Chapter 4: Mysterious Sphere

John turned back and stared back into the cellar. For some reason he couldn't explain, John felt that there was something down here, calling out to him. The feeling was so fleeting that John couldn't decide it if it was an actual feeling or just his imagination.

He decided to follow his gut feeling and turned back into the cellar, walking around to see if he could find the source of the feeling.

"Weird" John thought. "I clearly feel as if there's something down here, but I can't find anything." John kept walking around the cellar for several minutes until he found himself at the far corner of the cellar, facing towards the wall. He felt as if this was where the lingering feeling was coming from.

"I don't see anything out of the ordinary, it's just a brick wall" thought John. "Maybe there's something on the wall, or hidden slightly behind it."

John started feeling each brick on the wall, seeing if any brick would fall loose and reveal whatever called out to him behind it. John searched for several minutes until,

Thunk!

The brick John touched was pressed slightly inwards. As John backed away, he could hear some machinations working behind the wall before the wall slowly parted, revealing a dark corridor and a narrow staircase leading downwards. John peered into the dark stairway, but couldn't see what was at the bottom, or how far the staircase descended.

"Why is there such a thing down here? What are mother and father trying to hide" thought John.

He thought about returning upstairs to ask them about it, but decided against it. Whatever was down there, his parents had obviously wanted to hide it from him and others. John walked back to the main area of the cellar and found a torch and flint. He lit the torch and walked back towards the staircase, where he stood for several minutes.

"Well, standing here won't solve anything. I've always been daring, so why should this be any different. Besides, I doubt mom and dad would store anything life threatening in our own house," John thought.

He took his first step onto the staircase, pausing briefly before continuing down. Carefully, step after step, John descended down the staircase.

"I've been walking for a minute already. How far down does this staircase go? And why would it need to be so deep?" John wondered. After another thirty seconds of walking, John eventually saw the narrow staircase open up. Stepping off the stairs, John peered into the dark ahead of him.

The torchlight barely revealed a large cavernous area in front of him, but it was not bright enough to light up the entire room. Looking around at the entrance of the room, John noticed a formation disk and pressed his hand against it. Light suddenly illuminated the room in front of him.

Shock flitted across John's face as the room was revealed to him. Dazzlingly bright spirit crystals embedded across the ceiling that were lit by the formation disk he pushed revealed a room fifty feet across and thirty feet high, with a single large marble white altar in the very middle.

The altar stood on top of a small platform, with white stairs on each side leading up to the platform. John stared at the scene in front of him for a few minutes before walking towards the altar in the middle. As he approached, the feeling he had before began to intensify.

"Obviously whatever was calling out to me, it's on top of this altar," John thought to himself.

John arrived at the base of the staircase and composed himself before taking step after step up the staircase. He arrived on top of the platform and walked over to the altar, the feeling growing ever more intense. John stopped when he was three feet from the altar, staring at the object resting on top of it.

On top of the chest high altar rested a small round sphere, about the size of a large grape. It was as black as the void of space, and emitted a wispy red and black aura so sinister John thought he had plunged into hell for a second. Coming back to his senses after a few seconds, John quickly backed away, his heartbeat racing.

"Why would my parents have something like this?" John exclaimed. This sphere was nothing like John had ever seen before, or even read about. It was something completely outside his realm of understanding. John stood there for a few minutes staring at the sphere, scared to approach but reluctant to walk away. Although he felt no danger from the sphere, the lingering aura was enough to scare anyone away.

Before he noticed it himself, his hand was reaching towards the sphere, about to pick it up. Coming to his senses, he stopped himself at the last moment, but didn't pull back his hand. His hand hovered there for some time.

"Fuck it, whatever it is, I was drawn to it for some reason. I'll trust my instincts this once and hope it really doesn't kill me" John thought as he continued reaching for the sphere.

The moment his fingers touched the sphere, an intense pain washed over his entire body. John gasped for air but found no relief. The air was hot, like it was filled with ash and smoke. John's legs collapsed, his knees slamming into the ground as he wrapped his arms around his chest and tightened every muscle in his body. His vision went white. The sensation quickly spread throughout his entire body and quickly began to increase in intensity. There seemed to be no end to this torture.

After what felt like an eternity, John felt as if a chain of some kind inside him snapped. John's eyes opened as wide as they could, his mouth following suit. The pain had increased tenfold. John felt like his insides were being torn apart, his muscles stripped from his bones and organs violently exploding. He thought he was going to die, but suddenly, the pain subsided, and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Darkness washed over John.

He felt like he was floating in a void, with no sense of time. He felt like he had been floating for an eternity, and also just an instant.

John managed to slowly open his eyes, taking in the scene in front of him. The air was filled with a hazy gray mist, like an early morning after fresh dewfall only thicker. There appeared to be no source of light and yet, the world was illuminated enough to see. The world in front of him seemed endless. Each direction John looked was filled with gray mist and in the distance, he only saw an endless blackness.

John slowly turned around and took a breath, his lungs filling with cold air. He took a step forward and looked down at what he was standing on. Flawless white marble. John was standing on a pathway of perfectly sculpted white marble slate. He followed the marble pathway for about a minute before the mist slightly dissipated.

"What is this place?" exclaimed John in pure shock.

In front of John stood a massive white palace, so grand that John could not believe his eyes. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined a place as majestic and real as this palace could exist. The palace stretched as far as the eye could see, and rose tens of thousands of feet high into the sky.

Endless grand spires, thousands of feet tall, made of flawless white stone, marble, and gold lined the palace. Each spire was surrounded by hundreds of wondrous statues of grand beasts and imposing humans. The statues were so lifelike that John initially thought they were guards.

After staring at the palace for what felt like an eternity, John started walking towards it, eventually finding himself in front of a massive white gate, thousands of feet tall. To each side of the gate, large white ivory dragons could be seen, their scales outlined in gold, eyes glowing green like enchanted jade. The bars of the gate were thick, about twenty feet thick in diameter. They were pearly white and covered in very thin golden flowers.

Suddenly, the massive gates before him slowly started to open. As the gates fully opened, a pathway illuminated itself before John, as if asking him to walk through the gates. John hesitated for a moment before striding forward, walking by the massive gates and into the palace.

As John stepped through the palace doors, a holy aura washed over him. A feeling of pure serenity and peace encapsulated John, he felt as if his entire being was cleansed and born anew. He closed his eyes and bathed in the feeling for a few minutes before opening his eyes again.

The palace entry room was incredible. The walls stood thousands of feet tall and were made of solid white marble, the ceiling was arched and was littered with small golden stars that radiated light and mirrored the night sky. To the left and right of the entry room were large hallways. Long spiral staircases followed the walls upwards towards massive arched doors made of solid white stone. The staircases were lined with golden railings and had intricate patterns of beasts and flora carved along the sides. Beneath the staircases, were five doors dozens of yards tall and wide.

John stood on immaculate white marble flooring with a large circular flower medallion inlay in the center of the room. It was made with at least ten different kinds of stone and was perfectly symmetrical.

In front of John was a massive hallway lined with colossal statues made of flawless stone. On the right side, statues of a man were seen striking different heroic poses. The man seemed to be middle aged, he had a full head of long flowing hair, a chiseled face, a set of piercing eyes that seemed as if they could see through all of creation. He held a majestic sword in his hand, and seemed as if he could cleave through the heavens itself.

On the opposite side, the statues depicted a woman. She had luxurious robes, long flowing hair, and a face that would topple kingdoms and ruin empires. Similar to the man, she too had an aura of grandness surrounding her.

John made his way through the room towards the statues in front of him. As he walked, additional stars on the ceiling above lit up, illuminating the entire hallway before him, and revealing endless statues down the hall and a grand white door at the end. He studied each statue as he continued down the hallway, and after some time he finally reached the end and stood in front of the white door which stood hundreds of feet tall and wide.

He examined the majestic golden adornments embedded in the door and wondered to himself, "How am I supposed to open a door this large?"

Curiously, he moved to place his hands on the door in front of him. As if aware of his touch, the door started to slowly part, revealing the room behind it.

The room was larger than the previous hallway and entry room. Throughout the room countless white pillars dotted the floor, each pillar was large enough to need several men to wrap their arms around it. John's eyes followed the pillars upwards to the ceiling. To his surprise, the ceiling was not visible. A light gray mist filled the upper regions of the room.

As John stepped into the room, rays of light pierced the mist and illuminated a pathway before him. John continued forward, following the illuminated path for thousands of feet. At the end of the room stood another massive marble white gate.

The gate was different from the one before it. It stood upon a platform that had gray oval shaped stairs leading up to it. Standing thousands of feet tall wide, the gate had nine chains securing it in place. Each chain was tens of feet thick and spanned the entire gate, seemingly locking something inside. Far to each side of the gate, stood large doors at the end of each side of the room but John did not notice them due to the imposing presence of what stood before him.

Floating high above the ground in front of the gate was a translucent orb several feet across. Within the orb, ten spheres of viscous red blood could be seen revolving around each other, seemingly in an endless celestial dance.

John stepped up the oval stairs towards the gate. As he stepped below the translucent orb, one of the blood drops slowly started to descend. As soon as it left the protection of the translucent orb, the humming stopped. The silence surprised John. He felt an incredibly powerful and holy aura wash over him. He tried to back away from the orb but found that he could no longer move.

"Why can't I move?" John yelled as he struggled to break free of his restraints.

Despite using all his power, John couldn't budge a single inch, and could only watch helplessly as the blood drop descended until it was right in front of him. John stared at the blood drop, at which point it slowly began to move towards the center of his chest. John wasn't sure what this blood was, but after his experience with the black sphere, he didn't want to touch anything he didn't understand.

"Get away from me" John yelled, but no matter what he tried, he could not budge. The blood drop approached John before slowly merging into his chest. Another intense wave of pain washed over John, and he felt as if he was about to explode. Immense energy was rippling throughout his entire body, threatening to destroy him.

"So this is how I die huh?" thought John while trying to withstand the pain.

Light.

John slowly opened his eyes, only to find himself lying in his bed back home in his mansion. Confused, he looked around expecting to see the majestic palace he was just in, but could only see his mother sitting on the side of his bed, staring at him worryingly.