Magnus Chase and the Wrath of Morpheus

Chapter 17

Everything Changes

The leaves beneath my feet rustled and crunched as I walked deeper and deeper into the dark forest. Some of the rocks that weren't blocked by the moss seemed to glow because of the silver moonlight that set the whole scenery in dim light. The others were just dark shadows hindering me from walking in a straight line. I had to maneuver around a big gathering of slippery rocks and swampy forrest ground. Slowly but surely, I lost a sense of direction. The only thing that kept me from being completely lost was the voice of my mother.
Was I going insane? To be honest, at that point I didn't know. I was just following the voice of my dead mother who accused me of forgetting her even though I was responsible for her death. I followed the voice of a lost loved one. I followed her voice, hoping that everything could be normal again.

Deep in my heart I knew that it couldn't be my mother, and I wanted to stop walking and go back to the tent...but I couldn't.

What if it was really her? It sounded so real!

'Magnus, where are you now? Don't stop walking, follow me! I need to show you something.'

Now her voice was coming from my left. Wasn't that the direction where our tent was? No, that's not it. The lake was on my right side...or was it?

At that moment I realised I was completely lost.
But I didn't care. Why should I? Those people weren't my real family! They were just some guys I happened to end up with. There was nothing really special about them.

The trees were starting to stand closer to each other, bushes stood in my way. I didn't remember the forest being so dense when we arrived here. I wished I would've taken Jack with me so I could walk faster and didn't get slowed down by every little branch hanging off a tree.

'Magnus? Are you still here?'

Now her voice was on my right side. I turned around to walk into that direction but as soon as I made a first step I heard her voice again, this time much closer and from behind.

'Magnus? Don't leave me again!'

I swirled around to face her but there was nothing.

'Don't let me die again!' she cried, but the sound came from all around me. I didn't know where to go so I just stood in one point turning from left to right faster and faster trying to figure out where she was. Her voice echoed from the trees and made me feel like I was letting her down once again. I was helpless.

"Mom, where are you?" I said. My voice cracked, I started to draw shorter breaths. I reached out my arms and tried to get a hold of a low branch, but I was dizzy from spinning around. When I reached forward to grab it, I missed and stumbled against the tree.

The world started spinning faster and faster, my mother's voice surrounded me and begged me to come to her, to help her. But I didn't know where she was. I suddenly lost my balance as I tried to grasp the tree I was leaning against. It got harder to breath. My lungs closed up and I drew shorter and shorter breaths. While gasping for air and calling my mother the world started spinning even faster, I slowly sank to my knees. As if I was forced from an external power my hands hesitantly moved to my throat. Completely against my will they held on to it with a soft grip, but when I tried to inhale more air my hands squeezed. I opened my eyes wide in shock and fell.

The voice of my mother moved closer and closer from all around me, my vision field started to get smaller.

I heard her say, ''Now this is what you get for leaving me to the wolves.'

I wanted to tell her that it wasn't my fault, but when I opened my mouth to speak with the little air that was left in my lungs, my hands automatically gripped my throat even tighter. I lashed out and kicked with my legs to try and make myself stop. I felt my hands going numb from suffocating myself, I felt the energy leaving my body because of my lack of air, I felt my legs go numb and stopped struggling to save energy. All I could see from where I was lying were the leaves and branches of the trees around me. My eyes rolled to the back of my head and I started shaking uncontrollably. I convulsed and shivered, and as I felt my bloodstream slow down I got colder and colder. Still trying to gasp for air, the world around me seemed to get more and more dense until it finally collapsed around me.

The trees around me started to bend and their branches reached out for me like wooden arms. With an earshattering crack the roots of the trees were wrest out of the ground and the heavy tree trunks fell to the ground. The moment they would have hit me I somehow turned into a ghost like figure and the trees just passed through my body. Suddenly the ground beneath me crumbled and I fell, along with the trees, into the deep abyss that had appeared below me. Trying to stop my fall I kicked into the pitchblack and stuffy atmosphere that surrounded me now. Realizing that nothing could help me I looked up again.

The dark clouds above me that were miles away just seconds ago now seemed to move closer as if they were falling down.

A horrible screeching sound accompanied the whole scene as a blast of air that the falling clouds pushed in front of them hit me and would've increased the speed of which I was falling into the impossible if the ground that had crumbled to dust wouldn't have appeared again below me. My backbone cracked and the crash smashed all the remaining air out of my lungs. It felt like I was trapped in a deeper layer of reality, somehow underground, but not really. I didn't have enough time to think about it because mere seconds later the weight of the falling clouds pressed down on me as well and buried me alive.

Everything around me went black. But the pain didn't stop.

My hands gripped even tighter and my fingernails started to push into the skin on my throat. I felt my own cold blood running down my fingers. For a small moment in time my eyes refocused and in the complete darkness I saw a silver shimmering silhouette hovering above me. With my mouth wide open I wanted to say something, I wanted to cry for help, but I couldn't, I just started shaking more and more. As I was lying on the ground, that I couldn't even see because of the darkness, my body rolled from one side to the other, my eyes went out of focus again.

All I could see was how the darkness around me lifted, the clouds that had fallen on to me before shot up into the air again, and the ground started to feel more real, as did the pain. New trees shot out of the forest soil, growing at an immense speed.

It was like this new and deeper layer of reality manifested itself around me.

Everything looked normal again for a second, apart from the distorted spinning, just before the whole world broke down on me once more, this time with more force than before, smashing the life out of me.

Once again the trees bent over and fell into the abyss below me, once again the clouds buried me alive, once again the screeching sound surrounded me, now accompanied by roaring thunders, and once again I hit the ground, this time a level deeper down than before.

I felt a warm feeling in my stomach that moved up to my chest. I looked down and saw a light moving inside my body.

My left hand moved away from my throat and tried to stop whatever it was that moved around inside me. I lifted my arm high up above me, making a fist, and even though I didn't want to, I smashed it down onto my chest to harm the light, but it didn't help. The light got warmer and warmer. Once again, completely against my will, I lifted my arm and smashed it down again, and my breast bone and ribs cracked.

I gasped for air as the sharp pain pierced my upper body.

Not knowing how to make myself stop, my right hand left my throat as well and together with the other one they hit my chest repeatedly until I had punched a hole through the skin and through the bones.

The light that had been trapped inside me slowly started to rise out of my body, but, as if I was still connected to it, I moved up into the air with it. Hovering about 10 inches above the ground I stared at the light in front of me. My entire body became fiercely hot, and it felt like I was burning on the inside.

Suddenly the light got brighter and with it I relaxed a little, my fists unclenched.

I took a deep and shaking breath, still almost comatose from the abnormal pain, and had one last thought before falling into endless darkness and nothingness, one last thought before feeling nothing, one last thought before the light in front of me went black...'This is death.'