Desire

War. That’s what this was. The tumult of battle, roaring in bursts through portals snapping open and shut, open and shut. Chaos. Violence. Bloodshed. Pain. The wind through thickly spread trees, roaring and rattling. The clatter of violent cards on the gale, tearing through the forest’s leaves. The ear splitting clash of Rhavid’s sparking chains as he lashed them through her gateways with unrelenting focus. His strong, muscled arms flexing with knightly strength as he handled the massively heavy and unwieldy weapons with powerful finesse. The savagery of Brynn the dragon warrior darting in and out to deliver mighty blows and torch their common foe before retreating back to cover, blade edged in a blue draconic inferno. Her opalescent horns glinted with refracted light from the swirling gateways as she fought. Magic. How she reveled in it! The one thing that gave her superiority and worth! So very much of it. And she felt strong. So strong. The forest was astir with the arcane might of Ivras united under one cause. Alêkto’s power burned bright within the vault of her own, magnificent. This spectacular sorcery was agony, exquisite agony beyond any she had ever known, but it was nothing. She could do anything. She was in control. 

It really was in moments like this where the mind was most susceptible to hearing what it wanted, and to magic of an unsavory sort. She worshipped her own strength, her soul a ready, fertile garden for something *dark.* And there was something dark here.

Beholding the great and terrible Augury beginning to show signs of wear, she wondered if there was anything she could gain from it. She blocked a wave of glittering sand, which poured around her defensive portal against the wind and flowed into and through the tiny cracks in her armor. 

Gasping, her portals crackled shut, and she gritted her teeth. The image of the Augury’s card burned livid gold behind her eyelids, morphing hypnotically.

Rhavid bellowed a warning as the portals went down- she wasn’t there in mind to hear it.

In this vision through her pain and blood was the Drum of Destiny reversed, a symbol of burnout. On it she beheld herself as the central figure. 

*No. Not that one.*

Something twisted delighted in her defiance of a fate that was for her best. The song within that called to her to let it blossom savored self destruction. Ever so much more poetic that she she should choose the path of ruin than have it thrust upon her.

Something shifted, a crack in reality. The card changed, and suddenly it was the Archmage, symbol of power. Again, her own form depicted, clad in crystal, and in her rightful place. Where she had worked for. Where she belonged. The background was a holographic mirage, shifting, changing, dripping. Cracks radiated out around her. Multicolored liquid dribbled from her mouth. Blood pooled beneath the seat of radiance.

*Ah. Yes. I will have power.*

Oh, she knew she should not embrace that siren call. Perhaps the truest danger of this corrupted thing was that seductive warping. Maybe it would be nothing if she wasn’t willing. But oh, she was so willing. She would get what was coming to her. She would burn like a meteor. It was done. The threads were altered.

Back to reality, and she was bleeding, bleeding, bleeding from the crystal sand that dug across her flesh. Her blood was water now. With a shiver she traced a shimmering line of portal over her body, sending the belligerent, abrasive particles elsewhere, along with her clothes underneath the crystalline armor. The wind rushed all around her, but she couldn’t feel it, impervious to its chill.

Rhavid and Brynn had seemingly done their best to swat any remaining cards and sand out of the air while she was out, and had been visibly knicked. Good thing anything they hadn’t gotten had fallen to the ground, lifeless, a few moments after the portal went down, suddenly far from their source of power. Alêkto had taken a moment to rest from the intensive task of empowering another mage before resuming the boost.

The portals went back up, and Vizon gritted her teeth in pain. Rhavid and Brynn resumed their barrage of attacks; blue dragonfire and iron lighting. With a fierce cry, she opened a gateway within the card itself, rending it, something she had never been able to do, wouldn’t be able to do after Alêkto was done with her, and would absolutely someday have the power to do so on her own. Slashing, she cleft the monster again and again, branches clipped from trees flying through the air, sand pouring from cardboard wounds as it reformed itself again and again. As mages and that one daft nonmage struggled under the cataclysm of crystal sand and knifelike cards, she unleashed her boosted power and forged around them armor of portals, straining at the limits of what was possible. Alêkto’s fuschia fire burned as she cackled and gasped with the thrill and strain of channeling so much power at once to another.

Vizon stood upon the muddy stone, the picture of a sorcerous, scandalous and shining with accursed arcane might. Authority would be hers. Honor would be hers. Power would be hers. She would be the greatest Archmage of all time. It was her destiny. 

So she believed, hungrily, desperately. Once she had been nothing. She would never be nothing again. Once ignored and tossed aside. She would be never be loved, but she would be respected, revered. 

That ache inside her chest, that event horizon of emptiness tearing at her spirit, growing as she shoveled money and pleasure and reputation and luxury and fame and busyness and influence into its hungry jaws, it never filled. And yet she continued frantically appeasing it with offerings of worldly distractions. She would fill that void with the detritus of her ambition. It was easier than slowing down. Anything but that! The pain of her own stubborn folly cut at her with an intensity that tore at her spirit, and ripped a piece off. 

So this was how she would find a familiar.

An offshoot of her soul, avian and invisible but for the shimmering warp of the air delineating her form. A bird of paradise, feathers outstretched. She watched the battle through wings of distortion. The world was different through her companion. In it, what was there, could be seen, but layered overtop was what was not. In it, she witnessed herself deliver the killing blow to the monster. The hills looked so much more alive and profound through the window of this being than from any other vantage.

“Your name is Desire,” Vizon declared. “And you are beautiful.”

Exhaustion and pain were cried out to her innermost being, but it was in vain, for she would not rest. She would not heal. 

She was set on her course.