Title:           Sable Winged Anon Chpt. 2
Author:          Lanielan
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/kMSZzgCK
First Edit:      Tuesday 13th of October 2015 12:49:28 AM CDT
Last Edit:       Tuesday 13th of October 2015 12:49:28 AM CDT

Chapter 2
 
> “What have you done?”
“Well, I was just writing down the results of a test, but I'll assume that’s not what your asking about.”
> “What have you done with all of those bodies out there? What happened to you? You have scars everywhere!”
“I have done what mankind has always wanted to do. What every doctor has always striven to do. I have found a way to cheat death.”
> “This is what you've been doing these past ten years? Look at all these corpses! Look at yourself. Is it worth it?”
“Calm down. All of these bodies are just failures.”
> “Failures? You call all of these lost lives failures!?”
“Considering they were ever only magically grown bodies made from my own cells, that then died because the spell didn't work correctly, yes. Scientifically speaking, they are all failures. I am the success. They were never even conscious.”
> “Magically grown from….your cells? You must know that violates the Cloned Beings Protection Act, right?”
“So you're saying I should've gone out and used the homeless? Or prisoners? Maybe adopt some children from an orphanage in a war-torn third world country and used them instead? You thnk this is some kind of T.V. show? That's ethically and scientifically insane. Why would I try to develop a spell that preserves DNA and RNA inside of cells for anyone except my own? I wasn't entirely certain it was even feasible for the first few years.”
> “Well….no, but still. Cloning yourself with magic? Making a spell that keeps you eternally young? You know that every country in the world is going to be up in arms about this right? Magic was only just discovered. We need to take it slow so people won't be afraid-”
“People will always be afraid. Irrelevant of how fast magical studies are proceeding, people will always be afraid of what they don't understand.”
> “But we can make this easier for everybody if we just take it slow and-”
“Take it slow. HA. Good joke, humanity going slow. Whenever people want the next book of a series to come out, or the next episode, or a response to a text, or fucking Tweets, everybody can't fucking slow down. I make the most revolutionary spell ever conceived, and suddenly I'm going too fast. The hypocrisy of it all.”
> “You are kind of walking into the realm of….well for lack of a better term, Godly powers.”
“Hahahaha. You must be a comedian on the side. Godly powers, please. It's not like I'm immortal, just un-aging. A bullet in the head will still put me down like any other miserable sod.”
> “Why even do this? Your not that old….is it because of your grandfather? I know you were close but this seems a bit….well….”
“….No. I loved my grandpa dearly. But he lived his life, he did what he wanted to do. He was ready to go wherever we go after we die. However, what I want to be able to do can't be done in one lifetime. Not even a hundred lifetimes.”
> “What you want to do? What could you possibly want to do that warrants all of this?”
“Everything.”
> “Everything?”
“I want to see a blue giant collapse into a black hole. I want to be part of mankind's first contact with extraterrestrial life. I want to be able to travel in a ship to a new galaxy. I want to eat a burger on Mars, to touch a comet, to watch the Earth spin with an alpaca on the moon. To experience and learn every single possible event and piece of knowledge.”
> “….An alpaca….on the moon?”
“Why the hell not? I've obtained far more time then every other person on this little rock has. Granted, the alpaca idea was spur of the moment there. Probably something I'll do on a really slow year, but the fact is I now have the time to be able to realize my goal.”
> “You do know that you'll never be able to even remember a tenth of what you do, right? I mean, humans forget most everything that they see, hear, and do in a single day, how will you keep track of everything you'll ever even do in hundreds of years?”
“That brings me to my notes on the project you just interrupted.”
 
Pain.
Everywhere.
This is a good thing; pain meant you are alive, and your spine didn't break.
How lucky, considering by all rights you should be dead.
Then there was a sound of something with hooves approaching.
Then there was a light, with no warmth.
Even better, the locals have found you.
With any luck, the local medical facilities will have some form of painkillers that you haven't developed an immunity to yet.
Might as well get up and greet them.
Groaning, you roll onto your hands and knees.
Nothing immediately wrong with your limbs.
Looking over to the locals to see what planet you were on….
There were two….unicorns….with wings?
Well….ok then, weirder things have happened.
Perhaps a strange joke by some bored geneticists?
Shaking your head, you stand up to stretch everything out, popping bones that had been still for too long.
The horses flared their wings and set low to the ground.
They had an angry look to them.
Slowly lowering your wings, you realize that they were wearing some metal.
Beyond that, their manes were flowing in a breeze that wasn't there.
One mane of a rainbow, the other of….stars?
Some really artistic bored geneticists?
Slowly, you begin casting a calming spell on them.
The last thing you need after waking up from that crash is some angry animals.
“Easy there now, I won't hurt you; now where is your owner?”
The white horse….reeled its head in shock, with a look of….disbelief?
Then the dark one jumped in the way and made an arcane shield.
You can't say you saw that one coming honestly.
Then the white one jumped up and….fired an energy beam?
Dodging to one side, you see the dark one start casting another spell at you.
Getting a running start, you start flapping your wings to get away from them.
Not long after takeoff, you heard a roar which bent the tops of some trees.
You have seen many things, but trees bending to a roar?
This is a first.
Flying magic horses, potentially intelligent, lungs powerful enough to bend trees
This day is about #3 in the weirdest things to ever happen to you.
Looking back, you see the white one easily, its horn glowing gold.
You start casting seven barrier spells, just to be ready for anything that it will throw at you, while you start looking around for the dark one.
The sky was cloudless, and the moon was bright, but it was still hard to really see anything.
After the barriers were put up in record time you cast a night-vision spell.
Just as you do, a ball of blue energy hits your first barrier from below, shattering it.
The flash of colliding magic blinds your enhanced vision for a moment, bringing tears to your eyes.
Quickly wiping your eyes you start to scan the plains for the dark horse, seeing it dart around erratically.
That's when a light from behind you hits your barriers, breaking all but one of them.
If this world didn't have some strange factor accelerating your spellcasting, you would be unconscious again, or worse.
The barrier spell may be weaker than the shield, but to shatter five in one go?
These two are going to blast you out of the sky if something isn't done soon.
No sooner thought then the last barrier was shattered by the dark horse.
Anticipating the next attack from the other one, your quickly drop altitude low enough to smell the grass, gaining considerable speed.
The spell fires ahead of you, erupting in a shower of dirt and pebbles.
Quickly turning to one side to try to throw off the horses even for a moment, you wipe the tears from your eyes again.
This enhanced vision may be great for seeing, but their attacks are blinding you every time.
Dropping the spell might save you some pain, but then you wouldn't see where to go, or where the dark one was.
A difficult situation.
But better to be aware of painful knowledge than willfully ignorant of it.
When was the last time you felt this….pressured?
Heart racing, blood pumping, limited options, determined mystery attackers, unknown world, new variables for magic….
When was the last time there were so many unknowns to you?
Flying as fast as you can, you see some cliffs up ahead.
When was the last time you were so excited?
Looking back, you see both of the horses flying above you, preparing more spells.
Folding your wings after you pass the cliff edge, you start diving down into the canyon.
The howling wind whipping your hair.
The crosswinds from the cliffs.
The sound of dust being dragged across the rock faces.
The magic blasting past the soles of your feet.
When was the last time you enjoyed yourself from such simple things?
Dropping faster as gravity brings you down again.
Spreading your wings at the last few moments, you flap them hard to ease your landing as much as you can.
Landing near the river in the canyon shook your bones, even with the deceleration.
Looking up, you see the dark horse diving towards you.
When was the last time you felt this threatened?
Gathering up as much energy as possible, you fire an energy blast straight at the horse.
A last minute barrier saved it from the brunt of the attack, but not all of it.
Shattering the spell, the horse starts to fall to the earth.
The white horse yells, dives closer, and grabs a hold of the other with a levitation spell.
Taking the chance while it was distracted, you fire several quick energy blasts at the cliff.
You jump with a wind spell to get closer.
The rocks fell onto the pair of horses as you see a beam blast the biggest ones to dust.
Using levitation magic, you force all of the rocks to redirect towards the pair.
The rocks batter against another barrier, before a bright flash turns them to dust.
The white horse looks surprised as you steady yourself in front of it with your wings.
Having gotten close enough, you unleash as much magic in a shotgun cone as you could.
The tears in your eyes kept coming from all the light of magic, yet you would not blink.
There was the smell of burnt fur in the air.
The horse stops flying and falls with its unconscious partner.
Gasping for air at the sudden discharge of magic, you watch them fall.
When was the last time you felt so much adrenaline?
Hearing a shout, a flash of purple appears in front of you and wraps the two horses in an aura.
A third purple horse, smaller than the other two was in front of you for only a second, flashing you a look of surprise, and anger.
Then in a flash, gone again as quickly as it was here.
How?
Looking around, it isn't anywhere below you or above you.
Casting an arcane pulse spell, it doesn't feel like any other creature is near you.
Teleportation?
That magic was....pointless….
To move the countless trillions of individual atoms that compose even a rock was a task that no mind could keep track of.
The slightest error, and the object would reform incorrectly with incredibly explosive results from molecular destabilization.
With so many variables, you would need a supercomputer.
Some even tried to fold space to teleport with magic, but the energy required was so great, it took three spellcasters working in tandem to do it.
You still would only be able to get a few hundred kilometers at most anyway.
Besides magic being a rare resource in the first place, both of these applications, and FTL travel, were done far easier with the advancement of technology and physics.
Teleportation magic was so inefficient and dangerous, that it was more practicality than impossibility the community as a whole dropped the school all together.
Even you admitted that the effort wasn't worth the result when science did it so much better than the arcane.
This world….so saturated in magic was able to make horses that could do what humans arcanists struggled with easily?
Looking all around you start to finally realize the gravity of the situation with this moment of peace, undoing the night-vision spell.
The strange wind blows.
The blue river flows.
The moon and stars where shining in the night sky clearer than any other world you had ever been on.
You had no idea what stars these were.
No idea where these stars were.
Completely lost on an alien world flooded with magic that you still didn't fully understand.
Landing next to the river, you levitate some and purify it with magic.
The cold water went down quickly, with a slight tingle in your throat.
A world where magic was even in the water.
Magic seemed to saturate everything here.
The air, the dirt, the creatures.
When was the last time you were ever this lost?
“Ha….haha….HAHAHAHAHAAAA, AHAHAHAhahahahaahhaaaaaaaaaa.”
The laughter simply wouldn't stop, it was just so ironic.
You were the oldest human in existence.
You were the most famous spellcaster in human, possibly galactic, history.
You had more zettabytes of magically stored information than any other repository of knowledge in the known galaxy.
To say that you were one of the most well informed and wizened individuals in the cosmos was a gross understatement.
Yet here you were, completely and totally lost on some random planet filled with little magic horses with wings and horns.
And you had absolutely no idea what to make of any of it or what to do next.
The irony of it simply couldn't be laughed at.
When was the last time you laughed so damn hard?
Catching your breath, you hear a scream above you, and the clinking of metal followed by high pitched shrieks.
You jump to your feet.
Looking above you, a swarm of batlike beings diving down towards you, with the purple one on the cliff surrounded by five others in a glow of white.
Clearly the bats were a distraction while those on the cliff channeled a spell.
As wise as you are in the arcane, you are still only human.
One of you does not equal a small army of magic beings.
Two was hard enough; this was simply suicide to try to fight against.
The landing had drained a lot from you, with the shield spell and the regeneration.
The flight and fight from before had exhausted you even more.
The bats surrounded you.
No, bat-winged little ponies.
Clearly smaller than the first two.
Surrounded on all sides, no chance to escape.
Only one choice left really.
To do something completely unexpected and wildly dangerous.
You begin to draw in as much arcane energy around you as possible.
Something you didn't think you'd ever be able to do in such a great amount.
You begin to glow emerald.
So rare was magic back home, that you never really got to push your limits on how much energy you could handle.
The bat-ponies charge.
So much magic.
Your barrier stops their charge and pushes them all away.
Looking up, you see the six above you begin to glow and levitate from all of their gathered power.
You were only one human.
One was less than six, and you didn't have much time to draw in arcane energy on top of that.
Going straight against all of that power only had one outcome.
But the one flaw of all communal spells should still be true here.
If the chain is broken, the spell fails.
You weren't sure this would work.
But what did you have to lose?
Breathing out, you concentrate.
You weave the spell in your mind.
Time always seemed to slow when you crafted such wonders of reality.
Even the most mundane spells were a beautiful weave of energy and purpose.
Spells could only be seen by those who could cast them in their mind's eye.
After your first spell you knew that few other things could compare to magic's majesty.
It's infinite complexity belied what magic really was.
Looking up, you see the weave of the six's spell.
A different weave of varying patterns.
One was rough, thick and simple.
Another light, like thin silk; yet strong enough to support the others.
The third was erratic, carefree almost, with little rhyme or reason; somehow still weaving a cohesive piece that meshed perfectly with the others.
The forth was brazen, using colors and shapes that stood out more than the rest.
The fifth was grandiose compared to the others; precise, professional, with subtle flares that only strengthened the whole.
The last was at the center, reaching out and binding all the others into a cohesive whole, uniting the individuals weaves into one.
This was the one that needed to be dealt with, the keystone.
You let your spell fly, pouring everything into it.
The spell connected, and began to unravel the arcane lattice.
Starting at the edge of the spell, it slowly worked it's way inward, weakening the spell at random places as well as key points that helped maintain their connection.
The six tried to maintain it, but you had millennia of studying every single facet of arcane energies.
Your spell attacked theirs at the weakest points.
Then it weakened their stronger points.
They kept trying to keep the weave together, but they didn't know which parts to focus on.
When their attentions were completely on their own parts of the spell, you directed yours to the keystone in the center.
Where all of their individual weaves were connected.
Their spell was magically, and figuratively, torn apart.
The energies gathered thus far then exploded in a cacophony of magical energies.
You were thrown against the cliff.
You felt some ribs break, and your vision blurred.
The ground met your face for the second time today at gravity's behest.
There was ringing in your ears.
Eventually, the world stopped spinning.
You started hearing the river and wind again.
Then you felt a cold pain run through your torso.
You felt a lung collapse.
You coughed blood.
Turning, you see one of the bat-ponies with a handle in it's mouth.
You could feel the cold steel where your lung once was.
An inch more to the left and it would've been your heart.
Your blood begins to pool.
You can only look at this creature in the eyes.
You see unbridled hatred in them.
This is how you die then?
“Ha….*cough*hahaha….”
It hurt to laugh, but you just couldn't help it.
Then a flash of purple again.
Your vision gets hazy.
You hear some strange language being yelled between the two.
“To experience and learn every single possible event and piece of knowledge.”
No, you weren't going to die here, there was still so much to see and do.
Especially here, on a new world of mystery.
So loud, why are they so loud, you had to concentrate.
Grunting, you fight past the pain and push yourself up to your knees.
Not bothering to blink away the tears from your cloudy vision, you think the turn to you.
Irrelevant what they did at this point.
If they were going to kill you, you couldn't stop them.
Grunting in pain, you grab the handle protruding from your back.
You pull as hard as your sore arms could.
The weapon seems to slide out infinitesimally slow.
You would scream from the pain, but only more blood comes out.
Your stomach tightens, your heart pumps harder than you ever remember.
Pulling it free, you use the last once of your being to cast a spell you learned from an old friend.
It was a healing spell that rivaled your youth spell, though it may work vastly differently.
The pain it put you through was more than your battered form could possibly take.
You fall face first into the dirt, hearing something or another from the pony things.
When was the last time you felt this alive?
Then there was only darkness again.