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Chapter 48: Rocket


48

As they rocketed through the astral plane, with Monique as their point of reference, Askauri could see a black cloud smeared up through several different dimensional strata. A burnt, ashy malignment, at its heart was a darkness, a split in the fabric of reality that formed an absence, a sucking void.

The blankness pulled at them, drew them on, beyond Monique, down towards its blank oblivion. Askauri tries to slam on the brakes, to check their speed. He scrabbles to gain purchase in the Earth's material reality, but could feel himself, dragged along in Bealz's blistering wake, being bent towards the void.

Askauri strains hard to turn Bealz away, to arc them instead straight through to the heart of the massive energies, where Monique's life force, hers and something very much like it, roiled over and over, in a perpetual eruption.

They shoot on, though, their momentum dangerously unchecked.

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