The Journeyer and the Pilgrimage for the Origin of Magic

The Origin of the Void

Half the city lay in waste, half the city breathed relief, and the woman gone wrong fled to the sky. Adrian mounted his dragon and they leapt into the air after her. The destruction to the shipyard was severe—probably her intent all along. Most of the entire port navy had been sunk, the few ships afloat were badly damaged, still burning or smoking. A mast with the blue and black Fellowship flag cracked and fell into the sea. Wounded and dead lined the shore and docks. The desperate call for “Healer!” sprouted up everywhere. The rest of the living residents had the same flabbergasted look on their faces, as if to ask—did this really happen? Half the city… gone.

The superwoman, Nae, was flying at an impossible speed, towards what—Adrian didn’t know. Luckily, although he had never developed the skill to fly, he had acquired a racing dragon. Adrian opened his hand, using his connection with magic to shield from the rising smoke and wind resistance. Is she flying to the big twin, the large sun? Perhaps she tries to blind us....

The azure, orange tipped dragon he straddled pulled in her arms and legs, angled her comb down and with her long, sharp wings breast-stroked—soon she would be at full speed. Adrian saw a white cone shockwave and then heard a pop as the woman-gone-wrong broke the sound barrier. What makes you?

“You will find out soon enough,” his dragon, Ell murmured as she moved to Nae’s wake. She was careful not to open her lips; too proud to accept any drag. Ell had rarely flown so fast, yet they lost ground.

“Do you remember when you first found me in the forest as a toddler? How did you keep it secret for so many years? I’d have given my libido to know you could eavesdrop on other’s thoughts.” Adrian found and clasped his favorite of her under-scales, the ones that were practically ergonomic. His armor slipped down against her back—he knew he could fall off at any moment—he felt alive.

“A dragon for a dragon’s secret; I’d have traded,” Ell said, and then screeched. A yellow-orange flare darted towards them in unpredictable lines, growing exponentially; they were blinded. As he predicted, the superwoman had hidden her magic in the sunlight. Ell twisted into an S shape to avoid being unmade, and Adrian let go with one arm, pushing away from the expanding firelight to protect himself. A few meters in front of them, the great flare exploded. Ell spun out of control, but swiftly recovered. Adrian held on through this, flopping around like a stubborn rag doll. He grunted at the familiar, hot numbness of tearing muscle in his limb.

Ell leaned sideways so he could remount her. She wheezed like a squeezed rodent. Adrian checked her underside—one of her legs had been melted to a charred bloody stump. He cursed and patted her.

The scales on her body clenched as she narrowed to cut the air—she was angry. “We will get her…”

Adrian snarled at the white-armored superwoman and the thick black and teal tentacles dancing from her head; she was not far now—her attack had cost her time. Connecting with magic, he willed for an imbalance of electrons to Nae’s front— causing lighting to strike. Once—twice. The second strike hit. Nae lurched a few inches from the impact; unharmed. She turned around and craned her neck. Adrian felt out the upper planetary atmosphere until he connected with a good-sized piece of space trash, a satellite leftover from the Ancients. He reached out with his spirit, and pulled the debris down into a meteor. He directed it toward the woman gone wrong, while he continued to pelt her with occasional bolts of lightning, attempting to position her. He hoped the lighting would distract long enough…

A line of fire streaked through the atmosphere, across the sky. Just as Nae turned around, the flaming meteor slammed into her. She went through its surface like a pebble into a pound cake. Adrian squinted, hoping he’d finally damaged her armor— that much heat had to melt it. The meteor neared, but then, to his bewilderment, slowed down. Three sharp circular disks emanated from the center of the meteor, they looked like expanding planetary rings. The meteor split it into six equal sections around the superwoman. Ell frantically dodged the expanding circular bursts, and the superwoman held a hand up, directing the chunks of meteor to orbit her; massive static discharges erupted in between them.

She didn’t even move… Adrian held tight to Ell and scowled. He pondered what he could do to pierce her armor—his strongest attack? The dimension splitter… he could use it to cut straight through the middle of her, and end her horror once and for all. Ell was almost close enough for Adrian to use his sword; his skill was legendary.

Ell paused in a horseshoe shape, weary of the charged meteorite chunks orbiting the woman gone wrong, faster and faster. She looked at her burnt paw, and to the white-hot static discharges inside the swirling protective barrier Nae had created. Her orange spikes, nails, and soft patches paled.

Adrian stood on top of Ell’s back and removed his blade from its sheath. “We have to strike.” His tone was solemn.

“I know.” Ell tried to flex her brunt paw. She shuddered, accidentally relieving herself.

“Better?”

“Lighter at least.” She cleared the foam from her mouth as a bit of her color returned.

Inside her orbiting rock shield, amidst the white-hot static charges, Nae, the superwoman, appeared to grasp the air with her hands. She sunk her sharp fingertips into the very sky itself—and pulled. The area around her fingertips became sick and beige, like a worn-out pixel of reality.

Adrian winced and brought his palm to his forehead. “Can you feel that?”

“It’s like a pillar to the foundation inside me is being loosened. It hurts… it hurts my soul. What is she doing?” Ell licked her melted stub to clean it. Adrian could feel her body ripple at the touch of her tongue. “She may be the devil,” Ell offered.

“No matter, she’s not strong enough to rip open the sky.” Adrian clenched his sword pommel for comfort. “Drop me on top of her— catch me below if you can.”

“As you wish.” The meteor chunks surrounding the superwoman spun faster, the static charges between them became fiercer. Ell flew towards the top of the swirling deathtrap until they were so close Adrian could feel the hair on his arms stand. As Ell passed over the closest orbiting chunk of rock, Adrian ran the length of her, charging his sword—it and his eyes, lit up dark, fiery blue—the color of his spirit. He leapt off her tail and dove sword-first into an opening between the circling rocks. He could see the brown pocketed texture of a meteor chunk as it raced towards him. He parried left, annihilating half the rock, flinging a blue charge—extending off his sword—to his rear. The polished tips of Nae’s alabaster claws tugged at the very fabric of reality, like she was about to put her hand through a painting. She wrenched her fingers free to face Adrian and the sky around her returned to a healthy color.

Once Adrian joined Nae in the center, he stopped falling. There’s no gravity inside this broken meteor.

The white static discharges between the remaining meteor chunks coalesced around Adrian and Nae like streams joining a halo-shaped river. From this halo of static discharge, three bolts surged toward Adrian. One bolt came from above and the other two attacked his sides. Adrian cast a well-crafted spell, drawing the three streams of white static charge to his palm as if his arm were a lightning rod. He grabbed the charges like Zeus, and swung them in a circle. The remaining meteor chunks surrounding them shattered. He, and the resulting dust began to fall.

Nae charged, and Adrian parried the white solid shapes he could make out between the cloud of burnt brownish-red dust. Now or never… He closed his eyes and felt for her presence. She was not hard to detect, but fast—the fastest enemy he’d ever faced.

Below him he sensed Ell nearing and her aura of concern—then Nae lunged. Back left…he turned and swung just in time to make contact. His blade, glowing with blue fire, struck and caught like a fish hook. Had he pierced her armor? He peeked with one eye—through the stinging dust he could see her forearm stuck in the enchanted blade of his sword. Her armor is sharper than my blade? During his moment of surprise, she pulled him by his hooked blade and kneed him in the ribs, cracking his breastplate. He’d flexed in time to avoid losing breath, but his breastplate was ruined. He kicked off her side, prying her forearm from his blade and lifting his sword above his head, summoning his last resort, the attack that had never failed him, the dimension splitter. He felt her presence dart around in instant leaps of time, pausing only for a moment before teleporting again, two hundred feet away…100 feet away…50… He brought his free and sword bearing arm to their respective sides, dissipating the dust cloud so he could see clearly before fluidly bringing them above his head, combining both hands on the pommel for a two-handed strike. He opened his eyes—she was there.

“Wait Adrian, no!” Ell screamed inside and outside of his head from below them, but it was too late. The sky ripped open at the tip of his blade, separating the dimensions of space-time. Nae tweaked, dodging left so that his sword missed her midsection but cut her arm off at the elbow, separating it from her body. Adrian spun through the air from the momentum of his attack. The severed portion of Nae’s arm didn’t fall and die as he’d expected, but instead seemed to move on its own. It snuck behind him as Nae neared his front. She kicked him in the face and he felt a searing pain as her detached appendage stabbed him in the back.

He lashed out with his sword—whiffing, then felt a tearing sensation as Nae ripped her arm out of his back. He slowed his spin, and watched Nae reattach her arm, as if his best attack had done nothing but delay his own demise. At least delay is something I can work with…

Dizzied, he began to fall, no longer in the eddy of antigravity. A piece of her had broken off inside him—it felt like the time he’d fallen asleep on a Borer bug mound and woke to one prying itself inside him. He expelled an oof as he landed on Ell, back first, blinking to clear his daze and recover his breath. During that blink, the superwoman teleported directly in front of Ell.

Adrian bounced to the tips of his toes and ran across Ell’s back to confront Nae, but it was too late. With a swift movement, she grasped Ell by the base of her skull and ripped it out. Her jawbone and mandible remained attached. Her brain and lower teeth sat exposed atop her neck. Ell flapped her wings, clawed at the air with her arms and legs, and made a weak, guttural noise as she tried to growl. There was a fleeting moment where she was still alive and realized what had happened, then her body went limp with despair, rather than lifelessness.

“No!” Adrian felt his energy plummet; he was paralyzed. Ell’s body curved, then began to descend.

Nae rubbed her face against the portion of Ell’s face she’d ripped off, spreading her scent.

“I am mortified. My life is a mortuary. They all die— they all die!” Adrian yelled through Nae, at the stars. He felt his stomach rise as the dragon’s shocked, trembling body fell. “All that come close dig a grave, you dug a grave!” He stabbed Ell through her heart, to stop her pain, feeling her twitch one last time. He tore his broken armor off and used it to catch some wind, to distance him from Ell and get closer to Nae.

Nae followed him, lowering herself willfully as Adrian fell through the sky. She held out her arms like a priest, her alabaster body glistening from the sun's glare, adorned with splattered blood. “Let me take away your pain,” her soft voice offered.

Adrian released his breastplate; it flew off above his head, flapping like a mad eagle. The clouds warped into portraits of close ones he’d lost over the years. He whispered to himself, “Take it all, you shall have all of it…” The blue flame surrounding his sword extinguished, and he opened his palm. His sword turned and drifted, catching the wind— he stopped fighting.

Nae held a hand above him like a puppet master and pulled him up to her level; they stopped descending. As Adrian’s sword and armor fell past, Nae casually directed him toward the area of the sky where the dimension was torn; the rip seemed to be breathing. Through the tear was the darkness of space salted with stars; Nae reached into it with one hand, and continued manipulating Adrian with the other. Adrian felt a great drain, a great relief as his body was purged of all anguish. It took the form of red lines, like gaseous blood, draining from him and into Nae’s palm. “So much, so much! Even more pain than me!”

Adrian understood. Nae realized that she was not the freak, not alone, not the worst off—it was him. He was the unlucky one. Sins purged, he watched her euphoria. Even she could not hold in the power she’d collected.

“The flood will clean us,” she said to comfort him, then the superwoman tore a hole in the sky. Empowered by Adrian’s anguish, she summoned absurdity from inside the dimensional split. Leveraging the embodiment of Adrian’s pain with one hand, she used it to pull absurdity into the world with the other— the empty black space and stars on the other side of the tare paled, as if infected. Nae let loose her hold of Adrian. She grasped the edge of the dimensional split, now further weakened, and ripped open the sky like dead skin over a blister, exposing the raw wound.

Adrian couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take his eyes off the hole—it was the full version of the horror that had split his mind in two, long ago. A deafening sound, like the last bit of water draining from a tub issued from the sky hole. The pale wound of the sky dripped its color as if bleeding. It seemed to bend inward, and Adrian watched powerlessly as reality was sucked into a Void. He began to fall. Down, down…”