Lightning

-11- 「The Council」

Storm attached the phone to the bag's strap, the phone on speaker. Everyone was able to hear each other, as though they were all in the same place.

"Angel, c'mon. We're going," Storm said. Angel nodded and headed inside with him.

The two walked into the temple, seeing nothing in the room. They looked to their right to see the gaping hole they saw earlier. It was a clear room, the stone brick floor broken and in poor condition. Some of the bricks were completely out of place, showing the dirt underneath.

"This is what we've been fighting to get to?" Storm asked Scion through the phone.

"Look deeper. There's definitely something here," Scion advised him.

Storm looked to his left to see that there were stairs that they could climb up.

"I'm climbing up some stairs, alright?" Storm spoke to the cellphone.

"We're going down some stairs," Blaze spoke back. Storm looked to Angel, the two nodding and getting ready to go.

"How long has this been here...?" Storm asked.

"Thousands of years, maybe more. This is a sacred temple, exclusive to only high ranking Astrals, I'm assuming." Scion explained, slowly walking down the stairs, a gun in his hand.

"So, I guess we're disgracing our own people...heh..." Storm chuckled.

"Wait." Scion shouted, and Storm heard Scion's voice through the wall next to him.

Storm looked to his left, pausing for a moment. He then kicked the wall, breaking it easily. He then saw Scion and Blaze, walking down some stairs. The bricks that were kicked faded away quickly. Blaze then hung up his cellphone.

"Can you hear us?" he asked. Storm was able to clearly hear them and nodded.

"What...what is this?" Angel asked aloud, everyone staring at the hole.

"Alright, listen. The bricks that Storm kicked haven't reached us. This means this is not a space where things reach the other side. This is a space that sends things somewhere else. We don't want to mess with this thing, so let's just move on...okay?" Scion said, a bit of uneasiness on his face.

The group silently agreed and contacted each other through their phones again. Storm walked up the stairs, seeing more of these distortions. Bricks began to float as they began to climb the stairs, both groups taking note of what they saw. Storm walked into the next room first, seeing the same room when he walked in downstairs.

He then began to back away.

"Angel, stay close to me. Guys, we've entered the same room we entered in the beginning," Storm said to them.

"WHOA!" Blaze's voice boomed through the room. Storm looked up to see Scion and Blaze looking up at him from the ceiling.

"What?!" Storm shouted in shock.

The same distortion was there, on a much bigger scale. When he and Angel looked at some of the holes that should've shown the snow and trees outside, they found that they looked upside down as well. Storm began to feel dizzy and closed his eyes for a moment, his hand on his head as he tried to process what he was seeing.

Storm opened his eyes, calmly observing what he was looking at.

"I'm not sure if this is a trap, or if this is normal...I've never seen anything like this before..." Angel said, looking around.

Suddenly, Angel's jacket pocket began to glow bright blue, making a humming sound. Angel jumped in surprise, dropping the sphere.

"The sphere's reacting to something!" Storm shouted, looking up to see that the same was happening to Blaze and Scion.