Multiverse of Magic & Mistakes (Completed)

1.3.25 Chapter 25

The Inbetween

Middy was floating in an endless black void. Everywhere he looked, each way he turned, all he could see was the total blackness of eternal night, stretching endlessly into the distance. He had tried shifting forms into a range of creatures with excellent night vision; a moth, a racoon, and eventually settling back into his comfortable familiar Charteaux cat form, but his eyes were still unable to spot anything in the darkness.

Where was the boy? Rho had been thrown out of the collapsing portal and into the void alongside him, but Middy could see no trace of him. The void was vast, endless in fact, and although both the Guardian and the Mage had been thrown out of Violet's portal, the chance of them encountering each other in the darkness were slim.

Which way was up? Or down? Left or right? Gravity ceased to exist here, and Middy found the sensation of weightlessness and lack of direction to be unnerving. His blue-grey fur spread out around him in a halo, no longer pushed flush to his skin by gravity. His collar and silver pendant no longer rested comfortably around his neck but instead floated up and drifted by his chin. He flailed his legs, the four familiar short mammalian pentadactyl limbs instead of the six limbs he had had as a honeybee, or the two he had had as a Lindtiau, trying to manoeuvre through the void as if he was swimming in a waterless pool. Middy knew he must look ridiculous, but there was no one around to see him.

How long had he been here? Middy could not say if it had been mere minutes, or hours, or days or centuries. Nothing happened, nothing occurred to mark the passing of time. Middy was not growing hungry, or thirsty or tired. In fact, being trapped in the void seemed to negate the need for any physiological functions. He was still breathing steadily, in, out, in, out, but it seemed to be out of habit rather than a need for oxygen.

How had he ended up here? How had it all gone so horrifically wrong? He had been magnificent, a giant, terrifying creature of his home-world, giant blood-red bat-like wings, wyvern-like tough scaled body, razor-sharp claws and a huge mouth of white sharp teeth, enough to put fear into the heart of the bravest man or woman. That had been the aim, to terrify Rho and Vi, to get them to flee in fear back to Verdyn. But he had yet again underestimated them. The boy somehow had cast a strong ice spell back at him, the flickering jets of cold blue magic, counteracting the lindtiau's ability to breathe fire. And he had to hold back on the fire, for he wanted to shock and scare them, not cause any harm.

Perhaps he had attacked too soon? He realised immediately, that Vi was not ready to create the portal; his earlier plan of drawing up all the free magic permeating the cavern had been too successful, and left nothing for Vi, even though he now was relying upon her being able to create a portal and leave. Shit. Middy spun in the air and struck off in a different arbitrary direction. He really should have thought that one through. But then the worst had happened, Vi had somehow figured out how to draw power out of one of the red crystals and utilised that to open a portal. And she and the boy were about to leave Azuhelm, bags of stolen crystals in tow. And Middy could not allow that to happen.

He wasn't proud of his actions. He had not meant for it to end this way, had not meant for both himself and the boy to be expelled into the void, but he had had a very limited amount of time to act. He had seen Vi reach for Rho's hand and the two of them step-forward as if in slow motion. It was now or never, he had thought. And so Middy had abandoned the lindtiau form, shifting as quickly as possible back to his familiar, trusty charteaux cat form. He had shifted with such urgency and desperation, that the transformation would have earned him a shiny gold medal at the Guardian Olympics. Never had a shapeshifter changed from something so big and vicious to something so small and harmless with such alacrity, he liked to think.