Colourless white hair framed Talus's face as his violet iris began to spin, allowing him to see into a spectrum Human eyes couldn't match. Standing at his side, completely unseen by Crow or any other Humans were his three attendants. Trapped inside the Human simulacrum built from clay, dirt and borrowed blood. Talus could no longer directly communicate with them through the Ether, he could only rely on his Human limitations from now on. Whatever the Magi were currently fussing over had suppressed the real Ether back into the spirit realm, replacing it with Humanity's synthetic Mana and masking the connection to his true body.
Detestable Human magi, their spellcasting is still as rigid as their species. It's infuriating how I must not alert them to my presence or they would effortlessly crush this fragment of myself beneath their heels in my current state. Let them repair their foul shard tower, time is a Human blight, the Fae are not bound by such limitations. My flesh appears to be like theirs but it comes without the inherent flaws.
My steps have already become entrenched on this mortal plane, they cannot suppress me any longer. I will master their foul magic and topple their oppressive shard towers, freeing my people once and for all.
"Observe the creation of their shard. It may be our only opportunity," Talus instructed his three unseen attendants, his first words spoken aloud in barely more than a whisper. His accent and tone mirrored Crow's perfectly, lending credibility to their claim of Talus being his son.
His subjects bowed in obedience, their invisible forms hidden in the place between worlds, known as the Mirror Realm and now only accessible from the Mortal Realm's side. Their shifting eldritch bodies were grotesque and withered by Human standards, deformed by the effects of Human magic on the Ether, forcefully compressing it entirely into the Spirit Realm
The pupils of Talus's eyes shifted imperceptively, rotating in a spiral. It would unnerve any Human who caught sight of his eyes at this moment and could potentially provoke the distracted Magi into abandoning the importance of their current task to ensure his extinction. But by chance, there was no one nearby interested in a random youth standing and talking to himself.
Shard core creation, the scourge of my people and the reason for our banishment. Humanity has forgotten our existence but the Magi might remember. Their search for the Radiant Blood Flower is evidence of that. The flower's entire being is infused with Ether, that's what makes it so special to them in this world filled with artificial magic. It must have bloomed beside the portal of our arrival.
The Magi mistakenly believe that it's petty Human death and blood spilling that encourages the flower's growth. I would further encourage their delusion but it is a result of their warring breaking the local shard tower, allowing my people passage to the region. A portion of the Ether must have accompanied us through the gate into the Mortal Realm. The rest of these so-called 'grave rats' search in vain.
The Human, Crow, shall serve me well as a guide into Human customs. I shall keep him as a pet until his existence proves detrimental.
The air continued to vibrate as reality itself struggled to contain the magnitude of the spell being performed by the nine Magi. The Human Magi were too far away and Talus wasn't even slightly interested in their specific features and genders. Instead, he watched their actions with fervent interest, burning them into his memory.
The first Magi raised their right hand. They summoned an illusory black hollow cube, expanding to form the core's containment. Gravity bent under his command, flattening the overgrown grass in the area around Talus. A deep, warping bass rumbled across the landscape, the weight of the void bending space like an unseen hand pressing down on the battlefield.
The second Magi placed their left hand on the hollow cube, anchoring a series of translucent rotating interlinked yellow cubes. Static energy surged as bolts of pure lightning laced the framework together. Sudden bursts of crackling electricity tore through the stillness, slicing through the oppressive gravity with jagged, electrified shrieks. Lighting illuminated the newly rebuilt tower and the arcane cube hovering above it.
The third Magi rotated clockwise in the air, guiding a contracting blue diamond inside the incorporeal framework. A rippling tide of Mana flowed through, binding with the manifesting shard core's rotation. A tidal wave of noise with shifting resonance swelled, causing the nearby grave rat to release his grip on the dead soldier's feet and stare in a slack-jawed trance. Streams of water rippled upward from the wetland, defying gravity and weaving between the electrified chaos to infuse the unstable shard looming larger than a peasant's shack.
The fourth Magi pushed forward, stabilising an insubstantial stack of floating orange squares held between vertical hands. The two-dimensional squares collided violently with the dancing streams of water. It was followed by relentless and reverberating hammering as the unyielding force tempered the spiralling energies. Deep, pounding thuds like the heartbeat of a mountain rose and fell in an instant, stabilising the shard's form and making it more tangible.
Above it all, the fifth Magi raised both arms, sending out purple interlinked hollow cubes to spread throughout the construct. The shard shimmered with shifting illusions, warping reality itself. An eerie chorus of disembodied whispers drifted through the marsh. The otherworldly melody seemed to twist between realms, causing all the scattered observers on the ground to wince and cover their ears. Talus delayed a moment behind them before he distractedly became aware of Crow's braced figure and reluctantly imitated his posture.
The sixth Magi pointed at the shard's centre, projecting an expanding and rotating transparent white cube inside. Winds howled around the core, keeping it in perfect suspension, separating from the water rushing around and forcing it outside. Air rushed towards the shard with a ghostly howl, engulfing the entire structure in a frenzied, whirling vortex that vapourised the water and converted it into an obscuring fog.
Then, the seventh Magi drifted forward and sharpened their gaze, directing a red floating diamond. Unstable flames burst along the edges of the shard, emitting stifling heat that threatened to boil the spectators below alive. Pained yelps were heard from all around Talus as people leapt out of the bubbling shallow water to take refuge atop singed marsh grass. A volatile pulse of heat ignited outwards in a brief explosion, searing the churning water out of existence and transforming it into a painful mist blanketing the entire battlefield.
Just as quickly, the eighth Magi stepped back and pushed energy forward, triggering a dormant sequence hovering inside the shard's core. The lines of time blurred brown around the shard's silhouette, anchoring it to the Mortal Realm. Through his enhanced sight, Talus observed it all as the surge fractured into cascading time distortions. Echoes of past and future casting overlapped to create a reality-distorting series of squares, diamonds, and cube shapes that wove the Mirror Realm to the physical, forcing out the last vestiges of Ether lingering after Talus's arrival. He involuntarily flinched as he felt the last tether to his true body disconnect, leaving Talus and his attendants stranded for good.
And then, with a single, resonant pulse, the final Magi extended their hands with a dramatic flourish. They wove a string of interlinked green cubes, expanding and shrinking on themselves, and layered it over the glitching shard, calming the distorted geometric shape afterimages to prevent the chaotic fusion of elements and concepts from collapsing in on itself. Talus stood alone amid the boiling sea of turmoil, unfazed by the otherwise excruciating sensations happening to those around him.
A heartbeat of life momentarily stirred amid the chaos, and an artificial force began to emit from the shard. But only for an instant. Even that was drowned beneath the relentless surge of entropy and violent noise enshrouding the battlefield. The energies collided, fused, and spiralled out of control, reaching a cataclysmic crescendo before-
Silence.
For a moment, nothing existed. The very air became motionless. The world held its breath as one. Then.
Reality shattered.
Giving birth to something unnatural, the source of the Fae race's greatest hatred and animosity, a shard tower.
A massive, shifting cube emerged in midair above the rebuilt tower, folding in on itself, its surfaces endlessly rearranging with no discernible colour. Its shape warped and shifted in an infinite, unknowable pattern in defiance of the natural order of things.
Talus sneered with feral instinct, his fingers curling into claws as he suppressed the feeling of overwhelming revulsion stirring in his gut. He recognised something amid the creation of the shard tower. The Magi did not speak, but their spells contained a mutilated imitation of the Fae language in the form of erratic noise heard during the casting. Human Mana was a rigid parody of the Ether, this filled Talus with unquenchable rage as he recollected the buried memories of its creation.