Kevin looked around. They had moved deeper into the Ethereal Plane away from the portal. Now they were near several very large sheets hanging from above. They seemed to stretch off in either direction as far as he could see, billowing in a wind he couldn’t feel. Colors and lights moved in the sheets, though he couldn’t detect a pattern to it.

“Are we safe here?”

Jason looked up at the sheets, too. “Yeah, we’re deep into the plane now. The necromancer shouldn’t be able to find us, at least not easily. Those curtains mark the boundary between this plane and the inner planes.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I read the books.” Jason’s voice took on a superior tone.

“I read them,” Kevin said, defensively.

“You’re mom won’t even let you have them. Anyway, they put out a book last year on all the plane stuff. It’s why Matt ran that adventure.”

“I guess it’s a good thing you read them. So where do we go now?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Matt? John’s still not awake.”

“Is he still breathing?”

Jason put his hand near John’s face. “Yeah.”

“Well, maybe we should wait.”

They sat in silence for what seemed like hours, hoping to hear Matt’s voice. John never stirred the entire time. The fog around them swirled according to its own rhythms, but no other creature came near them.

“Jason, aren’t there inhabitants of the Ethereal Plane?”

“Yeah. And other creatures use it to travel to other planes.”

“So why haven’t we seen any?”

“I… don’t know…”

They looked around, but there was nothing other than the fog and the curtains. “This place is giving me the creeps,” Jason finally concluded.

“Yeah. But you said we should wait for Matt.”

“Well where is he?”

Kevin shrugged. “Maybe he’s stuck back where we came from. He created that world. Maybe he can’t leave it.”

“We can’t stay here forever. If we get out, we’ll try to find Matt, but I think we’ve waited long enough.”

“What about John? He still hasn’t woken up.”

Jason picked up their friend easily. “Everything is really light, like it doesn’t have any weight. I can carry him.”

Kevin stood. “Okay, let’s go. Which direction?”

Jason looked at the curtain. “I’m not sure, but we want to find a stretch of blue. That should be an entrance to the Plane of Air. The other 3 elemental planes would kill us almost immediately.”

“Plane of Air it is.” Kevin started walking alongside the curtain. It was an odd feeling. He was moving, but his feet weren’t actually touching anything. He’d never felt anything like this before. As they went, though, he felt more and more disconcerted. Several minutes passed before he realized why. No matter how much they moved, the curtain never changed.

“Is this supposed to happen?”

“What?” Jason replied from behind him.

“The color on the curtain, the lights, they never seem to change. We don’t seem to be going anywhere.”

“No. That isn’t supposed to happen.”

Kevin stopped moving. “What are we doing wrong?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. What I remember, we should just follow the curtain. It can take awhile, but we should get somewhere.”

“Maybe the color doesn’t change for awhile?”

“That’s possible. I’m really not sure.”

Kevin nodded and began moving again, determined to find some difference. Maybe this color went on for miles, but it had to change eventually. He looked closely at the curtain and stopped abruptly. What color was it? It had a color, certainly, but he couldn’t make it out.

“Jason, what color is this?”

“Seriously? It’s obviously… Huh? I can’t tell.”

“Me either.”

“But we were just talking about it.”

“Yeah, that’s what made me think about it. We never said what the color was. You said we were looking for blue, but I can’t even say what color it is now.”

“We really are stuck, aren’t we?”

“It looks like it.”

“And John’s still out. Matt’s still gone.”

“Yeah.”

“Kevin, I’m scared.”

“Yeah. Me too.”