To Fabrisse’s shock, it took them less than seven minutes to contain all the remaining Clucklebeaks. They couldn’t fly for very far nor for very long, and they always stopped after a while to perform their multiplying ritual, which was basically just an act of intimacy. Lorvan warned that these creatures were aetherically imbued, though, so there was no telling what could happen once they l...
2025-06-30 11:04:13 +0000 UTC View PostFabrisse tried again.
This time, his arm moved slower, more precise. He focused on the breath before the embarrassment hit full bloom—the dip, not the spike. Just like Liene said. The stone didn’t leave his hand, but his wrist tracked the arc with a cleaner motion.
[Synaptic Thread Recognition: +4% Progress]
Huh. It’s working . . . a bit.
...
2025-06-30 11:03:30 +0000 UTC View Post“I’m heading out,” Fabrisse said, slinging his satchel over one shoulder and trying to sound casual about it.
The clock struck eight. Outside, the stars had begun their slow reveal across the velvet dome of sky, scattered like forgotten chalk dust across a blackboard. The campus had quieted, save for the occasional echo of a wardstone adjusting itself or the metallic chime of ...
2025-06-30 11:02:57 +0000 UTC View PostCuman’s smirk faltered. His eyes turned from Miro to the radiating scorch mark between them, then to the woman striding calmly forward. His posture didn’t change, but Fabrisse could feel that Cuman wasn’t used to being interrupted mid-performance, especially not by someone outside their year.
If he hadn’t failed four times, he would’ve been in the same class as Liene, not Cuman ...
2025-06-30 11:02:40 +0000 UTC View PostSome time had passed since the vault. Probably around forty-seven minutes.
Fabrisse had left Severa’s presence before she could ask more questions he didn’t have the answers for. She hadn’t followed, thank the flame. His hands still tingled faintly from the invocation, and his neck ached a bit even though he hadn’t hit anything.
[System note: Concordance spells alway...
2025-06-30 11:02:21 +0000 UTC View PostFabrisse lingered by the pedestal a little longer than necessary. He cradled the Stupenstone like it might protest being returned, turning it one last time in his palm.
The System’s glyph flashed before his eyes.
[Final Step Required: Invocation.]
[Manifest attunement.]
“Put it back in,” Severa said crisply.
Fabrisse’s fing...
2025-06-30 11:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe wards around the containment ring didn’t shatter, but unraveled like silk threads loosening under a sudden draft.
The stone was oddly warm. Fabrisse didn’t think it was any magical, but more like the kind of warmth one felt when they held onto something for too long. It had human warmth. The stone was also denser and more weighty somehow, but he couldn’t tell if it was that diff...
2025-06-30 11:01:38 +0000 UTC View PostThe Lower Containment Annex sat beneath the older wings of the Synod, accessed through a narrow stairwell hidden behind a tapestry depicting the Grand Binding of Witherwyrm Baruchel. It was a dramatic and slightly overcompensating piece of propaganda, which now functioned mostly to hide the most tightly regulated basement on campus.
For those who had no business being there, one needed a ...
2025-06-30 11:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostFabrisse closed the door behind him and immediately turned to Greg, who was sitting on the floor in front of his bookshelf, carefully re-alphabetizing their emergency snack inventory by expiry date.
“No,” Greg said.
Fabrisse paused. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
Greg adjusted his glasses. “You paused meaningfully in the doorway, looked contemplative, and mad...
2025-06-30 10:59:52 +0000 UTC View PostThey reached a tall set of opaline doors etched with celestial runes. Lorvan didn’t knock. The doors opened on their own, soundlessly, like they had been expecting him.
Inside, the air was even cooler, approaching the temperature that’d require Fabrisse to wear a coat. He gave an involuntary shiver, the kind that started between the shoulder blades and traveled down his spine like a d...
2025-06-30 10:59:22 +0000 UTC View PostBy the time Fabrisse returned to class, he was exactly one hour and twelve minutes late. His robes were damp, his knees were muddy, and he still had a faint duck-feather stuck in his hair, which refused to dislodge no matter how many times he ran a hand through it.
The door creaked.
Every head turned.
Silence fell like a dropped curtain.
It wasn’t just that he was late...
2025-06-30 10:59:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe lower channel ponds weren’t far, but Fabrisse felt like they were venturing into a different ecosystem entirely.
Past the eastern greenhouses and the old chalk tower, the land sloped toward a series of runoff-fed terraces where the Synod kept its minor aquafauna: the silt-swimmers, scale-eels, and the occasional duck-thing that wandered in from the canals and decided to stay. The ai...
2025-06-30 10:57:18 +0000 UTC View PostThe next morning, Fabrisse did the responsible thing: he went back to the Synod.
The world had not ended. The Eidralith had not incinerated him in righteous flame. No magi in crimson robes came knocking in the night. He even got six hours of sleep, which was a personal best under magical duress.
The dormitory hallway was dim and unusually silent as he padded through in socked feet. ...
2025-06-30 10:56:54 +0000 UTC View PostIt took Lorvan and Fabrisse another three tries to get the correct invocation to access [Skills], which turned out to be a mimicry of the old mnemonic for self-knowledge rites.
As the motion ended with his fingers touching the center of his palm, a tone rang out, softer than before.
Invocation matched with Query Type — [Competency].
[Skills Interface...
2025-06-30 10:56:18 +0000 UTC View PostThe stairs creaked under Fabrisse’s feet as he descended. Their cottage was small and sun-softened, and it looked even more cluttered since the lower floor doubled as kitchen, living room, and informal herb-drying station, depending on the week.
His mother stood near the hearth, sleeves rolled up, wand tucked behind her ear like a pencil. A practical woman with flour-dusted hands and ca...
2025-06-30 10:41:23 +0000 UTC View PostFabrisse’s room resembled a secondhand bookshop crossbred with a nostalgic attic. It overflowed with annotated journals, old field guides, rejected thesis scrolls, and sentimental clutter no sane person would inventory, and the only reason why it looked remotely neat was because Dubbie insisted on tidying it up, even after Fabrisse had specifically told her not to.
He liked the kind of ...
2025-06-30 10:33:46 +0000 UTC View PostHe tapped his fingers against the side of his knee, glancing again at the fire, then to the glyph logs he’d recorded from his earlier invocations. All four had one thing in common. They could manifest and interact. Maybe there was a linking element that allowed for this manifestation.
If the others existed out there, and were drawn in, then this last one could be somet...
2025-06-30 10:32:52 +0000 UTC View PostSome minutes later, Fabrisse was crouched near the base of a leafless tree, both hands shielding a shallow indentation he’d cleared in the dirt. A few brittle twigs and shaved bark curls lay cradled inside like a nest made of frustration and secondhand kindling. Dubbie had slumped sideways against the tree trunk nearby, arms crossed, head tilted just enough to keep one eye on him out of sheer...
2025-06-30 10:30:51 +0000 UTC View Post“Invocation for Gentle Currents, Mark II,” Fabrisse announced with all the pomp of a court herald and none of the authority.
“You didn’t bring any scrolls.” Dubbie looked up at him from her perch on a slanted boulder, her cloak bundled tightly around her knees. They had moved to the windward side of Reflection Knoll, where the hill thinned into a patchy ridgeline, offering a cle...
2025-06-30 10:30:20 +0000 UTC View PostTufted with scraggly grass and wind-battered shrubs, the hill rose like a bump on the landscape’s forehead. Fabrisse had named it Reflection Knoll years ago, back when he was ten and decided all significant hills needed names. The name never caught on with anyone else, mostly because the townsfolk of Itakonra Hollow didn’t think a hill with three trees and one ancient mailbox deserved the w...
2025-06-30 10:29:52 +0000 UTC View PostHe muttered a string of silent curses and tried to open the skill repository, but nothing happened. He focused harder, willing the system to respond. Open ‘Skill’, he thought. Gain access to ‘Skill’. Acknowledge meat vessel. Hello?
Still nothing.
He reached up and poked at the floating letters.
His finger went right through them.
Fabrisse frowne...
2025-06-30 10:28:26 +0000 UTC View PostFabrisse was not at the Synod anymore.
He was home.
Home-home. Not dorm-home.
Fabrisse didn’t exactly announce his return when he slipped in through the side gate. He’d been sneaking home since he turned sixteen, enough that the boundary wards had stopped reacting and the neighbor’s cat now expected treats.
His house wasn’t far from the Twelvefold campus, b...
2025-06-30 10:27:48 +0000 UTC View PostNo one really knew what the Eidralith was. Supposedly, it had been unearthed from a crater older than the Synod. Some called it divine. Others suspected it was just very ancient, as ancient as the meteor that had given magic to all the lands itself.
Fabrisse also didn’t know the answer. But at least today, as the box flew like a meteorite and slammed directly into his face, he learned t...
2025-06-30 10:27:04 +0000 UTC View PostSevera’s robes scintillated with thousands of minuscule interwoven wardthreads as she ambled up the dais. She bowed before the floating Eidralith with exacting reverence before commencing the Invocation of Concordance.
Unlike utility or battlecasting—where incantations were often raw, sharp, and focused on effect—the spells for Eidralith resonance were ceremonial in nature. These ri...
2025-06-30 10:26:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe cathedral smelled like wax.
Fabrisse Kestovar slid through the side passage of the sanctum with the pace of someone who had been very late. The sanctum, a towering crescent-shaped chamber big enough to house a thunderbird, served both as cathedral and ceremonial hall for the Twelvefold Flame, one of the oldest mage orders on the continent. Today, however, it was under the adm...
2025-06-30 10:26:19 +0000 UTC View Post“Your dog has died! Kill the demon now!” Lorvan Lugano shouted as his student Fabrisse Kestovar held his wand aloft, face twisted in some vague approximation of anguish.
Mentor Lorvan is right, Fabrisse thought. Focus on the dog.
Bunsen was a good dog. Loyal and fuzzy, though not especially bright. He liked sausages, hated thunder, and once peed on the Headmast...
2025-06-30 10:25:43 +0000 UTC View PostAdded more to an existing chapter so now it is long enough to be its own chapter.
“Here, we have a table for you!” The tavern owner pointed at Blorbo as Ducaz set him down on the ground, as if Blorbo was the tavern’s property.
As Blorbo’s legs were roughly thunked against the tavern floor, a warm, sloshing noise of spilled ale washed over him. Marin...
2025-04-13 20:47:09 +0000 UTC View Post
