Novels2Search

OLD Chapter 1

AN: Seriously, don't read this. It's frankly embarassing.

-Vox

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4893 years have passed since the Great Breaking.

The last two thousand or so years have finally brought stabillity and true progress.

The time just after the Breaking was truly chaotic and destructive, as the sudden and wild influx of magic caused momentous change and mutation upon both the world and its inhabitants. Great forests sprung up practically overnight, predatory beasts grew more vicious and cunning, docile domestic animals became prone to feats of furious rage, and the thinking races themselves experienced many of the same changes, some even going mad and horribly killing everyone around them then themselves. It was as if the land itself wanted to rid itself of all life, as natural disasters struck one after another, killing all equally and with startling efficiency.

The worst, of course, were the emerging Monsters.

Terrifying creatures as though from the very worst kind of nightmare rampaging across the world as they hunted the thinking races as though after a delicacy. Only the ones most adept at hiding and those that were particularly gifted after the change managed to survive without brushing all too closely against the possibillity of extinction. The survival of those was only permitted by the Monster's limited intelligence, and the fact that one day the attacks suddenly stopped.

Now, so many years later, those days and the time before the Breaking are nigh-forgotten; the only evidence left is the continued existance of those horrifying creatures and the history books gathering dust on bookshelves.

When the attacks stopped, the thinking races that were able gathered together for mutual survival, and to explore and understand the changes that the world and they themselves now exhibited. For most, the only change seemed a new awareness, a sense hitherto not existant. Those particularly gifted in the change often quickly came forward to try and teach others what to them came almost naturally, but they were often met with failure. It was not until around 3000a.b.(After Breaking) that a method for almost anyone to utillise the new energy was discovered, thus ushering the new Age of Magic. Of course, this was only on the most major of the fragments, on every fragment that contained any major population of the thinking races there was discovered a unique, if at time similar, method of accessing magic, curiously the discovery of these methods all happened at around the same time...

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And now, almost two thousand years later, great bridges have been built between the major fragments and the magic method has been almost unified. Trade is booming and all manner of industires are undergoing revolution. Of course, some fragments have been completely abandoned and evacuated, mostly those that contained inhospitable environments and/or great concentrations of Monsters and powerful beasts.

The losses were truly great but, who knows, maybe the power gained was more than enough...?

                                                                                           -----------------------------                                                      

On this year, in an ancient forest of titanic porportions on the largest abandoned fragment, the roots of which which have broken straight through the soil and the stone and reaching almost half-way to  the hallow dessert, there was a event of truly momentous, if superficially trivial, importance. A seed, massive even by the standards of the ancient forest, had been uncovered by a major landslide. This seed, which had remained remained inert for hundreds of years now splitin two. Within there apearead to be a small body only slightly larger than a human five year old, from its head extended hair-like black vines to a length of almost two metres, their width was around a centimetre whilst their thickness only about 3mm. These vines were coiled around the body loosely, revealing onlt glimpses of its skin, which was the colour of wet hay. As the creature awakened, it rapidly opened its startling silver eyes, which had strange pupils the shape of three crossing lines, with the vertical line slightly longer, and looked around with a furtive caution, before quickly scampering up the nearest tree, digging into the bark with its tough claws as its tail twitched behind it.

As it reached the top, the vines atop its head fanned out around it, obscuring it from view and catching the light of the blue sun as its tail dug easily through the bark and the fles of the tree, connecting itself instinctivly with the tree's circulatory system. And there, in the gently swaying tree tops, the creature slept...