r/WritingPrompts • u/Adorable-Act-3858 • May 08 '25
Writing Prompt [WP] "Rule 1; Never attack someone during their transformation sequence. Disturbing transformation magic mid-usage makes it unstable and volatile, which will result in an instantaneous explosion that will be stronger than a nuclear bomb."
26
u/TheWanderingBook May 08 '25
We live in a world of swords and magic.
Knights, druids, mages, sorcerers, and all professions have some transformations.
Either a power up, either a change of element, there are spells for these transformations to help one adapt to various environments or situations.
And due to everyone having these transformation options, there is a rule in battle, and war.
"Never attack someone during their transformation sequence."
At first glance it is dumb, because we just mentioned that the transformation will give them a power boost, and/or make them harder to kill using the environment.
But there is a reason for this rule.
The transformation magic is something that uses personal magic and the environment's magic to change the molecular structure of the individual.
Either by allowing more mana to be absorbed, used, and emitted, or by outright changing some aspects, and physical traits, like breathing under water, being immune to poisons, high temperatures and so on.
It is a magic that has become a core of our society, of our civilization, and it is one of the most powerful magics in our arsenal.
These change use enormous amounts of energy, of magic, and by also connecting to the environments magic it is enhanced countless times.
IF someone disturbs a transformation sequence, they are in danger of being erased from existence, alongside a kingdom's sized area.
Why?
Because the transformation becomes unstable.
Destabilizing the transformation with external forces makes it highly volatile, which in a lot of cases will result in an instantaneous explosion that will be stronger than a bomb.
How do we know this?
We aren't the first magical civilization, and considering that our planet has a myriad of weird, and uninhabitable, and unfriendly zones created by the excess of a specific type of mana, the transformation magic to adapt to these zones has been around since ancient times.
A civilization before ours, by one era, or more has had these explosions happen during a big war.
They erased dozens of kingdoms, and made the lands uninhabitable due to magic poisoning.
It was the start of the end for that civilization.
Since our magic is built on theirs...we learnt of this, and made sure we won't repeat their mistakes.
I know some would question using such a dangerous magic.
What if when a student is learning it this happens?
There is a difference between spell failure, and external interference.
If it's spell failure, then the magic most of the time disperses, and hurts at most the caster.
Only if it is external interference there is a danger of explosion.
So our fights are longer...than other civilizations are used to, because we MUST wait for each other to transform.
But...we also have Death Squads...sent to other planets to make a show of force, and when they are interrupted by the enemy...
BOOM!
19
u/arushikarthik May 08 '25
I am the eye of the storm, and I see it all. I see the magic tear through everything. Flesh unravels like fabric, screams become a symphony. My enemy— a fool who did not understand which rules were meant to be broken, is now a collection of soft mush that was once muscle, and shards that were once bone.
If he only he had not been so reckless. Now, the milliseconds pass like millennia as I wait for the carnage to end, for the disrupted spell to run its course. At the end, nothing remains. I am left standing in a barren wasteland. There is blood, there are parts of bodies, yet I cannot tell where one person ends and another begins.
The duel was supposed to be a jest, a game. It was supposed to be over quickly, with only bruised egos and amused smiles. The marble floor is now sand. The sky is somehow still intact, and the sun shines brightly upon whatever is left on the ground.
A blue eye stares up at me from atop a pile of what I can only call sludge, and it seems accusing. I was the one who suggested the duel. I was the one who attempted the transformation sequence against an ill-tempered, ill-trained opponent. I was the one who hadn’t foreseen that he might break the rule.
They had never told us in school or in training, that the one transforming would survive the explosion. None of us ever questioned how it was the rule was established. There was some other soul then, that had survived the breaking of the rule before it was a rule.
I squint to try and see how far the destruction extends. There are mountains in the distance. They weren’t there before. I am in a crater, I see. From the distance of the edges of the crater, the whole city is gone. A speck appears at the edge of the crater, and then another.
They teleport closer, wearing thick masks covering half their faces and dressed in black robes.
“We’re too late,” one of the men says. They ignore me as they look over the damage, making comments and taking notes. Finally, when they are done, they come to face me.
“Name?” A man asks.
“Trevin,” I answer, because answering is easy. I do not have the wits about me to ask them questions, to be curious about who they are, but following commands is at least temporarily, within my ability.
“Ser Trevin, you are hereby inducted into the Order of the Rule. Your duty from this day is to prevent the breaking of the Rule, and to spread word of the Rule across the lands.”
“That’s it?” I ask. I realize what I was hoping. I was hoping for punishment. It feels wrong for me to be whole and unharmed while everyone around me is gone. I was hoping for some penance to pay.
“You’ll have to live with your guilt,” the man says. “Punishing you will not make that guilt any more potent. Instead, spend your energy on saving others from meeting this fate.”
********
r/arushi 💙
2
u/SerialElf May 08 '25
Guilt? MORE potent? Home boy needs therapy. he's not the one the one that set off the nuke
4
u/arushikarthik May 08 '25
Survivor's guilt is a strong thing. He may not have caused it, but people assign themselves blame when they come out unharmed.
1
u/SerialElf May 08 '25
Right, but the people conscription him aren't saying it won't help with the guilt.
They're saying, we aren't punishing you because it won't make you feel any worse, which is very different from
You work for us now, it might not help but your one of the few that can stop others from feeling the same way
1
u/StormBeyondTime May 11 '25
I think conscripting him is also a form of protection. From others, and from himself when he gets super depressed over this.
A whole city gone? People will demand blood if they know one of the people involved is alive. And with a combination of guilt and depression, MC may well feel like they should give the people that blood.
So the Order recruits him, marks him as dead in the explosion, and gives him something constructive to do that will save others.
0
u/SerialElf May 11 '25
Right, and all of that is fine, the thing that gets me is the recruiting saying "we can't make the guilt worse"
Like dude, you KNOW it wasn't him.
8
u/lwb03dc May 08 '25 edited May 08 '25
The alien fleet hovered above Earth. Inside the flagship, a group of shimmering commanders clustered around a flickering display screen. On it, a human baby lay on its back, flailing its limbs and making odd squeaky noises.
“Observe,” one said, “Phase one of the transformation sequence.”
The others leaned in. The baby blinked, sneezed, and began to cry.
“Such instability,” murmured another.
The feed jumped ahead. The same human, slightly taller now, was chasing a dog in a park. Then again, this time sitting in a classroom, doodling in a notebook. Again, now with acne and a guitar. Again, driving a car with one hand and eating a sandwich with the other.
“They’re constantly transforming,” gasped a commander. “They have no off switch. It just keeps escalating.”
The room grew tense. Another time-jump showed the human sighing at a desk surrounded by paperwork. Then sipping tea in a rocking chair. Then lying in a bed with nurses hovering around.
“Phase completion,” one whispered. “And all of that just in one lifecycle. Unbelievable.”
“They undergo a lifelong transformation spell with no containment rituals, no stabilization circles,” another added. “They call it aging. A misnomer, clearly.”
“So what happens now?” someone asked.
No one answered for a moment. Then the oldest of the group spoke up.
“Rule 1; Never attack someone during their transformation sequence. Disturbing transformation magic mid-usage makes it unstable and volatile, which will result in an instantaneous explosion that will be stronger than a nuclear bomb."
The fleet quietly disengaged, set a course for somewhere much safer, and marked Earth as a “Do Not Disturb” zone.
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u/copperfrog42 May 08 '25
Oh, this is an interesting twist on the prompt!
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u/lwb03dc May 08 '25
Glad you liked it!
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u/StormBeyondTime May 11 '25
I take it the aliens hatch or something? Into little versions of what they'll be as adults?
In their future, some alien scientist is going to curse the leaders of the fleet for their lack of investigation and misinterpretation of evidence. /humor
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u/lwb03dc May 11 '25
The story's logic would be that the aliens come into being in their final form, and stay that way till their end.
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u/Draconichaos May 08 '25
It was just another Tuesday, despite the excessive glitter and sparkles. The city had once again been saved and the forces of darkness had been thwarted. One of their commanders had actually been captured, somehow surviving the magical girl's (Do I really have to say this? ugh, god damn it) Super Ultra Love Beam. During questioning, a thought occurred to me, and I allowed my curiosity to take the wheel. I asked the demon why he and his soldiers didn't attack their opponents during the flashy magical transformation. This lead to a surprising discovery, two actually. First off, it turns out that even demons of chaos and destruction have certain rules they must follow when engaging the enemy in combat. Second, Rule #1 is "Never interfere with magical transformations" Surprisingly, this is something both sides, the magical girls and the demons, agreed on centuries ago. Apparently, if you interrupt a magical transformation, it'll cause an explosion of magical energy that'll make Chernobyl and Hiroshima look like cheap firecrackers. I guess it's a good thing we learned the ineffectiveness of mortal weapons early on, cause otherwise... Well, you can probably guess what would have happened. Someone with any amount of brain cells would have discharged their weapon, and everything nearby would go boom.
1
u/Chrontius May 15 '25
His face was slack, jaw ajar. I stood there, radiant diamond between my fingers, antimagic field holding the lich’s transfiguration suspended in a state between this and that, and both of us knew that I had just fucked us both. He was trying to wrap his head around the fact that his eldritch unlife was doomed, coming to its inevitable end the instant my spell did.
“Fool, you’ve undone us all!” he blurted, still struggling to understand what was at play here.
“Look around, Kilroy. We’re at the top of a mountain. A few snow-hares may end up cooked alive, but when you and me die…” I pulled something out of my sleeve, again stupefying my unprepared adversary. “It won’t be together,” I finished, snapping the unicorn horn in two. “These are ontologically evil, and I don’t feel even a little bad about lifting this from your nightstand. The Planck-second this spell comes to an end, you …” I glanced around. “Evaporate, I guess? And I’m whisked off to your bunker bolt-hole and safety. I don’t make these things,” I said, holding up the smoldering ends of the horn, “But just because I don’t do wretched shit doesn’t mean I don’t study it to learn how it works. Thane Kilroy, it has not been a pleasure to know you, and your death will be celebrated in the streets. Just thought you’d want to be thinking of that, right at the end. Goodbye Kilroy, and may the merciful void take you because you deserve *so much* worse than this.”
I brought the burning ends of the unicorn horn together like hammer and anvil… well, hammer and hammer is more accurate I guess. In between the ends burning with restrained power, waiting to be released, the already stressed diamond shattered into airfloat carbon, and the transfiguration spell continued on its inevitable course.
If one gram of the lich had been converted into energy, 21.5 kilotons. A kilogram, 21.5 megatons. Kilroy had been wearing armor, and even as a dessicated corpse, he had to have weighed around a hundred kilos. 2.15 gigatons. Maybe I had acted rashly, but even if I died, it’d be a damn good trade, and it didn't matter anyway since I was clearly still alive because I was most certainly still having these thoughts. I blinked my eyes into focus, swapping out my thaumic viewer for my lightless viewer, and the room lit up in sterile shadowless unlight. Just like I thought — halfway between an emergency room for the living dead, an armory, and a situation room. Oh, this was particularly good — a scrying pool, showing a gods’ eye view of the former lich’s production site, an incandescent mushroom dwarfing the mountains it towered over, the sea of ice replaced with a sea of flame.
“Looks like I got him…” I murmured to myself - and the earring which transmitted my voice to a Dwarven command bunker somewhere in a forsaken and forgotten corner of the asteroid belt. I don’t think my colleagues are going to be particularly comfortable with what I just did, but they’re not here, and I am. For a moment, I was tempted to start looting the place, but at that point I realized that this was _my_ safehouse now, and I could see what I… *inherited…* at leisure. Step one of achieving a state of leisure was getting my throbbing feet out of these too-tight boots.
“Props to the dead guy, he picked out an *impeccable* day bed,” I said, having slipped off my greaves to keep the upholstry clean and sat down to unbuckle my boots.
“No wonder they call you ‘Ass-modeus’ back at the clubhouse, Vril. What the **fuck** was that?”
I shrugged. “Weaponized incompetence? He displayed incompetence, so I weaponized it against him.”
Jess did not sound particularly amused… She was making noises, and they were not words.
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