A Smidge of Magic

Chapter 64

As soon as he heard the door shut behind him Roland dropped the locking bar and sprang into action. He rushed forward shoving all of the furniture, paper, and bric-a-brac that was strewn about the floor out of the way. Once done, he strode over to the tree in the center of the room. He called up an anchoring spell with muted flashes of blue light a thick coil of ghostly pale rope lashed itself around the tree and his waist. It would be his only way back from the Nether Never so he double and triple checked that it was secure. When he stopped touching it, the rope faded from sight, but he still felt it around his waist.

Finally going to be free of this Abyss, this pain. He thought.

As the last rays of the sun filtered through the hole in the ceiling and the interior settled into the shades of twilight, he had a brief moment of doubt. He questioned if he could go through with this, there was more at stake than just his life. The Eva'scarra claimed souls as well as flesh. Another crippling throb at his temple quickly banished his doubts and steadied his resolve. He had to stop the pain.

As a final ward against the unknowns of the Nether Never Roland cast a sphere of protection around himself. The softly glowing white aura would serve as both a shield and a supply of breathable air, should he need it. With his preparations complete he cast the spell sending himself to the Nether Never.

The sensation was difficult for him to describe or recall. One second, he was sitting in the shop chanting the end of the incantation, and the next nothing. Not the faint breeze that had been blowing through the cracks in the old building. Nor the bustle of the city outside his hidey-hole. There was no sound at all. All he felt was a penetrating sense of wrongness.

The air was too thin. The silence too absolute.

Everything was like an oily shadow fading in and out of existence. Outlines of buildings blurred and shades of people walked around him, flew over his head, melded with the surroundings. He was standing in the middle of a street as near as he could tell, or at least a poor reflection on one. As he watched transfixed, he realized the shadows were moving in time with his heartbeat. Or his heart was beating in time with the shadows. The bodies of the beings around him were twisted reflections of those back on Paragore, and the longer Roland watched them the more unnerved he became. He could feel bile rising in the back of his throat until he had to avert his gaze.

With a deep breath, he drew in more power, bolstering his nerve as well as his defenses. Reinvigorated he sought out his quarry, examining every shadow and shimmer until he could separate it from the whole of the street. Some of the shades, attracted by the surge of power, broke away from the crowd becoming more solid as they approached. There was no proper description Roland could conceive of to compare them too. They were a mass of writhing shapes and sounds always changing and shifting. Save for the eyes. Those twin slits were a myriad of color, swirling in hypnotic maddening patterns. Roland had to shut his own eyes from their assault.

That was when the voices came.

They began as little more than faint echoes. Then the sounds grew louder and louder until the voices were shouting inside his head. They promised things to the fledgling mage. Secret things that only in his darkest moments had he wished for. Dreams and desires that he'd buried so deep, and were so sinister, that he had never dared to voice them aloud. And to get all those sweet promises he only had to do was lower his shield, to let them in. He dug his fingers into his palms until blood welled out between his clenched fist. The pain helped to keep him from succumbing and gave him clarity. Snapping open his eyes he roared out in defiance.

"I seek audience with the Eva'scarra! Show yourselves!" Roland shouted. The conviction behind his words manifested into rippling waves that pushed back the shadow beasts and their deranged eyes.