Time marched on relentlessly.
September 1st arrived, bringing new students to Hogwarts, and the entire castle buzzed with the news of Harry Potter's sorting into Gryffindor. First lessons, first impressions of practical magic, first successes and failures. On Halloween, a troll infiltrated the castle, but fatalities were avoided—Potter and the youngest Weasley, in a fit of heroism, saved Hermione from the terrifying beast. Everyone was happy, except the Head of Slytherin.
Christmas, holidays, classes again, Easter break. Before anyone knew it, exam season had arrived. Down in the dungeons, beneath a room in the Third Floor Corridor, a heroic drama played out: the fateful meeting between Potter and the spirit of Voldemort, who had possessed the body of the foolish and power-hungry Professor Quirrell.
All this time, in a private room of the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, lay a young man with a blank, blue-eyed stare. He emerged from his contemplative state much more frequently than he had at home.
No one in the castle, aside from the Headmaster and the medi-witch Poppy Pomfrey, knew that once a month, Hector Granger's parents and Healer Smethwyck visited the Hospital Wing via the Floo network. One might have expected the boy's sister to visit, too, but she was far too absorbed in her new friends, studies, and adventures, having forgotten about her brother. Hermione carefully hid the fact from herself that she was actually glad she no longer had to care for and watch over Hector.
The children left the castle for the summer holidays. The only minor remaining at Hogwarts was Hector Granger, dutifully taking potions brewed by the hand of a Potions Master renowned in both England and the Continent—Severus Snape. The Healers strongly recommended against moving the boy, fearing regression, so the Grangers visited him regularly.
However, they did not come in August. Nor in September, at the start of the new school year. Nor in October.
First, they went on a long vacation to France with Hermione. Then they visited several resorts and saw various sights. Like the girl herself, the family felt conflicted. On one hand, they were relieved to be free of such a heavy burden as Hector. On the other, a sense of betrayal weighed on them. But one gets used to good things quickly, and besides, the boy was under the vigilant supervision of Madam Pomfrey, a highly competent Healer.
Christmas arrived again, but this time even fewer students remained in the castle for the holidays—everyone feared the unknown Heir of Slytherin. The Hospital Wing was already home to a petrified student and the caretaker's cat.
Time passed, attacks became more frequent, and panic mounted. Soon, Hermione ended up in the Hospital Wing, followed by one of the Hogwarts ghosts. Careful examination and diagnostics showed their lives were not in danger. Of course, many found it strange that Dumbledore, as Headmaster, did nothing—as if he knew something, or at least suspected it.
Right before exams, the unthinkable happened—the Heir of Slytherin abducted a first-year Gryffindor student. The brave Harry Potter and Ron Weasley set off on a rescue mission. True, they had to drag along the History of Hogwarts' most negligent Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. In the Chamber of Secrets itself, the ugly truth about the famous writer Gilderoy Lockhart was revealed: the feats in his books were not performed by him, but by other wizards whose memories he had erased after learning the details.
That same evening, Harry Potter, Ron, and Ginny Weasley ended up in the Hospital Wing. Though battered—and the national hero nearly mortally wounded—they looked pleased.
However, none of them, nor anyone else in the castle—not even Albus Dumbledore himself—knew that Fawkes the phoenix, while helping to blind the giant Basilisk in the Chamber, had not pecked out the monster's eyes. He had torn them out and delivered them into the hands of Hector Granger.
Why? For what purpose? No one but the phoenix, who had secretly visited the strange boy every week to watch him with curiosity, knew the answer. Hector, still unconscious, squeezed the basilisk eyes brought by Fawkes. They dissolved into a murky liquid in the boy's hands and were instantly absorbed into his skin.
After the exams, when the joyful students had gone home, Hector woke up in his private room in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing.
But his gaze was no longer empty. It was meaningful, alive, and… displeased.
. . . . .
I woke up abruptly.
Strange and forgotten sensations flooded my senses, screaming from every nerve. Heaviness. It felt as if I had been suspended in water for a week and then suddenly thrown onto the shore—gravity pinned me to the surface. But this was merely a sensory shock for my consciousness, not for my organs or brain, so I recovered extremely quickly.
I immediately felt the absence of the now-familiar sensations of that strange space filled with particles of "everything." Staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, I quickly decided to classify the past as a dream. Yes, the life of this body felt exactly like a dream to me now. A vague, blurry, strange dream that retained few details.
Helpless, eternally "absent" from my own body, unable to use the toilet without help for a long time—that was who I had been. But even in that vegetative state, those brief periods of clarity had allowed the body to learn everything necessary for interacting with the outside world and caring for itself.
I must note, my current relatives really suffered with me.
With great difficulty and a muscle cramp that shouldn't have been there, I tore my head off the pillow and inspected myself. A simple light-coloured pyjama set, humanoid, human.
A fountain of heterogeneous and contradictory emotions immediately spilled out in my head.
Shards of an elf's memory were indignant at my current belonging to the "lesser races." Shards of a dwarf grumbled about the weakness and frailty of this puny body. Memories of those accustomed to darkness complained about the light, and so on. Shards of numerous animals radiated a desire to just eat, finally! Shards of sentients from advanced worlds cursed the backwardness of everything around them, while shards of several mages of different races and disciplines lamented the unfamiliarity of the ambient energies.
Damn it, there was even dissatisfaction from shards of a different gender!
Only the largest shard—the core, you could say, around which the others were built—was simply glad to inhale the characteristic hospital smell mixed with something strange, to see daylight, to feel the body, and simply to live. It was a pity I had lost so much; the past life gaped with holes, and the other shards were unable to patch them. No, there were many of them, very many, enough for hundreds of such holes, but they were different.
Every shard now felt like a part of me, as if it had once been ME. Thinking this thought through, I came to a logical conclusion—perhaps that was exactly the case. A form of reincarnation. Each life ended in death and a transition to that strange space where you are literally stripped of everything. Perhaps after that, you are sent into a new life, clean, without experience or memory, and then it starts all over again.
By some coincidence, I turned out to be capable of absorbing either other people's fragments or retrieving my own, lost over many lives. It's a pity they didn't return completely.
Scanning the space around me, I noticed a small wardrobe for clothes next to the bed, a chalkboard covered in symbols, a desk with stacks of paper, and a chair. The room was small and looked more like a quarantine isolation unit—the walls were clearly not load-bearing.
I tried to move my limbs. My mind was quickly restoring motor skills. A couple of minutes later, I calmly got out of bed and changed into ordinary clothes found folded in a stack on the bedside table. Sweatpants, a T-shirt, socks, slip-on sneakers with elastic bands. To avoid untied shoelaces in my previous state?
A series of simultaneous, contradictory sensations from different soul shards caused a headache that forced me to sit back on the couch and massage my temples. I needed to do something about this.
Memory… One shouldn't perceive it as a set of pictures or something similar. It is a much more complicated, complex system of associations and responses to various external or internal stimuli. And these reactions—they were incredibly contradictory and concerned absolutely everything, from the body to the environment and smells. They dragged out associative chains, generating images and thoughts that caused nothing but irritation with the situation.
Rejection of absolutely everything, all at once! This problem needed to be solved, and solved immediately.
Using an elven meditative technique, I fell into the void in a split second. I only had to wish it, and a massive multi-coloured cloud appeared before my gaze. The problem was identified immediately—the overlapping of memories from different shards. There was a multitude of such overlaps, and the reason lay in the absence of timestamps. Simply put, every shard felt relevant right now, causing not only a mess in my consciousness but also brain overload due to maximizing the load on neural connections.
Experience with mental techniques from shards that belonged to wizards in various fantasy worlds suggested a method for creating an autonomous mental block to solve my problem. Digging up the necessary methods wasn't easy, as the required images were sometimes simply missing due to the incompleteness of the shards, but I seemed to manage.
The mental block would assign tags itself according to the following principle: from simple organism to complex, from less mentally developed to more. The foundation of the personality would be the last life as an ordinary human. Yes, much was lost there, but even so, it is the most complete, and simply the most recent. Everything else would be treated as ordinary memories, like a vividly remembered dream.
Opening my eyes, I saw the following scene:
Not far from my bunk, a suspicious grey-bearded old man in violet robes sat on a chair, representing the collective image of fairytale wizards. Next to him stood a lady over fifty in the uniform of a sort of sister of mercy. Familiar… Something familiar, but I couldn't quite grasp the information. Although, associations began to quickly lead me through the back alleys of images from the shards' memories, filling in the gaps from other images. What a stupid mess in my head—I can barely think!
My surname also seemed familiar… No, of course I know it, it's mine. But it felt like I should know something from past lives, but it was gone. Like hyperlinks to empty pages on the internet.
These two people looked at me closely but were in no hurry to do anything.
"It seems, Poppy, the boy has finally come to his senses."
"I agree, Albus. A meaningful look. Studying. Do you understand us, young man?"
"Unlikely, Poppy," Albus shook his head in annoyance. "After all, he has been somewhat… since birth."
"I. Understand," I rasped strangely, horrified by how reluctantly and clumsily my lips and tongue moved. "Like. Sleeping. Saw. A dream…"
I had to speak in stages, in short phrases, but even so, I felt that every sound uttered improved my ability to speak. Those elven techniques for accelerated learning and restoring mental activity are useful after all. The adaptation of skills to the body is proceeding incredibly fast! Or perhaps the reason lies elsewhere.
Elven… Elven… the most contradictory shard, spanning a life of a thousand years. But it is as riddled with holes and empty as it is huge. Inadvertently delving into the unraveling of associations through imagination, bodily sensations, and visualization, I managed to catch a few sensations stretching through this shard for its entire length.
The sensation of a bow grip in one hand, and an arrow between fingers in the other. I felt the tension of the bowstring as if in reality, but I couldn't even approximately recall the shape of the bow, for example, or a face. They weren't there. Nothing led to them. I can recreate sensations based on indirect data from other shards, but that would be precisely recreation.
Although, this is the basis of memory—impulses from neuron to neuron cause their excitation and response impulses to other neurons, causing a simulation of the stimulus and a response reaction. This, of course, is far from the whole mechanism, but it is the basis of organic memory, and it seems the memory shards provoked the corresponding development of the central nervous system…
"The dream turned out to be life," I continued, returning from my thoughts to reality. "I remember a lot. Need practice…"
"That is wonderful news!" the grey-bearded old man smiled joyfully, his half-moon spectacles twinkling. "To tell the truth, we have been impatiently waiting for you to wake up."
"Temper your ardor, Albus," the woman next to him looked at the old man with reproach. "Your verbal lace is inappropriate right now. Speak simply."
"You are right, Poppy. Habit. Do you know who you are?" the old man addressed me.
"Human. Already thirteen years old. Wizard. Hector Granger."
"Family?"
"Parents, Emma and Robert Granger. Sister, Hermione Granger. Parents are dentists. Sister should have finished her second year at Hogwarts School."
Looking around the room, I added:
"This school. Strange. It seemed like a dream. Real, but a dream. Turns out, not a dream."
"May I check your condition?"
"Yes."
"Poppy?"
The woman didn't need extra reminders—she took out her wand and, approaching me, began to wave it in the air. Curiosity flared within me, but the human eye is not adapted to register radiation in the magical range, so I didn't see anything specific. In the normal visual spectrum, I could see small waves of slight spatial distortion coming from the woman's wand toward me.
After ten seconds of silent manipulation, the woman stepped back to the seated and smiling old man.
"Everything is in order, Albus. Brain activity has dropped just a tiny bit and is still abnormally high. Lack of mass, thinness, and some complex underdevelopment of muscles. With that exception—everything is in perfect condition."
"Excellent news. I believed that everything would work out, and I believed in your qualifications, as well as Smethwyck's. It remains to observe for a couple of days, consolidate the result, and if there are no relapses or regression, Mr. Granger can be discharged."
This was clearly said more for my benefit, as it was evident from the eyes of the woman named Poppy that she had drawn the same conclusions herself.
"Can you introduce yourselves?" I asked, looking at them.
"Ah, yes! Old age is no joy. I forgot," the old man smiled. "Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"Poppy Pomfrey, Medi-witch. I work in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing. You, by the way, are in that very wing."
"Clear. Thank you. Hector Granger. You know. Do they feed people here?"
Albus chuckled and, wishing me only the best, left my room. Medi-witch Pomfrey promised a hearty lunch in a few seconds, asked me to wait here, and also left.
Lunch indeed appeared. Suddenly and on its own, occupying the empty space on the table. Salads, meat dishes, side dishes, tea, juice, buns. Quite entertaining, as each dish requires its own approach to handling cutlery, not just shoveling with a spoon. A skills check? Possibly, but I don't mind.
After this visit, time flew rather quickly. Madam Pomfrey visited me very often, checked things, cast spells, brought potions, and talked about abstract topics. More precisely, she asked questions, stimulating my desire to speak. Mostly about everyday things. On the one hand, this allowed her to learn the extent of my awareness of the life and reality around me, and on the other—conversational practice. Although, by the third day, I could speak calmly; the muscles and ligaments of my vocal apparatus did not tire from the unusual load, and my speech became smooth and literate, without slurring sounds or other garbage.
Physical activity in the form of simple movement through space or just the correct use of cutlery, books, notebooks, pencils—all this was relatively normal. But complex motor skills or any atypical movements could be forgotten for now—the body is truly undeveloped in this regard, and there is a lot of work ahead. Although, I am flexible.
The tuned mental block finished its work on the first day, and now I wasn't torn apart by simultaneously appearing contradictory emotions. But that doesn't mean the shards stopped influencing me altogether, no. They are "ME," and this "ME" really doesn't like… A lot of things.
To put it in order: due to the memories of the shards, I am simply unsatisfied with any aspect of the situation. A dwarf must be a strong warrior, a skilled smith, a cunning merchant. From a young age. Strong and resilient. If not, it is better to go straight to the Deep Roads for the Last Walk and not disgrace the clan with one's existence.
As an elf, I must be skilled in the arts, flexible and agile, a deadly fighter in both melee and ranged combat, possessing a heap of other skills and abilities. If not, one should ponder the meaning of immortal life and consider whether to fertilize the Mallorns with oneself. And there is a whole wagon and a small cart of such "ifs."
And only the human base hints, saying: "Mediocrity at thirteen? Good enough!"
For the whole week, I tried to figure out—how to live on? Judging by the memories of this body, I have to build relationships with relatives, study at this Hogwarts, whatever it is, grow up, and so on. Terrible. Simply terrible.
After a week of observation, old man Dumbledore came to me, and together we went to my parents. By Floo. An amazing transport system working on the principles of piercing space! And no, I didn't understand the basis of this system, but through some associations in the memory shards, I could understand at least what it is. I still don't understand how to relate to the memory of the shards. They feel as if I participated in some movie live, a sort of "full immersion"—after ordering, much of it finds no emotional response and looks more like information. Information that should be properly studied.
Via the Floo, we moved to a very unpresentable drinking establishment, styled like an ancient tavern. The few customers looked untidy and even resembled homeless people, although it is the end of the twentieth century, and these people, as I understand it, are supposed to be wizards. A terrible disgrace for a wizard—to be such a bum.
"The Leaky Cauldron," the Headmaster explained as we walked toward the exit of the hall. Many people nodded to the Headmaster with a smile, by the way. "One of the few passages to the main magical street of London, Diagon Alley. I think Professor McGonagall will tell you more when you go shopping. Or do you prefer to go with your sister?"
"Don't know."
"Perhaps that would be even better, although, as I know, she planned to spend the rest of the holidays with friends."
"Then I won't distract her."
Leaving the Leaky Cauldron, we found ourselves on a perfectly ordinary London street appropriate for the era. People in ordinary everyday clothes scurried back and forth, cars drove by. Techno-genic noise hit my ears, and my sense of smell sounded the alarm—the atmosphere of a metropolis can quite easily cause sensory shock out of habit.
"And here are your parents," the Headmaster smiled and nodded toward a car parked nearby. An old Land Rover. Old even for today.
The Headmaster waved his hand slightly in the air, and I felt a faint energetic fluctuation. The man and woman standing by the car, whom I vaguely remembered, immediately turned their attention to the two of us.
"Headmaster Dumbledore?" the woman addressed the old man and shifted her gaze to me. "Hector?"
"Hello? Probably," I nodded without much emotion.
And then the "sappy stuff" began.
Mom—and it was definitely her, for even a blind man would notice the resemblance of our faces—immediately rushed to hug me and wail something. Well, yes, seeing a fully conscious and intelligent look from her son for the first time. Father was much more restrained; he approached and shook hands with the Headmaster.
"Thank you for your help."
"As I said," the Headmaster smiled, "it was neither difficult nor costly, and even without our help, the boy would have come to his senses, albeit somewhat later."
After exchanging a couple more phrases with the Headmaster, my parents quickly dragged me into the car, and Mom sat next to me in the back seat, completely unwilling to let me out of her embrace. I hope she doesn't break anything; I'm as thin as a stick.
Upon arriving home, they showed me everything immediately, although I remembered it all anyway. Then they sat me down at the table.
"So thin, what a nightmare," Mom lamented, putting something meaty on my plate.
"I was like this before. I say—I remember everything."
My hands didn't hold the fork very correctly, as required by the upbringing from the shards, and I had to simplify the grip somewhat—the way the body had learned while on autopilot. Yes, I know I'm holding the cutlery as a human is used to, but the damn elf shard—even if it's almost empty, things he did much more often than a human are deposited in it, simply because he lived longer.
"Need more practice," I remarked aloud.
My parents looked at me with relief.
The whole day passed in a similar vein. They showed me things in the house, conducted an educational program in terms of "what is what, and how to use it." To my surprise, I noticed that some technical nuances, for example, the TV remote control, initially caused some stupor. But then, as if reluctantly, an understanding of both the internal structure of the CRT television and the remote floated up from memory. And how to use it, of course.
Hermione. My sister. A girl like any other girl. Only right now she really had left for her friends, and parents complained, saying it was impossible to contact her. Postal owls are needed, and wizards have no other communication. Nonsense. But oh well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Although I spent my birthday, July 4th, at Hogwarts, nothing prevented us from celebrating it with a tea party and cake. By the twentieth, the hype around my recovery had settled down in the house, and my parents stopped spinning around me all their free time like fairy-tale bears around a honey pot. Now I not only read various literature to verify the completeness of my knowledge but could also think calmly in solitude.
And there was plenty to think about.
First—physique. A sound mind in a sound body, and this is not just a saying. For a magical creature, which includes absolutely any organic being with a gift for energy manipulation, the state of the body is very important. When Healer Smethwyck visited us, if my not-so-great memory of this life serves me right, he spoke of a "triad": body, soul, mind. The state of the soul remains to be checked, I have more or less organized the mind, and the body remains.
At the moment, I am the happy owner of a male body, thirteen years of age. Somewhat taller than peers, thin, muscles mediocre. Regarding health, they said it was in order, only the brains work abnormally hard. This needs to be changed. No, not in terms of brains, but physical development, and several methods can help me. Classics of the genre—physical training. Add to them magical support in the form of potions and tinctures. But first, I should attend to diagnosing magical abilities and establishing a connection with different energies. Which means I need to start with magic.
What do I know about magic from the memories of the shards? Not much, and almost no specifics—general facts and thoughts that swirled most often in the minds of the shards. Plus a couple of dozen techniques, also the most frequently used, and therefore the best "imprinted."
Magic itself is a complex direction of conscious manipulation of diverse and multifaceted energies of the universe to change or embody various properties and aspects of reality. Simply put, magic is the discipline, sorcery is the process.
Since magic allows one to control energies, a logical question arises: "What kind of energies?" However obvious the answer may be, it is simple—any kind. Elves proved in their time that all existence is a form of energy. This fact is superimposed on the multi-dimensional nature of reality and generates an infinite number of energies of the most varied kinds, nature, and properties.
Multi-dimensionality? An infinite number of dimensions within a single space. Many such dimensions are filled with specific energy, the names of which are as close as possible to the embodied or related effects, properties, and other facets of reality. For example, such banalities as the energy of fire, water, or electricity, life, light, darkness, death, and so on. A measureless multitude. Some form others, more complex ones, upon merging, while some are impossible to combine, like matter and antimatter—there will be a big ba-da-boom.
Yawning loudly, I decided it was time to go to sleep. However healthy the body might be, it cannot boast endurance. Yes, sleep…
The soft, comfortable pillow under my head was imperceptibly replaced by a light, cool breeze carrying the scents of a summer forest. A magical forest—that was felt immediately. Stepping softly over a root of a centuries-old tree protruding from the ground, I inadvertently glanced up at the green crowns, through which daylight barely penetrated.
A step, another step—no one would have heard these movements. My hand familiarly gripped the handle of a bow, and an arrow begged to leave the quiver—my eye had noted a shadow flashing between the trees. The arrow instantly lay in my hand, and there I was already aiming, the bowstring drawn. Gathering a little wind magic in the movement, I directed it into the arrow, simultaneously forming a simple magical construct.
With a characteristic click, the bowstring loosed the arrow. Obeying the will of magic, the arrow bypassed the tree trunks, and a moment later, in the distance, a dirty human in leather armor fell from behind a tree.
"They are here!" a male scream rang out in one of the human dialects, but I already sensed the presence of the enemy, the direction, and the distance to him with my gut instinct.
Arrows left my quiver one by one, taking flight, and with the help of magic, they changed their direction, unerringly finding the end of their path in the enemy's heart. A moment, and it was all over; only disturbed birds cried somewhere above, in the treetops.
A few dozen light, weightless jumps, and I was bending over the body of one of the humans, holding my palms out over the body and creating a magical diagnostic seal, the color of which was green due to the energy of life.
I blinked, and it seemed as if I fell into darkness.
I opened my eyes again, standing near a crib woven from branches, where a chubby-cheeked toddler with pointed ears sniffled sweetly in white sheets, and a green diagnostic seal slowly flew from my hands outstretched over him. His parents did not distract me, and I quickly finished this task. Turning my head to the right, I met the worried and hopeful gazes of a young-looking pair of elves in loose light clothes dominated by floral motifs.
"Your baby is completely healthy," I said with a faint smile. "This is a great joy."
The female elf sighed with relief, not hiding her smile, and her husband just nodded importantly, as if it could not be otherwise. The female elf looked at me again and noticed in my spare expression not only polite joy but also concern.
"But not everything is so joyful, is it?" she asked, not hiding the renewed anxiety.
"You are right," I nodded reservedly.
"Speak, Healer, do not torment us," the elf showed restraint.
"The baby has a strong predisposition for connection with the dimension of death energy."
The female elf covered her mouth with her palms, and the elf only pressed his lips tighter.
"You understand what this means. The Elders will not allow an initiated necromage to live in the Forest. And to neglect initiation…"
"We understand," the elf nodded. "The craving for kindred energy and the inability to receive it will pervert his mind, pushing him to obtain this energy naturally. In the cruelest way."
"Yes. I will conduct the initiation for the dimension of life, as required—the baby is compatible with it, like all of us. But the rest… This is your choice. Do you need time to think?"
"Do whatever is necessary," the elf nodded stubbornly, and his wife gratefully placed a hand on his forearm.
"Are you sure? With your position in society…"
"Our son will not be a crazy ripper, but he will not grow up an orphan either, Healer."
I expected no other answer. Not after a century of attempts by this couple to conceive a child. Now I only need to create the necessary seals to connect the baby with the energy dimensions of life and death.
Removing my shoulder bag, I placed it on the floor of the living wood house to get the necessary ingredients. Looking up, I saw the empty streets of the white-stone city. The perfect walls of two- and three-story houses, but the windows were tightly closed, and only curious faces of children peered out from some, almost immediately pulled deeper into the house by parents. There, in the distance, the bright spires of the Academy were visible, and shielded magic accumulators on the highest tower glowed with faintly visible blue dots.
"Are you ready?" an old voice sounded from my side.
Turning my head to the sound, I saw the old man in blue robes who had bored me to death. In one hand he held a massive wooden white staff, topped with a sharpened blue quartz—the rarest mineral and one of the best accumulators of any magical energy.
"Show more respect to your elders, Rector," I smirked, taking a bundle of oblong metal cylinders covered in tiny runes out of the bag.
"Certainly not," the old man pursued his lips stubbornly, running a hand through his snow-white beard. "I didn't slave away for the Empire for two hundred years just so I couldn't say what I want in my old age. And how I want."
Standing up, I stood next to the old man. We were both looking at the same thing—a fenced plot with a large private mansion. Only it fell out of the general "perfection" of the city—almost the entire territory was as if covered in viscous dark fog, and the ground, trees, walls of the house—everything seemed covered in an almost impenetrable black mass.
"And what is it this time? A failed experiment?" I addressed the old man, looking out for the dark amorphous shadows that appeared and immediately disappeared in this disgusting magical mess.
"Narcissistic magical families, that's what. They were told that their child is not capable of projecting the energy of dimensions into reality, but no, everyone else is a fool," the old man grumbled, tapping his staff on the perfectly smooth stone of the road underfoot.
"Did they really conduct the initiation?"
"Exactly! They are smarter than everyone else. Their lineage has existed since the founding of the Empire! And if only they had conducted the initiation with fire—they would have burned, and good riddance to them. But no, darkness and Chaos. I feel sorry for the child…"
"And not the adults?"
"I got tired of pitying fools about fifty years ago. There isn't enough pity for all of them. And where have you been disappearing to? Meditating on some bush again, I bet?"
"You exaggerate, Rector."
Suddenly the mansion literally exploded with darkness, and a giant amorphous shadow rushed from its depths in our direction, the basis of which was a huge black skull with an open jaw. It approached inexorably, causing fear…
Jumping up in my bed, I felt my nightshirt sticking to my body, soaked through.
"A dream… Just a dream…" I spoke aloud, examining the dark room.
The stirring of shadows in the corner attracted my attention. I only had to look there when a black skull flew out of the darkness, flying at me with a nasty squeaky hum.
Jumping up in my bed, I looked at the nasty antediluvian electronic alarm clock that was emitting a nasty squeaky hum. Exhaling with relief, I turned it off with a push of a button, and immediately crashed back into bed. There was no sweat.
"Shit…"