Into the Abyss

Of course, at such a point one is basically dead; in theory, if one’s religious contracts are in order, it should be possible to somehow get to one’s reserved afterlife in the Plane of one’s particular deity or pantheon. However, exactly how that works, or how one locates said plane is beyond not only the scope of this text, but also the purview of Wizardry. Please check with one’s preferred priest or cleric for more information.

In any event, this severing on the Astral Plan may or may not be preferable to having one’s silver cord severed while traveling from one’s body on the Planes of Man. When this occurs, the spirit is in real trouble and will immediately need to find some means of protecting itself or it will be dissipated back into nature. The body will die in the same time period. A spirit whose Animus dissipates into nature, cannot be reincarnated or raised, or resurrected by normal means. Only extremely powerful cleric invocations can bring the individual back.

An individual, whose spirit is trapped on the Astral Plane, can usually be contacted, by the appropriate, speak/commune with dead/spirit type spells. Which brings up an unpleasant point for most self-respecting wizards. If one is in one of these situations, often times the person best suited to help the individual is a highly experienced necromancer. Of course, such help may be worse than no help; but necromancers specialize in securing spirits on the Planes of Man. Naturally, there would be a steep price, in many ways, for dealing with such an individual. Slavery to the necromancer as an undead creature, being only one possibility.

Chapter 4

The world blinked. Slowly. Sort of like a Broadway play where the lights fade out on one scene and then fade back in on another, say on a different part of the stage. Except, Tom was at the center of the lighting and it was the world that faded out and back in again. He was still on his hands and knees on stone: rough, raw, natural stone, not stone flagging like in the room with the psychos.

He was dizzy. He needed to catch his breath; except that, he just realized, he wasn’t breathing! Tom quickly inhaled. Hot, dry, very dry air filled his lungs and he breathed out again. He wrinkled his nose the smell of rotten eggs in the air; was that sulfur? Shit, he wasn’t breathing again! He forced himself to breathe again; if he didn’t think about it, he didn’t breathe! Well that would make life difficult! How was he going to sleep?

The next thing Tom noticed was a huge cliff to his left and a stone cliff wall to his right. A curved stone cliff for that matter. The ledge was curving around a stone cliff. He looked up... and up... OK that went up dizzyingly high; and it was cylindrical. He glanced over the edge to his left. He pulled his head back quickly. The drop was every bit as bad downwards as upwards. He thought he saw ground below, but there were clouds, dark grey clouds, below him, and flames. Fire? The ground below seemed to have molten lava on it and jets of flame that were shooting up hundreds if not thousands of feet in the air.

Whoosh! Went a loud noise off to his left; he turned his head to see a ball of fire expanding into the thin air and then contracting and disappearing. As he looked around, he saw other fireballs expanding and contracting randomly out of nothing. What the hell?

Hell? Fire, lava, flames, sulfur? Was he dead and gone to hell? Tom felt light headed. He must have forgotten to breathe again. He resumed breathing; he tried to breathe through his mouth to avoid the nasty stench in the air.

Tom shook his head and stood up. Or rather, he tried to stand up; he had to catch his balance on the stone column beside him. He was a bit unsteady. He looked down at his legs. Oh shit! They were the same legs he’d had in the room with the psychos! Hooves, he fucking had hooves! Like a goat! Concentrating on his feet, it felt like he was standing on his toes, but his toes were cloven hooves! He had like two toes on each foot and they were all nail! Or, mostly all nail, he closed his eyes to try to feel them; tapping his toes on the stone.

No, he had toes; it was just that what felt like his toenails surrounded each of his toes. He wasn’t standing on his toes, he was standing on his toe nails! That was weird. He looked down again, so what looked like his ankles were really the balls of his feet. His feet felt weird, he flexed and twisted them. It seemed as if there were a lot fewer bones and tendons in his foot. That would make sense with only two toes. His hooves were probably eight inches in diameter, huge! His foot was nearly as big around, but it was at least two feet long and since he was standing on his toes, his feet were arched upward and backwards towards his ankle which was probably 12 inches off the ground between his long feet and rather tall hooves.