Into the Human Realm [Book II] Rascal x fem reader

18

Contains: Panic attack. Mentions of pain.

My personal panic attack and anxiety tips included at the end of the chap <3

Song starts now:))

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Pop had always been a stickler for the rules. Magic had boundaries for a reason, and he had respected them with the admiration of someone who had seen what happens when the limitations were pushed too far. He had spent centuries respecting them, knowing the dangers and consequences of tampering, having seen these limits broken before.

"Pop!" 500 years ago, a blue mouse pixie calls out amidst ferocious winds as water gushes through Jubiland. Her voice was desperate and choked as the two stood on Pop's rooftop and Fefe's little fist was clenched around a jagged pulsating stone.

The storm was relentless, the waters tearing through houses and gardens. It was Emperor Nogo and his goons that had unleashed this tragedy with a vengeance, one soul purpose to crush their world once and for all.

"Fefe, listen to me! Please don't use that thing!" Pop shouted over the storm, the two pixies still somehow balanced on the rooftop of Pop's home. "We don't know what will happen if you do, it's too dangerous!"

Fefe did not wield any ordinary stone, instead, this one was one of many, forged in the earliest times of Emperor Nogo's dungeons. The Aetherstone was a relic imbued with raw, untamed negative energy capable of magnifying the wielder's magic tenfold - at the least.

These stones were alive and would feed on the lives of those who dared use it, offering strength but at a cost. It was like a virus, planting seeds that sprouted over time, and with it came a growing hunger for more.

Pop had seen this change in his best friend from the moment she found the stone buried in rubble and dirt after a battle a few months prior - the little black rock humming with a festering purple glow inside. From the very beginning, he saw the way that the stone had twisted itself into her very essence. Fefe had always been bright, she was one of the only pixies that Pop trusted and left his guard down around. To Pop, she was a breath of fresh air and his one ever true friend - but the stone was stronger. It had reshaped her joy and soul into something darker.

Although Pop had argued, pleaded even, and was left in a constant state of disarray, he could only watch with escalating unease as Fefe's experiments would expand, along with her rapidly mounting hunger for dark magic, slowly consuming her from within. The pull grew stronger everyday since touching the stone, started weaving this new negative energy into everything she did; her gardening, housework and her mechanical creations.

"It's the only way Pop!" The pixie called back through the howling winds. "If we don't fight fire with fire we'll lose our home! We'll lose everything!"

Pop's heart seized. They had always been opposites. Pop had been a careful follower of the rules whereas Fefe would make her own, constantly creating and dreaming. But, this is what made them the perfect pair. Anyone could see how well they complimented each other.

He tried again, voice softening. "Fefe...you don't have to use that stone, we can find another way. Together." And just for a moment, Pop thought he had gotten through, though perhaps it was his hopes running high.

She hesitated, only for a second, until her gaze flickered from his to the storm and rising flood waters, another wave looming in the distance as she made her decision.

"I'm sorry Pop."

Pop watched with widened eyes as she clenched the stone harder, tendrils of purple dark magic branching out into her veins. Her eyes darkened in colour, the same purple leaching out of them as the negative energy of the Aetherstone siphoned her own into the spell she was casting. It was horrifying.