Peril's Origin - A Magical Girl Quest [Complete]

It is a familiar sensation, especially in these last few years. Aside from recruiting your three harbingers, which took a small load off of your shoulders, or so the human saying goes. The Clockwork Dames are working adequately and to the best of their capacity. Holding onto three of the small number capable of marching against the Goetia is helpful.

Yet, even as you oversee all that is for offenders, this one small speck of [REALITY], Cosmos, is being oh so infuriating.

Humanity, Gaia's children, are not unique in the entirety of Cosmos. Assuming so would be ludicrous. What they are is an oddity in a sector of normative magic use, and one of the scarce few races capable of surviving without mana. Others like them existed before and will exist thereafter.


Though you have to admit, it is a good thing that beings like them are rare. Their champions break many expectations of magic and push others onto the paths and mental patterns required to do the same. They are usually the only ones that bring forth individuals capable of wriggling through your lockdown on the timestream.


It will take eons longer until you finally return to your original power. Grow beyond what you were reduced to in the beginning, and finally lock down all of time for good. You are [TIME], Chronos, the embodiment of time itself, and you closed yourself off from mortal hands at the start. The consequences of mortals playing with time are catastrophic more often than not. Technically, the same goes for the younger deities trying to meddle within your self, breaking what they knew needed to remain whole, and thus bringing forth Goetia.

One day, for certain, you will tear even [DREAM], Void's grasp over you away. Maybe you will allow her access still, considering that she is capable of using it responsibly, but you doubt that. Especially because she keeps throwing tantrums that you are rooting around in her darling Cosmos' chest area due to aforementioned humans.


And you are back where you started. With a human that you never expected to steal power over time from right under your nose. You worried for the repercussions of her dying in a time not her own when she began, and you were right.

Though, admittedly, aside from that first death of hers which you corrected out of pity, the other two timelines you had to cut out of yourself were at least justified. Even you are familiar with Gabriel, for she, too, is one who holds the power to fight Goetia and win. One who proved it more than once over her short life. You would have liked to welcome her among divinity, had she so desired. But duty compelled her to remain among her own, and duty was what did her in.

Nonetheless, for one who only gained the bare minimum of a Magical Girl's powers, she is doing admirably. Hopefully without any more failures you need to correct, it hurts to surgically remove them from yourself and it is difficult to adjust the cut parts before something breaks.

Gabriel, and a Dragon. Were you human, or inclined to gesture with your human avatar while you think, you would shake your head. Even though she surpassed each of them on the second attempt, this is beyond reckless.

At this point, you feel that you need to bring Yomi, Amelia, and Kagome all in for this. So you pluck them from their timelines and set them up to bring this journey of hers to a close. You give them their orders and set them up outside of Magical Girl Defiance's margin.

You are time incarnate, but you need to adhere to your own rules out of necessity. With your current weakness, you can only support a single time traveler moving to any given point; it strains you for they do not belong, and not even you yourself can insert a second traveler at the same point without tearing yourself. No matter who, the force of their entry would lead to open wounds in that area, and so you repel and direct them back to the point they attempted to travel from; it is one of the few safety measures you can enforce universally. A few short years of buffer between two travelers' entry points suffice to prevent this.

As you parse forward to see what takes place between Defiance's return of the Dragon battle and their entrance, you briefly wonder what to tell Gaia. Your avatar is currently in her avatar's presence after all, in that traveler's own time. You are still unsure whether Gaia figured out your identity, as you never truly tried to hide it. She will likely tease you if she does, if her Magical Girl completes the journey.

Only upon returning home will the loop be closed, and you can go about implementing the changes into yourself. You will have to reconsider whether an easy time implementing those changes from letting her close the loop is worth any additional trouble she could-


...what? What?!

How?

If that already hurt you, what might it have done to her? Do you have to pluck the three from where they are to perform euthanasia?

---

3,390 EXP spent
20 remain

---

You wake up feeling little better than when you went to sleep. Your eyelids almost refuse to open and your entire body feels like mush.

A weak groan makes its way out of your dry throat and you try to lift your hand, but fail. You could force it to, but that is probably what brought you into this sorry state to begin with. At least your mind is mostly clear.

Movement from the corner of your eyes draws your attention and you find Orux bustling over. He wears some kind of robe or whatever, you can not say for sure with how little light there is in the room. Or because your eyes suck right now.

"Good afternoon, dear," he greets you with a weak smile. You just groan in response and he sighs, sitting down on the ground next to your bed. "I figured something like that. Just be quiet and rest. Here." A strong hand feels under your back and pulls you up to sit, then a mug filled with cool water is held to your lips. You tip your head back to drink and immediately feel better.

"Th-gr, thank you." Your voice is still raspy, but you can speak. Orux lowers you back down and readjusts your blanket. Huh. "Since when, uh, am I dressed?" You faintly remember something different, though the last one or two minutes before falling into bed are somewhat blurry.

Your boyfriend strokes your head with calm motions while grabbing for something else you can not see. "I put you into your nightgown after you passed out. The Ashen Maiden was sympathetic and allowed me to stay with you while you recuperate. We could all guess that you will stay in this room for a while, after what you did." He pulls over a small tray with cold food in the time you need to mull that over, something mushy. "Maya brought this over earlier. Do you feel like eating?"

You just make an inarticulate noise and nod, then turn your head at Orux. "What did I do?"

He gives you a look for a moment, spoon already raised. The silence passes and he reaches over, so you dutifully open your mouth. It is mild and soothing for your throat, semi-solid like porridge, and with a milky flavour to it. Orux explains while you feeding you: "I have no idea what exactly it was, but that crater you spoke about is definitely not small. We got earthquakes even here. Several of the buildings in construction collapsed."

You mumble a sorry in-between bites, but can not say whether he heard it. If he did, he does not react, just keeps feeding you until you shake your head, belly full. Most of the food is gone now. "Alright," he concedes and puts it away. Then he takes your hand in his and strokes it gently with his thumb. "But please, do not do this again unless you have to. I hate seeing you like this."

Another sorry follows and you can not help but wallow in your misery for a moment, but there was no helping it here. Well, technically. You were kind of mad, probably in both senses. "Won't do it unless I really have to. This sucks." Then you grin back at him and squeeze his hand as best as you can, some strength returning. "At least I have such a kind man to pamper me. Maybe I should do this more often after all."

The face he makes, a mix of exasperation and resignation and a few other things, has you bark out a laugh. "Ha, don't worry. Joking." You calm yourself and smile up a little more kindly. "But you're getting a few more kisses once I can get up there again. Thank you."

"Glad to be appreciated," he gives back with a smile, his continued strokes relaxing you ever more. "You should rest now, dear. Others should be around at some point, I can wake you then."

You oblige his order and fall asleep.


A day passes, then two, then three. You quickly regain your strength and by the third day, you are out and about again with basically no limitations. Although being bedridden for a day and barred from any strenuous activity for two more, as well as dead tired the entire time sucked enough for several weeks.

Even now, you really do not feel up to going for Milidia yet. That Angel does not seem to be leaving anytime soon, so you figure you can take a few more days to fully recover.

The fourth day is when you realise your powers grew by a decent chunk again. Meditation and some light sparring with Lu give you insight into a new capability in your spear. You are not sure how to best describe it concisely, but what it does is give you nudges somewhere between concious and subconcious for how to adjust your stance and how or where to aim. Lu threw a few pebbles and you easily struck them in mid-air, so this greatly improves your precision.

Then again, your friend also cautioned you not to rely on this too much. Even if it does the work of finding good angles and approaches for you, it is only active on Aetheric Tide and does not help against enemy action. Further testing did reveal that your strike for Lu's hand was easily deflected, with no subconcious nudge for how to get around her parry.

It is still useful enough, especially with how it works on your throws as well. You could not test that perfectly yet because you were too tired to continue and did not feel like doing much of anything the next day, but there is a definite edge in this new power.

More confusingly, that following day also has a visit from Elisabeth, who thanks you again for doing this, wishes you a swift recovery, and... told you she was preparing a gift of sorts for you, as thanks for doing this despite not having to. It probably has to do with the Imps she sent early on to take your measurements, which you heard from Orux, but she does not say even when you ask.

Now here you are, wondering what to do with the bit of time you have before going on your last mission. Another day, maybe two, but you need to take it easy still. Better not risk a relapse.

So after a nice breakfast together with Orux, you decide on what to do.

-------------

Pick three one:

[] Spend some more time with Orux

[] Go hiking with Paoras

[] Check what Elisabeth is working on

[] Practice
-[] Write-in what (optional)


[] EXP-Plan
-[] Write-in what to buy
-[] Save it


+10xp A Momentuous Eon of Chronos' Thoughts

EXP gained: 10
Total EXP: 30


(Soft mechanics updated)