! #$%&? POV
...
Sirens.
Well, not sirens exactly, more like the howling of the wind.
I don't remember how I got in this position, my mind is kind of fuzzy right now, but...
Right. I remember now.
Well, I think I should first give you my name, shouldn't I?
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My name is "! #$%&?", and I am a third-generation magus. I don't remember my last name, it's been years since I last used it, after all. I now use my former middle name as my last name, "Animusphere."
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I was born into a branch of the Animusphere family. We aren't blood-related, but my grandfather somehow made a deal with the head of the Animusphere family, receiving a crest split from them. That's how my family got its magic crest, and how we became a branch of the Animusphere family.
...
Now, where was I?...
Ah! Yes.
As I was saying, I was born into a branch of the Animusphere family, although my grandfather and father did not pursue astromancy like the main family branch. Instead, for some god unknown reason, they decided to copy the Emiyas and research time magic. When I was a child, I heard something about trying to mimic a skill called "High-speed incantation" by speeding up one's internal time.
In my limited opinion, even though they somehow succeeded, it was still a big waste of time.
...
Anyways, when I was born, my father called me "a godsend", or "a prodigy", having thirty first-rate magic circuits. He was exaggerating, to say the least. I was good at magecraft, but far from being a so-called prodigy...
Right?
...
I was wrong. I should have noticed it sooner. As soon as I took my first steps into the moonlit world, by that I mean began casting my own spells, I should have realized I was above the average mage.
I mean, what kind of person could comprehend theories that took their predecessors years to understand in mere hours?
What else would you call someone who came up with their own theory about the flow and manipulation of time at only seven years old?
I was a genius, or as my father called me, a prodigy.
Though, I didn't realize this until much later in life. I guess even geniuses could be stupid sometimes. And I was very, VERY stupid sometimes.
...
Anyway, I spent most of my childhood studying time magic.
It was...
Boring.
The theories were all so easy to understand, for me anyways. And when I understood and recreated them, what could I do? Make a flower bloom forever?
But it wasn't too bad, at least I was allowed to pick another field of study besides time.
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I picked astromancy as my second curriculum.
I always had a strong interest in the stars, planets, and space in general.
It was the focus of the main family branch, so I would have knowledgeable magi to turn to when I reached a wall.
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Astromancy was fun. I never thought I would find magecraft that I considered fun. Everything my father taught me I grasped in hours, the longest time for me to understand a theory was about two days. I never considered magecraft much of a challenge, even spells not fitting for my elemental affinity were easy to cast in the form of Jewelcraft.
But astromancy.
Astromancy was more difficult. To read the stars, you needed to know the meaning and legend of every constellation in the sky, and have a sharp mind to understand the meaning best suited to the situation. And that was only the basics, as the spells got more complicated, the more things you would need to remember. It finally provided me with some entertainment.
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Time flew by, and before I knew it, I was already ten and the new head of my family.
The magic crest implantation went smoothly, and I began diving my nose into the spells stored within, trying to find imperfections that required fixing. And boy, there were a lot of mistakes.
My father and grandfather were both geniuses in their own right. However, they were sloppy, allowing a few errors to pass under the radar for quite some time.
Regardless the spells stored inside had immense potential for growth if one were to correct all the mistakes.
So, at age ten, I left for the Clocktower.
...
My first few years were peaceful, boring even, but I settled into a nice routine. There was the problem of me chasing skirts and then being blasted with fireballs by angry female magi, but everything else was perfect.
I wasn't too sure which classes to take, so I just tried every one. Eventually, deciding General Fundamentals, Astromancy, and Modern Magecraft Theory were the ones worth keeping.
I also did some studying in my free time, mostly about runes and magic circles, but bounded fields and time magic were also common subjects you could find in my stack of books.
I know I sound like a nerd, but hey, it's magecraft! How could you not be excited about that?!
...
A few years after I began my studies at the Clocktower, a large book gifted to me by my father sent me into a spiraling hole of shock. I would've never thought my father was almost sealing designated.
Apparently, the research he did on time magic was a bit... Taboo, to say the least.
I didn't bother to see what my father researched back when he was still working at the Clocktower, but I think I heard something about bounded fields.
When I dug deeper, however, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. My grandfather had somehow obtained the notes of a deceased sealing designate -I think his name was Norikata Emiya or something- all without the Clocktower knowing.
So that was the real reason my grandfather chose to study time magic. He stumbled across some random notes and decided to keep working on them.
But that's beside the point. My father decided to study reality marbles of all things.
I mean, they were a taboo among taboos. And you know what the most ridiculous part was? He got it to work. He somehow turned his own body into a reality marble that either sped up or slowed down his internal time.
Either way, it took me way too long to improve that stupid spell, but I suppose it was worth it in the end, the repercussions were almost none existent, and the effects were more prominent. I could now triple my internal time, but quadrupling it was still out of my reach.
...
For my remaining time at the Clocktower, I dropped all other subjects and focused solely on astromancy. I was pretty good at it, too, managing to use the primal form of astromancy.
It was complicated, and the theories and concepts were harder to understand. But, hey, it was fun, and I never got bored, not to mention telling the future was awesome. Every day there would be some new notes or discoveries that my fellow magi were swarming to get.
I was particularly fond of the theories of a fellow named Kirschtaria Wodime. It was about temporarily assuming control over planets, the heavens, and the universe to use their boundless Magical Energy as a source of power, artificially aligning celestial bodies in a series to create a gigantic magic circle.
It was a shame his theory couldn't be put to practice in modern times, magic circles made from stars would be so cool!
Then I did something stupid.
I tried to recreate his theory.
I guess researching taboos was something that ran in my family.
I mean, I really should have known better. If the lords of the Clocktower thought it was impossible, then how in the world could a nobody like me make it work? But I guess I was just too excited to listen to common sense, and that was when everything started spiraling out of control.
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The main problem that made this genius theory unreplicable was quite simple.
Prana.
The magecraft of the Animusphere family relied on ambient mana to fuel it, but in the age of man, ambient mana had greatly diminished compared to the age of the gods. Back then, the moons, planets, stars, and heavens were all overflowing with ambient mana.
So to combat this issue, I gathered as much magical energy as I could. I won't explain the whole process -it was waaaaaaay too complicated- all you need to know is that I somehow got access to a ley-line, set up a few bounded fields, and spent an unhealthy amount of time jamming prana into jewels.
That was all I did for a few years. Well, I did plenty of research on other magecraft-related things as well, but that's beside the point.
Then I simplified Kirschtaria Wodime's theory, making it less powerful but requiring less mana. I discovered a few oversights while simplifying it, so I corrected them. Surprisingly, if you applied concepts of Modern Magecraft Theory to astromancy, you would get some pretty interesting effects.
And yeah, all preparations were finished. So, one winter night, I went to a desert and set everything up.
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I wonder what in hell was I thinking back then. Doing this out in the open, where everyone could see. I was already on thin ice for being the son of an almost sealing designate, and the research I was doing was taboo, but I suppose I was just too excited.
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I set up the bounded fields, placed my hundreds of prana-infused gems, and began my chant.
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"The shape of stars. The shape of space. The shape of God. The shape of self."
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A golden magic circle formed in front of my hands, in the shape of a nine-pointed star. The hundreds of gems I placed began to vibrate as the thousands of units of prana stored inside them were being used up at astounding speeds by myself and the runes engraved on them. And then, the gems shattered, the remaining magical energy they had becoming purple particles of light that filled the gaps between the nine-pointed star.
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"Celestial bodies are hollow. Hollowness is empty space. God resides within empty space."
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The completed magic circle began to grow before stopping at a diameter of roughly two meters. I briefly turned my head and saw the stars shifting. They settled down a few moments later, before glowing a bright violet. And from those amethyst balls of light golden lines shot out, forming three intercrossing magic circles in the sky.
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"Stars, Cosmos, Gods, Animus, Antrum, Unverse, Anima, Animusphere."
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The magic circle in front of my hands shattered, and the ones in the sky began to glow so brightly I could barely look at them. Moments later, they vanished as well, and the stars moved to their normal positions in the sky.
And then, lights.
Hundreds of lights streaked across the sky. A huge meteor shower lit up the dark sands of the desert, slowly burning in the atmosphere. As the first few blazing hot meteors hit the earth, sand and dust flew in the air. The molten space rocks heated the air around them, generating massive winds that carried the air-born sand high up into the clouds.
A gigantic sand storm that lasted for three hours was the result of my astromancy spell. I managed to put up a barrier spell just before the storm of sand and molten rock hit my face, otherwise, I would be dead.
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When the sandstorm settled down and the sky cleared, dawn had already come.
The land in front of me was a wasteland covered with giant rocks and impact holes, barely any sand could be seen. The meteors were so hot that they turned the sand into glass, it hurt my eyes to look at the space in front of me, it was like a giant mirror reflecting the sun into my eyes.
I set up a powerful bounded field beforehand, so most of the desert wasn't impacted, but a colossal glass plate covered with space rocks was sure to garner plenty of attention.
I'll say it again.
I was stupid back then.
What magus in their right mind would just leave a colossal glass plate covered with space rocks that was obviously not achieved through natural or scientific means in the middle of a desert for millions to see?
Me.
That's who.
I thought it would take more than summoning a meteor shower to place me on the Clocktowers sealing designate list. I mean, the Animuspheres sometimes often did and nothing happened to them.
Boy, was I wrong.
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And that was how I went from admiring the work of a genius to becoming a genius myself.
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I should have expected the entire Clocktower to see what I did. I literally moved the stars' positions, after all.
I should have also known the Clocktower to slap a sealing designation on me as soon as I got back.
Summoning a meteor shower normally did not result in a sealing designation, but there were a few things that put mine in a completely different league.
First was the scale of the shower, no one had ever in the history of the Clocktower dared to summon one that large. Mainly because of the unimaginable prana that is required but also because it was almost impossible to clean up without non-magi noticing.
The second thing was how I summoned it. Magi would normally create a magic circle with rune-engraved stones or some prana-dense liquid to summon the shower, NOT BY ALINING THE F-ing STARS! Honestly, when I found out I just wanted to slap my stupid face.
The third reason was more or less my fault. The alining of stars could be seen worldwide by human telescopes, when I turned on the TV I saw scientist working their butts off trying to understand why the stars moved millions of light years. Some people even thought it was the end of the world when they saw magic circles in the sky.
So, yeah.
I got sealing designated.
How "fun".
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The worst thing about being sealing designated is that you don't find out until the enforcers get to your doorstep.
I was just doing research in my workshop and then at least ten enforcers burst through the door FBI style. I hardly had any time to escape but I managed it nonetheless, taking the most precious notes I randomly grabbed. After the enforcers ransacked the house all my research would be confiscated.
I couldn't let them get me, the lords at the Clocktower would take my crest and put my brain in a jar or something. I had no wish to spend the rest of my days in preservation fluid.
I have a safe house in my homeland in Japan, but I wasn't sure if I could get there.
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Nonetheless, I still tried. It was better than being experimented on.
First, I cut ties with my family. I didn't have a wife or kids, I was too busy improving my magic crest and astromancy, but I couldn't let my parents or grandparents get caught up in this mess.
Then I fled, taking the fastest flight to Japan I could find.
I had way too many problems than I would've liked. Some stupid freelancer even set up bombs in the fricking plane. Thank whatever god my family worshipped that I had a wind-based flight spell in my magic crest.
Thanks to that stupid bomb I did not arrive in Japan unscathed, but a healing spell or two fixed my broken bones. After that getting to the safehouse was much easier.
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The safe house was in a forest, twenty meters below the ground, with two entrances and exits. The main entrance is under a large slab of rock and covered with leaves. A bounded field I set up years ago protected the place from non-magi. The wooden hatch was covered by protection and attack spells, and only those with my family's crest could disable it.
The inside looked just like any Japanese apartment, with everything you need to live comfortably. The windows were enchanted to show the outside world, letting the magus living here know what was going on. And astromancers need to see the stars, after all.
All in all, it was a pretty safe place, perfect for hiding away. However, the food supply wasn't unlimited, so I would have to go out eventually. But I can just pay a friend to deliver me some food or something. I sighed and began unpacking.
...
My life underground was like my first few years in the Clocktower.
Peaceful, but boring.
I had to get money somehow, so I sold some mystic codes. I was a pretty good craftsman, so most of them sold for high prices.
I didn't dare go up to the surface, an enforcer might pop out of nowhere and knock me out. So I paid a friend of mine to do my shopping.
It was suffocating down there. Like I was a caged bird unable to fly free. I often cursed myself for not fleeing to a remote island village or a mountain.
But there was a silver lining. In the quiet environment, I was able to work much faster. I already perfected every spell in my magic crest and even added my own, though I had no heir to pass it on to. I considered making a homunculus once, but I didn't have the necessary tools.
My mystic codes generated a good amount of money, but I refused to sell my best code.
I called it "Earth."
It was a staff whose function was to draw ambient mana from the earth's ley lines, letting me perform greater rituals much faster than normal.
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A few years after becoming a mole, I began experimenting.
I remembered a magus saying you could cannibalize nerves to form weak and unstable magic circuits. I tested this out, and it actually worked.
However, it felt like shoving a hot iron rod up your spinal cord so I will not be trying that again.
But there was a result, a pitiful but still present magic circuit, having an energy output of barely five units. Unfortunately, when I stopped pumping magical energy through it, the circuit died.
My mind was swirling at the possibilities. If I could make the fake circuit more stable, then I could create as many as I wanted. I was grinning from ear to ear at this thought. Having an infinite amount of magic circuits would be any magi's dream. I didn't think I could get an infinite number, but I'm pretty sure I could get a few thousand.
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I spent the next couple of years researching this.
I somehow managed to secure a stable supply of human nerves, though I didn't want to know how the suppliers got them.
I must have gone through hundreds of experiments, but I eventually achieved my goal. Reinforcing the fake circuits right after they formed would result in something more stable, as their reinforced concepts prevented them from vanishing.
I discovered turning animal nerves into circuits was possible, but the quality was much lower. The highest output I could get from animal nerves was two measly units. They served as a good conductor for prana, though.
I often wondered if the nerves of phantasmal beasts would work, but how could someone get their hands on one in this day and age?
As time went by, I continued to refine my fake circuits. They would never come close to the quality of real ones, but I managed to create a circuit with an output of fifteen units of magical energy.
That one circuit took me a week to make, and the process was grueling and slow, but the result was obviously worth it.
...
The years passed, and before I knew it, I was already forty.
I don't know when it happened, but I developed agoraphobia. I was afraid to go outside. And just my luck, when this phobia developed to its worst stage, my friend said he had to deal with some business in another country and wouldn't be back for a few years.
I realized this would happen sooner or later. Magi often went away for long periods at a time, it was lucky my friend had stayed put for years. But now, he couldn't get me the things I needed. I would need to get food and living essentials myself.
I was shaken at the thought. The fear of enforcers was still fresh in my mind. But the time came when I ran out of food, so I had little choice but to go out on my own.
...
As I opened the hatch to my safehouse a cool breeze hit my face. I flinched, looking around for magi who could have caused this, but non came into my sight.
When I was a child, I loved walking around in this forest, with my mother's loving gaze on me as I showed her a cool leaf I found.
Now, after years of seclusion, I feared the unknown, even things such as a breeze were enough to set me off.
I slowly closed the wooden hatch and stood up, flinching at the sound of autumn leaves crunching beneath my feet. It was dusk right now, the setting sun casting shadows over every tree in the forest. Even though I see this sight every time I look through the magic windows, seeing it in person was still a sight to behold. The colors were somehow more vibrant, but the shadows were darker as well.
I shook my head, I need to get my things and go back underground.
I walked along the thin trail, illuminated by the light of the setting sun. But slowly, the sun went behind the mountains in the distance, relinquishing control over the sky to the moon.
I looked up at the now deep blue sky, how long had it been since I last saw this, I wonder.
The moon hanging in the sky, surrounded by twinkling stars, without a window of magic obstructing their true light.
This view was short-lived, however, as dark clouds gathered above. I sighed, it was going to rain, and I didn't bring an umbrella. It was a shame my car broke down, but years of neglect did that to a vehicle.
...
When I arrived at the nearest city, it was already pouring. I didn't mind, the calming platter of rain drops helped calm my racing heart. I arrived at the crossing across from the supermarket, looking at the traffic lights, I cursed the red man standing in the black circle. At least he didn't have to get drenched by the rain.
I noticed a few kids arguing about something in the middle of the road, but I paid them no mind. They were clearly in a lover's quarrel, they wouldn't want a forty-year-old thin, pale, sickly man to jump in, even if I was a womanizer in my younger days.
And then, I noticed something. A truck. More specifically, a speeding truck rushing toward the group of students. The driver was asleep at the wheel. It seemed these kids were so concerned about their fight that they couldn't even see the blaring lights of the fricking truck.
"Ah! Hey! Look... Look out!" I shouted, or tried anyway. I hadn't spoken a word in almost a decade, and my voice was naturally fragile, to begin with. As you can tell, it wasn't a very good combination. All I could muster was a pathetic squeak sounding like one of those lab rats' that got lost in the downpour.
I wanted to help them, they had their whole lives to look forward to. I didn't want a metallic box to take that away from them. And I did not want to see three corpses covered in blood.
I hated blood.
I want to puke at the very thought of it, but in the past, I endured for the sake of my magecraft.
It was better to save them. At least I could do some good while I was up on the surface.
...
As a magus, what do you think I did?
Did I pull out some mystic code and block the truck?
Did I use some fancy spell to blow the truck into a million pieces and then erase the minds of the three kids?
Did I somehow reach the root at that moment, acquire the second magic, and send that truck tumbling into another reality?
Okay, that last one was a bit of a stretch, but the point is, I didn't do anything of the sort. I acted like a complete buffoon and idiot. I should have been calm and collected, thinking about all the spells I could use to efficiently stop the truck and not cause a scene, instead, I began to run like a headless chicken.
I staggered as I ran, almost a decade of minimal movement left my joints weak and my bones frail. I wish I incorporated more calcium into my diet and exercised.
Even so, with a little bit of what some people would call magic, I reached them just in time.
The boy who'd been yelling finally noticed the truck approaching and drew the girl close to him. The other boy had looked away and hadn't spotted the truck yet. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked, using a small wind spell to carry him to safety.
Good. Now for the other two.
At that very instant, I saw the truck right before me. The wind spell I used to pull the boy to safety had worked too well, the aftereffect created winds that pushed me right into the truck's path.
...
The instant before the truck made contact, a light flashed before my eyes.
Was I about to see my life at this moment? I couldn't tell.
My mother once told me, "To see your life flash before your eyes is your body's desperate attempt to find something to save you in your memories."
And see I did.
I saw the times I studied time magic with my father, his small, faint smile as he watched me work.
I saw the times my grandfather lectured me about magecraft, the specific subjects I didn't remember, but some of his teachings made me into who I am today.
I saw the times I would run to my mother, tears of frustration rolling down my cheeks as I held my failed attempt at creating a mystic code. She would just take me in her lap and sing me lullabies until I fell asleep.
I gasped as the truck hit, and I was thrown to the ground. The air was forced from my lungs, which were spasming for oxygen in the wake of running flat out.
I let out the last bits of air from my lungs in the form of a sigh.
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'I wonder how my family is doing.'
...
I couldn't speak, but I wasn't dead. The reinforcement on my body had yet to wear off.
Except the truck was still moving. It pinned me against the concrete, running its fat and heavy tires over my skinny body.
I was dead.
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'This is stupid. I wished I stared a family while alive.'
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And yeah. That's my life. Pretty pathetic, I know. The great genius magus, dying not to enforcers but a moving metal box.
I don't know how long I was here, floating in a dark expanse of nothingness. I waited for my soul to return to the root, to be cleansed and then recycled, yet that feeling never came.
All I felt was a burning sensation all over my body, especially around the eyes and right hand, where my magic crest was.
I could feel my magic circuits changing, no, evolving. I could feel each one of them growing.
Then, the pain stopped, and I felt like being sucked into a whirlpool.
A blinding light hit me, and I opened my eyes once more.
...
"Waah!"
So, what do you all think? Not bad, I hope. I'll say this again. I'm just writing this fanfic cause I lost my creativity. I'm just trying to get rid of my writer's block. So I'll apologize if there are any mistakes.
Anyways, Please like, share, follow, and comment.
As always, good luck with your game of life.