Inscrybing a Beginning to an End

The Storm Before the Calm

So many canvases, gone to waste.

So many paint cans, now emptied and scattered everywhere.

So many failed students. They couldn't handle the pressure or discipline of being a card master.

Magnificus stood before his three graduating students, proud to be called a teacher. Three students who deserved their graduation present; the titles of Masters. The people of the Capital celebrated outside as they exited the Great Tower together. The first magickal graduating students. What wasn't to celebrate?

People began to set up the Capital for a party as Magnificus cleaned up what was left over. Well, making his inscriptions clean up for him would be a better description. Loud noises played outside as musicians came out of hiding. People raved and cheered as the newly crowned Masters soaked it all in.

Meanwhile, Magnificus was trying as hard as he could to block out the noise and lights. His migraine had only gotten worse. He cursed at the mere idea that he could feel such head-splitting pain. The worst pain he had felt beforehand was the rot from the Forest and the betrayal of the beasts that inhabited that damned place. Things felt dizzy and unstable, but Magnificus masked it to the best of his abilities.

Magnificus had sat down by his desk as he tried to find a way, any way, to end this migraine. He tried to think, but his mind was clouded and foggy with pain. There was no way he could paint something to help. Throughout the books he read, there wasn't much about migraines in the medical section. Even if there was, could it apply to him? Magnificus was a tree given life, not a human with a human heart and brain.

Thinking was giving him a headache. Magnificus lowered his head to the desk to block out the light coming from the large window. The noise was slowly growing quieter. And quieter. And...

It stopped.

And then there was a noise.

A beeper, perhaps?

Magnificus got up, but his desk was missing. He was in a void, where only some decaying rubble stood before him. He looked to his left, but there was no one there. He looked to his right, and there was a canvas placed on an easel. By the easel's legs were cans of paint. Only two. Magnificus had never seen this place before, but it felt... Familiar.

Finally, he noticed the wand, placed gently in his right hand.

The pain was gone, like it had never existed.

The world was gone, like it had never existed.

His mind was clear as Magnificus began to paint.

The noise of the beeper was soon blocked out by Magnificus as he focused on the canvas in front of him. In this clear world, so was his mind; almost completely blank. He let his eyes and wand guide him across the canvas, painting something he had never viewed in person before. What was this?

And finally, his arm pulled away. The canvas depicted a square disk made of blue with an unknown sigil and creature on it. It required energy. What type of energy? What was this? Magnificus was baffled as he tried to make out what this meant. It seemed inorganic with its straight lines and sharp corners. Nothing that the Great Scrybe of Magicks could make.

The world started to flash slightly as the ground glitched out. Everything around Magnificus started to fall apart as the beeper grew louder and louder. Magnificus looked around in fear as this unknown void began breaking down around him. He looked back at his canvas to see the same shape of the disk, but red and buggy. The sigil on the card changed to an encrypted language that Magnificus couldn't understand.

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