A body landed heavily in the snow, streaking trails of smoke and violet hued fire. The glade around the event hushed, the raw power and mana bleeding into the very air. For several long moments, nothing breathed.

“Ow. OW OW OW. Ow!” The figure’s head was concealed beneath a plume of powder, but instantly the space around the glade became frantic for a moment, as every single creature in a half mile radius began running. Away from the epicentre of madness and uncertainty.

And left a single adult male bleeding and crying in the snow.

He lurched in stages to his feet. And immediately began beating at the smoking remnants of his shirt. Finally the right neurons fired in his head, and he pulled the offending cotton tee off his body. His chest heaved, but there hadn’t been enough time to sweat.

It took a few moments to get his breath under control, and spot check his pants for any other burns.

He finally looked around, seriously, at this deathly quiet glade ringed in short, stubby trees. “Nope.” Conflicted emotions flashed across his face, settling on confusion.

He turned around, looking at a wide blue sky and an open snow-spotted plain. “Also nope.”

Something, perhaps intuition made him look above him. And he saw the rip in the fabric of the sky.

Gossamer, violet lines of *something* hung in empty space. And they pulsed, slowly writhing and vibrating in time to some slow beat. He saw that the lines, although complicated in nature, looked like they were slowly eroding. Without getting his fingers anywhere near it, he still felt a burst of curiosity mixed with caution. “Hello beautiful.”

Maybe it was just his concussion, but he thought maybe the violet exposed streaks twinkled at that one.

What was more compelling still was that these folds and lines made some sort of three dimensional structure. He murmured happily, “Well, you’re not geometric. And not random.” The structure was slowly unwinding, becoming less complex and the lines fading at a steady rate.

“Fractal?”

He absentmindedly traced the edges of the structure with his finger in the air, a healthy distance away, following the edges inward. “Definitely not.” It was clear to him that there was a center origin point to this pulsing wordy mass.

After long minutes his eyes flashed with understanding. “Here you are.” It was a tiny little thing, that looked almost like a greek omega. Which was definitely impossible, he decided. To himself.

Maybe he should have ran. Maybe he should have not messed with the exposed inner workings of the universe. But more than anything else, his particular human was the one thing.

Curious.

He stuck out his finger and touched the weird shiny thing.