Haunting Visions, Closing Shadows, and Revelation

The ritual had been a disaster. One member of the circle perished in the blast and the purple wizards had utterly failed to capture Wizard #7518’s prophetic power. The intruders who interrupted the ritual had escaped. Calista had taken quite a beating herself, both physically and magically.

The purple councillors had been questioning Calista incessantly about what she saw in the flames, but she told them that she couldn’t remember anything. That was actually true at first. But, the visions began re-entering her consciousness. It started very slowly. Sudden pangs and flashes of memory.

Then the dreams started. She had to protect her quarters with a magical bubble preventing any sound from escaping so that the other wizards wouldn’t hear the screams from her nightmares. It started with Soul #7518 , his bony smile mocking her, his chattering laugh torturing her throughout sleepless nights.

She was still connected to him somehow, through the events of the failed ritual, or perhaps he was connected to her. She tried to get him out of her head, but she could not. Then he brought in all the souls Calista had separated from their mortal bodies. Every kill, every vanquished foe, whether deserving of death, or innocent - they all began haunting her dreams. She wasn’t even sure if she could call them dreams, because that implied she was actually able to sleep.

Asteria tried to comfort Calista in the night, but she could only protect her in the physical realm, not the dream realm. Asteria suffered too, waking every time her mistress did.

This took it’s toll. Calista dragged herself through the corridors of the purple pavilion like a zombie. It was easy enough to see shadows and threats in every corner and the sleep deprivation didn’t help. Not to mind the fact that there were real threats lurking. Calista was falling out of favor with the power players in the purple pavilion, and others were beginning to see the cracks showing in her armor. She’d made plenty of enemies over the years, she could feel their envy swirling around her as they plotted their moves.

Eventually Calista had no choice but to call in a favor from one of the Pavilion’s alchemists and have him brew her a strong cannabis potion to take every night. This dulled the dreams. Sometimes she was able to sleep for a few hours, but it also gave her a nearly insatiable appetite. She began to gain weight and she didn’t care. It was the least of her worries. In fact, when she was in the rapture of cannabis and cake it was one of the only times in life she was able to forget those worries.

She still had haunting dreams, but the dreams that visited her were sorrowing echoes of her past. These were much preferable to the hauntings of Lich Duke Finn.

Calista had always had a proclivity to gain weight. It had caused her problems in the past, particularly during her training with the Dark Sisters. Back then she’d been shamed mercilessly.

“The dark sisters are no slobs! We have a reputation to uphold,” rang the memories in her head.

She was given strict diets and training regimens to follow. But she still couldn’t shed those excess pounds. Eventually the sisters had resorted to a spells which made certain foods that she loved taste disgusting and made her wretch when she filled her stomach past a certain point. This felt awful, but it did work.

But this time was different, she just didn’t care. There were no dark sisters telling her who she had to be. She was alone, this body was hers. It did not belong to the dark sisters. It did not belong to the purple wizards, it belonged to her. She had spent long enough restricting herself. For years she’d shunned the pleasures of life, and for what? Her magic still hadn’t been strong enough to complete the ritual with Diviner Finn. That was all that the purple wizards remembered, not all of the sacrifces she’d made for them, only her failure.

She was done. Enough was enough. Calista didn’t care if she lived or died, only that whatever fate befell her was one she brought upon herself by doing what she wanted.

And though it was sadness that brought her to this line of thinking, she began to feel that it was setting her free in a way. By giving away the tight control over trying to make her body look like people told her it ought to look, she began to feel in control of her life again. And gradually, the sadness began to fade.

She didn’t feel bad about the eating, the weight gain, the self-isolation and shirking of the burdens that the people wizards expected her to carry. She felt good about it. She enjoyed being high on cannabis. She enjoyed eating. And she felt her magic getting strong again - inspired, wild and free.

“Fuck them!” thought Calista.

She realized that all the things she’d be told she needed to do to keep her magic strong had only been holding it back. Her approach to magic had been rigid and forceful, but cosmic magic needed to flow like the milky way. The barriers she’d created served not to channel her magic, but instead to hold it back from it’s true potential.

A new determination entered her. She started weaving glamour spells at night, marveling in her new appearance and confidence. She felt good for the first time in who knows how long. But she couldn’t hide in her quarters forever.

She spoke with Asteria one night to share her revelations, “Astie, it’s time to change everything.”

Story by @0x_Ponyboy, art by @taniadelrio (final pic), additional illustrations generated by midjourney and Dall-E

Entered by: 0xecfe…D269