A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

I came back the next day, following a read through of when Fyntn found out about my reality core binding to a seed of thought. It was a fun time, but now was no time at all. I sat at the controls again, in some sort of temporal bubble that Akier somehow had a way of manipulating. Last time, I heard him whispering in my ear, but only after I wound time back. The ten-cut still blazed white light on a frozen scene, as I hesitated over the orb to wind time back. There had to be a way to rewind time to before Akier was realized in Tarne. If only Fyntn could assist me here. He had to be familiar with this setup. I tried winding time back again, this time not moving from the spot in the library that I hovered. Tarne wound back to before the lunge, and Fyntn got put back together, but Akier did not walk back upstairs backwards like before. Instead, he just sat on the couch again, this time grinning like mad. I flew closer to see if he knew where I was again, but he just kept looking ahead, gri...

When I awoke, I was nearly covered up by snow. It resisted soaking into my clothes because of the cold, and my skin felt like stone. I did not know why I was sleeping outside, but I could not recall much of where I had been before going to sleep. I knew but two things, my name, and the name of my trusted sword. ”My beloved, lend me your strength,” I spoke, trying to brace the cold threatening my life. I pushed my being into my arms, feeling the heart pounding in desperation. When it got to my hands, the energy of my body shared itself with the steel, casting alight in the namesake. “Nastu no Atsusa.” The outpost of heat from the blade huddled my body around it, keeping a stance of my arms tightened to channel energy into it that warmed beside me. It felt less to me like the summer heat the sword was named after, and more like a hot iron bar that could burn me if I was not careful. It melted some snow around me, and I could stand, still sinking into the packed snow below. The first thin...

NILVIIVLIN It was a dragon. A baby, but still a dragon. Nilvi was looking at it hatching before her very eyes. The stranger thing was that this creature of myth and legends was emerging from what she believed to be a farm-fresh chicken egg. She got it from the chicken coop and rather than cook it, Nil decided to hatch the poor creature only to be heartily surprised. The process took no extreme measures, no blazing pyre like in the books. One heating blub and time was all it took. The creature was almost entirely out of the shell, but a few bits still stuck to surprisingly smooth lavender skin. In the books, dragons were said to be scaly and reptilian in nature, but here was an example of a different outcome. It had a pair of horns already atop a rather reptilian head, but the eyes were as those of a mammal. “You need a name,” Nil said as the little dragon turned to her as if she didn’t even exist before. The little maw opened to produce a tiny squeak. “Oh, but are you a boy dragon or...