As it turned out, the source mages had a little bit more control over who received which time powers than they led their people to believe. They were certain this was a necessary deception, however. They couldn’t be honest about what they were doing, both because it could be dangerous, and because they didn’t want any accusations of favoritism. The truth is that they never gave certain people certain abilities, but when the truth came about about what they did, convincing people of this was the most difficult part. Some powers are more useful than others, and some aren’t really useful at all. For instance, Alyssa McIver was born with the ability to create illusions. She couldn’t simply create something out of her imagination. She could only show people things that existed somewhere, at some point in history. All she was doing was taking a magical video recording of some remote event, and overlaying it on reality to make it look like it was happening somewhere that it wasn’t. Her illusions were extremely precise, and impossible for the average person to detect, but as amazing as that is, the people of Durus had little use for it. The monsters they were fighting didn’t care who or what it was they were attacking; if they wanted to attack, they would. Yeah, someone with this ability could turn an entire town invisible, but the monsters could probably see right through the false image, and then nothing would matter. The source mages had to be careful not to let anyone get this power, or say, the ability to see what someone will look like when they’re older. They just could not risk wasting an entire mage for something they didn’t need. In order to keep the lie about the complete unpredictability of town mage powers, they created a special mage called a holistic diagnostician. It was his responsibility to identify a new mage’s powers, and to examine the extent of their gifts. As the diagnostician grew older, the source mages knew that he would one day have to pass the torch onto someone else, so they selected his two grandchildren, and made up an ancillary lie about this one ability, for whatever reason, being hereditary. While Elasy and Defirnod Taggart were both chosen, it was really only the former who fully embraced her role in society. Though the boy didn’t reject it, he would rather be doing something else. They found that his sister was much better at the job than he was. He was skillful, to be sure, but he had terrible bedside manner, and he didn’t much like it. That was fine; she could handle everything on her own. He had his own goals in life. Powers or no, he wanted to be a fighter. It was his dream to one day rid the entire planet of time monsters, and if they couldn’t ever figure out how to stop them from coming through the portal altogether, he wanted the mages to change tactics, and always stop them from even getting anywhere near the towns in the first place. Why bother protecting the towns when the enemies always came from the same place? His new plan was never realized, and before the humans won the war for good, a lot of innocent people had to die. He grew angry about this, and he blamed the source mages for their inefficient use of resources. Sadly for him, his outrage ultimately got him killed, along with a few more innocent people.
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The Advancement of Mateo Matic
Now that the lineup has been irreversibly established, and their reliance upon the direction of any external force removed from the equation, Team Matic must decide for themselves what missions to take. As they approach the year that changes everything, they may find themselves on a long detour.
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My name is Nick Fisherman III. It's not my real name, but that's not because I'm trying to hide from my former agency, or something. I named myself after someone I've known for most of my life, and he chose it in honor of his late best friend. I took up writing when I found myself failing 8th grade science, and realized I might never reach my dream of becoming a biochemist, a meteorologist, and a quantum physicist. I started developing my canon after a scouting trip to an island inspired what I thought would be my first novel. I founded this website upon the advice of many people, who told me I needed to get my work out there, and not wait for an agent to accept my manuscript. You can expect one new story every day. Weekdays are for microstories, which are one or two paragraphs long. They're usually only thematically linked, so you won't have to read one to understand another, but they do sometimes tell a combined story. Sundays are for my continuous longer story, The Advancement of Mateo Matic, which I started in the beginning, and won't end until 2066. Saturdays are for long series, most of which take place in the same universe as Mateo, and add to the larger mythology.
Monday, December 30, 2019
Microstory 1266: Defirnod Taggart
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