Free PHANTASIA by R. Atlas

right after them.

Chapter 4: The Evil Eye

    Red landed headfirst into a foamy undergrowth - unable to sense the stillness of the moment after rushing through the polarizing currents of a whirlpool. With his vision still distorted from reeling wildly at an uncontrollable speed, he gripped the soft floor underneath him and nervously scanned the area for any danger. He was alone, for the time being. There was no sign of the lidless eye, nor of Raven. He was surprised that the whirlpool had been able to separate them after their impossible grip on each other. Abruptly, his attention was drawn to the bright glow of the cavern he had fallen into, and the calm rhythm of a waterfall flowing freely somewhere nearby. He sat up and hunched over, counting to ten forwards and backwards with his eyes closed to let his delirium fade away, just as he had been taught to do so in academy.  
    My hand is gone. The ringing sensation in his ears came back. He tried telling himself that it would be okay, that he would get a syntechdage installed once he got back to Crest, but the thought clung to his mind like a leech.It was more than just a hand to him. Had it been anything else, his right foot, his left hand, it would have been just a limb; but what he had lost was his way of controlling the world around him. My right hand… dots of black creeped up against the fringes of his vision, inviting him once more to give in to the serenity of fainting. He focused on the light around him, desperate to anchor his attention to something. If he fainted, there was no telling how long he would be out for.  
    The glow of the cavern seemed to permeate everything around him, an organic gleam that betrayed the presence of boundless energy. Cron, he whispered to himself. Everything here must have been saturated with an extraordinary amount of it. The renowned energy source could be found inside any substance — its primary attribute being a bio-phosphorescent effect that it imbued to its container. The more Cron, the brighter the glow. After Cron was extracted, distilled, and purified into a more usable form through a cryptic process patented by MegaCORP called hyperproxification, it could be used to power anything from fleets of vehicles and entire cities to dimensional portals for space travel. He had heard that a gemini mothership could use as much Cron in a single day as all of Echidna City could use in an entire year. Every technologically advanced culture he had ever heard of, from every race he knew to exist, was fueled by Cron. He had learned that Xenosites showed a special affinity for the substance as well, suggesting that they used it for biological functions that appropriated extraordinary amounts of energy. But how they naturally synthesized the substance into a form of usable energy was still unknown.
    The floor of the cavern was composed of a thick spongy foam with a fungal quality. The soft lather was colored a deep shade of coral and frothed about spontaneously as if it were actively fermenting. Some parts of the foam were as hard as rock, whereas others were so light and viscous they felt like the stretched remnants of a gaseous gel. Wherever the natural interior of the cavern could be seen underneath the foam, a glowing metal cut through like fragments of a lunar crescent. As he gathered his senses, he came to realize the enormity of the cavern. The sound of a waterfall came not from a single one - but from several of them, hundreds of cataracts that gushed rapidly from holes spread generously all throughout the sides of the giant cavern. He couldn’t imagine how deep underground the whirlpool had taken him; the ceiling of the place stretched out into an immeasurable blackness, and towards no direction was there a visible end. Even on the floor he landed in, wide cavities threatened to take him deeper underground if he fell in.  
    He stood up and limped over to the closest waterfall with the intent of washing his face, but paused when he