The pack weighed a great deal, but fortunately, the tent and garments had broken his fall. In the collapse, even then, Rook had managed to pull out his two military picks and claw onto a chunk of sandstone. Pieces were raining down on him as he frantically clung to life. Bruised and battered, sand grating in his eyes and causing him to cough, and above all else a weightlessness surrounded by acceleration. Falling. It seemed like he had toppled a thousand feet before he suddenly became aware of himself as Emmett cried out.

For a moment, Rook was stunned and paralyzed, unsure if anything was broken or anything had impaled him. Pain told volumes of his body still functioning, but it wasn’t anything serious. Twisted joints, a contusion here from his tent pegs, a number of bruises, and a fun scrape on his forearms.

He tried to hurry to his feet, but the added 90 pounds of equipment weighed him down enough to prevent that. Hurriedly, he unfastened his pack, and rolled over. His hand made contact with his warhammer, and he instinctively grabbed it. The environment was so radically different from the world above that it made Rook dizzy. Cold where there was blazing heat, dark where the eyes had grown accustomed to blinding light. However, death was everywhere just like before. Only whereas the desert was the land of bleached bones, this was a grave.

Standing was difficult, and almost sent Rook tumbling backward, as his feet dug deep into the slope of soft ash. The disorientation didn’t help. However, he fought it still, moving as fast as he could on three limbs. It was an awkward and slow gate. Twice the distance could be covered in half the time should it simply been a floor instead of a dune, but he was there by his nephew's side shortly enough. At that moment, nobody else even existed. At that moment he was back in his sister-in-law’s house, climbing from the wooden floor where he slept, hearing the cries of his nephew about some unknown threat or injury. But this was more than night terrors. Something did go bump in the night, and it was more than an overactive imagination.

In the dim light (if you could call it that, for it was more like the dead light, that  had lost its vibrance and will to illuminate) he identified the form he was very familiar with.

Rook’s calloused hand grabbed tight to the still bound hands of Emmett. He paid no mind to the stinging pain of scraped flesh and sand still embedded in the wound.

[color=8888aa]“I’m here.”[/color] was all he said. He glanced about, looking for salvation, for wounds, for foes, and for any threat, any hope, any insight no matter how small or insignificant.