Chapter 128: And The Mind Fuckery Begins The eastern edge of the clearing approached rapidly. Beyond it, the trees were twisted with spatial distortions even more complicated than the borders of Osmund’s side of the island. "Eyes forward," Madoc advised without looking back. "And don’t try to understand what you’re seeing. Just follow me exactly. Step where I step." They entered the distorted forest, and Finn could immediately tell why Madoc had cautioned him. His senses were literally betraying him at every break in concentration from Madoc’s back that he had his eyes locked on. Unwarranted vertigo, questioning his sense of distance, of depth, of scale... Through it all, Madoc moved with composed confidence. His steps never faltered, never hesitated. He navigated the chaotic border region of his side of the island with the same familiarity Osmund had in his. "How long have you lived here?" Finn asked, partly to distract himself from the disorientation. "Three centuries, give or take." Madoc’s voice came from slightly ahead and to the left, though Finn could have sworn he was directly in front. "Long enough to memorize every distortion. To predict how space will bend from one moment to the next." "Must be lonely." "It has its compensations." They emerged into a small clearing — or maybe it was large, scale was difficult to judge here. At the center stood a structure that made Finn’s eyes water. It looked like a tower. A spherical tower? Finn blinked. It gave him the exact same feeling like looking at a chaos breach, except without the sense of wrongness. This was simply a tower that looked nearly two-dimensional, but yet never changed from whichever angle you looked at it from. And Osmund said all three fragment bearers were on the same level...? Finn thought with a mirthless chuckle. Either Osmund had really been holding out on him and didn’t like displaying his strength. Or Madoc was actually much more powerful than Osmund, and probably even this unknown Hagen person. But for some reason, he just hadn’t deemed it necessary to devour the other two’s fragments. "Welcome to my sanctum," Madoc said with evident pride. "The most carefully fine-tuned, temporally stable location on the island. Ironic, isn’t it? The place where time is most flexible is also where it’s most controlled." He walked toward the structure, and a doorway appeared — or had it always been there? Finn couldn’t tell. "Inside. We’ll begin immediately." Finn followed him through the doorway into a space that was somehow larger than the exterior suggested. Much larger. The interior was one vast circular chamber with a domed ceiling that displayed a slowly rotating star field. Or maybe they were just lights. Finn was past the point of trusting his eyes. At the chamber’s center was a raised platform with two circles inscribed on its surface, each about six feet in diameter. "You’ll stand in one circle," Madoc explained, walking to the platform. "I’ll stand in the other. The spell requires both of us — I’m the conduit and you’re the traveler." Finn climbed onto the platform and stepped into the indicated circle. The inscribed lines began to glow faintly the moment both his feet were inside. Madoc took position in the other circle, and his expression immediately became more focused. "Last chance to refuse. Once I begin, stopping midway will have unfortunate consequences." Finn was past the point of hesitation, but just for the sake of it, he asked: "Define unfortunate." "Your consciousness will fragment across multiple timelines. You’d experience all possible versions of the original bearer’s life simultaneously until your mind collapses from the paradox." Madoc said it with a plain tone, looking at Finn pointedly. "So don’t ask me to stop once we begin." "No pressure," Finn muttered. "Indeed." Madoc closed his eyes, and the air in the chamber immediately became heavy. "I’m going to start mapping the temporal threads now. You’ll feel pressure building. Resist the urge to move or break out of your circle. Understand?" "Understood." "Good. Then here we go." Madoc began speaking in a language Finn didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Anaelle, and neither was it human. It sounded much older and more fundamental, rolling off Madoc’s tongue in nearly the same way as the chants Finn had heard back in Egon’s Mausoleum. The words seemed to have weight, bending the air around them like heat distortion. The pressure Madoc had mentioned started building immediately. Finn felt it pressing against his skull, his chest, his very soul. Like being at the bottom of an ocean, but the ocean was time — or to be more specific, space influencing his perception of time in ways he couldn’t understand. The inscribed circles on the platform began glowing brighter, and lines of light spread from them like a web. They extended across the floor, up the walls, connecting to points in the star field ceiling that suddenly seemed much more real and much more distant. Finn’s vision began to blur from the temporal distortion. He could see himself standing in the circle. But he could also see himself lying on a bed in his room back on the hill. And standing at the Stagnant Sea. While also standing at the front of the first chaos breach he experienced back in Aethelos. All simultaneously, all equally real. "Focus!" Madoc’s voice cut through the disorientation. "Anchor yourself to the present moment! Don’t let the threads pull you in different directions yet!" Finn gritted his teeth and concentrated on the sensation of his feet against the platform. The weight of his body. The rhythm of his breathing. Anything concrete and immediate. The overlapping visions stabilized slightly. He was here, now, in Madoc’s sanctum. The other moments were echoes, possibilities, and maybe even realities, but not his current reality. "Better," Madoc said with a strained voice trying to give Finn every bit of encouragement despite the pressure he doubly felt himself. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "I’m establishing the bridge now. To the moment when your fragment’s original bearer first manifested their power. Latch onto the memory you have of them to create the link." The pressure intensified to almost unbearable levels. Finn felt something fundamental beginning to shift as he followed Madoc’s instruction, thinking of the core moment when Arros launched that Calamity destroying spell. His consciousness. His sense of self started to peel away from his physical form. Through increasingly hazy vision, he saw Madoc’s hands moving in complex patterns. Weaving threads of light that connected the two circles. Building a structure that existed more in time than in space. "This is the tether," Madoc’s voice seemed to come from far away. "Your anchor. Remember the core truths about yourself. Your name. Your passions. Your lover. Your family. Your identity... When everything else becomes uncertain, hold onto these." Finn tried to nod but couldn’t tell if his head actually moved. "I’m releasing the bridge now. Three... two... one..." The world went black. Finn’s consciousness was ripped from his body like it was suctioned off into the abyss. He had one brief, horrifying moment of seeing himself from the outside as his body stood rigid in the circle, with his eyes rolled back, mouth open in a scream that had gone silent. And then that disappeared. Blackness over took him. And he felt like he was falling. Through layers of reality, through sheets of crystallized time, through the membrane between present and past. He fell for seconds, or years, or both, unable to tell the difference. Images flashed past him. Faces he didn’t recognize. Places he’d never been. Moments from lives he’d never lived, as his fragment began to thrum — as the consciousness deep within it interacted with the surrounding temporal stream. Until suddenly... He slammed into something... into someone. A different vessel. A different mind. A different... Finn gasped and opened his eyes.