#astral schools

[crawdaddiie]

more blade icons!!

Star is kinda scuffed I'm ngl

[save-the-spiral]

Wiztober Day Fifteen: Star

Welcome to Day fifteen of wiztober2020

(link to prompt list)

Star magic focused on its caster. The wizard who looked up at the night sky and instead of feeling a fear of something so distant and dead, they felt comfort in being so small, in just being rearranged stardust that gained sentience.

And so star magic came naturally to them. They would wrap themselves in gossamer sheets of stardust and magic merged into an advantage in battle. It would flash and dance around them, constantly in orbit, and they were simply substituting gravity with magic to keep something so powerful around them without perishing.

A true, natural star wizard will always have an air about them. They are flashy, noticeable, beautiful. They are so very distant, and no matter how many times they flutter and flirt around a crowd of people, none of them would truly know the wizard.

Their tears are almost too shiny. Their nails or claws or talons will rake down and leave trails of powdery, glittery iridescent dust. Asleep and relaxed, they drool bright holographic colors into their pillow or on their desk. They are made of stars.

At times it appears as if they are truly just stars. There is no humanity or compassion in the knife sharp glint that resides permanently in their eyes.

They might shake, those beautiful tears trailing glitter down their cheeks, and their trembling hands grip painfully hard. They hug themselves tight as if letting go meant they would lose all cohesive form, and become those scattered beautiful dead lights again.

They are distant. They look around a crowd, and don’t seem to truly see another person. They forge onward as if they are the only person in the Spiral, lost in a dark and cold void, unknowing of their billions of fellow stars that young wizards gaze wistfully at in the night sky.

[save-the-spiral]

Carving Anew

(link to the original post)

I decided to make an addition to my most popular post, with the four additional schools. Content warning for blood mention.

When a star wizard is marked, the bright, sparkling energy of something so bright seems to blind them. Pinpricks of pain rise in a cold, detached fire, widening and filling their vision with nothing but white. When the pain abates into a slight tingling, there will be marks on the apples of their cheeks, stars that glitter, holographic markings on their skin forever. They can grow, with time, and more seemingly erratic or selfish plans pulled off to the benefit of more than themself. They will scatter across their face, varying in sizes and glittering in the sunlight, they will glimmer with strange, eclectic wisdom. They will carry constellations on their faces, amalgamations and dot-to-dots in order to represent their power.

When a sun wizard is marked the sunlight fills their body, warm, warmer, and then burning from the inside out, an instant incineration that leaves them bereft of any breath to scream with. On their back, where the spine tapers off, where their spine dips when they arch, stretching up, towards the heavens, there is a small sun. It shimmers golden, the size of their palm. It radiates warmth, loosening muscles ever tense from the stress the wizard takes upon themself. When they stray from the right path, falling into selfishness and greed, the mark freezes, turning their surrounding skin black and blue with the cold. But if they continue, if they do what is good and right, then the sun expands, gradually, until the circle is as large as their hand, fingers splayed, and the flares of the sun grow ever larger, up and down their spine, circling around their sides and to their hips, more coppery or orange as they grow older.

When a moon wizard is marked, a cool breeze hits them, pushing them around, controlled as the moon controls the tides. They are unsteady on their feet as a strange wet feeling, like a stamp pressed into their skin, hits them on their side. A phase of the moon, clear as day on their skin. The grey of the moon is darker depending on how light the wizard’s skin tone is- the mark wants to shine. As they change more, and accept these changes, on both their sides from their underarms to hips, there are lines depicting the phases of the moon, the full moon at their middle. The texture of the moons themselves are smooth, like touching a stone that had lain in a river bed for centuries. 

When a shadow wizard is marked, they don’t feel it. They don’t notice anything at all. Usually they only learn shadow after already being skilled and powerful enough to be marked from their primary school, and even then, they don’t spend enough time gawking at their mark as if it was new to notice the addition. But it is there, a dark indigo, almost black mark that lines the mark of their primary school. It will continue to spread as long as the wizard still practices and progresses in shadow magic, spiraling out with cut off lines, left in the strange triangle of shadowmancy’s casting sigil. After a while they may start to emanate from a secondary school’s mark, if the wizard manages to get one of those, a rarity. The shadow marks continue, regardless of how they potentially mar the body of the wizard. The shadow always continues on, unending in it’s existence.

So few wizards even know of these schools and their existence. To obtain a marking from them is strange, an alien concept that many scholars would tell you is impossible. A made up school, a made up mark, a waste of time. 

Until the stars burn into your skin and blind you, the sun becomes so cold it freezes your blood in your veins, the moon’s phases cut into the skin, the shadow takes all of those tendrils of darkness on your skin and pulls tight, binding you, stealing your breath away.

[save-the-spiral]

InkWizTober Day Twelve: Dragon + Forgotten

Welcome to day twelve of inktober!! I was excited to continue one of my older headcanons about dragons! (almost two years old! here it is!) Warnings for death mention, injury/scar mention, and dog mention. 

(link to prompt lists) (link to inktober tag)

One dragon per school is right. But no one ever said there were just seven schools worth of dragons.

People only want to think that. Even the concept of creatures and magic they can’t easily control or counter is terrifying. No one will hear these rumors in Ravenwood.

There are still beings out there, both wizard and dragon, one in the same. There just happen to be four more than most think.

Those of sun, burning hotter than a fire dragon ever could, powers bigger and all consuming. They are the largest possible dragon, twice the size of the dragon-wizards of the typical seven schools. Glowing, vibrant scales in yellows and oranges, the occasional red decorate their sky blue body in wide spiraling flares. Their claws are bright, perfect gold, and the malleability of them is their sole weakness. Their face is squashed, snout short like a malformed dog, a pug. They have large fans of skin that spread when threatened, like the myth spell, Basilisk. They breathe solar flares, they could level entire worlds with it, if it weren’t so difficult with their deformed face. They nest on barren, long forgotten worlds, collecting enchanted items and too many shiny treasure cards. They’re mentored in leadership, in protecting others and learning how to fly beyond worlds, in the vast emptiness of space. In human form, they have gold nails and collect many friends in their orbit.

Star dragons are actually the smallest of any of the normal dragon-wizards, slight and mysterious. They are shiny and luminous, a bright, perfect gem, iridescent eyes disorienting as they glitter in any light. The only dull part of them is the velvety black outsides of their spiky jagged wings, in order to hide them when necessary. Their fire is blinding, colorful, and runs hot. They are quick and distant, never connecting with anyone truly before they’re gone. Hoards are full of glittery things, anything with rainbows or whites so bright it sears the human eye. They have to be mentored in stealth, because their mentor knows that a star dragon could be discovered if they’re challenged on how bright they shine. When in human form, their hair seems to have some strands of bright quicksilver hidden in it, and they can fall into their dragon form easier than any other wizard when distressed.

Dragons of the moon are broad, smaller than sun dragons but larger than the others. They breathe grey dust, and it makes beings sleepy and weightless, floating and easy prey. Hoards are full of rocks, making their cave homes easier to hide, even if they enjoy the occasional flashy geode. They seem plain for a dragon, light grey scales covering their wide frame, with darker grey patches over any injuries, and the majority of their underbelly, the inside of their wings. In human form their scars and scabs can take on an inhuman grey tinge as well. Their claws are huge crescents and pure white, almost unwieldy, and most mentors of lunar dragons have to teach them how to manage those deadly claws. The most striking thing about moon dragons are the eyes. Always following the phase of the moon from Earth’s perspective in time, always moving, their pupil-less eyes range from round voids of the new moon, or brilliant full moons. There’s nothing stranger than super moons, or blood moons, or eclipses.

Dragon-wizard beings of shadow are the smallest, the weakest of all the dragons. Their dragon form is barely the size of an average horse, almost pathetic in comparison to others. Scars litter their dragon form even if their human form has never been injured. Scattered burns, digits frostbitten, necrosis, electric burns, poisoned slashes and bites, large swathes of scales burned even worse than the others, bright scars almost mockingly colorful, and residue of sand and thick dust in between their wing scales. The shadow dragon cannot fly. It can barely fight. They have long forgotten how to breathe dangerously. Their hoards are quiet, small things, a trinket or two they cannot be parted with. All they can do is wait and hide in the darkness, in their shadows, trying to understand their magic and their dragon form. They never last long, so there’s no need for a mentor. They get what’s coming to them, and they get it young and brutal.

If you thought yourself brave enough to look for the other seven dragons, never even think of the astral dragons. Don’t even whisper drunkenly about them in an inn, don’t tell the story to your children. Powerful beings have a way of knowing.

As for the shadow dragon, well, it’s a wretched thing. If you ever learn about shadow magic, ever learn about a legend within and legend like a shadow dragon-wizard, don’t bother. 

It's probably dead anyway.