Location: The Howling Infinite Nothingness, apparently. Or maybe just 'The Big Empty'. Seems fitting. Perks include: Zero gravity potential (still untested, not keen on finding out the hard way), spectacular stellar views (if you enjoy existential dread mixed with your cosmic vistas), absolute silence that screams louder than a banshee, and a distinct, unfriendly lack of anything remotely resembling breathable air, warmth, or solid ground outside the increasingly stressed hull of this house. Joy unbounded.
Right. First things first, after the initial violent ejection from whatever passes for 'normal space' near the Biblioplex. Spent the last hour, or possibly three (time feels… stretchy here), literally picking up the pieces. Books had flown everywhere – thankfully, none of the really nasty grimoires decided to spill their guts. My favorite mug (the one the Hair didn’t try to macramé) is now in three distinct pieces on the floor. Again. The good Silver Needle tea tin rolled under the sofa, spilling precious leaves amongst the Hair’s dust bunny battalions. And then there was the Hair itself. Peeling several pounds of terrified, hyper-static, floor-length hair off the ceiling where it had clamped on like some kind of furry, decorative starfish required patience, soothing murmurs I definitely didn't feel, and eventually a grounding charm just to dissipate the sheer electrical charge snapping off it. It eventually unstuck with a sound like tearing silk, remaining puffed up like a giant, electrocuted dandelion puffball, radiating residual panic. Calmed it down (relatively speaking) mostly by sheer exhaustion – mine and its – and letting it coil defensively near the main Void-Window to just… stare. It hasn’t moved much since. Seems genuinely stunned into temporary submission, or maybe catatonic shock. Frankly, either is an improvement over panicked ceiling-clinging. Silver linings, find them where you can.
Next: House integrity and life support. Did a full diagnostic sweep. The jolt didn’t crack any major structural runes, miraculously. The basic Void-Warding – that multi-layered, energy-hungry shield designed specifically to keep the crushing vacuum and absolute zero out while keeping warmth and air in – held. Keyword: held. It didn’t fail, but gods, it’s straining. I can feel the pressure against it, a vast, silent weight pressing from all sides. The runes along the main seals are glowing far brighter than they should, indicating a massive power drain just to maintain integrity. Air pressure inside is stable, thanks to the atmospheric recycler charm working overtime. Temperature is holding too, but the heating runes embedded in the walls are radiating palpable effort, fighting a losing battle against the bone-deep chill that seems to leach through everything, even the wards. We're not immediately dying. But the margin feels… thinner than usual. More fragile. Like living inside a soap bubble floating through a blizzard of razors.
The view, though. Gods. Once the adrenaline subsides enough to actually process it… it’s aggressively, terrifyingly beautiful. Stars. Billions upon billions. Not the soft, twinkling pinpricks filtered through atmosphere. These are hard, sharp, unwavering points of diamond-like light blazing in an infinite, perfect black. The silence makes them seem louder, somehow. Nebulae drift like impossible swirls of cosmic paint – violent purples, toxic greens, blood reds – hanging in the vast distance, too far to offer any warmth or comfort, just stark beauty against the abyss. I scanned for familiar constellations, anything to get a bearing. Found nothing recognizable from my home world, nor from any of the half-dozen primary planes I’ve charted over the centuries. Saw a few patterns that tickled a memory from some truly ancient, deep-space astrogation charts I once glanced at in the Biblioplex – charts mapping regions considered largely theoretical or mythic. Which is… not comforting. No planets in sight. No moons. No suns close enough to register as more than just another sharp point of light. Just… space. Endless, empty, consuming space. It makes the Biblioplex seem like a crowded tavern. Makes the crushing pressure of the deep ocean feel like a warm bath. It’s the kind of emptiness that doesn’t just surround you, it tries to become you.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
And the silence… gods, the silence. It’s not just quiet; it’s the absence of everything. No wind, no water, no creaking branches, no distant city hum, no animal calls, not even the subtle background thrum of planetary magic. Just… nothing. A profound, absolute vacuum that presses against the eardrums, making my own heartbeat sound like a war drum, my breathing like a bellows. The house’s own structural groans under the strain of the wards are deafening in the stillness. Even the Hair, usually a source of constant rustling and faint energy crackles, is unnervingly silent now, just a dark, still mass watching the uncaring stars drift past. Does it feel the void? Is it listening to the lack of sound? Or is it just overwhelmed into stillness by the sheer scale of outside? Impossible to know.
So. Where the everlasting, multi-dimensional fuck are we? And how do we get somewhere else? The Navigational Orb in the cellar? Spun it up again, fed it extra power. It whirred pitifully, the internal locator runes flickered chaotically, and then it settled back on displaying the same useless message: 'External Coordinates: Undefined. Suggest Turning Back (If Possible)'. Thanks, you useless lump of brass and crystal. Turning back from where? To what? How? Maybe those pulsing river stones, the 'Lesser Navigator Nodes'? Pulled them out again. Held them, focused intent, tried humming the resonance frequency that worked before, tried feeding them navigational energy, tried asking them – verbally and mentally – for any kind of directional clue. Nothing. Their internal pulse continued, slow and steady, but they offered no alignment, no warmth, no reaction whatsoever to this environment. Utterly indifferent to the void. Or maybe this place is simply too far outside any network they connect to. Fundamentally, irrevocably lost.
The initial shock is wearing off, replaced by a cold, creeping dread mixed with my usual simmering annoyance. Did the Biblioplex eject us? Was it that sighing book I ignored? Or the Hair’s ambient static discharge? Or did the house just bolt? Does it even have a destination, or are we just adrift now, doomed to float through this terrifyingly pretty nothing until the wards fail or the power runs out? Centuries of survival, countless near misses, powerful magic at my fingertips… and I could end up as a frozen witch-sicle with extremely long, dead hair, orbiting a dead star in an uncharted void because my house had a spat with a library. The sheer fucking indignity.
Plan A: Continue suppressing panic (requires conscious effort now).
Plan B: Monitor house systems constantly. Check ward integrity every hour. Conserve power where possible.
Plan C: Attempt scrying again, but aim for extremely short range first – literally just outside the hull. See if anything registers, even stray energy particles. Then slowly expand the radius. Maybe there's a pocket dimension nearby? A hidden nebula? A single, solitary asteroid I can aim for?
Plan D: Brew more tea. Stronger than ever. Need the ritual. Need the warmth. Need the caffeine.
Never a dull moment? I'd trade my left kidney (metaphorically speaking, pretty sure it’s still magically reinforced after that curse) for a solid week of profound, uneventful dullness right now. I'd even take the coastline again, annoying gulls and all. At least the gulls made noise. At least the ocean felt like something. This… this is just waiting to see what fails first. My nerves, the wards, or the house's apparent desire to exist.
