"I am touched to see this reunion, but we don't have much time left," the witch spoke. "Unfortunately, Big Altair here is not in any shape to go on giving lengthy explanations. You will just have to share memories."

"Share memories?" the shorter of the two boys inquired, not much managing to surprise him anymore.

The old lady with her bristly palms grabbed both Altairs’ right hands and locked them together, her own lying on top. After she muttered an indecipherable mantra, the mundane Alt found himself standing in the middle of a field. On one side, he could see the massive outer city wall and gates, that were eerily similar to the fortifications protecting Darsenius, the capital city of Levantia since ancient times, even if with modern technology their defensive value remained mostly symbolic. On the opposite end was a thick forest that stretched as far as the horizon. There was a similar forest in his world bordering Darsenius, although it was noticeably less dense due to extensive deforestation. The sun was still rising from the East, and it appeared that a very hot day was coming.

Altair was not able to exert control over any movements, and could only follow along as a first-person observer, picking up occasionally strong thoughts and emotions of the body he was inhabiting. From what he could tell, he was now wearing a casual shirt and pants that prioritized function over aesthetics, with his head covered in a straw hat and a leather bag with some supplies on his back.

His host headed in the direction of the forest's imposing sequoia trees through an isolated, decaying trail, far away from the main roads that connected Darsenius to the other major hubs of the Kingdom. He would stop periodically to pick up various herbs and mushrooms which increased in frequency the deeper he got. The large basket that he was carrying got heavier and heavier. Altair could sense impatience arising – it seemed his doppelganger was looking for something in particular and growing increasingly frustrated at not finding it.

Along the way, they were encountering fauna like what Altair had seen before on TV. In the industrialized world he inhabited, finding wild animals besides stray cats or dogs and rats and pigeons was like looking for a needle in a haystack, unless one ventured into contested or less-densely populated territories. Truth was that the animals he got a glimpse of here would not be found even in the National Zoo. Some deer were munching on mushrooms that his alternate self had picked up just a minute ago, apparently managing to re-grow them. A wild boar mama with four piglets tailing her every move crossed a rocky stream by gently levitating over it. All around him, creatures were displaying unusual behavior and fascinating skills and forethought.

Maybe what I picked up here are like the magic mushrooms from my world, and I am just hallucinating the whole thing, Altair thought, realizing the double-entendre of the word "magic" in this context. He had already seen and felt too much to seriously entertain such a hypothesis.

As the fruitless search continued, Altair began having difficulties to keep track of how long he had been in the viewer role. With every step, less and less light reached the ground, blocked by the increasingly imposing forest canopy even though the sun now appeared to be directly above him. Alt had no idea how his counterpart was not getting lost in this confusing maze, and he didn't appear to be carrying a phone or a GPS device to help orient himself either. He got his answer after discovering a papyrus map full of exquisite calligraphy in his breast pocket. Alt could make out some words and the geography seemed familiar. As far as he could tell it was some sort of botanical map, since it contained locations of various flowers and herbs supposedly present in the region. His suspicion was confirmed after his host pulled out a what appeared to be a torn-out page from an old tome, depicting a perfectly symmetrical lotus flower named Aurora.

Before he could read the description in more detail, his body suddenly fell to the ground to inspect a petal. He started turning it back and forth, checking how its celestial blue color descended into a snow white one at its axis, and even went as far as to smell it.

Could it be this flower that this... other Altair... is looking for?

The would-be freshman pressed on, chasing the trail of similar petals. As his legs kept steadily moving forward, he felt the atmosphere changing around him. At first it was gradual, with the chirps of the birds falling into the background, and the number of fallen leaves increasing. Then slowly he began seeing withered plants and broken branches, and the few remaining animals he managed to spot seemed to be on their last legs attempting to get away from something.

A sudden unexplainable dread crept inside his heart, as if what he was approaching went against the laws of nature.

Turn back! he called mentally, trying to get across to his host, long forgetting that this was supposed to be just a replayed memory.

Every fiber of his being was now swarming with revulsion, but his counterpart inexplicably kept pushing on, even if the effects of the cursed field or whatever it was that they had entered seemed to catch up with him at least physically, with him now breathing heavily and almost tripping here and there.

Not yet... I need to find it at all costs...

Alt felt his doppelganger's inner turmoil, and that there was something important out there leading him to ignore his own safety. The forest was now eerily silent, and only the wind was soughing from time to time.

Finally, by a dried-out creek along which sparse bare trees were crumbling, he found the lotus, its vivid blue and white shades starkly contrasting with the scorched earth surrounding it. Alt's host made a final run towards their target, feeling his legs about to give in. He was about to pull out the plucking instruments he had brought along to extract the lotus when the sight of what lied at the flower's core filled his heart with sheer, primal terror. Where presumedly the stigma should have been, instead an erratic endless darkness was creeping out in all directions, distorting the fabric of reality itself. It was leaving a vacuum in its wake as its center expanded and began pulling him in like a magnet. Altair had never seen anything like it before, not in the darkest of nights nor when he had been left for days in a bomb shelter as a kid with nothing but a small candle to provide illumination. The black hole sucked the life from everything around it, and other than the occasional spark it generated, it was impossible to see anything that lay beneath it. Alt felt like he was having an out of body experience, only this time he was forcibly being dragged away from his own body. He noticed that his hosts’ hands had begun to wrinkle, and apparently the bigger teen had caught on to this as well.

Dropping his tools and backpack, he turned and stumbled, trying to run as if chased by Godzilla itself, but it felt hopeless. After a few more uneven steps, he fell to his knees, unable to go on. Then, to his shock and awe he saw a dark humanoid figure almost twice his size appear in front of him. This stranger was generating the same ripples around him as the hungry lotus had been, and his face was featureless, with only light purple eyes standing out in an otherwise monolith body. He moved like he was made from energy, his body shifting in mass from side to side with every step as if essence was shifting inside him.

Altair felt like he was drowning on land in the presence of this man-like creature and his host was faring no better. The giant raised the equivalent of a hand in the direction of the unlucky herb gatherer, and the background, which was already an unnatural red as if the entire world was on fire faded away, replaced with infinite darkness.

***

Altair found himself back in the hut, staring at the wooden floor and sweating profusely. It took him a few minutes to realize and believe that he was back to safety and that the nightmare was over. He couldn't tell how much time he had spent reliving that foreign memory, but despite all common sense telling him otherwise, he knew deep inside that what he had experienced was real. After all, he could now feel the same dark energy faintly emanating from his parallel self, except instead of growing stronger like it did with the flower, it was slowly fading away together with the life in the taller boy's eyes.

"Maybe this was not such a good idea after all," the witch pondered, seeing the frail teen contorting himself on the ground, clearly fighting the urge to vomit. "But at least, it should give you an idea of how serious the situation is."

"You shouldn't have shown him that," the taller Altair said, his voice breaking. "Nobody deserves to go through that."

"I can't argue with you there. But now, if he decides to stay, he will know what he is getting himself into," she countered, while flicking her hands and stabilizing the struggling boy, who finally let a sigh of relief, after the shock and pressure to throw up subsided. He got up to his feet, and the old lady materialized a stool right behind him, with a cup also appearing in his hand, filled with a tea-like hot liquid.

"Sit down," she offered. "I know you have many questions."

"I don't think 'many’ even begins to cover it," Altair replied, tentatively taking a sip. "First of all, where am I? What the hell is this place? And why is it so similar but different from my home?"

"Why, you are on Arcalis," the witch chuckled, clearly enjoying his frustrated expression. "But not the same Arcalis you call home."

"What does that even mean, is this like a parallel universe?" Altair asked, now willing to consider even the most ridiculous explanations to make sense of his predicament.

"Not in the way you are imagining, no. We are all in the same universe... except, far, far away from each other...," she replied, trying to come up with the right words.