A monitor popped up in front of Boris, displaying the off-white cloud floating not far away.

"Xopil!" Boris called out to him, "Whatever it is you're planning..."

Xopil assaulted the monitor displaying Astrix with everything he could think of. Magic of various sizes, shapes, colors and densities entered the monitor and a veritable magical talent show appeared around Astrix.

"...Don't." Boris finished his sentence too late. He leapt from his chair and delivered a karate chop to the off-white cloud, knocking him temporarily unconscious.

A thousand new monitors popped up in front of Xiara. She quickly threw magic of her own at each of the monitors as she fell into a state of panic.

"Damn! His assault was too random!" Xiara exclaimed as she only managed to nullify a handful of spells successfully.

A new shared monitor appeared before Boris and Xiara bearing a simple message. "Critical Imbalance: Imminent."

"Uh, Boris... that's new for me, what do we do?" Xiara asked.

"Well... if we survive this, I'm going to kill Xopil slowly until I retire." replied Boris.

Mommy... Astrix saw his few memories flashing repeatedly before his eyes as a thousand beams appeared around him, a full three hundred and sixty degree assault with him at the center. A simple message appeared in his mind. "Critical Imbalance: Imminent."

So what does that mean for me? It feels like that message is telling me evasion is not an option. Just who wants me dead this badly? Astrix took a deep breath and hardened his resolve. Astrix wrapped himself and as wide an area around himself as he could manage in a spacial bubble, and then he released his time activation, bringing everything to a screeching halt. One by one, he felt the aura of each magical beam heading his way and launched the appropriate anti-beam at each one causing the spells to fall apart harmlessly. As the last beam vanished, Astrix felt the fatigue that had been building up starting to take him into dream land.

"I'm not the only one who saw that right?" Xiara asked as a new message appeared on the monitor. "Crisis: Averted."

"In any case, you picked a good champion Xiara." Boris stated as he tied up Xopil in a straightjacket and tossed him into a closet, "I want to know what the hell happened to Xopil though, he's never done anything even close to that before."

"He never had anything he couldn't destroy in the first strike before." Xiara shrugged, "And you saw, he didn't pull any punches."

"He did actually. His full strength is pretty damn scary." Boris corrected.

"Thank you Astrix." Xiara muttered under her breath.

Astrix floated in space unconscious for several days. He woke up with a yawn, and immediately spawned a vortex with a black core. He searched for the origin of all that lethal magic, the core turned golden as it honed in on his target, but it simply displayed a pitch black room.

Astrix was puzzled by what he was looking at, but it's not like he can dial a wrong number, so he jumped into the core.

Boris and Xiara were attempting to relax with a cup of tea when they heard noises coming from the storage closet that Xopil was currently occupying.

"He shouldn't be awake yet right?" Xiara asked Boris.

"No..." he replied a bit puzzled.

"Where is this?" Astrix asked loudly as he illuminated the room, and noticed he was sharing what appeared to be a closet with an off-white cloud in a straight jacket, "And how is that possible?"

"Astrix?" Xiara asked when she poked her head into the closet after opening the door. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Yeah well, I don't appreciate being targetted by all these long range magical attacks so I came to find out the hell is going on." Astrix replied.

"That'd be Xopil over there," she pointed at the off-white cloud.

"Xopil..." Astrix looked at the unconscious cloud warily, then took another look around the room. "Why'd he attack me? Why is he tied up and... in a... storage closet...?"

"Honestly... to think you'd show up here instantly." Xiara stated as she took a sip of tea while seated on a couch. "The fact you can even enter this place is baffling."

"I was created by Xopil, you said? So maybe I have some kind of identification that allows me to be here?" Astrix asked.

"That seems plausible... And it seems you and Xopil have become equals at a minimum... perhaps rivals? The how and why I still can't figure out." Boris conjectured, "I'm pretty sure neither of you is stronger than the other, but...he seemed hell bent on destroying you."

"He called him a future threat to maintaining balance." Xiara recalled, "But, Xopil only really lost it when you survived his first attack... or was it when you played dead, that's where it gets hazy."

"...And at that point, Xopil himself became a threat to the balance." Boris added.