Augmentation magic was simple enough, and could make me look however I wanted. I could pretend to be young for all of my life, but it wouldn’t extend my life at all. Elves had lives that were nearly immortal. They would see several hundred generations of other races come and go, and would keep living. They would still look like they were in their 20’s until they were well into their second millennium. And she was clearly already nearing that age. I knew I wanted to keep her from the heartache of falling for another human, but that’s what I was, and I was clearly falling for her.
Rogs found me in the library by my fourth day there. He was worried I hadn’t come to drinks for a while. And of course, En hadn’t known or seemed to care what I was up to. She seemed content to let me tinker and explore without intervening. It was probably just her avoiding the need to yell at me after I had been the one to almost die. She hadn’t raised her voice at me, or even shown that she was upset with me about the situation in the dungeons… But Rogs couldn’t get anything but anger out of her, so of course he came to pester me about it next.
“You’ve been gone for like two weeks!” He shouted. I shushed him.
“For fucks sake, this is a library, you meathead. And it’s been maybe four days.” I corrected.
“Yeah, but you usually break from the library to come have drinks at least… What’s up? Why haven’t I heard from you?”
“I’m just working on something. S-Something important to me.” I stuttered a bit.
“What’s so important to you you’d ignore your friends? Enpi has been so mad at you, she can’t even talk to me without saying how stupid we both are to have kept going in the dungeon, how we should have known better. It’s a bummer! I just want the old group back together. Come with me tonight? PLEASE?!” He whined, his finger once again jabbing into my shoulder muscle with a force that would likely leave a bruise, but I knew he wasn’t totally wrong with the comment about abandoning my friends.
“Okay I’ll be there!” I flicked his thick finger from my shoulder.
He returned it and asked “But what are you doing in here? You never answered.”
A sigh of resignation and another few prods and I relented. “You can’t tell her this is what I’m doing… But I would want to invite you to join me if it worked anyways.” I shrugged off his hundredth finger jab this morning and pointed to the book.
He looked entranced by it for a moment as if I was showing him the answers to life itself. Then he turned back to me with a twinkle in his eyes. “You know I still can’t read that.” he teased. “Can you tell me what you’re doing now?”
“gods damn it. I’m searching for a way to swap races. Not just visually, but like… Actually be another race. I’ve been searching the Augmentation magic, but I can’t find anything about it.”
“That’s because it would be Life magic.” He shrugged as if the answer was as obvious as that. “Changing your race, your magic, your abilities? That would be Life magic. Though, nobody has ever achieved becoming a race with a longer life than they were born with. At least there are no tales about it.” He shrugged and gave me a knowing look as if my simply talking about being another race was enough for him to understand exactly what I wanted to do with that magic.
“I… Okay. I’ll start looking there then. Thank you. And I’ll see you tonight for drinks. Promise.” I hugged him and began cleaning up the books and scrolls I had strewn around me.
Normally this was when Rogs would bounce out of the library and back to his regularly scheduled chaos. He wasn’t moving. Instead he spoke. It was soft as if speaking the words any louder would crush me. Maybe that was the case. “She isn’t going to let you in any more as an Elf than she has with you as you are now, you know.” He smiled sadly, and knowingly. I stopped and looked at him, wondering what he meant. He took the pause in stride and continued. “She told you about her first love right? Brought up he had a short life. She did the same to me once upon a time. She failed to mention he was an Elf too.”
My jaw had dropped and I was locked in on the story now. “Why… How did he die? Elves are known to be borderline immortal.”
“Borderline.” he shrugged. “I wasn’t there, obviously, but he was the only other member of her adventuring party. They had found a symbol in a dungeon at the base of a huge crater known as the world wound. He touched it. It must have been a trap, because it was warm to him. Within a few days, he had melted alive from the inside out. She had to watch him, unable to help as her magic did nothing. In fact, it seemed to speed up the process. He was already too full of magic. Overloaded with the stuff. That was what caused his death in the end. Her spells could do nothing but ease his pain until his guts turned to liquid and he drowned inside his own body. They tried to use Death magic to siphon off the excess magic, but it almost killed the Death magic caster who came to help.”
“Wh-What was the curse that caused all that?” I asked, worriedly.
“Nobody knows. In fact, nobody has seen the symbol before or since. Anyone who makes it down that far usually doesn’t come back out alive at all. I think he used his Death magic to siphon the extra magic from her as well, to keep her from getting hurt. She never told me the story, but I found it in an archive of a paper from the time.. They called it ‘The Matter of Life and Death’. I’m sure whoever came up with that got a hefty raise at the time.” he gave an uncomfortable chuckle. “Please don’t tell her I told you all this. She would kill me if she even knew I read about it.”
“She wouldn’t kill you. she loves you way too much. Maybe it’s more of a brotherly love, and mine may be sisterly, but I still know she loves us.” I smiled at him and he relaxed a bit. “Where did you find this archive? Not in this library, I’m sure.”
Rogs nodded “I still have the paper. I figured I should hold onto it, in case it ever comes up why I know the story. I keep it at home. I’ll go grab it for you. I know you and your big brain will figure out some way to keep that from happening to someone else.” I smiled at his compliment and watched him leave, before shuffling off towards the Life magic section.
It took me a few hours to pinpoint the spell to change races. You could easily move to a race with a shorter life span, and as long as your magic remained at the same levels, you could go back to your original race. The problem began when trying to go to a race with a longer life. Somehow, the magical power differential actually shortened the life of people who made themselves into elves. Life magic had lengthened their life by some, but inevitably they passed away younger than intended, by quite a stretch. humans who were only 30 had tried and ended up dying as an elf 5 or 6 years later.
But it was a magic differential. It was about the power you retained during the spell. Rogs brought me the paper that explained the situation with Enpi’s past. It didn’t use her name, but from the personality of the elf in the writing, it seemed fairly obvious it was our friend. I understood how Rogs figured it out but still didn’t know where he found this archive. She didn’t draw the symbol that had caused the reaction of course, worried it would curse someone else through the paper. She didn’t seem to describe it at all. Just said not to go into the world wound.
It was a place everyone was aware of, and nobody dared approach. From the paper’s description, it seemed that it was probably due to her influence on the matter. She had essentially helped barricade the surrounding area to make sure nobody would travel there again. She was making studying this very difficult. Though, she would make it even more difficult if she knew what I was planning. As would Rogs. I decided against telling either of them my plans.
The next step though, was death magic. If it could siphon off excess magic from another, maybe I could reflect excess magic from my body, so I wouldn’t take in more than I needed… Maybe a cross between Life and Death could protect me from my own stupidity. I was going to try this anyways. I was dedicated to a life as long as hers so I would never need to hurt her, and I would fight to the death to get there.
The biggest problem I had to face first; with the transformation. It seemed that most wizards who used this spell lost their ability to learn new magic when they changed races to an elf. They suggested this was likely due to excessive use of their magic reserves, and due to that, they would simply lose the ability to read magic script. They would also lose the ability to cast more than one type of magic. If this happened to me, I would be screwed. Without Life magic, I would not be able to keep myself alive after the change, and without Death magic, I wouldn’t be able to keep myself alive long enough to leave the dungeon. Though, there was a spell that used Death magic that allowed passing excess power out into the ether, it wouldn’t specifically stop it from entering you in the first place. I didn’t know what the levels would need to be at to complete the change, and I didn’t know if there was a way to balance this magic without both Life and Death.
I did understand myself to be a fool, but I was the same fool who crashed a motorcycle over a cliff and got back in the saddle before my bones healed in my last life. I love my life, and I love the life I had found here just as much. I cherished the love I had found in my friends, and I appreciated Rogs worry about both me and En, but I needed her love in a more carnal way than I cared to admit to him or even myself.
He knew of course. He knew from the moment that I woke up, and looked up at En like she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, because she was. I still called her an angel regularly when she wasn’t present. He knew my mind hadn’t changed like my body had. He knew me as much as I knew this version of myself, if I were to be honest. He watched me grow into the woman I was. He knew I was rash and he knew I was planning something stupid. That’s why he left me the archive as a warning. But I took it as a blessing. It was no warning to me, because I had nothing in my brain that would let me give up on my dreams. I wanted Enpi in my life, for the rest of our lives. I would do anything to make that happen.
Then I found it. Life magic that explained how one wizard kept his powers as an elf. He died within days, from overuse of his power. His body needed more than he could recover. There was therefor only one note on the subject from him before his untimely death. He had channeled the power in through a crystal. It was known as a power crystal, but the image that was provided was simply quartz. It was specified that it’s very common, even on this planet, so I needed to focus on finding a large piece. If I could channel my powers through the stone, the life magic that I used to change my body would take the magic force from your life, and not from your magic ability. If I could use the crystal as storage for my magic instead, putting my wizard casting into it, before transforming, and using the excessive magic from this curse to fuel my change… Maybe I could give myself a long life, and keep my magic? Maybe… Or maybe I was in for a gruesome death. If that was the case, I would need to stay far away from her when I died. She didn’t deserve that pain again.
Another few weeks of practice, planning, worrying, and preparing, and Rogs was getting seriously worried about me. Though En and I hardly talked, I would often find her coming to my bed in the middle of the night. She would play with my hair, or my belly, run her hands up and down my sides, all while pressing herself to me. At one point, I switched positions before she came to bed and wore the slutty outfit Rogs had picked for me months ago. She laid down as my little spoon, letting me hold her close to me.
That morning, she woke up after me, and still in my arms. I didn’t move a muscle until she woke up, trying to pry herself from my grip as gently as she could as not to wake me, not realizing I was busy taking in the smell of her hair, and the way my newly sized arms could barely make it around her chest, but fit perfectly snug around her belly, while my own chest pressed into her back. I didn’t play with her hair or run my fingers over her for fear of scaring her out of the new routine. She seemed to only come to my bed when she was certain I was asleep. And while I sometimes was, I had mostly gotten very good at pretending. It was worth every second I got with her, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Not yet.
Eventually though, it was time. I started wearing Rogs outfit every night, just because it gave me some clothes, but let me feel her skin on mine as much as possible. She had spent the night holding me like normal, but this time, she was running her fingers along the crevices of my legs as they bent at my hips. She traced the v, dancing her fingertips across my pubic bone, and driving me crazy. I moved my hips ever so slightly in time to her playful touches, and found her ever so gently lifting her fingers when my hips moved towards them, so the pressure would stay minimal. She let her hand slip below my pajama pants and I let slip the faintest of moans as her fingers touched me in such a vulnerable spot. She lifted her head from the pillow and whispered “Are you awake?”
I held my tongue, but after several minutes of her paused, hand frozen below my underwear, I nodded so slightly it matched the volume of her whisper.
“Stupid girl.” she said, and kissed my neck from behind. “You could have told me sooner.”
“I didn’t want you to stop.” I whispered in return, my voice hoarse with need.
“I don’t have to stop. Just ask me next time, okay? Talk to me, girl. I miss you.” She held me, teasing soft moans from me at every brush of my skin until we fell asleep together, my hands wrapped backwards around her back, and one of hers slipped into the hem of my pants.
This time, I woke up to her holding me just like that. We had woke up at the same time, and she smiled at me while I clambered out of bed. She stayed laying there, looking up at me with bright eyes. There was something new in the way she looked at me that morning. Something I could spend forever searching for, because it just felt so right.
I knew what I had to do to keep that look in her eyes. “I’m going to go out of town for a little bit. I have to go somewhere away from other people to try a new form of magic I came up with. I think it might help a lot of people if it works, but I don’t want to affect anyone else with it…” I lied, anxiety on my face while hers twisted into slight worry.
“You’ll let me know if you need help with something, right?” She asked.
“Always.” I lied again. My heart broke at the fib, but I couldn’t let her worry about me. I was doing something she had a very bad experience with. And I had just gotten her trust. She’s just given me her heart. That was why I needed to try this. Now, before it was too late. I needed to give her the happy, long life together that she deserved. The life that I wanted. The kind that would make us both happy together.
I was out the door after a few minutes of preparing and packing. On my way out, she said “It looks empty in here without your stuff. Makes me feel like you’re moving out.” I turned to face her and her frown was almost pleading. She was begging for reassurance that I was all too willing to give her.
“I’m not going to be gone for long. And I hope to stay with you for a very very long time.” I smiled, fully meaning every word this time.
It took about a week for me to reach the world wound on foot. It took another few days to find a way down that wasn’t just a cliff. The crater was enormous. It had to be at least 5 miles wide and 2.5 miles deep. I trekked down into the depths and it took almost a whole day just to get to the bottom.
There had been a border setup on the outskirts of the crater, but nobody manned the small walls and it was easy enough to step over. By the time I reached the bottom I could feel the magic. It was quite clear that this was a site with immense magical power. I knew some people claimed this site was the birthplace of magic, and I could feel from the magnitude of it here, that it could be true from just the concentrated the power. Clearly whatever had made this crater was still down here in some capacity. And of course, right at the center was the a dungeon entrance. A makeshift ladder that was weathered and falling apart lead down into the room that looked like it’s roof had been blown clean off. The ladder went down to a platform that hung over emptiness. The stairs that had once lined the walls all the way to the ground floor had mostly crumbled, but a thin section of most of the steps, and a handrail just above them, was still connected to the outer wall of the stairwell. I grabbed the handrail and shimmied my way down each step.
Death magic emanated from me, pushing the excess magic from my body and into the surrounding air in such condensed, raw power that it looked like I was glowing. It was a sickening, bright green glow that had me worried about what I might find down here.
The last 10 feet of the stairwell had no ledge to step on, so I tied a rope to the hand rail where the last step still clung to the stone. I looped the rope loosely through my belt and leaned back to test the hold. It seemed stable enough for a 10 ft drop. I kicked off and repelled the rest of the way quickly, tugging the rope once more to make sure I wouldn’t be trapped down here. It didn’t budge. I walked to the doorway at the bottom and looked out at the large open room before me. It was destroyed. Clearly decimated from an explosion. But the source of this insane magic was still lower.
This place was not like the other dungeons. They had all been reminiscent of a place or type of building I had visited in my past life. This place was entirely different. It was something I hadn’t even seen on a TV show before. The room around me was enormous and empty and several pools of water bubbled with magic under metal grates. Following the source of the magic, I found a tube at the center of the room and next to it was a pit with a ladder that went down into the depths. This pit held no water, but I could feel the water close to me. My Death magic was making me glow more bright green now than the glow from my bewitched candle. I extinguished the flame to put more effort into focusing on my Death magic. It was crucial at this point. I couldn’t risk too big a dose of this power until I was ready.
I lowered myself down the ladder, and couldn’t see much of anything. But there was a hand print on the side of this tube in the dust and grime that had covered the tube. I stayed back from it while I pulled out my quartz. I still wasn’t seeing a symbol like the one the archive warned about, but there was a thick layer of dust I would probably need to remove to see anything clearly. I figured all I needed was to raise a hand and wipe it off and I would be faced with the mythical, cursed symbol. I readied my crystal, and emptied my power into it, leaving only my life magic. The lack of death magic immediately filled me with a horrifying level of magic, increasing every second. I acted without thinking. I reached for the tube and called on the spell. The only change I noticed at first was my ears twisting out of their normal shape. The life magic stayed with me, but all the rest of my magic seemed to sap from me. I felt fairly normal as I focused all the extra power into the spell, I was holding the first known source of magic, world wide. I couldn’t help my curiosity. I brushed the dust away, but what I saw was something I would never have expected. My hand shot from the tube. A circle, with three triangular cones coming out of it at different sides, meeting the outside edge of a larger circle. I leaped back from the tube, and began climbing. My body still changing from the spell, I didn’t think about the death magic or keeping the magic from overwhelming me, but I certainly knew I needed to get away from this place.
The quartz dropped from my focus as I looked for the stairwell, and my full magic returned to me. That’s when I saw it. It had shaken me to see a radiation symbol in this world, but that was nothing compared to reading the sign that was engraved into the concrete wall over the stairwell. As my power had returned so had my ability to read English. The same English that said “Los Angeles National Nuclear Reactor. Bringing power to the people of America since 2075.”
The realization of what I read had to wait, as I felt the spell complete it’s changes in me, and the power around me began to become overwhelming again. I focused on my Death magic once more and ripped as much excess magic from my body as I could, even digging into the new, much larger reserve that I found within my new soul. If I took too much out it could be bad. I knew I had to regulate. But I could also somehow feel the ‘right’ amount. Balancing my magic to give myself the perfect levels on my way out was more difficult than climbing the rope back to the stairs, or using those stairs to climb up to the exit. Focus was the key, and panic was the enemy. But I couldn’t help but panic.
I hit the fresh air outside the reactor plant and began to run. My body was weird and different but mostly on the inside. It seemed fine. I didn’t feel like I was melting alive. But I also put my fucking hand on a melted down nuclear reactor… What did it mean?! Was this earth? Arthen? Really? Claxx was probably a mix of CA and LAX. FUCK And Muriac?! I felt so dumb. What kind of Murican was I? I couldn’t see it until now? But how could I be so stupid? And worse, how could this have happened?! Nuclear energy wasn’t magic! It wasn’t even slightly as flexible as magic. How could this be possible? How could I be alive? Knowing that Enpi had grandparents who said they had lived for nearly 10 thousand years… How old does that mean I am? How many years did it take for the world I knew to become one of magic, mythical races, terrifying monsters, rare beasts? What happened to the world I knew?
Did I not die that day? Was that why my face was still destroyed? So many questions and yet, the answers to each seemed to be hidden behind more questions. I ran and ran until I was out of breath and then I kept running. Magic fueled my mad dash for a while, and then I was walking, and then I could hardly stand.
Despite my weakened state, I refused to let my body stop once until I had cleared the crater. I made sure I was only barely above the level of magic my body made clear to me I would need to be at to maintain what I hoped would be a long and prosperous life as an elf. Then I used the power that was over my limit and converted it ALL to Life magic, pumping the healing through my body. I filled myself with healing and prayed to all the gods I did not know. My body seemed fine though. Too normal. I sat down in the grass. I was confused, lost and afraid. I felt more powerful and at one with nature than I ever had, though fear told me it might just be my insides beginning to melt from radiation poisoning. Exhausted, I found myself falling asleep under a tree on the edge of the crater. Without a way to stop myself, I drifted off into sleep.
My dreams were confusing, with radiation swirling through my body, creating magic and fueling the innately impossible things that my world had never been. No wonder computers weren’t needed anymore if magic had sprouted from their destruction. I found myself flying over the earth as I knew it, spinning through space at the same pace as the earth, as the pace rapidly increased. The universe flying around me as the world began to glow brighter every night, and green receded to the endless march of technology.
Then one day, the world slowed back down. I could see a beacon on the planet near LA. And then there was the boom. The light hit first. A flash of hot, piercing light that swept outwards all the way to my spot above the atmosphere. Then the crater opened as a shock wave traveled outwards much slower. The wave flattened buildings, cut the lights on every building, and knocked down trees for several thousands of miles. Eventually the shockwave made it to me, and even in the emptiness of space, I heard the thunderous clap of a bomb so powerful it wiped out all life on this half of the planet. Before the shockwave finished its travel outwards, the mushroom cloud sprouted from the earth. I watched as it drifted up and up and up, before the wind caught it, and the planet began to spin once more, while the cloud spread and covered the earth. All of it was dusted in the radiation. This was a mass extinction event and I watched as everything died. There were no longer any lights anywhere on the planet, and the earth was black and white with ash and death. Even the oceans were covered in a layer of radiation.
The spinning grew faster than it had before and I watched as the earth spent centuries burying the ruble of what humanity had created. The earth rose and reformed. Tectonic plates shifted as I watched. The earth became green again, and then what could only have been a few thousand years later, I started to see light again. Light on the earth. And then I was sinking in closer to the planet as I saw the life who was holding that light. Fire being lit by creatures. Dwarfs, with their smaller, rotund stature and their stone tools. Then the planet moved beneath me again, pulling me to a forest, where elves were building homes out of the trees and the woods. It was beautiful, and it melded into the natural landscape without any contradictions. Then I saw animal people living near where their animal counterparts would have lived, catfolk in the forests, kitsune in the plains and woods, frogfolk in the marshes, and lizardfolk in the mountains. There was a vast ecosystem growing, and while all still very primitive, they were living, breathing, and real. As real as myself. It seemed impossible.
As the world wound zoomed back into view, I watched as elves on the outskirts began weaving the poison of the area into magic. It started with simply Augmentation to turn a rock into food, as the area was still mostly barren of it. But they used their newfound power to help other tribes and elves to learn it. The magic spread over the globe and elves were using augmentation to create even more naturally ingrained architecture and lives. I watched as other races stumbled upon the elves, and were given the secrets of magic. Some were able to wield it, while others were not. Some were able to use Life magic to heal. Some were able to use Death magic to strip power and life from others in equal measure. Some were able to Augment. Some to wield the elements. Most were unable to use all of it. Most were unable to use more than one. Then there was someone who could use them all. They were a red skinned, horned creature that looked devilish. I realized it was likely a new race. Possibly a tiefling type of being. They started with the elements, mastering fire before all others, and then used Augmentation to create bountiful food from thin air, a mastery no one had shown before this point over the Augmentation magic.
He was a master in every type of magic before a few years were out, casting anything he desired. I watched all the way to his final breathe, and then… He was next to me. We were out in space again, but together. The earth far below us. Arthen, as it was now known. For the first time in my dream, I heard a voice. He said “You seem to understand more than you should, but also less than you deserve. I wish I had more answers to give, but your studies lead you in the right direction. Keep to them. You will find the answers you seek.” And then he was gone and I was alone again.
I had transitioned back to the earth, now over another Wizard. A master of most, though his elemental skills were less developed. Life and Death seemed to be his specialty. I watched him heal until those who came for him were killed just as easily. Then the earth skipped to his death, and he joined me. “You’re no master of all, but you can never be a master of just one either. You need to learn more. You’ll find yourself eventually.”
“Wait! What is this? This doesn’t feel like a dream anymore!” I shouted, but he was gone. I was alone. In front of a young woman who was healing everyone, but hid her true nature, she would use Augmentation, and Elemental magic in her home under the privacy of her own home. She didn’t share her abilities beyond healing, but she did begin to write. And soon there was a small trove of books and journals that were all written in a language only she knew how to read.
She died peacefully after hiding her books away. “Knowledge is to be shared. Do not horde it, for those who come after you will need to learn from your expertise. And you have plenty of expertise to share. Share news of your world. Share the history of this planet. Share the dangers of magic, the things that only you could know.” she smiled sweetly as she vanished.
“I don’t know anything.” I began to tear up. as the series of wizards kept coming. Showing me their life and their accomplishments and then telling me how I can live up to their legacies before disappearing forever. “I’m so confused and alone.”
Then I opened my eyes in time to see another wizard dying in a large room surrounded by people, all in tears as I was. His voice was soothing next to me when he arrived. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone. Your friends, and the people around you are always there to help, and to protect you. You were the first of us, by birth. You will be the last of us by death. Use that time to spread your kindness, your knowledge, your friendship, and your love with everyone around you. You will be loved in turn. I see good in you.” he practically whispered, but the words struck my soul louder than any of the rest.
I pulled myself back from the planet to try to breath, finding myself drifting in the quietness of space once again. The earth was not there anymore. Then a new voice appeared. “You’ve transcended death, my child.”
I turned to face the new speaker. A shimmering and ever changing light in the darkness, it could have been a series of new stars, had it not been so close to me. “What are you?” I asked, feeling both groggy and weary in my mind, trying to piece together this endless puzzle.
“I am Nethys. God of magic. I was born after you into this world. I was created in the explosion you witnessed here. And I am the one who kept your body safe and in tact after the fall. I felt great potential in you, but I had no idea the true power that you could achieve.” the stars spoke in a fatherly tone.
“I’m just me. I’m just a selfish, reckless, petty child who has no right to wield this or any power.” I growled with more hatred towards myself than was garnished by this god figure.
“You are the first to do so many of the things. Your accomplishments will pave the way for so many, and you will be the father of magic. You’re the first Elven Wizard for starters. A full Elf and a Wizard have never been, because it’s always required more power than existed elsewhere in the world. You found my central reserves and even knew of its dangers before you approached. You deftly battled exposure poisoning, while using your knowledge to bring balance to your magic. You trusted the magic you had and you came out alive and well. More than that, you’re immortal to a natural death. And with your trick with augmentation magic to store your physical ailments, you’ve become immortal for as long as you’d like. You’ve exceeded even my expectations, dear child. And you must, for the love of knowledge, share this new thing you’ve created. I beseech you.”
“I couldn’t even figure out a simple automatic Augmentation spell…. How can you have this much faith in me?” I shuddered.
“You did though. You haven’t needed to test it, but since your last encounter, that small tweak you made of applying the automation to both bodies has created a working version of this spell. And if you had cast the original version onto a magic item that would remain between your bodily changes, it would have also worked without issue. It was never a question of knowledge, or wisdom, but a question of trying again after you failed. Success never comes easy, and when it does, it’s often not worth the victory.” his voice was soft and reassuring, but somehow I still felt like a failure. I still felt the tears rolling down my cheeks.
My eyes opened once more, and I was slumped against a tree on the edge of a crater. The tears were real, and the experience had seemed as far from reality as it was close to the truth. I believed this stary creature. I believed in this god over magic, even though I felt so inclined not to. The first true Elven Wizard. It had an impressive ring to it, but I hardly believed I had changed.
I reached for a puddle on the ground and froze the water, making sure it was a perfectly smooth surface with no air trapped beneath as I did. The ice became a decent mirror on the ground. I looked at myself for a long time. The air whipped by me, pulling my hair in different directions, as I stared incredulously. My emerald eyes remained. My hair had shifted colors to a more wooden colored brown. My skin was pale as the stars in the sky, and light dusting of freckles on my nose and cheeks gave me a very young look. I blushed at the radiance of my own beauty. But I needed to know… If I had changed this much.
My body shifted before my eyes. The Emerald eyes staying put, and the colors of my skin and hair remained, though when looking at my male face, I looked nothing like I had in my past life. And none of the scars remained. I had been given a fresh start. A clean slate and a clean face. No destruction that made me appear undead would mar my chances at a normal life, in whatever body I chose to live. The tears that had stopped a minute ago, were flowing heavily now, though this time with joy, and excitement. Overwhelmed by the reality I once again found myself in, I realized what I had been given, had not just been given. It had been taken. I had claimed this success over nature. I claimed this prize from the gods. And I would cherish it, like I would cherish my life with my friends. My life that would now last for millennia.
Leave a Reply