ManaTech: A System of Magic And Technology

The Space Between

The darkness was beyond suffocating. 

It wrapped around me so tightly that I couldn’t even see beyond my elbows if I stretched my arms out all the way. 

The only light visible in the… wherever I was… were tiny motes of light dancing in the distance. 

They flickered into being and fluttered down from somewhere above to somewhere deep below where they were snuffed out. 

The motes of light were the only reason I could see the two creatures before me: creatures that made my head ache and my heart pound like a jackhammer in my chest. 

They were nothing more than silhouettes, a darkness so deep it was darker even than the black that made up my surroundings. The purest dark. If I looked at them for too long I could imagine my sanity slipping away into a nightmare of Lovecraftian proportion. 

One of the things drew closer and, somehow, even though I could barely see myself in the dark I could distinctly see what looked like a giant figure shrouded in a hooded cloak. 

“Now then, that is most unusual,” The figure said, its voice piercing through the darkness, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. “I was sent to retrieve the soul of a child, and yet… well, you are no child, are you?” 

“Soul?” I rasped, it was the first thing I’d managed to say and my voice cracked and broke like an old radio that hadn’t been used in decades. 

“Oh, impressive!” The voice exclaimed, “You have enough power of will to speak within the chasm! That is most interesting indeed!” 

The figure surged toward me until it was all I can see. 

A hysterical scream bubbled up my throat and I was only just able to hold it back. 

The thing was bigger than anything I’d ever seen before. It hardly seemed possible. It simply couldn’t be real. It stretched upward for what seemed like an eternity and was just as wide. 

“Don’t… Understand…” I gibbered, unable to croak out a coherent sentence. 

“Oh come on! You can do better than that, can’t you?” The voice sneered, “Besides, truth be told I should be asking you these questions, little mortal. What is it that you are doing here, and what did you do with the soul that was supposed to be in this place?” 

The creature waited a few moments but I was unable to come up with any answers for its questions, I barely comprehended them. 

“No? No speaking this time? Well, it isn’t as if I don’t have other methods to tell me what has occurred. Please hold still, this will only hurt a lot,” The creature said. 

A smaller tendril of the impossible dark came apart from the larger whole. 

It whipped through the gap between me and the creature so fast that it seemed to blur. 

While I wasn’t able to speak movement came easier. I let my instincts take over and dove out of the way at the very last moment. 

Anger seethed out from the creature and for a moment I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights. It only needed a moment. The tendril struck again and wrapped itself around my neck before pouring into my eyes. 

The visions came thick and fast. 

I was out of the black and back in a memory. The last memory I could remember. 

She was just a kid. 

A kid with headphones on, completely engrossed in what was happening on her phone screen… and she couldn’t hear the sirens. 

She was in the middle of the road and she couldn’t hear the sirens of the police car that was chasing a van that was going faster than any vehicle should have been when it was on a road that was right next to a school. 

She couldn’t hear them… and they weren’t going to stop. 

When I had been younger I had always thought that my life would be going somewhere. I didn’t know if it would be a particular moment or a series of moments or if I would ever truly be successful. 

But I had always thought that there would be something that would change my life for the better. 

That hadn’t ever happened. 

So it was time to make my own moment. This was it. 

Time felt as if it slowed to a crawl. My legs felt like they were moving through treacle. Nevertheless, it only took three long strides. I was there, in the middle of the road, I’d pushed the little girl out of the way. 

And then… I was hit by the van. 

The memory faded as quickly as it had begun and before I knew it I was standing in the dark once again. 

“Victor Dyllon, six foot one, green eyes, brown hair, date of birth January 17th, 1993, date of death should have been the 19th of July, 2064,” The creature rattled off the information as if it were reading it off a piece of paper, “You should not be dead, Victor Lyre, and yet here you are, soul in the Chasm waiting to cross the Veil to the Maw. This should not be.” 

“Did you say… dead?” I asked, words seemed to come more easily now. 

“Indeed… Dyllon, you have exited the mortal coil of your life decades too early, and for that I can only apologise,” The creature said, “I can assure you that this sort of thing really doesn’t happen all to often, and when it does we do try to offer wayward souls such as yourself some kind of reparations before you pass the veil to join with the rest of your kind in the great beyond.” 

I was feeling a little overwhelmed. 

Finding out you were dead, believe it or not, had a pretty big impact on your mental state and I wasn’t sure that I was grasping the full weight of what was going on. 

“Reparations?” I asked, latching onto at least one thing that the creature had said. 

“Indeed! Before you pass from mortality permanently we would like to offer you one more go around,” The creature began, “Well, when we say offer we don’t mean to imply that you have a choice in the matter. We’re going to send you off to a whole new Universal Plane! To join another world as if it were your own while retaining the memories of the living world that you just left! 

“I will drop you down onto a brand new world, one where you will be able to succeed and prosper in ways that will allow you to cut loose and live an exciting life,” The creature continued, “That way when it is eventually and inevitably time for you to pass on for good you can do so with a settled heart!” 

“Wait… hang on…” I said, still feeling incredibly out of my depth, “You mean to tell me I’m just going to go off and live life in another world?”

“That’s correct, Victor Dyllon!” The creature exclaimed, “I’m glad you’re keeping up! I’ll be sending you to a brand new realm where you can thrive to your absolute potential. This will be a bran new world where all your wildest dreams can become a reality! Well… that or they’ll be turned on their head into a waking nightmare… Anyway, good luck!” 

Before I could respond to the creatures final haunting yet chipper remark the motes of light that had made up the only illumination in the Chasm flickered away all at once. 

The darkness drew in closer. 

It pressed in colder and harder until I passed on into the bliss of unconsciousness.