Chapter 22 - Luci

Luke looked around the grey void, which stretched out farther than he could see with all the different shades of grey he could imagine. He let out a soft sigh of relief and caught his breath, still reeling from his fight with Chris.

In just one short day, everything had changed, he had watched the world he knew collapse before his eyes in mere hours, regained memories he didn't know he'd lost, got himself seriously injured fending off a Shadow far more powerful than himself, and then one of his former classmates had tried to assassinate him and when that failed tried to fight him to the death.

"It's been one hell of a day, hasn't it Luci?"

'What the hell did you just call me!' shouted an enraged demon.

"Lucifer's a mouth full, I'm going to call you Luci now."

'You're most definitely not going to call me that!'

"It doesn't matter right now, Luci, where's that cheat magic item you were talking about?"

'Only the mighty and majestic, King of Hell, Sin of Pride, Lucifer knows. You'll have to ask him.'

Luke deliberated over his next words for a second before sighing and saying, "Now's not the time for childish games, Lucifer, just tell me where the item is."

There was silence for a few seconds before an irritated voice said, 'look at the dagger.'

Following the instruction, Luke looked down at the dagger to see it point itself diagonally to the right, at a slightly upwards angle, as if attracted by a magnet.

Using the dagger as a compass, Luke walked the way it pinned, until he got to a point where the dagger pointed directly upwards. Looking up, Luke saw a grey sky that ascended further than his eyes good see, with lines of neon grey twisting and turning in the sky sometimes colliding to form bigger and brighter grey lines.

Following his instincts, Luke jumped straight up, and as he did the grey ground seemed to follow the soles of his feet, stopping as he reached the peak of his jump.

Looking around, Luke couldn't tell that he had just jumped upwards, "this place really is strange, how are Riftwalkers able to live here their whole lives?"

'Riftwalkers are strange as well, while they look human and act human most of the time, there are subtle differences in interpretation of the environment around them as well as their thought processes.'

"Didn't you have a child with a Riftwalker?"

Lucifer chuckled slightly and said, 'I never said that it was a bad thing. Your mother was a Riftwalker as well you know, that makes you part Riftwalker.'

"I know, that's how I'm able to wander around this crazy place without going insane."

Like then looked down at the dagger to see that it had gone limp again, no longer controlled by some unseen force. "I take it we're here?"

'Yes.'

"I need to quickly increase my strength, so this item better be good, Luci."

'Call me that one more time and you might one day wake up with a dagger in your heart!' shouted an enraged demon.

Luke snickered quietly as he cut a tear in the Rift. Starting at the pulsating grey tear, he suddenly had a thought. 'If I train my Riftwalker lowers, will I experience a significant change in them like my demon powers?'

'You can improve your Riftwalker powers, but it won't be quite the same as your demon powers. As you know the Rift exists outside the realm of normalcy, thus those that inhabit will also be irregular,' as Lucifer spoke, Luke couldn't help but picture Lucifer's smug face in his mind, filled with pride over the depths of his knowledge.

'Riftwalkers can stir the Rift to use many bizarre powers, no two manifestations are ever quite the same. I know that you'll at least be able to enter and exit the Rift at will without relying on the dagger by increasing your power. However, I'm not sure what you'll be able to do after that. The Rift doesn't follow any comprehensible patterns, you could not be able to use it at all or you could be able to use more than any Riftwalker for some bizarre and random reason. All anyone knows about the Rift is that it makes no sense.'

"Interesting," said Luke, before putting the matter aside as there wasn't anything he could do about it now, and hopping through the tear.

As Luke readied himself to enter an unknown environment, he felt his body slam off an invisible wall, as he was sent spiralling backwards through the grey space! He smashed off another wall as he was tossed through, the air! He then felt himself being sucked into an invisible whirlpool, as his body was ragdolled around the Rift before he was sucked into the middle of the whirlpool and similarly expelled out the other side!

As Luke was shot out of the whirlpool he landed hard on the ground, groaning in pain.

Coming out of his daze, Luke looked around to see that he was back in the real world, in. what looked like a multistorey car park.

"How the hell did I end up here!"