---The second calamity and the beginning of the end of the world ---

The second calamity marked the end.

The end of the fragile foundations humanity had built.

The end of the initial peace.

The end of the almost easy start.

The escalation of the inevitable war and the beginning of cascading hatreds.

To start. A ticking timebomb of a monster appeared. The glutton.

Nearly 100 meters tall and twice that in diameter, the glutton was shaped like a mountain. A small mountain – the size of a modest skyscraper – its back arched into a high point its legs so small and stubby they were nearly invisible.

As shocking as its massive size was, the glutton was less lethal than the first calamity.

None died by its appearance – not initially. No, its danger lay elsewhere.

Slowly but surely the glutton exited the cursed sea and entered the real one. A sea shrunk by the demon king as if he had prepared for the glutton to finish it off.

The mountain moved slowly but with smooth confidence into the only source of water on the planet and began to drink.

It drank, and drank, and drank. The vast sea disappeared day by day – endlessly consumed and permanently deleted by the void stomach of such a beast.

It was as if it drank not to hydrate itself but solely to deprive humanity of its water. Calamity.

Of course people came to fight only to discover a terrifying truth. This creature could not be killed. Poison. Death. Destruction and more – the mountain shrugged off all attacks without even seeming to notice. Its mouth seemed like a weak spot – gaping maw of toothy blackness that it was but in truth it was no more vulnerable than the beast's wrinkled scales. All attacks – all creatures that entered its maw were sucked in and consumed in moments.

To make matters worse, a constant whistle filled the creatures surroundings. A shortness of breath and unnatural vacuum that made something else abundantly clear.

The glutton was consuming humanity's air as well. Gallons of oxygen a second were deleted from the planet. Panicked estimates put the atmosphere dropping to dangerous levels in nothing more than a few weeks.

That’s when more drastic measures were taken.

Nukes.

An aetheric city decided to take matters into its own hands and sent a nuclear warhead to strike the glutton.

What could be stronger than a nuke after all? Humanity could deal with the fallout. Its greatest weapon would strike this foe for now…

Humanities worst weapon failed. Its explosion was shrugged off with enough ease it seemed to invalidate the power such a weapon should have. “There's no way something that tough should exist – our weapon must not have been strong enough!”

The same city increased the strength of their second nuke to dangerous levels – causing an explosion heard and felt across half the world.

They then turned to others in their frustration. Pinning the blame for this black hole of an Armageddon upon those of “corrupted aether”, this city sent a nuke to the largest magical settlement they had scanned. That single missile glassed the place and presumably killed most – if not all of – the mana side at that position.

They then turned to the sea, deciding it was too dangerous to leave available for humans.

If they could not block access to the calamity spewing danger zone, then they figured they could destroy it before it could do more harm.

They were wrong.

The nuke entered the mist vanishing into the depths without effect.

They sent a second nuke and calculated it to explode directly over the wonder.

And then the trigger happy city knew true despair.

Some time after the second failed attempt the third calamity emerged. Much too soon after the second this calamity was not nearly so passive.

A cloud.

A storm.

A nuclear weatherhead that began to circle the half globe humanity now lived on.

This storm didn’t drop lightning bolts. It dropped mushroom clouds. It didn’t rain water it rained radiation and blight – searing a wasteland in its wake.

This then was the end.

How could you fight a storm?

How could you survive atomic wrath long enough to suffocate?

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

--- Potluck ---

“What is everyone making for the potluck?” James asked.

“I’m making bread. Technically my nest is making us bread and I’m just harvesting it. Technically its making sandwiches and I’m killing those sandwiches then raiding the outer shells. Technically by bread I mean flesh with a suspiciously similar chemical make up and taste profile to bread due to ‘nest cheating bullshit’. Hopefully I can shove everyone else’s contribution in between two slices. I know you’re probably going to caveman a massive chunk of meat which can only be elevated with buns. Sandwich supremacy!” Richard called from the workshop.

Maddy poked her head out of a hole in front of Richard and yelled something incompressible.

She paused flickering slightly like she was covered in TV static then spoke normally. “I’ll conjure up any sides that seem missing at the very end.”

Jess weighed in with a sigh. “Can I take the meat instead. I’m not a good cook and that seems easiest.”

Moments later Troy came running in. “Richard your blind ass domain blocked me from stepping out here. I had to walk all the way over there before I could exit a shadow.”

“Seems like a skill issue,” Richard waved a hand beside his back then twisted a nob and shook a canister a few times.

“Oh I agree.” Troy nodded staring directly at Richard as he did. “Always, everything I called was just claimed so…I’ll head off and try and find something weird to cook. Bit of an adventure. There's a surprising amount of edible plants and animals appearing in the surroundings”

“Have fun. Pack a lunch.” Richard waved.

“Fuck it. Richard your idea of a contribution is stupid. How do I say this in a way you’ll understand. It's like taking the wrapper off a condom and sticking it on your cock.”

Richard started giggling. “You’re getting funnier. Have you been saving that one, just waiting for a time to shove it in?”

“For someone who seems to hate sex you make a lot of sex jokes. Want to talk about it?”

“What’s there to say. It's funny because of how absurd it is. It's like. Who the fuck wants that legitimately? Are they going say sike seconds later? Do people fuck and then vomit afterwards because of how gross it is? I think I saw a show once where that happened. Chick was not impressed. Anyways fine, fine. I’ll synthesise some sauces. I know a formula that can make a lot of different flavours. Can try and figure out some of the better tasting ones. That better?”

“Just want to make sure you’re putting in the bare minimum. I’ll be impressed if you make something legitimately tasty.” Troy waved a hand while walking away once again.

“My new goal in life is to prove myself to you. The person who’s opinion I care about the most.”

“I’m not your dad.”

“Sure mom. Whatever you say.”

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

--- Maddy ---

As Maddy entered the dungeon she found herself pressed in on all sides. The door to her custom dungeon was deep within the “reality” of her creation affinity. It grew in the part of her magic she least understood and twisted itself into a place she did not belong.

Pushing forward into it anyways – changing herself into something that “belonged” meant submitting to the dungeon. It meant accepting the shackle it offered her.

Her continuing to move forward ran along lines of consent and slowly the real world fell away – her link to her sisters dimming and her strength fading.

Suddenly – without warning – Maddy “popped” out of a hole in space. She had been pushing forward and inwards as hard as she could and then – suddenly – the force she was pushing against vanished and her movement jerked.

Maddy fell. The world was a disorienting spin as she tumbled – the sky becoming the ground and the trees around her smearing in a spin of green.

Snap.

Maddy landed in the middle of a forest floor surrounded by a strange glowing contraption. She was…fine. Unhurt but confused and disoriented. She felt different. Not more or lesser just…off.

For a moment she knew she was an eye, then she knew she was a person with arms and legs. Then she knew she was one of those person's eyes and a part of that whole and then she felt like her own separate entity.

And partway through that confusing disorientation, Maddy found she had grown arms and legs. Little stubby things – her arms and legs had three digits each and reminded her of chicken legs. No! They actually reminded her of Ponyo and the limbs that fish had grown before she became a real girl.

What had happened?

Where was she?

Maddy tried to sit up but found the glowing contraption around her limited her movement.

Looking around she realized she was sitting in what looked like a ring of mushrooms. The trap she was in – because this could be nothing more than a trap – looked man made and yet strange. Like its creator hadn’t understood materials or basic geometry.

Why wasn’t it symmetrical in any direction? Why was that curve green and every other line yellow or blue or gold or some combination?

Maddy continued to stare at the contraption – almost entranced by how ugly it was. She could physically escape at any moment but the ugly shapes entranced her. What meaning did they hold? What secrets did they hide?

“Captourse ounnous!” A voice called laughing from behind her and Maddy found herself suddenly rising – her trap unfurling in a single motion even as she was dumped into a new prison.

A perfectly smooth metal box.

It burned slightly – the metal harsh and rusted on the tip. Iron? A special kind of iron?

Before Maddy could teleport away, the lid to the box shut and a giant eye peered in at her from a tiny barred slit.

That wouldn’t stop her. Maddy confidently tried to blip out, forcing her mana into her strangely unresponsive power and feeling herself fade then reappear after bouncing off the outer area.

That was not how her power worked. Besides that there was a gap right there! She should be able to slip through that slit? Maybe…she should try again?

Several failed attempts later Maddy was stuck with several realizations. Besides the fact that iron hurt way more than it should and her captors sucked of course.

One, she was getting sick of getting trapped or imprisoned by others and two. She hadn’t realized the line Rumpelstiltskin had mentioned about her needing to break out of a box had been literal.

…

Maddy’s imprisonment was not a minor thing.

The monster holding her had no plans to let her free, and what Maddy had expected to be a brief stint in jail and a triumphant break out of her cage had dragged on far longer than she thought possible.

Days upon boring days. Months upon months. Years upon years. Maddy found herself in an eternity of waiting.

She couldn’t perform much magic at all – her mana was there and yet it barely budged with her prodding – leaking out in stagnant wisps whenever she fought to pull it out. The buttons she’d placed in her soul didn’t work – it was like someone was holding her down.

Maddy lost track of time kept as a pet for the hated one. The hated one was humanoid, with deep red skin and beautiful purple eyes she couldn’t help but stare at. It was easy to see the child as a demon, for as far as Maddy was concerned, that’s what his race was.

The hated one had a father – an older demon his skin a darker shade of red – but besides some interested examinations near the start, the older demon ignored Maddy.

Maddy had figured out how to understand them quickly, but it was a splotchy thing. The translation magic she’d placed in her soul was finicky when it came to this race – even when she pushed it into working once again with an active exertion of her soul. The biggest problem was that half or more of every sentence these monsters spoke came from their expressions. They placed so much information in micro changes to their face – and so Maddy could only understand them when she could stare at their expression and see their cheeks flutter and their eyes shift. Just sound gave a stilted translation – a language missing emotion, tense, direction and more. The demon's word for himself was the same as the word for his father – and also the animals in the forest from what she could tell with the direction of his eyebrows indicating which “self” he referred to. All this and more drove a sort of barrier between her and her captor.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Without understanding most of what was said how could she relate? Maddy had a unique name in the untranslated language – succundum which occasionally sounded like “Piece of luck” when she really pushed her arcane button for understanding. When relegated to nothing more than a trophy how could she feel for her captors?

After a certain amount of time, Maddy had faded enough, her personal reality was down to a flicker and her perception went on the fritz.

It was a sort of mercy this weakening of self – even if it was a death of personality. The boredom faded simply by her losing the ability to care and as her memories faded the age of confinement continued on into eternity. The two demons had disappeared – something about a fire. Something about purple blood and screams she could barely remember?

Maddy did remember the near escape. A purple skinned demon with deep red eyes had come and promised to free Maddy if she would make gold for it. Maddy had accepted and then immediately attempted an escape – finding her form captured easily and shoved back in the box for her betrayal.

How… was she so weak? So small? Maddy remembered being so angry at the time but now the blurry memory just seemed funny. Good one purple demon. Atta girl. She had been a girl hadn’t she? No the demon had been purple. That was what the demon had been.

Maddy was a bit confused by minor things like colour or gender.

Either way, anywhere from a year to a century had passed and Maddy sat alone in madness – no longer caring as much as she should. Her memories were nearly all gone. Her sense of self was reduced.

Her personality – all that made up her – was down to a single flickering ember. It was a fire she needed to tend – a hungry fire she needed to burn herself on. Memories. Desires. Unreasoned ideas. She fed her memories of earth into the flame, forgetting she had lived a whole other life. She fed her memories of the trials she had passed forgetting most of her journey. She had almost fed her memory of people but something deep down had rebelled at that – Maddy had needed to make statues of each of her friends as a promise she wouldn’t forget them no matter how far gone she was.

The only thing Maddy hadn’t attempted was her domain activation. She hadn’t attempted it due to fear of fading, and now she couldn’t even if she tried. Would it have helped? She would never know.

There was one happy accident little more than a bandaid on her flesh wound but Maddy had early on figured out how to slow the decay.

Maddy had learned to shunt her mana into her box. That was it. She physically pulled and pushed her mana like a physical cultivator and…released it into her surroundings. Then as decades or more passed – the magic had slowly isolated her bit by bit. It coated the inside of the cursed box reacting as soon as it hit the metal – touching and sizzling with arcane byproducts that built up as golden crystals. The crystals blocked the worst of the cold iron and reduced the pain of her capture. Her mana had crystalized with her wish more than her active intent and by creating her own box she felt safer and more comfortable even if it didn’t help her escape.

Maddy could now perform a bit of her magic – not enough to turn to sound and escape through the slit like she should be able to – but enough to furnish her cage. A billowy soft surroundings. Tiny sculptures the size of grains of sand.

Maddy vaguely thought the box had grown over the years – not fully aware she was now a tenth of the size.

It was the act of creation that gave her fuel for her self and, while she was little more than an ember, as she filled her cage with treasures and art, her lingering presence was maintained just that little bit longer.

The statues of her friends were joined by statues of things she had seen – memories captured in a physical form before they faded.

…

It was kind of fun being insane.

The pesky parts of ‘you’ that felt like they should be screaming in terror were gone. All your unimportant worries and hopes faded and ‘you’ simply were.

At least that’s how it was for Maddy’s eye. All that was left was the deepest parts of herself. Those bits stubbornly clinging on. For Maddy that meant a bit of curiosity and fascination with magic. It was just so interesting! What were these golden crystals surrounding her? They looked almost like they had absorbed bits of the Maddy reality that had leaked over the years. Could she do something with them? Turn them into some sort of spell? Maddy needed to make more stuff. She was a character in a story after all and without doing anything, what proof was there that she existed?

…

Maddy was dying. There was no other way of saying it. A true death as well – there felt like little chance her reincarnation spell could capture her soul when it was this frayed and small. The spellwork grasped the power of her “death” to shunt her soul away…but if her body just faded into nothing there wasn’t much the spell could do.

Creating art had stopped “mattering” as much – the amount of “time” each sculpture gave her had dropped to less than she took to make the sculptures. There had been meaning in creating something and meaning in each sculpture being unique but by this point, the ‘meaning of putting yet another sculpture into the pile’ was microscopic.

In many ways, the only reason she had lasted this long was due to the insulating shell she had placed around herself with that golden crystal…but even that was merely a stopgap. It let her hibernate for longer – the self sunk into the crystals helping cocoon her. The act of being completely alone in an area delineated and separate from anything else helped.

But that was it. It just helped – didn’t halt the decay completely.

It was deep in this slow dying spiral that Maddy’s fae instincts seemed to grow paradoxically stronger. Weak senses pulsed in panic and racial survival instincts clawed their way into prominence. To struggle was to live. Conflict bred power and the most important key to anything was meaning.

Some of those instincts were beneficial, some actively worked against her. Still as if the dungeon had been waiting for this point, it began throwing more events at her once again.

A fae was a creature of story. Maddy now understood just what that meant.

They lived and died in the memories of man – or really any creature sapient enough to share myths and legends. Immortal in a way – immortal as long as they were remembered. As long as people told stories about them.

Fae were imaginary creatures. As soon as people stopped believing in them they vanished. As soon as the proof they had existed vanished they did as well. They were in a way, beings created out of the proof of their own existence.

…

Far away a purple demon told her grandchildren a story about the trickster she had bested as a teenager. Maddy was deep in the fae trance as she watched this scene. Her perception had gone wonky as she flexed conceptual muscles and fundamentally changed the way she saw the world to include this scene.

In this position far away, a story was being told about her. A true story full of embellishments and lies. She was made out of the story being told and so, in a sense, Maddy was here in the physical location the story was being told at – at least as long as the demon spoke and flexed her face in a dance of expressions she was. This story being told was her body and this new body's senses were…limited.

As far as bodies went, this one was pretty lackluster. She couldn’t move or ‘see’ – the main “sense” she had was not sight or touch but emotion. She felt the way her body was told. Felt the flex of the demon's smile as they spoke. Felt the expressions of her listeners – the purple-skinned girl’s disinterest. The red-skinned little boys wide-eyed wonder. The three existed as if in a void – the surroundings blurred to Maddy’s senses for while place could matter for a story here it did not.

Maddy felt each and every way the children were reacting to her body. The story itself wasn’t very long. ‘She’ would be done soon. Maddy knew deep down this right here was her chance. If she were stronger…if her “main” body wasn’t trapped as she was then she could teleport it here to where she was being told.

Beetlejuice rules.

But Maddy was weak.

Maddy couldn’t bring her mana here – however far away it was. She couldn’t transfer her ‘self’ or use this story to escape.

Still her fae instincts were thrashing even harder as they realized what was happening – trying to grab onto this chance as much as she could. She was this story. This was her body. Bodies moved – they weren’t just puppets!

Finally she found a gap. The boys wonder. His interest in the ‘trickster’. His pride in himself. His curiosity and the way it was so like Maddy’s main body. His wonder in the unknown. His yearning for magic.

He was like her.

Maddy flexed her body pulling most of her form down into these desires in the boy with the fitness of a newborn. She pulled the ‘meaning’ in her story down and compressed it into the child before vanishing once again.

Nothing immediately happened.

Maddy’s weakened form began to forget what she had just done, as she slowly fed the experience into her guttering flame, gaining a few extra years of life.

…

Suddenly Maddy found her world was shifting. The planet she was on spun wildly and far above in the sky, a single massive eye appeared.

This was… monumental.

Such a pretentious description for what she felt and yet nothing felt more important to Maddy in this moment than that eye.

This meeting she had influenced was ‘massive’ – it felt like a blazing drop of ‘meaning’ fell from the eye – some esoteric ‘conceptual reality’ related to that push she had given and the journey this child had taken to reach her. It had started as something simple and yet grown as if feeding on the journey itself. The only reason this journey had happened was because of her push.

As soon as the drop hit Maddy, her spluttering self burst upwards with a roar of triumph. Years of ‘insanity’ fell away as Maddy felt her body grow and her existence strengthen. Memories were long gone but her personality roared into life along with her intelligence. Soon Maddy was almost as big as she had been when she started. She dimly felt like this newfound power was only there for this interaction – it would disappear as soon as the child left. A temporary boost if anything.

A single eye with hands and feet large enough to stare back at the eye looking down at her. It hadn’t seen her to start – her tiny form too small to see – her flickering body too transparent to be visible…and yet the boy looked for her, expecting her to be there and soon he found what he believed he would find.

“You exist!” the words spoken by the boy fed down to Maddy vibrating with so much force she felt like she would fall apart. He sounded relived. Shocked and excited at spotting Maddy’s body.

More of her returned.

She existed. She was real. She existed. She could be seen. She existed!

“I wasn’t sure I would really find you!” The voice continued – the face pulling back as Maddy heard some rummaging noises.

“I came prepared!” The boy’s head moved back into view above her a piece of parchment and strange looking pen gripped tightly in his red hands. “Can you speak? I’m using the dull language because I heard you don’t have the right bits for vibrant language”

Maddy pushed down on newly reformed buttons forcing her stagnant mana through old pathways bits of magical rust flaking off with specks of rainbow dust.

“I can speak yes. Have you come to free me little boy?” Maddy tried to make her voice sound as unthreatening as possible. Why did that sound so…suspect? Quick. Try and remember how to speak to people in as unsuspicious of a way as you can.

The pixy dust warping her voice probably didn’t help. Maddy “coughed” a few times dusting the last bits of buildup away from her.

“I’m not agreeing to anything just yet. I know how you work. I’m getting it into writing okay? Three wishes. I’m smarter than grandma and won’t give you whatever loopholes you used on her.”

Maddy stared upwards in silence…she didn’t know what to feel. Part of her was fascinated by the idea of this contract. The idea of…granting wishes. That fundamentally felt ‘right’ to her – as if she were dehydrated and trapped in a desert but had just caught a glimpse of an oasis far away.

And yet a good part of her raged at the imprisonment. She didn’t ‘owe’ anyone a wish. She had been captured against her will! Freedom was simply giving her back what she had been owed! It didn’t deserve a gift! It didn’t deserve a wish! She owed him nothing! That raging sense of injustice filled Maddy’s thoughts and made her want to to lash out. Made her want to poison any gift she gave – she was being mugged! This was like getting mugged in a dark ally! Trying to get the better of him was nothing more than karma.

Maddy’s senses fed the metaphor of an oasis back to her – strengthening the scene to the point it felt ‘real’. She really ‘was’ in a desert. She really was seeing an oasis far in front of her. She just…had to move towards it.

Was it an illusion? A mirage? Maddy…was relatively sure it was real. Bits of her illusion perception seemed to leak through – as if confirming it was no illusion but also hinting that reality looked weird from this perspective. Her illusion affinity both proved her perspective as well as allowing her to dimly see her regular one – something not quite overlayed but instead alongside the normal.

Through a bleary and weak form, Maddy struggled towards the oasis bit by bit – dimly aware she was speaking with each step. Each step was a word she or the boy spoke. Her movement towards freedom was the same as her speech, because her speech was the only tool she had to try and escape with and this desert scene was northing more than a metaphor.

Finally she was directly before her prize. Just a few more steps and she could drink.

“Alright. I know you have to keep your word but will twist my wish if I let you, so here I go. My first wish is for gold little golden fairy. Probably the most common wish you get asked but still I want it and I’m going to be clear with you. I wish to be filthy rich. I do not want gold that will suddenly disappear. I don’t want cursed gold, poisonous gold. Gold that will turn into a monster and eat my face. I don’t want to find out you’ve stolen it from somewhere that will come to take from me. Money can change my life. I know money cannot buy happiness jatta jatta but that’s propaganda spread by kings to keep it all for themselves. Gold, no strings attached. That is my first wish.” The boy asked carefully. He had written his request down in front of Maddy and the still wet ink seemed to sing to her.

Every time he said the word for ‘wish’ it ‘sung’ to Maddy and slowly but surely the scene was reframed in a way her instincts understood.

What…what was happening? Maddy tried to ask her instincts – tried to ask her surroundings or see the truth of this new perspective.

He was ceding ‘control’ towards her? By asking her for help, this boy…was offering her ‘agency’? ‘Control’ sounded a bit better but felt less accurate. They were both characters in the story of life and the boy was giving Maddy his agency. She was…a dues ex machina of a sort. She was the magic in this relationship. The mysterious unknown power in the kid's story.

…

As Maddy reoriented herself, the fae found herself in a familiar place. A place she’d mostly forgotten – a place from a distant past. She stood in a rocky sort of clearing surrounded by mist and darkness and blurry streaks of random colour that seemed to push her thoughts away from them.

Beside her lay the body of a massive spider. A broken spinning wheel and bloody threads lay scattered about.

This…this was where she was born.

This was where she had killed herself. This was where she had become what she now was.

Across from Maddy stood the little demon. The child held something close to his chest while his other hand was outstretched as if expectantly. This…was the wish then? Her perspective of what the exchange meant?

Distantly she could hear herself speak.

“I can make you gold if you let me out. I can’t do much while trapped in this box.”

“You won’t trick me that easily.” The child responded and Maddy felt trapped.

Maddy realized she herself was nearly frozen. She…she was a fae who could see. She could see what she was. Could see what others were. Could even spy secrets that should not be possible for her to see…

But that was it. Maddy was an eye. She had no arms. No legs. To grant a wish she needed to be able to control what she saw. R was a being of hands – able to shape and mould anything he wanted. Maddy was a creature of eyes. Able to see and nothing more.

To…actually perform true magic Maddy needed control. The ability to control what she saw. To grab one of the blurry colours and shape it or…something.

In some ways the metaphor around her was almost ironic. She had hated the old her’s ability to ‘control’. Hated the manipulation – had literally killed the spider able to weave her surroundings and in doing so, broke the sewing machine she was sure gave her the ability to sew his wish into being. If she had just kept her ability to manipulate the web…

She couldn’t even control her own sight. Drifting between different metaphors and scenes at the whims of her instincts and surroundings.

For a brief moment Maddy almost wished she had chosen differently…

No. Maddy was just looking wrong. She had never once wished for the ability to see but not effect. She belived by seeing she was halfway towards effecting. That was her domain.

She didn’t understand anything currently and was making leaps of logic. That was okay. She could learn. Maddy just needed to look.

“I can make gold. Look into my cage and look about. All of this could be yours. I promise I cannot make this out there while I’m still in this cage.” Maddy spoke and watched as the child looked in and saw her golden crystals for the first time.

“You promise huh. Okay. I trust you, I know promises are binding.”

…

Maddy felt herself gain some agency. She stole the child’s agency in this moment. Harvested his control willingly given and added it to her own. In that single moment Maddy felt her body suck something out of the world her – personal reality skyrocketing with something other than “Maddy juice” for lack of a better word.

She was trapped. She was stuck in a cage. She had lost her ability to interact with the outside world and in doing so had lost her agency.

This child had acknowledged that she could do something he could not. Had requested her help – had wished for her intervention…and in doing so had given her that which she lacked.

Maddy knew instinctually that even though she hadn’t actually done anything – the golden crystals had already been made, she hadn’t made them just now – by “granting” the child’s wish she had gotten her due. Maddy could now affect the “outside world” by that right she had just gained. The agency she had just gathered was an energy she could spend to influence outside of her cage. Just a bit more and she might be able to break out all on her own!

True magic was weird…or was this just a fae thing? She hadn’t done anything differently and yet her entire situation felt like it had been flipped on its head.

“Alright, My second wish is for mystic power. I want magic – not a magic tool that can be stolen or a cursed ability or anything like that. I want to be a wizard like the heroes of old! Someone who can shape the world with my thoughts! And no tricksy business with my power shortening my lifespan or trapping me in your cage as we swap spots or anything.”

Maddy felt a sinking feeling as the second wish rolled in.

That…that would be a bit harder.