As the others gathered and went about the small things needed to make a camp in the abandoned garden terrace, placing fallen beams and rubble in a corner of the room as far away from the ghostly tunnels they had emerged from, Tharne noticed a downcast and forlorn feeling resonating through his companions. Settled like a dark cloud overhead, they talked less and seemed less open with each other.
Nearby, Jadeis watched over Dahuri as usual, her normal loving expression mixed with clouded doubt and worry as the small girl distractedly tended a growing vine of fruits along the back wall behind their encampment. Yuri, usually vocal and opinionated, seemed to be stewing in her own thoughts as she moved around the camps perimeter, scanning and searching for any intrusions. Tomu and Nym, also patrolling, walked by her. None of them gave any notice that the others were even there. Vasius sat nearby on a solid rock outcrop, staring into the distance and pondering something.
The siblings, Blake Mia and Ryan, had taken to working close together, where their power was most concentrated, Tharne thought. Even Nima had stopped her constant competitions with Ryan and looked over at him frequently, as if waiting for his eyes to turn back to her. They never did.
Ivy sat with Nima in quiet conversations, discussing how much of their secret discoveries they should reveal to the others inside the tower itself. The tower now seemed, selfish as it was, something private to Tharne Nima and Ivy alone. None of the others had ever set foot in there and it pained Tharne to think that these others whom he had barely met would defile the hidden safety of the small rooms and great halls that He and Ivy and Nima had explored together. Those memories seemed so far away now, yet so precious.
Erim suddenly appeared from his left, striding with her casual grace and blank expressions from between two pillars.
“All seems clear around the complex” she muttered quietly. Tharne it seemed, she had taken as her commander and she spent less and less time with anyone but him.
“Good, Good” he muttered, his thoughts still turned to the others and the unease blanketing the camp. Erim, seeing that he had no further directions for her, turned and stood in a casual gait against a pylon around the gardens edge, Tharne looked over and noticed that although she looked calm and relaxed, she was, as always prepared to spring forward at any moment.
The time seemed to drag on as the group tried to converse and keep close to each other, slowly through the hours, as the horrors of the tunnels settled out of their minds, they began to brighten again, talking and even laughing once or twice quietly when Nima made one of her grand gestured jokes or told one of her more animated stories.
rested and recovered, they gathered their camp and prepared to move again towards the tower, the group from the darkness below stared in amazement at the bright colourful light breaching the dome above as cataclysmic events, frozen in time radiated their visions down upon them. As they moved together Tharne thought there seemed to be hope again for them, The others seemed to be growing more trusting of each other again, yet something felt as though it was missing, as though a piece of them had been taken and could not be filled.
The streets here, were unfamiliar to even those who had been above the surface before, they had never been to this part of the city before and progress was slow along the twisting and turning streets as they tried to make their way ever closer to the Tower in the centre of the city itself.
Lost in thought as he lead the way, looking for a doorway into the transit system he had found which could take them all into the tower again, he suddenly stopped, causing Nima to run into the back of him.
“What are you doing!” she muttered, brushing the front of her clothes as if they were dirty and misplaced, “You trying to knock my teeth out?”
Tharne simply stood silent, a confused look covering his face, “I thought is saw someone on that rooftop” he said, pointing to a building nearby.
The others tensed immediately and Blake and Ryan blinked around and up to the roof together, lightning and red smoke intertwining as the moved faster than the eye could track. Emerging and standing armed and ready atop the buildings roof they looked around and blinked back to the group.
“Must have just been a trick of the light” Ryan muttered as they returned, “That roof had an inch of dust and debris all over it and the only footprints up there were ours”.
The others relaxed, but Tharne could not get the image of the dark shape out of his mind, the way it stood, the way it felt when it looked at him. it seemed so familiar, as if he knew its name and only needed remember it.
The others kept walking forward in the group, all thirteen scanning and searching the streets for danger and locating the correct pathways to the tower, Tharne however could not get the feeling of being watched out of his mind.
Turning suddenly, he thought he saw a wisp of black, billowing in the wind as it rounded a corner. Immediately he ran down the side street, the tight walls of the narrow way crowded around him as he hear the others calling from behind. He turned and saw from the corner of his eye what he thought was a figure rounding into the next street. Sprinting after it, he turned corner after corner, getting lost in the maze of criss crossing pathways, buildings, bridges and gardens.
Then, as he turned a corner and lost all sight of his quarry. Standing, staff at the ready he turned to see his companions running around the corner breathless. He opened his mouth to explain, but the others expressions turned wide and shocked as they looked past him and off into the distance.
The sky above them was changing.
Great shocks, like faults in an earthquake, cleaving the universe beyond with great glowing cracks and fissures, had opened up and divided the skyline into pieces. Undulating and pulsating, different sections crumbled and decayed more, as though time sped them to their demise. Others retracted and reformed planets, stars, civilisations and cultures, like looking back through one thousand mirrors into the distant pasts of the world.
Then the shifting shook at its climax, rumbling and groaning with sub sonic frequencies enough to shake the lungs in Tharnes chest, then sling-shotting each section back to the present time, the shockwave of which, sent ripples echoing across the huge magical dome above them.
Tharne and the others looked on in horror as great shards of the universes fabric sheared through the great shield and crashed into several places across the city, splashing like watery crystals as they landed.
The ripples stopped, and the great dome above stood still and strong once again, but from hundreds of locations all around them in the great cityscape, the howls and cries of newly born shadow beasts leapt across the wind.
Shattered Cosmos 
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