Bloodflowers Bloom (The Astral Wanderer Book 2), D'Artagnan Rey [essential reading .txt] 📗

them to be so banal. Tentatively, she took a couple of steps forward and hoped she had not fallen too far behind, only to be greeted by a black, muddy terrain and several pieces of bone with none of her team around her.

“Hey, Jazai. Be sure to keep us informed about any of the big, bad illusions, yeah?” Wulfsun called. “You are the scholar of the group, after all.” When he heard no reply, he shrugged and looked back. “It might have been a bad joke but you don’t have to…” his words faltered when he realized he was alone.

“How the hell did we get separated?” The Templar growled his frustration and looked around for any signs of life. This could only be an illusion, he decided. During his previous ventures into the Abyss, he had never seen someone warped around the realm or anything similar. That said, given the present situation, he honestly had no idea what this was capable of in their world.

He took a deep breath and calmed himself. “They will be fine,” he muttered and examined his surroundings. He stood in a ravine of some kind and a wind whipped around him as he looked at the jagged rocks that blocked the sight of the top of the dome. “They are skilled and have probably realized the same thing I have. I am sure they can manage well until I get to them.”

The Templar released a small burst of mana to circle him and watched it carefully to see if it passed through anything or anyone. It simply swirled around him and didn’t connect to anything. If there were any human bodies present, they somehow escaped detection.

“Is this only an illusion?” he asked, walked closer to one of the rock walls, and placed his hand against it. While it certainly seemed real, it was also unnaturally cold to the touch. It might indeed be an illusion but it somehow used the terrain to enhance the division between them.

“I don’t think it is trying to kill us yet,” he reasoned, although he was not exactly sure if the magic was sentient. It might merely be replicating what the realm did. “This could also be it trying to pick us apart, though.”

Wulfsun charged his gauntlets, pounded them together, and launched a blast of mana to shatter the rocks around him. He waited for the dust to settle and scowled when he saw no distortion or opening in the area. This would, he realized, be a pain.

“Well, this is unfortunate.” Jazai scanned the area in search of his team while he tapped the side of his head in thought. “Illusion seems the most likely explanation. I doubt everyone was teleported without me noticing. Cloaking and silencing everyone else would also be possible, although I would have a better guess if I knew more about what the hells this is.”

His attempt to identify the problem was interrupted by a bright light several yards away. He spun, held his hand up, and readied the cantrip-infused rings, but he was able to relax slightly when the light faded and Farah appeared.

“Well, there is one of you at least.” He sighed and straightened, although a thought occurred to him. “Assuming you are you of course. My guess is that this is an illusion, so you could simply be another part of that.”

The guard captain frowned and strode toward him. He held his ringed hand steady but waited for her—or potentially it—to do something. Rather than answer or offer any kind of display of proof, she did nothing more than raise her fist to rap him on his head.

“Gah! There are other ways of proving it, you know!” He yelped and rubbed his forehead. “You have physical form, at least.”

“I’m real, young magi,” she stated with a sigh. “As are you. This is an illusion and I had hoped to dispel it. It seems I was only able to break through mine.”

Jazai’s hands lowered slowly and his gaze darted around as a hypothesis began to form. “And are potentially caught in mine,” he said, his voice low.

Farah regarded him curiously, “Hmm? What do you mean?”

The young diviner retrieved his tome and flipped through its pages. “I don’t think we were caught in a single large illusion. If we had been, your plan might have worked. But my guess is that we are trapped in several smaller ones so instead, you only found me. This would mean that we could all be caught in separate illusions but there is a limit to what it can do, otherwise you would have simply been sent to another personal trap.”

“I see,” she responded cautiously and looked at her sword. “So should I keep trying to break through until we are all together again?”

Jazai finally found the page he was looking for and read it quickly before he frowned and turned more pages. “We’ll consider it, but it is likely that even if it worked, we would be trapped again deeper into the forest. I believe this is meant to force us to waste our energy and magic. I’m not able to find the others even using my majestic, which means their animas are hidden from us.”

“What’s the purpose? To delay us?” Farah snorted in irritation. “It’s almost petty if that’s the case. What makes you so sure?”

“I’m honestly not,” he admitted. “I’m not sure how this place works and only have theories. But we aren’t being attacked and the illusion isn’t horrific by any means, so it probably isn’t meant to…” A smile formed on his lips as he tapped something in the book. “Man, it has been so long since I bothered to use this. I guess Zier did have a good reason to teach it to me.”

“Teach what?” she asked. “Do you have a plan?”

“I’m guessing the magic isn’t ‘alive’ as such but is reacting to ours. In a way, it is a mirror and only forms in certain ways when