"I think I'm done," I admit. "I wouldn't want to strain myself too much in case something bad happens. But this has been the most fun I've had in a while."

I toss the energy ball up into the air and let the energy dissipate quietly into a fading shower of white sparks.

"Shall we return to the village?" I offer.

Suddenly, Shadow sprints toward me, and with surprise I wonder if Shadow is trying to continue playing the game, but as she comes closer, my years of combat instincts start to evaluate her as a threat.

As she grabs my hand, my brain continues to yell at me and tell me to do something, but by the time my feet become disconnected from the ground and the world starts to slide underneath me, I'm still too surprised to react.

We are both rising extremely fast into the air, no doubt due to some magic Shadow is using, and the only reason I am not falling seems to be my temporary physical contact with Shadow's hand. I don't think I could fall from this height without being severely injured, and that's assuming I can exert enough magic to slow my fall. This is insanity.

The village's disorganized grid of houses has shrunk to a small pile of flat pebbles, and in the distance, this world's patchwork of environments has become apparent, with deserts rubbing against oceans and plains of ice. There is even a city off in the distance rubbing up against a vast forest wilderness, with a strangely jagged border between them, as if the city itself was ripped in two before one half was placed in this world.

Shadow steers us such that the world rotates beneath us, and another, closer city becomes visible. But I then recognize the fields and forest leading up to it, and I realize that was where I was imprisoned by the Entity. I didn't realize The Tower was at the edge of a city, let alone a city like that. The city is almost completely square, with a carefully pruned border between the city and the forest beyond it, and no discontinuities in the terrain close by. I can also just barely make out fine lines in the terrain, no doubt roads, fanning out from the city. Unlike everything else in this world, it seems that city was carefully planned.

Then, Shadow switches course yet again, this time making us descend quickly downward, the wind pushing against my face like a frigid waterfall. Before I know it, we're mere meters from the ground and weaving through the trees, and I fear I will hit something if I even dare turn my head.

Is Shadow even tired by this use of flying magic? Why won't she slow down?

"Shadow, slow down!" I cry out, as my feet graze the surface of a lake and create a spray of foam, and then the wind chills my legs as the water seeps through my robe. "I didn't ask for this! If you let go of me even for one second at this speed, I'll die! I don't have the strength to decelerate myself that fast!"

"Astro, I wouldn't do this if I wanted to endanger you. I may have gone a bit overboard though… How about this?"

After saying these words the lake disappears from view, the following disorientation not helping my mental state in the slightest. As I look around me, I realize we are much higher in the air, the lake far below us. It seems to shine like metal from the sky's reflection. Luckily, in spite of the additional danger of our increased elevation, Shadow has slowed down our rate of flight significantly. Instead we are slowly gliding across the landscape, the strong wind replaced by a gentle breeze.

With the threat of imminent death possibly averted, I have slightly more space in my head to evaluate the situation. Or, at the very least, question our reason for being here.

"Can you perhaps explain why you flew us extremely high into the air, and then brought us several kilometers away from the village?"

Shadow replies: "I, perhaps wrongly, assumed that flight would be a good way to help with whatever is plaguing your mind. Most people tend to enjoy flight."

"I'm bloody sure they do! When it's consensual, expected, and there's some reasonable assurances that they will come out of it alive. And that's assuming they're not afraid of heights."

Shadow chuckles in a manner that could be interpreted in many different ways. "I am sorry. Even after all of those years this is still something I occasionally fumble with, human interaction is more Fire's thing. I have trouble reading people without… getting into their head. But this is alright now, this slow flight, right?"

I sigh. I should have expected this. I got too competitive in that magical game of catch, and made myself seem like someone I'm not.

"I guess it's okay for the trip back."

Shadow turns our direction of flight, and we begin our trip back toward the village, just high enough to avoid attracting attention from unknown observers below.

Roughly an hour later, Shadow brings us down in the clearing where we first began our game of magical chess. I finally let go of Shadow's hand and feel relieved as I can stand with two feet on solid ground… and I can finally rest my arm.

Shadow says: "There is one last thing I must try before we return, I thought of it on the way back. In the world I come from my power is limited by the… gods. Gods would be the best term for them. Here though, I think that those limitations are not in effect. I advise you to step back a bit, I don't know what this will do."

I oblige, turn around, and walk a good ten meters away from Shadow, having learned the hard way at least some of what she is capable of.

Shadow closes her eyes and holds up her right arm. At first, the light around her hand seems to become increasingly bent and distorted, but then it becomes clear it's not just a trick of the light, or any sort of illusion magic whatsoever. No, this distortion of her hand is something… different. With each passing moment, the hand seems to gain another layer of optical distortion which is, somehow, not that at all. It's like perceiving each detail of it's form requires the same mental amount of strain as remembering what I ate for breakfast yesterday at 4am in the morning. The most I can make out of it, is that the very edge of the distortion-which-isn't still vaguely resembles Shadow's hand.

"Aha!" Shadow says. She pulls at the air, and a gap opens up in front of her that is just as horrifyingly indescribable as the distorted hand which was there before. The gap seems to push away everything: light, air, sound… even my ability to perceive its existence. Just looking at it makes me feel like there's an intense pressure inside my head. Then my mind unfreezes, from what frozen state I don't know. Shadow leans against the gap and a hand materializes into existence, as if it never existed before, even though I insist to myself that that hand is a part of Shadow's body and was always there all along. And whatever existential gap was there before… suddenly isn't.

The fading of Shadow's hand into existence is accompanied by a growing lightness in my head, and I become aware of the great amount of power that was used in the past few hours. How easily that power can be underestimated. I should have known better than to use my magic so frivolously. What was I thinking? I could easily die as the magic consumed me, or worse… hurt someone else later. How many wizards have I met on the battlefield which were so emboldened? How many people have died in those battles? How many of my friends? I still remember their faces. I still remember the ways in which each one of them died. I still remember the times we spent together, those pompous little pieces of…

Oh Jeb, I remember everything!

I feel a growing, splitting headache, as waves upon waves of memories of my past flood into my mind, from improvised introductions, to countless overused jokes with misplaced punchlines, to ad-hoc escape attempts from villains with ambiguous mental health issues. The world starts to dim and tilt back and forth.

"Are you alright, Astro?"

Shadow runs up to me and holds onto my arm just as the world decides to tilt itself upside down. The world can do whatever it wants for all I care. I knew it never cared about me anyway. My body is probably finally failing, my life flashing before my eyes like straight out of some cliche amateur pulp fiction novel. Because I selfishly used magic to indulge myself, and went too far. It's an insult to all my friends I could have saved with the same magic. In all these years, in spite of all the heart-wrenching lessons I've learned, have I really learned anything? It's as if I wished my friends dead out of spite. At least the rogue wizards I fought against on the battlefield had the courage to kill their enemies directly...

I wince as I prepare from the end, but rather than fade to black, the world stops rotating. I open my eyes and see Shadow still holding my arms, a concerned look in her eyes.

She asks again: "Are you alright, Astro?"

I blink a few times. "In all honesty? No, I am not okay. My entire life flashed before my eyes, all because of some blatantly irresponsible overuse of magic."

All confidence had disappeared from Shadow's voice. "I really screwed up, didn't I? We should have stopped at the dodgeball."

I sigh, feeling yet more guilt for being a bit too harsh with criticism for Shadow which was partly meant for myself. I guess if I could wield such powerful magic without consequences, I might indulge in it more freely, too. "I guess it's a lesson learned, then. For both of us."

Shadow says: "I really am sorry. I just… didn't know that that would happen. In my world I'm only allowed to use some extent of my powers, which is extended if I need to apprehend people who break the gods' rules but this… I have never done this before."

"I can't say I've seen anything like that before, either. Even thinking about what it looked like makes my head hurt. Do you have any idea what it was?"

Shadow helps me stand up completely again. "I do have a pretty good idea. Considering that the origin of my power, the reason for my successful ascension, is Void magic, I probably tore a hole into the fabric of reality. What you experienced was your brain trying to comprehend something it wasn't meant to comprehend, my - as cliché that term might be - true form does that to people."

"Yeah, that seems fitting, given the affect it's seemed to have on my mind!" I grip my temper by the scruff of its neck. "I certainly hope it's not permanent, no offense, I still forgive you and all that."

Shadow flashes a smile. "It's not permanent, I only eat minds that I want to eat."

"Ah, well, that's a relief, then," I grimace internally, mentally noting another reason not to get on Shadow's bad side. "I feel good enough to walk at this point. It's about time I returned to the village to find out what Kay and the others have been up to."