Yes, I did it!

I couldn't help it, but I love the creativity behind many of these orb memes so I had to get one for myself! Here I am, pondering my orbtions of what paths to take ahead!

This lovely piece was made for me by the talented artist  yagodka

And since I feel quite in the mood for fantasy as of late, here's a little bit of a story I've built on from Val's original canon as a sorceress!

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It was a late midwinter night. The crescent moon framed the starlit and sparkling sky, its silvery white light making the snow and the frost on the ground shimmer and glitter, casting the landscape in an eerie but beautiful twilight despite the dark hour. But while it was freezing cold outside, inside the large keep of the university it was comfortably warm albeit a bit chilly. Most of its inhabitants were asleep, students and teachers alike, yet the lonely tower in its midst always held some form of life.

This night it was the headmaster herself, Lady Valcyrie, a former scholar of the First Orden and now Master Sorceress of her own academy. While the university served many institutions of a wide variety of knowledges; its department for the arcane and occult was perhaps one of the finest, oldest and largest. It had taken many years of intense studying for her to reach this point in her life. Once she had been young, playful and adventurous, thirsty for knowledge and power. Now she was a middle-aged dragoness, and while some of her youthful energy might have left her she was still considered a beauty to behold by many, and what she lacked in vigor she now made up for in power and knowledge. But something that hadn't changed was her lust for adventure, thirst for more knowledge and frankly, being a nightowl.

Val had been a nocturnal dragoness her entire life. She was born at night under the moon and would thus always stay strongly connected to it and would always be the most energetic and creative during the late hours of the night. Tiredness only blanketed her in its lazy comfortableness when night started to shift into dawn; a rare trait that had caused plenty a rumor that she was a vampire, but she had proven that wrong by often greeting the rising sun from the ramparts before going to bed. But this night she was up to something new. Val had held an old scrying orb in her possession for quite many a year but had never gotten around to use it much, but as of late she had taken it out more and more, curiously exploring its depths. This night she had nothing planned but solitude for several hours which served her well as another opportunity to explore the unkown, so she had taken her orb out of its case and placed it down on her stone table. She initiated the ritual with rows of protective spells before infusing the orb with magic and sitting down.

Before her in the swirling mists of the unknown, contours and figures started to appear, showing many a path ahead, each filled with so much opportunity. In a way, exploring the orb was like exploring life on its own where each little decision each day took you down a new and yet unexplored path. Sometimes these paths would cross with others, or with the paths of other people. It was so strangely curious, so intriguing, even intoxicating. Orbs were dangerous, for they could lure their spectators so deep inside that they never found their way back out before time found and consumed their mortal remains, leaving the orb behind to be found by another knowledge seeker. In more religious scriptures an orb such as this would be known as an Eye of Odin, not only to tell of its endless wisdom, but also to remind everyone of the terrible price some have to pay for it. In truth, the orb was much like a well that one must be careful not to fall down into.

Val had lost track of how many hours had passed as she looked into its depths, only keeping a vague eye at the horizon to spot the first glimmer of a rising sun. A cold draft swept through her halls, causing her cape to flutter yet she remained ever still, unfaced, like a statue of herself frozen in time, for her conciousness was elsewhere but on the mortal plane. It was only when the sound of faint knocking echoed through the cold stone halls that her mind started to warp back into the room from where it came.
"Lady Valcyrie."
The disembodied voice echoed through her head, yet she could not determine from where it came.
"Lady Valcyrie."
It felt as if her ears moved in slow motion, slowly honing in on the direction of the sound.
"Lady Valcyrie."
She blinked awake and slowly turned her head towards the door, where her steward was peeking in.
"Lady Valcyrie, there's someone here to see you. A student of yours."
Val slowly adjusted her cloak as parts of it had almost slipped off, leaving her scales bare and exposed. She felt cold, almost unnaturally cold, and slowly stood up. She was so stiff and shaky it felt as if she was an old woman in the autumn of her life. She turned towards her steward.
"Very well. Have them wait. Start up a fire, and when the hearth is warm, bring them in. And will you be so kind as to fetch mulled wine for us once we have exchanged pleasantries?"
"Absolutely my lady."
The steward nodded, dipped down in a bow and left the room, closing the door behind him. Val turned towards the table, lifted up a large black velvet cloth and draped both table and orb in it, watching as the bright glow of the orb slowly faded, leaving only the protective runes around it still visible.