A Magical Anomaly

Prologue 4

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

Choice:

[x] Hmm… Maybe a smart casual look? White top, brown plaid skirt, white stockings, and brown trainers… maybe a purple bow around the collar for a pop of colour?

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

The smart casual look would be best, always good for any occasion...

Apparently... Maybe.

You glance at yourself in the mirror, narrowing your eyes as you trace your form for anything that might be out of place or odd looking.

Your small earrings are fine, so is the collar and bow you have on, your trainers are comfy to walk around in, should be good for the day.

With a satisfied nod you glance at the time. 10 or so minutes until Alice is supposed to be here… Your makeup’s fine, doesn’t seem caked on, even with your magically” induced amnesia… maybe it's muscle memory or something?

At this point, you’ve decided that your amnesia thing is definitely magical shenanigans. No point in trying to really understand what it blocks and lets through. You doubt you need more stress as it sits…

You’re already trying to be a magical girl… maybe even a villain to them. That can only mean more things to do… Well, you might as well enjoy what free time you have for now.

Another nod, and you smooth down your skirt, double check that your sleeves cover your arms properly and step out of your room.

You hear footsteps padding on the wood as you close your door, turning to Lillia offering you a cookie of sorts as she munches on one of her own.

“Mum made them a bit ago.”

You tilt your head slightly but take the offer either way. Enjoying the sweet as Lillia hums quietly. You’re broken out of your trance after a moment as Lillia keeps talking.

“So, Mum also said… something… uh… ah right, don’t forget your t-brace when you go, she said she left it on the entrance table, got your phone and everything right?”

You raise an eyebrow but give her a nod at that, no idea what a t-brace is, but if its on the table, it shouldn’t be too hard to puzzle out.

Lillia nods back at you, giving you a quick hug before she slips into her room, which you notice is the one next to yours. You slowly finish your own cookie and glance back at the time. Pushing yourself off the wall and heading to the door.

The entrance table has… something on it. Like a small bracelet made of white metal, blue lines of… tech? magic? Something running across its surface. There’s a few of them, one for each family member you assume. A quick inspection shows that they each have a “T-Brace” carved into the underside, and there’s a flat plate near the bottom with a name on each. You quickly grab yours and slip it onto your left arm as you take a deep breath.

The doorbell rings.

And so you open the door.

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

POV: ???

She could say with absolute certainty that she was bored.

You’d think that being in the middle of the cosmos, staring at an infinite number of stars would make for a wondrous sight. And it certainly did.

For the first hundred, maybe thousand years. It was certainly interesting to watch how the gasses became stars, how stars became black holes, and how those ended themselves.

But she was bored now.

Perhaps sneaking into the Fae queen’s lair and trying to sneak her crown out was a bad idea. Not that she’d ever admit that it was.

It was a perfectly normal idea. It wasn’t her fault that the queen embodied the concept of perception and order.

It did make her wonder though…. Why did cosmic entities born before humans take such a noble bearing… Why was she a queen at all? Why did they even call themselves the Fae?

Then again, she herself regarded herself as a noble lady. An honest one, with good intentions.

Honestly, the queen could get sucked into the eldritch sea for all she cared, mind warping, husband stealing bitch.

The cage of realities shook. A woven sphere of infinity shaped and warped into a crystal ball to contain her.

Technically it only did so because she allowed it.

She could have broken free whenever she wanted.

But nothing interesting really happened, and it let her get away from Queen Manipulative Bitch.

So she waited, biding her time.

And she liked to think it paid off.

Especially when she found that weird Anomaly thing. Was she human? She supposed. About as human as a human could be.

If you ignore the double core. Well, she supposed there was a human with four naturally occurring cores already….

But two cores was certainly interesting, especially when they were such… opposing elements.

Who knew that a Temporal Core and a Void core could coexist? She didn’t… and yet, against Fates rules, they did.

So very odd, but it definitely piqued her interest.

The cage shattered, reality warping into an infinitely long corridor, panes upon panes, layers upon layers, like looking through two opposing mirrors, she stared at her reflection.

She was a noble. So she had to look the part of course.

…Though the tentacles probably weren’t very flattering… or the eye stalks.

Speaking of eye stalks…

She turned around.

‘Could you not?!’

The eyes stared back at her. Hundreds, Millions of eyes peered into her very existence, her very essence.

The old geezers were watching her again. She was surprised…

They were usually too busy being… What was it again? “Gap Moe?” or something?

Someone had introduced Cthulhu to anime girls… And now half the eldritch gods were running around Earth as “Cute” anime girls with tentacles and reality warping powers…

The other half were doing the same as “Cute” monsters.

She didn’t know what to think of that.

How demeaning was it that an Eldritch being, a being so old they were here before reality itself came into being, compressed itself down into the form of a 12 year old human female and played child…

Well…

She couldn’t fault them too much. She’d entertained the thought herself.

Being formless was rather annoying after a few hundred millennia.

“What?”

The eyes continued to stare at her. Some were like a lizards, some like a fish, some had weird stars or sparkles in them, probably the gap moe group as she called them.

The eyes clumped together and merged, growing larger and larger as they all combined into one large, singular entity.

The sole eye dwarfed her rather small form. Well, if she had a form, it would be small.

Presence was probably the better word? She’d go with Presence for now.

It was probably supposed to be intimidating.

But she was a Noble. With a capital N.

So she called upon a fan, star light collapsing in on itself and weaving itself into one to cover her grin as it snapped open. The ‘wind’ blowing one of the panes of reality slightly sideways…

It was fine, nothing would come of that… nothing major at least.

Her ‘foot’ stepped forward, metaphorical heel clicking on the metaphorical floor. And she glared at the entity in front of her.

It was kind of strange now that she noticed, that she was gaining a form after being nothing for as long as she was… other than a Noble.

A dress made of a blackhole woven into form, stars dotting its center and cinching it tightly around a thin waist, a buckle made from a few realities shaped into place into a twisting distortion like a heat haze. Two sleeves split off from the dress, she liked her shoulders to be able to feel the cosmic wind thank you very much.

The sleeves floated down, starting from her elbow and down to her wrist, turning into a comfortable pair of fingerless gloves on her palms. The white icy trail of a comet swirled around her left arm, leaving its mark until it collided with her hand.

She dutifully ignored Tzeentch as they prattled on about why Yandere was the best dere. They weren’t even from this damn layer of reality! How were they even here!? Were they even eldritch gods?!

She shook her head. Running a hand through the cosmos that had become her hair before flicking it to dismiss him.

Everyone knew that Nyarlathotep was right, the spawn didn’t say much… or anything at all. But she knew that he was right that Tsundere was the best dere.

She blinked a few times in surprise. A red dwarf in one eye and a brown in another fading and existing as she did so.

She’d gotten sucked into their nonsense hadn’t she?

Ugh.

Whoever said Eldritch gods were meant to be terrifying had never met Magh’rathlak…

Though she was more seductive than scary…

Scary seductive…

She sighed and looked down at her now human like form then back up at the one eye that had become many.

“You could do this yourselves you know? Be less into the… is it weebness or japanness?”

They ignored her for the “pleb” she was.

She ignored them for the weirdness they were. Even if they had given her a voice that enchants the mundane with a whisper…

“Fine fine, go be… ugh… ‘waifu’s’ or whatever it is you idiots want to be. I’m finally gonna go grab me a girl.”

She ignored the hollering and hoots from the lesser spawns… and the pat on the back from Grandpa Nurgle…

He wasn’t her grandpa. He wasn’t even from this reality. Seriously, how was he here?

A shake of her head, a shake of her hand. And they were gone. And so was she.

Time to find that anomaly.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

POV: Filia

Alice…. Alice was… Alice.

On one hand, your family was right. She was blond… and busty.

On the other….

She was doing something called cosplaying.

You had no idea what that was, though Alice had explained it at your confused look. Apparently she was trying it out for the first time today.

She said she was cosplaying as someone called… History? No Histoire?

You, again, had no idea what or who that was.

Though you guessed it was a fairy. Mainly because Alice had a pair of blue and pink transparent fairy wings floating behind her. And they were floating, you’d checked.

Honestly, she looked rather cute dressed as she was. She’d tied her blond hair into two pigtails with a purple and white headdress on her head while a custom ordered purple graduate gown lined with golden designs, a white folded down collar and a teal tie covered her body.

She couldn’t fly or anything. The wings were made from a pair of hologram emitters built into the dress according to her.

Though everything worked together to compliment her looks, especially her cheery looking blue eyes and bright, teeth filled smile.

The shopping trip had been oddly fun, though it had taken a train ride from your town to the main city. You’d thought someone would be unnerved or annoyed at your lack of verbal response, but Alice pushed through that with the tact of a speeding train full of endless chatter.

You were pretty sure you could have tuned her out and she wouldn’t have even noticed.

How the quiet you had gained such a talkative and loud friend you have no idea.

Maybe it was fate?

You shook the thought away as you carried a pair of bags through the mall. A large, multi-story building built more vertical than horizontal. Alice mentioned there being a hundred or so floors. Though you had only been on floor 80 and above. The lower ones were, in her words, “full of cheap knock off brands”. You’d taken her word for that.

Apparently, your family was well off, or at least well off enough to shrug off purchasing designer brands. Again, you’d gone with Alice's suggestion for those, and from the lack of odd looks, you assume you’d let her choose on any other trips the two of you had taken.

The buildings were… kinda weird honestly…

You’d noticed it as you’d walked around. Most of the walls were made of painted metal, any glass had what looked like a metal roller or cover of sorts retracted into it, while all the closed shops had their metal covers down, forbidding entry in their entirety…

You imagined this place looked like a metal maze if it were to be somehow locked down.

Currently, the two of you had sat down at an ice-cream bar.

Because eating ice cream in winter, it was winter apparently, was a thing.

You couldn’t really complain as you bit into a sandwich of crunchy biscuit and soft vanilla though.

Alice’s chattering had died down as you ate. And it gave you a bit to organize your thoughts.

Or it would have.

Were it not for a blue glowing circle that lit up under her feet…

“Huh? A teleport circle? Wh-“

And then she was gone. In fact… you quickly looked around, and saw that everyone around you was gone.

A siren started wailing, and you saw hundreds of hexagons form a dome around the building as you ran for the window…

And then space ripped open in the central courtyard you had been eating in. A jagged tear splitting the air wide as a hand with too many fingers wretched the gap wider. A glowing blue eye stared at the floor, looking around as you ducked out of view, purely on instinct.

Something thumped onto the ground, the metal on a table squealing in protest before giving way as a larger thud fell down. The sound of chairs scratching on the ground and tipping over.

You didn’t dare look…

But you could… [ Peek over the half wall you’re behind, see what fell. ]