89th of Summer, 518
As Overgiving plagued the frame of Farris' body and his wounds were treated by the Healer, Ebon, Farris drifted in and out of consciousness. When Ebon left his presence and the Reimancer drifted into nothingness, his mind experienced an altogether different sort of hell...
Farris was thrust within the Void. Darkness encompassed the entirety of his form, the cold clutching at his chest and penetrating flesh to seize at his beating heart. He sought to inhale but oxygen failed to nourish him. He sought to scream out but his voice did not heed him. The Reimancer couldn't do a thing as he lay on the ground of the Other Side, wheezing without dying. Dira herself seemed unwilling to take the wizard as he stared wide-eyed into the immense portal that brought him there in the first place. Past the portal, he saw the Midnight Gem. He saw the basement that frequented his practice. And he saw Xypher. However, the Familiar was neither small nor helpless. Rather, the Kirt wore his face with a smirk he so very rarely saw upon it. The Reimancer wheezed, breathing poison into the Familiar's thoughts as the Void closed and Farris was left alone.
All alone. Unable to die.
The concept of time escaped the Reimancer in the Void and in the nothingness of the realm a massive figure began to materialize. A beast with mechanical limbs spurred forth and over Farris without causing injury. His wheezes continued, unimpeded as he realized the very same beast he'd narrowly avoided earlier that day returned for him. A blade-like right arm hovered over Farris' throat before the world turned to haze and Void mage was thrust forth. The mechanical beast withered away, Farris rose from the ground and soared into the sky before he was swallowed by another portal.
Farris' back touched upon the ground next, air flooding his lungs as he rose to a seated position. He was in a modest room lacking in decorations. On his lap, without his knowledge, a book sat, its cover flapping as if propelled back and forth by the wind. The pages were soon to follow and the book flapped through its contents with no end to the pattern in sight. Runic letters rose from the pages, notes he compiled through his stay in Sunberth. The language of Nader-canoch was his escape from communication, a barrier he raised so that his most private thoughts remained so. In the book he mused about the countless thoughts that plagued him. His heart was poured into it so that he could remain without such a liability in the waking world, yet another hell he witnessed on a regular basis. Sunberth was Farris' personal hell, one granted to him by his eagerness to leave safety and assurances behind. To leave his world behind.
My world is already gone, he reminded himself as words splattered as blood on the wall. YOU DID THIS, FARRIS. was splayed across the wall, with little to inform him of the cause. It wasn't until he looked away from the letters that he realized the journal was gone. The desk in his room was gone. Left behind was a corpse, a lanky, bearded man with graying hair. The mage's heart leapt to his chest as he looked down. When the corpse rose to its feet, the visage of Aster was before him. Dark eyes were void of the light they'd possessed in life. The elder mage's most treasured asset, speech, was lost upon him. Instead the corpse shambled towards him and stood him up from the ground. Farris was pushed back against the wall as Aster looked over the young man with a measure of intrigue. Father and son stared at each other for a time. Farris did not defend himself from Aster's attack, his eyes wide, a hand reaching to grasp at the elder mage's wrist as tears began to fall freely from gray eyes.
Was it my fault...? he thought to himself as Aster's hand reached for his throat. Farris clutched at his father's hand, wheezing again before, in the edges of his vision, the scene changed.
The room wilted away as the Dreamscape shifts. Farris finds Aster gripping at his neck and the two are flung from Mizahar and into the Void. The pull of an unseen portal sends the pair flying into the embrace of black oblivion. The cold, dank world of the Void withered from Farris' attentions as he watched the moving corpse of his father attempt to wring the life from the son's throat. His eyes bulged from inside of his face, his lips wide as he struggled to breathe, struggled to live... Failed to die.
Blood splattered from wounds that materialized upon Aster's flesh. Invisible blades pierced into his back and the body fell as it was cut down by a non-existent blade. The corpse withered away and upon the floor, spelled in blood, read the phrase.
YOU DID THIS, FARRIS.
What... did I do? he thought to himself. As if to answer his question, Aster's voice rang out in the darkness, his voice loud over the sounds of wheezing.
"You forgot about me."
No... never, he thought to himself. Tears begged to fall from his eyes, but they never came. The manifestation of Aster's voice did not need to hear his words, it seemed, for it responded to them as if he were capable of speech.
"You play a fool's game, boy. You ran away from home and arrived in a place that will never understand you. You left Ravok in search of what? Diversion? Freedom? Surely it wasn't arcane knowledge."
I didn't want to leave... But I wasn't sure... if I was going to be next...
"Weakness and excuses. Did I teach you to be so pathetic?"
No... you taught me what it was.... he trailed off. Admitting this, most of all to a father he knew no longer existed, tore him to pieces. He found his speech, deep within the clutches of the Void. He screamed out his next words, uncaring of who heard or what might come. Farris found tears flooded his cheeks, his fingers trembled. He sat up, the clutches of the Void far from reaching him as he stared into the horizon of nothingness beyond him.
"You taught me how to die! You left me alone in the world with no one to trust!" he admitted, his chest heavy with the admission that he truly felt lose in the world without Aster's presence to guide him.
"I opened your eyes, boy. If anything that's happened to you has served its purpose, then you might grow to shun the light of your own accord." Aster spoke words to him that he never thought he'd hear. As a boy, Aster tutored him in the wonders of the world. He walked in the light of knowledge and saw others who failed to do the same as tools to serve a grand purpose. Farris would not pretend that his father was a saint. For he wasn't and the boy wouldn't have taken stock in his teachings if he was. Farris did not worship in Sagallius to follow blindly the words of others as a puppet to their whims.
Shun... the light? What light? he asked.
"Dependence. Friendship. Compassion. Love."
Is human nature a flawed premise?
"Human nature is weakness painted with the brush of the Gods."
Farris listened to Aster speak and took his words in a new perspective. Never had he heard his father speak in such a way and never did he expect to hear him speak at all. "Then... what comes next?"
"Abandon humanity, boy. Turn light into darkness and plunge yourself into the nothingness. Emerge from it not as a man, but as something else entirely."
Is this Aster... or Xypher? Is the Familiar toying with me?
"You believe me an apparition? A mask worn by an alien without knowledge of magic?"
I believe that you're dead, come to haunt me for my misgivings. To taunt me for my Overgiving. To chide me for my lack of patience.
"I've come to end you, Farris. To make you anew and give you purpose again."
My purpose has already been decided.
"Oh?"
In a world without you, Aster... My purpose is to make bleed those that stole you from me. I fled from Ravok because I could not bear the city without the only thing thing that gave shape to ambition. I loved you, Father. I treasured your presence every day and this world without you is nothing but a lie. I will not have peace until you are avenged. You claim to come for my light, but you had it all along. What's left is my rage.
"Good," was the last word Aster spoke before the world around Farris wilted, leaving only the black emptiness of the Void.
WC: 1497