“What happened,” mumbled Ashton in shock.

“Good question… what indeed did happen…?

I guess I’ll start from the start then,” began Ash. “After you got slammed by the old man’s blue glowy thing, they returned later with some weird dark blue chains and strapped us down in a new cage. The moment the chains touched our skin though, I could no longer use any magic, which really, really sucked. So after that they left us in the basement, rotting away for a couple of days and my god was the smell bad, cause our body was still all banged up from earlier, a few bones were even peeking out of the skin here and there.

Luckily, we somehow didn’t die by that time and they returned and took us outside where a bunch of people all surrounded us like some sort of ritual. You woke up around then and started screaming and crying which really didn’t help our case you know, but after you feinted we arrived at those massive cliffs in the distance over there and they chucked us on this raft, after taking us out of the cage and removing the chains of course. Finally the old, grumpy demon guy pushed the raft off into the distance and I collected some magic energy and healed you as soon as possible. That’s about where we’re at.”

Ashton thought long and hard about their situation and what everything meant and what to do.

Could they do anything?

Would they simply die of starvation now instead?

“W-Wait… How did you know all of that stuff anyway, I thought you could only see what I saw… a-and w-why didn’t why die of starvation too?” asked Ashton.

“Just cause I can’t see doesn’t mean I can’t hear idiot,” retorted Ash, “Also, I’ve just been using the same magic that healed you to feed us whenever I could.”

“O-oh, that’s pretty simple… and m-makes a lot of sense,” replied Ashton.

“Bu-But wait!” exclaimed Ashton, “H-How did you make that fireball though?”

“I did it the way I explained a couple of days ago, I could feel the energy inside of me and so I inhaled the energy from outside, which appeared as those golden orbs. Then I ran that though my body and exhaled it back out and manipulated it with my mind. I willed it to transform into pure oxygen and then willed it to move forward and ignite. I was surprised at how easy it is to use magic in this world,” answered Ash.

“T-Then can’t you just use your magic to send us back to land?” questioned Ashton.

“No, the course of the raft seems fixed, for some reason it refuses to turn or do anything than simply drift gradually forward whatsoever, I think it’s to do with that crystal, it has to be what’s keeping us hovering too,” suspected Ash.

“W-W-W-What are w-we going t-t-to do?!” spluttered Ashton, “H-How are we going to survive out here, what if it’s just infinite darkness?!”

“Calm the fuck down!” roared Ash, “Stop your stupid stuttering and shut it. Food and water isn’t a problem, I can use magic for that. The only problem is that crystal, I can feel the amount of magical energy slowly trickling down, and you probably haven’t noticed, but we are actually gradually falling down deeper.”

“H-H-How am I supposed to stay calm abo-” started Ashton.

“Stop whining so we can actually FIX… the problem,” interjected Ash, “Yes, the energy is running out, but there’s lots all around us in this void… so… I’ll just try refilling it myself. It would be a great help if you could touch it however, as I have tried to siphon energy directly into it, but it just bounces off, perhaps contact would help, which is why I waited for you to help. Actually… I just realised, I can use magic, I should have just hovered myself over there and fixed the problem without even telling you about it, because your input in anything, has not remotely helped at all, yes I think I’ll do just that.”

“… sorry,” apologised Ashton miserably.

An invisible force scooped Ashton up and plopped him down next to the large crystal.

With a closer inspection, the two could see the crystal was comprised of millions of tiny interlocking pentagons, making up the basketball sized dodecahedron.

Even in the abyss, it shone brightly, actually managing to fight back the darkness surrounding the raft.

“Well… I know I said I’d do it… but you can at least touch it can’t you? Or do I have to make you do it myself,” hinted Ash.

“Okay, okay, I’ll touch it…” grumbled Ashton, reaching out to touch the crystal.

Fatigue slammed into him like a brick wall as the crystal shone like a sun, blinding him as he slumped to the ground in exhaustion.

“Huh, what do you know, it’s drained all of the magical energy from our body in order to replenish itself. It seems like we won’t need to worry about falling into the abyss anytime soon then,” noted Ash.

Meanwhile Ashton was too tired to enjoy the moment with Ash as he was barely conscious, and with a final huff of annoyance he drifted off to sleep.

********

“Ughhh,” groaned Ashton in boredom for what it seemed to be the millionth time.

Five weeks had crawled by since they’d been sent off into the abyss and there was no sign of anything happening for a very long time.

Ash however, had been very busy; crazily experimenting with his magic had kept him entertained, and would for months to come.

Ashton waved his hands, swatting a small hummingbird entirely composed of ice out of the air, the bird shattered on impact, the fragments morphing into snow and raining down onto his face.

“Awwww, what’ve you got against my pretty little birds, they weren’t doing you any harm,” lamented Ash.

“It was made of ICE though, and I didn’t appreciate it sitting on my face all that much,” responded Ashton gruffly.

“Hey, I get that you’re all disappointed that you can’t use magic and I can, but later when you’re not a baby and can actually do things, I’ll be the one that’s disappointed, so let me have my fun while I can, and later you can have yours,” pointed out Ash.

“Yeah, sure, I have the body and ultimately later I’ll get to do lots of things, but now, I’ve spent five weeks just laying here, watching you have fun,” complained Ashton.

“Well, you won’t let me do experiments with your body, so how can you complain, perhaps if you did, I might be able to forcibly grow you up,” reminded Ash.

“Sure, you MIGHT be able to do that, but there’s also a big chance you MIGHT, accidently kill me, maybe,” argued Ashton.

“Hey, I was only saying if you want… I never said you had to, but… I’m always here, so if you change your mind just tell me,” explained Ash.

The two say there in silence for a few minutes, watching Ash’s ice hummingbirds circle above them happily.

There was no sky visible anymore, the black fog was so intense five weeks deep into the void that the only reason they could see was because of the golden light radiating from the crystal.

As long as they refuelled its energy reserves a couple of times a week, they’d stay afloat and wouldn’t fall too far down into the abyss.

“Hey, wanna play a game,” suggested Ash.

“Sure,” answered Ashton thirty seconds later, his voice devoid of any emotion.

“I spy… something beginning with… a!” chimed Ash.

Another ten seconds later Ashton responded with, “It’s the abyss isn’t it?”

“You got it! You’re too good at this! Wanna go again?” asked Ash.

“No.”

********

3 years later…

“You ever going to get up?” complained a voice.

Blinding light appeared from nowhere and Ashton awoke right away, leaping out of his bed surprise.

Clothes materialised out of thin air and wrapped around his body as he walked downstairs to the kitchen after calming down.

He took a seat at dining table and waited for his meal as it was created in from of him from golden light.

Within a minute an impressively sized plate of scrambled eggs was ready to eat and Ashton washed down the delicious meal with a cup of freshly materialised orange juice.

After finishing his breakfast, Ashton walked out of the kitchen, through the entrance hall, down several twisting hallways and into the North Western Tower.

After tough climb up twelve stories of stairs, Ashton’s six year old body made it to the top and he began the usual process of strapping himself into dreaded metal chair.

Ashton winced a little as several leather straps bound him down on their own and the bright spotlight shone down on him from above.

“Alright, here goes nothing,” murmured Ash.

A swarm of bright golden orbs flooded in from the roof of the room and surged into Ashton’s chest with surprising force and several loud crackling and popping sounds could be heard coming from Ashton.

Ashton howled in excruciating pain as his bones rapidly expanded underneath the flesh and his muscles tore under the pressure.

His skin tightened over his bones and his skin began to split violently all over his body, spraying blood across the bright yellow tarps hung all over the room.

The bones in his hands and feet exploded out of the flesh, peeking far too much outside of his body.

A brand new set of teeth grew from inside of his gums and violently ejected the old set out of his mouth, scarring his gums.

His skull gradually expanded, his scalp tightening against it before it burst like a balloon, tearing down the middle, the flesh peeling away from his face.

By this point Ashton had gone unconscious and Ash was left to work blind, and seeing as he could feel ice cold air cutting into his bare muscles and that he was beginning to feeling incredibly feint, he stopped the rapid expansion of their bones.

A new wave of golden orbs flooded into the room and spread throughout his body.

Ash hastily willed the magical energy to heal, muscles stretched and expanded to thoroughly cover the new skeleton, organs grew and then followed the flesh and the skin, the remaining energy was transformed into blood to replenish what was lost.

Crisis over, the body was restored and had been efficiently aged by another few years, now to wait again for Ashton’s consciousness to return.

********

Ashton awoke again, this time in the splatter room in the North West tower, fresh blood covering the tarps.

The bindings on the chair were no longer in place and Ashton stood up, his eye-level substantially higher.

He looked down at his arm, his markings still the same as usual, yet the area it covered was fairly larger.

He looked up to find a hand mirror hung on the wall in front of him, revealing his new appearance.

Age-wise he appeared around ten, his hair was short, black, straight and well kept and his horns were about six inches tall with a slight curve backwards to them.

His dull golden eyes stared back at him and he flashed the reflection a smile, his white teeth shining back.

“What do you think?” asked Ash.

“Well… it’s certainly… older, otherwise it’s pretty similar, the blood covering my clothes could go though,” replied Ashton.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that…. And…. Done, all gone now,” hummed Ash.

“Thanks, shall we continue building the South East Wing now?” proposed Ashton.

“Sure,” agreed Ash.

Happy to leave the splatter room, Ashton hurried back down the long winding staircase back to the ground floor in his updated body, only a few stumbles along the way.

Several minutes later they arrived at their destination, the building site the South East Wing.

The South East Wing itself was going to be a large empty area built to be strong, made for the purpose of large scale magic experiments.

The outside would take on the appearance of the rest of their house; a medieval castle.

So far they had created a massive floating castle on the base of their little raft, it had many twisting corridors, dozens of towers and many rooms for the most pointless of purposes.

Ash’s favourite room happened to be the spiral room, which was entirely composed of spiral patterned objects.

Every now and again the two of them would go out and tack on another building to their castle, as it was one of the only fun things to do.

The first step of creating the new area of the castle was to create the foundations, which was what they’d been working for the past couple of weeks, today was the day they’d create the floor, which was rather simple with magic.

The only really hard part was the foundations, because they didn’t want it falling apart and collapsing into the void, but that was already done.

South East Wing’s floor choice was actually the crystal that allowed the colossal structure to move, the one on the original raft.

A couple of months earlier, Ash tried analysing it for many hours and he was able to replicate it and then recreate it.

Seeing as it was the hardest thing they’d ever encountered before they figured why not use it as a floor, that way they won’t accidently poke any holes in it later.

The usual golden orbs were dragged towards Ashton to be processed inside of his body and spat back out, ready to be transformed.

Ashton’s dark red markings shone brightly as Ash transformed magical energy into crystal, tremors ran through the castle and the light shining from his marking fluctuated.

Ash grew worried but persevered through the pressure and went on, fighting back the waves of exhaustion and after an entire minute of concentration, the lights faded away leaving…

…A crystal the size of tennis ball.

“Well… that’s rather underwhelming…” mumbled Ash before both him and Ashton caved into exhaustion and collapsed onto the ground unconscious.