Deeper and deeper, I sink into the core of the earth. The sensation is somewhere between the first and second time I interacted with the throne. I am as immersed as the first. But it’s less violent, like the second.
Elmir’s phantom fingers splay across where I imagine my stomach would be, if I had a stomach in this form. Focus, I can hear him command. The magic responds to you. You are its master. It is not the master of you.
Slowly, awareness comes into focus. It’s not quite like seeing, but more like my awareness sharpening the world around me. I am within a cocoon nestled deep in the roots of the redwood throne. I am in the dark spot I previously could not see within, trapped in a cage of gnarled roots.
Everything stretches out from here. Everything originates from this spot.
The se
