6. The Orb

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Source: .writer/books/5. 📝 Manuscript/1. Sand Veils/6. The Orb.org

1. Short Description

A tormented protagonist runs through a treacherous path, pursued by creatures, while struggling with a buzzing noise in his mind. He experiences chaotic visions and memories, but is urged on by an unwavering voice. Escaping a subterranean nightmare, he seeks hope in a glimmering light. He sees an immense obsidian orb in the distance, prompting him to run towards it. In a surreal wasteland with strange entities, he feels hopelessly lost and out of place, spiraling into madness, and experiencing existential loneliness.

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4. Image

6. The Orb

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5. Content

Run! The letter rumbled in my thoughts. Follow the path to the very end!

Then, unheralded, that accursed buzzing within my skull resurrected. The wailing cacophony escalated until I could endure it no more. I bellowed in terror, vainly attempting to muffle the sound by clutching my ears. What is happening to my mind? My distress attracted more of those abysmal creatures lurking in the dark, their golden gaze eating me whole. I dared not to face them, sprinting with my eyes clenched shut. I heard their spectral forms slicing through the air, hunting me with relentless speed as their wings flapped in a bat-frenzy racket. An unseen force struck me, toppling me to the ground, but I clawed to my stance and surged onward across the bridge.

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Lost in the maelstrom, flashes of a bygone self surfaced from a past long forgotten. I observed myself struggling to survive as I scavenged for food and built rustic weapons. I glimpsed barren wastes, subterranean hollows, towering woods, jagged peaks, mired marshes, boundless oceans… heterogeneous expanses whose horizons stretched out to no end. I beheld realms unutterable, battled beasts of unspeakable vileness, and witnessed wonders transcending belief. I tasted my blood and tears, endured famine and desiccation, terror and the sheer void of hope. Oh heavens…

What is this place?

Driven by madness, even if stepping over my fallen selves, I traversed the accursed bridge. At the end, there was a new entrance, a chiseled maw within the stone into which I cast myself in wild abandon. Halfway inside, something endeavored to seize me from my rear, but its grotesque bulk was too large for the opening. Terrifying shrieks and guttural roars reverberated throughout the cavern, punctuated by that I judged a clatter akin to wicked mirth. Panic hindered me to glance behind, to witness my assailant. In dread, I wrenched myself free from its iron claws and made my way inward.

I resumed my flight through the tunnel, pursuing the only path ahead. Gradually, my hallucination ceased, and a profound silence engulfed me. Time blurred in my walk, as seconds became days, and days fused into years. Somewhere along the way, I began ascending. At the tunnel's conclusion, far above, a pallid radiance bled through the darkness, glowing in a serene luster like hope's purest essence.

The entirety of my being was riveted on that ethereal glow. Joy flooded me; my nightmare seemed about to end. Despite my hope, the nadir of my tribulations was yet to happen. Traversing the spectral light, already outside of the tunnel, my vision was besieged as I beheld the desert unraveling before me. The tempest now abated, the complete boundlessness of that strange world stretched forever under a gray, undulating skyward dome.

That same desert of the sand veils!

The ghostly cyclone-like apparitions swirled all around in their incanting melodies. Among them, the black beasts of goo gorged on my lifeless remains scattered across the macabre space. I sobbed as my hope crumbled into despair. The beasts’ screams and howls pierced the morbid scenery, the haunting display stretching into the infinite over the landscape.

You are almost here! The androgynous voice resounded within my head. Come!

I realized at that time, as if suppressed memories flooded me at once, my suspicions were accurate. My journeys through that hellscape have been countless. I was trapped in a cyclical torment of death and rebirth, forever battling toward an unknown destination, only to be butchered again by the dangers in my crusade. But why? What purpose guided my steps? What fate imprisoned me? What goal haunted my every move? Through eyes misted with agony, I found something.

Distant on the bleak horizon, across the beasts feasting on my flesh, I discerned an outlandish object half-entombed in the earth. The relentless winds of eternity swept a shroud of sand from its apex. It was an immense obsidian orb, a stark anomaly contrasting with the surroundings. Its impeccable surface whispered to me of a far-advanced technology, lying in wait through untold ages. Despite being subjected to the caprices of fate, the uncanny artifact resembled unaltered by the vicissitudes of time. Though I lacked recollection, the thing resonated with me. I stared awestruck, as if the scene denounced a mistake in the very fabric of reality and brought back memories that should not be. I understood I had stumbled upon a conundrum of unfathomable depth.

Then it hit me again, the high-pitched noise inside my head, followed by a curse of maddening sensations and feelings.

Run! The smooth voice said. Here! Run! Come now! To the sphere!

The orb was the source all along! It was the unseen architect summoning me! Whatever power it concealed, it was that cryptic being that had guided me through my grotesque pilgrimage. Yet, how could I reach that craft? The ravenous creatures swarmed the air, hundreds of them, forever craving for my life. Horror and desolation devoured me whole. It loomed as a grim certainty that I would succumb once more, only to be reborn anew in a perpetual cycle of existential oblivion. What should I do? Amidst a sea of doubts and confusion, a frightening epiphany shattered my resolve.

I was in hell.

In that solitary, defining moment, the enigma crystallized before my haunted eyes. My eternal torment was naught but a cyclical, unavailing, Sisyphean nightmare. I would fall only to rise again, forever doomed to face those unspeakable horrors afresh as the relentless loop endured. Overwhelmed by a choking terror, I suffered at the view of the swarming creatures and all the torments the desert harbored for me. It seemed every road leading to the artifact was hampered, but the voice insisted.

Come! Do not doubt!

The riot of visions and sensations returned, climaxing as the madness in my ears intensified to unbearable heights. The ordeal suggested that a cryptic message, whose significance eluded me, was being transmitted straight into my brain. Then I realized with sharp clarity that the letters originated from that same orb—some way. Amidst my private, tumultuous upheaval, fragmented echoes of a past existence flitted once again across my mind, as if eons had been comprised into a few seconds.

In those recollections, that same phantasmal wasteland loomed, vast and incomprehensible, resonating with the eerie dirge of the cyclones. I marveled upon firmaments of the most strange, painted with somber shades and formations beyond comprehension. Entities abound—some hostile, some innocuous. I felt always misplaced, cast away in that desert, notwithstanding the eternity that there I lingered. My very essence suffered rent asunder, its remnants adrift in uncharted territory. I recollected when for many times I glanced up, my mind reeling, craving for rescue amid my desperate predicament.

In my nightmarish visions, I saw how death mocked me, offering no respite. On the heights of my anguish, I re-experienced my repeated attempts to end my life, only to reawaken in random places. I wept, all alone, but my voice reverberated into nothingness. I observed how I spiraled into insanity as I faced all my efforts drowning in futility. That realm bore no trace of Nature, devoid of any rational order: foreign, discordant, incongruous. It was a place never meant for our kind. Oddities and anomalies abounded, and the simplest logic carried no sense. The entire landscape reeked of absurdity, a ‘pataphysical dimension where even two plus two resulted not four.

Above all, the devastating isolation. The visions seared into me a profound existential terror. Cast adrift where no soul had dared traverse, there I stood, thrown into the abyss of nothingness. I saw colors and forms impossible to the human eyes. I encountered scents and tactile sensations that defied conventional existence. I beheld marvels beyond the realm of description. Though I endeavored to escape often, I had nowhere to run. Throughout all my plight, for as long as those memories led me, there persisted that enigmatic, androgynous voice, a haunting whisper guiding me through my odyssey as to draw me closer and closer to something.

It was the sphere, now I knew.