The duty of carrying a bag from the gym to our team's storage fell to me, again.

And all because I ended up being the only, albeit junior, instructor present today.

And as noblesse oblige principle goes, it meant taking care of the safety and security of a whole load of longswords, one handed swords, rapiers, sideswords, a few dao's, two shaska's and a misplaced piece of railroad track mistakenly called falchion. The last one was courtesy of early 90's, when hot blood and enthusiasm compensated for the lack of established weaponsmiths and historical martial arts related knowledge and literature, resulting in a whole lot of artifacts, which apparently had more relation to Martian technology than Earth’s history.

As our time slot was the last, ending at 8 pm, I locked the doors and turned towards the storage block located down the street.

---

Bored to death and cursing the lazy asses of the missing “colleagues”, I looked like some especially homicidal SantaI when half-dragging the bag full of blunted, but potentially lethal goodies towards the sport complex's warehouse.

And that was when I felt a tug. The feeling would not be that worrying, if it had been physical - a lost child asking to find the parents, random wire or branch or even an occasional zombie would be fine (yes, I have my apocalypse kit ready at home, and as most healthy modern males I have plans for survival in most apocalyptic scenarios).

What was most definitely not OK, was the fact that somebody had tugged at my very being.

Right, the Soul, spirit, whatever it might be.

Never felt one inside me before that particular moment. Heartbeat - check, lungs working - check, occasional hunger/fill/ache in stomach - check, soul - nope, no previous references.

Actually, while being very fond of fantasy, myths, legends and such, I was a clear atheist, or in a pinch, temporary agnostic. So, a sudden feeling of having a previously unnoticed, but clearly essential piece of me being pulled, made me panic.

---

The panic helped, as it kickstarted my adrenal glands into full gear. As epinephrine flooded in, I was forced into my personal conditioned state - absolute calmness and attention.

That was not something like superawareness or time-slow stuff from the sci-fi, games or movies. It was the trained determination I had to force myself into, when I used to make myself to go through absolutely torturous physiotherapy and training to rise back from officially hopeless paralyzing injury to my spine after an attempted robbery some ten years ago.

To get past pain and focus on my fleeting sense supplied by motor neurons to actually get something done I had finally conditioned myself to calm down and give my utmost attention whenever I experienced fight-or-flight response.

And now all those years of blood, sweat and tears actually helped in a completely unexpected bizarre situation. I focused on the part I deemed to call "soul" for having no alternative references, and resisted the tugging feeling had.

It was like having a limb that had fallen asleep - it was there, but control was rather dubious. And with the exception of having no "pins and needles" feeling of returning blood, the control was slowly getting better.

---

And then, suddenly I was simply pulled. Straight out of my very own, slightly damaged and patched, but still in very much in running condition, body.

Unexpectedly, I found myself above the dim streetlights, looking down on my still-standing body.

Blank stare of my own eyes was plenty unnerving, and I started to come to terms with the fact that if the current forced out of body experience is real, then other mystic-fantastic-supernatural stuff might be real as well.

A sudden yank from above turned my attention towards the sky- and the observable situation did not add any positive sides to my predicament.

Namely, a huge, murky vortex appeared, either a few meters wide if not far off, or monumentally gigantic if in stratosphere - lack of perspective against the already dark sky made any proper estimations impossible.

Some part of my consciousness wondered how I was able to see dark objects on dark background so clearly. But mostly I grew exceedingly worried about the distortions of myself and surroundings - the evening's sounds changed their frequencies towards higher pitch and colours of sodium-vapor streetlights below shifted from orange to green spectrum.

Even myself experienced unpleasant effect, with feelings probably similar to being turned into spaghetti, while being played around with as a piece of clay.

---

Suddenly I found myself in the middle of nowhere, facing an old, but fairly sturdy man.

His face still retained some of the looks that might be described as "noble", but his arrogant expression completely ruined any sympathetic reaction towards his persona.

The man was wearing a weird amalgam of leather and thick cloth with numerous pouches, strings tying up small bags and even chains binding something looking like small but thick books to his waist.

"******** ** ***!"- the old man demanded something in an unfamiliar language, clearly not bothered about the fact that I might not understand him at all.

And that was weird, as while I could speak only something like half of dozen languages, I was capable of recognizing at least most of the widespread living and dead languages.

Another weird thing was, that although I could not make out a word, I subconsciously understood his demand to submit.

And as any healthy person with martial arts experience in a dangerous situation would do, I kicked him straight into nuts, putting all my skills and strength into that ultimate move.

---

In response, instead of doubling over or passing out, the geezer sneered and made a move most strongly resembling Darth Vader - he lifted me by my neck without actually coming into contact with me. Felt the Force, I did.

Pressure akin to garotte seized me, and I struggled to get free from something I could not even touch. ‘

The calm part of my mind continued analyzing my predicament - "where am I? What is happening? How it is happening?"

First - I was in nowhere, likely in the mythical mindspace, having my consciousness (or, yeah, soul) being dominated by somebody with supernatural skills.

Considering the lack of movement-hindering robes, instead sporting those leather torso covers and wide cloth sleeves and pants, and a multitude of paraphernalia attached, it was some sort of agile wizard, perhaps a battlemage. Or combat wizard. Fighting sorcerer? What might be a politically correct way to call a supernatural dude, keen on telepathically strangling people?

Considering that on 21st century Earth magicians are known to be mostly confined to being a fruit of writers' imagination and at most to carrying rabbit or dove-infested tophats in cheesy shows, something was very wrong with the data available to general public.

I shook my head trying to clear out extra questions that kept popping up, as sometimes doing is way more efficient than thinking. Especially with my tendency to get sidetracked.

---

So, there I was, modern person with some amateurish skills against a violent combat-experienced magician veteran.

And I did the only thing available to me - focused on my hand and imagined my preciousssss - my personal longsword, bought by saving up for half a year, and custom ordered from a renowned Swedish swordsmith.

Surprisingly, a bunch of fantasy works did not lie - it was possible to manipulate the -mindspace? spirit world? what the hell is that place actually called?- with an effort of will.

I felt how my hand grew heavier as a familiar leather-covered hilt nestled in my palm.

Continuing my spirit combat crash course, I directly stabbed towards the throat of my adversary.

It seemed that my action paid off by ruining mage's concentration for long enough for me to regain my relative freedom.

Understanding, that my skills and knowledge of the situation are inferior to the enemy's, I rushed forward. Aiming to strike at the shoulder close to the base of the neck, I put my all into a textbook-perfect slash, also known as Zornhau in medieval German fencing manuals.

Old mage reacted instantly, moving backwards with practiced footwork, but it proved to be unnecessary. As I lost the grip on my focus, willpower-created sword disintegrated midway, leaving me wide open.

As I almost tripped due to the surprise, the mage rapidly approached, clearly intending to get close and personal now that I had shown some ability besides flailing around.

Luckily, before he grabbed me, the world shook.

Cracks appeared everywhere, and white space distorted as if the surroundings were bent into prism, splitting white ambience into a rainbow of colours - a local apocalypse under the direction of Sir Newton and his experiments with prisms.

---

The suddenly pale face of the geezer, as he started muttering something unintelligible, was a proof enough that the current situation was not a desired addition to our little tête-à-tête.

Alarmed, he screamed some words I could not make any sense of, and moved hands in a fashion reminding me of mudras in Hindu ceremonies.

A small vortex appeared, similar to the one I saw before arriving into white space.

As the mage turned his back to me, trying to flee into the vortex, he abruptly jerked and coughed up some blood and slumped over.

I deemed the vortex to be the only sensible way out, considering my lack of realistic knowledge in arcane matters, and dashed forward. Seizing the moment, I did my best in avoiding cracks appearing everywhere, and jumped into the vortex.

As I passed the mage, I noticed something odd - he was slowly becoming transparent, losing focus like an image on a shattered screen, and small flakes like sand were being blown off him in the maelstrom of destruction.

Small particles were rising everywhere, mixing with coloured distortions caused by cracking space and I felt my surroundings breaking apart as I plunged into the whirlpool. At the moment I entered it, I felt something rushing into me, and then everything went black.