A Shift In Time

[ultimusmagus]

*** Having been unable to play PS at all due to complications (you don\'t want to know, or care ... but if you do, do a search under my name to see my other posts, heheh), I figured I\'d create a story within the Yliakumian epochs... to hold me over until I can play, I guess. I\'ve purposely avoided reading any other stories, and if you feel the need to comment on mine, please keep in mind that I\'m not writing about present-day Yliakum as envisioned by the devs, nor have I had any experiences in PS...yet. ***

[\'Mage, wizard, savior, demon. I have been called these things and more, yet they have no hold over me. They are merely titles, a means to classify a person\'s gift - or curse, depending on one\'s view. Much like a butcher, a farmer, or a politician, a title tells the world what a person does. Still, the question remains: what defines what a person IS? In the great scheme of things, does it matter how others perceive us from our actions, our appearance, our words? Many would say that such talk is meaningless, for one person can\'t change the world.

There have been times I agreed with that philosophy, but I know that I\'ll never have those thoughts again. I have always sought to change my environment, trying to conform it to my perceptions of right and wrong. Such an outlook might be good for my ego, but perhaps this time I\'ve gone too far. This time, if my sense of guilt is any indication, I may have damned my soul, and no god on this world shall have pity on me...\']


The air shimmers as powerful cosmic forces coalesce into a point a few feet above the rocky cavern floor. Crackling with energy as the smell of ozone and sulfur rapidly fills the air in the small cavern, a portal opens, like a giant maw waiting to engulf anyone who wanders too close. Instead, a smoking ruin of a humanoid body passes through, seemingly expelled from a spitting mouth, skidding painfully on the floor and coming to a stop against the cavern wall with a crunch.

Minutes later the still-smouldering heap stirs, an a choked sob echoes faintly as the body raises itself to a sitting position. The charred man slowly, very slowly reaches his right hand into the folds of his robes, once black with intricate patterns of shimmering purple and gold trim, now nothing more than burnt rags clinging painfully to his raw skin. He fights for each inch, every movement sending spears of pain through him. Only his strong will keeps him from blacking out. Only one reality exists in his small universe of pain. An hour, a day, a year...time has no meaning. He lingers in a fog of nothingness, and the only measure he has of movement is the pain, and his mind wraps itself around it, knowing that to lose hold of the pain would shatter his universe. There is nothing else but the pain of movement, until a new pain grazes his conciousness - the pain of blistered, bleeding fingers grabbing hold of something smooth and cool, so painfully cool!

This new pain is blindingly bright in the fog of his universe, and although his eyes are already closed, the charred man squints reflectively as he brings his lips towards this new sun, this star that has appeared in his universe. He welcomes it with a kiss, and a flood of cold, bright light sweeps away his conciousness...

[ultimusmagus]

The first thing the man noticed was that he was still in pain, which was a good sign that he was alive, if a bit sore. Having been dead before, he knew that feeling something was better than feeling nothing at all, even if that meant some unpleasantness. Compared to what he had gone through a few hours (or was it days ago?), this felt more like one of those back itches you just couldn\'t reach.

The second thing he noticed was the empty vial lying next to him. An entire vial of angel\'s tears, able to heal an entire company of mounted knights...and their horses, gone in one draught! He knew he had wasted not a drop, for he spied no flora emerging from the barren rock that made up his current sleeping spot. Angel\'s tears could find life on any surface an make it flourish...or bring someone from near-death, as it did with him. Only the gods knew how he had been able to survive long enough to drink it, because try as he might he could not remember what happened after jumping into his planesgate while trying to escape from Hormgar, demon-king of Ultharel. He hadn\'t even formulated his destination when that third firestorm bolt shattered his hastily raised shield spell and was forced to jump into the \'blind\' portal, as gate users called any portal with an unknown or undetermined destination.

Which brought him to the third thing he noticed. He didn\'t know where he was. A blind worldgate can lead to any one of hundreds of destinations, but a blind planesgate, randomly destined to one of the infinite planes of the cosmos? Figuring out which plane he was in would be like finding a particular needle in a stack of needles that never stopped growing. Since that would be a pointless exercise, the next best thing would be to figure out what kind of plane he was on, and the best way to do that was with magic.

No matter what the laws of physics are in a particular plane, magic is always a constant. However, the way it is channeled and applied varies according to these changing laws. He was pretty sure he wasn\'t on a prime chaotic plane like the one he had just left, were even keeping a constant physical form required a great deal of concentration. That meant that he was on a plane of order, and he was thankful for that.

To start, he tried \'feeling\' the innate magic within him, his only companion during his travels. Using that reassuring spark as a foundation, he extended his senses outward, searching for the energies native to this world. He felt  disoriented as two major forces vied for his attention - the core of the planet, which he had been expecting to sense...and something else. Far above the spot were he sat crosslegged on the cavern floor was a force that shadowed the planet\'s, made it insignificant in comparison. He withdrew from that power, for much as staring at a sun or an overbright light hurt the eyes, his senses were feeling overwhelmed.

Stretching out his limbs, he laid as comfortably as he could on the hard ground. He needed to rest before he attempted any castings. With that much power available to him, he was sure he would be able to figure out what form magic took here. Then, he could gate back to Ultharel and from there, home...