Mischief in the Stars

The Astral Plane

"Eliphas, where are you?" she exclaimed, growing more nervous by the second. For a moment- she stopped. She simply floated in the air... the darkness enveloping her. The silence overwhelmed her before she heard a faint buzzing sound. The sound grew louder with every second, and Rory pressed her hands against her ears to block out the noise.

Then, she dropped.

Pummeling down, she let out a frightened scream. She tried to place her hands below her, thinking her energy blasts can slow her fall. Pushing her hands out, nothing happened. Rory quickly realized that her powers didn't seem to work in her mind. She began to tumble faster and faster.

The black surrounding her began to flicker, causing her to crease her eyebrows in wonder. The darkness disappeared altogether as she watched different scenes fly past her. With every different scene, a new world was placed in front of her. It looked like the same place, but with entirely unique features that she could never have imagined. She saw skies filled with different colors. Animals she had never seen before were now directly in front of her face. Nature that she could not have pictured in her wildest dreams surround her. Every second that passes was a new world. She occasionally saw people or other creatures in the scene. Hearing a melody of laughter or crying, the scene was always changing. For a moment, she could've sworn she saw Earth, and she could feel her heart tug for a moment. Hundreds of scenes flashed in front of her eyes. Families playing in a park, a unique animal flying through a crimson sky, a man staring directly at her in a dark room with a monotone expression. She continued to fall as the world changes in front of her.

Finally, she landed harshly on the ground. Rory let out a grunt of pain, glancing around frantically. She saw Aurora in the corner like in her vision, curled and shaking into the corner. Her brown skin was littered with dirt and bruises.

"Aurora," Rory whispered as she stood up, running over to the girl. She couldn't explain it, but she felt an emotional connection to her. Placing her hand on her shoulder, she watched in horror as her hand passed right through the girl.

"It won't work," someone informed her. Letting out a yelp of surprise, Rory turned around to see Eliphas leaning casually against a rusty wall. "You can't make contact in the astral plane."

Rory began to sputter nonsense, completely taken aback by how nonchalant he was about this. "In the what? What the hell was that? What did I just see? That could not have been in my mind- I've never seen any of that before!"

"That's because, in order to get back to this scene, we could not simply travel through your mind. You would die from the sheer force it would take to do that. Instead, I manipulated the astral plane and pieces of your memory to create a scene in front of us. We could not simply watch your memory again. We had to be able to stand in it and find something to tell us where she is. So, my apologies if the trip was not first-class," Eliphas apologized sarcastically with evident frustration.

Rory raised an eyebrow, she would never admit it, but she was amazed at what he was able to do. The details of the memory were extraordinary; she could even feel the cold and brittle air nipping at her skin. "I don't suppose we can talk to her, can we?"

"No, don't bother trying either- save your energy," he told her as he shuffled around the edges of the walls, scanning them for any indication of a location. Rory turned her attention back to Aurora.

"We're gonna find you, I promise," she whispered before standing up and checking around the corner. She couldn't imagine what Aurora was going through right now. This dismal place had already made herself lose some hope. The walls were covered with dust and dirt, cobwebs in every corner. She kept glancing at her hands, holding them out and attempting to blast energy from them. When it didn't work, she sighed out and continued to look around. Bending down, she checked behind a few crates, but there was nothing there. Frowning, there was literally nothing there. A gaping hole of darkness sat behind the boxes.