He's seen this corner before, probably.
It's not a corner he's seen often, not anywhere he goes for any particular reason. But he wanders a lot, and he's probably seen this corner before.
That little shop with the worn-illegible sign wasn't there when he did. He would probably remember it, if it were. It catches the eye.
"By a long shot. Even a Neutral witch who hasn't obtained an arch-curative or anything of the sort has about twice the human lifespan."
"Excellent!"
She bounces a little in excitement (the resulting boob-jiggle is genuinely incidental) and holds out her hands.
He hesitates.
"—is there anything I should know more immediately before trying, any parts of the process where I could mess something up for myself permanently if I screwed up in some unlikely but possible way..."
"No part of the process is permanent until the process is finalized, which isn't going to happen by accident."
It feels almost as if he's being pulled out of his body, except not in any direction that exists in conventional three-dimensional space.
The place he finds himself is almost a starfield, except not as perceived through any kind of visual medium. The qualia he's receiving right now are in a completely novel sensory medium. There are structures between the points of "light;" three of them are currently the largest and closest to him, followed by a grouping of nine. And each of the three is a different "color" than the other two, and each of the nine has two "flavors," which overlap with each other substantially, and then of the more distant "stars," most of them have a color and a flavor, although much less strongly than the closer twelve.
The nearest one is synesthetically "red" and contains the information that it involves power growth through practice, that it allows for the learning of every kind of magic in that-one-star-cluster, and that one of those magics can be taken without any investiture of power potential if its affinities and his match. Also, his aura will increase in magnitude and integrate with the star cluster.
The second one is "blue" and contains the information that it involves power growth through study, that he can take any two of a cluster of stars that's a superset of the red-associated cluster of stars without investing potential, and that any of a different subset are twice as effective if he takes it.
The third one is "green" and contains the information that it involves power growth through economic transactions with any of this pomegranate-like star-cluster within the green star, and furthermore that each of the beings represented by these pomegranate-seed-stars will in addition offer him magic swag which he can glue to his soul.
...is adhering objects to my soul as drastically irrevocable and transformative a process as it sounds?
It sounds like - the sort of thing where I couldn't rule out that it might cause significant personality changes, or changes to how I perceive and interact with the world? And that doesn't seem worth risking for... most possible kinds of object, really, no matter how useful.
I have activated lots and lots of witches and kept in touch with many of them afterwards, and I haven't seen any patterns in personality change over time that make sense to attribute to soulbonding to relics. All it does is let you summon and dismiss them the same way you would mothergifts--that's this thing over here. She makes an Academic-aligned ranked-magic star light up.
Hmm. I'll think about it.
He's much more drawn to the blue star, though. He hesitates, remembers Penelope's assurance that everything here is reversible until the final commitment, and tentatively selects it.
The next ring of stars is, once he touches it, races he can be. There are nine of them in total.
Neutral - basically still human, but with some physical boosts. Recharges by sleeping.
Gnome - a four-inch-tall tinkerer of mad scientific proportions. Recharges by making stuff.
Gemini - imagine you fork, and then you and your fork are each other's HDM daemons, and also slightly Crystal Gems. Recharges by staying in sync with yourself.
Pixie - tiny little plant-related fae person with plant powers and leafy wings. Recharges from the blooming of associated flowers.
Lamia - Naga snakewoman. Recharges by vore.
Aurai - so an Aurai has a normal speaking voice that steals lifespan from anyone who hears, and a scream that sends people back in time until and unless they find the magic escape butterfly. Recharges from the timeline not changing from people being sent back in time even though it really should.
Wither - horrible constantly decomposing undead that repairs damage to themself via cannibalism and recharges via ambient decay.
Spider - magic sentient giant spider. Recharges through bondage.
Hollow - spirit bound to a suit of magic armor. Recharges by "eating" ore.
...that is all... a lot. That is all just very. Okay, crossing everything that recharges by harming people off the list immediately, that leaves Neutral, Gnome, Gemini, Pixie, Spider, and Hollow. (You could make a case for Wither technically not recharging by harming people, but he would rather not make that case, actually.)
He attempts to investigate each of these in more depth, starting with Neutral.
Neutral witches age past maturity at about half the rate of mundane humans, and do so more gracefully, in general; their bodies also don't randomly trip over entropy and fuck up the way human bodies do that leads to cancer and dying of an air bubble in your brain and developing globs of fat in weird places and getting diabetes.
(If he inspects it very carefully, there is a link to another star that mostly does not otherwise seem to exist.)
It's an upgrade of the Neutral witch type. Upgraded Neutrals can pick a second class's power-gain method (though not any of the other advantages of that class) and use that as well as their actual class's type, and get 20% spell resistance.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
