Makiya

19. "I am you"

“What is this? Oh, it’s the ground.”

“Wait… no”

“I’m stepping on the sky?”

“Wait, wait… no.” Andrey spoke silently.

“This is… I know this place.”

As Andrey realized where he was a large twenty five-floor building just crashed into the ground right in front of him. The huge noise as if an explosion was deafening.

Andrey floated back from the building as the dust suddenly disappeared and he could see this empty building which now looked like a complete mess.

A few seconds later complete silence filled the space. 

Andrey finally realized this is the world he had fallen in when he was away from the Makiya blades.

“Did I possibly lose the blades along the road? Did I drop them ?! Seriously?!” he angered, quickly trying to touch his back with his hands to see if the black arms were there. But they weren’t.

Calmness was expressed with a deep sigh. 

Andrey looked around in question. Why did this building just crash in front of him?

Why is he actually floating mid-air?

Suddenly after realizing this gravity as if multiplied and pulled him to the ground.

He crashed on his back.

“ARGHH!” he screamed, but it was just from the expectation of sudden pain. He felt none.

He sat down and looked at his arms. He wasn’t hurt at all.

“You won’t get hurt from this here…” a whispering voice ran through his right ear.

Scared Andrey quickly turned around to find out there was nothing but the same building which was in front of him.

He raised an eyebrow and faced forward again. Only to see the same building there.

What? 

Andrey got on his feet and started walking forward towards the building, which appeared to be just about ten meters in front of him. He walked for what felt like 5 minutes and the building didn’t move, neither did he. 

I guess I’m stuck? 

“Where are you?” Andrey yelled in expectation of that whisper to return.

“Iiiinsiiiide” a maniacal low voice rang through the boy’s head.

“I’m trying to come to you, but I can’t move from my location. How do I come there?” he asked in a normal voice. 

A loud noise was heard from his right. He turned around as the noise was closing in. It was a wave of air. It was as if vibrating. The moment before it hit him he could recognize this was the vibration of the word “Inside”. The moment it hit him that same “inside” resonated inside his head and he fell from the sky again.

This time not saying a word Andrey simply crashed on the ground with closed eyes. The moment he opened his eyes he felt something touching his nose. It was somebody standing on top of him but like an ideal mirror image.

He got scared and tried to push him away, but couldn’t.

“You wanted to come to me, why are you trying to push me away now?” the person asked in a familiar voice.

Andrey stopped trying to struggle his way out of this and just asked “Who are you?”

“Really? You ask me this?” the man replied. 

The person on top of Andrey was too close for him to be able to truly see anything. He was so close their noses were touching. It was practically impossible to focus anything from such a distance. The boy closed his left eye so he could improve his vision. And yet he couldn’t tell 100% who this is. He felt as if he was seeing someone familiar.

“Where am I?” Andrey asked as he realized he won’t get a reply to his previous question.

Suddenly the person above him was gone and a large rock, no, a comet was about to crash straight over Andrey. He couldn’t move and simply looked at it as he faced his destiny. The comet didn’t crash. it just traveled through him, but after passing through he was now standing on the side of the building. The sky suddenly shuffled random black clouds and then turned back to complete black. Sometimes the ground and the sky colors switched. In this case, the ground wasn’t either up or down anymore. The gravity was pulling towards the building. 

Suddenly Andrey walked down the building’s apartments, realizing that this suddenly transformed more into a climbing fest rather than else.

As he finally reached the bottom of the building he went through the ground effortlessly as if it was just a curtain and furthermore, on the other side, the building wasn’t crashed anymore. It looked as smooth and great as the Pentominium. 

After passing through this unreal delusion he could now walk straight again. He walked forward a bit, and before him, was nothing but the white sky, filled with black clouds.

He felt something on his back tingling. Was it the black arms?! He panicked as he turned around quickly. Only to see a man dressed in black before him. The man appeared to be dressed in a black shirt, with black pants, a black cloak with its bottom colored red. In complete amaze, Andrey jaw-dropped as he saw none other than himself stand before him, there was one difference, though. His eyes. They were red, filled with darkness.

“What? You act as though you’ve seen me somewhere?” the red-eyed Andrey joked in a dark voice.

“W-wh…” Andrey tried to speak, but couldn’t.

“To your question…” the red-eyed boy started walking towards him.

Andrey, completely stunned, stood there, as his copy just went right through him and leaned back-to-back. 

“I am you.”

And a burst of maniacal laughter echoed in Andrey’s head.

“AAAAAAAAAA!” Andrey screamed out as he just opened his eyes. 

“What happened to you?!” the old Polkas asked as he got scared from the sudden screaming.

Everyone - Dea’n’ha, Polkas, Galera, Rang, and Garo - staring at Andrey’s random screaming. Just a few seconds later Galera didn’t skip the chance to mess with the youngster.

“What, you dreamed your mama didn’t feed you any milk?” he asked as pure laughter followed from him and Rang.

Dea’n’ha was just looking at Andrey’s scared face, who just now started to frankly come to his senses.

“I was asleep?” Andrey asked as he used his arm to check if the blades were in their place at his back.

“You bet you were. I bet nobody is gonna try to attack us because they would think a giant wild beast is sleeping here. THAT’S HOW HARD YOU SNORED! BUHAHA!” Rang continued messing with the boy as he and Galera exploded in laughter again.

“You weren’t snoring, young man...” Garo said with an attempt to put a smile on his face - as if carved from the hardest mountain.

“How far are we yet?” Andrey asked as he was looking at the wide river on the right through the trees. Judging by his memory of the map the river flows on the west side of Ribas, therefore they should be more than thirty percent done with the road at least.

“There’s not much left” Dea’n’ha replied.

“You were really asleep?” she asked him through telepathy.

“I’m not sure. As if I was in another world…” Andrey replied hesitantly

“Another world? You do look tired, you know. If I weren’t a mage I’d say you need some rest, because you talk bull”

“Well… It’s only natural...I’m tired, indeed. I got into a fight just before coming over to you guys.”

“You were fighting? That’s why I felt all that negative energy?”

“I guess so.”

Andrey turned around and looked at Galera and Rang talking about something. Garo was...well, being Garo. His stone face was looking into one dot as if he was paralyzed. The geezer was sitting next to Dea’n’ha and waiting patiently for the trip to end. He wasn’t angry with them for being loud and laughing a lot, he just had a slightly annoyed face. Maybe it was because he was sitting on the wooden part of the cart and not on a carpet, which is a good reason for him to feel the ride uncomfortable.

Andrey decided to take advantage of the time he had in wait and decided to practice.

He concentrated on his body. Closed his eyes and practiced his breathing. The slow inhale and exhale only helped him feel calmer and more sleepy, but that was just a side effect from being tired. He ignored the sleepiness and concentrated on hearing. Then he managed to activate Earsight. 

The world which unveiled around him was suddenly all so different. It was almost complete pitch-black. He could feel his mana now. He could see his blue cloud-like body. This was the mana that fueled his existence. Though there was something far more breathtaking just a few meters next to him. 

The whole cart was covered in slight blue, drawing its silhouette. In front, though, was a shining blue cloud. That must be Dea’n’ha. Before Dea’n’ha a glorious white beast resembling a horse was seen. It looked like a zebra and a tiger at the same time. So that’s the moving mechanism. 

But why isn’t it visible outside my Earsight?

A few moments of delighting his mind with the visuals of the great beast and he remembered.

She had told me that materials can be created, but we can also have our mana float in mid-air. So she hasn’t created a material but is in fact using wind magic in order to create the beast which then makes a current and pulls the cart forward. This is how it’s not visible and doesn’t grab unnecessary attention. Not that a floating cart practically doesn’t grab attention, but apparently not many people managed to notice this as we passed by them. I wonder what else there is lying in secret… I see, so the silhouette of the cart is visible as those are strings of Dea’n’ha’s mana grabbing the wood so it can be pulled and navigated easier. Damn. Just how complicated sorcery does she make? Honestly, she has thought of so many things, is maintaining their state, and not to mention that the carpet we’re sitting on is avoiding the bad road’s bumpy holes. Does this mean that she is also keeping track of this too?! And atop of all this, she was using telepathy to talk to me… How amazing are you, Dea’n’ha?