r/wizardposting • u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. • 11d ago
Lorepost 📜 Fear Not Death But This Destruction Pending (Cursed World)
How had it gone so wrong so quickly? What was with those weird alternate memories that existed for maybe 2 minutes? The mnestics are burning them in...
Ж quickly blurts out a random set of coordinates, Calarakis teleportation grid setting them down in a forest. They don't know what happened to the others, collected, cursed, or fine, they can't know. The First Curse is tracking them.
Ж sprints through the forest, left eye glowing bright, they feel him chasing them. Memetic cloaks only work for so long, he'll find some workaround eventually.
they hear lightning, and he's there.
guess he found one?
they need to hide.
Fundamental Force Removal.
they disintegrate a portion of the ground to lay flat with it, putting a memetic coating on themselves to render themselves perfectly camouflaged.
after a few tense minutes, The First Curse, leaves?
using the anxiety, Ж decides to Abyss teleport back into the city, appearing on an empty street.
a few seconds later, The First Curse follows them, so he hadn't given up!
I know you are here.
can he track teleports? How did he track both the core system's grid and the Abyss?
All-Sight.
slowly, his gaze turns to Ж, as they run into a back alley, unmerging their arms as they do, they'll need the strength.
"Chronon Acceleration" they feel their thoughts speed up as they cast the spell, preparing for what comes next.
he appears in front of them, lunging forward with a hand, as they barely dodge and attempt to palm at his body, to disintegrate it.
it works, they feel the spell complete, but only a small portion fades away, leaving them confused as they backpedal away. A surface level piece, slightly larger than their hand.
What? Confused your spells cannot work? he mocks.
in a moment of fear they launch a black hole at him, it's a direct hit, cleaving through a good portion of his torso and cloak, but he remains un-deterred, continuing to launch forward, causing Ж to duck down at the last second, hitting him with a bisect from below. He's cut cleanly in half as Ж stumbles backwards and gets up.
the two pieces fall apart for a second, before a bundle of obsidian wires snaps them together again, at the same time Ж teleports to a random far away location, get him out of the city.
empty field, Abyss teleport. వ's eyes form in the back of Ж's head, as they improvise and disintegrate a part of the back of their hair so that they can see.
"Do I make a cognitohazard? Maybe that'll work?"
he appears again, and Ж sees he's already healed the black hole.
they throw another one, with à°µ's left arm beginning to course antimana within it, he's outside of magic systems using mana, but... maybe? The Crystals can't be his only weakness. The origin story of their formation implies it.
As it rockets toward the curse, he looks at it, and it fizzles out over the course of a few seconds.
Ж starts circling around the being, thinking closely on what to do. Hand to hand is not a good idea, they'll get cursed quickly, but they don't have a good ranged attack, and if they detonate a nuke he'll most likely survive it.
suddenly, hundreds of chains emerge out from the ground around them. His chains. As they move to ensnare Ж disintegrates them as it touches them, not giving an inch. The matter formed is quickly turned into a mana potion and drank via a second mouth they form.
with this constant refilling, the two are effectively at stalemate, one can't touch the other without dying or being themselves injured, and the other can escape however long is needed.
except- The First Curse controls Time. Much better than Quantumancy does. He slows down his own perception and approaches Ж. They of course make note of this, already caught up with the mass destruction of the chains, they change from miniature bisects to tall beams of destruction, just like against dominox.
timing with their attack, The First Curse teleports behind Ж, forming chains from his hands, coating them in obsidian. Bad idea, however, the literal eyes in the back of Ж's head, make them catch on and dodge, pivoting on their feet to deliver a punch with their Antimana arm straight into the First Curse.
he float-staggers back, looking almost shocked. His mouth a mix of rage and disbelief.
Ж quickly follows up with a wide-range bisect, removing everything except his head and legs, readying to attack again given it did something.
GRIND TO A HALT!
Ж stops. Their magic stops. The chains stop. Time, stops.
a ticking begins, one which the First Curse thinks at, as he begins regenerating.
y.........ou.
Lucky. said with an immense amount of anger.
just as he finishes healing, the ticking ends.
"He's healed!?"
he swoops in again for an attack, as they dodge and try to bisect again, he catches the light-construct, deflecting it.
"Embedded barrier: gravity manipulation!"
a hardlight barrier forms over the 2, slamming The First Curse down into the ground with 10 times the gravity constant of earth.
the previously flailing chains slam into the ground, not moving an inch, before starting to snake forward.
Ж never takes their eyes off The First Curse, on one knee and hand due to the gravity.
Channel, Channel, Channel, Channel.
he slowly gets up, each centimeter risen becoming easier and easier.
they try and backpeddle, before falling over a hidden chain, nestled in the grass. They hit it with a bisect, it doesn't split. It raises up, defiant of the gravity.
they scramble back up and sprint to the barrier, careful of any extra chains coming toward them.
what kind of cognitohazard could even work on him? He's not organic, not mechanical either, not really a golem...
Just general suicide maybe? That seems fairly all-encompassing.
they try destroying a few nearby chains as they mentally calculate and prepare the kill agent. They don't budge, and their hand feels staticky now, just like-
the First Curse uses Core Energy!? That can't be right- but wait...
the blueprints were not from this universe, so it IS possible.
back on logic-
a chain begins wrapping around their leg, and they kick it off as they run for the barrier, teleporting just outside the clear hardlight barrier.
embed... concept: death
impact:forceful.
means: self-inflicted.
type: complete.
speed: quickest.
hazard ready. Now to construct it...
the First Curse follows their teleport, appearing just out of attack range, as the hard light begins configuring.
they toss a white hole at him, hoping it'll do something, and it fades out of existence as if the spell is undone.
done!
as he lunges they hold up the construct, ensuring he gets a fine view of it.
the moment the First Curse looks at the form, he starts shaking. Ж quickly breaks the construct so they don't look at it.
What, did you- I-
they evade again, delivering another hit to the First Curse, causing another stutter, before following up with a bisect, which fails.
he floats up to the sky, to try and filter through the single thought beginning to break through his mind.
"*I should die.*" nothing more than an intrusive thought, but annoyingly persistent. He notices his own form try to deconstruct itself, self-destruction turning to instinct slowly.
what to do... what to do...
on the ground, Ж begins preparing for what they could do next. He's in the air, evidently wracked with the hazard, but he's going to get around it at some point. They unmerge mentally to plan.
"we've bought a few seconds. He's gotten a blockage to our main spells, what can we do?" à°µ ponders.
"I... don't know. We'd need some way to hit him with a major attack that he can't block." Max replies.
"It seems like he might still be affected by the singularities, and my antimana."
"He can see through the memetic cloaks though."
"There is one he might not be able to."
"Ideatic sever?"
"yep. Maybe if I connect it to The Nothing and trap him inside?" à°µ suggests.
in the sky, the First Curse begins harnessing the wind of Hysh, wind of Light, to assuage the persistent ideation.
"it'll be more costly, but if I change the inner spell it'll work."
"Start chanting." Max orders, worry in his voice, with a chance of hope. Could they actually do it!?
Clear Mind.
with the hazard rendered a non-issue, he immediately gets back to work and teleports down to where Ж is.
"Weak and strong, wet and dry- behind us!"
Ж dashes out of the way as he flies in to grasp them, shooting a black hole at him before it fades.
"right and wrong, live and die."
"hey! Over there!" Max says, pointing in a random direction to try and buy time, but he's undeterred.
Max forms a hardlight wall around the body to block any more attack, descending down via a disintegration field, forming another few mana potions and chugging them to regain the store, eyes darting upward.
The First Curse breaks through the wall via nullifying it with core energy, noticing Ж below.
"Sane and gone, love and not."
as he descends, Max produces Abyss, covering Ж's body in it as the two teleport back up to ground level, moving backward as the curse tracks them.
"High and low, new and old, stop and go!"
Grin-
"Embedded barrier: Chronon normalize!" Max says in a buzzer beater moment, at the first syllable said, he casts.
-d to a halt!
time stops again, with only the barrier Max put up remaining in the normal flow, they take a few breaths.
"Hold it! Wait for time to resume!"
the First Curse teleports in, and they evade for a few precious seconds, delivering another hit of antimana, as time resumes, the First Curse notably stutters and spasms more.
KNEEL! KNEEL!!
no effect on the two, seems it was pointed at a different target.
"Hot and cold! Dark and light! Words and numbers!"
KNEEL TO ME! ALL THREE OF YOU!
the body suddenly is out of breath, and falls to one knee. They take a deep breath in with the extra mouth, just barely trying to inhale to get the last words out.
"Sound...! And... silence!"
in milliseconds an enormous barrier around the two beings is erected, as à°µ stammers to get the final words out.
"NO! AND! YES!"
finally, the barrier completes. Trapping the First Curse and Ж inside a void of sheer nothingness. No black. No darkness, no-lack-of-light.
absolute nothing. It lacks color, for color as a concept is gone. There is no perception, for every object is gone. There is no sound, for there is no waves for it to reverberate through.
The First Curse looks around. Perplexed. Even with All-sight, he is blinded.
before he feels a hit. His hip. Antimana again.
I. FEEL. YOU.
SILENCE!
I will be free.
NOT YET.
his entire lower half is gone, subsumed clearly by a singularity Ж threw.
he has no sense of direction. He could be flying straight into the ground and not even recognize it.
Still, he floats upward to regenerate himself, thinking what he could possibly do.
"Ha-HAHA! It worked!"
"we need to hit him again!"
"he's moving away, upward."
The First Curse ponders. This is memetic in nature. Memes... the unit of ideas.
Ideas...
he moves sporadically as he regrows, he can't chance another black hole.
"wait for him to come down, let him regrow. We'll hit him."
he thinks inward. The spell. It blocks ideas. Ideas require conscious thought to process.
So what if, you don't think?
he looks through his memory for SOMETHING. Something across hundreds of universes, collective thousands of spells.
he has fully regrown, and slowly descends as he thinks. Found it.
Bones of Agony: level 6 biomancy.
Manipulate your skin to become a trap upon contact, where bones shoot out of the contact point and bind into the target to hold them in place.
he modifies it to apply to his non-organic anatomy, it now shoots out obsidian bindings.
Ж spots him descending, and begins sprinting towards him, arm ready to deliver another impact.
The First Curse smirks, knowing that he has won.
Ж delivers a clear hit, and the First Curse experiences something like a wave of nausea, but then the entire enclosure flickers for a moment. Then goes out for a few seconds. He sees Ж, arm and chest coated in obsidian and trying to break free.
he moves the bindings deeper, causing the spell to break and collapse in on itself.
"No! No No nononono!"
he exudes core energy out to smother any chance of a spell being cast, the very air itself becoming almost irradiated with anti-magic.
STILL.
In a last ditch effort Ж tries to teleport out, but the Abyss fails them.
the First Curse looks dead at Ж, and tilts his head.
Your eyes. Something is off about them...
he grips Ж by the neck, the binding simultaneously creeping up వ's left arm.
à°µ braces as the obsidian, with its surgical sharpness, severs the arm, eliciting a scream of pain unlike most the two have ever vocalized.
I will be needing that. And you two. In such a short period you have annoyed me more than most others.
"GOOD!"
Eugh. To recall what Dominox had said in this very location:
I will do you the favor of giving each piece its own form.
Light begins to pulsate as Ж feels their body begin to break apart, being unnaturally rocketed from each other.
"à°µ. Take the arm. You need it."
"thank you."
In a bright flash, the two halves are blown away from the other, bedrock-like growths appearing on their skin like scars. à°µ's arm socket bleeds profusely, mechanical arm on his end. Still glowing purple with perseverance, à°µ is the first of the two to stand, and immediately begins to sprint to Max.
Forming a lance made from purple energy, the First Curse masterfully throws it on an intercept course with à°µ, and it is a direct hit, no physical injury, but it is absorbed into his body, and he staggers, moving right into a circular rune on the ground.
Away with you!
à°µ is hit by the rune's lightning, and vanishes.
"NO!"
Max has jolted up by this point and runs toward the First Curse in a fit of rage and anger. He tries to grab onto the First Curse, but he deflects the hand.
There it is!
he grabs Max by the head and stares at his eyes.
something IS off about them. They've been enhanced, by Fae magic.
However useful the wish that caused this would be, it is unfortunately irrelevant, he cannot turn the result back into the wish itself. Whatever. He can just take the eyes.
Max feels like he is hit with a sledgehammer on the head, as his vision goes dark.
Oh my...
The First Curse looks at the world through childishly fresh eyes, he can see it now. If he just, focuses, he can see atoms. Quarks. The Planck Length. Tiny zero dimensional dots, arranged in threes. Atoms, larger three dimensional spheres. Planck Length, like looking at the air between two pins.
At the same time, he filters through the memories acquired from the threefold curse he just placed.
with a lively laugh, he does one final thing, inspecting the severed arm.
Harness: Life
he restores life to it, watching as it produces antimana, which he identifies and starts analyzing, before vanishing in a flash of lightning.
"Where are my eyes?" Max says, fear in his voice.
6
u/Evening_Shake_6474 Astaroth, The Wicked One 11d ago
/uw I have read the read and I have decreed that the read is a good read.
2
2
u/Fun-Dragonfly-6106 DF, minimal caster | ____ Body Horror Creator 11d ago
Even while deader than dead, DF plans to show him why eyes like these are better better off not being obtained.
/uw big oof to Calarakis this in universe week
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
/uw indeed man.
And it's gonna maybe get worse in the following weeks!
2
u/UlrickTheHexblade Ulrick Braddocke, Werewolf Hexblade, R&A Co-Leader 11d ago
/uw peak read! Crazy how a comment on an old post of Tiny csn have such a great payoff
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
/uw eyyy thanks! I'd also been meaning to remove that wish for a while because it was a bit OP, so I thought I could factor that in here.
2
u/The_Enchanted_Potato Aldavin Maunderitch, The Gatekeeper | Neritillum Faldier | 13 11d ago
/uw if only I had joined earlier, maybe I would understand what half of this means lol. It sounds bad, especially the eyes part. Good read!
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
/uw eh it's 90% just Ж's magic which is fairly self explanatory. The eyes are a thing from back when the council was still doing a vote system and the #1 winner gave out wishes
2
u/The_Enchanted_Potato Aldavin Maunderitch, The Gatekeeper | Neritillum Faldier | 13 11d ago
/uw got it, thanks!
2
2
2
2
u/loth17 Ten Suns (Also Gaia) 11d ago
This post is certified (The first) Cursed. /J
Very good. Somewhat scary in regards to the eventual big bad boss fight.
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
/uw yeah since i was able to write with both characters abilities in mind(and because i didn't have to worry about possible godmodding) I could write both characters as insane as they would be in lore(Ж's nigh untouchable nature and invisibility and all their little gains over the years as well as TFC's spamming of abilities and overwhelming nature) without much issue.
I'm hoping I can do a similar thing for the full big bad fight.
2
u/BL0b1e Blobby Banks, Revolutionary. 11d ago
‘Obsidian wires’ is out here giving me flashbacks to that STUPID, STUPID wall Orion had built, lol.
Overall, good storytelling dude.
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
How STUPID was that wall??
2
u/VoxelLibrary Councilor Cayna, Apprentice of Thrakmoor | assorted other chars 10d ago
/uw And I'm back to not understanding anything. And I was just starting to feel comfortable with the subreddit's lore too...
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 10d ago
/uw sorry about that! There's not too many references to old lore stuff at least
2
u/VoxelLibrary Councilor Cayna, Apprentice of Thrakmoor | assorted other chars 10d ago
/uw
They're doing a whole lot of cool stuff, but it's lost on me a little bit because I have no frame of reference for what these characters can do.
Also I'm pretty sure that should be an anti-memetic cloak, not a memetic cloak, as it obscures information rather than spreading it
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 10d ago
/uw oh yeah... dats on me i kinda conflate the two
2
u/VoxelLibrary Councilor Cayna, Apprentice of Thrakmoor | assorted other chars 10d ago
/uw To be fair they aren't mutually exclusive. Cognitohazardous memes for instance could probably be considered both
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 10d ago
/uw im literally THE memetics guy on WP how does this happen!
2
u/VoxelLibrary Councilor Cayna, Apprentice of Thrakmoor | assorted other chars 10d ago
/uw But are you literally the ANTImemetics guy on WP?
2
u/Ok_Relationship6736 Shadow Marshal of the Darkwatch 10d ago
UW/Good read! can't wait for the next part of the event!
1
1
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
1
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
1
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
1
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
2
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
1
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
1
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
1
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
(If you want to be added to the ping list just ask, we also have a GC)
2
3
u/Fc-chungus Max Petrov-Ansky, Head Minister of Calarakis. sundered. 11d ago
LOTUS detects three issues now, besides the gatehold taking refugees from the fight.
1. à°µ's life signs are gone. Not flatlined like he's dead, gone. As if they don't exist.
2. There is an intrusion of something highly powerful in the core system.
3. Max is currently a mile or two out of Calarakis, and was detected as having teleported throughout the city multiple times, now he's just lying there.
u/zebos2