Magic Spells - Blog Posts

He's casting his most potent no-penis spell

musings on the sun

christina perneta, noor hindi, vincent van gogh, jeanette winterson, zinaida vysota docenko, anne sexton, olga kos, khalil gibran

Do you remember your first spell!?

Lately, it feels like I’m walking through a fog—one that settles in my bones the second I step into work. I’m usually bright. Thoughtful. A little intense. A little weird. The kind of girl who sees too much, feels too much. A Virgo to the core—structured but soft, always trying to make sense of everything. I dream of harmony, of people who treat each other with care. I crave a kind of calm that lets me breathe.

But at work, I feel like shit.

It’s not the job—it’s the atmosphere. I clean. It should be simple, even peaceful. But the energy is heavy. Tense. Paranoid. I feel watched, like every step is judged. Like my silence speaks louder than it should. I thought this place would understand—that I’m in school, that I have a family, that I’m doing my best. But no. When I ask for a day off, I’m treated like I’ve done something wrong. Like my life outside of work is an inconvenience to them.

And I hate who I am there.

I shrink. I doubt myself. I flinch at simple questions like “how are you?” I’m too emotional, too soft, too scared of saying the wrong thing. My voice gets caught in my throat, and I become someone I don’t even recognize—someone who watches from the sidelines, instead of standing up.

But that’s not who I want to be.

I want to be clever. I want to be bold. I want to be the girl who raises her head, lifts her sword, and walks into battle like a storm they never saw coming. I want to be brave enough not to care who hates me. I want to stop trying to make everyone comfortable. I want to stop apologizing for being alive, for taking up space, for needing time, for having a voice.

I want to stand on my own two feet and not shake. I want to look people in the eye and not flinch. I want the strength to let people’s opinions bounce off me like arrows off armor. I want to weld my sword up high—my voice, my truth, my presence—and see them coward at the sight of someone who knows who they are.

I want to be the kind of woman doubt doesn’t dare to approach.

But how do I become her?

Right now, I hide in my mind to survive. I drift. I dream. While I clean, I disappear into other worlds—places where I matter, where I fight dragons and win. Places where my softness is power, not weakness. I imagine sunlight through trees, pages turning, hands that build, voices that lift. I lose myself in stories, music, moments that keep me afloat when reality makes me feel like I’m drowning.

Because the stress here—it's thick, like smoke. It taints people. It steals kindness. And I feel it trying to steal me.

But I won’t let it.

Somewhere in me, I know she exists—the girl with the sword. The girl who doesn’t beg to be heard—she commands it. The girl who isn’t afraid to be seen, even if being seen means being misunderstood. I want to become her. I will become her.

This place may try to bury me, but I’m not soil. I am fire. I am wind. I am something they cannot contain.

WLC 6.A: The Real "Disarm Traps" Spell

Ling looks upon the runic circle and scans the area. As she expected, the big trap is filled with various smaller traps, some more cleverly hidden than others.

"Bl'ell," says Ling, "Only one way to deal with this."

Ling conjures a herd of false deer. She directs the biologically accurate meat puppets to charge through the field while she hides a magic shield-tree. The traps and curses detonate with explosions of various flavors of energy. Flaming chunks of meat fly into the air.

When the cacophony ends, Ling peers out onto a wizardly warzone. Stone and ice statues stand over struggling half-sunken beasts, all coated in viscera amid the burnt field and corrosive pools. Several deer suffer from various disfigurations: extra limbs and openings (like Ling's own spell "Unwanted Orifices"), inside out (Sir Kenra's "Bodily Inversion"), and a torrent of diseases - both natural and magical.

"Guess I have a fan," mutters Ling.

A: You created that spell? Wouldn't have expected you to craft such a horrifying transfiguration. L: It only lasts a few seconds. J: Enough time to cause mental damage, sensory discordance, and intense physical pain. L: Yeah, that's how suddenly gaining and losing fully functioning body parts works.

The meat and deer dissipate, causing the crumbling of the now hollow statues. Holes remain where they had been trapped.

Ling still keeps her attention focused for more hazards as she approaches the broken windmill, carefully stepping around the lingering hazards.