The rest of the day went smoothly; I had caught up with much of my schoolwork and had practiced my spells to the point where I could replicate them somewhat consistently without draining much of my magical reserves.
Heading into my bed, sleep started to envelop me. That was until I thought about my meeting with Midnight, of course. I recalled how I made a deal with him to help him "crack" into my world. This made me excited, which did not help in any way to my ultimate goal of falling asleep. Still, I did so anyway.
Waking up inside of the labyrinth, it seemed to be that same as before; I was alone and left to wander the halls without any end in sight. Looking around, I didn't see any sign of life. This only put me in a state of panic; when was Midnight or even Boingo and Endora going to show up?
These thoughts coursed through my head until I saw a looming figure in the distance. Walking up to them, I noticed that it was just Endora.
"Feste!" She noticed my presence. "You seem restless."
"It's alright," I reassured her, "it's just that Midnight might be paying us a visit."
"Oh. I remember now." The all-too-familiar silence swept over us and we were forced to keep walking along the slender hall.
Almost about ten minutes later, I began to notice a throbbing sensation inside of my head. It'd been nothing more than a soft discomfort in my cranium, but it quickly worsened to the point where I was forced to grunt and hold my hands up to my head to uselessly attempt to alleviate the pain.
"Feste," Endora whipped around, "what's wrong?"
I wasn't able to speak anything without a surge of nausea overcoming me. I simply decided to fall to my knees and continue grunting instead.
"Is it... Is it happening?"
This question made me realize something; this was probably Midnight's doing; he was most likely trying to force his way in, as I had agreed for him to do so. Meanwhile, agony now continued to surge throughout my entire body.
Then it was over. My pain suddenly disappeared, almost causing me to debate on whether the episode even occurred. There was no time to think about anything else, though; a new voice rang out from behind me: "Hello, Feste. I hope that it wasn't too painful."
"Midnight," Endora gasped as I slowly rose from the ground.
"Yes," he replied. "You must be Endora, am I correct?" He placed his head on the palm of his hand. "Third year?"
Endora nodded and our principal cracked a smile. "Well, Feste," he began in a cheery tone, "it seems like I was successful. I don't exactly remember the last time I executed that spell."
"Yeah..." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. " I don't think you pointed out the immense amount of pain that I would have to sit through, though."
"Yes." Midnight's expression melted into a saddened one. "I'm sorry about that, but it would have been inevitable. Pain is an unfortunate side effect for a lot of intensive spells, I'm afraid. Especially when you direct it towards someone that might not have too much experience with it."
I nodded, still in disbelief. I then hoped that I wouldn't have to go through that again.
Without warning, Midnight turned his back towards us, beginning to walk off. "Well, I will leave if you don't have anything else to add to this conversation. I'm sure that it'll be better for you if I descend quickly." A few seconds elapsed and he turned around yet again. "Oh, and I might not finish this night. It'd result in more pain if I were to tear through this labyrinth of yours."
With that, Midnight left. Endora and I were left in his place, with silence between us once more. We then began to engage in casual conversation, talking about academic matters and the like. Throughout the remainder of the night, I managed to extract what I thought was a helpful tip from her; it was one that would hopefully lessen the impact that spells had on my reserves.