Multiverse of Magic & Mistakes (Completed)

2.1.9 Chapter 9

Unknown location, 328 years ago.

The portal closed behind Lissa with a quiet pop. She staggered forward, dropping her bag to the floor, feeling faint and collapsed to her knees in the soft mud. She glanced around, trying to take in as much of her surroundings as her spinning head would allow.

Green, oh there was so much greenery, an astounding sight for one who grew up at the centre of a vast desert, the ground was dirt not sand, and the air so refreshingly cool and humid. Her head swirled and she sat down hard, mud seeping into the grey linen of her trousers. Then Lissa fainted and promptly collapsed backwards.

The world again went black.

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When she awoke, Lissa could not tell if she had been unconscious for several hours or several minutes. Her head hurt, a pounding pain, like a drum circle behind her temples. She winced. It was worse than any hangover or illness that she had ever experienced. And Lissa felt so strangely empty, there was a void inside her chest where her magic usually resided which was now a gaping hole.

She was experiencing a phenomenon she had only ever read about, the sensation of having used up all the magical energy her body could store.

Lissa reached for her bag, pulled out a flask and drank deeply. She took some deep breaths. It was ok. She was ok. She would be ok. She knew what this was and knew that her magic would come back, it would slowly re-fill from her surroundings. It would take time, but time would come back. She took another long drink of water. The headache was dissipating already.

Lissa slowly got to her feet. She was standing in a vast forest clearing, surrounded on all sides by beautiful tall green trees that stretched up high towards the sky. One lone tree, stood tall and proud in the centre of the clearing separated by a wide stretch of grass on all sides until the rest of the woodland begun. She had never seen anything like this. The red dessert had several oasis's which were surrounded by a scattering of rare desert palms, but this was something else. These trees were so tall, and numerous and cast the clearing into deep shadows. It was stunning and beautiful, and she turned round in a slow circle taking it all in. The air was still and silent and serene and soft chirping and birdsong echoed from the woodland.

The next thing that hit Lissa was the cold. Or rather it wasn't cold, cold, just cold for someone who spent so much time out in a desert. She was no stranger to cold, for the dunes were often freezing at night, but the daytime cold was a new experience. She shivered, and pulled her jacket out of her bag, grateful for her foresight when packing.

She was feeling much better now, her head almost clear, the shakiness gone from her limbs, the shock of it all was dispersing to be replaced with wonder. She should explore. She needed to see what this place was like beyond the clearing.

But Lissa knew better than just to set off unprepared. She knew that whenever she was ready to return home, it would be best, to leave this place from the exact same spot that she entered it. So Lissa took some time gathering up some fallen sticks into a pile and making a clear marker of her location. And then she set off, randomly heading north, leaving clear red crosses among the trees, so she would be able to find her way back.

After an hour or so of walking through trees almost as tall as the Tawny Towers, with trunks many times thicker than her waist, Lissa suddenly emerged into another clearing and again could scarcely believe what she was seeing. She stood on the shore of a lake so vast the tips of the trees on the other side were just visible lines on the horizon. The water was perfectly still and flat, marred with only the softest ripples from the wind.