Warlock Apprentice

Angor woke up only to see endless darkness. There were strange whispers going off right beside his ears.

What are they talking about? Or… are they humans at all? I hear growling…

He felt something familiar. It was as if he just went through the same experience not long ago, yet he couldn’t remember when. Or rather, his whole mind was too chaotic for him to think properly.

When he saw a small light spot in the distance, he stood up and followed it out of instinct.

As he moved closer to the light, the whispers grew louder and more unified as if thousands of different individuals of different races were trying to explain the same word in different languages.

They made his head ache.

He reached his goal—a strange door that existed alone in the dark.

Or… is it a mirror?

He changed his mind because he saw someone inside the “door” looking back at him. He couldn’t see the reflection very clearly. The stranger was wearing different clothes, while their hair was longer than Angor’s.

Yet something told him that he was looking right at himself.

Two different ideas fought inside his disturbed mind and somehow convinced him of the impossible.

“Are you… me?” Angor decided to ask.

There was silence.

Angor carefully lifted his right hand and moved toward the door. He wished to confirm whether he could touch “him”.

Following Angor’s move, “he” also reached out a hand.

Two hands slowly connected in the middle.

“It’s so cold…”

The first thing that came to Angor’s mind was that the other one’s hand felt like ice.

This strange feeling was also familiar to him. He believed he put his hand on something similar recently.

“What is that?” someone suddenly asked him.

Angor thought the man in the door was the speaker. Before he could reply, he saw the darkness giving way to light, while all the whispers slowly stopped. At the same time, the “door” shattered to pieces.

He opened his eyes and saw something black looming in front of his face.

It was Sunders, who was wearing that signature black gentleman suit.

Where-where did that mirror go? Angor panicked a little.

Then he saw Sunders smiling for some reason.

Angor slowly looked down and noticed that Sunders had grabbed his right wrist while his right hand was still trying to catch the air.

He then shook his head and looked around. It seemed he was lying on a bed inside a room he couldn’t recognize.

Was that a dream?? So while “dream-walking”, I moved to touch- Wait! Did I do something funny to Sunders?!

Angor couldn’t imagine how he could carelessly “stroke” the body of a formidable and strange-tempered wizard. He desperately prayed that his professor wouldn’t punish him by chopping his hand off.

“I-I… There was this weird dream, sir! I didn’t mean to touch—” Angor retracted his hand with a start.

Sunders raised an eyebrow. “Pull yourself together. What is it that you’re reaching for?”

“Um, you?”

Sunders’ expression grew dangerously funny.

“I mean, the air! Since there’s nothing in front of me… right?”

Sunders shook his head and put on a more serious look. “Take your time and think again.”

“But there’s not… wait, I think I caught someone’s hand in my dream.”

Angor felt that his memory was still blurry. However, several details were coming back.

“Who is it?” Sunders looked at Angor’s right hand with a stern look.

Following Sunders’ hint, Angor checked his own hand as well.

His irises shrank.

Starting from where Sunders was gripping at, his entire hand was… not his hand anymore.

Compared to his left hand, his current right one was longer. To be precise, each finger on his right hand now had an extra segment.

He tried moving the hand and immediately saw something green glowing around it.

What in the-?

He did more tests and noticed that he could control this strange hand just fine. On the other hand, it seemed that he couldn’t do anything to the green lines floating about. There was nothing wrong as long as he didn’t mind the alien looks of it.

“You’ll have time to get used to it later. Now tell me, whose hand were you reaching for?” Sunders interrupted Angor’s body experiment and asked again.

“I… don’t know. It’s someone in the mirror… or a door. I can’t even make out their gender.”

“Long, blond hair?”

“It’s long, but I can’t tell the color. The clothes seem pretty expensive, but I don’t know the exact colors either. Did you see them too, professor?”

Instead of answering, Sunders questioned Angor about his previous experience, including his journey so far in Witch’s Town and what the strange dream looked like.

Angor did not withhold anything. He told everything he could remember, including the terrifying old witch.

Sunders remained quiet for a moment to digest what he just heard.

“You believe the man you saw in this ‘door’ was you?”

Angor nodded.

Sunders rubbed his temples. “When I arrived at the cottage and found you, there was another man beside you who was obscured by some mist or shady effects. I saw his blond hair, but his hair was a lot longer. His form dissipated as soon as I moved closer.”

“You didn’t see his face either, sir?”

“No. But I saw him taking your right hand. Or, I saw him trying to fuse with your right hand.”

“Eh, fuse with my hand?!” Angor lifted his strange hand again. He understood none of what Sunders was talking about.

Does it mean “he” affixed this bizarre hand on me? But why? Where did my old hand go?

Angor tried clenching the hand into a fist and succeeded without a problem. Also, there seemed to be a strong power hidden inside the hand, but it felt… foreign.

He squeezed so hard that he saw several blood veins pulsing on his right hand.

Blood? But my soul did not have blood!

“You finally noticed?” Sunders grinned. “Your right hand is ‘real’ now.”

“Really?!” Angor quickly lifted his left hand and checked.

Everything on him still suggested that he was in his “soul form”, except for the foreign body part he just gained.

A terrible realization struck his mind.

What about my real body back in reality? Did my body grow a wrong hand too?

He failed to remain calm as cold sweat covered his entire body, or at least he believed so, as his soul couldn’t sweat.

“Don’t take my words to your heart yet. I might be wrong,” Sunders spoke up again.

“What… do you mean, professor?”

“There’s another possibility that the strange character was pulling your right hand, your REAL right hand, into Nightmare Realm from the wizarding world. We had to get back first to confirm what really happened, and before we can, do not use that new hand.”

Sunders glanced at the green marks flying around the hand and felt something terrifying troubling his mind. He couldn’t sense any energy signature from it yet, but something told him that they should be very careful when “handling” Angor’s newly grown body part.

Angor nodded and slumped on his bed, not sure of what to do. Losing a hand was quite a heavy blow to him.

“I have another assumption.” Sunders continued when he saw Angor in such a low spirit, “Perhaps you never lost your hand. This one is also YOUR hand, just looks different.”

Angor looked up at his professor, confused.

“You ‘felt’ that the man in your dream was you, no? Maybe you were right. That man is Angor, a projection created by Nightmare Realm.”