Warrior of the Void Book 1, Chapter 16: Meditation

Snapping open their eyes, Muur found themselves elsewhere. Gone was the lonely, isolated room in the catacombs. In its place was a grand corridor, it’s ceiling crumbling bearing the grand arches of a palace, fragments of its shattered walls were held aloft by pure nothingness as they lazily bobbed up and down, up and down– an errant whisper of wind causing one to tremble in place and spin lightly.

The floor was that of their new home, the simple layout of rectangular bricks feeding into the next guiding forward those walking upon them. But Muur had very little to observe when it came to them, not when he could see himself under the thin white tunic that was his sleepwear.

His body wasn’t the one he’d grown accustomed to over the last two and a half days. It was, unmistakably, his previous one– But also not, as she could see features of her new form peeking through. He’d never been a towering, muscular macho man, but the lines of his body were clearly rounder and softer than they’d been three days ago. Not to mention he certainly felt smaller.

Partway through an attempt at peering down his ass to compare it to her new bottom in the name of empirical testing, he felt an itch. Coming from right in the middle of his collarbone and just above the lung, almost like sunburnt skin peeling off. Unable to help himself, he scratched at his naked, porcelain-like skin. Only to find it flaking off in chunks like damp sand, revealing the pattern of her pristine black scales underneath.

In surprise, Muur’s hand jolted away– taking a piece of the ‘skin’ with it, just large enough to expose the corner of a cavity. Green light blazed from within, and just like a sinkhole that had decided to finally make itself known, all of her shell began to fall in as the light flashed brighter.

When he reopened his eyes, his chest was home to a hole half as large as his head. Nestled in the middle of it was the source of the light, a flame– or maybe a ball of plasma? Or a droplet of water? Whatever it was, it seemed to feed off of the spiralling streams of debris that were slowly being drawn into it from the crumbling edges of the hole.

A gentle poke at the roiling mass and the mystery came apart just as easily as the chunk of shell it took off the offending finger, leaving nothing but a swirling mess of tarry black and burning green in place of the digit. That was them. Not Muur, not Neil, not any of those convenient shells nature had given them for day to day life. No, it was the thing without face or gender or name or build underneath it all. The one with the love of wordplay and the colossal strike zone and the pyromania and the schizophrenic taste in music.

This was only validated all the more as they extruded out from the cavity, a slug-like protrusion to twist around and look at the face of the shell they wore. 

It was definitely theirs– or rather, Neil’s. But they could see the gradual transition towards the new shell, Muur’Zagas Himaa. Things like the start of a tiny nub of a horn, or of scales forming just under the skin, as well as a discoloration in her pupils.

A quick squish of the cheeks with pseudopodia and they were satisfied, slithering back inside the chest cavity and shimmying to fill it out like it was an old coat. A particularly mushy hermit crab, that was them. Still, back to being Muur, for all there was a gaping hole in his chest.

Hopefully nobody here would call him a slut and screech for him to cover up his oozing cavity. Speaking of ‘here’, the mindscape(?)’s corridor wasn’t as endless as it’d appeared at first glance. All the way back, at the very end of it was a bright orange light. He wasn’t exactly an expert on magic-assisted meditation visions, but ‘follow the glowing thing at the end of the tunnel’ was pretty straightforward.

The deeper he went, the more it started to feel like Muur had been mistaken twice over and that it really was endless, because no matter how much he walked, the light at the end of the tunnel never seemed to get any closer. All he could do was place one foot in front of the other while the walls that surrounded him scrolled past him, one crumbling brick and moldering painting at a time.

There was nothing but the sound of naked feet were the only thing filling the oppressive silence, no breath or pulse coming from the shell as he pressed ever onwards. Just a soft pitter-patter of toes on cold brick, almost like the ticking of a clock for all it let him measure time.

Why he eventually stopped walking was something only he knew, a twist of the gut quickly forgotten when the ‘tip–tap’ of footsteps didn't stop with him. At first, he thought it might have been a distended echo, but… no. They weren't the regular and measured sound of his own advance, neither was it the rush of some monster trying to chase him down.

His eyes lidded and his head crooked to the side as he focused, his true self even oozing slightly from his chest to lap at the shifts in the dusty air with dozens of hair-thin tendrils and delicate ‘leaves’.

One-two-threefour--onetwo-three-fourone--two-three-four… on and on they went, repeating this measure again and again. It was– like a dance. Like someone in the distance was dancing.

Reopening his eyes, he had to blink them in surprise, ooze smacking against his side like a fish’s tail as it scrambled into the shell. The light, once so far away, was right in front of him. Its radiance threatened to blind him for a moment, but an instinctively raised arm shielded his eyeballs well enough. With the worst of the glare blocked, he was free to get a better look at what he'd been walking towards. 

All around him, the walls and ceiling were nothing more than a suggestion, brickwork giving way to silken strands of rock as if a giant spider had spun its webs from asbestos. They floated in an imperceptible breeze, tugging them into the burnished light of a sunset. One that could not be contained by mere walls, its red-tinged orange colour bleeding like ink on a page, seeping beyond what had once been a grand hall.

In the middle of it all, framed by both light and strings, hung a dark shape. A flame-shaped void that flickered from one side to the other, that jumped, twirled and danced with wild abandon. Each brush with the ground echoing with the beat that’d lead him here.

Narrowing his eyes, Muur took a step, then another. Each felt like pushing against an invisible storm, pushing him back like two magnets repelling each other. But he was nothing if not pigheaded, slowly but surely closing in on the dancing void… no. Not a void, a person. This far, he couldn’t make any defining feature, only the impression of twirling legs and arms. Then, a tail, acting as a counterweight to the wild dance. Soon, the haze around the figure began clearing with his advance, hinting at long raven hair whipping with each step of the performance. At two pairs of increasingly familiar horns, framing the dancer’s brow like a crown.

She spun to face him right as he got close enough to reach for her, his hand missing her shoulder by a hair. Then, they both stood stock still with eyes blown wide, as he looked into the face of a perfect replica of his body in the waking world. 

Muur had no chance to so much as articulate a word, claws cinching down on his waist from behind and yanking him into impenetrable darkness.

                                                                                                                                                   “I̸͜ ̶͟f̨͘o̢͠ú̸n͜͡d͏͘ ̵̨y̧҉o̷҉u̸͠~.”

He could do nothing as winds blew past him, whoever or whatever this was spiriting him away into the sky. Or the next best thing, given how he was flying blind. The ooze that was Muur’s personhood gnawed at the inside of his shell, weakening the material in a line around his left knee even as it pooled on his foot. 

“Hello there, miss. I’m afraid I didn’t get your name.” Being unable to understand the words didn’t mean he couldn’t read the tone. That’d been a greeting. 

Whatever had grabbed him made a sound in response. But with the wind whipping in his ears, it was impossible to tell if it was some manner of speech, or a menacing chuckle.

“I didn’t catch that!” Muur replied cheerfully, “How about I call you–”

The words were lost in the winds as Muur was pulled into darkness. Away from the light, away from himself and– away from the flame that threatened to singe off her eyebrows.

“-mom was worried when you didn’t come to lunch, you kn– Why’re you trying to kiss a candle?” Orliane stood at the door, her hand still wrapped around the knob, “Is it a Xaela thing?” 

“It is an ‘I got lost in meditation’ thing.” Muur chuckled as she pinched the candle’s wick, so little heat unable to do anything to a body used to setting itself on fire from the inside out. “I will have to go apologize for worrying her.”

“Huh. Your old teacher must’ve been pretty good. Even with my parent’s help, I can’t figure out meditation at all,” The small elf said with a sigh, “Sitting like that for hours, doing nothing and waiting for stuff to happen’s just the worst. Anyway, they’re serving early dinners today. Do you want to come or…?”

“I don’t know how much this will help you, but my personal trick is to just let my mind run off into whatever tangents it wants. Get lost in thought, basically, then you can just sink into meditation proper.” Muur replied with a shrug, before shaking her head softly, “And I will have to pass on the food, I’m still full from breakfast. I think I’ll just go apologize to your mother, then get back to work. Need to stretch my legs a bit.”