The Wordless Mage
Chapter 45: The Day His World Ended

Chapter 45: The Day His World Ended

Liora’s chest tightened as if she’d been choking on something that refused to pass through, the world before her turning blue.

Tears streamed from her cheek, the horrendous grief engulfing her mind and leaving her with just its crumbs.

This was all in addition to the blood that caused the air to embolden with the smell of rotting flesh, although she hadn’t either the time nor energy to trace her mind elsewhere.

"Mom!"

She ran forward, tripping on herself to land directly on her knees.

Her hands ran through the pooling red in front of her, water rushing down from her eyes to exemplify her blind stupor.

Lyra’s hands covered her mouth, tears welling in her own eyes as well. She’d been inebriated in shock not only by the corpse of Rowan’s mother, but also by the unnaturally emotional Rowan, his hair flecked with red once his knees had slammed into the blood to cause it to splash upwards.

"I-I’ll call an ambulance." She barely mustered the strength to talk to Rowan, skipping forward past the dead mother to reach for the telephone bolted to the wall.

Liora, on the other hand, hadn’t heard Lyra, her attention still on her mother’s corpse. She cried for her name, obscured by the memory.

No response.

She grabbed hold of her hand, squeezing it up and down to try to elicit some type of jolt or breath of life into her.

No response.

The world seemed to crash down on her, pressing all its weight on where her heart laid within her chest. It shuddered, skipping a few beats.

Her breaths turned ragged, the volume of air inhaled with each one diminishing with each second.

Hopelessly, her body forced her to breath faster, the time she took for each inhale and exhale halving. Her chest couldn’t handle the sudden shifts in pressure, lagging behind each inspiration by half a second.

The world shifted from blue to gray--the cause shifting from grief to lack of oxygen.

She could feel her stomach burn as if a hole were bore into her skin, but she didn’t care. No, she wished only for the suffering to end, to take her own breath and life.

"Rowan, you’re hyperventilating!"

The words blurred along with the surroundings, Liora’s pupils turning white from shock.

God, please, if you exist, take me and bring her back in my stead!

She dropped, her weight pulling her down through the empty void.

For a second, she could forget the scene that just played out in front of her, her own thoughts returning. But it was helplessly minimalized by the returning of color to her world.

The world wrapped around her like the uncurling of a black sheet, little drops of paint splashing onto it to bring about scenery and life.

She was sitting behind a desk, her thoughts joined with Rowan’s once more.

"Yes, I feel it... language is speaking to me!"

Beneath her was a poem, personifying her grief in words so indescribably perfect that there didn’t even need to be black hiding it to withhold its remembrance.

No, she understood that such a poem would never exist in the world for too long, the years that she’d spent alone in this single room all building up to this moment.

She’d previously dropped out of college, leaving everything behind. Yes, for if she were to properly leave behind a legacy for her mother, it would be through language.

And, thankfully, her mother had fully bought down the mortgage for the house, so all Liora needed to do was make enough money to pay for the basic necessities.

As swiftly as her hand moved to finalize the words spanning the paper she was writing on, a bright light encompassed her surroundings, pulling her into its luminosity with the full force of a black hole.

No, please, not now! Allow me just this final requiem for mother, to establish her legacy!

Her cries went unanswered, the room around her being lost in the light.

For a moment, it felt as if her body was being tugged on from two sides, one willing her transportation, and the other ordering her stay. It was a struggle, but she knew, unconsciously, which she’d preferred.

The new world winning, her body flew between the space between worlds, incomprehensible to the human mind. Its backgrounds knew no color, shape, or thought. Just the forever expansive yet infinitesimal stretch of imaginary space, so contradictory that its contradictions formed contradictions.

Rubbing her head, she looked forward to the space that she’d landed in.

"So you have gone through his repressed mind."

A deep, powerful voice projected through a familiar void, not immediately recognizable.

The place she ended up had not been the chamber where the heroes had originally been summoned, although this location was equally as jarring.

No, she floated in a space beyond her imagination, the ambient aether carrying with it its own intention.

Turning her gaze to her own waist, she saw her grimoire attached to the hip, humming at her appearance.

"Grimoire!"

She cried for its presence, removing its tether to hug it into her own arms.

A huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders, allowing her just a moment to relish in the reunion.

Wait, so does that mean...

She pulled her hand back behind her head to sift through her hair.

Long, thin, and...

Purple!

Unapologetic tears streamed from her eyes, her smile opposite their solemnity. She hadn’t the words to describe the emotions crashing through her mind, but she didn’t need to. She could at least be grateful for the returning of her body and grimoire.

Wait, what was that voice?

"Who are you!" She turned, pointing her finger at the presence.

It was without form, inexplicable to the human mind. Her brain scrambled to make some type of imagery, so the best it could assemble was a disheveled orb of bright light that’s shape struggled to stay static.

It was as if water were bursting from a balloon, trying best to pop out but failing. Not something that someone could honestly state as grounded in reality, especially not when it was supposedly a person.

"That’s a question you’re not yet poised to know, but what I can tell you is that I’m the one whose put you through this, and I need to talk to you."

Liora turned, straightening her face.

"Alright, then. Speak."