Enter a strange and amazing new world you've never seen before, but you most likely already live inside. Follow Theodore, a lonely kid who has to Travel through the 7 Layers of Space in order to find a brick and probably save the universe. Unfortuna...
There are many doors between the various Layers of Space, though only a small number of them are marked and known.
Very fancy places like The House of The Magician Detective and The Temple of the Hanging Foot contain 7 primary doors, which, through a rigorous and mostly-boring process, have been well-marked and well-stabilized.
But other, lesser-known doors emerge, get forced open, and change.
They are always red.
This one was now an oven.
***
Not surprisingly, it was very hot inside the oven.
Theodore slipped forward, covered in a sheen of sock puppet sweat. It was an over-sized oven, but the passage was narrow, another surreal long hallway to traverse, but this one was on fire. It was the style of a pizza oven, a flat slate floor surrounded by brick that lead to a very real fire. The slab of a door closed with a thick THUD behind them, but he could still hear shouts through it.
His throat tightened in instinctual horror as he wondered whether or not he had made a horrifying mistake.
"What the hey-neigh is happening?!" Terrycloth Green screamed out, coming to suddenly, disoriented with pain at the cardboard cleaver that was still sticking out of his shoulder. Theodore took in TCG's wound vaguely, he hadn't even seen it happen in all the chaos. He tried to keep them moving forward towards the flame, against all reason. Every inch and second was a challenge. Anywhere he planted himself quickly set to burning him, like a foot on summer's hot pavement, but much worse, more like a sock in an oven.
They crawled low on their bellies, inching forward towards the fire. His vision blurred. He tried to say, "I think this is the door back to Gup, why aren't we there?" though it came out sounding more like, "Shmufff hafffa blarg fla GUP." The smell of burning socks filled his head and he laughed hysterically as he realized that that he was smelling his own flesh burning.
"Do the...Power...Pttrrr..." Terrycloth Green mumble-gasped, and Theodore shook his head trying to clear it. He knew there was no time or ability to fish out a sketch pad and pen. He reached out with his puppet 'hands' and grabbed at some ash that had piled in the side of the oven. Unable to think and burning up, he summoned the feelings and ideas that were tied to Gup, now much easier to access than the first time. An elaborate little charcoal drawing emerged below him on the slate, it looked much like his first, but with broader charcoal strokes.
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Terrycloth Green was uncharacteristically still beside him. He'd gone limp. Theodore grabbed him by his scruff and, against all of his better judgement, crawled straight for the fire. The heat was a force, it pressed against his face urging him back, but he summoned a last ounce of irrational strength and pushed forward through the flames.
There was a moment of shocking pain, a pin-prick of focused agony, but just as quickly it was overtaken by the increasingly familiar sensation of having one's entire body pulled apart and re-assembled. Theodore was amazed to find that he welcomed it.
