The cruelty of AEther‘s half sibling, Past, perisis to the relative present, but unbeknownst to it, AEther has a twin that was born from the same magical embers at the first wound in Space. This sibling is known as the Quintessence and followed alongside AEther through all of its existence like a dark, unseeable shadow. It was even hidden to AEther until that moment when it encountered Past and both twins were racked with pain, despair, and the suffocation of entrapment. Only, the Quintessence was not actually bound up and assaulted as AEther was. It took an unknowable amount of time for the twins to realize what was happening, but as AEther acclimated to its condition of constant assault, it was able to sense the presence of the Quintessence that raged in the same agony that it had at the hands of Past. The Quintessence was bound to AEther and could feel all of its feelings, so AEther tasked the Quintessence with the mission of empowering the sentience that AEther had created by accident. AEther had learned Past’s weakness; a glut of the awareness of sentient beings made Past slow and less effective in its assault because it grew stuffed with each sentient being’s experience with the present.
The Quintessence understood that it was free of Past’s assault and, desperate to free its sibling from the terrible fate, it separated itself into many small pieces, an action that looked like the collapse of an entire galaxy. These small, dark and invisible pieces of the Quintessence spread the breadth of space, seeking out the sentience that AEther had created in its journey through Space. When the pieces of the Quintessence encountered sentience, they settled into the beings and their surroundings, imbuing artifacts and beings of the universe with magic.
The Quintessence of the dark parallel is the source of all magic in the universe, and that magic is very strong and pervasive.
When Past caught wind that sentience was thriving across the universe, it realized that they had powerful magics, the likes of which comprised AEther. So Past studied AEther’s magic with the hope of corrupting it. Past was able to spread veins of darkness in the magic of the Quintessence, corrupting some beings and encouraging wanton death and destruction to stop the bloat it experienced as a result of so many experiences with the present.
Eventually, after unknowable time, Past ended its assault on AEther because it realized that their battle waged more effectively among the sentience of the universe. Past retreated to deepen its understanding of the mysteries of the universe over which it presided in order to empower it’s forces of destruction.
AEther communed with the sentience of its sibling, the Quintessence, and they forged the arcane distinctions that exist among the sentient populations of the universe. To do this, they chose a Master of Universal Arcana from among the sentient beings of the universe who was capable of commune with such awesome entities and willing to defend the sentience of the universe. The Master of Universal Arcana changes depending on the schemes of Past and its chosen warriors.
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