The rush of water murmured behind Hope, traveling down the tracks where he assumed it to be going down the abysmal fog from where he came.
Hope remained at the mercy of his body's collapse on the ground, laying in the same spot in the same position as if any effort to move would waste any energy he was saving. His cargo pants, black sleeve shirt, boots, and chest rig were all damply stuck on like a heavy suit of armor.
There were times when he doubted his eyes were even open.
Hope was sure they were.
But the world remained the same in darkness, eyes opened or closed.
Was this another tunnel perhaps he was in? A very big one if it had to fit a damn train. But the thought that Hope was underground in dark confined walls again brought an uneasiness, different compared to when he was in the labyrinth den of the behemoth. It stirred a distant feeling, but not from feeling another threatening presence.
Strange.
Even his heart was throbbing in his ears like an alert drum.
Hope frowned. He was certain traces of the behemoth's effects had sapped away so why was he reacting like this?
"Ah what the hell..." Hope muttered.
Maybe he was paranoid.
Or maybe his body didn't let go yet of the close experience of death almost snuffing the life out of him.
Hope paused as he listened to the thoughts in his head. He felt his rational mind intact. The annoying voices there as well.
But whatever the manner of fact it was, Hope took deep breaths till the tightness in his chest loosened. It seemed his body was acting on its own again, in contrast to his calm mind, which he hated when it did that.
'I'll just wait a little longer...'
But as the minutes passed, eventually hours, a light gray fog started to appear on his far right.
Hope turned to look as the mist started to brush away by dawn's wake, lifting itself vapor by vapor, slowly clearing the view to the other side.
And there, down the tunnel from where he'd came was a wide broken tunnel mouth. Stone protruded around as if it had been broken off like a pipe. Light reflections from the rushing water could be seen as it poured off into a disappearing waterfall, and beneath those waters, Hope saw what he presumed was right, were train tracks.
As more time crawled on by, as more of the fog cleared and the distant sun lit up the gray sky, Hope could see a huge dirt wall on the other side as well as another broken tunnel mouth, though dry and barren from water in contrast to his side, with torn train tracks leading to a sudden descent. He squinted his eyes and saw small pipes sticking out like jutted bones and ledges of the wall broken off as if hinting it once had a whole self. The only thing that seemed to connect between his side and the other were the thick webbed vines, though green and darkish blue were they.
Hope grimaced as he forced himself to stand.
His muscles spasmed again and the wounds on his hand and wrist stung from the movement, reminding him of the terrible night with the damn behemoth and Profaned.
Hope leaned against the wall for support as he started to walk towards the silver light, passing by the boy who lay nearby with a faint but noticeable rise and fall on his chest.
The boy was still alive.
Although, his body had seen better days; the boy's skin looked deathly pale and his wet brown hair stuck over his eyelids, thin scratches clawed his neck and ear but nothing too deep.
Hope reached the edge of the broken tunnel and looked up, seeing the familiar cursed labyrinth den of a building perched on top of the surface. The tall, stacked lengthened stories did not appear as threatening as when he explored inside of it. But the broken wall where the behemoth broke through, the aggressive scratch marks decorating up the stones were all there.
Hope looked away and his eyes scanned all the other neighboring buildings perched on top of the wall as well.
They stood a lot taller.
Well, of course they did. That was because he was on a different level.
A lot lower level.
What Hope was staring at now was a gaping chasm. One of the many rumored chasms around Quadrant I.
The gap between him and the other side was vast. When he looked to the sides, the chasm only stretched a little more than half a block. Although a threateningly deep scratch that gouged into the earth, it was a distance away from the main road in which Hope would have never known or come across it himself.
'And I thought I might've been closer...'
Just how many hidden sites would Hope have to discover?
The strange sight of buildings, streets, and cars suspended high above like a floating city almost made him dizzy, as if he had stepped into a different part of the world that was inconceivable for this reality.
Hope had heard even worse chasms up North where a whole city was uprooted and dipped into a crevice while its other end tipped to the sky. And others stretched for miles on end as far as the eye could see.
Hope could hear his memory voices begin to intertwine with those thoughts: his commanding officer's voice explaining part of regions they should avoid, or the clustered talk of soldiers explaining their travel past those dangerous parts.
Much of those stories they told said it all began from a distant time before Hope was even born. Although, maybe not so distant to those who survived from that age:
The Dark Times.
A darker age even before the Nightmare Spell when humanity had been consumed an endless series of devastating wars.
Cataclysmic natural disasters overturned cities and mountains, swallowed valleys, and stormed lands as if the world were nothing more than a playground for toys to be wrecked and played with such sinister glee.
A time when the earth felt inclined to join and wreak havoc along with the frenzy of humanity's self-destruction.
And leave its mighty wrath upon the world.