Bjorn looked up from his tablet and pulled on his hair. "Can Bjorn bear another failure" read the tagline for another article, feeding on his corporation's drop in stocks. His corporation wasn't even that large or influential, so why did the entire world jump on him, like some deranged hyenas.
The man dropped his hands, some of his dirty blonde hair sticking to his fingers. He brushed them off on each other and looked out the plane window. The vehicle flew through a massive thunderstorm, almost unnatural seeming lighting bolts snaking around in the clouds.
Quite the first day of a vacation it was.
In the reflection, he noticed one of the other first-class passengers stir. A young girl, whose entire family sat freakishly still throughout the entire flight.
The teen looked at him, tilted her head and pointed at his chest, then giggled.
Bjorn wondered if maybe his tie was crooked and looked down. A tendril of electricity was coming out of the ground, piercing with its liquid-like tip into his heart. The shock of the situation, combined with his exhaustion, knocked the man out.
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Kaida looked around the first-class section, repurposed for a feast. The chairs were ripped out of the ground, stacked in one corner, the walls covered in entrails and blood of the passengers. In the middle of the room, stood a table made out of more bones than could be found on the place.
Her family feasted on meat, grilled right on the table. Having a full stomach and somewhat tired of the sight, she turned to her mother and poked her on a relatively clean tendril. "Mom, could you phase me into the cleaner plane?"
Marika smiled happily at her child and nodded.
The girl found herself back in her first-class seat and glanced towards the only normal human in this section. A liquid tendril of electricity snaked up his well-fitting, black suit and pierced the man's chest.
Wondering why the human wasn't reacting to it, she pointed at the curiosity. Almost immediately after, the skinny man fainted and folded onto his knees. Kaida shrugged and looked at the bodies of her family.
They sat extremely still as if sleeping, or maybe like wax figures. It seemed that while they didn't occupy their bodies directly, they forgot to imitate breathing.
The girl shrugged, fixed her blanket and dozed off.
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The world shifted slightly before Wania's eyes. The plane he feasted in, continued on its course, but it seemed the real one was dipping down. The teen looked towards his sister, confused.
"Part of the plan, but I suppose the feast is over," the woman explained and took on her human form. "Drink some more and let's return before they shift too far apart."
"We are still in the middle of the ocean, why would we land here?" Wania asked, then downed a bottle of his mother's brew.
"A new academy, celebrating the changes coming to the world. You will learn, mostly alongside humans, so you will still have plenty of opportunities to study them." Marika answered shifted back to herself, swiftly followed by her wife.
The boy turned to his friend, but she also shifted out. With a shrug, he went back into himself and fixed his posture.
Outside, the plane descended beneath the clouds and began slowly circling an island, made out of marine-life corpses.
The middle of the island flattened out, forming a landing strip, cornered with tall, black obelisks depicting Sophia's ancestors. Sculptures of tall and plump draconic squids squatted on pillars depicting an ancient civilisation, many-dimensional script describing their history. At both ends of the landing strip, stood tiny statues of a human man, with a long face. Out of his multi-layered suit, stretched out thin tentacles, holding his head from behind, forcing his face to look in every direction.
Marika cackled and her face split in a vicious expression. "Sister?" Wania wondered what caused the outburst.
The woman schooled her expression and smiled at her little brother. "I merely saw depictions of an old acquaintance, a curious little man. He's done so much to further my goals."
"The entire world believes in us and they don't even know we exist. Isn't art beautiful?" She continued and laughed brightly.
"How does their belief help us?" The boy grew confused. His mother always taught him mortals couldn't do magic and what was faith if not another kind of magic?
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"It didn't help, not until today. Now they all have at least a little bit of magic within them, billions of souls are aware of what our existence could mean." Marika looked up in thought, then opened her mouth to continue when the pilot's voice interrupted her.
"..." His words were garbled and incomprehensible. After a minute of disturbed static, the pilot shut off the mic and focused on trying to regain control of the plane. The chief stewardess walked through the first-class section, as if not noticing anyone in it and relayed the captain's wish, for the other passengers to remain calm.
Finding the console and the steering wheel unresponsive, the captain put his head down on the wheel and began praying. The co-pilot followed the example of his colleague, trying to put together his trembling, sweaty hands.
As if to answer their prayers, the plane swerved and barely missed a tower lifting out of the sea. With strong turbulence, the plane hit the landing strip and began slowing down, spraying fish viscera on its underside.
Finally, with a bit of a drift, the plane stopped, mere centimetres away from one of the small humanoid statues.
Marika stood up, clapped her hands and waved her family over. "It's our stop, so let's get going and let the other people continue on their journey." She looked over towards the man sleeping in a fetal position and after a short deliberation, lifted him, together with his blanket. "He'd want to come back here anyway." She explained to no one and left towards the door.
Wania poked Kaida on the shoulder, waking the girl up and followed after his sister. A flight of steel and white marble stairs extended from the plane, slightly clipping through its side and the otherwordly family descended them, towards the soft, uneven ground.
The young man looked back at the plane and saw a shadow of a futuristic skyscraper extend from it. Just as the building and it's stairs began shifting back to their dimension, a body hit the ground just next to the stairs. Keiko ran up to the human and checked his vitals. "It seems the heavens gave us a janitor!" She exclaimed and dragged the man - wearing an expensive but dishevelled suit - away, towards the city growing out of the water.
Wania took the burden from her and put him on his shoulder. "I expected a more mundane university."
"It will reform itself, to better suit this era and the citizens we expect to have here..." Marika explained, "Sophia, do you know why your uncle would leave that for later?"
"I think mom had a fight with him earlier, but..." the girl answered uncertainly.
"I guess he can explain himself." Keiko piped in and pointed towards a huge, green jello-dragon coming out of a door in the wall of a horizontal, two-dimensional palace.
With each step taken towards his extended family, the giant from the deeps, took on a more solid form, slowly becoming the titan of fear, he was most commonly depicted as. Once the divines met, he shrunk and turned into a towering, lightly tanned man, wearing a deep-green suit.
The man's dark-green, almost black eyes scanned the group before him and he jumped forward, grabbing his niece into a tight hug. "Sophia, it's been too long! Come everyone, help me reshape the city into something more presentable to the mortals!"
Without letting go of the girl, he turned around and began leading his family deeper, into the confusing labyrinth of impossibly wide streets. "The old man is still around, if you'd like to chat with him, Marika. He is in my mansion, in the penthouse."
"Maybe I will, later." The woman thought out loud. "How have things been going for you, Frederic?"
"Yeah, that name really doesn't stick. Maybe I will go with Howard for the next couple of years, or Benedict?" The man boomed. He fixed his niece into a more comfortable position on his right arm and scratched his bald head. "Life's been as good as it can be in the depths. Hiding the deep-sea creatures has been getting difficult though, what with all the new toys the humans have been developing."
"I heard some submarines have been going missing." The ancient beings chatted, catching up and exchanging mundane gossip.
Ancient obelisks, stretched into the sky, at impossible angles. Sometimes they jutted out of pyramids, decorated with reliefs depicting rituals and wars. Elsewhere, flat walls stood, blocking out the sky, surrounding and being surrounded by everything above and below them.
Wania reached out towards a door in the ground and grabbed a handle slightly above his face. Walking through one of the first settlements of his ancestors, on this planet, filled with him a sense of awe and pride. A world contained within a lone fish-bone, a brick in the pavement filling an entire world. Everything within and out of perception, stretching until your mind got lost.
The boy bumped into something and looked around. His family stopped in front of a mortal-designed looking dorm, tagged "Love your craft", he blinked and it changed to "Dagon st. 8/10".
"Alright kids, pick rooms for yourself and get comfortable. The faculty should arrive over the next week and we will be inviting the other students over the next month." Marika explained, then smiled at the young ones. "I will grab you in the evening, to have supper together."
The red brick building, broke the chaotic harmony of the surroundings, the trees and lawn before it, bring a wrong, healthy green. Wania watched his niece being led inside by her mortal mother and followed after them. Moments later, Sohpia caught up to him, having wiggled out of her uncle's hold.
Wania left the supposed future janitor in front of the front door and stepped inside. Without wasting time looking around, he ran up the stairs in the middle of the entrance hall, hoping to get one of the top, corner rooms, with the most windows.
He felt a little silly when the women took two rooms, on the other side of the top corridor. Still, the boy didn't let it dim his sense of victory when he saw the large, wall-wide windows letting in a lot of light. First, he crawled into every nook and cranny of the small apartment, while sticking his face to the window in the main room.
Letting the sense of space, flow into him, Wania slowly unpacked and furnished his new home. After deliberating over his options, he hanged the mural of a window, over his bed, set in the centre of the large room. Finding that could freak out any mortal guests, he might have, he moved the picture to the wall opposite the window. Then shifted the bed, so he could look at the painting, without twisting around.
Maybe it was time to write a new blog entry? Wania shook his head and decided against it, nothing interesting happened this day. Maybe he'd write after supper.