Singularity Sphere

Summary

Born from Velandra, Sovereign of the Heavens' endless mana, her singularity spheres have ever been her signature magical form. Though a mage with no conceivable equal, and capable of all kinds of magical arts, the humble sphere would be the first form of magic she wove.   As a child, her peasant family couldn't always afford luxuries or niceties, and childrens' toys ranked among those. While her siblings earned and got their own, disfavor and scorn ever kept Velandra from hers. Little more than a toddler and already frustrated at how no one shared with her, Velandra's desires gave purpose to her growing power. The airs churned before her one evening, and a pitch-black sphere warbled into existence. Overjoyed at having her own qiu–or playing ball–the young Velandra played with her new found toy. Although her parents tried getting rid of it, Velandra simply made more when they weren't looking.   The qiu would become the means to which she explored magic. As physical objects, they could float, be hurled, or otherwise interact with the world as she wished. But, they were existences much more than a simple playing ball–they were convergence points of her mana. A proverbial doorway that could channel her otherwise limitless source, allowing her to do magical arts far beyond her peers. Though she came to learn how to channel her mana through more conventional means, the qiu remained a trustworthy tool on her belt.   In time, as Velandra grew older, wiser, and learned more of the world, the qiu itself changed somewhat. Although its basic structure remained the same, Velandra constructed magical arrays upon her qiu. These arrays took on different forms: hedron-like glass prisms, magical circuit rings, external aides like crysium devices, and more. They all, ultimately, turned the qiu into a two-step magical process. The array would draw upon the inner core for power, and then transform it into whatever effect it'd been built to do. While Velandra would later abandon material components, the idea of constructing magical circuits became a foundational bedrock for her qiu.   However, at that point both a grown woman and one with social expectation, she couldn't simply keep calling them 'qiu'. A child's play thing it once was, but not any more. So, from Velandra's studies of Yonfao and other philosophies, she regarded them from there on as singularity spheres. The actual word for 'singularity' is the same as 'infinity' in her culture, being douyon. The root concept ties into the endlessness of Yon, and several other ideas like immortality and transcendence. The distinction arises when a location is invoked, either literally or not. That is, in the concept of the infinite, there is a specific 'point' within it somewhere.   To the eye observing one of the spheres, it distinctly is such a point within the world. A sphere of perfect, non-reflective darkness, ringed by a glowing purple horizon of Velandra's mana, always the center piece of someone's vision. The boundless world moves more around them than they to it, and that alone is quite the fantastical thing to experience. Many people tend to call them 'black suns', as they are as immovable as the sun, but thankfully nowhere near as blinding. Some simply regard them as 'douyon' directly, particularly philosophers.