World In Between

TLC 02/6

A space between dimensions, accessible to neither, that sometimes trapped beings forever.

She(Mara Berens, Leira's grandmother) was trapped in a place with only the other beings who were trapped, the living and the dead, to talk to. But there were consequences for mingling with the darker beings trapped in there with everyone else, and it could be difficult to tell one from the other in time. Time was difficult to calculate in the world in between, but it wasn’t long after she was trapped there before Mara saw the darkness from a dark being, creep over a Wood Elf who had fallen in trying to use a portal, the same kind of accident that had trapped Mara. The Wood Elf begged for help as the darkness covered him like ebony liquid, engulfing him till he was absorbed. There are even worse things than the world in between.

TLC 02/9 Thick, gelatinous ether made up the world in between. The substance was there, and then it wasn’t, impeding movement and making it harder to reach out toward the living world just beyond. Distances in the world in between were relative. They could be a few feet, a few miles or another world. It took the same amount of focus to pull a being from Sacramento, California to Rome, Italy as it did to roam over a square city block. The world in between didn’t follow time or space. There were malevolent forces living in the world in between who were using darker magic they brought with them to slice through the filmy substance and move rapidly, showing up in different places in only a heartbeat. The world in between permeated the world of the living where time still passed in a linear progression, even if it didn’t in the void where Mara was trapped. The world in between stretched around and through and mingled with both Earth and Oriceran, giving a peculiar view to the myriad of inhabitants trapped there, watching time pass. Wanting it to pass for them again, or at least stop forever. That was the misery of the world in between. Trapped beings could watch for centuries, millennia even, not aging if they fell in while still alive, or never going on to the afterlife if they were dead. But they couldn’t participate, couldn’t communicate with anyone on the other side. All their senses were still there. They just turn on and turn off differently and you have to know what you’re doing. All they could do was watch, and hide when necessary from the evil that coursed through the world in between. Minions moved throughout with the darker forces - the dead the humans called poltergeists that had learned just enough about how the world in between worked to cause trouble and dispense nightmares, but not enough to really harm anyone. It wasn’t unusual to barter with the poltergeists to reach the other side of the veil but every once in a while, the darkness was attracted to what was happening and intervened, taking over the mind of someone trapped in there. The living in the world in between were their favorite targets. Madness might be their reward for such dealings. The poltergeists were easy to spot. The energy surrounding them was erratic and tended to throw off sparks into the ether, creating popping bursts of light. A poltergeist was dressed in a brown suit, still wearing a woolen winter coat and leather Florsheims. A dead human man, killed on a workday. Part of his head was smashed in, teeth broken. Did he even realized he was dead? Poltergeists could tell a being how to send a message to the real world.