Howdy!  Here is Chapter 18.  Sorry I know I said this chapter would be out early but somethings came up.  I had to travel unexpectedly and what not.

Also to lessen confusion this chapter starts from the point when Otis first splits his mind prior to being tortured by Edgar.  And you can always find other stuff at https://yougots.wordpress.com/

Enjoy

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A golden knife appeared in the gray man’s hand.  “Violam, I am sorry but I have to cut you now.”  

Otis split his mind.  Otis, I am going to put up a barrier between us.  I will be Violam from now on.  You must survive.  

No, you mustn’t it’s too dangerous.  We do not what will happen if we stay separated for too long.  

A moment of silence passed.  I am sorry Otis.  The barrier slammed into place between the two minds isolating pain and reality to only one side.  

“Darkness again.  Well not exactly darkness that's just the easiest description of being the secondary mind.  It more like consciousness floating in a sea of nothingness or is it that I am suspended in a sky of nothingness.  Hell I could even be laying on the couch of nothingness.”  Otis sighed at his predicament.

“Did I sigh or did I just think I sighed?  Being second mind is great for pondering magic and the great unknown but not such a great place to just hang out.  Well it could be worse I could be facing that crazy man’s golden knife.”  Otis shook at the thought.

“Did I just shake or did I just think I shook?  I wonder how the other me is managing.  I hope Violam pulls down the barrier soon I hate this place.  I might as well make use of my time here if I do not focus on something I am likely to go crazy.”

Otis expanded his sense to manipulate the elements like he had the previous times he was in this mental space.  He felt a wall stopping his senses from reaching the outside world.   “Damn this barrier.  Next time I see Violam I am going to punch him in the face.”  He pushed his senses along probing the barrier for weaknesses.  

It was firm at first a constant restraint.  His senses were too raw to feel the finite details but he continued to feel it out it.  The barrier seemed to stretch out forever, no matter how long he traced his mind along the barrier it never ended.  His search for a weakness in Violam’s barrier was taxing on Otis.  After what he assumed was a few hours he felt tired and needed to rest.  So even in this mental space he needed to sleep.  He did not want to think about what happens to his conscious while he slept in the mental space.  Since he did not have a physical form did his mind just cease to exist for the time he rested or did he just somehow close his metaphysical eyes?  It was best not to think about things like that.  He was afraid he might follow that train of thought for too long and never make his way out of it.

Violam finally lowered the barrier after what felt like days but when Otis spoke with Violam only a few hours had passed.  “He says that he is fine but he is already sounds a bit off.  There must be something I can do here.  I don’t know what they are doing to him, to me.  If only I could get past this barrier or at least see it.”  

The world of nothingness flickered around him a faint outline of the barrier came into focus.  Otis noticed the change in the mental space he pushed it further imagining that the barrier was a physical wall but he could not get it to maintain the shape as far as it could go was turning into a dense fog.  

A thought came into Otis’s consciousness.  “I might be able to get out of the nothingness.  Maybe I can create my own world in here.”  He thought of the forest he hunted in with Milo and Michelle.  That time in the forest with them was the happiest he had been since he arrived in this world.  So it was natural that it was the place he wanted to recreate in this mental space.  Soon layers of earth rolled across what he assumed was the bottom of the mental space.  Then grass and trees sprung up from that ground.  Otis’s consciousness hovered in the forest he still did not have a body.  He willed his consciousness to take his physical form.  This had been a more difficult task than creating the forest.  Slowly his consciousness condensed down and began to take a physical shape.  He did not know how long the process took to create himself but it required all of his focus to accomplish his physical form.  When he finally finished creating himself he immediately fell asleep.  

Upon waking Otis stretched his newly formed body.  While he was not stiff or sore it still felt good to stretch after a nap.  He took stock of himself.  He looked like he did when he first entered Vilenna, he looked like a child of eleven even though his real body had the look of a teenager.  

He stood and looked around the forest.  It looked exactly like the forest had just north of Flower Hill Village.  Otis picked a direction and walked until he reached the dense fog that had been the barrier.  He estimated that he had traveled for about half an hour to reach the barrier.  He stepped into the fog, it surrounded him but he continued to walk further.  He walked until he was surround by a dense sea of white.  As he walked forward he had the keen sense that he was no longer moving, confusion set in he could no longer tell which direction he should go to leave.  Otis began to panic he felt lost in the fog, he turned to retreat and took a single step.  He emerged back in the forest.  He turned around intending to go back to where he had awoken but after half an hour he reached the barrier once again.  He picked a different direction and once again after half an hour he reached the barrier.  This time he ran from the barrier expecting to reach the other side of the barrier much sooner but it was still the same, it still took half an hour to reach the barrier.  No matter what direction he picked whether running or walking the barrier was thirty minutes away.  

The forest had lost all of its appeal.  Otis decided he needed somewhere flat with no obstructions.  He remembered the Training Pavilion that he trained in with Captain Trevino.  A stone floor began to construct itself around Otis.  There were no building like there had been in reality instead the stone ended at the fog barrier.  Otis could see the fog all around him in fact it was not that far at all.  Definitely within thirty minutes walking distance.  He tested out his new mental construct by walking forward and observing his surroundings.  It still took him half an hour to reach the barrier he surmised that the barrier also moved as he walked forward.  He observed the fog barrier it looked the same as it did when he was in the forest.  He noticed that from time to time a dark cloud would appear in the fog.  

Otis settled down in the middle of his construct.  He wanted to test what he could do here.  He held his hand and a flame appeared above his palm.  He could still not touch the elements but he could create fire.  It did not feel like fire it was not a part of something greater than himself.  In reality when he pulled on the elements there was a resistance like if he did not pull hard enough they would snap back into place.  The fire he created in his mental space was purely a construct of his own, created out of nothing.  It was also different from fire of the real world.  The most notable thing was that it was green. He flicked his wrist and the flame shot forth into the fog.  The fire looked like a liquid flame.  It had dripped when it flew through the air, everything the droplets touched burst into flames.  The barrier rippled as the flame collided with it.  A faint green tint spread through the barrier and dissipated.  

He pushed his consciousness to the fog exploring it once again exploring what he had done and inspecting it for any damage.  He was disappointed there was nothing.  He withdrew his consciousness from the barrier.  Otis formed a large earth boulder construct.  It was also different from a real rock.  The earth was darker, heavier and harder.  He flicked his wrist and the boulder slammed into the barrier.  The barrier shook violently.  The boulder did not bounce off the barrier instead it was being consumed by the barrier. The fog exhibited a faint dark brown tint while it consumed the boulder.  Once it finished the dark brown fog dissipated like the fire's color had.  Otis once again extended his consciousness to search the barrier only to find the same result as last time.  There was no damage.

As he searched the barrier a tiredness soaked into his body.  He withdrew his consciousness back from the barrier.  Otis’s constructed world flickered in and out of existence.  Otis stood and stumbled forward.  He tried to mentally strengthen his construct but he had no energy left to do so.   The world blanked out, his body faded away and Otis slept.

Otis awoke to the darkness once again.  He surmised that he over taxed himself attacking the barrier.  He once again constructed the training pavilion and his body.  Constructing his body took much less time and he felt more at ease doing it.  He felt the barrier for any changes, it was exactly the same there was no damage.  The only difference he could see was that the dark clouds were appearing more often in the barrier.  They also had seemed darker than before.

Otis could not reach the elements but he wanted to test his other skills.  He reached for his mana first.  He could feel it there but it was a tiny amount and there was no response to his summons.  

“No matter how hard I pull on my mana I cannot summon it.”  He mused aloud.  “Let’s move onto something else then.”  He reached out to the shadows.  He was surprised to see that he could summon the shadows to his mental space.  He immediately covered his body in shadow as he had when he attempted to escape the camp.  He wanted to figure out how that lizard man and that monstrous gray human Butch could see his shadow form.  Otis had believed that the only one who could see through his shadow had been Milo.  He experimented with the shadow drawing himself deeper into his connection with it.  

He constructed a wall of mirrors and inspected his appearance.  If one did not look carefully they would completely miss Otis but upon closer inspection the light dimmed where he stood.  Otis could see his dark outline.  It was just like Milo had said he still left behind his shadow.  Otis had been careless, it was not the perfect shadow skill he believed it was.  It may fool some but against a strong battle hardened enemy it was useless.  He dismissed his mirrors.  

There was no sun in his construct so there were no shadows to work with.  He pushed his shadow away and separated it from himself.  Doing something like this in reality would have drained all his mana.  He remembered that Milo had the ability to step in and out of different shadows.  This is something he had always wanted to accomplish but could not due to the mana strain.  He set that as his immediate goal.  Unlike the fire and other elements he had tried to make in his mental space the shadow was real and not a construct.  The shadow had that familiar feeling, a connection to something deeper, something other worldly.  

He pulled a new shadow to himself.  He attempted to step into as Milo had but only successfully walked across the top of shadow.  Otis frowned, “How the hell does Milo do it?”  He pushed his conscious towards the shadow to inspect it.  He first ran alongside the shadow but felt nothing amiss it was just a shadow.  He pushed his mind closer and reached out to touch the shadow.  His mind passed through the shadow and enter another space of nothingness.  In shock he immediately retracted his mind and stumbled backwards falling to the ground.  

“What the hell just happened?”  Otis was out of breath and his heart was racing.  He calmed himself and reached out to the shadow once again with his mind.  He passed through the shadow daring not to go too far into the nothingness.  As far as he could tell it stretched on infinitely.  The tiredness came again.  Otis retracted his consciousness back to his body.  He did not know why but he feared that if he slept within the shadow his mind would be forever separated from his real body.  

Otis awoke once again and constructed the training pavilion and his body in an instant.  Before he delved into the shadow once again he decided he needed some concept of time.  He wanted to know how long it took until his mind was exhausted and needed to sleep.  

In his construct appeared a tall wide candle.  On the candle was twenty three notches.  A completely burnt out candle would signify the twenty fourth notch.  The notches did not signify hours because he did not really have a grasp on time in this space.  He just chose twenty four because it was a familiar and comfortable number.

Otis suspected that his experiments in this space also contributed to his exhaustion so need would also need a baseline to draw a comparison.  He decided for the first candle he would not experiment, he would just let it burn until he fell asleep.

He sent his green flame to the candle and waited.  He considered this to be his most painful and boring experiment.  Ten candle notches later Otis was unable to stay awake and fell asleep.  When he woke his training pavilion construct was still there, it seemed to only disappear when he overextended himself. The candle was also still burning and he had only slept for two more notches.  

He dismissed the candle and created a brand new one and lit it.  This time he would experiment.  So he attacked the barrier, searched it for weaknesses and explored his shadow magic.  Otis was exhausted by the time the candle had burned to the sixth notch.  He continued to summon the candle after every time he woke up.  He noticed that he was able to stay awake for longer each time.  After a few cycles of sleep and experimentation which he now considered a type of mental exercise he moved up a notch.  That was not the only thing that had changed he also noticed that his mental senses were becoming more acute and now as he scanned the barrier he could feel cracks and fissures.  There was always a dark cloud in the barrier now.  Otis scanned the darkened area of the barrier, it was the same as the rest of the barrier.  He could not understand why that one spot was darker than the rest of the barrier.  

He also grew impatient exploring the shadow, there was no heads or tails to the place.  He had dove into the shadow dozens of times and as far he could tell it was just a vast nothingness.  He had made no progress whatsoever in trying to understand it or learn how Milo moved within them.  If it was not for the fact that he could retract his consciousness he would not have been able to leave the shadow.    

Otis retracted his mind from the shadow.  He looked at the candle it had reached the 14th notch.  He knew that his time was just about up.  He would need to sleep soon.  

“Damn!  How does Milo do it?”  Otis yelled in frustration.  He decided he would give it one last try before he slept.  Otis reached out and pulled the shadow into his mind.  The shadow readily jumped into his consciousness.  Otis frantically pushed it away but his strength was waning.  He messed up, instead of pushing his mind into the shadow he had pulled the shadow into himself.  His construct blasted away as the shadow chewed up all his mental energy.  Otis could not fight the intrusion.  His mind only had one choice it started to convert and merge with the shadow.  The shadow put up no resistance instead it embraced Otis’s consciousness.

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Otis woke to nothingness once again.  He reformed his construct and stepped onto the training pavilion.  He was wary of what had happened but he felt no different than he had before.  He summoned a candle and a mirror.  There were no physical changes except he thought his hair might be darker.  He thought of making a shadow and it appeared.  He did not have to sense or pull the shadow to make it happen.  It felt completely natural to him to summon the shadow like he would the mirror, candle or his green flame.  But he still felt its connection to something deeper and now he felt like he was connected to something deeper.  He pushed the shadow across the room and created another one.  Unlike before he could now feel both shadows even if he was not connected to it.  He summoned tens of shadows then hundreds.  His keen senses felt all of them, their position in this world and their connection to their world.  He stepped into a shadow and directed his mind to a shadow on the other side of his construct.  Otis stepped out of the second shadow.  

“I finally did it.”  Otis jumped around in excitement but it didn’t last long.  At first there was just an itch, an itch in his mind.  Then there was a noise, it sounded like a pounding on a wall.  With each thud the itch in his mind grew stronger until it became painful.  The fog around Otis’s construct had turned red and the color grew more vibrant as the pounding continued.  The pounding grew extremely strong and loud in a matter of moments.  By the time the barrier had turned a deep red Otis’s entire body was stricken with pain.  The pain lasted for ages as did the pounding.  He had lost all sense of time when the last thud occurred.  The last thud was by far the loudest and strongest.  Pain crashed into Otis, he screamed out as he fell to the floor.  He heard something tear in his mind.  The pain in his mind eventually subsided and while the boy had not changed the barrier had.  It was not quite as red as it had been but now Otis could see red flames.  They were not tall flames as they were only a few inches off the ground.

Otis pushed his mind out to explore the barrier.  What he found was that the flames were not within the barrier instead they were just outside it.  The barrier also felt weaker.  He surmised that those flames were attacking it but they were weak.  At the rate the flames burned it would take years to break the barrier.  The dark cloud reappeared in the fog once the pain went away.  

Otis had cycled through several of his constructed candle noting the growth in the flames.  They were larger now but not by much.  Since the barrier still stood strong he did not think the flames were a threat yet.  He just hoped he could find a way out before they were a threat.  Otis constantly probed the barrier for weakness.  His mental energy was much more powerful now so he could inspect the barrier while working on his shadow magic and trap making.    

Over the year in Flower Hill Village Otis had trained his trapping skill.  He could now make magical traps which had been very valuable against that monstrous gray human Butch.  His magical traps were simplistic.  He either had to trigger them or he could set them trigger on pressure.  Magical traps themselves were just a condensed element that would erupt once triggered.  There had been two traps he had used to slow Butch down.  The first was a Light magic trap that flashed ruining his vision for a moment.  The second was an Earth magic trap which sprang up encapsulating its victim.  The gray human Butch had been too tall for it to cover him but it still slowed him down.  Otis needed to improve them to make them more complex and powerful.  They were all too simplistic right now.  A fire trap would only erupt into a pillar of flame, a wind trap gave a short weak tornado and he could not make a shadow trap at all.  In this mental space he may not be able to reach the elements but he could simulate them like he had with the green fire.  So he added magical traps to his training regimen as well.  

Otis decided to take a break from his training when something caught his eye.  The dark cloud in the fog, it was vibrating.  Otis stepped toward the cloud to inspect it much more closely.  He was about to push his consciousness to the barrier when a gray spike shot from the cloud.  Otis dodged to the side.  The spike missed the boy.  It retracted at shot towards him once again.  This time the spikes speed increased significantly.  Otis did not have time to think let alone dodge.  He pushed his mental energy out forming a black barrier.  The spike slammed into the hastily made barrier.  The spike retracted and shifted its direction targeting Otis once again but from a different angle.  Otis moved his barrier to match the spike blocking it.   The spike struck out several more times each time becoming weaker until it retracted completely from the barrier.  The dark cloud had also left the fog.  

Otis sat down on the ground exhausted.  “What the hell was that?”  He looked at his black barrier.  “I know this feeling.  Shadow Magic?”  The black wall in front of him was made of mental energy and condensed shadow.  He used his mental energy to change the black wall into a different shape but failed.  “Another thing I am going to need to practice.”  

He looked at the spot where the spike emerged.  “I have a suspicion that finding time to practice it will not be a problem.”

He dismissed the shadow wall and probed the fog.  “It’s was definitely weaker now.”  Just then another dark cloud appeared in the fog.  It did not take long before it vibrated and released a spike directed at Otis.  He summoned another Shadow wall to block the spike's attack.  Just like before the spike retracted into the cloud and attacked several more times.  Eventually the spike lost strength and dark cloud left the barrier.  Otis sat down to rest, controlling the condensed shadow and maintaining his construct was exhausting.  He did not want to know what would happen if he was attacked when after he lost consciousness.  The boy waved his hand to dismiss the training pavilion construct and instead constructed a plain white room.  This construct had been used several times during his experiments.  He found that it wasted a lot less mental energy and could stay awake for the length of five candles.  

The next attack came, this time without warning, there was not a darkened cloud before the spike jetted out of the fog into the white room.  Otis had not noticed it until it stabbed into his shoulder.  His vision began to fade, the spike fed on his mental energy.  The spike retracted back into the fog.  It shot back towards the boy.  Otis in his haze grabbed a half condensed shadow and throw it into the spike knocking it off its path missing the boy.  He fended off the rest of the spikes attacks in a similar manner.  The attacks continued to occur and became increasingly more frequent.  

Otis lost track of how many times he was attacked but it finally stopped.  His condensed shadow defense was no longer a solid wall, it now was more liquid.  It did not have the stopping power of the solid barrier but it was easier manipulate and wasted less mental energy.  He kept his guard up even though he could see the barrier repairing and strengthening itself.  Whatever had been invading his mind had given up for now.  Otis closed his eyes, he did not dare sleep but by doing this he figured he would waste less mental energy.  

He sat in silence for a time until something stirred in Otis’s mind.  “This...I am recovering energy.”  As soon as the boy spoke the feeling disappeared.  He settled back down and felt for the energy but nothing came.  Otis relaxed as he had before and in time the recovery began again.  It was not something he could search for or make happen it was just a natural occurrence.  He would need patience and time to recover.

Otis’s eyes snapped open the candle had burned four notches since he had closed them.  “Something’s wrong.”  His mind itched like it had when she heard the pounding but there was no pain this time.  The red flames stretched upward consuming the barrier.  The fog itself was quickly turned red.  

A gray spike shot out from the fog.  Otis used his condensed shadow to knock it off its path.  Another spike emerged from the fog and shot at him then another and another.  Soon he had half a dozen spikes stabbing towards him.  Otis frantically dodged or block all of the incoming missiles but they continued to attack.  Otis noticed that the barrier had weakened dramatically. In the past the barrier would seal the hole immediately after the spike was retracted.  Now in its weakened state it could not heal itself quickly.  Otis licked his lips in anticipation.  All he had to do was wait for an opening once the spikes reached their limit.  Right now he was being bombarded by these attacks.  They suppressed his movement he could not get close to the barrier but they will weaken and that's when he will make his escape.

Images began flicker in the barrier at first Otis prepared himself for a new enemy but soon he realized the he was seeing the real world through Violam's eyes.  The image started to become more visible in the fog.

"What is he doing?"  Otis blocked a spike as he yelled in shock.  Violam was in some type of arena.  What was happening could not be described as fighting.  Some had weapon, many did not but they were all cowering in fear.  Otis watched helpless through Violam's eyes as his body killed every last prisoner in that arena.  Tears ran down his cheeks as he blocked more spikes.  He thought of everyone Violam had killed for his sake.  He saw Violam leap in the air to smash an Ogrite soldier.  

Otis couldn't help but be hopeful at seeing the death of one of his captors.  "We're free! Run!"  He shouted misunderstanding the situation.  "Run!  No why are you walking?  Run. Get out of there!"  He watched Violam calmly walk out of the arena and the image flickered out of existence.  Otis kept blocking the spikes but now with less vigor he was confused.  "What is going on in the real world?  What could have driven me to kill all those people?"

The red faded from the weakened barrier though not completely and the red flames burned much higher than they had before.  There were less spikes now and the attacks were slowing down.

The last spike withdrew from the barrier.  The weakened red barrier could not automatically fix the hole left behind.  While the barrier slowly began to heal, Otis sent his shadow through the enclosing hole.  Otis stepped into his shadow and out of the shadow on the other side.  Otis was disoriented, he was falling and the world was spinning around him.  Before he could right himself he landed face first into the ground.  

Dazed the boy stood and observed his surroundings.  He was standing in a field of grass.  The sky was a deep red and jagged gray lines had cut through it.  The lines were moving it looked as if they were attacking the sky.  Otis follow the lines with his eyes back to a large red crack in the sky.  When he looked at the crack it made his mind itch almost to the point of pain.

“I don’t know what that crack is but I am sure it has something to do with that pounding.   I get the same feeling looking at it as I had when I heard the pounding.”  Otis said to himself as he winced in pain.

Red flames ran from the crack scorching the sky.  Otis narrowed his eyes but avoiding looking directly at it.  “I need to get rid of that thing.  It is definitely not good and it makes me feel sick.”

Otis ran towards his mind’s invader.  The land steadily shifted from that of grasslands into a dry wasteland.  He had ran for what he thought was several hours but the hole in the sky was only a little closer.    Otis stopped running as he approached a deep gorge.  

“How deep is this?  I can’t even see the bottom?”  Otis said as he looked out over the edge.  It was a straight drop into a dark abyss.  “Can I jump it?  It is a good fifteen feet.  If I could control the wind I know I could make it but on pure strength I don’t think I can.”  He shook his head.  A smile showed on his face as he thought of a solution.  He summoned his shadow and pushed it forward.  The shadow fell into the abyss and never appeared on the other side of the gorge.  Otis had even lost his connection to it at some point when it fell into the darkness.  “Tsk.  I will have to figure something else out.”  

Otis sat on the ground to recover.  He had not had much time to rest since the last attack.  “Maybe if I try further down it will be narrower.”  Otis looked down the gorge in both directions until something caught his eye. He turned to face the direction he came.  It was fog slowly rolling towards the boy.  At its speed it would take it a while to reach the boy.  

Otis stood and ran down along the gorge.  It was hard for him to tell how far along he was running the terrain all looked the same and the fog always seemed to inching closer to him.  He stopped running.  “What the hell is going on?  It looks like I haven’t gone anywhere!”  Otis yelled in frustration.  “What is this place anyway?”  He looked at the approaching fog the stress was getting to him.

He backed away from the gorge until he was only a few feet away from the fog.  He needed to escape the fog and the only way was to get across the gorge.  In desperation he ran forward.  The world shook and fire fell from the sky.  Otis dodged the falling flames.  The sky itself was on fire, flames poured out from the crack with a greater intensity than they had before.  An image flickered into the sky.  Otis knew immediately it was looking through Violam’s eyes.  He could see a Dwarf threatening Sonashi grabbing her hair and pulling her towards him.  Otis saw his body snatch the Dwarf by the back of the neck.  The sky burned hotter it was oppressing.  Otis panted, his breath had turned ragged.  He fell to the ground paralyzed by the heat and power that emanated from the crack in the sky.  He watched Violam torture the dwarf with a strange satisfaction.  

Otis covered himself in shadows to stop the flames from burning him alive.  He felt the weight from the fires lessen because of the shadow.  The world continued to shake as Otis scrambled to his feet.  It was too late for him to escape, the fog was already upon him.  Otis summoned a shadow wall and slammed it down between him and the fog.  The fog floated through the black wall and into the boy swallowing him.          

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