It is the age of magic, finally.
It came as our last age, as result of someone inventing a fuel that made us better as a species, as a movement. Without having to go through the effort of moral uprooting and replanting, he had the fortune of goodness, that we applied to the planet. All waste was gone. But our best loved child, War, grew angry under this good age, and she stirred us, like growing children do, against each other.
Somewhere someone ripped open a new concept to bleed onto earth. It was that simple. If the best natural force was at our beckon and call, the winner must have something more. And in twisting our newest tool and weapon, we contorted it into something that was not native to our world, or even the world as it extended outward, endlessly.
War still has her tantrums, and we are still doting, adoring caretakers, but there is nuances on earth now, and they are made bright by the gems that decide our power.
-
The magic has an aesthetic now. Colored stones, usually adorned and framed in metal. Magic runs rampant, and people wield it. Most treasured is the offensive arts, because they decide the fate of any nation. But any direction of magic produces a kind of mineral, and that is what the stones are. Sometimes they fall form the sky, or sometimes they are birthed from wounds like stigmata. Wherever magic is prevalent it leaves traces in the form of gems. Oil on water is particularly powerful, and clear ones are completely drained of their potency to summon magic at all. The gems are an effective way of controlling magic.
The world is made up by courts, and the courts are at war with each other, usually. That doesn't mean they have separate agendas toward other places, when they can work together. I hate you, but we'll see you next month, when we strike a country far from us, yes?
And then the look of the world. We have too much of the old materials, and are inlove with the pretty of our stones. There is no need for technology to remind us of how we used to waste so we could have, so we've escaped into a mid-evil continuum of decor. Knights with blades, pregnant with all manner of stones, and armor with colorful schemes or hen egg-sized treasures. The buildings too, the castles, have silver vines and gemstone fruits. It is beautiful, we think. So the bricks and iron pillars and concrete slabs have been re purposed into great fortresses, and we don't loose ourselves to screens anymore. We honor our families, however vague that endeavor is, and try to stay alive by earning a keep, as always.
And we go to school.
-
Carxer rode the stairs quickly, down. He was a dapper princeling of The Howlingbird Court, with his long black hair that remained wild despite the band that tried to hold it back. Violent heritage, and he had the blithe minerals to prove it. Native to his lands, not far from this esteemed Eseleth Academia, the stones were gunmetal gray, matte, with brilliant ruby highlights. He wore two small ones hanging from his ears, and - some liked to say - their reflection on his lips.
Carxer was a soft boy, the family's gentle flower in a field of barbwire tumbleweed. But among Howlingbirds that was not saying much. A poet with brittle bones to them, who war like it is breathing, could still be a sharp and insufferable someone to most other Courts. He wore casual armor today, which was barely metal on his joints. Most of his tunic showed, and all of his leather boots. Tall for his age, with sword and spear limbs, and black eyes with red rings. What kind of poet he could be, reading with a face like that.
The storm of his hurrying came to stop, and he raised his arms far over his shoulder protection. The halls and its bustle said it was morning, and he was in a good, rambunctious mood, it seemed. He could not worry about how his Court had expanded its lands into some of the disciplines here, and how people from there might hate him for it. Well, he could not always worry about it. "I have a challenge for you." and little petals swirled around his form, red like the stone's shadows. The ruby light gathered into his right wrist, and when he clenched that hand into a fist the light exploded out, like a star exhaling. Surely they would look at him now. "A duel! And if I win you will let me write off your sheets concerning today's manifest in Collaron history." A court that had the same role in magic as did Pandora for the continents. It seemed the Howlingbird only wanted to get off easy from doing homework, which explained the slight fear in his eyes, that had red where there should be white.
"And if you win." he said to the crowd, who may or may not be listening. "Well, then I suppose you're gods and don't really need anything from me."
He was a jester. And most of them knew there wouldn't be famous Howlingbird outrage if they didn't take the challenge. There was an issue of pride, though, and he knew some of them well enough that it might work.