Arcana LVR gives raven senses

Even with prior experience, the suddenness of it all still caught her by surprise. It wasn’t a gradual thing, something that built up and allowed her to grow used to it and adapt—it was like a switch being flipped, an instantaneous change that came without warning.

And the moment it did, she felt everything change. It was like a portal had opened into her heart, flooding it with liquid fire—enough that for a moment, she honestly believed she might spontaneously combust and burn to ash. Instead, it flowed through her veins, spreading its increasing warmth to her limbs. If her veins had started to glow through her skin, it wouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Then it began to solidify, taking shape as a network of power and light inside of her, pulsating in tune with her heart—and she began to change. She felt her skin harden into something besides human flesh, steady waves of energy rewriting the very fabric of her being. Energy, untold and absurd amounts of energy, gathered in her muscles, giving her strength and speed. At the same time, the world began to slow to a crawl, moments beginning to drag and stretch around her.

And then the world began to open up, as if a veil had been lifted. Where there had once been darkness, now there was a riotous calamity of light, expanding across her field of vision. For a moment, she felt like she’d been blinded—while at the same time, like she was seeing the world for the first time. Things fell away and became meaningless as visible light was revealed to be nothing but a fraction of the much broader spectrum. Colors flashed before her eyes that she had no reference for, because they were a mixture of more than just three primary colors, while the illusion of solidity was dispelled throughout the world around her as matter was broken into a billion tiny parts by her gave. The blue sky vanished, replaced by remnants of cosmic phenomena that painted broad stokes of light upon it.

It wasn’t just her eyes—or rather, her eyes became an almost meaningless part of it all. She could feel the brush of air against her skin and the very touch of light, and it was enough for her to ‘see’ by. Her senses combined and expanded until there was no practical difference between what she could hear or see or feel. It was an onslaught of sensory information, even before taking into account the fact that time had been slowed tremendously, giving her ample opportunity to take in everything.

And then there were the things that went above the normal senses, beyond them. As she cast her gaze over the battlefield, she could see traces of things left behind long ago, blurred images of men and women dying at the hands of the Grimm, of carnage and bloodshed and terror. She could see traces of Aura seared into the world around her, something at once blindingly pure and terrifyingly infectious. The lesser powers that had been unleashed throughout the battle had left its mark as well, in vague flickers and flashes, but they were nothing compared to the volcanic eruptions of light that marked traces of what had been left elsewhere.

But all that was dwarfed, literally and figuratively, by the figures that stood above it all, revealed for what they were. She saw Jaune as a towering figure, similar to the form he sometimes adopted but made distinct by his sheer size as he towered to the heavens and covered the sky with his thirty-twofold wings. Countless eyes burned like stars, brilliant even against a background of pure white, and even knowing it was just an image, she was surprised his gaze didn’t incinerate everything it touched.

Beside him was another figure, expect beside him wasn’t the right word. Adjacent to him, within him, reflecting him—it had elements of all these things, but none of them fit quite right either. Regardless, the figure that stood with him seemed like an inversion of him; made of darkness where he burned with light, gaze literally frigid, and seeming to cover the sky above and below Jaune’s wings with darkness. That must have been Jaune’s second soul, his twin and partner. Seen this way, they seemed like an angel and a devil, but also seemed united, allied despite how they appeared—and they stood in opposition to the same foe.

The final figure—who could only have been Malkuth—was a giant as well, every bit as tall as either of the twins, but distinct. The twins, though opposite to each other, were similar in that their presence was like a brand upon the world, like divinity trespassing upon the mundane. Their presence was impossible not to notice and she was sure that had anyone else possessed the senses she’d no gained, they’d have been able to spoke either of them from miles away—hundreds of miles, possible.

Malkuth was different. His true appearance was a subtle thing, seeming to bend into the patterns of the world around him. Even as colossal as he was, he seemed like a nature part of the world—a mountain that pierced the sky, perhaps, but still a mountain, a natural aspect of the world, however remarkable. Looking at him more closely than that only furthered that impression, because his form was almost like a window or, perhaps, a mirror. Looking into him, she saw the world and saw it fill with life over what must have been eons, even as she also saw the here and now, the world she was faced with and lived in.

Seeing him like that—seeing them like that—left her feeling very, very small.

Taking it all in, on top of what her own Semblance provided…her brain felt like it was overheating. Almost literally, in fact—like something was slowly breaking inside of her. But it never quite came to pain, though the sensation stopped only just short of it; as soon as it appeared like it might cross that line, the feeling dulled slightly, as if the feeling was escaping her mind. That would be Jaune’s work, she imagined—healing her before she was even harmed or something to that effect.

None of which really changed how striking the experience was. This was how he viewed the world, every day—but even just a glimpse of it was terrifying. That was the best way to describe it; the breadth of the world seen through his eyes was horrific. Seeing it this way could have—perhaps should have—driven her mad.