To Fabrisse’s shock, it took them less than seven minutes to contain all the remaining Clucklebeaks. They couldn’t fly for very far nor for very long, and they always stopped after a while to perform their multiplying ritual, which was basically just an act of intimacy. Lorvan warned that these creatures were aetherically imbued, though, so there was no telling what could happen once they laid an egg.
Fabrisse tried not to picture what an aetherically infused egg looked like. He fai...
2025-06-30 11:04:13 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse tried again.
This time, his arm moved slower, more precise. He focused on the breath before the embarrassment hit full bloom—the dip, not the spike. Just like Liene said. The stone didn’t leave his hand, but his wrist tracked the arc with a cleaner motion.
[Synaptic Thread Recognition: +4% Progress]
Huh. It’s working . . . a bit.
He felt a bit more embarrassed. This knowledge was definitely supposed to be something he should’v...
2025-06-30 11:03:30 +0000 UTC
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“I’m heading out,” Fabrisse said, slinging his satchel over one shoulder and trying to sound casual about it.
The clock struck eight. Outside, the stars had begun their slow reveal across the velvet dome of sky, scattered like forgotten chalk dust across a blackboard. The campus had quieted, save for the occasional echo of a wardstone adjusting itself or the metallic chime of an unsupervised experiment misbehaving two quads over.
Greg, cross-legged on the floor with hi...
2025-06-30 11:02:57 +0000 UTC
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Cuman’s smirk faltered. His eyes turned from Miro to the radiating scorch mark between them, then to the woman striding calmly forward. His posture didn’t change, but Fabrisse could feel that Cuman wasn’t used to being interrupted mid-performance, especially not by someone outside their year.
If he hadn’t failed four times, he would’ve been in the same class as Liene, not Cuman and Severa, both of whom were several years younger than him.
She didn’t look at Cuman. She ...
2025-06-30 11:02:40 +0000 UTC
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Some time had passed since the vault. Probably around forty-seven minutes.
Fabrisse had left Severa’s presence before she could ask more questions he didn’t have the answers for. She hadn’t followed, thank the flame. His hands still tingled faintly from the invocation, and his neck ached a bit even though he hadn’t hit anything.
[System note: Concordance spells always left a trace.]
The spell was done, but it was like his shame had left a splin...
2025-06-30 11:02:21 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse lingered by the pedestal a little longer than necessary. He cradled the Stupenstone like it might protest being returned, turning it one last time in his palm.
The System’s glyph flashed before his eyes.
[Final Step Required: Invocation.]
[Manifest attunement.]
“Put it back in,” Severa said crisply.
Fabrisse’s fingers hovered over the pedestal, but didn’t move. An Invocation? Right. That makes sense. But ho...
2025-06-30 11:02:00 +0000 UTC
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The wards around the containment ring didn’t shatter, but unraveled like silk threads loosening under a sudden draft.
The stone was oddly warm. Fabrisse didn’t think it was any magical, but more like the kind of warmth one felt when they held onto something for too long. It had human warmth. The stone was also denser and more weighty somehow, but he couldn’t tell if it was that different from a normal Stupenstone.
Then the System whispered:
[Stupenstone Reclaimed — E...
2025-06-30 11:01:38 +0000 UTC
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The Lower Containment Annex sat beneath the older wings of the Synod, accessed through a narrow stairwell hidden behind a tapestry depicting the Grand Binding of Witherwyrm Baruchel. It was a dramatic and slightly overcompensating piece of propaganda, which now functioned mostly to hide the most tightly regulated basement on campus.
For those who had no business being there, one needed a Visiting Student Permit of the highest order.
Or, in Severa Montreal’s case, a last name.
2025-06-30 11:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse closed the door behind him and immediately turned to Greg, who was sitting on the floor in front of his bookshelf, carefully re-alphabetizing their emergency snack inventory by expiry date.
“No,” Greg said.
Fabrisse paused. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
Greg adjusted his glasses. “You paused meaningfully in the doorway, looked contemplative, and made a beeline for me instead of your desk. That only ever means ‘Greg, I have a bad idea and need so...
2025-06-30 10:59:52 +0000 UTC
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They reached a tall set of opaline doors etched with celestial runes. Lorvan didn’t knock. The doors opened on their own, soundlessly, like they had been expecting him.
Inside, the air was even cooler, approaching the temperature that’d require Fabrisse to wear a coat. He gave an involuntary shiver, the kind that started between the shoulder blades and traveled down his spine like a dropped bead of ice. The circular chamber beyond was paneled in moonwood and shaped like a perfect do...
2025-06-30 10:59:22 +0000 UTC
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By the time Fabrisse returned to class, he was exactly one hour and twelve minutes late. His robes were damp, his knees were muddy, and he still had a faint duck-feather stuck in his hair, which refused to dislodge no matter how many times he ran a hand through it.
The door creaked.
Every head turned.
Silence fell like a dropped curtain.
It wasn’t just that he was late. Or that he looked like he’d been dragged backwards through a wet hedge.
It was that he was...
2025-06-30 10:59:00 +0000 UTC
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The lower channel ponds weren’t far, but Fabrisse felt like they were venturing into a different ecosystem entirely.
Past the eastern greenhouses and the old chalk tower, the land sloped toward a series of runoff-fed terraces where the Synod kept its minor aquafauna: the silt-swimmers, scale-eels, and the occasional duck-thing that wandered in from the canals and decided to stay. The air smelled even more of moss and charcoal than other parts of the Synod, and a light mist clung to ev...
2025-06-30 10:57:18 +0000 UTC
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The next morning, Fabrisse did the responsible thing: he went back to the Synod.
The world had not ended. The Eidralith had not incinerated him in righteous flame. No magi in crimson robes came knocking in the night. He even got six hours of sleep, which was a personal best under magical duress.
The dormitory hallway was dim and unusually silent as he padded through in socked feet. Maybe everyone else had fled while he slept. Maybe the Synod was under quarantine. Maybe—just mayb...
2025-06-30 10:56:54 +0000 UTC
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It took Lorvan and Fabrisse another three tries to get the correct invocation to access [Skills], which turned out to be a mimicry of the old mnemonic for self-knowledge rites.
As the motion ended with his fingers touching the center of his palm, a tone rang out, softer than before.
Invocation matched with Query Type — [Competency].
[Skills Interface Accessed]
[SYSTEM NOTE: Skill terminology is regionally adjusted. Refer to ...
2025-06-30 10:56:18 +0000 UTC
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The stairs creaked under Fabrisse’s feet as he descended. Their cottage was small and sun-softened, and it looked even more cluttered since the lower floor doubled as kitchen, living room, and informal herb-drying station, depending on the week.
His mother stood near the hearth, sleeves rolled up, wand tucked behind her ear like a pencil. A practical woman with flour-dusted hands and calloused fingers, she looked more like a baker than a mage. Only the faint shimmer of condensed water...
2025-06-30 10:41:23 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse’s room resembled a secondhand bookshop crossbred with a nostalgic attic. It overflowed with annotated journals, old field guides, rejected thesis scrolls, and sentimental clutter no sane person would inventory, and the only reason why it looked remotely neat was because Dubbie insisted on tidying it up, even after Fabrisse had specifically told her not to.
He liked the kind of chaos he’d created. There was a logic to the mess, a cartography of clutter only he could read. Th...
2025-06-30 10:33:46 +0000 UTC
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He tapped his fingers against the side of his knee, glancing again at the fire, then to the glyph logs he’d recorded from his earlier invocations. All four had one thing in common. They could manifest and interact. Maybe there was a linking element that allowed for this manifestation.
If the others existed out there, and were drawn in, then this last one could be something that he had to give up in exchange.
What’s the point of resonance if not to align s...
2025-06-30 10:32:52 +0000 UTC
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Some minutes later, Fabrisse was crouched near the base of a leafless tree, both hands shielding a shallow indentation he’d cleared in the dirt. A few brittle twigs and shaved bark curls lay cradled inside like a nest made of frustration and secondhand kindling. Dubbie had slumped sideways against the tree trunk nearby, arms crossed, head tilted just enough to keep one eye on him out of sheer obligation. Her other eye was already half-lidded in sleep.
[Time Remaining: 36 minut...
2025-06-30 10:30:51 +0000 UTC
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“Invocation for Gentle Currents, Mark II,” Fabrisse announced with all the pomp of a court herald and none of the authority.
“You didn’t bring any scrolls.” Dubbie looked up at him from her perch on a slanted boulder, her cloak bundled tightly around her knees. They had moved to the windward side of Reflection Knoll, where the hill thinned into a patchy ridgeline, offering a clearer view of the valley below—and, more importantly to Fabrisse, slightly better airflow. A proper...
2025-06-30 10:30:20 +0000 UTC
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Tufted with scraggly grass and wind-battered shrubs, the hill rose like a bump on the landscape’s forehead. Fabrisse had named it Reflection Knoll years ago, back when he was ten and decided all significant hills needed names. The name never caught on with anyone else, mostly because the townsfolk of Itakonra Hollow didn’t think a hill with three trees and one ancient mailbox deserved the word ‘knoll’ in it.
The shrine light shone below like fireflies bottled in glass. From this...
2025-06-30 10:29:52 +0000 UTC
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He muttered a string of silent curses and tried to open the skill repository, but nothing happened. He focused harder, willing the system to respond. Open ‘Skill’, he thought. Gain access to ‘Skill’. Acknowledge meat vessel. Hello?
Still nothing.
He reached up and poked at the floating letters.
His finger went right through them.
Fabrisse frowned. “Okay. Maybe . . . maybe it needs ritual context.”
He squared his shoulders and began m...
2025-06-30 10:28:26 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse was not at the Synod anymore.
He was home.
Home-home. Not dorm-home.
Fabrisse didn’t exactly announce his return when he slipped in through the side gate. He’d been sneaking home since he turned sixteen, enough that the boundary wards had stopped reacting and the neighbor’s cat now expected treats.
His house wasn’t far from the Twelvefold campus, but it was still far enough that nobody came here unless they meant to. The Kestovar home sat tucked ...
2025-06-30 10:27:48 +0000 UTC
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No one really knew what the Eidralith was. Supposedly, it had been unearthed from a crater older than the Synod. Some called it divine. Others suspected it was just very ancient, as ancient as the meteor that had given magic to all the lands itself.
Fabrisse also didn’t know the answer. But at least today, as the box flew like a meteorite and slammed directly into his face, he learned that the Eidralith could hit like a gods-damned mule cart.
It was less like a divine moment and...
2025-06-30 10:27:04 +0000 UTC
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Severa’s robes scintillated with thousands of minuscule interwoven wardthreads as she ambled up the dais. She bowed before the floating Eidralith with exacting reverence before commencing the Invocation of Concordance.
Unlike utility or battlecasting—where incantations were often raw, sharp, and focused on effect—the spells for Eidralith resonance were ceremonial in nature. These rites, taught only to upper-echelon students and flamekindlings, were aetheric alignments meant to dem...
2025-06-30 10:26:40 +0000 UTC
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The cathedral smelled like wax.
Fabrisse Kestovar slid through the side passage of the sanctum with the pace of someone who had been very late. The sanctum, a towering crescent-shaped chamber big enough to house a thunderbird, served both as cathedral and ceremonial hall for the Twelvefold Flame, one of the oldest mage orders on the continent. Today, however, it was under the administration of the Unified Synod of Thaumaturgic Study, the academic branch of the Order, tasked wit...
2025-06-30 10:26:19 +0000 UTC
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“Your dog has died! Kill the demon now!” Lorvan Lugano shouted as his student Fabrisse Kestovar held his wand aloft, face twisted in some vague approximation of anguish.
Mentor Lorvan is right, Fabrisse thought. Focus on the dog.
Bunsen was a good dog. Loyal and fuzzy, though not especially bright. He liked sausages, hated thunder, and once peed on the Headmaster’s boots in front of a visiting dignitary. That was a good day.
They were walking home fro...
2025-06-30 10:25:43 +0000 UTC
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2025-04-16 11:50:12 +0000 UTC
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Added more to an existing chapter so now it is long enough to be its own chapter.
“Here, we have a table for you!” The tavern owner pointed at Blorbo as Ducaz set him down on the ground, as if Blorbo was the tavern’s property.
As Blorbo’s legs were roughly thunked against the tavern floor, a warm, sloshing noise of spilled ale washed over him. Marin had already sat down and slapped a jug of ale onto him. “Good ale!” Then he gestured for the pa...
2025-04-13 20:47:09 +0000 UTC
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2025-04-07 17:07:37 +0000 UTC
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2025-04-07 10:43:41 +0000 UTC
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