The Novel's Sidekick

"Alright, we don't have much time in hand," Oscar said, standing back up immediately. He looked around the space with a piercing gaze before starting to count the staircases. He stopped at a few of them as if calculating something.

He gazed at every one of the staircases, but his eyes lingered on one of the ones that went deeper and downwards rather than the others. "That one," he said, and started running. He stopped finding others looking at him incredulously. "Come on, you need to trust me on this."

Yeriel joined nonchalantly with a flat face. Noyar groaned a little before joining next, while Jon didn't want to be left out, joined in the end. They were already here. It's better to stick together even when you're feeling lost. Besides, Oscar seemed and acted especially familiar with this place somehow, so it could go well.

"Now let's discuss our plan, shall we?" Oscar spoke as they ran, not looking back or down. They were upside down on the stairs—unsure if climbing downwards or upwards—looking down would only make them nauseous.

"As you two have been here for some time, I don't know if you have noticed any oddities of this space yet. Like different points of gravity, or you bearing no physical injuries?"

"We have seen a little more than that," Noyar answered.

"But you haven't seen enough," Oscar said. "Knights are not really familiar with the term Astral space." He paused and looked at the quiet girl. "Yeriel, you should know about it, right?"

To his dismay, Oscar got no answer from Yeriel, which seemed to trouble him, though he got back to explaining rather quickly.

"An Astral space is, how do I explain this?" Oscar paused, though all their legs were running.

Astral space, Noyar muttered inwardly. Yes, even though she hadn't been scholarly like most magi, she heard about it, it's not that uncommon, but as far as she could tell, Astral plane was a place of the spirit, of the dead, but . . . Could it be?

Oscar turned to look at their wrongness in the faces and said, "No, don't worry, we're definitely not dead. This is definitely not Ishtar, nor the afterlife. You're all alive, just not in your physical form."

"What?" Jon croaked. "What does that mean?"

"I'm explaining just that, but I fear you don't have the scope to understand, nor do I have the time to explain it. Besides, I don't think you would believe it if I explained it. So, long story short, this is the land of spirit, soul, whatever you call it. It works on different laws than the physical bodies."

Noyar understood what he was saying, but the more she thought about it, the more questions appeared on her mind. "Wait," she said hesitatingly. "If our spirit dies here, then our physical body dies too, and the other way around is true too, right?"

"If your spirit dies, it's game over, but the opposite is true too, but there are some exceptions, but none of us is the exception. So it would be great if none of us tries anything stupid."

"Wait, if our physical body is not present there, how's my Dominion of gravity working?" Jon couldn't stop his curiosity from running out, beating Noyar to his question. As far as he can tell, gravity works on mass, on physical things, but they were not physical from what Oscar told them.

"Exceptions? What are you talking about?"

"Stop questioning," Oscar grunted. "There is no Qna going on here." He paused and turned towards the floor, where every one of them dropped. He halted abruptly, looking at it with no nausea or other side effects. "But speaking of exceptions, it's here."

Noyar had trouble understanding what he was saying, but she knew it was not because of her troubling mind. However, she knew better not to question more on time like this.

Just as Oscar finished speaking, what they were running from appeared on the upside-down floor, roaring. With more light present in the space compared to the mountain, they could see it better. A three and a half feet metre tall beast of pure white. The long, elongated, and twisted antlers stood on its head, more to represent its beauty rather than just being a weapon of protection.

A silver halo surrounded the body of the beast as it cried, coming into such a chaotic place like this. It roared and found them rather quickly, though it hadn't found the way to reach where they were now. Yes, the saint beast was intelligent, but compared to humans, it's still lacking quite a lot. How would it feel to run upside down?

It would have been fine if it had some familiarity in it, as beasts adapted to things like this better, not to mention a Winterheart Reindeer had some mystical power over spirituality, but this should be the first time for such a young saint beast like this. However, it would definitely find its way towards them, one way or another.

"Hey, Pal," Oscar shouted, trying to catch its attention. "Come now. Christmas party is this way."

They started running again, ignoring the beast's roars. Oscar led them through the way, turning between different staircases, and changing their point of gravity. As they run, Noyar couldn't help but question what Jon asked a few moments ago.

"Alright, for the plan," Oscar said, turning to peek at the beast. It was running on a different staircase now, definitely closer to them, but the staircase leads to a different destination in the short term. "As I was mentioning, different points of gravity. Each of the staircases runs on a different scope of gravity, or at least it looks that way. My plan is simple: trap it right in the centre of all the gravitational force."

"The centre of all gravity," Jon muttered. "That means you want to trap it in weightlessness?"

"Yes, but not exactly." Even Oscar himself looked uncertain. "It would work, most likely. Even if it didn't, we would have a way out."

_ _ _

I waited so long to write the sequence, and there's still few more like this, though none would come anytime soon. Sigh.

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