Who Knows?

[schrodinger]

When I come to, the sky looks like it's nearly dawn. Or dusk. I can't tell.

My head aches slightly, like I've got a mild hangover. Strange, since I don't remember drinking anything in the past few hours. Wait. What do I remember? My mind's a haze, and I can't recall much beyond waking up on the ground here.

But where is here? I sit up and look around, and the landscape stretches as far as my eye can see in every direction, showing me nothing but the same, homogeneous terrain for miles around. Grass. Some wildflowers, here and there. And the sun, hanging just above the horizon, framed against the nearly cloudless sky. Have to clear my head. Have to try and think what happened before I got here. I focus, and try to bring the events of the past together into a coherent image.

I still know what I did. I killed Gestalt. I took everyone's minds. That much, at least, I haven't forgotten, though it might be a mercy if I had.

I still know why I left. I couldn't handle living in a veritable tomb, created by my own hand. Well, I told myself I had to search for a solution that I couldn't find in there, but maybe I needed an escape as much as anything else.

And the rest is... a blur. Did my planeshift go awry? Am I indeed on that world now? I rummage in my pocket for the planar compass that I appropriated from the Academy's collection, and confirm that I'm where I planned to end up. That's a relief.

But I find more than I counted on lying around in my pockets. A collection of strange weapons. Some kind of magical crystal. And a bottle of liquor. It explains the hangover, but why don't I remember having it with me? I certainly didn't have any of this on me before I left, so how...

A quirk of magic, perhaps. Maybe the enchantment on my pockets interacted strangely with the shift, and these items are missing from their rightful owners in another world. Maybe. That explanation seems flimsy, even to me, and the gap in my memory definitely has something to do with it.

Doesn't matter for the moment. I'm here, and apart from the clearing headache, I feel fine. Time to get moving.

I get to my feet, and decide to keep going straight ahead. One way is as good as another, from what I can see.

-

This is weird. I've been walking for perhaps an hour or more now, and yet... nothing. Still the same plain field. The sun still hangs precariously above the horizon, suspending the world in twilight. I should have stumbled upon some kind of settlement, or a trace of civilization, by now - or at the very least, the sun should have set, or fully risen, by now.

What's going on here?

[To Be Continued.]

[schrodinger]

The passage of time is strange here. It's been 6 hours since I found myself in the middle of this field, and I've been walking in a relatively straight line for most of that time. So why hasn't the sun changed its position yet? Why don't I feel hunger or thirst or fatigue setting in?

To make things worse, there's no sign that I've made any progress at all. The area around me appears basically identical to the spot where I woke up, and there's nothing else for miles around. It's a perfectly innocuous, pastoral scene.

And yet I feel a sense of despair creeping over me.

So much for walking - I haven't gotten anywhere. I thought I'd be able to find someone else, maybe get my bearings a little... but no luck. Well, if the answer does not lie without, perhaps it lies within. This mysterious gap in my memory - what does it mean?

There's got to be more to it than this. Something I'm missing. Something I can't recall -

Think.

[schrodinger]

I reach way back into my subconscious, where everything I see, everything I think (even if I don't know it), everything I feel converges.

Enter my mindscape. It's dark in here, a shadow gallery with memories and thoughts suspended like drifting constellations in a boundless obsidian sky. It wasn't always this shady, but that's to be expected. My thoughts have taken a turn for the worse ever since my last birthday.

In the midst of old recollections and passing muses, I find something...unexpected. A large gray area, a haze obscuring my sight of what's in my mind. Gray? Not just that, I think, but somehow dim. Like it isn't actually there. Yet it stops me from seeing through it all the same. As if it senses my presence, it flees - uncharacteristic for a haze, granted, but this means something. Got to chase after it, even if I'm not actually here.

As it strays away from me, I catch sight of what it was blocking, but as I'm focused on the chase, I don't get a clear view of what it is exactly. No matter. There'll be time to review later on. The haze is always just a few steps ahead of me, close enough that I can keep it in my sights, but far enough that I can't reach out to it. I'm not physically here, and I don't feel tired, but I realise the futility of this quickly enough.

Time to try a different approach, then. I tap into my mana reserves and attempt a simple binding spell. Ordinarily, you wouldn't expect it to work on an insubstantial subject such as a cloud, but this is my mindscape - what I think goes. A glowing leash materializes around the haze, firmly halting its advance, and I am stepping up to examine it more closely when it turns on me.

My hold on it becomes a chain that it uses to climb over me, overwhelm me, it is drowning me in nothingness, I am falling into the abyss and all I can see is -

What?


-


I am entering the Academy of Arcanis at the age of 7, nearly astounded by the mastery that my professors display. They are similarly astounded by my speed on the uptake, my ability to understand and apply the lessons that others take far longer to grasp. Little do they know that my learning isn't a function of their lessons or the textbooks, but rather of their minds, as I absorb their long years of experience into my own, taking the concepts that they've understood for years and bringing them to new heights. Little do I know that they will be unwitting victims of an endless sleep, brought about by my own folly.

I am sitting on a small perch of rock that juts out from the waterfall beneath me, watching it flow into nowhere, carrying away my errant thoughts and emotions. A few years into my magical education and it's my seventh extraplanar trip, an exchange program with Minamo. A few hours into meditation and my legs are going numb already, an inevitability considering the position that I'm poised in. But scarcely do I register irritation at the fact when the emotion, and the sensation, are washed away by the rushing stream below me. The objective of this exercise is not to attain new insights through hard study, but to review what the inner self already knows and learn from it. Or so Sensei Hisoka tells me, but I so far I haven't seen anything noteworthy. That's not to say that the time's been wasted, though; my classmates' minds have been wide open this past hour, and I am privy to everything that their inner selves already know. But my leisurely perusal of their psyches reveals more than I'm prepared to handle. I thought I'd seen it all. ...Not this much. Not this close.

I am standing in the Grand Hall of the Academy, aghast at the scene around me. I am looking upon the prone forms of my schoolmates and teachers, prying open their eyelids and attempting to elicit a response - any kind of response, and meet nothing but failure. I am listening to the deathly silence that has descended upon the entire school since I lost control mere moments ago, calling down corridors and up stairwells in the hope of finding someone who hasn't been affected...and also to break the terrible quiet that weighs upon me, a haunting reminder of what I've done. In desperation I scour the entire Academy, and find that everyone is...gone. It is a nightmare, straight out of pulp fiction, but even in my shaken state I know that there can be no waking from it. I can't close my eyes to this and hope for everything to be better when I open them again. The servants line the Hall's floor with mattresses and carry everyone in, and I sit in Gestalt's old seat and wallow in misery, making myself see everything, feel every mind that has been silenced by my hand. I am alone with this sin on my hands and there is nowhere to go. My head throbs, and I'm weeping softly into my hands when I realise that my tears are glowing, and that the pounding in my head hasn't just been from the guilt, it's the magic, rushing out again and I am panicking trying to keep it under control and then -

I am on my knees, crying out to the indifferent twilit sky, and a searing beam of energy is coursing out from within me, cleaving it in two, a clean line of white traced vertically across the horizon, from end to end. The gap widens, widens all the way around the world, and a new sky that looks exactly the same takes its place, and all of a sudden I feel again. Panting, I pitch forward onto the grass and lie down. Now I actually am tired. And hungry. And thirsty. And I remember everything.

Hey. You back with me?

...You were there?

Yep. All the while.

...Where was I all that time? You know, the neverending walk in that world?

Who knows? Maybe you wound up in an extended dream that overtook your psyche. Maybe you were in limbo.

You couldn't have contacted me? Brought me back to reality?

No. You had to work through it by yourself. If I'd tried to intervene...

Alright, I get it. I've cleared my amnesia, anyway, and I'm back here. Now I just need to trust that walking actually gets me somewhere.

And if it doesn't?

I'll just blame you for faulty navigation.

Oh you.