The silence all around them was uncanny.
Geslo raised his head and looked around, then turned to Anke beside him.
The "old gentleman" had never told Geslo his name, but Geslo quickly guessed that Dernothus must be it.
He could not find the old gentleman, though, so he turned to Anke.
Anke looked back at him, equally bewildered. Clearly, he could not find the old gentleman either.
Just then, deep light flared across the walls on every side, kindling a red-violet glow. The rays reached out like tendrils from within the walls, weaving densely together into enormous shells that threatened to envelop everyone in the room. At the same time, the floor beneath Anke's feet seemed to change, turning from hard to soft.
He looked down. The old floor was slowly writhing like thick, viscous flesh.
His feet began to sink rapidly.
He hurriedly lifted one foot and stepped aside, only to land on more of that soft, sticky flesh.
Now he was sinking as though he had fallen into a muddy swamp.
He looked up at Geslo and found that Geslo was sinking too.
Everyone and everything in the room was sinking.
In the blink of an eye, the floor had swallowed Anke's lower body.
Then Anke noticed that the twisted floor was not entirely solid. It was made of some illusory, translucent substance, through which he could barely make out a vast, empty grassland below.
Are we going to fall through?
The thought flashed through his mind.
Boom!
At that instant, a roar exploded inside his head.
"You're here." The voice from the void, impossible to identify as male or female, spoke again. Its cold tone now held a faint note of amusement.
Anke's falling body suddenly stopped.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
More explosions followed, above their heads, beneath