Darkness surrounded Susie. She felt her body pressed into the cold, rough floor, a tingling numbess emanated from her limbs, unable to tell where her fingers ended and the ground began. She saw, no, felt Noelle laying on the ground next to her, just inches away. She tried to lift her arms, but the air felt dense, like syrup, fighting a losing battle against gravity with all of her strength.
Noelle's presence began to fade, while Susie struggled to define the edges of her body, as if the fog surrounding her consciousness had begun to thicken. Unable to move, Susie opened her eyes.
Atop a dark cliff, surrounded by endless nothingness, lay Susie and Noelle, dazed from the transition to this yet darker world. The purple girl slowly stood up, steadying herself as she examined her surroundings.
She saw her clothes — the same she had worn on all those adventures, though the spikes on her bracelets have been removed, replaced by long, metal bracers that extended up her forearms. She turned around to look at Noelle, who went through a similar transformation: her pearly white robes were patterned with embroidered swirls and cracks, like freshly frosted glass, embossed by light blue cloth. The colors of this reality were as vivid as she remembered, though the world did shine in a different, shifted hue — a subconscious reflection of her mind.
Susie knelt down, trying to awaken her dearest, clutching her shoulder. "Damnit... Noelle? Elly..? Are you..?" She sounded hurt, not by anything physical, but by the sheer weight of her 'success'. Deep down, she wanted this. She wanted it so bad, it made her heart ache. It took her so much time to move on, to start living her real life instead of getting caught in a fantasy. But she could never forget the past. She promised herself that she never would, even if, perhaps, the memories of her friends were what kept her hurting.
Noelle weakly rolled over and opened her eyes, looking at directly at Susie. The sight of her brought the deer some much needed strength, and the two carefully stood up. "You... Susie, y-you did it..?" Noelle sounded as surprised as she was worried, the impossibility of their situation striking her mind like a hammer.
Her companion looked down, staying silent as she took a slow, deep breath, the resolve in her voice strengthening Noelle with every word. "We need to go. We- We can't stay here for long. If we're lucky, we'll find help, but if not..."
She looked around, trying to gauge her surroundings. They were standing on a purple rectangular platform that seemed to extend endlessly into the ground. A black outline of a cartoonish arrow was drawn onto the ground at the far edge of the square, indicating the direction they needed to proceed in. Susie stepped onto the sign, and the arrow lit up, followed by a second platform rising from the depths, a similar arrow drawn on a different side. "Berdly was further away when I opened the Fountain. If I'm right about this, he should be somewhere up ahead," she stretched her arm to Noelle, who quickly took it, walking along to the next platform, "though with our luck, his plastic bag probably turned into a giant lightner-eating dog by now."
Noelle smiled weakly as the two snaked their way through various panels, the monochrome shades of the ground swirling beneath their feet, like paintbrushes disturbing freshly painted gouache, creating turbulent eddies wherever they stepped. She looked down at her arm, tracing the outline of her delicate sleeves. "I... I-I can't believe we're really here. It feels almost..." She flicked her wrist, and a large snowflake manifested above her palm, turning into tiny frosted needles as it fell onto her fur, "...magical."
Susie did not reply. She tried her best to feign apathy, but she couldn't hide the fact that, despite their situation, she was excited to return, to experience a fantastical adventure with her friends once again. If only Kris was here to see it.
