>>5906087The effect is instantaneous. You know this, consciously, rationally. But.. It doesn’t FEEL instantaneous. Rather, you feel much as you do on that fateful day when Izirina Henzler transported you and Costella Fanucci into the space-between-spaces, the aethereal emptiness between the disparate reams of creation. No… Not even like that. You feel your body separate from your mind, from your soul, and wander free through a realm you have only passing familiarity with—that of the untethered and unconscious mind. The spell Izzy ahs woven carries you not through HYSUCALY space, but mental: through that barely-understood realm of raw, unconscious consciousness which Man and Elf only touch in slumber, and which scholars call The Dreamscape.
“I don’t,” you mumble, and are alarmed to hear your own voice in a dozen intonations and inflections. “I don’t understand. Am I… How do I get out of here?”
“Ezreal.”
You cast your gaze about, flailing your limbs in a dark sea of ignorance and uncertainty, grasping at nothing and at dozens or hundreds of passing fancies that might as well be nothing. You try to drag yourself back to consciousness, to comprehensibility to reality.
“Here I am!” you cry.
“Ezreal,” says the voice again—a voice you feel you should recognize, and yet do not.
“I’m here!” you shout, reaching out, and then your pride fails you and you wail: “Please… Help!”
You reach out with both hands and feel the hand of another clutch each of yours. Swirling in a psychic storm, cats adrift in a maelstrom of half-rendered meaning, you are wrenched back to reality and o the prime material plane… And there, made flesh and blood and bone once more, you find you find your sense of self solidify anew.
“TIPS!”
You lurch forward in space-time, fully realized in corporeal existence once again. There is a sudden wave of forward motion, but also downward and upwards momentum, such that you immediately launch forwards with some velocity and land upon your hands and knees, retching and—to your moderate embarrassment—crying, tears and mucous spilling forth from your mouth and nose. In spite of all this, your primary feeling is relief: relief to find your fingers on solid oaken floorboards, to feel yourself pinned in lace by gravity’s sweet embrace, and you ego anchored to skin and skeleton once more. When hands find your back, massaging smooth circles, the feeling of homecoming is only amplified, the unpleasant sensation of sudden spiritual-physical displacement alleviated.
“Shh,” you hear Costella coo, “it’s okay. You’re here. You’re safe.”
“I… I…” you choke.
You look up, expecting to see Costella’s soft features… But instead, it is the intense and studious gaze of Izirina Henzler which meets your own, flickering with divine lightning, unshielded by the shaded glass of her sunglasses.
“Ezreal,” she whispers, “what did you see?”
[The End… For Now]
