"That is a tough decision. I don't think I could have done it." Alex says as he walks side by side with Lanetli through the snow frozen as it falls from the sky.
"You would have done it. People don't realize what they are truly capable of until they have to do it. Others may have slogged through the demons, but this was the option that led to the least loss of life in humans. That was the plan anyways."
"I'll let you continue your story, but I don't think the modern human is cut out for the kind of stuff you're talking about. We would break." Alex responds as he climbs a small snow mound to keep up with Lanetli.
"You act like I wasn't broken with the decisions I had to make," Lanetli says as he glances around at the homes nearby. "I think we might need to head over to Europe. How do you feel about walking across an ocean?"
"I really don't think I could survive that," Alex informs him.
"Oh, yeah. I forgot about how fragile non-magi are. No matter, I'll make a boat or some shit. Just gotta get to the shoreline. If you need to eat just grab something from somewhere, they won't miss it."
"How long are we going be gone?"
"I'm expecting like a week or three, but it could be longer. I'm getting to the bottom of this." Lanetli says, a look of seriousness crossing his face. He does truly care about his chickens and wanted them to have the same fame as him, even if he doesn't believe he deserves it himself.
"Give me a minute, I'm gonna raid a Walmart for some warmer clothes and some foodstuffs for the trip," Alex says as they round a corner and see said store in their view.
"Make it quick. I don't want this to last longer than it has to," he says. Alex picks up the speed and makes it into the grocery store which was clearly not locked as it should have been, and Alex had no problem getting in and filling a cart with anything he might want or need. Lanetli is just getting to the store when Alex reemerges, even the chicken looking impressed with his speed in the store. Alex decides to just steal the entire cart so that he doesn't have to carry all the shit he took in his arms or a bag. "Damn, normal people need a lot of shit."
"I know, I'm a normal person. Let's go, I think we are a long way from the shore and I don't want to get help up too long for supplies." Alex says as he forces the cart forward through the piles of snow pushed to the side by snow plows used on the roads. "Hey, did you ever find out who that guy was? I mean, thousands of years you probably got some information."
"I think I did, but what was really scary was that I couldn't see his history. I didn't even realize until later that I had no idea what that guy could do. I have an idea now, but I want to get a little farther in the story. Just give us a reason to break up the story a little bit. This isn't all sunshine and rainbows for me kid."
"I get it, go on," Alex says as he grunts and pushes the cart through another snow pile.
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"You want to starve them out? Isn't that the thing that got us into this situation in the first place?" he asked.
"I know, but listen, I can starve them out, but I am going to prepare what is left of humanity for it first. We need to k how to make tools, farms, and buildings because having them beforehand won't do anything. We need to learn as fast as possible. Any magi that could help yet?" I asked.
"We do have one prodigy it seems. She got the nature icon a week ago, we don't really know what that entails though," he says back.
"That is fantastic news! I'm sure a nature mage can get something to help with the problems I'm going to have to cause! Point me in her direction, I need to talk with her." I told him.
"Sure thing," he responds, a slight laugh edging its way into his tone. "She's in room four hundred and eighteen. It should be clearly marked."
"Thank you!" I said as I ran out of the room to meet with our young mage. I never got her name, but I would know her when I saw her. I ran through the halls, eventually getting to her room and knocking on the door.
"Hello?" I heard from inside, her voice a good deal older than I was expecting.
"I'm looking for a mage?" I asked.
"I'll send my daughter out to meet you in a minute!" she exclaims through the door, seemingly trying to wrangle little kids, a nigh impossible task no matter the being.
A few minutes passed and a small girl opened the door, head already craned to accept the adult guest. "I'm Eve, the Nature mage. What did. . . What is going on with your magic? It feels. . . Wispy." she asked taking in my presence. She was around ten, one of the youngest magi I've ever heard of, with curly blonde hair and big brown eyes that seemed to see far too much.
"That's something I hope you can experience one day, but for now we need to talk about your icon and what it gave you, may I take a seat?" I asked. She agreed and opened the door wide to reveal the chaos only young children can bring to bear, and a mother trying to frantically clean up before a guest decides to judge, which is one thing all mothers share.
"Hi, sorry for the mess. I'm Amanda, Eve's mother. We'll get out of here and let the two of you fancy smart people talk. Carson! Put that down! Yucky yucky!" she says as she frantically tries to keep a small boy from eating something off of the floor, though only Knowledge knows what it was. She picks up the small boy and a little girl around a year or so younger than the boy. They leave and I take a seat across a small coffee table from Eve.
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"I don't know if you quite understand the situation, but the rift, the giant crack in the sky is closed. That means no more demons coming through."
"Good, that thing was as unnatural as anything can be. It made me sick. I have to assume the demons are still here? Their Corruption still seeps into the lands and destroys the planet from the inside." she said, growing serious very quickly, showing an intelligence I was not expecting from someone her age. A true prodigy indeed, and a Nature mage through and through.
"Yes, and I need your help. I have a plan to starve them out, but it will also starve the surviving populations of native life." I told her, trusting her to keep up with the adult talk she was incredibly adept at.
"So you were hoping I would have a solution for this? Sadly no, my icon gave me a personal power, that prevents the need for food and water for myself and one other willing person. There is little I can do for the rest of the native populations at the moment. I also don't know the extent you intend to reduce resources. I want to help in any way I can, so please, tell me what I can do with this that can help." she says, truly desperate to participate.
"For now, I want you to find a young boy about your age and use that power on him. Keep him alive with you, because if nothing else you two can repopulate. At this moment, however, I want you to teach me everything possible about nature, anything I could learn." I said.
She seemed skeptical, but soon information started spilling out that was truly interesting, easily understanding and explaining concept concepts such as urban heat inversion, inertial variability, and solar variation. I learned a good deal from the conversation, but it wasn't enough for one person to learn. She needed groups.
"Okay, no go explain that to as many people as you can, come back to be when something interesting happens," I tell her. She agrees skeptically and leaves the house, yelling to her mother that she was going out for a while. The child was clearly trusted as Amanda let her leave with little more than a half-hearted wish for safety. I left and continued training as many children as possible in magic as much as possible. Magi would come in clutch in the coming days.
I didn't get far, the young students having a hard time understanding the complex concepts I tried to push through their skulls. Quickly Eve managed to unlock a new power, one that would potentially save everyone.
"I got a new power, sir! I got a power that lets me accelerate growth to the point where it is visible to see! I think this is the kind of power we can use!" she said, excitement letting her more childlike attributes shine through her adult personality.
"That's amazing Eve! Just what we needed. Now, I need you to teach people to farm and build houses. That is what the big deal will be once my ritual goes off. After everyone has a good idea of how to farm, I need you to start exemplifying parts of your icon, teaching people about it, and becoming Nature. It will only help us." I told her. I prepared to be teaching these children for months as the adults prepared to farm for their lives.
It was several months before Eve had managed to get the surviving population into such a state of mind that they would all have to farm, let alone actually learn the craft, but it got done nonetheless, and we had some good prospects for mage hood, the strongest of which was Adam, a young boy preparing to become a Cosmic mage. The boy loved space and understood the complex interactions of stellar bodies well, and magic came fairly easily to him. He was still far from mage hood though, not having the personality to become the mage he needed to be. I realized that this was a perk of half incarnation I hadn't realized would exist, seeing how far off a person was from making a connection to an icon. I couldn't see exactly what was needed, but I got a good sense for it, knowing something in his personality just wasn't quite right.
I finished a class, the last one before the world got too hectic for another and helped herd the others to an open field outside of the cave system. I wasn't sure how stable the caves would be after my ritual, and I opted for safety above all else.
I walked to a large stone, cut exactly for this purpose out of marble, and accepted a tool from a citizen. I started engraving the ritual into the stone to give it extra stability. Once that process was complete I positioned my students around the stone, telling them to gather all the magic in the area around themselves and keep it there as long as they could. As soon as each student reached their limit I started reaching out with my magic to the area and preparing it to be temporarily claimed for Time, the icon of eternity. The students struggled to contain the magic, and I gave them a tip to not keep it still, directing it instead to spin around them, as magic hates to be motionless. This lessened the strain on many students and they started pulling more magic in. I waited again until each was at its limit before laying my claim to the territory. The magic was torn from the control of the students, instead gathering around me, waiting for my command. the students pulled more in, noticing the conversion to Time forcing more into the area.
I started shaping it into the ritual, allowing the magic to gather and coalesce into a liquid that flowed and filled the ritual completely. I drew more in, forcing it into solidity and even farther, packing as much in as I could before I couldn't compress it any further. A horde of demons charged into the territory of Time, and as they did I pulled at the magic inside of them, the students around me helping to forcefully rip the demons apart. They explode from the inside one by one and are contributed to the ritual.
I reach through my memory, pulling up the incantation from the back of my mind. "Satria ny fotoana dia mandrakizay,"
"Satria ny fotoana dia mandrakizay," the kids repeated with me, to help further with stability. Likely overkill, but with this much magic, there was never enough caution.
"ny fotoana dia fandringanana sy mpamono andriamanitra,"
"ny fotoana dia fandringanana sy mpamono andriamanitra,"
"aoka ny ho avin'ity tanàna ity ho fandravana azy,"
"aoka ny ho avin'ity tanàna ity ho fandravana azy,"
"aoka ny heriny no handrava azy."
"aoka ny heriny no handrava azy."
"Andriamanitra dia mangovitra ny masony ary toy izany koa ny olombeelona."
"Andriamanitra dia mangovitra ny masony ary toy izany koa ny olombelona."
"Ravao ny rindrina izay misakana ny fahafatesana ary avelao ny mandrakizay hahazo ny valisoany."
"Ravao ny rindrina izay misakana ny fahafatesana ary avelao ny mandrakizay hahazo ny valisoany."
With the final phrase in the incantation done, I pushed the last of the magic in the area into the ritual and it went off. At least I thought it had, but nothing happened. My concentration fell on my claimed area and Adam pulled magic that came rushing to full the balance to the others, helping them recover, and I could see something different about him as if something about this ritual and the experiences made him view the world differently.
I looked around, finally decided that nothing had changed near me, and I looked up to see a giant rock burning as it entered the atmosphere, giving us only half an hour to find cover from the world-ending event. Then Adam connected to his icon, Cosmos finally deciding that the kid had what it took to become a mage, seeing a solar system form from the magic in the area before dissipating into the kid to form whatever power he got. I was hopeful that it would be something that would help us survive the meteor, though I was doubtful.