~~Jack~~
"Promise me ye'll keep this a secret," Fiona said to the two of them. "Azamel's warning wasn't for aw folk to hear. I screwed up."
"I hadn't told anyone about this before you brought it up." Laughing, Jack gestured to the darkness ahead of them. "How'd you get us here? One moment I was in a jungle, next I'm walking through dark again, now I'm... in a warehouse?" Yeap, warehouse. The large, dirty windows high above, the towers of metal beams holding rows upon rows, shelves upon shelves, of boxes, the forklifts, and all the amenities. He did not envy anyone a job moving or boxing products, dealing with nothing but enormous walls of capitalism personified. Slave labor.
"Mmhmm." Giggling, the Scot tugged on their hands, and dragged them both through the warehouse, between the isles of boxes piled sky high. A big damn warehouse, exporting some sort of toy or blanket or something equally innocuous. "There's a lot of tricks I've learned from Vrall. And, both in the dream, and in the physical world, I can see the gates."
"... gates?" Damien said, glancing around. "This is Banner's Fields warehouse. They sell... I don't know, really. Nothing anyone cares about. I don't see any gates."
Jack nodded. "And we should be careful. Could be people working late."
Fiona took a moment to glance around, and everyone took a longer moment to listen. But other than distant cars, it was unlikely anyone would be around this late in North Side. Damien shook his head too; no one around.
"Lads, there are tunnels atween worlds. Ye ken nae everything is limited to the physical world, to these flesh and bone things we all like so much. There are... strange places, in the beyond. And ye ken who can see those places? Visit those places? This lass." She pointed her two thumbs at herself.
"... what sort of places?" Jack said.
"I'm nae sure, honestly." She shrugged, and skipped ahead, sneakers kicking along the concrete, and fingers touching boxes as she moved by. "There's the Shadow world, that the Uratha deal with. Begotten don't normally go there, according tae Vrall. Nae reason to. The things there are... they aren't what we need. We cannae feed off them."
Jack tilted his head to the side as he followed after her. "Something monsters can't eat? The spirits?"
"Exactly. That place is... it's a shadow, and it doesn't have what we need for food, like we find in folk. Nothing for us to devour. And, it's a dangerous place."
"More dangerous than Dolareido?" Damien didn't sound convinced. "Considering the ritual Jack described, I find that hard to believe." Walking slow, he continued looking around, eyes open for anyone that might be nearby, and no doubt ready to turn on his cloak of night if needed. "And, we have assault rifles and explosives here. Shotguns too."
"They have entities that defy reasoning!" She leaned in toward Damien, hugged his arm to her chest — hoodie and jeans were hilariously cute on her — and waved across the empty air over her. Parting the night sky they couldn't see. "Trees that talk. Deer with wings. Roads that walk."
"... roads that walk?" Jack said. What? How the fuck did that make any sense?
Fiona laughed at him, and poked him in the shoulder. "Ye'll find out soon enough. But, be careful to not... do anything? I dinnae ken much about this world, except that it's dangerous, and there's these... we'll, maybe ye'll be able to make sense of it. I can't." At the end of the warehouse, before a roll-up door, she held out her hands.
And the world changed.
Damien and Jack stepped back, and drew weapons as the wall started to vibrate and screech with a loud hammering, as if a hurricane had shot itself across the ocean and decided to pay them a surprise visit. The walls shook, trembling with the weight of the impacts Jack could not identify. The walls began to do more than vibrate, they began to bend. Both vampires ducked, expecting the twisting material to shatter or explode with the colossal pressure, but the walls had no intention of losing their solidity, bending with a curve of the air like looking through shaped glass.
It was like looking into a black hole. Fiona kept her hands up, fingers trembling, the horror inside coming out and engulfing her in its form. No longer simply Fiona, but the Vrall creature as well, both standing there, both with hands outreached. Vrall had a lot more limbs though, and she used them against the air, pulling it apart to expose the guts of the universe. The universe didn't like that, and the little bit of light in the warehouse flickered, lost to the void descending on them. Jack expected the light bulbs overhead to shatter, and rain down sparks, or for fire or lightning to crack the air. Instead, he stared into a void, a black void that cut into the emptiness before them. Black didn't do justice to describe the depth of the abyss.
What was the name of that new black, blacker than black black? Vantablack? Blackest? Like that, something that pulled his eyes in until he felt like he was sinking.
"You... found this?" Damien said.
"Mmhmm. Someone, or something, made it, a long time ago. And there are others, in the city. The wolves don't know about them, or at least don't use them, but they don't need them to get into the Shadow world. And these gates can go other places too, if you can find them."
Jack gulped, and stepped beside her, and the deadly spider creature sharing her space. "You can't make them?"
"Maybe some Begotten can. I can't. I can tunnel into the dream, and into this physical world. But other places? I have to find those doors, like this one, and they're almost always locked. But..." With a big, happy grin, she winked at him, and looked back to the portal before them. "Begotten are monsters. True, real, monsters. We go where we want."
She yanked her hands apart, and tore the blackness open. It bled gold and white over them, a rushing water that had both vampires reaching up to block it with their hands. But it did not touch them, despite washing over them, covering them, burying and drowning them in the flowing colors. Plenty to see, colors shining, but nothing to touch them, like it didn't exist.
