#magic beings

It consiss of five transformations: Sirenix, Corpus Fauny, Fractalix, Ignitix and Cosmix. The Quest itself can be undertaken by any fey magic user of at least Enchanteur/tress level and can be done in a group or alone, but each transformation must be earned by every participating person individually. Some of these transformations are unlocked through a series of quest tasks (eg Sirenix), a single task(eg Ignitix) or through connection with an external agent (eg Corpus Fauni).

To help fey magic users start their quest, natural guardians linked to wild magic, such as selkies or Magifauna can bestow Harmonix onto the participants. Harmonix equalises a fairy’s powers in a new environment they are not innately suited for. In the case of the Winx this meant major adjustments for fire and light power users Bloom and Stella, while Layla barely got any boost compared to her Enchantinx, because her powers already made her very adapted to an underwater envirnoment. The looks of Harmonix changes depending on which creature granted it to the fairy in question.

The quest is designed to be completed in five years (one for each component), but it can be done faster. At the end of the period is a hard cutoff: if a magic user isn’t done with all five quests and was able to manifest a nymph form, the process is deemed as failed and they will lose their magic power. Equally failure at any of the five parts of the Quest evokes the same penalty. Attempting the Nymph Quest is therefore a high stakes challenge.

Thematically the transformations of the Nymph Quest, while they certainly appear to, don’t actually correspond to the elements. The nymph transformation was crafted by h’Agia, mother of all nymphs towards the end of the second Sorcerer Fairy War with the aim of unifying ALL uses of magic. For this she blended not only the principles of fey magic and sorcery, but examined the way other magic beings interact with the Flow and use it’s powers as magic. She has discovered the deep tie other beings have to Wild Magic that humans lack, who rather tend to get attached to Archane Magic through their bond with pixies.

Therefore each of the five transformation copies aspects of the five non-human magic beings found in the Magic universe, while the Nymph transformation itself represents the human aspect while also bundling the previous five. 

Sirenix is the obvious merfolk magic mimic. It allows fairies to access the Infinite Ocean and travel between planets the mer way.

Corpus Fauni is built on the same roots as elven magic, with the most noticeable influence of sorcery as well. It requires bonding with a Magifaunus though to filter pure wild magic for the fairies to use. Its other effects include the ability to shift into or merge with the bonded Magifaunus.

Cosmix is representative of centauri magic. The centauri, while entirely terrestrial base their magic on cosmic power fluctuations and astrology. For fairies this mainly translates into gaining the ability to survive in space and wings that allow them to cross massive distances in the blink of an eye (these wings are not suitable for on planet hovering flying though)

Fractalix is largely the same subspace manipulation gnomes use to shrink and teleport between the folds of sub and supradimension. With this transformation fairies are able to enter subdimensional spaces, whether stable like the Golden Kingdom, or unstable. There is a strict time limit however to how long it can be used, as magic digests and fairies run the risk of loosing skin and limbs to subspace - literally.

And finally Ignitix is the harpy magic equivalent. Though sentient magic using harpies are long extinct by the time the Winx are born, their legacy as the first fire using civilisation remains intact. Their magic harvests energy from atmospheric pressure, lightning and geothermal heat. Ignitix  bestowes considerable extra firepower to fairies (literally and figuratively) is also very limited in use: like sorcery it draws on powers a fairy doesn’t necessarily have at the moment and can therefore only be evoked 3 times in a nymphs lifetime (which is very long). Sometimes evoking it is not a conscious thought, but rather a last resort, in this way compensating a bit for the nymph transformation’s biggest drawback.

...which is that after completing the whole Quest and gaining the nymph form, fairies lose their Enchantix. Being a nymph and having all these forms to draw from more than compensates in general. However it has to be said that the nymph transformation(s) are fundamentally more suited for Elemental aspect magic users. Abstract aspect users may have better applications of their powers in spell-crafting and being an Enchanteur/tress than a nymph, but that is ultimately a personal decision.

Most humans are not inherently magic sensitive the same way eg. selkies or non-physical entities are. A large number of them is born with magic sensitivity, enough in fact that they developed 3 distinct magic streams to specialise their craft in, but still what they value most is intelligence and expression of organised societal life as they understand it. 

For the longest time intelligent species fought their wars among themselves, humans in their Magic User Wars, Centauri during the Big Expansion and of course Merpeople in their never ending Turf Wars. But once peace has been wrought, it could only be kept at the expense of unifying against another threat: intelligent magic users of another species. 

Humans are fortunate in their physiology, for it does not make them locked to planets with specific topographies like other species. Goblins and gnomes need rocks and obligate minerals in their diet to ensure healthy development. Merfolk you’d hardly find in a place without ample interconnected waters. And what environment benefits Merpeople is often a hazard to Centauri’s delicate ankles. Elves (and  in primordial times Harpies) have had a better chance at adapting, sharing the ability of humans to terraform their living space. 

Humans and Elves share so many similarities, they were initially thought to be a magic sensitive and non-sensitive iteration of the same species, how gnomes and goblins are essentially the same creatures. It was of course later revealed that humans were more than sufficiently magically competent to escape that classification. Humans and Elves have stood side by side, categorising the vast expanse of life emerging in the Magic Universe. Fuelled by the sense of superiority deeply ingrained in both peoples, they got along well in their intellectual discussions. However, at the end of all things their opinions diverged on what they saw each other as, and how that related to their place among all other creatures of the Universe.

Elves of course saw humans as inferior. Humans have just finished their war waging, compared to the other beings, so they could only be called Young. Elves saw categories between ages of emergence: to them a species was either long standing or newly emerging, defining the worth of their contribution to the world. You just couldn’t trust someone who has just invented organised religion as much as you could believe those who have seen cycles of emergence and dismantling.

Humans, as stated before, priced intelligence so much they’d separate ogres as a distinct species from trolls, despite the two being exactly the same kind of creature, with variation emerging depending on which planet you observed them on. In their system, of course equally seeing the Elves as inferior to themselves, humans who had come up with the categorising system were the most intelligent and deserved to be named at the top. They designated the phylogeny as humans vs non-human: Complete classification of Creatures found in the Magic Universe, it said.

This caused incredible discourse and Elves involved in the project either left or were forcibly extruded from the research environment where their voices could be heard. Humans having spread to most parts of the Magic Universe presented the dominant culture on most planets. Through their hegemony, the term “magic creature” was popularised, slowly stripping the rights of every non-human inhabitant of the planets.

In many places this lead to the development of so called Split Societies, where instead of fighting, the previously societally integrated beings withdrew from human influence and founded their own kingdoms, nowadays best observed on Earth and Manubra 47. 

Magic Being Recognition Act

Though pushback after a while appeared futile, resistance to the human rule did not cease. After hundreds of years of campaigning, the still incorrectly termed, Higher Intelligent Species banded together, comprising of Gnomes, Elves, Centauri and Merpeople and demanded a change in terminology and equal treatment.

Their arguments were based on their kind sharing magical responsibility and a magical consensus in the form of their representatives in the Golden Kingdom. If they could sit there side by side, why could they not do the same in the physical world. They further cited the criteria of the original classification system, according to which they were all considered the same level of advanced civilisation: they formed societies, taught skills and left records and reminders of their existence. They engaged in religious practices as well as empirical discovery of the world around them.

Their demands were the abolishment of discrimination, respect of the sovereignty of their territories and equal rights and opportunities of integration into human society. 

Together with human spouses and allies, the affected species organised protest and campaigns across several planets until the movement caught on and the leaders of the magic Universe had no other option but to respond to the demands.

The Magic Being Recognition Act, as imperfect as it is separating only the large four from the rest and elevating them above being termed a ‘creature’, is still a ground breaking resolution in political rights. Levelling the playing field across all species of the Magic Universe, it established what we call today Hybrid Societies.