Book 5: Chapter 53 — Barriers
Dylan settled down on Noah’s shoulder as they kept moving through the endless flat plane. For a long time neither spoke. Noah was focusing on maintaining their orientation and not letting himself get drawn away by the lure of the path back to the living world and Dylan had never been talkative at the best of times.
He had to admit, it was nice being free of the Devourer’s constant commentary. The rest of the trip should be downright peaceful. He just kept catching himself curving back whenever his focus wandered.
Unfortunately, their path didn’t remain empty for long. After another indeterminate amount of time that Noah would probably describe as an hour or two of walking, they came across an endless expanse of a large black wall.
"How did a whole wall get here without any of us seeing it?" Noah asked, annoyed at the disruption.
The wall crossed the entire path in the direction they were going, disappearing in either direction without visible end. He moved along beside it for a little, but it showed no sign of changing that way either. Jumping revealed that his ability to fly as a soul in the underworld was almost nonexistent. He could hop and somewhat drift, but while his momentum sideways seemed to be well preserved—as he learned by smacking face-first into the wall at a higher speed than he was expecting—upward was not something available to him.
The wall was too smooth to climb, resisting his best efforts to imitate a gecko. Dylan even tried scrabbling at it with his tentacles, in case he could make himself into a sort of step, but they slid off just as easily.
"Do we go around?" Noah looked first one way, then the other. The wall wasn't perfectly flat across their path, it would push them off a bit to the right, generally away from both the Reaper and the exit, or backtrack the way they'd come.
You're my vessel, are you not? the Devourer spoke up. Simply consume the wall.
“I can eat a wall?”