Ignore the squeak of lesser minds as they rub two half-baked ideas together; greatness begins here.
Archartificer Magnifiria the Mindglow read the inscriptions upon her obsidian cup, its rim traced with fine copper filaments that hummed faintly with thaumic energy to keep its contents a perfect 81ºC. She raised it to her ruby lips and sipped from the cake‑flavored ambrosia. The enchanted choker on her neck transmuted every calorie into a charisma‑enhancing elixir, its tiny brass coils releasing the byproduct as minute puffs of perfumed vapor.
Beauty mattered, and genius deserved an audience that did not look away.
As she gently, lazily stroked her cat’s fur, her gaze turned to linger on the source of her greatest frustration.
Magnifiria, High Elf, Lvl 320 Greater Emeritus of Knowledge
INTELIGENCE ‑ 9,999
Magnifiria’s sculpted eyebrow twitched at the four‑digit number before she dismissed the status window with a scoff.
A thousand books orbited her workstation in perfect, planetary arcs, each one recited theories and definitions in the preserved voices of history’s greatest scholars. Their paths mirrored the stellar objects of the home plane, a mnemonic compass she had tuned until even their shadows kept time. At the centre floated her newest “lifetime achievement,” a dragon‑hide tome containing all mortal magical knowledge. Each sheet, format 4A0 in the size system she herself had standardized, was longer and wider than Magnifiria was tall.
For eighty years she had slammed head first against that barrier, chasing that five‑digit, god‑tier INT stat. Today she would break the system by forging the first Crystal Integrated Runic Cogwork Engine, a core of pure intellectual sorcery, capable of calculus that would answer every speculative whim and, incidentally, reorganise civilization around better shelving.
She waved Prince Fluffington off and activated the mechanism that sealed the marble tower. Arcane shields and cog‑latched shutters slid into place with a soft hiss of escaping steam; stained glass dimmed, doors shut, lids closed. On a pipe-fed pedestal, locked within a ring of magneto‑gear teeth, a fist‑sized blue prism was primed for the task at hand.
Magnifiria plucked a volume from the outer ring with a gesture, chanting out its contents at dizzying speeds, stripping its text and formulae by turning them into glowing runes that flowed into the swirling crystal. The labour demanded steady rhythm and a trance‑like focus; hours passed in productive silence broken only by her song‑like voice. The now empty books were discarded onto a growing pile.
Each book primed the orb for the next piece of information, its light flickering faster, greedy and ravenous.
As the floating books thinned, only the largest tome remained: the massive flat and warm surface, the perfect favorite nap-spot for a one Prince Fluffington.
Normally, his anti-magic collar would not interfere with the book’s anti-gravity enchantment. Yet as Magnifiria reached out for the World’s Largest Tome, her levitation spell snagged against the familiar’s equipment and both spell and enchantments hiccuped.
Magic failed.
Physics became the book’s new master.
Gravity returned, sending the tome and the cat crashing down.
CRUNCH
SPLAT
The forty meter drop abruptly ended with the greatest mortal intellect on record flattened like a pressed flower. Its glancing blow bent the podium where the altar stood, cracking pipes and sending the sphere flying off into a corner and hitting Prince Fluffington in the head.
The familiar, shocked and distressed, batted the thing away, desperately trying to figure out whether this constituted a breach of contract. It quickly concluded that, regardless of lawful termination, being in the scene of the crime was not to its convenience.
Forgotten in a corner of the room, amongst the pile of scrapped prototypes, the orb began to glow.
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AN:
The prologue/chapter00 of the story I will be releasing and, hopefully, draw in new readers (to say this story is a very hard last-ditch effort would be an understatement). Need to provide some finishing touches, but should have everything in order soon.
Hope you guys enjoy, will keep you updated!