Chapter 1

Alistair:

I had been living in a dream up until now and now the dream turned into a brutal nightmare in a moment’s notice.

It all started when Bob, my best friend, tried to open The World Egg that was stored in our school vault.

We were having a normal day, I was with my girlfriend Kat in the cafeteria when Bob came and told us that he wanted to see what was in the school vault. Of course I said that breaking into the school vault was a bad idea but Bob didn’t listen to me, probably because he found it annoying that I was with Kat but that’s for another story, he said that he would break into the vault after the last lesson and I couldn’t do anything to stop him. So I just dismissed the idea of stopping him, thinking that he would give up eventually, and focused on my food and Kat; she was as beautiful as ever her hair dark as a night sky flowed over her shoulders, her dark eyes were captivating and I couldn’t even believe that I was with her (which was also one of the reasons I didn’t think much about Bob).

And so ended the school, I had forgotten about The World Egg a long time ago and was heading home with Kat when I heard a loud noise coming from the school. That was when my “dream” ended. I took Kat’s hand and ran to the school building as fast as I could; I didn’t want to risk her but leaving her alone seemed more dangerous. When we reached the doors of the school vault I was already feeling a dark aura behind the doors. We had been too late; Bob had already opened The World Egg.

I was scared but I had to do something, so I did the unspeakable and opened the vault. It was hell inside, there was darkness everywhere and I could see it coming out of The World Egg. Bob was nowhere to be seen and I knew that we couldn’t do anything to save him, he was already lost. So I took Kat behind me to protect her and started walking towards The World Egg. The darkness was very powerful, I could feel it attack the barrier I had put up before entering continuously. When I finally reached out to close it, I understood that only my power was not going to suffice, and that coming here was a huge mistake.

When I felt my barrier crack I started to feel the panic rise up on my throat. I didn’t care about what happened to me, I was already lost, but I had to protect Kat. I had to get her away from this place before my barrier gave up completely, so I used the rest of my remaining power and sent her to the place I knew she would be the safest: my parents’ house. She cried out my name and told me not to leave her alone, but I didn’t have enough power left in me to save us both. In a second, she was gone and I was all alone in the darkness, the second I had sent her my barrier had shattered and the darkness was now attacking my bare flesh. It hurt like hell and I didn’t even have the power left in me to cry out, but I was happy, I thought that Kat was safe with my parents and I could die happily. But things were not as simple as I thought.

Kat:

I couldn’t believe what had happened a moment ago. A few hours ago I was with Alistair having the time of my life, now I was in a hell and he was telling me that he was going to protect me no matter what. I was still in shock when I heard a loud crack coming from the barrier that surrounded us, I tightened my arms around Alistair but he made me open my arms put his hands on my shoulders and said that it was all going to be okay in such a voice that I almost believed him. But I knew what he was trying to do, I told him to stop, to not to leave me alone, but he wouldn’t listen.

I reached out for him but I was too late, next thing I knew I was in the middle of his room in his parents’ house. His bed looked really comfortable to me at that moment but I didn’t have time to rest, I ran downstairs as fast as I could and started banging on the door of his parents’ room. They opened the door immediately and asked me what happened, I tried to summarize what had happened a moment ago but I was too nervous that the words that came out of my mouth had no meaning. They understood that the situation was really bad and calmed me down with words that only resembled the words that came out of Alistair’s mouth when he casted the barrier on us and when he sent me to his room. Once I was calmed down I told them what Bob had done; and tried to explain what I had seen in the school vault, but I didn’t even understand what had happened. Still they understood what happened and I understood it was very bad, because this was the first time I have ever heard them swear.

Drake and Levia (Alistair’s parents) started preparing immediately after making sure that I was okay, I could still see the terror in their eyes that appeared when they heard my story. They started off by casting a 7th tier(which was the highest tier, but only in theory, no one had ever seen a tier 7 spell before) barrier on me then they casted one on each other; after the protection spells were complete they went onto casting some other spells that I thought were a material for myths. After casting all the spells we went to Drake’s car and drove to the school as fast as we could; I could only hope we weren’t too late to save him.

Chapter 2

Kat:

I was really nervous before I even got in the car and the suspense of not knowing whether Alistair was alive or not during the car trip didn’t help me at all. All I could think of was that this was entirely my fault, if he hadn’t had me with him at that time he could have escaped; he could die because of me. These were the thoughts that haunted me every second. Levia had noticed my situation and knew that nothing she could do would make me feel better, so she focused on the road while I got lost in my thoughts.

When I woke up the first thing I felt were the cold and the Darkness trying to get in the car, they were constantly attacking our barriers and I wondered how strong Drake and Levia must be to not to show any signs of fatigue under such a powerful attack. We somehow reached the school safely and got in, the situation was nowhere close to how I remembered: The corridors were covered with a thick layer of dark mossy goo, the air felt heavy on my shoulders, and there were no signs of life. I felt panic creep up my throat as I thought that there was no way that Alistair was still alive in a place like this.

When we reached the vault I saw that the huge white door was now completely black, and it was covered with a black moss. I was about to touch the handle when Drake suddenly pulled me back and told me not to ever touch anything that showed any signs of the Darkness. He continued to hold in a protective position as Levia reached for the door and opened it without touching. The inside of the room was inexplicable, when I was here with Alistair I hadn’t gotten to take a look around and now that I looked closely; there was blood and body parts everywhere and they were covered with the same moss that covered everything. I was really close to puking when Levia assured me that those were not Alistair’s body parts, and that he was still alive though barely. That got me to calm down a little, and when I was calm enough the first thing I noticed was the helpless look on Drake and Levia’s eyes and that The World Egg was nowhere to be seen.

Alistair:

I couldn’t believe I was still alive, The World Egg hadn’t killed me and tried to torture me instead, what it didn’t know was that I was used to torture and not killing me was a big mistake.

I started thinking as soon as I understood that it wasn’t going to kill me. I knew Kat was going to try to save me so I needed to keep her safe, I needed to get rid of The World Egg. There was no way that I was going to be able to destroy it so I needed to seal it. I was not an expert on sealing but I knew how to create an abyss dimension and even though I didn’t know how to send the Egg there, I thought that I could go there myself and take the Egg with me. So I waited until I had enough power and casted the gate to the abyss.

I was shocked when my plan worked and the Egg came with me to the sealed abyss.

That was when the pain started to settle in, I was too caught up in the thought of saving Kat that I had forgotten how tiring it was to create a sealed abyss. I had used up all my power and started to feel the pain the Egg was trying to inflict on me.

I was too tired to stop the pain, I was too tired to feel the pain; I was too tired.

Kat:

On the way back both of them were silent. I had to know what had happened but Drake and Levia weren’t telling me, and not knowing what had happened to Alistair was making me feel worse and worse by the second. The looks on their faces, as they tried to find a solution to the situation they couldn’t even dare to tell me, were continuously adding up to my feelings. It didn’t take me very long before I started crying; that made them understand what I was going through, and how inconsiderate they had been by not telling me what had happened to Al.

Drake told me that it was impossible to explain Al’s whereabouts in words, that he was somewhere that didn’t exist in this world, and that he had gone there by his own desire. That was when I understood why The World Egg wasn’t there, he had tried to sacrifice himself once again for my sake. This added onto the guilt I was already feeling, I fell to the ground, my legs didn’t have the strength in them. He was god knows where, with the Egg, trying to protect me, and I couldn’t help him at all.

Chapter 3:

Kat:

I needed to do something, I needed to reach him somehow, and there was only one way I could reach him. I needed to use something I hadn’t used in years, I needed to use my one and only unique ability, I needed to telepathize with him. I had made Drake put a seal on my telepathic powers years ago because I was too little to control it efficiently, and I sometimes couldn’t differentiate between people’s thoughts and their words, or things would fly around without me controlling them, and some other weird things happened around me that I was almost kicked out of school. I thought that I would be capable of controlling it now, after all the things Al taught me, so I asked Drake to remove the seal.

When Drake finally accepted that the only way to reach Al was through telepathy, he removed the seal. The first thing I felt after he removed the seal was a surge of power, I could feel every little thing around me, living or nonliving didn’t matter; I could feel them all. It was overwhelming, when the sensation hit me, I almost fell and Levia caught me in the last second. They both had a sad and worried look on their faces as they stared at my head, so I found a mirror and looked at myself.

I didn’t look ugly, my face wasn’t swollen or anything, like what happened to people in movies when they gained a huge power. Still, the power had had its effects on me, my hair had turned completely white, and my eyes were red and shining, my skin was even whiter than before. I looked weird to say the least, but it wasn’t so bad; being able to reach Al was worth it.

When I returned to them, both Drake and Levia still had a sad look on their faces, as if I had caught cancer or something. I told them that I was fine and I wanted to talk to Al, they stopped looking at me like I was going to die and got to work only after I yelled at them that I was fine.

Drake went to my right and Levia to my left, they both held my hands and began to cast with me as the catalyst. I felt their power as soon as they started to cast, just observing that power from the outside was overwhelming, I had only felt like this when Al was trying to show me how to use my powers by guiding me with his own power. The power of this family was Legendary class if not higher. They guided me through a place I didn’t know and finally we reached an unnatural abyss stuck between worlds, it was obvious that this abyss did not belong here, that it was the creation of a mage of great power.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

It felt like years had passed when we finally felt him, Al was all alone, in the middle of all the Darkness that was coming out of the Egg. I could feel that the Egg was torturing him, but he wasn’t letting it go. I suddenly started to feel really helpless, but Drake and Levia pushed me forward. When I reached out to him with my mind, I felt numb. He was continuously being tortured, he was all alone in the middle of the Darkness, but all he could think of was my safety. I could feel him rapidly lose consciousness as the Darkness tortured him. I wanted to destroy the Egg, I wanted it shattered in pieces, but I could do nothing from here. I needed to reach Al, I needed to talk to him, I needed to feel him. In what seemed like a thousand years, I felt him open his eyes.

Chapter 4:

Alistair:

The first thing I felt when I opened my eyes was pain, excruciating pain, but the next thing I felt made me forget all about it. I could feel Kat reaching out to me; I could hear her begging me to wake up, to open my eyes; so I woke up.

As soon as she understood that I was conscious, she bombarded me with questions, I couldn’t understand what she was saying and I knew she didn’t care if I understood what she said. She just wanted to talk to me, to feel that I was alive, and I was content with that. I wanted to embrace her so much, to kiss her, to love her; but I knew that because of my decisions, I couldn’t touch her.

After some time I felt her settle down, she stopped talking and tried to feel my existence. Some moments later she asked me if I was okay, I answered that I was fine but we both knew that I wasn’t. She asked me why I left her, and I answered that it was the only way to protect her. She asked me where I was, that I couldn’t answer as easily.

I explained to her what happened after I sent her away, how the Egg didn’t kill me, and how I thought that I needed to seal the Egg in an abyss. I told her that I hadn’t had enough power to send the Egg away and seal it from the outside; that I had to take the Egg myself and seal the abyss from the inside. I felt her start crying as soon as I finished explaining; I felt bad that I had made her cry, but I knew that she was alive and well, and that was enough for me.

When she asked me how she could save me, I didn’t have an answer.

Kat:

When Al said that he didn’t have an answer to my question, I was consumed by despair, if he didn’t know how we could save him, who would?

I was lost in my own thoughts when I heard Drake’s voice, he was calling me back. I didn’t want to leave Al, but I knew that if Drake was calling me back, there had to be a reason for it. So I assured Al that we were going to get him out of there no matter what, and terminated the connection.

When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was Drake’s back, he was holding me behind him while Levia was casting some kind of barrier against…something. The only thing I could see out of the barrier was darkness, a normal person would’ve thought that it had only become night time, but I knew better. I could feel that this darkness was unnatural, that it was a product of dark magic.

Drake said they were dealing with it, but I could understand that they were not doing very good, the Darkness was too strong, and it didn’t appreciate our attempts to take Al back. I needed to help them, so I did what Al had thought me, and sent out my power. A white halo appeared around us as I continued sending out power, I could feel the power of the darkness, I knew I could defeat it. Drake and Levia understood what I was trying to do and focused on protecting us while I started to focus my power on a single point. I could feel my power was draining but I knew what I was doing, once I collected enough power, I focused all of it onto the Darkness. The light was blinding as I let the power flow into the darkness. As soon as the light beam reached the Darkness I felt it lessening its hold on us and trying to protect itself; it was too late. The Darkness blew away in a matter of seconds and we were free, if only I had this power when I came here with Al.

I felt myself losing consciousness as I fell into Levia’s tender hands.

Chapter 5:

Al:

I don’t know how I’d managed to keep my posture the whole time Kat was here, because as soon as she severed the connection I collapsed in pain, the Egg had stopped aimlessly torturing me and started to try and consume me; it was trying to seal my soul into the depths of my mind and take control of my body and power. I fought against it at first, I tried to fight it, to reject the Darkness; but it was too powerful. I felt nothing as I lost consciousness and the Darkness consumed my mind.

Kat:

I started crying as soon as I came to myself, I was in Al’s room, and I missed him so much. I was almost going to cry myself to sleep when Levia came and reminded me that we had no time to waste. She told me to wash myself up and come down when I felt better.

I went to the private bathroom which was connected to Al’s room and almost collapsed once I got in. I recalled all the fun we had with Al, his laugh, his screams of joy, and the face he had when he sent me to his room. I was shaking, but I needed to not waste time, so I washed the tears out of my eyes and slowly managed to get downstairs.

Drake and Levia were discussing what to do in the living room, so I dropped onto the couch next to them and started listening. I saw a change in their tone and expressions once I joined them, they were acting differently just for me and that made me feel sad. It was their son who was in danger and they were still thinking of my well-being.

Drake said that to get a better understanding of Al’s situation, he needed to take a better look at the abyss he was in, so I had to take them there and connect with them with the abyss magic Al had created. We assumed the same position and went to the abyss once again. This time I didn’t try to connect to Al but to the magic itself, which was a much harder thing, the magic was resisting me, it was trying to protect itself from us and I could only get in with the help of Levia. Drake started working as soon as we were safely connected to it, he casted a spell to make the abyss understand that we didn’t mean any harm to its caster, then he started casting multi-layered spells to understand how we could get Al out while leaving the Egg inside.

It seemed like days had passed when Drake finally told me to severe the connection. And in a moment, we were back in the living room. We had a fast meal as soon as we came back, because even though I didn’t feel hungry, I knew I was going to need all of my power to be ready for use at any moment. After the meal, Drake took a deep breath as he told us that the only way to save Al was to go into the abyss ourselves.

Chapter 6:

Kat:

Somehow I felt like I had been expecting something like that for some time, so I wasn’t really surprised when Drake told me that we needed to break the seal on it and go into the abyss ourselves before the 23rd of December or that Al would die. I was ready to go at that moment, but I knew that I wouldn’t survive in the abyss with the way I was at that moment, and I knew I wasn’t going to have the chance to train once we got into the abyss; I needed to get more powerful before we could save Al.

We went to bed after we talked about what we were going to do. The next morning, as soon as I got up, I asked Levia to train me on how to use my powers better; Levia told me it would take months to master a power such as mine. The problem was that we only had three weeks before the 23rd of December. I needed to start training as soon as possible, so we went down to the basement where Drake and Levia normally trained; this was the first time I went down to the basement and it was impressive to say the least. There were bookshelves filled with books on every single wall, the floor was filled with at least 5th tier magic circles, even on the ceiling were magic circles, there were tables with complex mechanisms on them; I couldn’t even begin to guess what half the stuff in the rooms was for. The only thing I was sure of was that it was going to be three awfully long weeks in this place.

Levia looked at me with understanding eyes while Drake took stacks of books from the bookshelves and gave them to me. When he saw that I had a puzzled look on my face he told me to read them all then come back and that I had about an hour to finish at least half of them, and when I finished them all he would give me some more. Levia told me that I needed to know the basics and the theory of magic before we could start training for good; even though my power couldn’t completely be classified as magic, it still functioned similar enough to magic that it could almost be classified as such.

I had always been an avid reader but it took all my power to finish them all in the time limit Drake had put. He was actually somewhat shocked when I told him that I had finished all of the books. I was probably the only person he saw that didn’t ask for more time, well maybe except Al but he is something else, he reads encyclopedias for fun and finishes them in a matter of minutes. So Drake gave me even more of even bigger books, and I was starting to get the principles of magic and how it worked. By the time I finished all the books that Drake gave me (he gave me all the books in the library eventually) it had been almost a week and I knew almost everything there was to know about magic, at least in theory.

So, it was time to finally get some field practice. Drake had said to me that Levia was a summoner and that she was going to summon a Tier 5 demon for me to practice my magic on, they told me that they would interfere if something went wrong but I still felt very anxious while Levia was casting the spell.

In the middle of her words I felt darkness emitting from the binding circle drawn on the floor in front of Levia, her voice started to get higher to the point that she could be considered as screaming. I was starting to get really scared when a black fog appeared in the middle of the binding, the fog had glowing eyes on every side and it seemed like it was trying to pierce right through me. I panicked and fell to the ground and cried out to Drake for help but I couldn’t see him anymore; I was alone in a dark space with the fog creature which had started to change shape. There was blood dripping from its long mouth, its eyes were bloodshot, its arms were covered with dark bloody scales and it had a snake-like lower body which was a weird phosphoric green. The room started to smell of sulfur as soon as the thing took shape, and it made a high pitched shrieking noise that made all the bones in my body shake. I would have lost it there had I not read about this creature before.

It was called a Salamandarian Curse, it’s a creature that doesn’t actually have a physical body but it takes shape to scare the people who summon him. Although it doesn’t have a physical body, when it takes shape it can spit acid and use its claws to pierce its opponent.

As soon as I assessed the situation with a calm mind I knew what I needed to do, so I reached out to it with my mind and attacked it with non-physical powers because I knew that it wouldn’t get damaged by physical attacks. At first I was not very sure of myself but as soon as I felt its power, I understood that I could easily defeat this monstrosity. I had been training for the whole week and it had paid off very well, I could completely assess the Curse’s power and act accordingly, so I reached out to its conscience and broke through the barriers it had put up with no problem at all. As soon as I gained control over its conscience it lost control of its shape and returned to the fog form.