𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽 | 𝒟.𝑀.

80 | ﴾ The Netherworld ﴿

I stumbled out into a black world that was a bizarre and morbid carbon copy of the Realm of Life, but like the black side of a yin yang symbol it was identical in every way, yet dark and brooding, as though the sun had decided to set for the rest of eternity.

My first observation was that I had no access to most of my senses; no feeling presented itself in my nerves as I stood in my prior tracks in the snow in front of the archway in the French alps. I twisted my hands before me, noting that I was to some degree invisible. I had appeared in the Realm of the Dead in spirit form, and I had no magical abilities.

With nothing but ballet shoes I should have been freezing, but I wasn't; I wasn't...anything at all. I couldn't feel or smell the breeze of the Appalachian winds coursing over the sharp mountainous peaks, or the snow squalls scintillating through the air in rivers of glittery ice. My mouth was tasteless. It seemed deductively that all I had was impartial and veiled visual perception of my surroundings, with a very muted audiologic.

I rotated to look behind myself at the Realm I had just escaped from within. The bright glowing lavender of the film before me continued to shimmer with it's normal beauty, yet the imagery of the world beyond was fading away with intensity. 

I started to march forward in no exact direction save for downwards, my legs practically sifting through the snow with no resistance. I should have felt panicked about how I was planning to get back to the Malfoy Manor in such a spectral state, but there was no heartbeat in my chest to physically express terror. 

Thankfully it took me a matter of moments to discover that gravity did not perform with the same mechanics in the current dimension that I was in, leading to me taking what should have been seriously deadly leaps off of the cliff face only to float slowly downwards to the next shelf like a lazy samara falling from a Maple tree.

The most disturbing part of the world I had reemerged into was the deficit of temporal indication. I could have been wandering through the frigid wilderness for centuries for all I knew, as the sun never shone, and neither did the moon. It was constant and quiet, dull even, and I never grew tired.

Eventually the snow bled away into a shallow mossy carpet of green vegetation clinging to the steep terrain. I later found myself wandering through a rural French village at the bottom of the rocky escarpments, hardly able to see living people brushing through streets with warm golden aura's around their bodies. They ignored me entirely, walked straight through me even only to show off instantaneous frowns at whatever freakish sensation the interaction provided them with.

I was formidably lost; I had never been so close to the region of France that bordered Switzerland, and I could not ask anyone for help. 

Well, nearly no one.

There was a horrific incident that occurred in the village of Entrèves - as I had come to identify the name of my current location, which was a charming and rustic ski town - where I first encountered another entity in the same plane as myself.

I had chosen to sit on the side of the highway as I had failed on many occasions to get onto a bus going towards the coast and stay on it, due to the fact that I would simply fall straight through the metal floor. Nothing in the world of the living reacted to my physical presence enough to allow me to leave the area I had stumbled into. I could walk, sure, but it would be unbearable.

The entity in question happened to be on one of the buses that ran back and forth between the ski hill and the central bus stop in the town. I was laying on the ground as orbs of yellow light floated excitedly around me, representing people preparing to head to the sporting attraction, when the specific bus heading to Piscina Alpina Plan Checrouit pulled up.