A red-hot wave of pain shot through his mind as he beheld the diagram, and a cry escaped his lips against his will. The lines and circles seemed to glow blindingly bright, and after a moment the diagram began to spin. The intricate circles and squares melded into one another like cogs in a machine.
His vision grew dark as the world around him fell away in pieces with each pulse of fiery pain that shot through his skull. Each beat of his heart pulled him further away from himself, ultimately leaving him floating in an endless void.
As the last of his surroundings fell away and shattered against the emptiness, seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours. A great rumbling sound filled his ears, vibrating his entire being. The inky black haze that clouded his vision seemed to expand into the infinite void around him, and a blazingly bright light took hold at the center of it all.
Despite the intensity of the light, however, it did little to illuminate the void around him and he found himself slipping further and further away. Tendrils of darkness grasped at his arms and legs. He tried to shut his eyes but they would not close. He tried to run, but his limbs betrayed the signals he sent them.
Great despair filled him as he lost his autonomy. Time became meaningless. The years stretched into centuries as he descended even further into the vast nothingness, the cold grip of the void icing his very bones.
His purpose had long since become a forgotten memory at that point. Every single part of him had been stripped away. In truth, he was less a person at this point and more of a concept. Who was he, and why was he here? Was this even real? What was real anyway? Nothing seemed to matter anymore except for a strange feeling, the only feeling aside from pain that he had in the depths of this ruthless eternity.
Something in the back of his crumbling mind kept gnawing at him. Something that urged him on as he kept resisting the tendrils of the void. Something about a struggle perhaps? Eventually, all sensations faded away. The pain stopped, and even the sense that he was floating vanished. If not for the presence of that pulsing light he doubted that he would even be able to tell that he existed in the first place.
Then, a faint sound, almost like a whisper tickled at his ears. A voice perhaps? Yes! Yes, it was a voice! One he had not heard in ages. Who was it though? Cypher wondered for what seemed like centuries, mulling over the sound trying his hardest to think through the gaps in his fading mind. His memories tangled and stretched out into a single long thread and he tried his best to get what information he could from that seemingly infinite tendril.
At last, the answer came to him. It was Alvin! But his words were so muffled and distant that Cypher could not hear or understand their meaning. He clawed his way through the darkness, fighting with every ounce of willpower he had. He fought until he once again grew closer to the light. He fought until he remembered himself. He fought until he remembered his purpose.
It was all so clear to him now. How could he have forgotten something so important? Now he could hear Alvin much clearer than before. It sounded like he was crying out to him, begging him to push through and finish what he started.
"You can do this you hear me? Fight harder, my boy! Fight! Don't-" Alvin's words faded away but with each syllable, the light before him flickered and grew a bit brighter.
His efforts redoubled, and he fought off the darkness that threatened to smother his entire being. He would not end here, he could not! He existed and that meant that he could still fight.
He felt a hand on his back, warm and comforting pushing him forward toward the light, and turned his head to see who was standing behind him. The presence remained, but only the thick black of nothingness greeted him.
It threatened to pull him back within its never-ending depths and he turned to face the light again, struggling even harder than before. A sharp pressure licked at his consciousness after that. It was strange at first but as he drew closer to the light, he remembered what that pressure was and recoiled.
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Pain once again consumed him. Terrible, throbbing pain shot through his head, but he fought on. Through clenched teeth he moved, taking small steps forward towards the bright warmth that seemed to flicker and dim as if something whirled around in front of it. Then, as if the grip that bound him had suddenly vanished, he fell forward onto a cold hard surface.
The pain ebbed away slowly but soon it was gone. His mind returned to a stable state and he could think clearly once again. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were slightly transparent. It was a strange feeling but one that he was quickly growing accustomed to.
He shifted his gaze and looked up to see that a small building had formed around the light and a door stood before him. A soft glow burned dimly behind two opaque windows on either side of the door. It looked as though a fog surrounded the building and beyond it was only the inky blackness he had been trapped in before. He made a mental note to avoid wandering off into that darkness, although even without that he wouldn’t have dared to return to that place of his own accord.
As he stared, the building began to call to him. It wasn’t so much a voice that called to him, instead, it was a strong feeling or compulsion that beckoned him forward. He stood up and walked a few steps forward to grasp the doorknob. He wasn’t scared anymore, but he was still quite cautious. With a click, the door swung open, and inside he found a bookshelf with a single book resting upon it. Above the bookshelf, hung a lantern which lit the inside of the room with a dim grey hue.
He looked around the room and noticed that rows of other books lined the walls. They were neatly arranged as if on a bookshelf themselves rather than part of the structure that surrounded him. As he stepped forward, the door behind him swung shut softly. He paid it no mind.
Compelled by that same strange urge from before, he reached out and touched one of the books on the wall and felt his heartbeat. It was fast and irregular but soon returned to a slow and steady rhythm. Curious, he reached for another book and felt his lungs filling with cold clean air.
He carried on this way and reached for several more of these books, and was startled as each one brought him a different sensation. One held the feeling of blood rushing through his veins. Another contained the soft pressure of his full Orrium, and still others even held some of his memories. He knew now that each one represented a part of himself or a function of his body. It was surreal to see that everything that he was, everything that made Cypher, ‘Cypher’ was contained here in these books.
He returned his attention to the bookshelf that stood in the middle of the room beneath the lantern. The single tome that rested upon it was a light blue color and crackled with sparks of electricity. He reached for it and opened it to see the light blue diagram of the spell that had been burned into his mind.
Where before it had only represented a sort of switch that allowed him to cast his spell, the lines inside all made perfect sense to him now. He could see how their will combined with his own to change reality and allowed for control of the energy and matter of the universe.
He could see how these specific laws and reasonings could mold the power within his Orrium and conjure up a bolt of pure energy from the ether. He could control the amount of energy conjured, and could even change its speed and direction at will. This was the essence of the lightning bolt spell and now that he truly understood, he would never forget it.
His ignorance of its true meaning and power stunned him and he felt ashamed to even call what he had known before a spell in full.
“So this is what it means to truly know a spell…” he thought to himself, his voice echoing all around him. The sudden sound of his own voice startled him. On top of that, he finally took notice of another one of the books on the shelves around him. This one seemed to glow and pulse much faster than the others.
It didn’t take him long before he realized that this book was a constantly updating stream of his own thoughts. As he held it in his hands he could see the words of his thoughts being written upon its pages in real-time. It was strange to see how the words would start and stop as he thought out random sentences. It was so quick and accurate that for a moment he couldn’t tell if his thoughts were born from the words appearing on the page, or if the words were creations of his thoughts.
The sensation made him a bit dizzy and he closed the book, amused at the novelty of the whole experience. Alvin's voice once again rang out in the distance and distracted him from his revelation. Alvin urged him to come back to reassure him that he was alright. The book fell from Cypher’s hands, but closed itself and floated softly back onto the shelf he had taken it from.
Turning away, Cypher opened the door he had entered through to find the black void gone. In its place was a white expanse just as infinite as the darkness had been. However, instead of being mysterious and filled with danger, it felt comforting, safe, and welcoming. As he walked through that white expanse, the darkness that had clouded his vision vanished and he opened his eyes.