With a popping sound similar to popped bubble wrap, Jack suddenly found himself thirty or forty feet in the air, falling face-first at a polished marble floor below him."Oh s.h.i.t-" was all he managed to get out before he swiftly and unceremoniously cratered into the ground, skidding half a dozen feet chin first before sliding to a halt. Strangely, the impact hurt less than he would have expected. Even more strangely, this somehow made the whole thing even more embarra.s.sing and insulting.
He started working his way to his feet just in time for Frumpkin to appear in front of him with a loud bang, causing him to shriek unintentionally and fall back onto his a.s.s.
The deity was wearing sungla.s.ses and a floral print b.u.t.ton-down shirt, and looked a good bit more tan than when Jack had seen him last. When he saw Jack on the floor right in front of him, he raised his sungla.s.ses up to his forehead, revealing pale white circles around his eyes.
"Rough landing?" Frumpkin asked.
"You could say that." Jack said, scowling and trying for the second time to get back to his feet. As he did so, he took a good look around for the first time.
The two of them were in some sort of long hall, maybe two hundred feet wide, with floors and walls of the same matching white and black marble, polished to a near mirror shine. The hallway receded far enough into the distance that Jack couldn"t see the end of it, and overhead the ceiling was high enough that he could barely make it out in the haze above them. As he looked, he realized there were actual clouds rolling along beneath the ceiling. The whole hall was lined with matching white pillars ornately carved and trimmed with gold, and matching doors painted red with gold trim lined both sides of the hallway as far as he could see in either direction.
"Whoa..." Jack said, taking the whole thing in. "What is this place?"
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"This, this is, well, honestly, I"ve never really given it a name, so we"ll call it the Long Hallway of Important Stuff About Everything." Frumpkin said, looking around admiringly, before kicking off the ground and starting to float in the air above Jack.
"Now follow me. I have something to show you." Frumpkin said drifting off down the hall.
Jack followed the floating man down the ma.s.sive corridor as Frumpkin looked from one door to the next, until he finally seemed to find the one he was looking for, and dropped down in front of the large red door. Jack walked up beside Frumpkin, and looked at it.
Directly in the middle of the door, right at eye level, was a polished golden plate screwed into the door that read, in flowery script "JACK EAMES".
Frumpkin reached into the unb.u.t.toned portion of his shirt, and pulled out a comically large ring of keys. By Jack"s count, there had to be thousands of them on there, of every shape and size, and material, imaginable. Frumpkin picked through until he found an una.s.suming bra.s.s key, and held it out.
As soon as he did, the otherwise blank surface of the door molded and shifted, creating a matching gold handle and lockset, and Frumpkin slid the bra.s.s key into the lock and twisted. The door"s latch popped free with a heavy clunk, and the large red door swung inwards, revealing a stellar void, filled with consellations of stars.
"Dude..." Jack said, taking in the spectacle.
"Pretty cool, huh?" Frumpkin said. "I thought that was a nice touch."
He motioned in a grand, sweeping gesture towards the open doorway.
"After you, your hero-ness"