent spiraling into the distance before he barely managed to stop himself with a quick series of one-footed hops.

This time, though, Bamby didn't say anything. This was… truly a problem.

But the question was… how had that thing found it so easily? Its location was always moving, always shifting. It wasn't just a simple matter of following a pattern or going where it had been last.

This was something that didn't make the slightest bit of sense.

There, in the middle of the vastness of space, there was a door of bronze and brass. It was etched with the war calls of heroes and depictions of battles that had burned down the Heavens themselves.

Just standing in its presence made one feel small. They were countless light years away, but it was larger than even a red giant. It still somehow felt like they could reach out and touch it without moving an inch, despite knowing the vast gap that separated them.

Kenton and Bamby couldn't enter. They had long since left the proper age range behind.

They had taken a risk by entering this domain instead of returning to their own all those years ago, and that was why they were here instead of elsewhere.

They had had the same hunch back then, but now that hunch had slipped right out from their fingers.

They hadn't taken this place seriously at all, believing themselves to be above and beyond it. And that much was true.

But the end result spoke for itself. They suffered greatly, not in bodily harm, but in time wasted.

Then they both had the same thought…

Just what was the point? What was the point of it all?

Go back to their domains and become powerhouses? Then what?

They'd never reach that level; they'd never reach the same Existence; they'd never—

"No." Kenton growled.

He would reach that level. He refused to break here.

**

"I'll go!" Lyra said without hesitation. Tears were still brimming in her eyes, a puffiness that didn't seem like it was going to reduce anytime soon still lining them.

Ameridia sat behind her desk, her face stone-cold, but she nodded slowly.

This time, she had chosen to ask Lyra because she knew what the answer would be. Lyra loved Theron too much to have replied any other way.

And she… would just have to be good enough.

As for what Ameridia would have done had Lyra said no…

She refused to think about it.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

**

Theron's body was on the verge of collapse. But whatever happened after the gates closed was beyond his understanding.

His senses seemed to come back, but only in part. A constant, whining whimper beat on his eardrums. Somehow, the world felt wrapped in moisture, but there wasn't a single hint of anything meaningful in this moisture.

He couldn't pull it into his being; it reacted more like wind than water, but it rebounded more like silk flying through the air than any sort of wind that Theron was used to.

It took a while, but Theron realized that this wasn't like any Mana he had ever seen before. It was like the world… no, the potential of the world itself had been distilled into creation and destruction, life and death.

But it was neither so good nor so evil. It was just want.

Something flickered in Theron's eyes. Or, rather, it would have had he had any eyes remaining at all.

There was still no Mana for him to absorb, so he wasn't healing properly. He wanted to pull on the healing waters from his Primordial Earth, but his soul just felt so… so very tired.

Nothing was working properly, and the only consistency he had was that very same whining and whimpering that played in his ears again, and again, and then again.

Theron grunted, trying to move, but then he felt something holding him down. It was that Darkness that had surrounded him again.

"Ayame…?" Theron's voice sounded like he spoke it through grinding gravel, his throat in a state worse than what sandpaper alone could describe.

The whimpering stopped for a moment.

"Where… are we… where are… you?"

The whimpering continued, a whining that was slowly beginning to sound more and more like…

Sobbing.

A restrained sob, but a sob nonetheless.

Theron tried to move again, but he was too restrained to do so. Something was still tying him down, and it wasn't just pain. Ayame was doing it; she didn't want him to move.

"Ayame, I need to move."

Theron didn't receive a response. All he could hear was more sobbing.