“Ugh… My head…” Liv groans, her eyes beginning to flutter. She expected many things: the sun pouring in through the window, Charlotte knocking on the door, the feeling of silk on her back, that sense of contentedness when she lies in bed, and the smell of pine and citrus that wafts across her room. Instead, she’s met with a cascade of colors, reds and blues mashing with greens and oranges, exploding into yellows, magentas, and cyans. It's an aurora, both smashing together and tearing apart in an endless cycle of death and rebirth.

  She tries to blink, but finds she has no eyelids to blink with, no eyes to see with, and no head to hold them. She looks down to where her body is; or rather, where it should be.

  There's nothing.

  The cold, icy grip of panic besets her heart, a chill running through her the depths of her consciousness, a pit forming deep in her nonexistent stomach. She knows she shouldn't panic, that keeping a level head in an unfamiliar place is for the best; yet, she can't find the mental fortitude to remain calm.

  She tries to scream, but nothing comes out. She has no mouth to scream with, nor vocal chords to vibrate, let alone ears to process the noise. She tries to thrash, to demand her senses back, her body back; yet, nothing comes of it. She has no muscles to move with, no limbs to thrash with, no tendons to coordinate. Her surroundings begin to burn brighter and brighter, scarlets and maroons flashing through the sky like lighting through clouds. They crack through the endless sea, tinging each cloud they touch a deep red. Liv expects them to boom like a whips of thunder. No sound comes. They simply propagate, spreading further and further beyond her sight.

  “Gotta be a dream… I ain’t dead yet… Just gotta wake up.” Liv mutters to herself like a mantra, the thundering red slowly giving way to calm shades of blue and purple, the two forces fusing into magentas that detonate like supernova's, colors Liv can barely comprehend flashing before her.

  Liv manages to look down, then up, then spin. While not corporeal– more so a conglomeration of thought and feeling– she could still perceive her environment. The colors seem to stretch on forever, growing sparser and sparser the more she focuses toward the horizon. Colors still flicker, fuse, and detonate over yonder, but not at the breakneck rate they where she exists.

  “Well, I reckon that’d be the way I get outta here.” Liv says to herself, floating toward the sparser parts of the world. Her formless mass whips through the empty space of color, effortlessly gliding like a skater on ice. She felt like she was going faster, but had no way to tell. With no feeling in her body, she had no way to estimate her speed, her perception perpetually locked, gliding until she reaches the edge of this world.

  The edge of this world is a black, inky nothingness: the colors which painted every crevice of this place replaced by a void beyond perception. Staring into it, Liv feels a strange sense of unease grip her heart, green cracks splintering into view just behind her. Her heart thunders through her nonexistent chest, her resolve wavering. She looks around a bit more, hoping to find a another exit. If there was one, however, she couldn't see it any which way. All she could see was more of the same colors.

  Liv sighs, her resolve hardening.

  “Ain’t no time like the present.” She says, hyping herself up as she slowly glides forward, trying to push herself into the void. What she feels is a strange repulsion as she treks forward, each push forward sending her back in equal amounts. She lets out a mental growl, willing her way forward. Whatever she was now shook with the strain, a deep echo resounding through her entire being. It was real. Too real. Real enough to make her freeze.

  "This ain't a dream." Liv groans. "And I'm stuck in... Some sorta paintin'. What the hell even is this place?"

  The realization wasn't a pleasant one. All her old questions flare back to life, no longer explained by the simple explanation of "it's just a dream". That still left "dead" on the table, but this didn't seem like the heaven her mother had told her about. There weren't any white clouds, no chorus of altruistic angels, no glimmering gates gilded with gold. She snaps it out of her mind. Wherever the hell she was, she wouldn't be there for long. With redoubled effort, she crashes her being against the barrier between the void and the world of color.

  Hours pass, or perhaps not a moment goes by at all before she can feel what she's been waiting for. A single, subtle give. At the same time, she senses something else, like a predator deep in the forest locking onto its prey. Something was coming, an unknown factor. Liv redoubles her effort, panic beseeching her soul. If she was caught, what would happen to her? She didn't want to find out. Just as she's about to push through, a voice booms out, the colors dispersing around it.

  “Liv?” Her boss’s voice rings through the entire space. Liv feels the reverberations shake her being, pushing her back into the world of color, away from the void of nothingness. Her focus shifts as she tries to make out a shape, if any exists. Yet, she can't seem to. It's just a haze of nothing, a spot that feels like it should contain something.

  “Hi, boss!” She calls out, genuinely relieved to hear from someone she at least knows. She wasn’t dead, confirmed by her weapons presence. A rumble goes through the space, the colors coagulating to form what appears to be a simple, yellow eye with a blue iris. It stares at whatever Liv is, doing full circles around her form.

  “How are you here?” Her boss questions, confusion and curiosity lacing its voice. It analyzes her like some sort of experiment, its hazy iris analyzing everything she is.

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  “I dunno.” Liv admits truthfully, not moving an inch. “Went to bed, now I'm… Here. How the hell’d you get here though?” Liv questions, her query directed at her boss.

  “That is none of your concern.” Her boss says, causing Liv to scoff. In the distance, a red bolt of lighting cracks down, quickly quelled by a single glance from her boss’s new, strange form.

  “I reckon it’s certainly my concern!” Liv yells at her boss, red lighting lancing through the clouds of color, tinging the world a menacing maroon. Her boss looks back at the lighting before returning its gaze to her, a sigh escaping it.

  “You are in my realm, in the gauntlet.” It says simply, a hand materializing out of the eye. It’s made of a vibrant green, like the lushest tree Liv could imagine. It’s pointer points directly at Liv, all her boss’s attention focused directly on her. “At least, a piece of you is.”

  “The hell does that mean?” Liv questions incredulously, a hint of panic washing through her voice. The maroon grows darker, lighting arcing around, the detonations around the, growing sparser and sparser. Her boss turns to them, splitting its attention between quelling the storm and speaking to Liv.

  “If you could calm down so I may explain, that would do us both wonders.” Her boss says, its attention split between the rapidly fading lighting and Liv’s fading panic. She calms herself, trying to be rational. She supposes her boss would know what's going on, and how to get this “piece” of her back to herself.

  “Aight… Aight, I'm calm.” Liv says slowly. “So could ya explain how the hell I’m here?”

  “If I had to guess, it may be the connection I established in your head. A small piece of your soul might have passed through the connection.” Her boss theorizes, it’s eye flitting about the realm as if to look for something. It eventually snaps between the colors, finding something Liv cannot. “As I suspected: a breach. I will have to study this.”

  “Yeah....” Liv mutters, her vision flitting around as well. “Why don’t I got a body or anythin’? Ain't fair you get an eye thingy and I gotta be... Nothin'!"

  “We aren’t close enough, nor is your soul powerful enough to form a cohesive body in my realm.” They say, adding with a mumble, “It’s already worrying enough that you've arrived here in the first place.”

  Liv scoffs through their connection, trying to send what she hopes approximates an eye roll through as well. "Reckon we'd be closer if you told me anythin' about you. Say... Yer name?" Liv prods, a bit of hope sparking in her soul.

  "No." Her boss replies instantly, her hope crumbling to tiny pieces. After a moment of silence, her boss' attention locked on the supposed breach she made, a thought pops into her mind.

  “Am I gonna be here every night?” Liv questions, looking back to the void. She shudders, feeling goosebumps crawl across her very essence. With hindsight, she could see how bad an idea it was to throw herself into the yawning abyss.

  “Most likely not. I could see you passing here willingly when need be if our bond advances any further, though." Her boss says, the eye her boss calls its body beginning to dissipate into wisps of vibrant smoke. "I'll have to be more careful with you."

  “Are you 'sposed to be, uh, meltin?"” Liv questions, watching as her boss’s body drips down into the mess below, instantly reabsorbed by the colors beneath it.

  “Indeed. I have fixed the breach.” Her boss says, continuing to melt as they speak. Their voice, while not distorting, begins to fade… Or rather, she begins to fade, the colors seeming to warp around like a cacoon. Her boss’s voice grows fainter and fainter, her brain straining to catch every word. “I’ll have to be more attentive to these breaches you seem to be making. If you had gone into the void, your soul would have-.”

  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

  Liv slowly opens her eyes, her mind swimming in a lake of grogginess, her mouth dry, her brain pounding against her skull, an aching headache assaulting her senses. She groans as she tunes into the knocking, knowing exactly who’s on the other side of the door. She takes a peak at the clock, then at the window. 10 minutes to nine AM, the morning sun . She stands up slowly, hobbling over to the door, swinging it open to reveal Charlotte dressed in her armor. A shine runs across its metal length, polished to an extreme degree. Her smile is ecstatic, a banana in each hand.

  “Good morning, Liv! It’s a wonderful morning!” Charlotte exclaims, holding out one of the two bananas to Liv. She bounces from foot to foot, her voice a high, shrill, ecstatic sound. “I tried to wake you up earlier, but I couldn’t seem to accomplish that through the door. So I went and got these from the mess hall so no time would be wasted! We have very little of it before testing starts!”

  “Aight.” Liv mutters, looking down at the banana. She peels it slowly, taking a bite as she walks back into her room, leaving the door open as she drags herself to the closet. She felt like hell, and probably looked the part too. Her dream had left her slow, sluggish, and weak: If it was a dream, that is. Opening her closet, she finds rows and rows of monotone shirts and sweatpants, each of them in different yet diverse sizes. She grabs two ones that seem her size, walking herself to the shower. After a quick shower, she opens the bathroom door, steam billowing out. She lets out a sigh of relief, her body refreshed. Charlotte was still waiting at the door, her impatient steps were increasing in velocity as Liv approaches, her words blurring together as she speaks.

  “There is no time! Come, let us go now!” Charlotte says, grabbing Liv’s arm as she drags her toward the stairs. Liv hardly keeps up, trying to blink her exhaustion away. In the back of her mind, she can feel a sort of nagging tug on her brain she associates with her boss. Yet, it doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t have time to think as Charlotte bounds down the stairs, leaving Liv to follow sloppily. She shakes her head, trying to wake up as best as possible. She picks up the pace, her feet stomping against the concrete stairs, mentally preparing herself for the tests to come.