Humanity

Seeing what became of Its elves, The Magus was not particularly bothered. With their long lives, infrequent births, and inherent caution, they had been rather boring. It created a few more elves, hiding them in the far reaches of the world so their cousins could not easily find them. Once It had done this, It turned to Its next project. These, It decided, would not be so boring.

They looked almost elven, these new creations, though they were stronger in build. These, It turned greenish-gray, and It gave them short, brutal lives. They had sharp teeth, and were completely unafraid.

But It made their lives too short. They had little care for the long aeons ahead. These creatures, It named orcs, and they did spread to many parts their predecessors had left untouched in their fear. They formed large, warlike bands, creating a rough, cruel society. For a while, It was content to watch their incessant infighting, but It quickly became bored.

And so it went.

The Magus created many races in this way. Some had long lives, some had short. Most were unafraid of the dark, many could see with little light. It even revisited the elves, twisting Its creations into new forms.

But none of Its creations held Its attention long.

Finally, It focused Itself. Its new project had to have a shorter lifespan than the elves, or It would get bored of them quickly, but longer than the orcs, or It would have little use for them in the long run. They couldn't be timid or fearful, but nor could they be completely unafraid. They wouldn't be as strong as the orcs, nor as fragile as the elves. This new creation would be a middle ground, a compromise between all Its previous creations.

And they would be perfect.

It called them humans, and they quickly outstripped the orcs in their exploration. They had lives just long enough to taste eternity, without being frozen by it. They planned for a future they would never live to see. They had genius, they had madness, they had paragons and villains, they had brutal destroyers and peaceful healers.

They were chaos.

And The Magus loved them dearly.

Cubeaism 1 - What They Said

((Story based on this thing here.))

They say that it took only one man to destroy my entire way of life.

My family were devout worshipers of Terrae, She Who is Life. We lived in a forest stronghold, with watchtowers placed in all directions. They hunted the wild animals for sustenance, and the evil creatures that dared enter our domain for sport. I was young and eager, and I wanted nothing more than to join them in the hunt.

Then, the fires came.

They say it was a man angered by the gods. He was what we now call an alchemist, a man who wielded great and terrible power.

One night, he walked unseen into our most sacred place and by merely raising his hands, he set all the forest ablaze. His presence burned so brightly that around him, the lakes dried up. The land itself burned.

Nothing was safe.

No one was safe.

My family fought valiantly, but there was no force of arms great enough to overcome the man.

I remember Mother telling me to run, flee the forest. She sent me to the disciples of Penna, where all may know peace and safety in their lofty temples.

My family were warriors.

I now follow a different path.

I will bring the blessed light of Penna to all the world, and I will use the same magic that man used.

Where he destroyed, I hope to rebuild.

Perhaps ... perhaps one day I will know what drove the man to act as he did.

I have left the safety of the Moon Garden Temple at the suggestion and blessing of my teachers. By myself, with the magic I now harness, I will build a new temple in Penna's blessed name.

I shall name it the Temple of Fallen Stars. It will stand above the charred ruin of my family's home, a monument in their honor.

So mote it be.

"Gifted" is the Term

Or: Intellectually Gifted, Socially Cursed

They call it 'giftedness.'

It's a capacity for learning more effectively than those who would otherwise be considered your peers. It's a curiousity and a hunger for new knowledge, and an inability to be fully contented with incomplete or inaccurate answers. It's a talent for nearly every single thing you try, to the extent that there are so many options you become paralyzed with indecision.

It's not really just a gift, but also a curse. Being more intelligent marks you as different - and being different is generally considered a bad thing. Using the larger vocabulary you're 'gifted' with leads to a lot of blank stares. The same goes for any of the knowledge or trivia you've picked up along the way. People just don't care, and a lot of times they'll mock you for caring.

The standards are all higher. I remember as a child, I was actually embarrassed of my "A's" because nobody else really seemed to get them, and I did not have to try for them. A "C" was almost devastating because ... well, it's like getting an "F" if you generally get "C's." I never once actually got an "F" - the closest I ever received was a single "D" throughout my entire K-11 1/2 education (there was a bit of a dispute in my Senior year and I ended up graduating early to resolve it). In standardized testing, the one outlier among an otherwise nearly flawless score was in math - and even that, at about half the rate of my other abilities, was still an "average." My perception remains to this day that I am very, very bad at math, despite at least half of all other people being worse.

In a lot of cases, I tend to think, "I'm not really good at this, everyone else just sucks."

Mom has a funny story: after my first day of kindergarten, I came home and complained that I already knew everything they were trying to teach me. This didn't abate until I reached college. I never learned to study, or had to work to overcome challenges - which meant that in college, I actually started to get the C's, D's, and F's that I often overheard other people talking about, because I never had to work for anything. Even working my hardest, I was disorganized and frustrated with everything, because suddenly, things became hard. I couldn't read during classes like I tended to do as a kid, because I had to actually think about what I was being presented.

Giftedness also leads to social isolation - especially if anybody knows about it. In grade school, when I was first ... let's call it 'diagnosed,' what they did to determine this status was to pull a number of students out of their normal classes and put them through a battery of tests. I remember one of the tests involved a bunch of lines on a paper, and you were supposed to make pictures out of them. I drew some books. Even that early on, I indulged in too much escapism.

From there on, they continued to rip about six of us out of our normal curriculum in order to try and educate us at a level above and beyond our peers ... the problem was, it was ill-organized, ill-directed, and they didn't really try to teach us anything advanced, just different things than everyone else learned. I had a shaky foundation in my normal classes because I missed about half of the content. I was able to overcome what this did to my actual scholastic performance, but I wonder sometimes how well.

One of the other kids actually asked me for one of these noisemakers that I'd gotten - little packets of gunpowder that made a loud snapping noise when tossed on the ground. I gave it to him under the assumption he wouldn't do anything too terribly stupid with it. He got caught using them in the boy's restroom, and I got in trouble for 'taking advantage of someone less intelligent.'

I remember when we moved into the city, it wasn't a terribly large change for me, because honestly, I didn'thave that many close friends. There were two or three people I associated with, but they weren't really friends. The one person I would have considered a friend who could think on my level (some six or seven years older than I was, who made the wise decision to deliberately fail the talented and gifted testing) made it his life's ambition to get away from the small town and the psychic leeches that made up his family. I wonder where he ended up sometimes. He was the one who introduced me to the wider world of the internet, and online games, for that matter.

I don't really know what the point to writing this all was. Just needed to get it out of my system, I think.

First Summoning

She glanced at the other two hooded figures in the dim-lit summoning chamber, reaching up to adjust her own hood, nervously.

She'd just purchased the right to use the Eternal Nightmare in her League matches, and this was to be her first session with it. The summoners standing near her were her friends and classmates, long-time companions who wouldn't care if she made a fool of herself.

It was only a simulation anyway. Save their three champions, they would be sparring with pre-programmed constructs. They couldn't respond as people did, wouldn't talk or laugh or think as people did. Useful training dummies, but ultimately non-sentient. They wouldn't laugh as people did, and she was sure that she was going to make a fool of herself for this first match.

She always did, when trying out a new Champion.

The countdown began after all three of them made their selections. She wondered how people like Katarina felt, being dragged in to trial matches like this. What about Twisted Fate?

She might ask that of them directly, if she ever scraped together the influence to purchase the right to their presence.

Reaching for Nocturne, she steadied her own mind, calling to his unique signature. "Embrace the darkness ..." His voice murmured in her ear, tingling in the back of her mind. Calling ....

She pushed her mind outward, speaking the words of summoning. Every Summoner's ritual was at least slightly different, because every Summoner was different. It naturally took some Summoners longer than others to complete their rituals. She liked to keep hers short and to the point. It was almost effortless, flinging her mind outward like this - for her, the trick was keeping an "eye" on her physical body.

"Welcome to Summoner's Rift."

It had no legs. Odd that that should be her first disoriented thought, as she examined it - it floated, almost incorporeal, heavy blades hanging from its 'arms.' "Do I scare you, summoner?" She gave a headshake that only it could perceive, stretching her mind to try and fill the space it occupied. It was foreign, strange, but not any more so than Cho'Gath. She had mastered the Void Terror, and she would master this Nightmare.

 - awash with blood, the body in pieces, manic, dizzy laughter -

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to.

She covered her physical mouth, almost thrown out of the link. Her left hand held steady on the glowing image before her, holding its edge physically to reinforce it.

"You arrigh'?" One of the other Summoners asked it, gently, his mind pressing the words into hers. She responded with a sense of affirmation, tamping down the nausea.

"Drip, drop, the sound of blood ..." The Nightmare taunted, her full attention upon it again. She directed him, wordlessly, to collect the basic necessities - she'd done a bit of research on how to use his abilities properly. Dark 'hands' closed around the scythe purchased from the merchant. Just a symbol.

The scythe glowed brilliant for a moment, then evaporated, strengthening the Nightmare's own weapons. Its attacks would steal the very life from the constructs they would be fighting today.

"Yesss ... bring me more fleshbags to slice up." Anticipation, raw and eager, filled her mind, mingling with its. No - the other way around ... wasn't it?

The announcer's voice called out, dragging her attention to the upcoming match. "Thirty seconds until minions spawn."

"You comin'?"

"Solo mid?" She asked, distractedly.

"If you wan'." Three Summoners in a link - it was easy to forget who was talking. Easy to lose herself to the link. "Sure y'can handle it?"

"It's bots. I'll be fine." She waved a hand, dismissively, sending reassurance his way as well.

It came to rest just in front of the blue tower, staring at the human female just across the way. Images came unbidden in her mind - the female in pieces, just how He was going to end her pitiful life. Given His choice, it would be slow and painful. It would take days of unending nightmares. She'd heal up, in the dream, but only so that He could cut her open again. He would take any hope of escape and slowly rip it away - with his bare talons, even. Only in this world had He any need of true blades, after all - and those formed of His will.

It took a long moment to realize that the woman they were examining was a child - Annie. Annie had always been one of her favorite Champions, and she was briefly glad that this version was just a construct, with no Summoner behind it.

Amusement at her discomforted realization, a sinister laugh. "Weather forecast for tonight: dark, with a chance of pain."

She snorted a little bit at the joke, even as the Nightmare filled her mind with more images of death and dismemberment, sending back: "Only a chance? I had been given to understand you were better than that." Even minions felt pain. The constructs that wore Champion skins were little different.

"Minions have spawned!" The announcement cut off any possible response.

She drew first blood, the blades an extension of Their arms as They destroyed the golem in the image of a young girl. "Annie" screamed her agony, blood staining her stuffed bear as her golem was sliced in two. A blast of energy slammed into Nocturne's all-but-incorporeal back, pushing him toward the ground as they slid through a shroud of darkness, phasing through minions, into the woods, and out of the tower's wrath.

"Worth it." She grinned to herself. They hadn't even died this time.

Twenty-eight kills later - better than Katarina's twenty-seven! - and having sliced through an entire army of minions, her companions finally destroyed the constructs' Nexus just to end her fun. She found herself disappointed, pouting a little bit as she stared through his 'eyes' at the enemy's Soraka longingly. They hovered inches away from the kill, one blade pinning the ex-goddess to the destroyed inhibitor. The other hovered, magically paralyzed, just above her navel.

"That's right ... people are flames to be blotted out." His voice was soothing, contented from the slaughter, and she found herself nodding in agreement as she pulled away, finding her true body had fallen to its knees without her attention on it, an almost-lifeless ragdoll.

They both knew she'd be back.

Dragon Mage: Origins

Entry #1

My first night in the Circle Tower as a full mage. I finally understand why my - no, our - confinement is deemed necessary.

I still feel it. As though the demon hovers over me, waiting to seize control again no - not again, it was never ... my thoughts are my own, my mind is my own. I cannot sleep at all - worry I may never sleep again. In the darkness of my bath this evening, I imagined I could see its eyes above me, watching ... waiting. Waiting for my guard to slip even an inch.

Jowan was there, when I woke from my Harrowing. He wanted to know what it was like. He's been on edge for days now, and I suspect this didn't help any. He said he wanted to speak with me, said it was important. I can't imagine why, truly. He knows I cannot tell him of the Harrowing. Maybe it's his "secret lover." Ha. Jowan is my friend, but sometimes I think he gets jealous of me. How easily I take to magic, how the First Enchanter himself has taken an interest in my learning. I never knew my parents. Sometimes, I suspect Irving thinks of me as the daughter he never had. I'd like that, I think. He is like the father that I never had, as well.

Oh! Two odd things happened today, besides my Harrowing, that is. I nearly forgot.

There is a Gray Warden staying here at the Circle, a man named Duncan. He seems like a good and upright fellow. I think I expected him to be ... bigger.

Astride a Griffon, perhaps?

Also, there is a Templar here who seems to have taken a shine to me. Edgar ... Edwin? Cullen, anyway. A Templar and a mage ... how silly.

Best not dwell on it.

Foreboding

The other night, I had the oddest sense of foreboding.

It was dark, of course, since I leave work after sunset.

The parking lot was mostly empty, and I park a ways away from the entrance to the building. Every sense was straining for some kind of movement, some anomaly. I felt a little like I was being watched, but there was nothing there. No one.

Of course now I pay more attention than is really reasonable to the distant tree-line.

Fucking trees are everywhere. 

When I got home, the whole neighborhood was empty. No cars parked in front of my neighbors' houses. Trees remain abundant, like tall people with black arms stretched up toward the sky. It's a midwestern suburb. Of course there are trees everywhere.

The neighbors probably just had somewhere else to be.

Which, you know, never happens really.

But whichever.

It was just so ... quiet. Eerie. So I fished around in my purse to find this thick chain necklace (think: necklace made of chain mail) I keep because hell, getting hit with it hurts, and it draws less attention than anything else I could have on me. I don't think 'jewelry' properly qualifies for weaponry, but hey, if I can make a potential intruder disagree, I've done a good job. No? Plus it looks pretty cool.

Nudged the door open with my foot, turned on the light - that humanish figure I was seeing is just Mom's mannequin. I knew that. Grab my sword. Poke around a bit, make sure there's nothing to find.

Don't really have the courage to check the upstairs alone.

Decide I'm really alone.

Jump out of my skin when Mom opens the door.

There was nobody here.

I'm feeling kind of silly right now.

You know?

Oh. Friday's post is going to be a bit ... odd.

Sensory Overload

So, in an attempt to be somewhat more cheerful than Friday's uh ... BLACK ABYSS of DESPAIR, I decided I'd elaborate on some of the topics mentioned there, especially the sensory thing, which you might have guessed by the title.

Because describing my perception of the world has always been incredibly cheerful before. Yep.

So, TL;DR: I seem to have reasonably acute senses when measured against other people. Kind of. The end.

For anecdotal proof, read on:

I took some psychology classes in college and high school as electives, because the subject interests me. I can't really recall if this happened in college or high school, but one of my psychology teachers set up sensory tests as part of the chapter on the senses. The one I remember vividly involved the sense of taste: the teacher presented four jugs of water and insisted only one of them had a minimal amount of sugar. This was untrue; all four jugs had a different amount of sugar in them. All four of the glasses of water I was presented with tasted different.

So yeah. That's nice.

The hearing ... hm. I've got a couple of stories on that. When I was very young, they put us through a few hearing tests, one of which was off in a kind of in a quiet room. Essentially, the idea was to raise your hand when you heard a beep, depending on which ear you heard it in. Well, I raised my hand when a phone three rooms away rang, despite the noise-canceling headphones I was wearing at the time. This sense hasn't really diminished much at all over time, probably because I don't really think "bleeding ears" is an acceptable decibel level for music to be played at. On a practical level, this is a huge advantage in my current - and previous - lines of work. At the haunted house, it allowed me to filter through the din of all the ambient noise and music to hear where a group of customers was, pretty much throughout the house. At a call center, it helps when a customer is softspoken and can't seem to figure out which part of the phone to speak into.

Sight is ... interesting. As I might have already mentioned, I've got significant visual disturbances that no eye doctor has been able to attribute to actual physical damage. It's probably some kind of disruption in the nervous system. Or alternatively, y'know, crazy person. I also wear corrective lenses as I am nearsighted. That said, up close especially, my eyesight is fairly acute. In addition, I have remarkable night vision, which is both a positive and a negative. On the positive side, we have all the normal benefits of good night vision, plus things like this post, which was written with the aid of a very dim, green, LED bulb placed across the room in otherwise complete darkness. With the aid of a glow stick, I was actually able to write at almost my normal font size, and read with no difficulty. On the negative side, we have a certain amount of photosensitivity: bright lights are uncomfortable, especially oncoming headlights on the road, for example, but also a bright, sunny day can, if I'm not prepared for it, lead to a bright, shiny headache.

Smell is one of the less useful senses for me, and I seem to be more easily overwhelmed by powerful odors than most people. However, since most of the people I know are smokers due to the whole "call center" thing, it's not really like I've got any kind of baseline to work against If possible, I completely avoid the perfume and detergent aisles of any store; they make me lightheaded and dizzy. Smell is also one of the easiest senses to ignore in day-to-day life, and one of the harder senses to measure against any other person's regardless.

Touch is ... well, pain is part of the sense of touch, right?

I can't say I feel much of anything acutely, other than pain. And cold. And pain as a result of intense cold. Painkillers don't really work effectively for anybody in my family, least of all me. I also tend to ignore my body unless it's actually in pain, and even then, if I distract my mind, I don't even often notice there's anything to feel until it's excruciating. I do know I have a completely numb patch on my right leg that sometimes hurts when touched. I suspect nerve damage from an early-life bee sting to be the culprit: I had a bad allergic reaction.

I like to run my hands along walls as I walk.
It helps ground me in reality.

I don't think I'm really outside the parameters of normal human functioning, as far as sensory data goes. I just know that some things, like the gentle clicking whir and beeping of my computer's normal operation (distinct from the fan), is audible and comforting, while the high, shrill noise of a supposedly "off" TV sets my teeth on edge, and most people seem oblivious to these things.

So there. Probably the most boring thing I'll ever write.

Hooray.

You probably should've quit reading this at the TL;DR.

It rained today. We're under a flood watch.
It was so cold the rain became a centimeter-thick sheet of ice on my car.
It hurt so much to scrape it off with my bare hands.

Blind Rage

Deantha Ashenmoor was angry.

She slammed the door to her rented room shut, locking it tight as tears rolled down her face. She was so angry.

A plate had been on her table. It hit the wall, smashed to bits, a bowl and a cup following as a scream of inhuman rage tore her throat. Finally, even the table itself was overturned, rolling through the air to slam hard against a bookshelf.

Hungry for destruction, she ripped the blankets from her bed, claws slashing -

Claws ... slashing ...

Not even human.

She collapsed on the bed, shaking, a howl of grief escaping her that gradually became a wail, until that, too, faded. Deantha sobbed brokenly, fur melting away to reveal soft, human flesh.

Images flashed through her mind. Armod filled most of them. The warrior's calloused hand stroking her lupine muzzle as he softly reassured her that she'd be all right. His own face covered in wooden splinters and gore, foam rolled from his mouth. The sharp pain as his sword snapped her shield arm in a training exercise gone awry.

The confused fear in his eyes as she pried his jaw open. As she reassured him that he would be all right, her hands pouring the faintly-glowing liquid down his throat. As she violated his trust, took his free will away.

It was the only choice she had.

You thought you could trust him, came the insidious thought. Him, a Worgen. You've seen him in a rage, and you thought you could control that? Or did you think frothing at the mouth was normal?

Deantha decided to take her emotion out on her pillow, punching it with all the strength she could muster as she tried to ignore that cold, logical voice.

You thought you could trust him and he hurt you.

You thought you could trust him, and you tempted him, goaded him into losing control. How long has he been infected, even?

You don't know. Years maybe.

You thought you could trust a monster like him.

"He didn't mean it," she mumbled weakly, curled up in her bed. "He didn't mean it. He wouldn't hurt me on purpose."

He trusted you, the voice shot back. Trusted you to be strong enough for him.

But you're weak.

She didn't have a response for that accusation.

She never did. 

In-Character: Dreaming of Things

((I may have mentioned this at some point, but I am an avid roleplayer. This particular post is an in-character look at probably my most favorite new character - a Stormwind human, bitten by a half-feral Worgen. Forgive the awful accent, it makes me giggle a bit inside.))

"'Allo, Poppet."

I made a friend today, I think. Her name is Miranda, and she is nice.

I am leaning on her because I am tired, and very cold besides. I turn to look at her, and I am smiling, with my very human mouth. Only, she is not there - it is HIM, instead. I am caught, the rabbit before the wolf, and I cannot look away.

"You're real pretteh, yeh know tha' roight?"

I am kneeling now. There is blood everywhere, limbs and fingers and toes. A lower jaw ripped from a face, skin and muscle, lip and teeth, all together in my hand. The tongue remained with the rest of the skull, and that remained with the body. Although I barely know her, I realize somehow that this maimed corpse belongs to my new friend.

And I know that I have killed her.

"Kill you? Now whoi would Oi do a thing li'e tha'?"

He is above me, his long, sharp teeth sunk into my shoulder as he does unspeakable things to my body. He is not a man, although he walks upright: fur sprouts from his skin, inky and blank, and his eyes glow with crimson. Bloody crimson ... so much blood, I am drowning in it, I think. I do not want to die. With all that I am, I do not want to die.

"Oi need you aloive."

I am one of them. I can see my fur clearly. It is a muddy, brownish color, covering hands that end in claws like scythes.

I do not understand what is happening to me, the changes I am going through. I hold my stomach, as the pain is most intense there. Looking down, I see my abdomen swelled and bloated, and I am confused. The pain is intense, and with the first splash of red, I realize in dawning horror what is happening to me. Tiny teeth housed in soft, furred muzzles chew their way out of me.

"Moi children, love."

I wake up, trying not to scream. It is all a dream.

My hands come into view, and I realize they are paws.

"'Allo, Poppet."