SciFi and Fantasy Stories: The Sorceress' Daughter: Prologue [OLD]

The Stage is Set

            At the dawn of civilization, there were the Old Kingdoms.
            As soon as man killed animals for food, he knew he could kill his fellow man. And as soon as two tribes met, both of the opinion that their crops were entitled to the same soil and their beasts were entitled to the same grass, there was war. Those tribes turned into cities, and the cities turned into kingdoms. But the war didn't end.
            One race, however, simply left. Perhaps they were a mixture of ethnicities shunned by all other tribes. Perhaps they were religious pilgrims, or maybe they just felt the call of the seas. Regardless, a band of sailors left the Old Kingdoms, and they rowed and sailed along a strong northwest current to a land untouched by other men.
            The land was named Teria by the settlers, and over time their society flourished. Over time, similar refugees from both the Old Kingdoms and Teria set sail to discover and settle the continent of Servia. Still the expansion of men blossomed and the small continent of Ebolia, with Teria to the West and Servia to the East, was settled.
            In the fashion of men, homes were built, neighbors banded together, cities were founded, and governments were forged. History was created by the endless march of time, entities of world dominating power shaped the course of destiny in their own way: The Tersian Republic, Hartian Alliance, Sian Empire, Tersian Empire, Servian Compact, and Ebolian Union each took their place as the most powerful force in the world, over the span of five thousand years.
            The Tersian Republic held Teria, Ebolia, and Servia in it's grasp before it fell apart trying to conquer the Old Kingdoms. The Hartian Alliance was a shady group who manipulated the world through rouges and secret agents. The Sian Empire started as a small nation at the remote tip of Servia and held Ebolia and Servia before the Emperor was slain in Teria.
            The Emperor's name was T'rquin, and he was a sorcerer. An otherwise normal human born under an influx of magical powers, T'rquin was able to tap the vast energies of life. The Hartian Alliance was too led by a sorceress, one named M'rdyth. T'rquin and M'rdyth were, put simply, the most feared creatures ever to exist. Since T'rquin, every sorcerer found was burned, executed or imprisoned. This job was carried out by the Tersian Empire, who were lead by the descendants of the hero who slew T'rquin. The fear of sorcerers kept Teria in place as the most powerful entity in the world for over a millennia.
            Presently, the most powerful nation is the Ebolian Union. Ebolia was under Servian control until the rebellion for independence shattered the Compact into ethnic war.
            (It was in fact Ebolia which caused the collapse of the Compact, but not due to the revolution. The underground resistance in Ebolia had long operated a group known as "Assignment 4", which specialized in political manipulation and sabotage. A carefully hidden secret, A-IV is the only reason such a small nation could have such complete power)

            Ebolia was the undisputed leader of the world. Servia was shattered into dozens of ethnic tribes. Teria was still a player in world politics, but only by virtue of size and history. It was these circumstances which allowed the extraordinary events detailed in this novel to occur. The progress of history marched on.
            And the sorcerers held back and watched.

The Actors Take Their Place

            Preparation is the key to victory. As long as an army strives for victory, they should be prepared.
            The army of Ebolia understood this: The intensity of the training for the Ebolian Grand Guard was unparalleled, mostly because EGG accepted applicants to their academy long before they would be eligible for any other draft. Large contingents of first-year students in the academy were always fourteen-year-old orphans. They didn't see combat until they were eighteen, naturally, but Ebolia still provided four extra years of training.
            EGG operated in a radically different way than any other army. The idea was that they needed to be prepared for combat at all times, even in times of peace. To keep their soldiers on their toes, EGG allowed corporations, individuals, and other countries to contract out Guardians. In short, EGG was a mercenary group over whom the President of Ebolia had a permanent (and prioritized) contract.
            The nation of Servia, the largest remaining chunk of the Servian Compact, also kept their soldiers alert by a similar means: They launched many frequent invasions of the smaller countries around the continent. Servia gained large amounts of land quickly that way, but the world in general was mortified. Several minds announced loudly that the Servian continent was about to become the New Old Kingdoms: A state of eternal ethnic war.
            However, the fifth or so nation to be invaded launched a secret SOS to EGG, and as soon as the elite fighting force arrived, Servia withdrew. It was reported that neither side took any casualties, and that Servia fled without firing a shot.
            The idea caught on wildly with the rest of Servia's crosshair fodder, and soon the Servian Service couldn't turn a corner without seeing the scarlet uniform of EGG. SeSe didn't stop the invasions though, and EGG didn't stop rescuing
            EGG didn't mind because each invasion was a small cash-cow. SeSe didn't mind because each fight was an excellent training scenario. The world in general ignored the affair, and the only ones who really minded were the ones currently occupied.
            Teria's army didn't follow the same principals. In fact, Teria didn't have much of an army at all. The Tersian Nationals, founded over two thousand years before the present, was pretty much decimated by the Thirtieth Tersian King, Endimion Heartfire III.
            His logic was that Teria was basically safe from all foreign armies. Ebolia didn't NEED to invade a country to get her way (A-IV was a secret every ruler knew about, but could never be sure when he was influenced by the clandestine group.) Servia was too busy clinging to her former glory to set her sights off continent, and the Old Kingdoms had opted to wallow in their own blood bath since the dawn of history. The incredible amount of upkeep for weapons, barracks, and pay could be diverted to someplace slightly more useful, like soup kitchens or schools, and Teria would be a generally better place.
            He drafted a royal edict, by the name of the Military Redirection Act, which abolished all non-volunteer positions in the Tersian National Guard and kept only the elite Nationals who provided the King's security.
            It was the Military Redirection Act that resulted in the downfall of the Heartfire crown. Not because it abolished the military (although that didn't help). In fact, it was the broadcast of the speech which caused the downfall.
            In that time, the official language of Teria was a dialect known as Old Tersian. However, 99% of Tersians were fluent in Ebolian, an overlapping 2% were fluent in Tersian, and 1% were considered illiterate. In fact, there was only one person alive who spoke ONLY Tersian, and that was Endimion Heartfire. He broadcast his speeches in Tersian, and that 2% made a comfortable living as translators. However, they were dying off quickly.
            The head advisor to the King began a massive battle to get the King to speak Ebolian.
            "We are a Tersian King. We will speak our native tongue."
            "That tongue is a dead one, my liege." The advisor pointed out. This debate had occurred before, when the King was about seventeen years old.
            "No."
            "Your Highness---"
            Eventually, the aide found a piece of logic so sound the King couldn't argue against it. The Military Redirection Act was the first decree the King broadcasted in Ebolian. He made a general mess of the language: Slaughtered tenses, mixed pronouns, mispronounced words, confused accents, and even misplaced adjectives.
            "Funding military results where world piece murders children with guns created. Counteracting restaurants and global misconception have rendered military inoculations. Overweight moneys will be spent in poetry for Teria's youth and my harem."
            The journalists in the room had politely suppressed their laughter until the final line. Even after the head aide pushed Endimion off the stage and read the speech properly, the press was tickled with the prospect of the King diverting funding from the military to his personal brothel. The late night comedian had a scene of young women in Tersian military uniforms lounging in a room filled with couches and sofas, misbehaving in general by licking pistols and tickling each other with toy swords.
            "We ain't speaking Ebolian anymore." Endimion said, secretly wondering why he didn't have a royal harem.
            "Your highness---" The head advisor said firmly, "We have hired a speech tutor for you."
            The matter had been decided in a grueling all nighter of a council meeting right after the Military Redirection speech. In short, the advisors vowed to get Endimion to speak perfect Ebolian, or die trying. They set a strict criteria for all potential tutors: He must be native and completely fluent in all things Ebolian, he must have no regional accents, he must be a trained educator, he must not have a political agenda, and a tutor with a family (who might accompany him) was frowned upon. They scoured Ebolia and found Terra DeCiel.
            "Terra" is Old Tersian for "Child of Teria." Naturally, she was not a child of Teria. On the same token, if you were to enter an open-air market in Servia and ask for a 'terra', you would be handed a highly starchy tuber. No, her name was her mother's idea of a security measure: No self-respecting witch would claim to be from Teria.
            Terra was a prim, thin, black-haired woman with large eyes, a narrow face, and a very pale complexion. She was also short, and stood in stark contrast to Endimion. Endimion was tall, blond, stocky, and had a much wider face. And, for all of Endimion's blunders, Terra was as graceful as wind over a brook.
            She moved into Teria Keep and immediately made a nightmare for herself. She refused the room prepared for her and demanded the western-most point in the Keep, exactly opposite the location of all furnished sleeping quarters. Once settled, she submitted to the kitchen a special diet: High in leaves, low in roots, and mostly avoiding meats. Poultry and foul was acceptable, and pork if mandated by special event. However, no meats from any animal larger then a pig.
            For whatever reason, the complaints of the staff never reached the advisors' ears. It would be highly inaccurate to suggest the whole of the event which was about to unfold could have been avoided by a cook complaining a little louder then he did, but it deserves a footnote just the same.
            To her own credit, Terra began teaching immediately and with unexpected gusto. The vigor of the study was obvious in Terra's method: She kept the King locked up in classes whenever she could, as often as she could, and at whatever hour of the day she could. The time spent was the marvel of the advisors, until Endimion revealed his engagement.
            "MARRIAGE?" The head advisor roared. "There is no way I can allow you---"
            We are a king and a man." Endimion said simply. "You have no right to tell us what to do.
            "I! ME!" The advisor spat, turning quite purple. "There is no royal tense in Ebolian!"
            Endimion's bow knit, as if he saw no reason as to give his head aide such a reason to tantrum. "We ain't going to stand here and---"
            "I AM NOT!" The advisor screamed, his eyes watering. He threw a book across the room.
            The King's ears turned red, and after a calculated pause he said, "I love her. We will be married. We are not going to be stopped---"
            "WE WILL NOT BE!" The advisor corrected once again. "I am this close to apoplexy! Maybe it hasn't sunk into your love-struck brain," The advisor was considerably shorter then Endimion, and he jumped up on every word to bring himself to eye-level, "that I cannot allow this marriage to happen! DeCiel is a foreign national who isn't a citizen, doesn't even plan on living in Teria, is a peasant, and need I mention the numerous young ladies of the lower courts who are all red-blood Tersians, and here I need to remind you of your duty to marry a young female noble of full Tersian blood, one who is socially popular, acceptable, photogenic---" And so it continued for several minutes, and at the end of it all the advisor was near tears, out of breath, and shaking. "Last but not least, Baronet Quillfire, who is my personal favorite, fancies you far beyond your crown, and is one of your kingdoms most delicate flowers. Just wait until she finds out you're engaged to some alien---"
            Endimion appeared unfazed through the tongue lashings, and interrupted with a grin. "Then invite her to the bachelor party! Invite them all, but only the photogenic ones. Not like anyone'll ever see those photos though, eh?"
            The advisor made a violent gesture of ripping his tunic down the seam. "So she taught you enough Ebolian to be lewd. Charming. I'm glad enough tax money was spent paying her so she could practice saying naughty things to you---" Suddenly his eyes bulged out of his head. "She's pregnant, isn't she?"
            "Not yet." Endimion said jovially. "She is as virgin as the day is long and I love her. She--- She has this aura."
            The advisor began with a guttural moan and ended with a high-pitched warble. When it was through, it looked like he was ready to curl up and die. "An aura? An aura? An aura is a mask. It conceals, it hides, it misleads! Would you trust anyone who wore a mask? Would you listen to me if I had a bag over my head? Are you listening to me now? Well, hear this: Veto!"
            Endimion turned dangerously dark. "What?" He hissed.
            "Veto! I cannot allow you to marry her for reasons related to the sanctity of the Heartfire bloodline and the policies of employment for all civil servants!"
            At that time, the highest, first-tier advisors had the ability to forbid the King from doing something until the matter was put in front of the council of advisors for a vote.
            "The Advisor to Fish and Game is a third-tier position and doesn't have the power to veto." Endimion pointed out.
            The advisor looked murderous. "You can't demote me in the process of veto!" He spat.
            "I didn't." Endimion said. "I foresaw this altercation and filed the paperwork fifteen minutes before I summoned you." He made it a point to use his newfound dazzling vocabulary. " So, I'd like you to go and tell the rest of the council the good news. Also, if you don't extend my apologies to Baronet Quillfire in person, then I'll have you locked up for dereliction of duty. Get it?"
            The advisor glided silently out of the Keep at that point, took the Baronet to a bar and became very, very drunk before completing his duty, at which point he locked himself in his house and didn't make many more council meetings.
            The wedding was a gala affair with a very small live audience: The President of Ebolia, the Vanguard of Servia, all the nobility of Teria, the leaders of the small countries resting on the Tersian continent, and the leaders of the small Servian nations with whom the Vanguard could get along with both personally and diplomatically. The wedding was, of course, broadcast to all of Teria and most of the world. It was a decadent, royal affair, which was pretty much the Tersian event of the century. The glamorous details of who-came-with-whom, how large the cake was, how long the parade was, and how exquisite the food was were all reported in every major press outlet to the point of copyright, and so none of them can be written here. Suffice to say, it was the high-point of Endimion's reign.
            In reality, the wedding had nothing to do with the collapse of the Heartfire crown. It is important only because it involved Terra. Terra was the key to the events. However, the people of Teria were ecstatic over the whole affair. They had been waiting, wondering, and reading fictitious accounts of Endimion's love life for about five years. The King had a Queen. The Lord had a Lady. The Knight had a Damsel.
            It was Teria who was in distress.
            Terra had a secret, a secret so deep and so secure not even her lover could even surmise it's existence. It was only on certain occasions when he could even guess something was wrong with his wife. The secret brought guilt, and with guilt came a need to be loved. The harshest of pundits would say that the Queen never loved the King, but only received and responded to his affections.
That is, in every sense of the word, wrong. The Queen's love could be proven with what she did when she learned she was pregnant. She shared her secret, tearfully whispered to her husband spontaneously spoken in the middle of the day.

            The dilemma that faced Endimion suddenly was tremendous beyond explanation. The ordeal was so intense that he needed to consult a vast number of the world's greatest minds for advice.
            He started with his own council. They were flabbergasted, and gave no helpful advice. In fact, the only response they gave was in the form of the Fish and Game advisor, who screamed,             "Told you so!” Spat on the ground, and then quit his job.
            The next pair of thinkers came from Servia. "We recommend the only sensible course of action." The dark-haired, greasy scientists said. "Abort the child. Divorce the Queen. If she does not divorce civilly, hire EGG." 'Hire EGG' was a Servian euphemism for the assassination of political prisoners. "Your majesty, you are facing what may be the end of cilivization as we have known it for two thousand years."
            The next ensemble of thinkers came from a panel of freelance 'experts' hailing from around the world. "We can see nothing wrong with bringing the child to term and keeping the whole affair silenced. What the world doesn't know..."
            The next mind, while not the last, was the definitive. Sage D'orac, the Dean of the Ebolian University. D'orac was the greatest thinker at the time, and will be remembered forever as one of the greatest men who ever lived.
            "I really don't care." Was his advice. "Is that all?"
            Endimion nearly snarled. D'orac was a comical figure, very short, very round, with a spherical head, oval spectacles, and two handlebar mustaches compensating for a bald head. "No, it isn't. I've been told that this is the event of the world as we know it. 'I don't care' isn't a humane answer."
            "Humane! That's the thing." D'orac said gleefully. "You can either do the safe thing, or the humane thing. I don't think either option is the smart option."
            "If you'd like your fee, I'd like a course of action." Endimion said drolly, knowing that it would catch the attention of any Ebolian.
            "You're not using your brain, sire." D'orac said. "If she wanted to take advantage of the situation, she wouldn't have come to you by chance as a tutor. No, if she wanted your attention she would have had it long ago. And what would she gain by waiting for a child?"
            Endimion nodded. "That's right. Thank you."
            D'orac let out a mighty, "Aha!" before shaking his finger at the King. "You're still not thinking! Do you want to trust the fate of the world on mere circumstances? No, you want to reach a conclusion based on what you know! You know that the Queen takes a special diet low in meat. You know she abhors all sunrises. She is pregnant, so I'm assuming you've seen her naked at least once...?"
            Endimion blushed, and nodded.
            D'orac snapped. "But not completely!” He laughed at the pleasure of knowing what royal family members wore in the sack. “She wears four bracelets which never leave her person! Four manacles that were wielded onto her arms under my own supervision, which renders her as harmless as a career Tersian soldier!” Endimion was too busy picturing the bracelets to respond to the Sage, even after he paused. “In short, Terra lives her life in a manner which is dictated by a method I developed myself, and it gives her, and the rest of the world, piece of mind. And, if you triple my fee, I'll give you a tape recording of me saying, 'there is no harm in the marriage between you and the Queen.'"
            Endimion smiled, and pointed to a one-way mirror over his shoulder. "Already have one, actually. Thank you."

Denouement

            The announcement was made at a feast celebrating the second anniversary of Endimion's marriage. The ballroom in Teria Keep was decorated beautifully in blues and whites. A thousand candles flickered against the hand-ground crystal. A table many yards long was outfitted with the most comfortable chairs in the palace, and the undisputed best chef in Teria catered the food.
            The list of guests was pretty much the norm: All nobles of Teria (including the Baronet Quillfire, who had become a good friend and close advisor the both the King and Queen, and was in fact sitting as close you could get to Endimion without being Terra), the President of Ebolia, the Vanguard of Servia, the North Tersian leaders, the Servian leaders, et cetera. However, there were some notable inclusions. Sage D'orac was there, and was in fact the Toastmaster. There were some other Ebolian Sages, some generals from EGG, and, most notably, some tribal Kings from the Old Kingdom. They were Terra's doing: She encouraged Endimion to send a diplomatic mission to the islands and bring them closer to the rest of the world. Endimion found a great deal of pleasure in conversing with the Old Kings in their native tongue, which closely resembled Old Tersian.
            After an excellent feast (mostly devoid of beef, but the pheasant detracted from that), D'orac rose to the podium behind the head of the table.
            "Ladies and gentlemen, you have so far focused on a turkey stuffed with sage, so please now focus on a sage stuffed with turkey." And so began the downfall of the Heartfire Throne.

            "Ladies and gentlemen," Endimion began, repeating each sentence in Ebolian and Tersian, "Thank you all for showing up tonight. This little get-together is in honor of my wife, Queen Terra DeCiel Heartfire, and our completion of two years of marriage." Applause. "My wife has honestly done more for the people of Teria then any other Queen since the dawn of our Empire. Thanks to her, over ten thousand families moved into a clean, modern house last year. Thanks to her, soup kitchens are fully stocked and have begun teaching their patrons skills invaluable to their advancement in society. Thanks to her, thousands of needy students will have grants to pursue higher education. If all this can be accomplished in two years, the future of Teria is bright indeed.
            "Beyond that, it was the Queen's work which brought our four honored guests from the Old Kingdoms here. It is my wife's dream that this will be a turning point in world relations, and we hope that the people of the Old Kingdoms will learn that their cousins, the Tersians, Ebolians, Servians, and all other nationalities, are still of the same flesh, same blood, and same hopes for a united mankind!"
            This was worthy of a standing ovation, except for the Old Kings, who might bring themselves to work towards unity of mankind once they obliterated the infidels encroaching on their rightful land. They scowled at one another and frowned at the clothing, food, and electric lights.
            "However, there is another undertone to this evenings festivities. Another focus on the future of the world, and I call upon my lovely wife to speak."
            There was some stale, diplomatic applause. Endimion once called it the, “Why can’t they make speeches after desert?” clap.

            Terra glided to the podium. She was dressed in an ice blue dress which matched the rest of the room, and her face was the perfect picture of inner tranquility.
            "Well, for starters, I'm pregnant." The Baronet Quillfire let out a squeal of surprise, and the rest of the room applauded. A couple of the noble ladies dropped many of their deep-seated dislikes for the Queen.
            "And, to finish, I am the youngest in the Kinderflame line, and I have been a sorceress---"
            No one heard the rest of her sentence. The speech was being broadcast around the world, and the world froze.
            The Old Kings laughed audibly and heartily, and joked among each other about how blissfully wonderful it would be if they started another war and killed themselves in the process.

            Meanwhile, fathers snarled at the television, and mothers drew their children in close--- All knee-jerk reactions to the word 'sorceress'.
            It took only a few moments for the sharp ones to analyze the situation: Every vital leader in world politics was locked in one room with a sorceress. Never before had such a perfect opportunity presented itself to a sorcerer. M'rdyth? Born under an age of anarchy. T'rquin? Blazed his own path. T'rra? One wave of her hand, and the kings, presidents, dictators, emperors, viceroys and generals of the world would be smitten dead, face down in their hors d'oeuvres.
            Inside the Keep, the hundreds of candles became pillars of hellfire. The reflection in the crystal became the refractions of Gehana. The sky-blue decor became as cold as ice.
            Terra, or Sorceress Queen T'rra, to be respectful, stood, unmoving, at the podium. She looked, plainly, as if she was going to be sick. The guilt she had felt all her life swallowed her. It created a psychological need to be loved, and there was no love in the world for T'rra. She turned and faced her husband, who was as unmoving as the rest of the room.
            The first person to move was the President of Ebolia, and his action was carefully hidden. It was to spin the crown of his watch in a special movement. The watch began broadcasting a radio signal that screamed alerts and commands to every Ebolian Grand Guardian in the world.
            The Vanguard of Servia was next, and his gadget was disguised as the screws in his eyeglasses. They armed Servia's secret long-range missiles, but no one outside of Servia knew about those.
            One of the Old Kings took out an Old Tersian-Ebolian dictionary, and broke the silence by saying (gleefully), "Everyone is screwed."

Curtain

Never before had Teria been closer to lynching a royal family. At the end of the feast, T'rra started crying, and D'orac, in his usual unattached attitude, sang, "All but the waiters: Dismissed!" And then quickly amended it to open an impromptu press conference. D'orac was smart enough to know that there wasn't a single journalist who would approach Teria Keep with an armed guard. He used the 'press conference' to help himself to more pheasant.
            He was correct. Every journalist in the world thought that they could cover the story quite well, thank you, on their own, comfortably in their homes at a computer terminal. In fact, passing down a damnation to a Sorceress was one of the easiest things in journalism, as every college graduate had written an average of 4.89 papers on the Sorcerers and Sorceresses of the world.
            However, the leading newspaper of the time was The Daily Cornet, published in a small, diplomatically neutral country in the northern part of the Tersian continent. The staff gathered in a secret meeting which gave the Sorceress Queen several more months to live.
            "You see---" The editor said, rolling a fat cigar around his mouth, "every newspaper in the world is going to be calling for the abortion of the baby and demanding T'rra, in a cage, at the North Pole. But part of journalism is looking at the story in a fresh way, right? Well, we have just snagged a statement from Uncle Baldie (a pet nickname for Sage D'orac) saying everything the world needs to here. I've got an article all written up nice here..." He tapped a manila folder on his desk, "And all it needs is an author. A rookie, who is about to have his career made for him. Give me a name."
            "Thom Reagan." Someone offered.
            "Thom is about to become a very famous man. Remember, gents, if we do this right we'll be hung in effigy. Maybe someone'll fire bomb the office. This---" He said, blowing a smoke-ring,"could be our finest moment."
            The article was front page on every paper that subscribed to the Cornet Wire Service.

Sorceress: Safe
Sage D'orac Hennel, as told to Thom Reagan

All right boys and girls, let's think about sorcerers and sorceresses. As far as you know there have only been four: M'rdyth, T'rquin, P'rrol, and T'rra. Naturally, the world is a little better off now then when M'rdyth was calling the shots.
M'rdyth was born right after the breakup of the Tersian Republic. She is basically considered to be the first person to explore magical powers. She used this power to manipulate and force her way to the top of a shady network of rouges and spies known as the Hartian Compact. She established a reign of fire which has (and will continue to) scar the 's word' since it was used. But, of course you know this. T'rquin used similar tactics, and was defeated by Arwin Heartfire. The spot he was slain was marked by the greatest mausoleum ever built: Teria Keep and Palace. Of course you knew that too.
P'rrol never came to any sort of power. She was born and she died at the tender age of seventeen, murdered in cold blood by overzealous Tersian Nationals. She wasn't a Queen, she wasn't an Empress, she wasn't a threat.
Since P'rrol, and before P'rrol, sorcerers and sorceresses have been born, lived, and died. They didn't bear contractions or titles. They were called Mr, Mrs, Daddy, and Mommy. No one knew about them but them. I bet you didn't know that.
Sorcerers occur in 'lines', families, where the powers are passed on to the first-born and no other child, creating a chain of descendancy instead of a 'tree'. Lines start and end abruptly for reasons I suspect but cannot confirm.
The Sorceress Queen T'rra is just one of the few who know they are a part of a line. The Kinderflame line can be traced back four hundred years...: Needless to say, none of them have been troublemakers. But you didn't know that.
The Sorceress Queen takes great care to suppress the magical power which is her birthright. She starves herself of magical energy the best she can: Avoiding the sun, eating few animals, and doing careful mental exercises have carried her through all her life and will continue to as long as she lives.
The most impressive measure was designed by me personally: Powerful magnetic bracelets locked in place, unable to be removed. These magnets disrupt the natural flows of energy and cut down on T'rra's magical potential exponentially.
Feel free to place your trust in my judgment. You have as long as T'rra has been alive. But of course, you didn't know that.

           

           The world stood on edge for six months. The editor of The Cornet looked forward to being burned, skewered, sliced, beaten, and shot at in effigy on a daily basis, mostly on the lawn of the main office. However, Servia was quiet. EGG studied anti-magic measures carefully. Tersians ate, drank, and lived under a dark cloud.
            Then, the sky opened.
            It occurred over a tiny village known as Sina Togg. A swirling, chaotic mass of magical energy suddenly appeared over the village, and crashed into the tangible plane with force enough to leave a fifty-foot crater in lieu of the hamlet.
            Anything that touched the energy was contorted, morphed, and deformed. A simply beetle exploded in size, becoming the size of a car. Men grew extra limbs, lost their minds, and gained a thirst for blood. Some were completely engulfed in fire and still lived--- In their own, monstrous way. Plants were morphed into their own aggressive entities, granted unearthly freedoms of movement. The natural fiercesomeness of bears, badgers, cougars, and other beasts was magnified with the addition of tusks, spiked tails, and other fantastic horrors.
            Worst of all, the existence of magical creatures on the tangible plane changed physics as it was known. Electricity in all manners failed outright: No spark plugs, televisions, or plumbing. Guns worked fine, nothing electrical there, but oft the bullets wouldn't so much as draw blood from the monsters.
            The wave of energy seeped through the tangible plane just slower then the horseback riders. Women who knew how to ride spread the alarm. The men stayed back to fight. All others were warped or killed.
            On that day, Queen T'rra went into labor.
            The two major pieces of news mingled together in the process of transmission: "The monsters are coming! The Queen's child is coming! The monsters are here! The Queen's child is born!"
            By the time the news hit Teria City, an influx of refugees poured into the ancient stone embattlements. A mob formed outside Teria Keep and quickly overcame the National's standing guard. Some Nationals were killed after opening fire, and some turned on their King.
The mob stormed through the castle, burning and gouging, tearing down tapestries and anything that beared resemblance to Endimion. The horde was unstoppable. They were one body, acting in fear and hate, spreading through the Keep until they reached the infirmary.
            The room was abandoned, unlike most of the others. The nurses had gathered all the medicines and supplies they could and left. The King and Queen, however, remained behind. Their hands were clasped together, and their bodies were lifeless. Perhaps they poisoned themselves, perhaps the Queen killed her husband unwittingly, perhaps they simply had heart attacks at the same time. No one cared. No one noticed the bracelets T'rra wore to suppress her powers were torn in half and were on the floor. The only thing anyone noticed was the lack of an infant in the room.
            The mob burned the corpses in a gruesome pyre which gutted most of Teria Keep.
            However, Teria found a savior.

            His name was Vistian Delamore. He hailed from the Old Kingdoms, and when his chieftain was invited to that fated dinner in Teria it inspired to exile himself in the tradition of the first Tersians. As soon as he found someone who spoke Old Tersian (the closest thing to his own tongue) he announced he knew how to stop the onslaught. He retold the story of his tribe’s greatest hero, who defeated a horde of monsters centuries before. According to him, the way to defeat monsters was common knowledge among the men in his country.
            He gathered all the men he could and made his stand outside of Teria City's walls, and his army diverted the tide. The city was saved, but it was one of few.

            Vistian was appointed Commanding General of the Nationals, and hastily crowned himself Regent. He taught his men the tactics he knew to defeat the monsters, and his popularity soared.
            He gravely told the world that the monsters would not be eliminated for too many years. He asked for (and received) Teria's full support, and he vowed not to rest until Teria was free from the scourge.
            Once he was fully installed as Regent he immediately created an elite team of Nationals dubbed 'Black Gloves' (for their uniform). The first action of the Black Glove was a secret, gruesome one: They scoured the streets and delivered to Vistian the body of an infant boy, newly decapitated, for inspection. The presumed heir to the Heartfire throne, and the presumed end of the Kinderflame line.