My memories of the circumstances under which I came to be what I am are a bit shaky, considering what was happening at the time and what happened shortly after. I still have some vague recollection of “living” through it though, and I can piece the rest together from what I found out later.
I was in a massive empty space, surrounded by almost total darkness, the only point of reference I had to judge distance by was the flickering colors and lights far far away. I'd glimpsed this part of the cosmos before, but only at the farthest reaches I’d dared to explore: I'd never figured out a way to actually traverse the distance to here, and I'd worried about the dangers I knew must lurk here in the inter-dimensional space I now know as the Void. I didn't have time to think about that though: from the moment the spell hit me, I could feel my form being torn away, as if it was merely a paper shroud for my mind and soul. I tried desperately to hold it together, lest I be lost in the Void as a consciousness without a body, but the spell was too powerful: my physical form was broken down into raw potential before I could even mount a proper counter. Whatever cast this spell had directed an immense amount of force into it, as if I was struggling against the indomitable will of a distant leviathan...
I had barely recovered my bearings by the time the next part of the spell began to trigger. The first part had removed my physical form, but was somehow keeping me together as the next part started to weave a new form around me. Not one to be part of someone else's magical experiment, I quickly pulled at the fabric of that spell...
I quickly found that, while whoever this caster was had access to far greater will and energy than me, their spellwork was far less sophisticated than one would expect. It was as if they'd used a brute force approach to removing my body and constructing a new one around my mind. I managed to pull it apart at the seams, instead using my own spell to break it down and absorb it, quickly hijacking whatever spell was keeping me together and trying to weave some sort of ward to defend myself from whatever was going on...
...it was the moment that I'd countered the spell though, that all hell broke loose.
Before I could finish raising a defense, another set of spellforms rushed in on me: I'd triggered some sort of failsafe. It was quickly made clear to me that whoever the caster was hadn't intended to let me exist if they couldn't control my existence. The trap spells grabbed at all parts of my being, pulling at my mind and memories, trying to unmake what little was left of who I'd been. Once again, my efforts to resist directly were useless: it was like fighting against some unstoppable force of will, bearing down upon my insignificant mind, a mind which I was losing fast.
Desperate to not be turned into nothing, I grasped at the spellwork, frantically tearing apart those spellforms and absorbing their energy. Every second, whole swaths of the person Marilyn had been were ripped away. Memories, consciousness, and personality were shredded, thrown asunder, and whatever I didn't manage to hold onto was lost to the Void, like disintegrating objects in space. By the time I'd pulled apart the spellwork, the damage was done: I had no idea who I was or what was happening to me. All I knew was that I needed to keep what was left together, and keep myself from being subsumed into the astral. Every moment I spent in that void, entropy wreaked havoc on me: I was literally falling to pieces...
Clawing out in desperation, I found one last spellform which hadn't yet triggered. All I could tell was that it was some sort of travel spell, meant to relocate me somewhere far across the cosmos. I had no idea where the caster had intended to send me, and at this point, I didn't have enough mind left to guess. All I knew was that anywhere was better than here...
With no other options left, I tapped into the spellform and activated it, sending myself hurdling across the space between realities. Turbulent forces wrenched me about as I struggled to maintain my sense of self, experiencing a form of ego death as my raw essence was directly exposed to the collective unconscious of a billion worlds. I don't know how long I was falling for: time is an entirely relative construct, and I had no frame of reference, nor was I even a temporal being at this point. It could have been seconds just as easily as an eternity. I was running purely on will and purpose at this point: I would have felt fear, but the emotion was no longer functioning, so close I was to being subsumed into the cosmos entirely by the time I hit the destination and was quickly pulled into the aura of some unknown World...
I felt a vast force surround me as I entered the powerful magical field this world was surrounded by, and just as soon as I'd left the power vacuum of the void, I found myself tumbling about in some sort of vortex around a massive power source. Quickly losing coherency, I focused on keeping myself intact. I managed to connect the cluttered remnants of the girl who had been Marilyn haphazardly, unable to rebuild memories and concepts properly in the maelstrom. My will had been exhausted at this point, and I found my consciousness dwindling. Unable to act, unable to find shelter, the purpose that had driven me began to die...
Forms blended into nothing... Existence became meaningless...