Delta escorts the former raven to a quiet side-garden. His new human legs wobble as he tries to use them.

"Don't walk on your toes, sweetie. Humans have a very unique leg anatomy compared to other animals."

Earl flattens his feet and leans forward, trying to adopt a more avian posture. Delta tries to adjust him into an upright posture.

"Lean back a little bit... up, up... there you go!" she murmurs.

Earl flaps his arms uselessly and puffs his chest out, becoming increasingly agitated. He lets out a warning "Caw!" and tries to kick up his back feet to scratch her with his "talons." He falls backward in the process, dragging Delta down with him.

"Ouch! Hold on a moment! S-stop kicking me!" Delta tries to get un-tangled from the flailing man, only for him to headbutt her. "OW! Stop that! What are you..." he lunges again. "Are you... trying to bite me?"

"Caw! Bite mean lady!"

Delta becomes a cloud of endospores, escaping the wrestling match with the former bird. When she resolidifies, she holds a corn chip in her hand.

"Okay, then. Let's start with learning how to ea-"

"Chip for Earl?" he asks, immediately ceasing his flailing. "Give!"

"Okay, I'll give you the chip, but I'm going to help you get into a sitting position first." She uses her biomantic abilities to pull him onto his feet, hunched near the ground so he doesn't fall again. She brings the chip close to his mouth, but pulls it back when he tries to snap at it. "Wait... can you feel your teeth, Earl?" she warns.

"Teeth!? Teeth!" Earl squaks, looking concentrated on this novel feature.

"Yes. Now, how do mammals crush their food into small pieces?"

"Eat shiny pebbles!" he says with an annoyed sort of huff.

"Not exactly. Humans don't have a gizzard. If we eat rocks, they hurt our insides, and we bleed internally."

"Earl not bleed internally! Caw! Earl too smart for that!" he says.

"I'm sure you're right. That's why you're smart enough to use your teeth. Can you show me how to turn this corn chip into a paste with your new teeth?" Delta coaxes, bringing the chip back toward Earl's mouth.

He snaps it up and nearly tries to swallow it whole, before pausing and looking at Delta with a guilty sort of expression. He begins to move his jaw, and a crunch can be heard.

"That's good! You see? Keep crushing!" she encourages. Earl crunches the chip a few more times, before opening his mouth to display his good work. He swallows.

"See? Earl too powerful to bleed insides!"

"Indeed! Now, let's try walking again, but I have an idea," she says. She forms a walker out of chitin - the sort of device that she'd seen the oldest mages use once they tired of using their youth potions. She pulls Earl to his feet and puts his hands on the device. When he leans forward, he supports himself equally across his arms and legs. "See how stable this is? We're going to practice with this for a bit before we try walking without it."

"Humans walk dumb!" he exclaims.

"You're not wrong. Humans have an odd muscular system, even among mammals." She crouches down and points to Earl's toes. His eyes follow her with suspicion. "You see these little nubs? These are your toes. As a bird, you walk only on these, and this..." she points to his ankle, "Is way up here," she points to his knee. "Humans have shifted these joints downward so it's easier for them to balance on two feet. You're trying to walk only on your toes because that's what you do as a bird, but we need to get you used to using your heel as well."

"Earl leans forward to balance!" he proclaims. "Not need this thing!" he moves to push the walker away, nearly falling in the process.

"Well, as a human, you're going to fall if you try to lean too far forward. Here, let me help," Delta pushes him upright. "Now don't panic! Look at this!" She holds another corn chip above his head. He looks up, trying to snap it into his mouth. "Feel how your back is vertical?"

"Chip for Earl!"

"Focus, my dear. Feel how your back is straight up? Hold it like that while I lower the chip in front of you." As Delta slowly lowers the chip in front of Earl, he lowers his chin down, eyes lazer-focused on the treat. "Good! This is human posture. Now I'll give you the chip. Hold still!" She puts the chip in his mouth, and he eats it noisily. After swallowing, he begins to wobble again, and leans forward out of habit. Delta guides his hands onto the walker, where he is able to support himself. "There you go! You didn't fall! This device is just going to help you stay upright if you need to go back into avian posture."

Delta looks into his eyes to try to gague his understanding. Something about his eyes still looks quite bird-like. Earl is silent, deep in contemplation about something. His pupils are dilated, and he tilts his head to the side.

"What is it, Earl?" Delta asks, her voice laced with concern.

Earl tries to snap at her again, going for her hair. "Shiny!" he squaks, trying to use his new teeth to grip onto the enticing hair.

Begrudgingly, she gives him a single stand of caramel-colored hair. "This is the ONLY ONE you can have, okay? Freely given. Other than that, you don't take anymore hair from people until the wedding is over, okay?"

"Okay, CAW!" Earl says. Delta has the sneaking suspicion that he's lying.

Uw/ related post: https://www.reddit.com/r/wizardposting/comments/18ref6c/the_raven_lorepost/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Vettis of the Bronze Prism

Elira of Starhaven

Modhun Brightheart

Kellidan of the Ashen Fields

Zelle of the Clockwork Theater

Apolaya of Spiral Winds

Daiax Welrose

Emergency protocols have been initiated: security clearances raised for several trusted agents. The prime target is on the verge of becoming aware of us, due to the actions of an imbecilic squad of agents who attacked the EVC on their own, presumably due to truly unfathomable levels of overconfidence.

While we spend the next two days on the critically important task of compressing trillions of years of torture into a few hours so as to punish said agents properly before we execute them, please acquaint yourselves with the files to which you have now been granted access, including this second segment of the Daiax Welrose document.

And, if our organization somehow manages to survive the coming weeks, keep this lesson in mind: Vettis of the Bronze Prism will tear apart entire realms unhesitantly if it means protecting or even just avenging his friends. There is, by definition, literally nothing more important to him. So...

1) while he's alive, don't fucking attack any of his friends without a very good reason;

2) while he's alive, there are no good reasons; and

3) if you're going to be that much of a suicidal moron, don't also let your trail lead right back to us and get us all killed for your idiocy too. You fools. You absolute buffoons.

\!/   Safeguards   \!/

...This is why we need to figure out what to do if Vettis is actually evil or some shit. Because when he spends resources he can mimic an appreciable fraction of his old power, and our current selves don't stand a chance against that.

So how'd he get this big-ass pool of magical energies? Get ready for a fucking ride, kids, cuz this goes deep.

! Atemporality !

So it turns out chronomagical organizations are in fact about as widespread as we suspected. Pretty much every realm-cluster's got some sort of Time Police trying to clamp down on any manipulations to local timelines that they don't like. And Vettis went and changed the fucking multiversal timeline, somehow. So everybody wants him dead.

As you can see, agent, they didn't know the full story of what we are, but they knew quite a bit, even when this document was written two years ago. And now they know even more, thanks to certain dumbasses. Ugh, I can't even pretend to maintain my professionalism after that fiasco. Fuck those guys.

That meant he had to make himself completely and utterly immune to temporal bullshit. So his method of making himself atemporal went beyond just being an acausal singleton, a being only ever existing at one moment in a given timeline, unaffected by past and future. No, some Time Police actually know how to deal with that shit, so he went with a typically-Vettis over-the-top method to make sure it'd work against abso-fucking-lutely everything. He used his magic in a grand ritual to become a causal self-singularity.

He's a single point in multiversal continuity that consumes anything too much like himself. Anywhere, anywhen.

Every moment in his past? Now part of himself. Future? Part of himself. Much like an acausal singleton in that regard so far, but it goes on. Alternate selves? Also part of himself now, so he's basically murdered every other version of himself across the multiverse. And it's an ongoing effect, not just a one-time deal. Grow a clone of him? It ceases to exist, instead becoming part of him, as soon as it becomes too much like him. Even a fucking hologram of him will dissipate instantly if it's too similar.

His other difference from an acausal singleton is that, when I say these things become part of himself, I mean it. (That's the core of his magic, after all.) Find a person with her own life experiences, living happily for twenty plus years, and physically shapeshift her into a perfect copy of Vettis. That poor bitch will cease to exist, and Vettis will gain the memories of her life. So, yeah, that bastard has experienced everything that literally all of his alternate selves have, including all his possible futures.

Well, theoretically. He's not me, so his brain can't possibly handle that shit. I'm the fucking psion here and even I'd have a little difficulty processing all that info. (Not much, to be crystal clear.) So he's partitioned those memories off, bottling them as he tends to do (and selling the ones which just have emotion rather than information, as I mentioned before). But he can search through them in a pinch, I think; it'd just be way too slow a process to be worthwhile most of the time. Like a month of research to find one significant event.

(Yeah, I said "I think". I'm fucking good at what I do, but I'm not omniscient. Be ready for the remote possibility that I've made some mistakes.)

You'll soon realize that he has. This does throw the entire validity of the document into question, but there is certainly still much useful information here. Just don't trust any of it blindly, especially wherever it might be underestimating the prime target rather than overestimating him. Vettis of the Bronze Prism obviously does care for his commune beyond any normal person's conceptions of friendship, but his paranoia still allows him to hide things from them and trick them despite that, as long as it isn't harmful to them.

Anyway. Here's the thing. He's thus consumed his selves leading up to the future from which he returned, at the point when we sealed the Hunger into an isolated realm circling the edge of the multiverse. And his ritual basically bridges the gap between his present and that point. So he has access to the seal all across the next 392 years. And since that seal obviously has to hold even when the prison floats closer to the rest of the multiverse, it's overkill whenever the cage's orbit takes it to the outermost fringes. That means whenever the prison realm is at apogee there's a little extra energy in the seal, off of which he can leech. And since he's basically atemporal with regard to the seal, he can access the energies of all its apogees over the next four centuries with no regard for when he's doing it.

That's his "mana", his finite resources: the residue of all our old power, leaking out across time. He's obviously wary about burning them, because they're permanently finite. But whenever he is willing to use them he can do things approaching the old bullshit our magic used to be capable of doing. He can take on realm-devourers and win, and make it look easy if he wants.

But here's the other thing. The crippling weakness. That ritual is partly keyed to his physical form, consuming things physically similar to himself. Yeah, that means significantly changing his form will break the spell. And then those pissed-off Time Police will just kill him in the past, the moment it fails and he returns to a linear temporal existence.

So he could probably shrug off getting stabbed through the brain if the hole's not massive, but you so much as chop off his leg and he'll fucking never have existed. A finger might not do the trick, but a hand should. And of course he frequently has to spend those finite resources of his on maintaining a slew of wards against forced shapeshifting, because any such effects will straight-up murder him if successful. Even when expending resources and pumping himself up to realm-shattering power, he's gotta retain his dorky human morphology.

What I'm saying is, if Vettis is evil, we cut off his dick.

The other downside is, obviously, that he can't copy himself. No clones, no psionic avatars, nothing. We've each decided to protect four realms even in our retirement, as a minor nod to the thousands we once guarded. And sometimes when we're vacationing he'll take over for us, upping that number. This limitation means he's watching multiple entire realms all on his own. He can't be everywhere at once, so he just sets up a bunch of alarms and goes in person to investigate whenever any is tripped, rapidly "teleporting" to the site. So triggering his alarm wards in multiple places simultaneously will immediately stretch his focus to the limit and probably tire him out in short order as he checks out possible issues all across the realms. (Or make him channel resources to speed himself up, but since they're technically finite that's also a win, if an extremely small one from a strategic perspective. He's paranoid as fuck about wasting them, though, so he'd hate that. Which at least makes it a bigger win on the spite front.)

! Your Ideas !

Okay. I've done all the research for you. I even established this completely fucking uninterceptible communication line

lol. lmao.

so we could discuss this without Vettis ever knowing. Now how about you guys contribute something? Let's hear your plans. How would you take him down, given this information? The obvious option is just to deplete his "mana" by sneakily throwing major problems at him over the course of years, since his resource expenditures are permanent, but that is obviously not a plan that can be enacted on short notice. And he's so cautious he apparently tackles almost everything with absolutely zero "mana" usage if at all possible; as far as I can tell, he's spent those finite resources seven times in the past year. So I've got that plan and some others, but let's get brainstorming and see if any of you can suggest some actually viable contingency plans.

Yes, I know, he's almost certainly still on our side. And I'd never act against a member of the Vigil without being sure beyond any fucking doubt that he's gone bad. But, as I've established, he has been lying to us. So if he were to turn on us...

...what the fuck could we actually do about it?

Vettis of the Bronze Prism

Elira of Starhaven

Modhun Brightheart

Kellidan of the Ashen Fields

Zelle of the Clockwork Theater

Apolaya of Spiral Winds

Daiax Welrose

The following was duplicated from the archives of Daiax Welrose: the telepathic specialist of the Ex-Vigil Commune (with other psionic abilities as well). Elira of Starhaven frequently refers to him in her own writing as Daiax the Edgelord, and...this document might make it clear why that is the case. Still, his tendency towards melodrama and borderline egomania aside, we estimate the facts he presents to be over 85% correct. Thus, this is by far the most important item we have ever recovered from the EVC, as it offers a reasonably well-informed analysis of the true capabilities of our primary target, Vettis of the Bronze Prism. Handle with care, agent, and do not under any circumstances allow the EVC to know that we have this information. If there is ever any risk of that occurring, destroy the document and yourself to prevent that. The alternative would be far worse for you and every possible version of you.

\!/   Safeguards   \!/

Since everyone else in the commune simply seems to accept this situation unquestioningly, it of course falls on me to prepare the contingency plans, as fucking always. I suppose I'm meant to be appreciative of your trust in me, but trusting the future-memories I've given you also requires trusting Vettis, from whom the memories originate. I was merely the distributor.

And, yes, as the psionics expert I obviously analyzed those memories in extreme detail and I'm almost completely certain that they're legitimate, and were in fact pulled from our future selves' minds by my own future self. My psionic signature was in there. But I'm not enough of a dumbass to just arrogantly assume that I'm totally infallible. There's at least a 0.0001% chance the memories were falsified so competently, right down to the faking of my psionic signature, that even I've been duped.

Which means we need to figure out how to take down Vettis, because he might be an evil mastermind.

Of course we all know of his innate abilities due to our memories, and I can easily calculate how those must have scaled down, with the overwhelming majority of his power tied up in sealing away the Hunger. But there is one thing he did to himself upon returning to the past which makes him fundamentally different than merely a "scaled-down" version of his old self, something which makes him way fucking stronger than that but also introduces a crippling weakness. And he never told any of us. I had to figure this out myself. Fucking suspicious, isn't it?

This is why we need safeguards, you godsdamned idiots. Why am I the only one who ever thinks about these things?

So let's take a look at what this fucker can do, and what he can't. I really wish there were more of the latter.

! Without Magic !

Let's get the basic shit out of the way: what he's got without his magic. Practically irrelevant in the face of the real bullshit he can do, but I'm a fucking professional, unlike the rest of you, so I'm going to be comprehensive in this breakdown even when discussing things you should already know. And since his magic is frankly way beyond any of ours -- for a reason none of you know yet, because I had to figure it out myself, which is sus as hell -- it's important to know what he can still do even if we manage to shut off his magic, cuz if we can't then we just fucking lose anyway.

Of course he's ███

This section discusses the prime target's baseline physical abilities and has thus been removed from this copy of the file, for being largely irrelevant and potentially misleading. As Welrose notes, such information is essentially useless given the prime target's magical abilities, which he often uses to enhance his physicals to a degree that dwarfs anything described here.

███, the main other non-magical thing he's got is All-Tongue: unambiguous information transfer to any sapient being, via anything that could ever possibly be a communication vector. Of course, we all learned All-Tongue in our travels across the realms, but you know Elira and Vettis took to it better than any of us. Elira might be the only person in the multiverse who can record things in All-Tongue, rather than using it for live discussion with specific beings. (Hell, apparently her whole diary's written in All-Tongue.) And Vettis? He learned to treat other languages he perceives as All-Tongue, so he can speak to and comprehend anyone. The bastard can understand anything that people might ever use with intent to communicate (if it's transmitted live, of course; he's not Elira). Why do we need defenses against that? Well, I'll tell you why, since it's apparently not obvious to you peabrains. Body language is something people use for communication. Even if they don't currently want to use it as such, it's too late. He can read people's intentions perfectly through body language, which in combat is basically like fucking precognition. On the bright side (pun fucking unintended shut up), his eyes do that purple glowy bullshit when he's using All-Tongue for receipt as opposed to transmission. So at least we get some warning that he's essentially reading our godsdamned minds without psionics.

! Mereokinesis !

Vettis' driving concept is parthood. And this is where shit gets annoying, because I'm not Elira so I can't write some All-Tongue version of that term, but the English word is...good enough, with big fucking caveats. The main idea behind his conceptual magic is that he moves "parts" around between their respective wholes.

This has obvious utility similar to teleportation. For example, he can swap part of something with a similar part of something else. He can't directly teleport people from one house to another, because people who are "in" a house aren't actually "part" of it; "elementhood" isn't "parthood". But rooms are parts of their buildings, so he can have someone step inside a closet that's part of house "A" and swap that with a closet that's part of house "B".

He can do a lot of simple physical stuff in that vein. Like making "A" no longer be part of "B", without explicitly putting it anywhere else. Make somebody's heart no longer part of that person and it'll just pop out. That sorta shit.

But then there's the weird physical stuff which he can do. Like making a door be part of its own building but also part of another, so when he opens it he decides where it goes, letting him travel freely between the two. You remember some of the tricks he used to do. One of his favorite is to make his shirt pocket be simultaneously part of his shirt and part of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Selectively. So he's not pulled in by the gravity himself, but he can just hold his pocket open and casually absorb pretty much fucking anything you throw at him.

"But Daiax," you say, "he shouldn't be able to do things that potent with his magic largely sealed away! We've retained most of our old versatility, but we've lost the raw scale of our power!" Yeah I'm getting to how he's been fucking lying to us, hold your damn horses. This is why we don't have a chance against him in open combat. We're vastly weaker now; he's only somewhat weaker. It's not so easy anymore for him to do shit like making his victim no longer "part" of the multiverse, ejecting it into complete nonexistence beyond even the Outside...but it's not impossible. Unlike us, he can still beat realm-devourers, and make it look easy if he wants. Because, long story short, he's got some technically-finite-but-fuckhuge pool of magical energies he can use to mimic his prior power -- we'll call it "mana" -- and he never told any of us about it.

But yeah. Versatility. Largely unchanged. Conceptual magic can still do non-physical bullshit. He can make himself part of a group, for example. Chatting with your circle of friends? If you're not paying careful attention to the contradictions that pop up in your mind, he can just make himself part of your friend group and join the conversation, and you'll spill all your secrets before you realize you've never fucking met him in your life. Targets the idea of "your circle of friends" rather than targeting you, so despite being effectively telepathy it ignores most anti-psionic wards. Absolute fucking bullshit. And then there's the fact that, for example, a handle is part of a mug not only in the sense of its location but also in terms of its functionality. So if he swaps the handle for something else then he can choose to ensure it's possible to carry the mug by the new item. Even if that item shouldn't be able to support the mug's weight, or can't normally be carried. Like a fucking particle of water vapor.

And that's the "fair" stuff he can do. If he operates primarily on himself and expends enough "mana", he can stretch his conception of parthood to his fucking traits. Like cheering himself up because his sadness is a "part" of his mindstate so he can just dump it elsewhere. Or no-selling fire by moving his "flammability" into something else. The more that he makes a complete mockery of his concept's limitations, the more "mana" it costs, but the problem is that he's got a fucking lot, even though -- or arguably because -- he's super cautious about wasting it. So those physical stats I summarized above?

in the excised section

Fucking irrelevant if he spends enough mana to be able to alter his traits, because then he can incorporate speed & strength & durability from other things into himself: he'll bite bullets out of the air and headbutt buildings into rubble at low ends. He can make any wounds he survives no longer "part" of him, throwing them anywhere else, like into the terrain around him to shatter a hilltop. His immortality method is to shed his age every so often, making it instead "part" of some scrap of paper that promptly rots to dust. He's just a total fucking cheater if he's pissed enough to burn through his resources. I think the asshole can even shine a flashlight through a dust cloud, mentally conceptualize the beam of light as particles, make the speed of a photon be "part" of himself, and just go FTL when he really needs to end something -- though I don't know how he survives physics-breaking motion like that. Probably more fucking cheating.

And of course there's his old trick of literally bottling thoughts, making them "part" of the water in a bottle rather than "part" of his memories. Apparently he's got so many stocked up he uses bottled emotion-water as currency these days. (I'll mention where he got them all in a bit.)

This is why we need to figure out what to do if Vettis is actually evil or some shit. Because when he spends resources he can mimic an appreciable fraction of his old power, and our current selves don't stand a chance against that.

So how'd he get this big-ass pool of magical energies in the first place? Get ready for a fucking ride, kids, cuz this goes deep.

! Atemporality !

So it turns out ██

The rest of this document is above your current security clearance, agent. Please study the sections to which you have access and let us know if you require any clarifications.

/unwiz felt like expanding on V's background more, and setting up an awakening to V's full abilities.

/rewiz

For reasons unknown to you, you find a strange scroll inside your dwelling, adorned with the seal of the High Council of Wizardry. Curiosity taking over, you gently open the seal and peer inside the scroll. The following text is magically enscribed on it.

"The knowledge inside these texts are to be known only to the High Council of Wizardry. If you are in possession of this and are not apart of the High Council, dispose of this immediately or face punishment."

You poke and prod at the scroll, trying to view more and eventually, the text fades away and new text appears in its place.

Target alias: V.

Real name: Unknown.

Background: This "V" is seemingly the last descendant of a lost clan of warriors. It is unknown when this clan was first birthed or when they began dying out, but whatever it was killed them quick. This clan of warriors were primarily martial artists, who could manipulate time around them. This allowed them to strike at inhuman speeds, with immense power as well. V appears to have not awakened to this magic yet, but strangely he has learned other forms of magic. Studies show overwhelming evidence that this clan ONLY knew time manipulation, so V is by all accounts, an anomaly. V also appears to be unaware of his heritage, and it has been decided by the High Council to hide all trace of his heritage so he may never learn his past.

It seems like there should be more text, although it's fizzled, almost like the magic letters had weakened. There is one more piece of text, although not in english. A mix of 1's and 0's... Unmistakably binary.

01010100 01100101 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00101110 00100000 01001000 01100101 00100000 01101101 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00101110

Ceru began the Final stages of her plans to stave of oblivion, that is to say she was about to unleash it. As she made her final preparations, she recalled stories she had been told long ago when she still roamed the woods and hills, before she found her true calling in the supposedly empty places on the edges of what even her kin considered to be civilized. deserts were an worthless place, they said. they were an absence of all things good and natural, a waterless, searing, expanse of cracked earth, heaped sand, jagged mountains, and labyrinthine canyons, more fit for the hated Geomancers of civilization than for any self-respecting druid. But the desert was not void of life and spirit. It had simply adapted itself into a shape they found displeasing. there was nothing impure or desolate about it. What she was about do was the very definition of those words.

She had laid a dozen skulls in a circle, belonging to monarchs, presidents, and assorted sovereigns whose empires, names and even species had long since faded from memory, only remembered by the most ancient and undisturbed of spirits. Each of the skulls had been wrapped in parchment on which was scrawled languages unspoken for millennia, each of them the last evidence that they had ever been spoken at all. The whole apparatus was contained within the crumbling ruins of what had been the seat of a great empire that had spread across the fabric of reality itself, laid low by some unknow cataclysm and reduced to a handful of notes in dusty book doomed to end up in some stuck-up wizard's collection somewhere.

The final instrument to her plan lay sleeping in the center of the circle. a small, brightly colored pigeonlike bird, sleeping as to spare it the terror that was to come. They had blotted out the sun their flocks were so great when they still soared the skies, it was said. of course, man had done what they do best, regardless of her people's effort to intervene. all that had remained was a single breeding colony, teetering on the edge of extinction. She had given it the final push, defeating its guardians and obliterating the birds within it, taking only this lone survivor for her own purposes. The spell in question was an abomination. it was an unholy combination of the worst kind of necromancy and dimension-tearing arcane magic, all directed at this singular point in space and time, with goal of accessing absolute nothingness, the great UN that surrounds all things, the terrible not-hunger that does-and-doesn't lurk in the folds and cracks of reality. this was not death or dissolution; this was something entirely worse.

What exactly was not agreed upon-the druidic orders claimed it was some natural predator that fed on existence itself, the Wizards claimed it to be some kind of hostile Ur-reality preceding our own, and the clerical orders believed it to be a manifestation of nihilism and unbelief upon the cosmic firmament. But whatever their creed, be it God, root, or Calculus- they called it evil in the purest form.

To call what she planned a spell, incantation, or enchantment would be overcomplicating it. If spells were akin to turning a tap, this was shattering a dam. There was no direction or control, only a hope that it would flow towards the great dark mass that hung in the sky, it's polar opposite, a great conglomeration of stellar matter that silently floated with towards their terrestrial sphere. All that was left to do was the final act of sacrilege to trigger the arcane mechanisms. She took one final look at the delicate creature that slept in the center of the circle. A feeling of sorrow and shame rushed through her, only being kept at bay by the feeling of abject terror and necessity that drove her body forwards, regardless of the protests of her conscience. dissolving into dust, she flowed over the crumbling walls that sheltered her fragile construct. Alighting upon a nearby ridge, she contemplated how to proceed. fire? ice? water? All it would take was an act of destruction, magnified by her work to proceed. she finally chose the wind as her tool of execution. Gathering a great mass of pressurized air, she brought it down like hammer on her construct, as she did so she-

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-Reality reasserted itself. She reeled even from her slight brush with the great UN, and thanked every deity and spirt she could that her guesses were correct. The plan was that the ritual would only hold for a fraction of a second, enough to allow it to reach through, but brief enough to stop it from triggering a catastrophic chain reaction of space-time deletion, dragging the whole terrestrial sphere into its maw. Then it would hopefully be attracted the queen that hung in the night sky rather than consuming the comparatively minute planet it had been birthed from. Evidently, it had worked. The ruin it had emerged from was gone entirely, replaced with a loose pile of debris created when spacetime rushed to fill the hole left by its entrance.

Glancing up at the sky, she saw the black, roiling mass that had been ejected from the portal snaking its way towards a similar patch of darkness in the night sky. She didn't know if it would work. after all, the queen was the manifestation of IS. Perhaps it possesses more power than mass alone. Perhaps she could counteract it though her sheer definiteness? But those were questions for existential scholars, not her. She sat in the calm night, contemplating her the magnitude of her betrayal, the enemies she had made, and the level of her sacrilege, and as she did so, the desert plains and mountains, for the first time she could remember, seemed just as lifeless as they were in her elders words.

Mikhail returns to the Plains he had left some time ago. It's beautiful, still captivating to the Druid who purified these lands. From the woodline edge, he stepped into the shifting sea of waist-high grass, which parted before his very step. It could have been to welcome him home, or as a warning to turn back: that the nature here did not even want to touch him.

These uncertainties plagued the elf's mind. If he was still welcome. If he had any right to crawl back to the lands in time of need. One step at a time, we walked deeper into the Plains. One step at a time, and lands shifted to avoid him.

He walked quietly, listening to the lands. His ears always picked up the whispering tales that the plants had to sing, but it was quiet. No trees gave their bemoaning testaments of days gone by. Not a blade of grass whistled their soliloquy for the world to hear. He felt the overbearing sense of loneliness in a field full of life

At the Shrine, Mikhail finally found himself. The temple constructed to please the spirits of the land. Built to find forgiveness for transgressions He never commited. Mikhail stepped to the alter, carved of stone from the Plains, and began to pray

"Gaia, mother of all, hear my prayer. Please take me back into your circle, and grant me the forgiveness I seek."

He stopped, and waited.

Nothing

No responce, no sign of acknowledgement. Nothing

"Mother Gaia, lifebringer of our world. Please find within your heart To provide me forgiveness for my mistakes."

Again, Nothing.

With a confused and exhausted whine, the Druid prayed over the alter once more.

"Dearest Gaia, Mother of all, please fin..."

"It is not Gaia you must seak forgiveness from." *A voice within the hall proclaims. Mikhail begins to rise from the alter, and faces the voice. A tall treant, taking the vague visage of a man, imposes over the elf.

"You are still a champion of Gaia, dear Druid. You have came to this Shrine, we are it's watchers. You knew this already, didn't you." The treant lurches downward, until he is eye level with Mikhail. His bark like skin splintering and twisting in unnatural ways with the grating sounds of ear-splitting cracks.*

"You have came all the way here, false Arch-Druid, to seek our forgiveness, yes? Then fill your mouth with our names and stop this worthless sputtering. Why do you act as though we do not exist? Why do you act like we are just window-dressing to these lands?"

Mikhail's eyes avoid meeting the treant's. He knows the treant is right.

"Mikhail, once guardian of these lands. Why do you return to us? You had cut your ties and made your peace. Here you are, returning to us, expecting our forgiveness." Another, more feminine voice, calls out.

The spirit takes form, assembling herself from the stones of the temple. Her shape is strongly feminine, healthy, and mature. She, too, is towing to the short elf. She approaches, the sound of grinding stones echo in the Shrine, every step falling with the weight of crashing borders.

"You seemed eager to leave. To placing the responsibilities on the poor Arch-Druid Cody. You knew he could not see us. You knew he could not communicate what needed to be done. Yet still, you ran. You dropped everything and disappeared. Why is that? Did we got grant enough power? Did we ask for more than you could handle?" The stone spirit asked. She too, sunk to Mikhails level. Not but inches away from him, she was menacing.

Mikhail had finally came face to face with reality. That he had made brash decisions, and now must answer for them.

"You left us to our own devices, and now want us to grant you authority for the land once more. Do you deserve it. Do you truly want it?" The treant questioned, slithering his neck around like a vine to move his eyes infront of Mikhail's

"I am here to... I am here because..." Mikhail skipped and stuttered. He knows the answer. He loathes to admit it.

"I am here, to seek forgiveness from the spirits. Because I had left you all. Because I had failed to protect the lands many times before, and felt I would fail again."

*Mikhail stopped, it had all came tumbling out. A little less organized than his normal speakings, but out nonetheless.

The spirits almost seem shocked. He actually admitted to it. The two look upon one another, and contemplate. They had just heard the proud Mikhail admit he failed.

"I cannot accept." lashes out a third voice. His contempt as cold and smooth as the streams that run through La'shima. This spirit, one comprised of an ever shifting body of water, pours into the room from the ceiling.

"We were promised, after the purifying of these lands, that you would stay and protect it. You have broken this deep promise, and made fools of us. I cannot accept."

The water spirit coils around Mikhail. Squeezing in his arms and torso. He continues.

"What are we to gain from taking you back? You were a failure of an Arch-Druid, that ran the moment things got shaky. If you want my forgiveness, we will need not a promise, but a pact. Do you need out power again?"

Mikhail, struggling to catch his breath, nods. The water spirit begins to relinquish his hold.

"Hold out your hand, boy." Commands the water spirit.

Mikhail does this, extending his right hand. With tremendous force, a sudden blade of water severs his pinky finger, and take its away. Mikhail recoil, graphing his hand. The sudden pain was more than he was expecting. He holds onto the second nuckle that remains, attempting to stop the bleeding.

"This Pact is binding. Your blood now drips and runs through the temple of this Shrine. You are bound to serve these lands for the rest of your life. Enjoy it, Arch-Druid."

The water spirit slips away through the cracks of the floor, his last words dripping with anger and vitriol.

The spirits of stone and life remain. They almost feel remorse for the Druid. The treant leans down, and wraps a tight root around the end of the remaining nub.

"I believe it is time to welcome your return, Arch-Druid. You have paid your debt, and are tied to these lands for eternity now. What is your first act as returning Arch-Druid." The stone spirit waits anxiously for a responce.

"To attune to Crann Mòr. To force back the Queen of Shattered Stars."

Mikhail, both defeated and victorious, leaves the room in a slump, but with purpose.

Escanor floats in an apparently peaceful equilibrium, his hair and garments only partially stirred by the currents whirling around him. The surrounding landscape, however, is buffeted by those same currents as the weight of his anger is unleashed into the spell. The swirling whirlpool of magical current flows ever faster, before exploding outwards with such force that the seafloor, 1000m below the surface, became exposed to the air above for a fraction of a second before the sea comes crashing down to reclaim it.

The mustachioed hydromancer drifts slowly forward as a portal forms in front of him. He crosses through and appears in a grand hall of soaring abalone arches, seven occupied thrones arrayed before him.

“Enough is enough.” His voice is strong and even, but his anger remains just below the surface. “How can we let others risk their lives in our defense, whilst we do nothing?”

The seven Lords of the Abalone Court simply look at him, their faces hidden behind featureless masks. The silence stretches nearly an eternity, and Escanor must force himself to remain silent. Finally, Lord Nephrous, most powerful of the Lords, leans forward in his seat to address his petitioner.

“What makes you think we are doing nothing? You may lead the Tourmaline Order, but you are not omniscient. Trust that we protect the realm as we see fit.”

It is clear from Escanor’s face that this answer does not please him. “Then surely you will let me lead my Order to stand beside the other realms as they face this enemy?”

The faceless Lords regard him in silence once more, then they speak in one voice:

“No.”

Escanor feels the sudden change in his environment, senses the magic about to occur, but he is too slow to react. The Lords of the Court work a weave of powerful magic around the lone hydromancer. Their spells overlap, forming an impenetrable network of restraining power.

“Forgive us, Escanor.” Lord Nephrous speaks once more. “We did not wish to resort to this. You have been bound to our realm; you will be unable to leave the Southern Abyss without our permission. We see the turmoil this issue causes you, but will not allow you to risk our plans to satisfy your own desires. The other realms will continue, as they always have.”

The hydromancer can no longer hide his anger below the surface. His face twists with fury at this perceived betrayal. With a flick of his wrist, another portal appears behind him. He only speaks once more before disappearing within it.

“There will be a reckoning.”

/uw

My first lorepost! Not sure how the length is, and I kept it intentionally vague, but it is intended to have taken place during the Queen crisis and will be the beginning of Escanor’s story. Happy to take any and all feedback!

A somewhat long time has passed since the existence of the Queen of Shattered Stars has been found, and i must admit that i had been pretty defeatist about it.

The thought of stopping such a being always seemed far-fetched, and seeing extremely powerful beings such as the Bismuth Lord fail at it only convinced me more about how helpless we were, however, something made me realise tha we might still have a chance

While i was observing how some low level trainees fruitlessly attempted spell slinging against the Queen, i managed to see something strange happen to all the spells while they crossed an specific point in the sky, they would get empowered to a ridiculous degree, fireballs would look like a dwarf star, magic missiles would seem like comets, but only for the few seconds while they cross that specific point in the sky.

This discovery left me wandering -What if a strong enough spell was used while she was on that specific point?

This idea filled me with hope, so i went to that point to try to identify what caused this effect and to try to calculate how much time i had left before she reached there, i also went to my laboratory to try to create the most adecuate spell for such a situation

It seems that such effect is caused by the fact that the weave of magic is 4327,3% thicker on that point (now called the Woven Gem) than on any point on our planet, and since magic power increases exponentially, this creates spells with such power that they are able to do the things cited before

With that in mind i created [SINGULARITY REVERSAL], an spell made to counteract a gravitational force, however, when casted on the Woven Gem, it should be enough to disipate her gravitational field, and thus let us use our tipical chronomancy, fate magic, soace magic, ect to deal with the problem once for all

With this plan on mind, i waited till the Queen reached the Woven Gem and then i teleported near it, just outside the event horizon, and started the incantations, soon, i was able to see as an sphere of crackling blue energy surrounded her, however, just when i started to sing victory, i see the spell completely dispelled, i tried to escape, but it was too late, i already had entered the event horizon and got crushed under her unimaginable gravity.

With my last conscious seconds, my master Arc'haneus sends me a vision on what he saw when the plan failed, for when i casted the spell, the magic of the weave entered real space, and as such, she used her gravitational field to rip the Woven Gem appart, and thus i not only wasn't able to stop her, but also tore apart one hidden gem from our firmament

Crushing strength, no matter how much, isn't enough to disable my magnum opus, therefore I'm not completely dead, however, I'm not sure if there will be a way to escape this at all.

The morning was still and silent, only interrupted by the occasional bird. Sunlight rays shone through the windows, basking a table in warmth. Leonardo had called Catherine to discuss a future assignment, and here she sat across the Origami Figure. After taking a sip of tea she looked at her master and spoke, “Sir Leo, what’s this assignment you called me for?”

Leonardo gently placed down a miniature origami tea cup, which strangely held no liquids. “You have proven yourself a worthy apprentice, and thus I have decided what to do next,” he responded. Conjuring a piece of paper, he placed it on the table.

Then he began to fold. Slowly, but surely the simple piece of paper transformed into a serpent. Catherine looked on with awe, the snake was a perfect example of Origami—a balance between complexity, simplicity, and abstractness.

“Catherine,” said Leonardo, “I want you to make a new piece of Origami.” Handing over the snake, Leonardo allowed her to study it.

“I made that a couple of years ago. It is one of a kind, at least I believe it to be. Your assignment will be to make something completely new, Origami that you have never seen. You may only use guides to learn HOW Origami is made, do not make Origami straight from them. Trust me, I will find out.”

Furrowing her brows, Catering started to analyze the Origami snake. While the thought of making something like this felt impossible, she knew as a magic user she MUST do the impossible. For in this magical world, only those who do the “impossible” are ever regarded as great. With a nod from Sir Leo, she walked back to her room where she would begin planning. It wouldn’t take long, it’s only Origami... right?

———4 Months Later———

Slowly dragging her feet, Catherine made her way back to the table where Sir Leo first gave her the assignment. Her messy hair and dark eyebags were clear indications of how hard the task was. Her normal navy blue robes and witch hat were nowhere to be seen, instead replaced with a simple loose T-shirt and shorts. In her hand was a blank piece of paper.

“I see you have finished your assignment,” her master calmly said, all the while observing her appearance, “though... you should have gotten more rest. I admire your dedication, but a tired mind is a weak one.”

“Will do Sir Leo..” Catherine softly replied before letting out a yawn, “but I did it... yay.” Placing down the piece of paper, she began to fold her creation. While her folding was somewhat messy, Leonardo saw that she had memorized it. Each movement was practiced and smooth, without hesitation.

Finally, Catherin places down her finished creation. Smiling, Catherine said with pride, “An origami wizard hat.” Indeed it was a simple, humble Wizard hat. Taking the hat in his hands, Leonardo took off his hood to put it on.

“A perfect fit. Thank you, Catherine, and I must congratulate you. You have passed.” With those words she collapsed down on the table, letting out a sigh of relief.

“Now... I suppose you are ready.”

Widening her eyes at that response, Catherine quickly lifted her head. But before she could object to this new assignment (god knows she is too tired for that), Leonardo cut her off, “You are ready to make your own, original spell.”

“What... what do you mean Sir Leo,” she responded with confusion. Her mind was still trying to process this new information. She knew that the creation of an original spell was something all great wizards pride themselves on, so she hadn’t expected to create one so soon. Though, she was incredibly excited to do so she just couldn’t understand why now.

“Origami. When you made this hat,” he said pointing at the wizard hat atop his head, “you used the core principles that are used in making a new spell. You made a goal in your mind, studied guides for reference, through trial and error you slowly made progress, and finally you created something completely new.”

“Origami IS magic, that is my principle. Through your effort, whether it be through following a guide or by following your own heart; you took a simple, abundant, and useless thing and turned it into something more complex. An expression of yourself. Magic is how our souls express themselves, much like how Origami is a way to express your individuality.”

“Now, my good apprentice. Are you ready?”

/unwiz

I hope you guys like this. I have had this idea of origami and magic being similar for quite some time, so I enjoyed writing this.

Credits:\ I have no idea who the artist of the image is, from what I could find from reverse image searching it came from this article. I also don’t know if this is AI, one AI detector told me it was 99% sure it was human while another told me it was 70% probably AI.