Prologue: Airgailia

I live in a world where those who have magic are slaves. Our country discovered enchanters existed along side them secretly. Threatened by their existence they were driven them out of hiding when man-kind discovered a magic neutralizing toxin they named Ecodite. Ecodite has been used to render enchanters entirely powerless. It sanitizes the magic currently in use and suppresses the magic within the enchanter. The enchanter is then either beaten, killed, or turned into a slave to do the bidding of the one that they’re forced to call master. Those who disobey their master are usually killed and replaced like some kind of disposable object or discarded food someone didn’t want. These are usually the default options, unless the master is of a particularly vile nature then they’d beat and torture their slave until their spirit is broken like some kind of untamed stallion captured in the wild.

Many, many, many years ago enchanters were more plentiful than the normal human race. The world lived in peace despite the normal crimes and conflict of basic human nature. There was war and battle, such is the way of greed and envy. There was murder, theft, and brutality as any other part of the world. What I mean by peace is that enchanters, mixed races, and humanity in general were able to live together in general harmony as much as the human race could possibly achieve. However, enchanters were only known as a myth for normal humans. The human population used to tell fairy tales of fantasy and wonder but somehow, over time, those stories started to focus on the antagonist being an enchanter who wanted to cause calamity and chaos. They were seen as evil and hated by most as the generations passed.

Then one day a man was being robbed and attacked. His wife was being forced against her will and to protect his family, the man used fire magic. In his emotional turmoil he accidentally burned the face of a smile child from next door who happened to be standing outside of his home. This was the beginning of the downward spiral. The man’s family was able to escape but he was captured and killed. The news spread across the city, then across the region, and eventually spreading across the country and into the rest of the world. The story started out correctly but through misinterpretations and bitterness as well as just usual twist to sauce things up, the story ended up changing completely. Instead of a man protecting his family from a group of robbers, the story had changed to a deranged magic using man on a rampage.

Once the news had spread globally, things increasingly became more and more intense. Everyone was skeptical of each other. No one knew who had magic and who didn’t. So the president of Airgailia issued that scientist find a way to snuff out the real humans from the impostors. After twenty years of research they found a way to powderize econium. Once inhaled by an enchanter, the user starts to experience an instability within their magic. This caused a painful reaction within the users which resulted in moans, groans, or even screams of pain as the powder infiltrates the magic making genes within the enchanter’s body. Allowing them to be sought out in large crowds or in hiding places. After thousands were captured and turned into science experiments, they were able to refine the econium and stabilize its properties to create the ecodite. Along side the ecodite being created an extremely rare and unstable substance called polygonite had also surfaced. It was made during the unstable points of converting econium into ecodite. After a two hundred years of conversions, only three polygonites were created. None of which were on purpose.

When the human hand touched the polygonite, they were immediately tortured internally and died soon after. When the autopsies were done on them it was discovered that their insides had been torn to shreds. Of course human kind couldn’t leave things alone so they decided to use the enchanters as test subjects. Any enchater with low magical energy was destroyed on the inside in very much the same was as the normal humans had. As the years passed and large numbers of enchanters were killed off or murdered during experimentation, they finally decided that the substance was too unpredictable and too dangerous and tried to destroy them. Upon the destruction of one of the three polygonites came the devastation and layering of the surrounding three regions. Four entire regions were wiped from the earth leaving only 38 people alive in total.

Out of those 38 survivors only three of them were human and only because they were protected by an enchanters at the time of the explosion. When the government sent out a search and rescue team, no one was found alive and the polygonites was gone. The government assumed that the destruction of such a large surface area meant that all three polygonites were destroyed, not knowing how exceptionally powerful only a single one of them was. The survivors of the incident stole all the money they could find in the rubble and anything they thought would be valuable enough to sell. Including the polygonite that was sealed within a special box. Once the survivors found shelter hidden away in caves of Navaar, they created a home for themselves and the surviving humans. Though their band was small, they decided to dictate a leader among them and the leader chosen would help rescue and rebuild the enchanters to a brighter future now that they were free.

One of the humans protested and claiming that they should turn themselves in for being part of the magic world. A mother who had lost her child stepped forward and explained magic to the man. She told him that magic wasn’t what the humans believed it to be. Explaining that more than 80% of magic users are low level and can only do light magics. Someone could use fire but only enough to light a stove or fireplace. That the power of their magic faded over the centuries and that all of the testing and mutilation was worthless. They posed no threat to the world. The human wouldn’t hear of it. He talked about the rumor of a man who murdered a human child with his fire magic because he lost control of his abilities. Everyone tried their best to convince him but the man felt so superior to them that he simply would not listen.

In the dead of night, the human man decided to leave the band and seek out help and turn them all in as runaways. The leader they elected, Zayne, already believed that the man would attempt to betray them and set up a trap. That human tried to steal money from them when he happened upon the forbidden box. Upon inspection he realized that the box had been unlocked and his curiosity and ego convinced him to open it. Since the band of survivors were simple members of the community and slaves once owned, none of them were aware of what power the polygonite held inside. Someone from the band woke up and realized that there was a bright blue light coming from their treasure room and decided to investigate. Just as the human went to reach for the strange crystal, he was stopped by the voice of the young female enchanter. She asked him what he was doing and begged for him to stop. However, he had too much pride and contempt that wouldn’t allow him to back down. He truly believed that this glowing crystal looked far too valuable to stay with such low life spawn.

The man reached out once more to grab for the crystal when the young woman jumped forward to knock it away. The young girl’s hand made contact with the crystal and she began crying out in pain. The entire camp woke in fear of attack. Zayne used his magic to propel himself forward to get to the treasure room as fast as possible. He was not prepared for what he saw before him. The glowing blue blur made everything difficult to see but it was obvious what was happening. The crystal had fused itself into the girl’s hand as well as to the human man’s hand. The two had made contact with the crystal at the same time. The man scream out for help as the girl scream out in agony. Once the rest of the band arrived at the entrance they were in shock of the sight they beheld. Someone tried to rush towards them to try to help them but was stopped by Zayne when he noticed the two people holding the crystal were nearly completely combined into a single entity. He didn’t know what to do. He knew he was responsible for setting the forbidden box into plain sight, knowing the man would try to take it. He panicked and had no idea how to aid in the situation. All he could do was sit back and wait like the others.

Once the human’s body had been absorbed in totality, the young girl’s body began to change. Altering itself from beast to creature to human form and back again. The girl faced immeasurable torture within her own skin. Zayne called out and asked if there were any other medical enchanters, besides himself, within the band and only one woman spoke up. She apologized to him for being so weak but that she could only do moderate healings from cuts to broken bones but that she wasn’t powerful enough to do much else. Zayne shook his head and pleaded that she do her best to heal the screaming girl. The healer rushed over and started the process but what shocked at what her magic was showing her. The girl’s bones were morphing and twisting around inside of her body. The crystal’s light began to fade as it entered itself into the girl’s body.

After nearly an hour things finally started to change. The healer was almost completely out of energy, the human man and crystal had been consumed, and the girl finally stopped screaming. The cave was silent. Only the sounds of water dripping in the distance remained. No one knew what to do and Zayne was in too much worry to move a muscle. The healer began nodding as the exhaustion was setting in. Zayne jumped forward in enough time to catch the healer as they began to fall to the cave floor. He was afraid. Zayne was afraid but he knew he had to touch the young girl to make sure she was still alive. He checked her pulse and it was stable but just as he started to retract his hand, the young girl grabbed onto Zayne’s wrist. Zayne received images in his mind of a mysterious magical power like no one had ever seen. The body of a human changing form into different sorts of animals and other humans. Shape shifting. This was a power that had never existed within their realm of knowledge. Zayne also began to feel like his own magical power was starting to intensify the longer she held onto him. Zayne was also a medical enchanter but before that particular day his medical abilities were only strong enough to aid himself. After the incident he made sure to do all he could to use his healing power on others as well.