Once, as a girl, many years ago on Earth, I'd visited a nearby tourist location: a cave. The tour guides had taken us deep through narrow caverns and twisted tunnels, explaining the various limestone and stalactite formations. Then, as we reached the zenith of the tour, they cut the lights and plunged us into darkness. It was a blackness so whole and complete it was suffocating, and I remember screaming in fear for the lights to come back on.
Those moments in the dark were nothing compared to the excruciating terror of the darkness that enveloped us now. Although the darkness held no mysteries to me, I squeezed my eyes shut anyway. The tremendous weight of the earth pressed in on us from all directions, straining the Earthen Walls to their breaking point, filling the air with suffocating pressure. I poured all my mana into the barriers, unable to spare so much as a thought for anything else.
