The Blessed War

8

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The first thing I had to go through was the Ritual of Purification. We were always meant to rework that name, but we never really used it so we never thought it necessary.
All it entailed was a deep scan of the life force within oneself, revealing any impurities or irregularities to be promptly corrected. The effect of using a portal correlates to life force irregularities; the more frequent portal travel is used, the more likely your life force has irregularities. Most cases weren't major and the BODS were swift in coming to the aid of many who suffered symptoms associated. There is one key difference between irregularities and impurities though; irregularities come from frequent use, impurities come from duration of use. That is, using a portal often leads to something different than using a portal for a long time.
I hardly ever used portals, so the Scholars didn't see any irregularities, however... How long was the dark magic inside me?
... Uh. 5 minutes? 10 minutes max...?
Far too long.
Dark void was practically sewn into my life force, an impurity they didn't know how to fix. The first thing they tried was the usual psychic intervention where they try to prise the impurity out by pure will and intent, then they tried to physically drag it out by subjecting me to the three forms of Divine magic, then they tried to extinguish the dark by performing a mass enchantment to attempt renewing my life force through the supplier (which never really worked, I don't know why we ever tried it). The case may have been I needed to completely dissociate myself from my life force and risk death but, they weren't that desperate and neither was I.
In the end, they found it was incurable. I was kept under close inspection in case anything flared up, but it took a matter of weeks until my symptoms faded. Though left with life force permanently tainted, they saw no reason to pursue a target unreachable and unrelated to any progress in magical study.
So they let me be. The process was irreversible but no real harm was done. I had learnt my lesson, after all.

Now, recall Lubnov.
The eccentric Fairy was rather irregular in her own right, barring the countless appointments she made with the BODS to set straight her portal-induced irregularities. Indeed, the constant need to remedy her life force became an irritation to the BODS, but nonetheless they took the opportunity to observe and record the skewing effects of the void magic.
Her flair in spell casting was anomalous to say the least, but we hypothesised it was related to her irregularities. What with her life force always being replenished via the Web anyway, she could afford to lose quite much and keep it in an irregular state.
We debated stopping our sessions of life force correction and instead replace them with sessions of thorough, precise measurements of her life force.
We thought she'd be apprehensive and resist the notion, but she complied with anticipation and smiles, to our surprise. If anything, she was more enthusiastic about the idea than even we were.
Hence, we substituted remedies with result recording, and scrutiny with simple chatter. I was present with the Medical Scholars in all meetings with Lubnov, not because I could help -obviously not, - but because I was actually interested in her.
No, you fools, not because I fell in love! It was an honest curiosity and inclination to know more; we did have some similarities, I mean we had both been under great influence from the portals and we were both after all not as irresolute as the rest of the BODS.
I did enjoy even the most idle chatter with her, and my clairsentience told me she felt likewise. It was a worthy friendship in my eyes, and it seemed the BODS were quite proud of me for it. Why? I haven't the foggiest.
As a number of recordings of Lubnov's life force were taken, we concluded everything was absolutely fine. With her continuous consumption and replenishment of life force, no kind of decay or impairment was seen as she went about her usual business of spell casting and portal usage.
These records were valuable, really quite valuable. Too valuable to be shared.
...

Ahem, um, it's about time I dropped a bombshell.
You know how we hid the Art of Enchantment from public knowledge?
Well, we hid a lot. I mean, a lot.
We didn't want anything to be mishandled, right? Why give the governing bodies of any realm knowledge that is more than likely to catalyse anarchy? Call us untrusting, but you already know what the darned Divine realms were capable of once given the right stimulus.
We hid projects, we hid experiments, we hid knowledge, we hid our extrapolated powers, we hid nearly everything. We diverted suspicion by allowing certain tidbits here and there to be available to the public, but only so much.
We once tried to clone Divine beings and instead created nightmare-fuel mutants.
We once tried to harness the Heart's power to try and mimic the creation of its podium.
We even hid many unveiled aspects of Divine magic that were really worth keeping secret.
There were even incidents where failed attempts to create a portal had caused the magic of the Centric realm to go temporarily haywire, which we had a hard time covering up...
We certainly didn't distribute our knowledge of life force, dark magic and portals.
We may never know: it could have prevented the Revolt.

Another anecdote.
I was enjoying some of my free time with Lubnov, wandering aimlessly among a vast forest whilst discussing her new schedule with the Medical Scholars as well as her personal affairs with Kestriel. She trusted me enough to share such personal information and I did trust her enough to share what wisdom we hid from everyone else, but rules were rules: forbid public awareness. She was a close friend, but no less a civilian.
Then suddenly, the earth beneath us trembled. A distant shattering could be heard and breezes picked up into full-force gales. Lubnov and I were in a slight frenzy. The first thought she had was to run back to the Temple of the BODS, but I had another idea. She didn't know what enchantment was but this was urgent; I had the skill of teleportation, and with an enchanted boost, I was able to drag Lubnov with me.
We landed in the middle of a hall with a collection of clair-psychic Scholars, petrified from an extrasensory flood of information into their minds.
I didn't want to ask what was going on. A band of Scholars of all species were already on the case and the ones who were left were panicked and preparing to perform a powerful protection ritual.
Protection?
I instinctively joined in of course, Lubnov by my side. She was bewildered, the poor girl, as she was just now glimpsing what life within the Temple walls was like... as deranged as it must have looked.
I joined a few Scholars who were working to awaken our clair-psychic comrades from their trances, but I heard the shimmery chimes that resounded when Angels teleport, and around me Scholars who looked enervated and nauseous struggled to keep up with the rest. We were all preparing something big and we needed everyone to help.
I kept Lubnov close as we all got in formation to initiate the ritual. We each called a quick prayer before each diving deep into our cores to dig up our enchanted abilities. A hand of mine was tightly held around Lubnov's, and I felt her shaking with rattled nerves.
Without a second thought, the entire Band of Divine Scholars conjured a huge ethereal yet robust shield, formed from pure life force energy.
It took a huge amount of will to keep the materialised wall erect during the onslaught of the void darkness but we were out of options.
Thud.
Someone fainted. A sickly pale Fairy had collapsed under the pressure of sustaining the shield, her uniform monk-like robes flailing around her as undercurrents broke through the portal for a millisecond.
Thud. Thud, thud, thud.
More fell, this time including an Angel and two Unicorns.
The fallen support momentarily shattered the dome, much to our worry. Some Unicorns tried to patch together what was now lacking with their own conjured magic, but before any effect could be seen it all went down in failure. A huge glassy crash fell upon us and the leftover energy from the collapse sprayed around in stray electric bolts.
Lubnov sprang into action. As the dense fog of dark void started to close in on us, she flew straight up with myself in her hand and held us both in the centre of the chaos. She held her free hand out and cast a spell to enlarge her wings by a huge scale and encased us all, providing an impromptu short-lived shield.
And it finally struck me. I knew what to do.
You guessed it.
Once her wings finally caved and she fell to the ground herself, I instantly drew all the dark energy I could toward me. Hah, it was only thanks to my previous dark magic interference that I was able to do this.
I harnessed indescribable dark power as effort to divert it from the terrified Scholars below.
Oh, but that wasn't enough.
As I drew up more and more dark magic, I was finally able to redirect it from myself.
Down I shot a dense, lethal, inequitably potent beam of dark energy to the ground directly below my feet, which harshly ravaged open a fiery portal to an unknown destination.
Scholars carried other fallen Scholars to sprint and leap into the furious abyss.

And thus, the BODS - plus Lubnov - were saved.