The Astral Plane
"I'm here!" his sing-songy voice filled the large house, smugness dripping off every word. Rory immediately groaned, hands rubbing her face in displeasure. Eliphas continued to shout as Aliya growled, leaning down low as if ready to attack him.
"Is he always like this?" Rory asked, quipping an eyebrow at the girl next to her.
Eira sighed, a soft chuckle escaping her lips. "You have no idea."
"Hello? This is not the welcome I expected!" Eliphas exclaimed in frustration. Rory made her way out of her room with Eira and over to the staircase, coming into sight. Turning around, he grinned at her like a Cheshire cat. "Ah! There she is, the damsel herself."
"I cannot stand you," she told him simply before she began to walk down the stairs towards him. "I'm doing this for Aurora."
"As am I, do not think for a second this is for you."
"Eliphas, no need to act all noble. We are all perfectly aware you are doing this for something in return," Maximus corrected him, walking into the room with Aidan and Channing tailing him. "Before we do this, just tell us. What is it you wish for?"
"You mean besides the throne?" Eliphas perked up coyly, tilting his head as if to think. "Oh wait, I needn't ask for that- all I would have to do is kill the royal family." Channing nearly growled at the warlock in front of them, beginning to prowl forward.
Maximus subtly moved his arm in front of the wolf- shaking his head to stop him. Turning his attention back to Eliphas, who was watching with an amused expression, he let out a scoff. "I would like to see you try."
"Can we please focus?" Eira spoke up in annoyance, making them revert their attention. She gestured to Rory, reminding them of why they were there, to begin with. "We didn't call you here to hear empty threats."
Clapping his hands one, Eliphas whipped his head sharply to Rory with his arms held out wide. His long, jet black hair swinging slightly as he moved. "Right, come here."
"Only take what you need for Aurora- no poking around, got it?" Aidan ordered him sternly. Crossing his arms, he kept a cold glare locked onto Eliphas as Rory walked over towards him. He twirled his hand out to her, a sly expression across his features. He wiggled his fingers slightly, silently telling her that he wanted her to place her hands in his.
"I will blast you to the next century if I find you in places of my mind you shouldn't be," Rory warned him before hesitantly placing her hand in his.
The warlock said nothing as he gripped her hand tightly and closed his eyes. His hands were cold, sending a shiver down her spine. His smooth hands encased her, feeling much like metal. Surges of magic flowed through her, represented by different colors sparkling across both of their wrists. She watched in fascination as their hands glowed before Rory felt as if she was thrown back, feeling as if her consciousness was collapsing in on itself. The air was knocked out of her lungs at the sharpness of the fall.
She fell and fell into a pit of darkness, glimmers of colors flying past her. Waving her hands around, she frantically tried to grasp onto anything. Hearing a crashing sound next to her, her eyes widened as a wave of bright colors came barreling towards her. Rory curled her body up in the air, quick to prepare for the blow.
She suddenly felt very light- as if she was floating. Glancing down, she saw the colors going straight through her body. Holding her hand up, she gaped at how the colors passed through her body with ease. They felt much like how she had imagined a cloud, the cold air seeping into her skin as it simultaneously pooled out of her. The colors continued on, majestically swishing through the darkness. Snapping back into reality, she glanced around. "Eliphas?"
"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.
Squinting her eyes slightly, she saw a faint mark on the wall. It almost resembled the tail of something; however, it was small, and she needed to see the whole thing. She hesitated to call to the warlock, but she needed his expertise and he was the only one to know anything about this.
"Eliphas?" she called out, turning her head towards the warlock, who was on the other side of the room.
"You insistent woman," he grunted out as he marched over to her, "what is it you want-" Eliphas cut himself off when he saw the black hole. She lifted her hand and showed him the marking on the wall.
"How do we see the rest of it?"
"You're not going to like this," Eliphas told her without missing a beat as he roughly grabbed her wrists and yanked her from the ground as she yelped out. "But lucky for me, I don't much care for what you like," he said before whipping his hands up to her head with a sinister smirk. He closed his eyes and squeezed her head in his hands.
She gasped in pain, feeling as if her brain was being squeezed and ringed out like a towel. Letting out a choked groan, she flailed her arms at him in an attempt to get him away. She squirmed in pain, desperate to move away from him. He didn't budge in the slightest. He stayed locked in place. Rory watched in agony as his eyes moved frantically under his eyelids. Shaking terribly, she felt a tingle throughout her body. Her eyes widened as the feeling was oddly familiar.
Rory quickly raised her hands and placed them on either side of his head. Her trembling hands locked in place as she gulped slowly. She sent the energy to the palms of her hands before blasting them out. Eliphas was blown backward as he stumbled. Grinning at the warlock, she could feel a bit more energy remaining in her body. Turning back toward Aurora, she held both of her hands out.
"NO!" he screeched, but it was too late. Rory sent every last bit of energy towards Aurora. The blast looked powerful from their end, a glimmering energy blast rushing towards the girl in the corner, but it was only a small gust of wind for Aurora. But that was enough for her to look up. Her wild eyes darted around and locked on Rory.
"Rory," Aurora whispered, a look of blissful hope on her face. Rory let out a joyous laugh before she was ripped back towards the warlock.
"What have you done?" Eliphas demanded before taking both of her hands in his own once more and throwing them back into reality.
Rory gasped for breath, falling backward from Eliphas. She landed on the ground and struggled to move from pure exhaustion. Her body felt like lead as she sagged on the floor. She could still hear the warlock scolding her for her actions with Aurora. Her vision was blurred slightly, but she could make out a face above her that took her into her arms.
"What did you do?" Eira shouted as she held Rory's face in her hands. "Rory? Can you hear me?"
"I..." was all Rory could manage out before her eyes began to close more. She was fading in and out of consciousness quickly.
"What- did- you- do?" an angry voice demanded, and she heard slamming on the wall. Rory peeled open her eyes, and to her surprise, she saw Malakai slamming the warlock against the wall roughly in rage.
"Malakai..." Rory breathed out, shaking her head at him weakly. He froze for a moment before regaining his composure with a cold expression on his face.
"We were in the astral plane, and I needed more, so I tried to force it from her head. Little Miss. Twinsie here didn't like that so much. She managed to throw me out of her head before blasting that infuriating energy towards Aurora which, somehow, got through to her. She interfered in the astral plane, and that takes an enormous amount of energy," Eliphas explained as he threw Malakai off of him. "Zark, you don't even know what you've done!"
"Hey! Mind your tongue! Vulgar language won't get us anywhere! Care to elaborate? Or do you wanna keep it to your typical cryptic self?" Eira snapped at him with ice laced in her tone.
"Sure, keep joking. You don't understand! She interfered with a memory in the astral plane! A memory!" Eliphas ranted on angrily, pressing his hands together in almost a prayer motion. "That means she changed the actual course of actions from the real event, and we don't even know the repercussions from that! You can't just do that; it is against every rule Fantamia has. Actually, every rule that every realm has! We could be killed for this! Foolish girl..."
"Did you even find anything useful? Or was calling you here an even bigger mistake than we thought it was?" Aidan spat at him, a flash of crimson red coating his skin.
"Actually, I did. And I might so be inclined to share that information if you give me what I want-" Eliphas began before he was interrupted by Channing, who growled some sort of insult that Rory couldn't make out in her exhausted state. Rory could vaguely hear the rest of them continue to bicker as she slid deeper and deeper into sleep.
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