It had taken longer than expected for Azura to get the proper magic together, but it made sense in hindsight. He was missing one of his cores, and his connection with the other was tenuous here. Not to mention just how much mana he’d been using in here. Worse, he had made sure his stored mana was all connected to his core, he didn’t want to risk losing it when he lost his body. He wasn't in the pool, but there his body reformed immediately and in the same place, he wasn’t willing to take the risk here.
On top of all that there wasn’t any ambient mana here, so his recharge was painfully slow. Thankfully he had realized that he had plenty of mana after all. A whole body of it in fact. He’d never actually broken down his body for mana to cast a spell before, but well first time for everything he supposed. It was a good thing his specialty was enchantments, because he obviously wouldn’t be able to maintain a spell while he was just a soul, he wouldn’t even be conscious until his body reformed.
Once the enchantments were properly filled on the sheet of ice, he took a deep breath. His body began breaking up into golden light and flowing into the enchantment causing the dim silver glow to become a brilliant gold. The light shined more and more intensely until it began to swirl, forming a glowing blue portal that seemed to swirl like a vortex. By the time the portal had fully formed, Azura no longer existed in the void.
***
Elismera was a little concerned. Almost an hour passed, and there had been no reaction from the core. It was a part of him right? So surely if anything happened it would react in some way? Or at least she hoped it would. Well not like she’d be able to do anything about it. Her magic was versatile in combat, but outside combat it had few uses. Not like there were many magic types that had anywhere near the versatility Azura seemed to. It was almost unreal, but she supposed he probably traded off quite a bit of power and casting speed for the versatility. She bet if he had focused on a branch of normal magic he’d be able to cast many powerful spells in rapid succession, but ultimately she thought his choice to be versatile instead suited his cunning nature.
She was pulled from her thoughts as a soft blue light appeared in front of the void. It slowly began to swirl, before it started getting faster and faster. It only took a couple seconds before a portal like a swirling whirlpool fully formed. She noticed the core emit a faint glow as it warmed in her hands. She imagined that was significant, but didn’t know in what way. “That’s certainly an aggressive looking portal.” She rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand why Auros was so hesitant. Having a monster core was typically not a good sign, but if Azura really did have bad intentions, then he could have easily started a war as soon as he had found the tree. Honestly knowing him she didn’t doubt that he could do all kinds of damage, and yet he seemed to go out of his way to help others. Even knowing about the monster core she just couldn’t see him as someone malicious.
“Well you don’t have to walk through it if you don’t want to, but I don’t really plan on dying in here.” She walked through the portal after that. The sensation was very different from any portal she had ever walked through before, and not in a good way. She felt like the whirlpool appearance was perhaps a warning, because it felt like she was trapped in a raging river. She felt like she was being bounced around impacting things all over the place, somehow it wasn’t the wild motion that captured her attention though. It was beautiful. She was surrounded by stars, even the ‘river’ she was stuck in was like a flowing stream of the small lights. There were many other streams of stars, and other patterns of them above and below. It was breathtaking enough that she barely even felt the pain of the rough ride.
The trip almost felt too short. It didn’t even take a minute for the stream to shove her through another swirling blue portal. Once she was through she had to wince and cover her eyes as she was met with a bright light. Azura’s core cradled tightly against her for fear that she might have dropped it during the rough ride here. Wherever here was. She slowly opened her eyes as they adjusted to the light, and was once again amazed at what she saw.
***
Auros stared apprehensively at the portal. It had been several minutes since Elismera had gone in, and he had no way of knowing her fate. Logically he knew he didn’t really have a choice. If he stayed here he would probably die when the subspace collapsed, and it’s not like Azura would go through all the trouble of having them sign a geas if he was just going to kill them anyway. Then again it wouldn’t be the first time the kid had done something incomprehensible to him. In that sense it actually made perfect sense Azura wasn’t human.
He took a deep breath. It’s not like it mattered anyway. If the portal led to his demise it wouldn’t change anything, he was going to die either way after all. He stared at the portal having made his decision, but struggling to work up the will to go through with it. In the end the decision was taken out of his hands when the portal started shrinking. Adrenaline filled his body, and he lept through the portal. His eyes closed in panic as he fought for control as his body was tossed around in what felt like a raging river, only without any water.
He felt like he was drowning, but couldn’t bring himself to breath, he couldn’t even bring himself to open his eyes. It didn’t take long for a bright light to assault his closed eyelids as he crashed into something soft, or well softer than the ground anyway. He finally opened his eyes to see he had crashed into Elismera and she had turned her head to look angrily at him, some dirt stuck on her face from where it had impacted the ground. He jumped up quickly, putting some space between them as the portal closed.
“Sorry! I didn’t expect you to still be in front of the portal!” He apologized quickly. The portal closed behind him, but he was more focused on the angry elven girl glaring daggers at him. He broke into a nervous sweat, hoping the girl wasn’t about to get aggressive.
“What do you mean? You came like 5 seconds after me, of course I hadn’t moved yet!” 5 seconds? It had taken several minutes to work up the nerve to step through the portal? Oh right, the time dilation effect, he hadn’t really thought about that. Not like it would have changed anything, the portal was closing, he didn’t exactly have time to dilly dally.
“Oh yeah, I didn’t think about the time dilation, my bad. The portal started closing, and I pretty much jumped through in panic.” The answer seemed to appease her at least for now, because she rolled her eyes and turned away, giving him a chance to finally view his surroundings. Only for his breath to be taken away at the sight before him. There was an almost ethereal beauty to wherever they were.
Flowers took up every inch of ground not occupied by something else, and their petals flew around with the breeze. There didn’t seem to be a sun, but a soft light encompassed everything all the same. A small plateau with a gentle waterfall stood not far from them, a little lake forming at its basin and going on out of sight. Trees rested here and there in groups of 3-4. While he couldn’t call the nature anything other than beautiful, the big attention grabber was probably the beautiful marble castle. The pearl white castle was relatively large, the middle tower probably being over 100 ft tall.
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It took over a fairly wide area of space too, with a much smaller tower in each of the cardinal directions, or at least what he assumed were the cardinal directions, without the sun it was a bit tricky to tell. The castle had 2 waterfalls coming from it that he could see. Each coming from a hole in the 30 ft wall surrounding the whole castle and filling up the mote he hadn’t really noticed until now. Well at least now he understood how Elismera was distracted enough that he had hit her on his way out. He had seen plenty of castles, but this one emitted an odd sense of majesty, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Although the gold accents and markings on the castle seemed oddly familiar.
***
Elismera was almost glad the 2nd year had bumped into her. At least she was after she checked Azura’s core, and saw that it was unblemished by the fall. She had been completely out of it. Lost in awe at the strange place she found herself in. After being knocked back to her senses it occurred to her that this obviously wasn’t their world. Had Azura messed up? She couldn’t say she knew him all that well, but he didn’t seem the type to make mistakes like this. If he failed it was because he bit off more than he could chew, but usually the result of that was complete failure, not half success. “Just where are we?”
“An interesting question, of which a proper answer may be difficult.” Her eyes widened as she swiftly turned towards the motherly voice. Her eyes met piercing blue, as a giant wolf came into view from the treeline. There were definitely not enough trees to conceal a wolf of this size, but the talking bit had already tipped her off that this was no normal wolf.
“Ok, let me try an easier question then. Who are you?” Auros had finally gotten over his own awe, and seemed to be preparing for combat, but at least he had the sense not to attack yet. They after all knew almost nothing about this place or their current company.
“I am Alaya. Though my name is not what you seek, yes? You seek to know whether I’m friend or foe. As long as you treat that which you hold with care I shall bring you no harm.” She looked down at the core, and was finally able to piece together where they were. Azura really was clever wasn’t he. So he hadn’t been able to find a link to the real world, she supposed the spirit world was as good as the same thing. He had traveled between real and spirit worlds several times, and she had no doubt that once he reformed he’d be able to do so again.
“I mean him no harm, and will continue to guard it until he reforms.” Surprisingly she found herself meaning it. A secret for a secret, a bond had formed between them, they had each other's lives in their hands, and she at least had a firm confidence that she would not be betrayed. Honestly her grudge against him seemed so silly now, all because he may have stumbled upon a seed he likely wouldn’t have recognized anyway. In a sense she was lucky she had been forced to hide the seed there. It had led to her having a very helpful ally.
“You speak truth, so the truth I shall speak in return. Normally Azura would take days to reform, but thanks to his unique nature we should be able to speed it along, just this once.” Well that was ominous. Well in the sense that the speed up could only happen once, the offer itself was a welcome one. Though she had to admit to being curious what exactly it would be. The wolf kneeled before the core, and an energy quickly began coming from the orb.
The wolf opened her mouth releasing a soft white light that merged with the blue light coming from the core. An intense wind blew from where the lights met, and the core floated from her hands positioning itself in the center of the maelstrom. From there it didn’t take long for the light to calm itself, and slowly break into golden flecks of light. Those flecks merged together until they began to take the familiar shape of their wayward teammate. All told the process probably took about 5 minutes. Once the body was fully formed the flecks of light fell off revealing Azura looking exactly the same as he had before he had entered the void. “So you 2 ready to go or what?”
***
Azura played it off, but for all intents and purposes he had been dead. His body had completely dissolved and stripped of magic to make the portal. Of course without a brain he had nothing to remember that time with, but he felt it in his soul. The chilled terror of nonexistence. He didn’t know what Alaya had done to allow him to reform so fast, but her relaxing mana was the only thing keeping him from freaking out. He had narrowly avoided oblivion, and even scarier if his soul had gotten stuck in the void he wouldn’t have even been able to go to the after life, so it would just be his soul in the endless abyss of the void. Needless to say he was glad to have dodged that bullet, and he had another thing for the ever growing list that was his debt to Alaya.
“Are you? You did just literally reform from nothing, I can’t imagine you’re in better shape than we are.” He tilted his head curiously. Was that genuine concern? He didn’t realize Elismera would have been actually worried for him, especially not after finding out he had a monster core. Auros’ reaction was much closer to what he expected, the 2nd year looking obviously wary of him
“I’m good as new… Literally.” The joke helped him calm a little, it wouldn’t do for the panic to slip past his carefully maintained facade, and whether he was good or not, they really did need to return to the material world. “Anyway jokes aside, Opening a portal from here to the school should be easy peasy.” He wasn’t bluffing or playing humble either, these 2 worlds were so closely linked that a portal between them wasn’t difficult at all, even his blink spell was based around skipping through the spirit world to his target location.
“If you say so.” If Elismera was trying to hide her skepticism she was doing a poor job of it. Well she was right about his condition, so he had no intention of calling her out on it. He did his best to clear the storming maelstrom of his thoughts so he could properly control his magic. The existential dread that came from returning from oblivion would have to be on the backburner for now.
Symbols spread out from him as another portal slowly opened. The portal was a simple circle glowing gold, silver, and blue. It emitted a gentle light. “Why is that portal so different from the one you used to get us here?” Surprisingly the question came from Auros who still looked to be on his guard. Unfortunately he had never actually gotten to see his other portal.
“It is? Huh. I never actually got to see that one, but it should have been more or less the same, except the actual transportation method I suppose. That one had to be drawn out so you could properly shift to the different timestream, abrupt changes can really mess someone up.” They were lucky not to have been more affected by it changing in the subspace, and he imagined that was because they had gone through it gradually as the black hole powered up around them. That was pure guesswork though.
“That was an interesting experience, the bridge was quite beautiful.” He smiled at Elismera. He would have to ask her what it looked like. Later though, for now they needed to get back, he had no idea how much time had passed in the material world after all.
He stepped closer to the portal. “We can talk more when we are back where we belong, come on before we miss the tourney.” They may have already, and even if they didn’t he wasn’t sure Auros would still be willing to be on his team, but one issue at a time.
“Right behind you.” Elismera said as he stepped through the portal. The trip was fairly gentle, unlike the portal from the trials, this one didn’t feel like breaking apart or being squeezed, it was simply a shift because it was adapting him to the new environment. He stepped out into the courtyard to see there were still people reappearing from their fight with the shadows. He sighed in relief even as his portal became the obvious center of attention. Elismera followed shortly after followed by a slight gap before Auros came through. Auros moved away, putting some space between himself and them. He wasn’t close enough to Auros to really be offended, but it did hurt a little.
“What crazy insane crap did you do now?!” He laughed. Lily’s shout instantly relieved a weight he hadn’t realized he had been holding. His friends quickly swarmed him and Elismera bombarding him with questions. He only smiled. It felt good to be back.