Chereads / In A World Where Magic Is In English / Chapter 3 - Beyond The Veil

Chapter 3 - Beyond The Veil

I could almost hear it. The splash.

It was if I had fallen into a great sea. The waves cascaded once against my person once and in the same instance, pushed me down and under.

It was suffocating, yet no panic filled me. My mind felt as if it had just been thrown into a washing machine set to turn forever.

My mind was heavy, it felt so tight. As if it was suddenly made of lead and I couldn't seem to muster conscious thought even as I sunk deeper and deeper into the darkness. 

The otherworldly experience seemed to last forever, as if the waters below had no end. 

' What happens when I reach the sea floor I wonder?' The thought popped into my mind as I sunk further and further downwards.

' Did it really? Could I even think at this point?'

' I don't know?'' 

' Do I know? ' 

' Hi.."

" Hihi".

"HIHIHIHIHIHI"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!" 

The laughter seemed to come from my mouth.

Did it really? I didn't know.

Or did I know? 

I didn't know that either. 

The thoughtless babbles continued to play out in an endless rally in my mind as I continued to fall.It went on for so long that eventually, the weightlessness no longer felt like a stranger but rather like an old friend. The suddenly, something changed.

'It stopped.' 

Everything had stopped. The heavy sensation had stopped. The babbles had stopped. Even the weightlessness that I had begun to get used to had stopped. It felt as if I was merely a scripted character in some film and the director had cut the scene. 

Out of the blue, a warm but rough sensation started tickling my waist and slowly spread further across my body. My body also felt as if it were straightening out, like I was slowly falling flat on some rough surface. 

It was a strangely reassuring feeling of stability, almost akin to that of a fallen leaf finally touching the ground, weary from tossing and turning in the merciless winds.

But just as I was starting feeling into it, a powerful force suddenly pulled sharply on my waist and I thought my back was going to break as my upper body and legs were simultaneously forced back with terrible force.

Strangely, all I could think of was: ' Is this what it feels like to be fished out of the water? I feel sorry for the poor fishes at sea.' As I was hauled away at ridiculous speeds.

The force was unrelenting, pulling me upwards further and further away from the abyss. But, regardless of how far I seemed to travel, the black canvas before my eyes did not change. 

The darkness was omnipresent. It was an infinity of impossible blackness that stretched to…well… infinity before my eyes.

But I was proven wrong. In the impossible void emerged a small spot of bright white light. 

Although was just a mere drop in the black sea at first, but once it came into view, it felt as if time had begun to flow again, bringing with it a sense of perception and logic that seemed so foreign a concept in the stygian world I had been in just a few seconds ago.

The white spot was slowly getting bigger, growing from the size of a pin point to almost that of a baseball.

' Or am I actually the one moving?'

I didn't know.

Soon, the black canvass was ironically no longer black, but actually more white. The white dot had become so big that it could no longer be considered a dot anymore but almost more of a moon or a perfectly circular lake filled with milk. 

The dot got bigger, and bigger and bigger until before I knew it, the black canvas had turned white and a wailing sound filled my ears as I shakily inhaled a lungful of air.

A humid, husky smell of incense incensed my nostrils as I took my first breath in my new body, although I knew it not yet. My surroundings were very noisy and it annoyed me. 

Firstly, there was that wailing, screaming sound that sounded like a sick ambulance . Then there was the chatter in hushed voices all around me like a crowded gathered and gossiping around a crime scene. 

Then lastly there were the two voices that seemed to be conversing loudly in a difficult foreign tongue that seemed to use a lot of nasal enunciations, not that I understood any of it though. 

As much as I wanted to scream for them to shut up, every time I tried, no words seemed to escape my mouth and the accursed wailing only got louder, much to my chagrin.

' What on earth is even going on?' I thought. ' If only I can see what is….'

I opened my eyes, an action that surprisingly required a lot more effort than I expected. 

A giant hand loomed above me, literally casting shadows over me as it's sheer width acted like a giant umbrella shielding out the light from some lamps that hung above. The hand belonged to a giant, formidable looking woman, dressed in a slightly ruffled up tunic and white apron with her sleeves rolled up. Her face was flushed and her chest heaved up and down like rolling waves, bringing her cannon sized biceps along for the ride.

She was talking in a hushed tone with another giant woman. This woman was a lot more petite and I realised that she was actually holding me in her arms. She had a kind face and amber eyes and a pretty nose, her pale complexion was also as flushed, perhaps even more than the giant gorilla lady standing by her side. 

I also noticed that she was half naked.

This all took a moment for me to process and everything felt so surreal that I was almost certain that it had to be some kind of dream.

I looked down and then something in me snapped.

"ARGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!" I screamed.

"WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!" 

The wailing sound that has incessantly pestered my ears suddenly became even louder but I was not exactly in the state of mind to make a connection between the two as I proceeded to scream even louder than before.

"ARGGHHHHHHHHHH!!"

"WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

"ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!"

"WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

The giant gorilla woman seemed visibly annoyed and angrily said something in the strange language from earlier. Her hands flew through in the air in a fluid motion, her fingers emitting a faint light that followed her path of movement which allowed her to draw a strange pattern in the air.

My could feel my jaws slackening from the superhuman display as my screams of shock suddenly got caught in my throat, causing the sound to escape my lips to resemble that of a choking frog that tried to eat too much in a single sitting.

A bright light briefly flashed across my vision and a warm reassuring feeling settled upon my shoulders like a warm blanket. 

Instantly, my mind calmed and my panic subsided but it would perhaps be more accurate to say that whatever the gorilla did, it caused my IQ to drop to that of a foetus and thus forcefully deflate any instinct of self preservation that I had. My vision blurred and my body felt heavier.

Eventually, as if all at once, the world turned upside down and everything went black.