- Groningen, the Netherlands
January 21st, 2037

It was a clear winter's day in the city of Groningen. The entire region was covered in a layer of snow, a more generous amount than what they had seen over the past decade. Children had just left their schools, playing outside in the snow. But for one young collie boy, his day of study wasn't over yet; the apprentice magician was doing some training with his mentor: Master Magus Harm Dijkstra, the hornless bull. His stature towered above the collie. The two were training outside in the park, the Master challenging Niek’s plant magic skills in this cold, snowed over park. At least he didn’t have to worry his feet were getting cold; he has been walking on blade prosthetics ever since he lost his feet in a nasty Fiend Fire accident two years ago...
“This won’t be an easy task for you for you,” Harm said to his student. “Trying to make plants grow with magic during winter is no small feat, but I’m confident you’re ready for it.”
“Are you sure, Master?" Niek asked. "I hope this doesn't end in disaster.”
“Nonsense! This ain’t no Fiend Fire. Go on, try it. Just use the breathing technique I taught you.”
Niek took slow and deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. He raised his hands, wearing his favourite pair of leather mage gloves, and spread out his feet. He started gesturing the spell, moving his hands upwards, trying to pull the plants to grow against the tree trunk. The snow started to move. Tiny vines rose up from the snow, and slowly made their way up the tree trunk, until it reached the lowest branches of the tree.
“Very good,” Harm smiled towards him. The boy stood their, in disbelief of his own performance.
“I ... I did it! ... Holy shit, I actually did it!”
“You’ll become a great mage someday. Let’s move on to something different, a bit outside of your element.”
“Like snow?”
“Yes. Mastering water in all its forms will help you on your journey to become a Master of Flora. Now, the first thing I want you to do is -”
Harm felt a massive disturbance in the air before he could finish his sentence. His magic-sense caught ripples in the Lattice nearby he had never felt before. Something was wrong. Very wrong...
“Class is over,” he said, gripping his staff firmly. “We need to return to the Wellspring right now!”
“What is it?” Niek asked, as Harm was forming a portal with his staff.
“The thing I’ve been fearing for months now... but this is not supposed to be happening right now. It’s too soon...”
Harm gestured the spell to open a portal as he had done so many times, but the portal was already fracturing while it was forming.
“Shit! It’s already destabilising all magic,” he said. “We have to run, the old-fashioned way. Quickly!”
“Say no more, Master!” Niek smugly smiled.

They ran through the city to the Wellspring Cellar under the Martini Tower. Harm was very surprised how fast the boy could run on his blades through the snow. There were already signs of magic starting to fail in the streets, but there was no panic yet. Harm knew it was only a matter of time before chaos would erupt if this would persist. They entered the Martini Church, opened the otherwise magically locked doors to the basement and went down the spiraling staircase. They were not alone; two other mages were standing guard, already trying to control a clearly disturbed Wellspring, a big glowing cloudy orb in the middle of the Wellspring Cellar. The elder of the two was a human woman, with chestnut brown hair, dressed in an indigo robe. The other was a younger spoonbill lady, dressed in the same indigo robe.
“What’s been happening here, Tineke?” Harm asked the human lady.
“I don’t know, Master Dijkstra,” Tineke answered. “You must’ve felt the same disturbance as Tessa and I did.”
“I fear this is just the beginning. Send a Code Red to any Wellsprings we can reach.”
“Master?”
“Just do it, Tineke! There’s much at stake here. Magic is already destabilising. We need to brace ourselves for the worst...”
A red glow appeared from Tineke’s hands and was sent into the core of the Wellspring, which briefly turned red before returning to its familiar blue colour again. Harm and Niek had joined the effort in stabilising the Wellspring as well, the crystal on Harm’s willow staff glowing a bright green.
“Whatever you do, keep your focus on the Wellspring,” Harm ordered. “If this is what I think it is, we’re going to see the biggest magic surges in history...”
Without warning, a massive beam of light hit the top of the Wellspring. The orb became brighter, more chaotic, as it if was a star about to go supernova. Harm immediately leaned in and pushed back against the immense amount of magical energy, with a beam of green magic coming out of the end of his staff.
“PUSH!” he shouted to his fellow mages. “Keep it contained!”
The four if them tried to push back, harder and harder, but the Wellspring still looked like it was about to burst. This was stronger magic than Harm had ever faced before, so raw in nature, and with the intensity of the “Gateway to Hell” of an aluminum oven. He hoped it would be over soon, as he didn’t know for how much longer he could hold it back. And that’s when he noticed something that could pose a bigger problem: a feedback charge, slowly crawling towards him via his own containment spell beam.
“I have a Back Crawler!” he shouted to his fellow mages. “Whatever happens to me, stay focussed on the Wellspring! We CANNOT let it blow up!”
The feedback charge was getting closer. Harm tried to push back, but to no avail. The charge got close to the magic crystal of his staff; the last few seconds before it hit seemed to look like an eternity to Harm. But as soon as it touched to crystal, a bright flash blinded Harm, and a shock of magic knocked him back hard, and everything went black in mere moments...

“Master? Are you there?”
Voices were calling for Harm from far away. At least, so it seemed. Chaos in his head. He was feeling numb and only had started to retain consciousness again. His eyes were still closed, feeling he had not enough strength in him to open them. In fact, he could barely move. What had happened? The last thing he could remember he was performing some powerful protection incantations on the Wellspring in front of him. But something had gone wrong. Something had knocked him out. But what had switched his light off? Whatever it was, it must have been very powerful...
“Master Dijkstra? Hello?” the voice called him again, more clearly this time.
Harm slowly opened his eyes. Everything was out of focus for him, but he was clearly lying on the cold, hard floor of the blue lit Wellspring Cellar, with his head lying sideways. It was a bit of a strain to focus with is eyes on his surroundings. On first glance, nothing seemed to be majorly damaged. Another person entered his view, a spoonbill lady, Tessa, blowing down to check on him.
“He’s coming back to us again, Tineke,” she said to her fellow mage outside of Harm’s view.
“Wh... what happened?” Harm could barely muster from his lips.
“You took quite a blow, Master,” Tessa said to him, standing much closer to him now. “How are you feeling?”
“Weak...” he moaned.
“It’s okay, we’re here,” Tineke said. He felt her laying her hands down on his body, and felt some strength returning.
“Thanks, Tineke...” he softly spoke. “The Wellspring... is it okay?”
“The Wellspring is safe, Master,” Tessa said. “The magic levels have lowered back to normal again.”
“Tessa and I contained the discharge together when you went out. Niek held up the protection spell all on his own. He recovered just before you did.”
“It was torture,” Niek said out of Harm’s view, “like every muscle in my body was on fire.”
“But we made it, Niek,” Tessa said. “We all made it.”
“Not quite,” Tineke said. “Harm, you may be in for a bit of a shock...”
Harm tried to lift himself up from the regained strength he had. He pushed himself up with his right arm, but when he wanted to rest on his left arm, he sensed some very strange numbness of his left arm. For a moment he thought he had lost his arm, but he still felt there was something there. He looked at his left arm, and didn't see the fur covered limb he expected. Instead, he saw a set of intertwined thick willow branches what was once his arm, ending in a three fingered hand at the tip. It resembled the hilt of the staff he had, which seemed to have vanished. He tried to move the fingers, and it seemed the wooden arm, despite its numbness, still was a fully functional arm. Opening his hand, he saw a shiny green crystal, the same one one that was at the tip of his staff. He felt with his other hand how far this transformation had gone up his arm. He started at the elbow, and moved up... all wood. In fact, most of his left shoulder had turned into wood as well. Tineke was right: it was a shock to him.
“My arm! What happened to my arm?!” he panicked.
“The Wellspring discharged most of its magic on your spellcasting arm through your staff,” Tineke said. “It seems the staff merged with your arm. Can you still use it?”
Harm tried to cast a low level spell, the very same as the first he had ever casted: a candle flame illusion. With a small gesture, he summoned the cold flame right into his wooden hand, with the crystal embedded in his palm faintly glowing.
“It feels numb, but I can still use it,” he said.
“You’ve gotten lucky,” Tineke sighed. “You could’ve lost that arm forever. You think you’re ready to get on your hooves again?”
Harm nodded.

He got up, still feeling a bit weak and dizzy. He looked at Niek, the border collie lad standing on blade prosthetic legs, who was still performing some incantations into the blue beam of the Wellspring in the middle of the chamber. He looked quite exhausted, yet he was still performing his job. All looked quiet, and there were only some minor cracks here and there. Everything started coming back to him. He and his team of mages had tried to ward off a major earthquake and contain an extreme magic discharge from their local Wellspring in Groningen. That was the thing that knocked him out. But from the looks of it, they had succeeded to avoid disaster.
“How’s the situation outside?” he asked.
“Not good, Master” Tessa said. “We had to raise the shields as soon we got the warning from the Lille Wellspring of an earthquake coming from the south.”
“An earthquake? How bad is it?”
“Devastating. The city is safe, but outside of the shield, there’s a ton of damage. Electricity is knocked down, telecom is down, there’s little running water, and a ton of collapsed buildings all around the region. If there are any hospitals still open, they’ll be overburdened with wounded people...”
“We’ve been trying to contact the other Wellsprings,” Niek said. “They aren’t doing better, if not far worse. We’ve got all hit at once. Amsterdam had to resort to turn everyone into mers because of an incoming flood.”
“If it was what I think it is, it must’ve happened all over the world...”
Harm gestured an incantation, and a transparent blue sphere was forming in the air...
“Brussels isn’t answering!” Niek yelled. “I can’t get a link established.”
The sphere became clearer, now showing all the continents of the Earth, a network of golden lines appeared, connected to dots all across the globe, with Groningen being one of the smaller ones. Some lines were shattered, clear breaks within the network, and some of the dots had gone dim.
“How did you do that?” Tineke wondered.
“I’ve learned this from an old kitsune friend,” Harm said. “It shows a map of the entire Wellspring Network.”
He inspected the map more closely. He saw that several of these dots appeared red and cracked. Boston, Beijing, Shanghai, Moscow, Kinshasa, Santiago, Göteborg...
“This is very bad,” he said. “I’ve never seen those cracks before... These cultists actually done it!”
“Done what?”
“Sources warned me they were going to blow up a major Wellspring and it would destabilise the entire network. It looks like they broke through our defences somewhere and actually did it...”
“Where’s Paris?” Tineke asked.
Harm looked again, and to his shock, he saw a big gaping hole in the middle of the network in France where there’s supposed to be a Wellspring. Not just any Wellspring, but the linchpin of the entire network in Europe. Not even a dim dot was on the map, nothing at all. He could hardly believe it; this was impossible, and yet, the map didn’t lie...
“Paris is just... gone...” he gasped. “Whatever happened there... we were just feeling the aftershocks.”
“It seems to get worse the closer you get to Paris,” Niek said. “Lille and Luxembourg aren’t answering either. I have no idea what happened there.”
“I may know someone who does,” Harm said. “Can you guys excuse me for a moment?”
“We’ll keep on contacting the other Wellsprings. Even if they only have bad news.”
“Do that. Whoever answers, is not lost yet.”
The three remaining mages stood around the Wellspring, while Harm looked for a private room next to the Chamber. He took out a small device that looked way too advanced to be created on this planet. He opened the lid and started speaking in it:
“Master Dijkstra to Admiral Řykaja, do you copy?“
A few moments of silence followed, before the relieving words came back through the device: “I’m so glad to hear your voice again, Harm!”
“Glad to hear yours too, Hizana. Did you have a good view from orbit of what happened to Earth?”
“More than I wished to see...”
“Is it that bad from your point of view?”
“I’ve heard the stories from other admirals that had to witness planets go through their Great Filters. Everyone told me how messy these were and how helpless you would feel, not being allowed or able to intervene... I’ve just witnessed it today for myself happening to your world. I can’t imagine how it is down there now.”
“We’re still needing a grip of the situation, but the level of destruction is seriously high. Did you guys see anything big happening.”
“Well according to our measurements, you may have just avoided an even worse fate. Our sensors measured a discharge of a staggering 1.21 Gigahex. Any more, and the planet would‘ve ripped itself apart.”
“My God, did we almost lost our world completely?”
“It seems only a large magic counterspell has averted the disaster. Whatever they were plotting against you, you’ve won... but at a steep price.”
“Did you see anything happening to Paris?”
“You’re not going to believe this, but... where Paris was, everything in a 100 kilometer radius is gone and replaced by a patch of Mars.”
“Sorry, did you say Mars? As in planet Mars?”
“The surface looks pretty red...”
“But if a patch of Mars is here, then Paris is... Oh God... How are they going to survive that? My God... Roel’s there! Don’t tell me he’s dead!”
“Sorry, but I can’t give you anything on that now. Our station’s sensors aren’t sensitive enough to monitor activity on Mars. I do have one piece of good news.”
“There still is some good news?”
“The Verne Project is safe. Once that launches, the galactic community will be allowed to help you. My people on the ground are doing everything to finish this project successfully.”
Harm sighed in relief: “There’s still hope for our planet.”
“Let me handle the Verne Project. You and your team have enough to worry about. They’re going to need you there.”
“Thanks for the update, Hizana.”

“Stay strong, Harm. Řykaja out.”

Harm closed his communicator and hid it away. None of them had realised just how dire the situation had been, worse than he had feared. He took a moment to regain composure to return back to his team.

When Harm entered the Wellsprings chamber again, his fellow mages were still busy having conversations through ethereal windows to other Wellsprings. Tineke saw him enter again, and finished her conversation in a few moments.
“And? You’ve gotten an answer what happened to Paris?” she asked.
“Yes, but it’s out of our hands and none of our concern at the moment,” Harm said. “It’s clear that with all these problems going on everywhere, help won’t be coming from the other Wellsprings. We’re all on our own.”
“What are we going to do, Master?”
“Call all the mages in the region. We need every help we can get to get the utilities up and running again. Electricity, running water, telecommunication... especially water. Help the wounded. And at all times, guard the Wellspring! We’ll have to take turns. We can’t let this happen again!”
“And what about our families?” Niek asked. “Mine are outside of our protected zone.”
“So is mine,” Harm said, starting to feel a sense of dread. “My God, the earthquake hit the farm! I need to see if they’re OK!”
Pictures flashed through his mind. His family farm wasn’t built to withstand an earthquake. Such a thing was unprecedented where he lived. He had no way to warn them about the earthquake in time. His husband Vojek, his kids, his mom... would they be buried under the rubble? He couldn’t get this image out of his mind...
“Go!” Tineke said. “Tessa and I have our families within the protection zone. We’ll guard the Wellspring until you return.”
“But it’s my duty as a Ma-”
“Just go! We can’t have you here restless, worrying about your family. Go check on them, get some peace of mind. We can handle this.”
Harm sighed. “I’ll have to return the favour some day Tineke...”
He cited an incantation and with a few gestures, he summoned two portals. It was a relief to him to see that the portals were stable again and it seemed to go much easier with his “staff” left arm. He hinted at Niek to take the left one, who went through it and that portal promptly closed behind him. Harm went through the right one, back to his farm, and soon after, that portal closed as well.

He looked in horror as he saw what had happened to the farm he had known for all his life. The earthquake had turned the house into rubble, and the large cow barn looked like it had been partially swallowed by quicksand. He heard familiar voices screaming in pain and fear. He instinctively started running towards them.
“MOM! VOJEK!” he shouted.
“HARM! HELP!” he heard Vojek shout.
He saw his husband next to the rubble that was his house, a blue-furred cat-rabbit like alien called a Carbine, removing pieces of rubble as quick as he could, together with his son, a teenage Carbine, but with an uncharacteristic brown and cream coat, not falling out of tune with anyone else from Earth. Harm had to come close to see what they were actually trying to clear: his daughter, a blue-furred cow, buried under the rubble.
“Anja!” he cried, and helped getting the rubble off his daughter. “Don’t panic, dad’s here, everything’s gonna be OK,” he tried to comfort her.
“Dad... my legs... they’re burning,” she cried from under the rubble. That was not a hopeful sign for Harm.
“We’re almost there, sweetheart!” Vojek said. “Just hold on for a minute.”
The three of them cleared the last few pieces of rubble the free her up to her torso, but her legs were still buried under some heavy pieces of debris. Anja's fur was full of dust and she had several open wounds, violet blood dripping from them. Harm laid his left hand, his staff-fused arm, on her body.
“Dad, you hand -” she noticed.
“Not now, I’ll explain later,” he said, The crystal in his palm started to glow, and Anja’s open wounds stopped bleeding. But Harm looked concerned while he was healing her.
“Your legs... they're completely fractured,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do to heal them right now...”
“But we have to get her out,” Vojek said. “What are we going to do? Cut off her legs?”
Harm paused for a moment, thinking that Vojek's quippy suggestion wasn’t as bad as it may sound...
“You know, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Harm said.
“Hubbie! You can’t be serious!” Vojek protested.
“Dad?” Anja was startled.
“Calm, Anja, dad’s not going to cut you with a blade. There’s some magic that can do this painlessly. I’m going to decouple your legs from your body, so we can free the rest of you from under here, OK?”
Anja nodded.
“Alright, here it goes...”
He moved his hand to the top of her leg, just right next to the rubble. The crystal in his hand glowed brightly, and a seam appeared around her leg. He repeated it for the other.
“Dad... I can’t feel my legs anymore,” Anja said.
“Don’t panic, this is supposed to happen,” Harm said. “Vojek, Rien, help me lift Anja.”
His husband and son joined him to lift Anja from under the rubble. They got her out easily, but where her legs were supposed to connect were now two stumps covered in fur; the rest of her legs were still under the rubble. Anja started crying after being freed, and Rien tried to comfort her, while Harm tried to address Vojek again.
“Where’s Mom?” he asked. Vojek’s ear dropped back, and tears started to well up in his eyes. He pointed at a point deeper into the rubble.
“She’s there, if she hasn’t joined Dad already...” he said.
“No... Mom... MOM!” he cried. He ran towards the point in the rubble that Vojek pointed, and started to remove the rubble. Thoughts racing through his mind. She can’t be dead! She must be somewhere underneath all this, he didn’t want to know in what state. He had made a small hole in the rubble, enough to stick his left arm in deeper. The crystal started to glow again. He sensed something: signs of life, although somewhat weak...
“SHE’S STILL ALIVE!” he shouted. “HOLD ON, MOM! WE’RE COMING!”
Vojek headed towards him, and helped digging, and even Rien came to them, carrying his sister, who even helped them in this reduced state to help save their grandmother. From time to time, Harm uses his Life Sense spell to check if they were digging in the right spot, and kept on shouting into the pile, hoping to catch a response from his mother. For a while, he got no reply, but when they removed one piece of rubble that revealed her ever so slightly, his mother finally was able to respond to them.
“Harm,” she spoke almost inaudibly. “Help me... please...” She clearly lacked to strength to talk any louder.
“Hold on, Mom, we’re coming for you! We'll get you out of there!” Harm reassured. They kept on digging, but the more of his mother got revealed to them, the more they realised that she was suffering a worse fate than Anja. The golden brown Jersey cow wasn’t the youngest anymore. Harm laid his hand again on her body when he could reach her, and the prospects weren’t looking good...
“Fractured legs, pelvis and arms...” he said.
“She must be suffering internal bleeding,” Vojek said. “No wonder why she’s weak!”
“You guys will have to take care of her, because what I’m about to do to her will leave her mostly immobile for now. At least we can get her out alive. This calls for some more extreme measures.”
“Harm, are you suggesting -?”
“Yes, the Dalton-method.”
While the others kept on digging, Harm started to reach for his mother’s neck. His crystal was glowing again, and a seam appeared around the neck. Gently, he removed his mother’s head from her broken body, out of the rubble.
“Harm... I... I don’t feel my body,” she said.
“Shhh... it’s OK, Mom, it’s OK,” Harm cried, hugging his Mom’s head close to his body. “I had to do it.”
“I... I’m just a head,” she realised.
“It’s the only way I could save you. Don’t worry, when all of this is over, I’ll take you and Anja to Sab. She’ll help you regenerate the missing body parts... if her facilities are still intact...”
“Oh Harm... I guess Dad will have to wait...”
“One day see him again someday... but not today, Mom. Not today...”
Harm sat there on the pile of rubble that once was his home, crying with his mother’s head in his hands. Sad about the things he had lost in this calamity... but strangely, also relieved. He was surrounded by the people he held most dearly in this world. They were still there with him. Fate had spared them from the worst...

The light in his world hadn’t faded out...

_______________________________

A pivotal moment in Harm's life that would leave him changed forever. I had planned this to happen to him for a long time, but thanks to  dressari's wonderful work, I finally have an image of him with his spellcasting arm fused with his staff after the events of K-Day, along with a story seeing things from his perspective.

I'll post a pic of his apprentice Niek later.