Modern Mage – Chapter 15

Here is chapter 15 for those of you still reading this twisted story from my imaginations. I hope you like it
as much as the others before it. This is more of a cerebral part of the plot line but important to understand Andrew more than you already do. I appreciate the feedback I’ve been getting from those who have been leaving comments and those who have joined the site and PM’d me. Thank you again for reading the story and I’ll have the next chapter posted as it comes to me.



The silence and darkness were a welcome change from the fire in my blood until that sensation faded. I was adrift in darkness, weightless with no sense of direction. Things slivered and whispered in the darkness. I could feel indescribable caresses along my skin under my clothing. The stagnant oily taste of the air as I breathed; and the air smelled of rotting corpses and other sickly sweet scents I was unable to identify. The darkness was so profound that I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what resided in the space around me. There was no sense of time passing here; even my perfect Time Sense from that sphere wasn’t working. That worried me because it meant that I was in a space in which time was a meaningless construct. Most people even many Mages see time as a line flowing in one direction, a theory call Linear Time. To most this is true, however as you learn and work with Time Magick and your understanding of time you realize that it is an artificial construct created to allow people of all kinds to understand what is happening.


My spine crawled under my skin as felt some kind of hard chitinous tendril slither up my leg before it withdrew. My heart was racing as I tried to understand what was happening and where I was. I had a theory that I didn’t want to accept as it meant that I couldn’t get myself out. I reached out actively to sense what was around me with Magick and that is when I realized there was no connection to it. I could no longer feel my Avatar, the connection was there but no magick. That cemented my theory about where I was. Todash Space. The space between spaces where Cthulhian nightmares lived. Now I was glad that I didn’t have the option of shedding light on the situation. I was stuck here for how long I wouldn’t be able to tell as the Tellurian’s rules had no effect on that which existed outside of it. The only advantage to being stuck here was the same disadvantage; they had all of eternity to find me and I would be stuck here without changing. I was going to be stuck here until someone on the other side could figure out where I was and how to get me back from here. All I had to do was hope my sanity remained intact while I was here.


When you exist in a timeless state where nothing and everything is happening at the same time it is difficult to know anything for certain. I’m not sure if I had, am having or will have the thought that I now know how Schrodinger’s Cat felt about the box, but at some point in every when and no when the thought happened. I tried to focus on Sindee and my friends but thoughts and memory are fleeting in eternity. I believe that Hell would have been a better place to be stuck than in this dark nothingness that followed no rules or rhyme or reason. In order to protect my sanity I started to go over the events of my life in order from my youngest memories to my recent experiences. I was thankful that I had cast a Mind Magick spell on myself that gave be perfect recollection from that time forward as well as enhancing those memories I already had.


I drifted there lost in my memories for and indeterminate frame of reference. Going through my memories wasn’t helping as I lost sense of order in them as there was no frame of reference for time here and my mind was adapting to that fact despite my efforts. I worried that my memories weren’t real, that I only imagined everything; that my life was nothing more than a dream in a timeless place. The thought of that possibility filled me with a dread far worse than the whispers in the darkness ever could have. I mentally gripped the image I had of Sindee and held on for dear life, using that as a mental focus.


I focused on the memory of her eyes and the last time I had seen them. The silver flecks inside the grey storm cloud irises. From there images flowed to me or time we had spent together. If this was a dream that never happened I wanted to hold onto it anyway. Then the image of her coming into a hospital room passed through my mind. Then there was an image of her in a white gown, hair pulled up tight into a complicated braid, then the image of her in a green dress standing in the summer evening. The image of her in a sapphire dress under the moon and stars was next. An image I didn’t remember came next; she looked older and was walking with a dark haired young woman through a park talking. After that an image of her younger, dressed in jeans and white shirt. The shirt was stained red with blood flowing down her right side from a wound in her shoulder and chest. Then an image of her fighting some kind of magic user passed through my mind. The images flashed in an ever changing menagerie of possibilities from her with children and grandchildren running around and playing to her alone and angry at the world to her teaching medicine; images of her as a Mage, a Vampire and other things. Then an image formed of her pale, eyes closed and features completely relaxes; peaceful as seen only in death.


I began to hate myself for leaving her alone, with me gone and unable to protect her from the world I exposed her to. I was determined to be the first person to find a way back from Todash. I was not going to wait to be rescued; I was going to find a way out of the space between spaces if it killed me. I was a Mage and just because no one has accomplished something before didn’t mean it was impossible. It just meant that no one was smart enough to think their way around the problem. I tried to think about what Todash was and wasn’t when I hit the proverbial wall of my limitations. It’s is almost impossible to focus one anything this when you perceive an eternity and a moment as the exact same thing. When time doesn’t exist in a place it fractures your sense of the real.


And that thought gave me what I needed to work up a way out of Todash. I told you a while back or was it that I’m going to tell you about how reality works. Reality to most beings is consensual as it is formed by what the Consensus of those in it believe. No one believes in dragons anymore therefore they ceased to exist and any skeletons found are written off as being dinosaur fossils. For Mages reality in conceptual as what they can imagine and conceive they can create with enough power, skill, knowledge and will. I knew what I could attempt to do but thankfully I didn’t have to worry about time. I started to speak to the whispers in the darkness, telling the entities stories of Magick and Avatars. When the whispers quieted I knew they were listening so I spoke more of the planes of existence describing scents and sounds and how this felt and tasted. I spoke nothing of visual descriptions as there was nothing to see her in darkness and they would have no point of reference for the descriptions. I just continued to speak for as long as my voice help out, encouraging the listens to pass along my tales to everything else in this purgatory I find myself in. I didn’t know if this would work but I had to try something. I did everything I could to bring most of the laws of reality to this place leaving out the concept of time so that I would not need to worry about if having its effects on me causing me to age or to starve as the body wasn’t being supported in a physical sense.


I didn’t stop my talking, whispering, pushing the information out to the denizens of this pitch black nothingness that surrounded me in fear that if I stopped talking I would forget the idea. If I forgot what I was doing and why in this place it would be as if nothing had ever happened with no concept of time everything I worked to change would cease. There was no way to say how long I was speaking or what was said to push things to the point I needed and wanted. All of a sudden I felt as though I had never lost my connection to Magick and speaking aloud what I was doing to keep the sensation real in the mind around me as well as my own, I tapped into the magick and used Correspondence, Spirit, Life, Prime and Matter Spheres to yank myself back into the Prime Material Plane from where I left.