"I'm afraid you aren't going like what's about to happen," Dan admits, sitting upon a stool, his hand resting upon a large, leather-bound tome. The sole word "Qualia" is engraved into its binding.
We are back at the bottom of the great obsidian room. This time, Dan has halted the influence of the ward on the Book as well. I can feel its pressure within my back pocket. On the tables, most of the brewing stands are filled with vials of variably colored fluids, emanating grey smoke.
"Will 'what's about to happen' involve ingesting various forms of potentially hazardous liquids?" I ask, still wary of the substances I encountered the last time Dan brought me here.
"Potentially hazardous? No. Some will taste quite bitter, though."
"Oh, joy..." I try not to think of what the various forms of potentially disgusting liquids will taste like. "I can't wait."
"Neither can I," Dan adds with a reserved smirk. He gazes blankly for a moment in thought, then stands up from his stool, and walks toward the left wall. He picks up a steaming vial gingerly from its rim; the liquid dancing in the glass is a dark, opaque purple. He tilts the vial in a circular motion to cool it off, then, to my surprise, lifts it to his own mouth to drink, pinching his nose as he capsizes the vial.
Dan then hovers the vial above the brewing table, but drops it prematurely as he lets out a sickly grunt. He clasps his hands upon his face, the intensity of his grimace on the border of disgust and pain. His back is hunched now. Is he choking?
"Are you alright?" I cry out, standing up from my stool.
Dan waves his hand slowly in dismissal. "I'm fine, ahh..." His hands migrate to the silver hair under his hood and clench at the scalp. "It will pass. None of your potions are quite as vile, I assure..." Dan lets out a groan of pain. With effort, he braces his weight against the table. He tilts his head in a futile attempt to escape the pain.
After a moment of bracing and heavy breathing, Dan sighs in resistance, and stands up silently. He sets the fallen vial upright, picks up another potion by its rim, and walks back to the center table. He tilts the potion in a circular motion, places the potion in front of me, then returns to his stool. This potion contains a transparent, teal liquid.
"What just happened?" I ask, concerned for Dan but also nervous of what the potion will do to me.
Dan turns open the tome and flips through its pages, his eyes flitting from one side to another. "I ingested that potion to increase my magic pool. The spells I intend to cast are quite costly."
"I thought you said that the potions aren't hazardous."
"I was referring to your potions, not mine," Dan clarifies, as his fingers trace the tiny text. He glances up at me for a moment before bending his head over the tome again, flipping through its pages. "Please drink it at once. The effects of my potion won't last long, and I will need the effects of both potions in order to cast this spell."
I behold the potion one last time, wary of what effects hide within the teal liquid, before lifting it to my lips. It is quite bitter, but far more bearable than I had anticipated. I feel the warm liquid sink down my throat and into my stomach. As I monitor its presence, I hope to Notch that whatever magical ingredients now inside of me do not cause intense pain. As the seconds pass, I feel nothing unusual. I wonder what Dan was trying to warn me about.
"Why do you say that I won't like what's about to happen?"
I watch Dan settle upon one thin slice of the thick brick of pages. He neatly moves it to the side and begins to read.
"It's the spell, isn't it?"
"The spell is also harmless," Dan states vaguely. "At least, it is harmless in and of itself. They all are. However, some of the experiences that the spells create could provoke an emotional response. They could be extremely sad, unpleasant, or possibly even terrifying. It's hard to say how you will react, mentally and physically."
"Physically?" Now I wonder if the pain I've anticipated is not so far off after all.
"Well, you may act out in response to what you see. I don't have time to go into any more details, though. The bottom line is that I am trying to provoke the book, in order to understand its motivation. Now, let us begin..." Dan clears his throat with a raspy exhale.
"You're going to try to provoke the Book?" My heart begins to speed up, as Dan's magical dialect begins to echo in my ears. I feel like he's ignoring me. "You better know what you're doing. I've had too many bad experiences with the Book already."
The spell continues without pause. Dan's brows are locked in concentration.
My arm reaches behind my back and brings the Book in front of me; its open page is filled with script as the two competing voices in my head cancel in interference. "How dare you treat me as a mere inconvenience! It is a disgrace when compared to the level of trust that we have placed in one other. You know without a doubt that I have done so much to help you. The least you could do is be grateful, rather than make up stories about all these 'bad experiences' you've never had."
The guilt of my denial becomes clear and painful. The worst part is that the Book is right about all of it.
Just as Dan's voice begins to strengthen in my ears, and between the moments where the words on the page have faded and new words are written to replace them, my vision begins to spin and flash. A sound like a stormy wind deafens me, and I am thrust into empty space.
-
I am back at my house, standing in the foyer. I am happy to be home, and relieved to be finished after a long day at the corral with Jonas. The dry warmth of the faintly oak-smelling air is the perfect luxury after running through the cold, autumn air. I walk towards the side room, relishing every step, in preparation to rest in one of the chairs.
My muscles sink in relief as I sit down. I have the weak feeling that there should be something in my back pocket, but when I reach inside of it, I feel nothing but the burlap fabric. I recall that whatever used to be in my back pocket represented some business I needed to attend to. Now that it's gone, the business it represented must have been taken care of.
I sigh as I look back upon my day. Somehow the details seem fuzzy, but I feel especially comfortable right now. I absorb the familiarity of my surroundings. In front of me is a small, square table with four chairs, all made of oak wood. One of these chairs, the closest to the foyer, I am sitting in. In my line of sight is a torch upon the table, followed by a chair, and beyond that a shelf, containing many month's worth of almanacs, various nonfiction books, and kitchen supplies. Below the shelves are closed drawers. To my right is a window, through which the lit windows of other homes can be seen. To my left is a sink, a stone counter, and a furnace.
I begin to consider plans for the rest of the night, thoughts which also seem fuzzy. I wonder why my thoughts are so disconnected, until I realize that this world does not exist. My body tumbles into a silver atmosphere, every part of me submerged in an unbearable heat; the world itself seems to burn around me, every perception and memory fuel for the flame. Then, the void, like my home, ceases to exist.
-
My senses emerge from blindness into Dan's great room. The Book projects giddy relief.
"Fristad, I thought that I had lost you. I returned to the void, exposed to its all-consuming acid. I thought I would be trapped there forever. Thank Notch that it is not so."
I feel shock at the prospect of sharing my mind with the Book once more, longing for the solace of being alone at home. However, I suppress this idea, preferring to give it up than succumb to the Book's vindictive guilt. I pretend to be happy to see the Book again.
"What did you experience?" Dan asks, ending my train of thought.
"I was at my house. I went and sat in the chair. At the very end, I was burning in that Notch-forsaken void," I articulate the last word, 'void,' with difficulty. It now has an added weight on my tongue.
"Hmm..." Dan contemplates for a second. "That is a relatively predictable response. Let's move on, then."
"Wait, that's it? I just felt the effects of incredibly painful, soul-shredding flames, and you say we're going to move on? Don't you think excruciating pain like that is noteworthy?"
"Given the fact that the book has likely spent thousands of years in the void, no."
-
The process is repeated many times. Dan and I each drink a potion, and then Dan recites a spell. Unlike the first spell, the following experiences are consistent between the Book and I. We experience nature in its many forms, from forests and deserts to caves and oceans. Then, we are thrust into a variety of other worlds, from a cavern of lava and scarlet stone, whose heat makes me certain that it is the Nether, to an island of sandy clouds, to an ether of red shadows, to yet other things that I am incapable of describing. None of the environments seem to incite an emotional response in either of us, although they are all quite beautiful.
I drink another potion. This time, it is a milky white. Since the first potion, Dan has consistently drunk a translucent orange potion, without suffering any visible signs of pain. He drinks the same potion now.
Once again, Dan recites a spell, his voice reverberating off of unseen walls of magical energy. I wait as my senses fail me, plunging me into another world.
-
Immediately, I feel a sense of uneasiness. It is cold and dark. As my eyes adjust, I observe that I am surrounded by a dense crowd of trees. It is completely silent. The moonlight rests faintly on the grass like a ghost.
I am dressed lightly for the weather and the circumstance. I wear only a shirt, pants, and shoes. There is no satchel hanging from my shoulder, no sword hanging from my waist, and no armor to protect me from the monsters that could be hiding behind any one of the nearby trees. They could ambush me at any moment.
I listen carefully for any sound of movement, wary that rushing to escape will only make me an easy target.
For a while, there is nothing but silence. Then I feel my shoulders jump as a twig snaps behind me. I crane my neck around.
Please let it be a stray chicken. I strain my neck to keep an eye on all the gaps between the trees where the sound may have come from. My heart jumps as I hear loud footsteps in front of me. I swing my neck around and lock eyes with a creeper, two meters away. It is even more terrifying in the dim black and white. Its permanent scowl mirrors the tragedy of my fate. Its beady eyes barely shine in the moonlight. It is too late to escape. I hear it begin to hiss.
Then the illusion ends, only to be replaced by another. I am in a dimly lit library. Facing me is a man in a full body cloak, not just any man, but one capable of great magical power. I try to focus on his face, but it is fleeting and blurred, like an incomplete memory. Somehow the magician terrifies me even more than the creeper. I am afraid of not just the abrupt end of my life, but a fate worse than death.
-
Finally, that frightening illusion ends as well. Dan appears in my vision once more. He seems to be worried, aware that this illusion was different from the others.
"What did you experience this time?" Dan asks with a tone of sincerity.
"I was standing in a dense forest, where I was ambushed by a creeper. Afterwards, I saw a magician in a library."
"A magician?" Dan raises an eyebrow. "What did they look like?"
"I didn't see much. All I saw was that the magician was wearing a long, hooded robe, but..."
As I look into Dan's eyes, I notice something distinct about him, the same distinct feeling that I experienced in the presence of the magician in the illusion.
"...I could almost swear that the magician I saw was you."
At those words, Dan's face turns pale.