And so, the cycle began.
Specs would wake up in a new world. One inhabited entirely by human people. He would be called a monster, inhuman, ugly, and other such insults. Vy’kathuum, as the voice had revealed itself to be called, would pester and prod him from the recesses of his mind, twisting fate ever so subtly to bring even more misfortune to Specs. Vy’kathuum called himself the God of Knowledge, and insisted that he held the key to every Truth. Specs only needed invoke him to solve any riddle, any conundrum. But Specs knew better. Invoking the God’s terrifying power only brought his awakening from his dormant state closer. And when Vy’kathuum awakened, the world before the both of them would shatter once more, and they would begin anew.
Each cycle lasted about 50 years, give or take. The first few, of course, were accelerated by Specs’ misuse of the power Vy’kathuum gave him. Indeed, the malicious God sought to break Specs. To have him submit completely, allowing Vy’kathuum to use his physical form as a hollow vessel, that he might do as he pleases indefinitely. To this end, Vy’kathuum even incarnated friends from the ItemVerse into new worlds, placing their very souls into the world. They, of course, did not remember Specs, and treated him the same as any other person. Monster. Freak. Weirdo.
What’s more, Vy’kathuum created a particular gap in Specs’ memory and senses. If a particular individual should show up… He could not see them. Could not hear their name. Would be utterly unable to perceive them, save for the knowledge that someone was in fact there. They spoke, but only a garbled mess came out. Who were they? It was Blaise, of course. Specs could not find the name on any occasion, but he knew that they were very important to him, and so it pained him whenever they appeared. Who were they? What have I lost, he thought. He only knew that he loved them.
With so much time on his hands, Specs sought patterns. Anything to distract from the overbearing dread of living in a world whose days he knew were numbered. And a pattern he did find. Magic, it appeared, remained consistent among all the worlds he visited. He discovered that mana, as he called it, was a fluid source of energy that could be channeled in various ways, and began to study it in and out. He had nothing but time, after all.
A misconception in many worlds he visited was that magic was tied to bloodline. A pyromancer would birth pyromancers, and so on. While it was true that certain schools of magic would be more easily channeled given genetic predisposition from generations of use, it merely took training to use other schools of magic. This was a Truth these worlds often denied, and so he did not attempt to change their minds. Truth is, after all, the right of the individual.
As cycles came and went, Specs became ever more proficient in magic, and this wealth of knowledge, this seemingly unending repertoire of spells, at the very least made him useful to people. As luck would have it, his form as a slug allowed him to channel magic much more explosively than any human mage could survive, as his regenerative capabilities allowed him to quickly recover tissue the “mana burn” would damage. So long as he had access to water to prevent him from drying out from the heat the mana output, Specs had ease of claim to being the strongest magic user in any world he visited. And though he was never particularly close with anyone, people seemed to at least appreciate his abilities. Such that, eventually, he made a habit out of travelling and helping others to pass the time. Was it fruitless to help people in a doomed world? Maybe so. But they would at least be happy in the moment, Specs reasoned, and that was purpose enough to his occupation. The birth of the Scholar.
Delve into Madness 