September 2025
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    Magic like THIS

    Hi guys. I struggled a lot on how to exactly express this. And after a while I realized that showing it to you would be better than trying to synthesize it.

    I want stories with magic that feel like this:

    +++++++++++++++

    The newborn god who used to be D-822-46 floated out of the rift and down onto the mountainside, hovering above the crust of snow. She grew a pair of rabbit ears, swiveling them. Silence.

    The ears retracted and her face split from the nose down. Her tongue unbraided itself into tendrils, tasting the air as they waved. There were others surrounding the hill.

    They were hiding under the snow, but she could taste everything about them. Like her, but covered in armor. They did not carry the reek of fear, nor the electric hum of anger. They were merely determined. They had come to hunt.

    She put her face back together and willed herself to where one of them stood on the edge of the ring. The hunter leapt to his feet, firing his weapon; the bullets rippled into her like pebbles into a lake, vanishing harmlessly. The taste of panic made her blood start to rush.

    She popped him like a berry and pressed him dry, the fluids of his body swirling in the air around her, and jumped to her next enemy. The serpentine trail of blood and mucous darted to his helmet, flooding it, forcing its way down his nose and mouth, filling his lungs until they burst. She threw her head back and shrieked with joy.

    A boom echoed across the mountainside, and something undeniable – even to her – crashed into the ground. It was too slow; she was a streak in the wind, trailing color and furious glee.

    Someone pushed her – a tug toward nothingness. She shook it off, like the grip of a child, but it was real power. Power like hers. Power she might steal for herself, once she consumed the vessel that carried it.

    She burst toward the one trying to unmake her, teeth bared; her will was stronger than his, her desire more forceful, and he could not make her change. Laughing, she spiraled and picked up speed, and they collided with enough force to scatter his body over the snow. The survivors broke their formation, starting to rush in, and she knew she was winning. She burst into flames, just to make them afraid.

    They closed on her, some of them running along the ground, others ripping through space the way that she did. She could sense words, coming out of their devices and traveling through the air between them. She didn't understand what was said, but she felt the meaning – through desperation, a plan.

    Stones rose up from the ground and began to strike her; she waved her hand, and they turned to moths and flew away. In the instant that took her, one of the others reached his will into her chest and pulled. She felt herself torn open, twisted and cracked, bones exposed, bare heart bitten by the cold.

    But she was above their world, and her body not subject to its laws. Her ribs spread wider, stretching and reaching, until they surrounded the nearest prey and snapped shut around him.

    She felt his screaming from inside his body as her bones extended and tunneled in. She pulled him toward her, reshaping them both, breaking down his form. She would add it to her own. She would add all of them to herself, mind and body, and any others she found, until there was nothing else left, until the only life that existed lived within her-

    Then a huge steel net came down over them all. Before she could erase it, the boom came again and an unstoppable force slammed into her legs, shearing them off mid-thigh. She screamed. She was suddenly bristling with darts, falling to the ground, pierced with a spear that began to pour lightning into her shifting flesh.

    She screamed again, and her agony blossomed into chaos. Spires of pointed bone shot up from the ground. A monstrous serpent burst roaring from the mountainside. A storm of teeth and thorns howled around her.

    They scattered, but quickly regrouped, spreading out into a rehearsed formation. Their leader roared defiance at her beast – she could hear it from where she lay, even through the woman's helmet. The creature writhed, scales ripping away and muscle instantly turning to ash, until its blackened skeleton crashed to the ground. One of them thickened time itself, and her projectiles slowed to a crawl, while another changed them to lotus petals with a soft, sad song.

    She tried to remake herself, but there was too much to overcome, and the harpoon inside her crackled again, and then there was nothing.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    +> Passage from SCP Tale "On the slope of Mount Olympus." (

    I want magic that feels like this.

    Oniric. Like reality itself is a dream, and twisting it is a matter of raw mental(magical?) strength, experience, determination and skill.

    A writting style that allows for fluid battles like this

    by Ordinary_Azathoth

    1 Comment

    1. idreaminwords on

      Not completely sure this fits the bill, but maybe give The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins a try?

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