On a grey silver world, filled with technology, steel, and wonders of their age. In a room created for situations of a worldwide scale, sits a group desperately trying to keep people safe.

“Report.” An officious man, leading the group says.

“We are getting spikes in energy reading.” One of the operators says going over the readings he was receiving in real-time.

“How long do we have?” The leader remained calm trying to get as much information as possible.

The operator starts to write something down and does some calculations, “Based on previous occurrences, we believe 24 hours.”

“Dammit!” The leader slammed his fist, “Do we know what it is this time? We can't have a repeat of that lizard thing.” The man thought back to the last energy spike when a massive lizard the size of a semi-truck appeared. It flew around and breathed fire, defying all laws of physics. Too many people were lost before they were able to put it down.

“Sir.” The operator snapped the leader out of his stupor, “It’s not just one, we seem to be getting readings all over the place.”

The leader paled, “How many?”

“Hundreds.”

“Ok.” The leader took in a deep breath. The man thought about how he could allocate resources to the spots and take care of them quickly. “That is still manageable.”

“Sir this might just be the beginning.” The operator spoke softly.

“I know it's escalating.”

“The new scanner we have.”

“I know I've been told hundreds of times the scanner is still new and is probably missing more than it's finding. We are working with what we have.” The leader said through gritted teeth. Turning to his assistant asking, “Have they made any progress analyzing the power.”

“It's slow going, but things are starting to look up, we are learning why guns aren’t super effective.” His assistant said.

“At least that's good news. Why are bullets ineffective?”

“These creatures aren't immune to the bullets, but get this. The ammo is too soft.”

“What?” The leader asked shocked

“Yeah the creatures are getting hit, but the bullets aren’t going through. Though they are packing a punch.” The assistant was reading something from a clipboard, “Oh, and they’re too dull.”

“How is that possible?”

“I have no idea, the scientist is even hypothesizing swords or arrows would work better.” The assistant was flipping through pages of papers trying to understand herself, “They tested arrows, and they fucking worked. Something to do with sharpness they have extremely flexible and dense skin.” The assistant paraphrased not understanding the terminology.

The leader was confused still not understanding why “The bullet should still penetrate with its size and speed. It’s like a flying knife tip.”

The assistant looked over the paper again, “It’s the hardness, look I don’t know It's like fucking magic.”

——

On a green green planet filled with myths and magic, in a tower, in a college of mages, an archmage paces angrily remembering his peers shooting down his life’s work.

“30 years to craft the spell. 30 years perfecting it.” The man grabbed a pillow and threw it across the room. “Thirty years of my life to create my own original spell,” The mage raged, “and they tell me it's worthless. They just don't understand the potential.” He shouted.

“It was an amazing bit of magic.” A man’s voice comments

“I know, and the practical applications.” The mage agreed.

“Everyone just wants a bigger fireball.” The man lamented.

The mage nodded his head, “True, it's just frustrating that they can’t see the beauty in the spell.”

“I mean you really shouldn't have called it a spell though.”

For the first time, the archmage stopped to look at who he was talking to. There in his room sitting on his bed was a man wearing strange clothes. The mage would have sworn he wasn’t there before. The mage had lost himself in the discussion not realizing how strange a sound voice was in his own room. With all the wards he had set up no one should be able to get through. A drop of sweat formed on the mage's back, as he knew this man had to have an awful lot of power to get in here. Especially, without tripping any alarms.

The mage tentatively asked, “Who are you? And are you here to kill me? And what do you mean not calling it a spell?”

The man laughed at the questions knowing he would be getting more of that soon, “No, I’m just a delivery man, and as for your spell.” The man began slowing his word, putting them together, “It was very practical, even more, impressive it barely used any energy, but its real use is multiple discs. I would have called it a swarm spell, and honestly if used right it could be the next magic missile.”

“My discs are much more practical than magic missile.” The mage interrupted indignantly.

“True but each disc is only an inch in size, why not make them bigger.”

“I found that to be the optimal size, it's not about the size it's the quantity.” The mage started summoning hundreds of little discs moving them to many different shapes made up of discs. Even using them to move random items in his room.

“See swarm spell, but for what I’m seeing I could just use a levitation spell.” The man pointed out.

The mage smiled, “Yes, but the only cost for these discs is the initial spell then they take almost nothing to maintain. Reusable over and over.”

“But I would be exhausted.”

The mage scoffed, “For like an hour, then you can use the discs constantly to move big, small, large, a fucking wagon if you want.”

The man smiled seeing the mage's passion, “How long did they grill you like this, trying to make it less than what it was.”

“Hours.” The mage sank into a seat, exhausted, "I don’t know what you are, but if you’re not here to kill me, or ridicule me. Then what?"

“I want to make you an offer.”

The mage raised an eyebrow.

——

On a grey silver world, where advanced technology has taken over, and magic has been fully ensconced in fantasy. Thousands of babies are born. Nothing is different about these births, everything goes as normal as the babies sleep. They are born into a time of change, as monsters begin to appear upon the world.

Trough every baby born sets off a sensor alarm. An alarm for the new energies that they have only just learned existed. A team is sent out to find the monster that triggered the alarm, and takedown, except they only ever find an empty house or hospital that had been evacuated by the alarm put in place to keep the people safe.

These were deemed as false alarms until one day one of the teams sent to find the source of the alarms holds the sensor over one of the babes. The sensor goes off, sending all the teams into confusion.

The teams, armed with this new surprising information, went back out to the previous sites to confirm what they had learned. Quickly they began to find more and more of these babies with the foreign energy surrounding them. There is a debate for a time as people began to panic thinking these children were monsters in disguise until they realized these were just normal human children, they’ve just been exposed to the new energy.

One scientist hypothesized, "These babes might have the same energy, maybe they can use it? They could help the world." This was soon confirmed when one of the babies summoned a small silver disk to play with in front of the researchers shocking them all. For the first time in millennia, this world began to believe in magic.

——

On a highway between chaos and order, a place between worlds. A man and a woman are driving in a truck.

The woman asked the man, “Why did you offer a deal? I don’t think I've seen you do that before.” Pointing out the strangeness of the deal.

The man shrugs, “You have, and this was a little different. They needed people who understood magic, and archmages have a lot of power. If they are just taken it can destabilize the world, they are taken from.”

“But I've seen you take gods.”

“Cultivator gods, tend not to be gods, there just people with a lot of power.” The man clarified

“Isn’t that a god?”

“Almost, it's very similar but not the same.”

“How?” The woman always thought gods were just people with a lot of power.

“Cultivators are very hyper-focused in one area, and in that area, they reach the…for lack of a better term, the divine. Actual gods are all-rounders in all of it.”

“Really?”

“Well, most of the time, it's also” The man tried to think of the right words, but not finding them took a different route, “Think like their power is on a different frequency, sometimes a cultivator is stronger but the god needs less to accomplish the same things.”

The woman somehow understood the man's ramblings, “I’m kind of following, but your explanation needs work.”

“Yeah, but to your earlier question. I gave the deal, for two reasons.” The man held up two fingers. “One gives them time to make sure nothing happens to their world when they go, and two mages love research, and a world with technology just getting magic?” The man paused to emphasize his point, “So many would jump at the chance, and they would be beyond happy to help out. That is if they were asked instead of taken, also some had wards to stop people like me from just taking them.” The man added as an afterthought.

“They do?”

“Yeah, but looking at the wards themselves. I don't think they realize that's what they do.” The man commented.

“What do they think they do?”

The man grumbled his response embarrassed, “...fae...Socks...”

“What was that?”

“Keep the fae from taking their socks.”

The woman burst into laughter.

The man’s face grew red as he indignantly said, “It doesn't even make sense, why would the fae want socks?”

The woman kept laughing saying in between breaths, “I’m just imagining you appearing all big and scary with your truck.” She began to speak in a deep voice, “Your socks. Give them to me.”

The man ignored her, “I don't even understand how that pushes me back. One of them even saw me walk into the ward, and bounce back. No amount of convincing I could do could persuade him I wasn't there for his socks. He kept going on and on about his precious socks, I eventually just left.”

At this point, the woman lost all self-control and was rolling around laughing.