Witch's Den

I sat at the edge of the tower watching Eloise work for about another half hour before she finished. I spent the time sorting my thoughts, both the myriad of questions I had in terms of importance, and doing my best to hold onto what I considered to be the most important parts of my dream I could remember.

With a final pull, the threads pulled the edges of reality back together again, stitching it closed and leaving the sky unblemished. Eloise shook off her hands like trying to get cobwebs off, and the threads dissipated as they floated off. Stretching her fingers by pulling them back and rolling her shoulders, she turned to me.

"Let's get out of here. Stand in the middle, right here," Eloise pointed, and I got up to make my way over. "And hold onto the potion rack. Advance warning, this might be a little jarring, as we reenter physical reality. Freely take the final health potion if you feel like you need it."

With no excuse to object to another potentially uncomfortable experience, I followed her instructions, though I had to voice my newest question.

"So where are we right now?"

"On the fringes of reality, everything you see here is just an echo of the physical world, produced by the mana that suffuses the environment." She pulled out a glass globe from one of her pockets, a needle pointing down to near her feet, floating within it. She crouched down to where it was pointing, rapping her knuckles on the stone floor before continuing her explanation. "Only that which does not interact with mana can appear here, hence echo. This thing here is a compass that points to the anchor that I left in reality to make the return a breeze. It will reel us in the moment I activate it. Ready?"

Is that why everything is so muted? And not because of my headache and whatever else was going on with me and my lack of a soul?

I held off on asking anything more right this moment and instead gave an affirmative with a simple "Yes."

A pale glow enveloped Eloise's outstretched hand, and it began to spread in a donut shape, following the edges of the tower, with the center area, where we were both positioned, left untouched. As it intensified to the point I had to squint, it suddenly shifted into a thick haze like intense heat on tarmac.

Then the vertigo hit, not bad enough to make me stumble and fall, but the sudden, unexpected onset gave me a brief fright of dropping the potions. It was soon followed by the feeling of falling, which was an odd experience considering I was not moving, but as I was about to put my arm in front of me in case I found myself falling, it refused to cooperate. My body was frozen in place, my eyes unmoving, my breathing stopped, and just as I felt panic start to rise, it was over.

The sudden shift of the environment, in the mere blink of an eye, was startling. Like exiting a room full of smoke, the haze I had felt was lifted, with the colors regaining saturation, the sound and the feeling of a breeze, the warmth of the sun, whisps of cloud breaking up the expansive sky. And the fresh air, of all things, stood out the most, as I gasped for what felt like my first breath after holding it for a good few minutes.

Eloise was also taking a big breath as she crouched in front of a rectangular wooden box adorned in metallic liverly, gemstones, and all sorts of intricate engravings. It resembled a water cooler, with a large glass container sitting on top, half full of a blue liquid resembling the shade of the mana potions. A ring of thick fabric surrounded us, stitched with multiple colored threads in intricate patterns, hooked up to the sides of the box that seemed to control the entire esoteric mechanism.

"No time to rest just yet, unfortunately," Eloise declared while getting up, hopping over the donut construction, and heading to the stairs leading down past the wide open double doors. "Now that you are in this realm proper, the lack of a mature soul is going to become even more severe. Let's get it patched up, and you settled in."

I followed suit, my dress shoes clanking loudly in the spiral stairway, each step sending a wave of pain pounding through my skull. It was relatively spacious, with another set of open double doors at the bottom. We entered at the windowed end of a long hallway looking out at the city, and turned to go past several doors lining the sides.

"This entire wing is reserved for my use, mostly as storage and some workshops," she explained while bringing out a large set of keys on a ring, stopping to unlock one of the doors just before another hallway intersected with this one. "And these are my quarters. I'd love to tell you to make yourself at home, but it would be best not to touch anything. Especially not my closet."

I was somewhat taken aback by that specific warning, especially with the shift in tone from somewhat lighthearted to deadly serious.

"I don't make it a habit of snooping around people's clothes," I assured her, feeling a little self-conscious at having to state that.

"It's not my clothes that are the concern. Most of those have probably been torn to shreds," Eloise stated as the lock clicked open with the turn of the key, and a pattern of pale blue light in what I could only describe as runes lit up across the door and the stone frame it sat in before it opened. "I've had to use it as a makeshift prison for a beast that assaulted me during my previous extradimensional portal trials. No clue where it came from, and am currently waiting for a specialized cage to be built and delivered. So if you value staying in one piece, don't touch the closet."

The word of warning made me hesitant to enter, but I gingerly followed her into the room when she held the door open.

Although the room was untidy, I would not call it messy. There was clutter everywhere, but more from the sheer volume of things stuffed into the room rather than it being scattered about, and that was saying something, considering the room's immense size. Every surface, which included multiple tables, desks, cabinets, shelves, and even some chairs, was stacked with things whose purpose I could not tell. There were two doors leading to other rooms, as well as an expansive open balcony, or more like a terrace, occupied by another large device.

Before I could process everything in the room, Eloise turned to the rack I was holding and started plucking a couple of the potions out. Two blue ones, of the human consumption variety, and two purple ones.

"Keep the last health potion just in case. It's sturdy, so don't worry about it breaking. Clean out..." Eloise paused for a moment while looking around the room before pointing out one of the tables up against a wall. "That table there. Just move everything onto the floor, out of the way. If anything happens, anything at all, from touching something to it breaking, tell me immediately. I'll be over in just a moment."

She strode over to a desk stacked with papers and notebooks, sweeping an arm to shove them to the side and make space for herself, before rummaging through some drawers. I did not linger to watch, as I went to do as instructed, surveying the work ahead of me.

Most of what I found was a mass of lenses and what appeared to be tools, many of which were in sets of multiple identical-looking ones. There was also a thick tome with papers sticking out, marking various pages, and cases of crystals and jewels neatly lined in cushions. There was even what looked to be a microscope, although its metal surface was fully engraved and encrusted in gems. I began with that, finding it ridiculously heavy, but after having moved the largest item, I had no difficulty with the rest.

Just as I finished up, Eloise arrived with a large, thick blanket, which she draped over the table. "Shoes off, and sit. Make yourself comfortable, you are likely to pass out after drinking this next one I give you," she commanded before turning back to her desk to retrieve two mugs as I settled onto the blanketed tabletop.

I took one of the mugs that was handed to me, and then what looked like a pearl, its smooth surface shimmering a pretty pearlescent.

"When you are ready, drop that in, let it dissolve, and then drink it all. Not an exact replica of the process done with a fetus, but that is because you can just drink it directly. It works on a relatively simple theory, of getting a good chunk of a mature soul to jump the queue before the mother's gets mixed in. I won't sugarcoat it and tell you it is painless, because honestly, I don't know what you will experience, but hopefully the idea that you should have the same capability to do magic as I after gets you through. And the solidarity that this is probably going to suck way more for me than you," she raised her mug after settling into a nearby chair, a sour but determined look on her face. "So bottoms up, on your mark."

I felt like I had to give some words of appreciation as I dropped the pretty little sphere into the murky purple liquid, even if I did not fully understand everything going on.

"I don't blame you for what happened if it really was an accident," I began, watching the fizzing and bubbling in my mug. "So I really appreciate you doing all this, even if it is out of guilt. Thank you."

I did not wait for a reply when I saw my drink had stilled, and once more ingested a mysterious, magical liquid, dreading the outcome, and ready to grab the health potion from my pocket if need be. I nearly gagged at the horrendous taste, not even able to think of anything to compare it to, though with little surprise, as something this foul should surely not be ingested.

In anticipation of the worst, I lay my head down when I finished, my face scrunched up in disgust, but soon numbness spread throughout my entire body, going completely limp and without sensation. The mug clattered to the ground, shattering, and as my consciousness dipped further and further away from my body, a feeling of an actual, genuine out-of-body experience, the last sensory information I received from my physical body was a bloodcurdling scream from next to me.