Fourteen days were left until the harvest festival, and every day the death toll grew.
Cows and pigs killed as their meat got prepared to smoke. My parents dragged me to no more slaughter festivities, though the hag that refused to give me her name did from time to time.
I feasted on souls like some kind of monster, the lich memories reminding me that the part I consumed were merely the parts that would be cleansed anyway.
That day, I worked on the spell I would present to the Village during the festival, a performance I hoped would make them accept me as the witches apprentice.
To prepare the spell I wanted, I first did a few tier zero attempts with the three components.
First I did ‘Corrupt bright’ as a light spell, which kind of had the coloration and brightness of my skin fluctuate heavily, in a disco ball like thing.
The next thing I did was ‘bright projectile’ which simply created a flare that dissipated after six seconds.
All of them were of course tested on the pig, which at this point didn’t care much for my spells anymore, now determined that I did everything I could possibly inflict on it.
Rather stupid sentiment, when I created bright decay as a necros option, quite literally summoning quite possibly radioactive light right in front of its face and forcing my teacher to heal both me and the pig from radiation poisoning.
And then came the crown jewel of my creations, Corrupt bright projectile, or the way I called it: Disco flare.
Arcana
Spell list
Notes
Necros
Purify (Decay infection)
Weakens or destroys debuff and illness.
Necros
Afflict (Infect decay)
Infuses a creature with insidious Necros, weakening their immune system and natural regeneration.
Spatium
Slow (Decay movement)
Decrease the target’s speed, as long as concentration is maintained.
Necros
Seizure (Infect movement)
Causes the targets external muscles to twitch uncontrollably,
Spatium
Clean (Move decay)
Expel substances of the decay category from the target
Necros
Spread (Move infection)
Force the target to release infected breath, creating a small area in which the rate of infection is increased.
Necros
Protect (Decay projectile)
Destroys a Projectile
Spatium
Evade (Move Projectile)
Moves a projectile in a random direction.
Necros
Eldritch lance (Projectile corruption)
Forms a dart sized construct of necrotic energy, prevents healing.
Spatium
Force projectile (Projectile move)
Forms a dart sized projectile that pushes the target away.
Null
Redraw (Gather projectile)
Pulls any projectile nearby into the hand used to channel the Spell.
Lumen
Disco (Corrupt bright)
Chaotically change the coloration and brightness of something.
Lumen
Flare (Bright projectile)
Create a bright projectile without any effect.
Necros
Rad (Bright decay)
Causes radioactive light. Do not cast.
Necros
Fester (Infect corrupt decay) (tier 1)
Create a curse that turns soft tissue into puss, before expelling it and spreading the curse further.
Lumen
Disco flare (Corrupt bright projectile) (tier 1)
Create a burst of ever changing color.
It was beautiful, and truly worth being considered my greatest creation so far. I used it on just about everything in my mentors hut, be it pig or wall.
The spell changed the color of everything it touched for the duration, taking a bit of them and replacing them with some of the other colors it gathered, before dissolving, resulting in all the pigments returning to the place it had taken them from.
Again, the spell forging took many hours, but my mind wasn’t sucked into some weird dimension this time, the spell simply formed and left a big headache behind.
When I tried to remember tips on spell casting from my lich lives, I simply couldn’t comprehend what they did to cast spells, the magic they used too different to give me a full picture, though some of the runes looked similar to one another.
As the exhaustion gripped me,the witch gave me a cup of tea and told me to meditate, which I did.
My soul had changed. The liquid looking the same as before, but the two titans inside swam far away from one another.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Awakening from it made me remember the sacred mission I had decided upon during my last rune choice, and thus, I set upon it. My head still hurt from the last spell, but this one was too important to pass up a flash of inspiration. I wanted to eat things myself, and not rely on my mother longer than absolutely necessary.
Rune
Description
Move
Move
Decay
Decay
Infect
Infect
Corrupt
Corrupt
Projectile
Projectile
Gather
Gather
Consume
Consume (tier 1)
Bright
Bright
Choosing consume for this was obvious, though the other runes eluded me.
First I attempted a tier 0 spell with ‘consume decay’ ‘consume infect’ and ‘consume gather’, resulting in three spells that were close to what I wanted.
Consume decay allowed me to stop the decay of something by drawing it onto myself, even restoring a molding piece of food that was given to the pig by my teacher, the effect made me start withering, which I counteracted by drinking a bit of the bottled milk my mother had prepared.
It turned out the mutation I dreamt about had changed myself a bit, though the witch simply raised her eyebrows and waited for me to continue my experiments.
Consume infect sucked a kind of black mass out of Pig, slowly extracting the substance from its mouth and traveling towards me like a string of sentient slime, a desperate cast of purify destroying it and making it grasp into almost every direction at once to find new material to infect, my two spells held upright, the new one failing to do anything once purify was done with the mass.
“Maybe you should first make a version of these spells that do not require you to absorb the effect directly?” My teacher asked, confusing me as I realized what had happened.
“Carelessness is the second most common source of death among mages and alchemists, though all types of refiners share the primary one, which is fellow refiners.”
She explained, though I barely listened, my curiosity on the nature of the thing I had just destroyed too big to not look at the black sludge on the ground.
“Turns out our little pig here has build up too much uncontrolled magic. It would probably have died within the week and been consumed by the time, until it was big enough to go after humans. Interesting to see that they are considered an infection by the system.”
She said before taking a bucked and pulling the slime inside.
“As soon as your hands are big enough, you’ll be the one cleaning in this place, but you’d simply make more of a mess if you did it now.”
The hag complained, waiting for her to get away before casting the next one.
Consume gather created a minor black particle on my hand that grew with everything I touched, the range and size growing until I started to struggle in my control, my teacher rushing over as it started to consume my hand as well.
She shouted something, resulting in the spell disappearing with half my arm gone, though it started to regenerate slowly while drawing on my own health, something quickly replaced by the healing spell my teacher started.
“That one was a growing spell. No one casts them unless they are suicidal maniacs, and I’ll have to kill you if you use it too liberally. Now go to sleep, and don’t you fucking dare cast this one again until you go on the focus creation. That one turned to tier four way faster than they normally do.”
As she brought me home, I quickly drifted off to sleep.
Arcana
Spell list
Notes
Necros
Purify (Decay infection)
Weakens or destroys debuff and illness.
Necros
Afflict (Infect decay)
Infuses a creature with insidious Necros, weakening their immune system and natural regeneration.
Spatium
Slow (Decay movement)
Decrease the target’s speed, as long as concentration is maintained.
Necros
Seizure (Infect movement)
Causes the targets external muscles to twitch uncontrollably,
Spatium
Clean (Move decay)
Expel substances of the decay category from the target
Necros
Spread (Move infection)
Force the target to release infected breath, creating a small area in which the rate of infection is increased.
Necros
Protect (Decay projectile)
Destroys a Projectile
Spatium
Evade (Move Projectile)
Moves a projectile in a random direction.
Necros
Eldritch lance (Projectile corruption)
Forms a dart sized construct of necrotic energy, prevents healing.
Spatium
Force projectile (Projectile move)
Forms a dart sized projectile that pushes the target away.
Null
Redraw (Gather projectile)
Pulls any projectile nearby into the hand used to channel the Spell.
Lumen
Disco (Corrupt bright)
Chaotically change the coloration and brightness of something.
Lumen
Flare (Bright projectile)
Create a bright projectile without any effect.
Necros
Rad (Bright decay)
Causes radioactive light. Do not cast.
Necros
Sacrifice (Consume decay)
Consume another decay to return the body to a better condition.
Necros
Sip miasma (Consume infection)
Drains another creature of diseases.
Necros
Black hole (Gather consume)
Creates a spell structure that consumes everything, increasing it’s own mass indefinitely.
Necros
Fester (Infect corrupt decay)
Create a curse that turns soft tissue into puss, before expelling it and spreading the curse further.
Lumen
Disco flare (Corrupt bright projectile)
Create a burst of ever changing color.
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Pig loved his life, he was getting fed daily, and all he had to do was let the little one throw weird things on it that hurt from time to time.
It trained every day to be the most attractive pig, making sure to eat whatever remained of the little ones weird things.
Today, the little one had left behind a small piece of black glass.
Pig knew how to exercise and get his own body pumping, getting more of the things called ‘traits’.
Right now, he had impressively thick skin and strong muscles, but this new energy was enough to ascend him to a realm filled with strong pigs, all grunting and fighting, some of them walking like the little one, and some walking like him.
They told him to wake up and work through whatever he had eaten, because dying outside of epic battles was for losers.
That night, a pig ascended beyond it’s limits, a mighty pair of tusks growing as it felt itself understand the little one much more intimately.
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