☀️ Arselia and Akonia

Oh, how interesting,” Mika says, placing two cups of tea and the promised candies on the table, “where did you get such treasures? I’ve never seen anything like it…

-- It’s quite a long story. The problem is, you see, that the exact names of the places involved are classified for political reasons, which isn’t exactly suitable for a museum, but I can tell you the gist of it.

-- There was this one madman, a prominent figure, but his name has been erased from the people’s memory because of what he did. In an attempt to create a source of immense magical energy, he lost control and endangered an entire region, as the remnants of this magic permeated all objects and living creatures, altering the very fabric of reality. Some managed to avoid the worst of the consequences. Some things were distorted in strange ways and then returned to normal. But overall, the area was changed beyond recognition for a while and became quite dangerous. Despite the sudden chaos, the appearance of numerous monsters and anomalies, people continued to live in the region – partly because some of them had changed and would likely not have been accepted anywhere else. Even if that hadn’t been a problem, fleeing through those lands would have been too risky.

-- Well, I was just an explorer, helping the surviving locals fight their troubles. During one such expedition, my companion – the girl sighed – my Sparky sniffed out an anomaly in an underground cave, which, after all the checks, turned out to be harmless, so I took it with me. Then, a familiar mage suggested a theory: teleportation. This chest was probably in some palace very close to the epicenter of the disaster, and among other things, it contained a teleportation device. After the magical surge, the teleport activated on its own, and the chest, along with pieces of the nearby floor and walls (which I did observe), ended up somewhere completely different and was found by me.

-- In the end... Again, I’m not saying this in my own words, I’m not a mage myself. But in the end, it seems that all the contents of the chest were distorted and mixed together, as if the very aspects of the items in it were blended. There are still recognizable man-made treasures here, some medallions, brooches, stones, but it’s as if all of this is painted on the fabric of reality by an artist who doesn’t understand how it’s arranged materially. What is it made of? What shape is it, and why this shape? What is it for? The distortion changed all of this, and perhaps the teleportation mixed the aspects somehow... And most importantly, this collection retains some mysterious, magical, one might say, beauty. The way it shines, the way it feels in your hand, the way it looks completely different from different angles...

-- That’s it. Getting it was actually not easy, but what to do with it was also a question for me. There’s definitely no practical use for it, it’s just a beautiful mystery... All in one 😉