Can the Magi still be trusted?

Look about this land and tell me what you see. For I see something most remarkable. We stand atop this hill, surrounded at each conceivable angle by enormous mountaintops that are crested by trees and meadow as they peer down at the great, winding valleys below. There is songbird whistling through the almost-still wind. An invisible river one can just about receive to the careful ear, being fed by a waterfall just shy of a kilometre away. Then the sky half a kilometre ahead turns to a delicate light shade of purple before the narrow bands of clouds warp against it.

And then there is the shrill cry of death that pierces the tranquillity. Somewhere farther ahead, new-born wyrms mimick the roars of their matriarch. 

The Magi proclaimed our lands would be forever free of their kind: that was the purpose of the Greatest Solution. So where did it all go wrong?

We know that the dragons had lived in this region for thousands of years; we can see evidence of this in Abrascian records. Their pattern of brutally attacking human populations across Abras Tier goes back to the start. When they attacked, they done so with such efficiency for death and destruction, that we have always lived in fear of them. So fearful, in fact, that we begun to build down - houses not up but basements upon basements. Our political establishment enacted home-schooling policies, and hoarded literature at the capital's library so that it was never lost to the fires. 

But eleven years ago, the attacks hastened. Before that it was maybe one attack every six months. But every day those beasts came and tore loved ones away - child or not - and ruined homes and destroyed whole towns and villages. It was a concerted effort to destroy our nation, made by beasts who do not have the capacity for intelligent thought, not like ours. Whether or not they were being controlled or lived off a blood of pure and hateful spite, none of us truly know. All we know is that we had to do something. 

All the the political establishment vowed to do was throw lives at the problem. Thousands of men and women, fighting for the defence of their country, and their homes and their families, were subsequently lost. Thrown into the fire for nothing. Most of these people had survived attacks on their homes and were sent to the nests the following day. 

That's when the Circle of Magi capitalised on the destablisation of our political establishment. As we tore through our own streets in protest, it was they who promised our people a solution: the Greatest Solution that would save mankind. It was magick that would end the threat, not knights or underground cities. We raised them to the place of leaders. We removed the politicians, just like we removed the Monarchy a thousand years ago. But, as we soon realised, their promises were empty. 

On the night of the Greatest Solution, Abras Tier cried. Earthquakes all across the region deafened our ears. A fissure, still visible, ripped through the land, all the way from the northern to the southern seas, and beyond even those. 

But at what cost?

Mother Nature has twisted to its infection. The skies turn purple, the trees change shades and shed their leaves differently, the animals die but reanimate in wildly different formats. The Greatest Solution came with this cost. And it did work: there were no more dragons.

They fled to the Northern Lands, where the space is vastly open and mountainous; where the highest peaks are concealed by cloud so that their young can soar and their roars will never be heard. We watched with intrigue as their shapes deformed; with enlarged horns and thicker throats, their roars became mightier than we'd ever dream.

It did not last long. 

One might look at a number of reasons why animal life returns to their old nesting grounds. Pollution. Being hunted to near extinction. Dwindling resources such as wildlife for food or trees for nest construction and the like. Too much competition amongst their own kind, forcing the weaker subspecies out. Even the coming of novel subspecies, whose features lack important traits as the rest in order to keep up, may be the cause. That's all what the literature says. But do you know what I think?

I think the answer lays within the land itself.

What strikes me as equally important to answer on our journey is the question of why their lust for destruction endures. Over a century has passed. The dragons here, while possible, may not necessarily be those same individuals who laid waste to Abras Tier. So why has their need to commit death to an innocent species endured?

We must investigate and find out for ourselves. That was the objective of the Arc-Light Expedition. A group of ten individuals, carefully selected by the Circle of Six, who were dispatched to these lands to investigate the first known nest on our lands since the Greatest Solution. But their communiques failed and the expeditionary force had not made contact and have now missed four planned rendezvous. Their fate is questioned. Nevertheless, that is not for me to answer, for I come here against the wishes of the Circle of Magi.

So who am I? 

My name is Mira. 

Not everybody is born with an affinity for magick. I was one of the gifted. It was destined that I join the Circle and become a mage. But, by the time I reached eleven, I was to be suppressed. Knowledge of my education, and of my future, were being kept from me, and I could not pursue my destiny. "You're not right!" I recall the Grand Mage proclaiming as he held a pointed finger to the forehead between my eyes. He referred, of course, to you.

My earliest memories are of your whispers. No one, not even my own parents, have ever been able to see you. To them, when I talk, it is to no one, as though I speak to an image of lunacy. But I know the truth. You do exist. Unfortunately my gift of seeing gave the Circle the misapprehension that I am too odd to become a mage. And instead of removing me from the Circle, instead they chose to oppress me, to prevent me from maturing and gathering the required skills and knowledges on my own. So, at the age of fifteen, I finally escaped, and I've lived ever since under a new name. I joined the Arboria University and became a research fellow into the Origins of Naturality and Applied Magicks: the study of how magick affects nature, and how it might form and develop without the element of unpredictable causalities. Then I learned about the Arc-Light Expedition, and I returned to the Circle, admitting to who I was and what I had become – that I was the University's brightest and most knowledgeable individual, who should be permitted to join the expedition. And a self-trained mage despite their oppression.

What was their response again?

They tore me of my identity. They plotted to imprison me for the remainder of my life. They moved my family far away, and indoctrinated my parents and siblings to react to me as though I were an enemy of the nation. I never deserved a monster's treatment. I've only ever wanted to study Nature as a Mage.

Indeed, I've allowed few people closer to my heart than most. Up until recently, there was a male in my life whose happiness was as infectious within me as my love was for him – or so I hoped. Alas, that story was brought to an abrupt end. His need for a child was too strong. I still recall the crippling sadness that devoured my abdomen when, just days after announcing to my love my pregnancy, my womb bled, and I knew then the fate of my beautiful child. I told him he does not need a broken woman to impede upon his life's ambition to become a parent. Instead of embracing me and offering me hope and care and love and compassion, he agreed, and left me alone to pick myself up. I remain thankful that my insecurities and other deviant emotions of that night were genuine and my actions were not a test. Because, if it were a test, and if he had also then abandoned me for that same reason, I may have become even more broken. It was you, in fact, that saved me from jumping into that fire place. 

I'm crying now. It's picking the coldness up from a freezing wind and feels like ice to my cheek. I can't afford these sentiments. I cannot afford my heart's betrayal. There are lives that I can save. The Circle certainly won't.

So the reason we came here.

We climbed this mountain to reach perspective of the tasks ahead. Just weeks ago, the town of Gras Abas – just a short walk west from this mountain – fell to the mighty dragons. The Arc-Light Expedition are presumed dead. The only ones capable of solving this mystery stand atop the mountain, staring in wonderment at the vast beautiful landscape before us. The answer lies within the land. And it is my time to prove to the Circle that they were wrong about me. I am no lunatic. I was born and raised to be true to myself, and that I shall remain. We must first descend this sheer mountaintop by the route we climbed to find a place for camp. And tomorrow, onwards to Gras Abas, the town that died.

So, come, let us together venture into the new unknowns.