1 Awakening
For countless eons the world remained untouched by mortals and gods alike, a place where not even rays of light could be found. A cold and dark world it was, without fires to bring warmth to the freezing wastes, without water to nourish any plants or beasts.
It seemed to be a dead world, where even the soil will not support life in any way. Yet amidst the barren lands of this world, something did not fit into the endless silence of the rocks.
A steady but strong beat shook the rocks on the surface, like a drum of war breaking the silence, just once every thousand years.
"Dumm, dumm." the sound echoed through the hallways deep underneath tons of rocks and sand. What was once a grand palace now seemed to have been utterly forgotten and lost in time. Stone upon stone was stacked over the buildings, the walls and ceiling ruined by erosion to the point where it was hard to tell between the building and the natural stones surrounding it.
With the echoes finally ebbing away, sucked up by the vast sands of the deserts, it seemed like the world would once again return to its deathlike state for the next thousand years, but this time unlike so many times before, there would be no return to the quiet solitude for the world.
"Dumm, dumm." yet again the sound caused tremors across the world.
"Dumm, dumm" beat the heart for the third time and the tremors this time ripped apart the earth and shattered the mountains close by. If anyone would have been able to see the phenomenon of the whole world trembling, they would be deeply shocked, but there was no one around, no one to see the trembling mountains, no one to see the fire in the planet's core beginning to burn and rage anew, no one to even see the lifeless sun in the sky starting to shine again as if to herald a new beginning.
Only one being was there, yet this strange creature was utterly ignorant of everything around it, its consciousness only just waking up from its long slumber. There was no body that could be found explaining the heartbeat, no flesh and blood was buried beneath the earth, yet the spirit still lived and the world around it reacted to it. A heartbeat like earthquakes and fire flowing through the rocks like blood might flow through veins.
'Where am I? Who am I?' the being wondered. With the memories deeply buried though, no answers would reveal themselves. Years passed by, yet the strange being still found no answers. Overcome by loneliness it finally decided to look for answers elsewhere.
'Spirit' she thought to herself, not in words, for she didn't even remember language, but in emotions and pictures, whatever her memories revealed bit by bit. 'Mountains don't move, if I want to travel I have to leave this place behind.'
How does a being without a body move? While a mortal might be unable to do the same, for a higher being it seemed all too easy to leave behind the trappings of a body, even more so as the body of this creature was just made up of rocks and stone, bound to the world it was slumbering on.
Leaving the world that was its resting place for so long, the spiritual being started on a journey across the galaxy. A silent, forgotten world, a world it could not even remember the name of. Yet still even if it was just a dead and lifeless planet, for a time it was still home.
Soon a comet could be seen travelling through the known universe. From the farthest corner it seemed to flash with insane speed towards the center regions. A twinge of emotion made the spirit stop for just a moment and look back to the world it once came from, before the journey went on into the unknown.
For a long time it had already travelled across many worlds, but did not find the answers it was looking for. This time however it found something that sparked its curiosity. It was a statue of a person on the highest peak of a small mountain range.
On a quiet place inside the area that is commonly known as the Gleaming Mountain Range a loud crashing noise could be heard. Too fast for anyone to see, the speeding comet landed on the mountainside causing quite an avalanche where it finally came to rest. Once the dust and snow settled down again and the place once again regained a certain amount of peace, the spirit started to move.
While the lands surrounding the Gleaming Mountain Range were sparsely populated, there were still a few villages to be found in the area. Most people were hunters or miners, with only a small number among them aiming for a path of a knight or mage.
The world had various ways how people would gain power, but the most common paths to choose were those of a spirit knight or a mage. With a multitude of countries and races, there would also come a multitude of ways to achieve their goals, but in the end nearly every major society had a path for those who would train their physical bodies, who focus on their inner self and on the opposite a path for those who train their minds and use their body only as a conduit for the powers beyond.
There were also stories of a third path on other worlds called science, with technology beyond anything one could dream of, with ships sailing through the air and even people walking among the stars, all without magic, but this was a path that heavily conflicted with the spirit of the world. Some legends said that a world could either have mages or they could have scientists, but as the very essence of the two was in conflict with each other, it would not take long for either side to completely win over the other.
From time to time people visited and often influenced other worlds. Names, language, habits, traditions and even food recipes were exchanged, intentionally or even more often unintentionally. What would be normal on one world, might be the stuff legends are made of, in another.
The world the comet landed on was called Gaia by the inhabitants of the area it landed in. It was a rather large planet, with a lot of water and not unlike so many others where humans lived, with a mostly temperate climate, with forests and oceans and jungles and deserts, snowcapped mountains and huge grasslands.
Gaia had always been a magical world, where science was hardly ever seen and for thousands of years, nothing really changed when it came to technology. Some might try their experiments, but with the high amount of spiritual aura and the dense ley lines filled with magic power, most of the more complex things would quickly break apart. Physics and chemistry would lead you only so far with the chaotic element of magic present.
Magical theory, thaumaturgy and magecraft, runecrafting and similar schools of thought thrived however, shaping the lands and the borders of countries based on who would be able to wield more magical power, who had more magical soldiers and who had the finesse and experience to become wealthy with magical artefacts and items. Such a world was the destination of the comet this time, but unlike all the others before this one did not seem empty.
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Lynn slowly walked along the snow covered little stairway, step by step going up to the mountain.
She was not very tall and the stairway was nearly always covered and would not really be accessible for a normal person, however not only did the 15 year old girl not have any problems with her ascent, no she seemed more upset about having to walk all the way here, rather than the cold winds and the ice everywhere.
"Wait till I get down again you little brat! It's all your fault that I have to come up here." She mumbled to herself. She was nearly at the peak when her steps suddenly faltered and quickly came to a stop.
In front of her, where not too many weeks ago stood a solid stone stairway leading further up the mountain, there was now a big crater.
"By the Heavens, what happened here?" a voice called out behind her. It sounded rather familiar to Lynn and she quickly turned around only to have her face change from astonished to rage.
"You! What are you doing here! It's all your fault I had to come all this way."
Not only did Lynn know the young boy in front of her, but he also seemed to be the cause of her current predicament. It was her little brother Ethan, barely 12 years old, who had a habit of causing trouble and mischief wherever he goes. He was also their village's youngest mage, with everyone calling him a genius.
"Oh calm down sis, I'm sorry." The boy tried to appease his elder sister. "How were I to know that you wouldn't just fall into the pool, but instead bring down the whole fire node with you? It was just a little spell I wanted to test."
"You and your little spells got me into this. Now I have to sit in this stupid cave and channel magic power into the fire vein all day long until I can bring back another divine fire. It might take me weeks till a fire node forms."
Lynn crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at her little brother for a while, but it didn't take long before she sighed and couldn't be angry with him any longer. Who would be able to stay angry with such a guilty looking face in front of them?
"What are you doing here?" she repeated her earlier question. "Are you not cold?"
Shaking his head Ethan's guilty face quickly turned into a grin. "I mastered a spell to keep away the cold earlier. It works rather well. I might not be able to use magic power like you to just use my body, but I have enough spells to explore places like this anyways. You will see, one day I become a mighty archmage travelling around the world with a dragon as my steed!"
"Well well mighty archmage." Lynn seemed amused by her brother's theatrics. "Let's first find a way up this mountain, before your spell runs out and you end up with frostbite instead of a dragon steed." She then carefully walked along the edge of the crater, slowly making her way up to the peak again, with her brother following closely behind her.
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