A Snowed Abode

Time

"Wait... centuries ago? How could you still be alive?" Pax asked relevantly... but seriously, are they vampires? Because they do not seem like any stereotypical one... maybe golems? Ah, why am I even wildly speculating, let us just continue on...

"What leaked from our experiments... from the universe... is a certain essence that... both annihilated everything, including our mortal coils and any possibility at having the usual lives again, and..." That is quite the statement, one has got to admit... but how does one's mortal coil be annihilated... perhaps that means they are immortal? Does this not sound somewhat similar to the others who were also negligent with their experiments? Instead of going through the effects themselves, though, the results were stolen... and I suspect (if indeed whatever leaked from here is the same as the production of their probes) if they knew that they could have become immortal, and tall... that they would probably regret having it stolen. At least they have their optimism going for them, though...

"Was it... the ethereal archetypes that leaked?" Clemens suddenly said, specifically homing in on what the trio were probably all thinking, although one supposes that it was more of the ethereal energy that does the leaking, with archetypes likely following in its wake...

"I believe they may be called that now, but centuries ago we had no idea as to what they might have been. Not just nominally, but what they were capable of too... the first time we witnessed that was when our other half vanished into the ether... taken away by an incomprehensible abyss, never to know them again, swallowed whole by the netherworld..." That is... quite the explanation, and clearly he is more than just some huge person... technically, though, could an abyss ever be comprehended? Is it not just a bottomless hole? I suppose if one shone a light strong enough to go to the bottom, if it was not literally bottomless, then one can 'know', but otherwise it is just like any space where eyes cannot bounce light off from...

"Other... half...?" Pax asked, while contemplating the possible implications with a sort of meandering solemnity usually only reserved for a meditative pause...

"We are from a species called the 'twos', although we are mainly known as that only by those who meet us here in this dimension... not exactly a twin, but whenever our kind cross a certain spatial barrier we seem to be forever intertwined through synchronization... it is a bit strange, but it became second nature to us, up until that point..." Well, that should perk up Pax's interest, considering where they just came from... what kind of spatial barrier, though? Like a black hole, perhaps, whose event horizon transforms all? I mean, usually it just makes people into individual spaghetti, theoretically elongated to infinity... so, perhaps this is the opposite? Or not, strictly, as it was never explicitly said that short or tall were their original forms, so far, anyway. Could this be a new kind of physics? One where phenomena does not just destroy life?

"Twos...?! You must be related to a few scientists we were just talking with! We did indeed notice this strange phenomenon of synchronized walking... as they have not been separated, like it seems happened here so long ago..." Exactly, now the crucial question here is, I think, the one the whole of existence depends on... are they, literally, all scientists in their species?

"Well, the world is surely small... we might need to speak with them at some point, then... meanwhile, why would you not meet with the three others that inhabit this place, just before this cave, where you came from? They might like to know this also, and possibly provide you with some other information..." Oh, so those were not just shadows whispering in the dark...

"Ever since that accident aeons ago we were never the same, hollow and lifeless do we feel..." Well, one might feel like that if somehow one lives forever in some dilapidated cavern, one has got to admit...