Chapter 3

Daniel tried to breath, but his body refused to even begin to make the motion of inhaling. He could have been completely surrounded by breathable air for all he knew, but he had no way of actually knowing with how adamantly his body refused to even try it.

The only solace Daniel took in the situation, and the reason he wasn't freaking out at the moment was that he knew he could leave this place whenever he wanted. 

It felt like a switch in his mind that he could easily flip, and he'd once again be back in the real world. Only after establishing that 'safety net' with himself did he decide to make the most of the experience and at the very least try to figure out the basics of how his tattoo worked. 

So minor panic attack over and done with, Daniel walked through the wide-open door he'd been too rushed to bother closing, and back into the kitchen with no trouble at all, where he quickly found what he assumed to be his dad throwing objects made from chitin down into the fog where he could only assume his bag was. 

His father had taken on a strange appearance. He was entirely composed of the same dark fog that rested on the floor, but roughly shaped into the form of a person. Only then did Daniel realize the complete lack of noise permeating the world around him, because from the speed his father was moving at, he was being anything but quiet. 

As he watched his father work Daniel began to feel his lungs burning from a lack of oxygen, and contemplated flipping the mental switch when another shadow rushed into the room and ran through him before he'd had time to react.

The human shaped fog, that Daniel assumed to be his mother, had phased through him and continued walking as if nothing had happened as she handed a bunch of objects that Daniel couldn't identify over to his dad. 

'Let's see if the shift makes noise.'

Daniel flipped the mental switch and immediately his world returned to normal. The fog receded, the walls turned back to normal, and his parents turned back into people. His parents didn't even notice him reappearing, which likely meant that the process didn't produce much, if any noise.

Daniel quietly slipped out from the room before his parents could notice that he'd returned and ran back to the garage. He figured that the best use of his time was to thoroughly explore the uses of his tattoo. It'd artificially lengthen the timer, which was already getting dangerously low, while also increasing his chances of surviving if he happened to be tossed somewhere unfortunate.

He hadn't forgotten where he'd found the corpse, which had almost assuredly been the previous host for the golden card. The man had been transported into an enclosed pit forty meters underground and had obviously had no way of getting out of it. Which wasn't a fate that David wished to follow in.

'I need to make sure I pack my rope and rock pick, if only to avoid ending up like him. Though I can't exactly plan for everything. Honestly though, it seemed like the corpse had prepared for nothing. The man hadn't even had a pack on him,' Daniel thought grimly.

Daniel stopped that train of thought before it began to spiral out of control, it wasn't helpful in the moment, and he needed practice using the tattoo. He was on the clock, so once again he flipped the mental switch and found himself back in a grim mirror of his house. Complete with dark fog and rough, chitinous walls.

Daniel didn't rush out of the room this time, and instead walked around the garage, looking at the various objects lining the wall with a slight frown. Objects that he knew should have been there had seemingly become one with the wall. Shovels, axes, rakes and the like were all completely indistinguishable from the chitin that made up the house.

If he didn't already know that there were tools on the wall before using his tattoo, he'd have just assumed them to be a particularly rough patch of chitin.

Daniel reached out to touch one but couldn't move it regardless of how hard he tried. Recognizing the issue here and following the chain of logic Daniel walked over to the door leading into the garage and found it flush with the wall. He'd actually bothered to close it when he'd come in this time after all.

'Well, this could be a problem.'

Daniel pushed against it as hard as he could, but it didn't budge an inch, and only after several well-mannered kicks against the door was he forced to leave the space that he'd aptly decided to call Limbo to catch his breath. 

Immediately upon returning to the real-world Daniel opened the door by nudging it with his boot. He hadn't even latched it and it'd been completely immovable.

'Alright, so I can't move objects while in Limbo, but anything I take in is fair game?'

Daniel had a small pocketknife in the right pocket of his jeans, and it had maintained the same metallic gleam it'd held for years throughout the entire process of moving in and out of Limbo.

'I can't move objects, people can walk through me, they can't see me and moving in between worlds makes no noise. I can make this work, though I probably need to work on my cardio if I want to stay there for a reasonable amount of time. That's doable, but still a deceptively large downside.'

Daniel was in shape, but cardio had never been his forte. There's not much running to be done down in the caves and that's where he spent a lot of his free time. 

Dismissing the thought Daniel grabbed the hatchet and whetstone before running up the stairs to his room and grabbing a spare rock pick and set of rope. 

During the process Daniel walked by the mirror that hung next to his closet, and stopped when something caught his attention. 

Daniel had always had a muscular build, which was a given due to his hobby, but the man in the mirror looked healthier than he had that morning. Not that he hadn't been healthy before, but he simply looked a little different from before. It was minor, but noticeable, at least to him. His messy black hair remained the same, alongside the generous amount of dirt and grime that coated his skin, but his muscles had become more… defined?

'Alright that's noted, but I don't have time for it', Daniel thought as he rushed out from his room and met his parents back downstairs.

"Where the hell have you been?", Paul asked as Daniel entered the room. 

"I was testing out the tattoo. Its secondary ability works, which is great, but the timer's already at the four-minute marker." 

'Which I could lengthen by a good bit if I needed to but being thrown into another world out of breath and tired sounds much worse than arriving with a few more nonessentials.'

Daniel's mom dragged the backpack across the tile floor towards him. It was too heavy for her to lift at this point, but he appreciated the effort nonetheless.

"Daniel sweety, we got the pack ready for you. I'm sure if we had more time we could think of more things to pack, but this will just have to do." 

Daniel took the pack and shoved the supplies he'd gathered into it before lifting it up and slipping its straps over his shoulders. It was heavier than he'd thought it'd be, but it would be fine for now. 

'I can ditch what I don't need once the timer's finished counting down, but more importantly… '

Daniel cleared his throat and turned to face his parents, "Mom, Dad, I love you both. I don't think I said it yet, but the tattoo says that the timer will reset and start counting down once I'm in the other world. I know this is all crazy. I don't know how long the timer will be once I'm there, but I'll come back. I promise."

His mom didn't respond with words at first, instead opting to hug Daniel as tight as she could before whispering in his ear with tears streaming down her face, "Please tell me this is all one big lie. I'll forgive you, and I'm sure your father will too."

Daniel's expression strained before fading into a deep frown, "I'm sorry mom."

Daniel's father wasn't an emotional person. Him giving Daniel his knife was for him, more than equivalent to what his mother was doing.

So Daniel wasn't surprised when his father calmly walked over to him, unzipped a pocket on his pack, and pulled out the revolver.

He handed it over to Daniel who grabbed hold of it carefully. He could already tell from its weight that it was loaded. 

"Keep that on hand Son, and make it back safe, okay? The ammos in the right pocket of your backpack."

Daniel watched the barely disguised concern on his father's face before responding, "Okay, I will."

With that done, Danie's father pulled his mother off of Daniel, who faked a brave smile before making his way to the front door. 

"Just to be safe I'm going to go stand in the field over there when it happens. The cave where I found the card was more than a bit melted."

"Probably a good idea." Paul said as he watched Daniel run out from the house and out onto one of the tilled fields that had nothing growing in it but clover.

Less than a minute later the timer reached zero, and Daniel simply disappeared. There was no flash of light, no great show of magic. He was simply there one second and gone the next.

Paul had a complicated expression on his face as he stared at the spot where Daniel had been standing mere moments before

"I was really hoping he'd been lying."

"Me too honey."