The Three Dar Angels

Hello all, for those who remember me, it's been a while.

While I was writing The Loners, I mentioned that I was working on a very large project. This is that project.

This is the first few hundred pages of the first of four books, which is currently vastly incomplete at this time, so I apologize for the abrupt ending this has. (This is also my 4

th

rewrite of this story.)

It hasn't been accepted by anything, but I am curious to see as to how readers might react to this story.

So, I present to you the preview of what I have so far.

I claim all copyrights and such, but honestly, good luck trying to figure out all of the pieces of the puzzle with this.

I also thank those who choose to read this ahead of time, and I would like honest opinions.

The World Known As Magicka

Magicka, the name given to this world. No one knows where it came from (although much speculations is abound), and no one really knows why it has stuck around for as long as it has (longer than any written records indicate), but, that is the name accepted by most who live on Magicka.

The general consensus is the obvious, that the name 'Magicka' is derived from the term 'magic', which, once upon a time (at least, according to speculation) was wielded by all humans on Magicka during what is now known as the First Age of Humans. However, this is also a time which any and all written records are lost, and the only stories known of that time were stories passed down verbally until finally it was gathered and printed on paper. Unfortunately, even this collection of Magicka's unknown history is mostly based on speculation and various 'consistencies' of the stories that had been told.

The basic premise surrounding the First Age of Humans is that there was a city which rested on a cloud in the sky called Nirvana, and possessed a World Gate, which allowed travel between the city and the surface below it by creating a portal within each arch of the Gate connecting the two locations. It is unknown whether the World Gate of Nirvana was created by human hands or perhaps created by beings who had moved on. Regardless, the idea was successfully copied and the Magi were able to duplicate the power of the World Gate, and perhaps is the main reason why the Magi are unified to this day.

Each World Gate operates in a pair, and each pair of connecting World Gates must be created from the same source of material that it's twin came from. For example, a Gate built with materials from one mountain will not connect to another Gate built with materials from another mountain. The two must come from the same source, and must be, in a strange sense, 'twins' from the same parent.

Each Gate is little more than an archway on the outside, but the real difficulty in constructing the Gates is the complex artistic designs that are inscribed on each Gate and the complex rituals to create a solid connection between both Gates that allows the Gates to create a portal between one another. These too, must be perfect duplicates, which causes problems concerning maintenance. If a single line is worn due to weather or someone just randomly scratching at the Gate, the Gate's connections will be severed and the Gate will not work.

The history of Nirvana is almost completely unknown, and no archaeological evidence of Nirvana's existence have never been found, though many point to the Lost Desert as a possibility of where the ruins were buried since, according to the myth, Nirvana was supposedly located at the center of the pangea, and it's position in the sky never changed.

The only known story concerning Nirvana itself is the time of it's downfall, and the story of the demons and the White Angel. Details of this story vary depending on who is asked, but the short version is that at some point, demons from beyond Magicka attempted to invade and devour the world, and a man named Garserimos rose to become the White Angel of legend and defeated the demons with the destruction of Nirvana, finally bringing it down to the surface. From there, little else is known and is surrounded by speculation.

Whether or not these stories held any such merit at all, that is a different question entirely. However, most believe that some part of this history is true somewhere, for the World Gates

do

exist in the present day. Demons on the other hand, or the power of the White Angel...stories of this kind are always exaggerated.

Back then, supposedly, Magicka itself held a very different face than what it is today, and did not have the two Great Phenomenon. In the world of Magicka today, there is only a single but large pangea of land in the entire world which measured approximately thirteen to fourteen thousand miles across starting from one end of the pangea to the other. This pangea, oddly, was divided in two different ways by two natural boundaries. (Once again, even this is held in speculation, with conspiracy theorists throwing countless explanation at the two 'natural' boundaries of the pangea, their origins and their 'purposes'. )

One was the Great Ocean of Chaos, a stretch of five thousand miles of ocean which touched both ends of the pangea, which, for some odd reason or another, was plagued by the Great Storm of the Ocean of Chaos, a storm powerful enough to render almost all of the Great ocean unfit for any sort of naval travel thanks to high winds, powerful waves, and a somewhat unnatural sink rate of any who dared to try.

Most say it is a natural event, that many elements ranging from cold and hot fronts, winds, jet streams, the vastness of the ocean and so on created the endless cycle of storms, some of which spread out in the form of hurricanes which struck the pangea of Magicka on a random and mostly inconsistent basis. Others believe it was an act of the Supreme One, or the Dragons, or the Phoenix, or whatever other belief system people followed. And a select few believe that this was done on purpose, though it is generally believed that no human, Magi or Tech, could have created the vast storm which rested on the Great Ocean, and these conspiracy theorists believe that there was another unseen hand which gave birth to the Great Storm.

What little is known about the history is the written accounts which dated all the way back to Visigoth, the Grand Dragoon in the year 436 when the Great Storm was confirmed to have been discovered, or created, depending on which version is told. Shortly after a failed naval invasion of the Magi, it was documented that somehow Visigoth had created the storm in order to protect the Magi from any further invasions by sea, acting as a giant destructive wall to protect Magi waters. However, this simply is impossible. No human, Magi or otherwise, had ever displayed that kind of power, not even Visigoth himself from what is shown of the records of his abilities, and was ultimately believed that it was the will of a divine being.

The second natural landscape which divided the pangea was the far more prominent Lost Desert, a three thousand mile stretch of a seemingly endless and lifeless desert which touched both the North and South Seas at the top and bottom of the pangea, and it's center is located at almost the exact center of the pangea. This 'positioning' of the desert is one of the main reasons why so much speculation surrounded the Lost Desert and it's origins. The other reason is the noted increase in size over the period of it's history.

Once again, the desert is believed to be first documented a few hundred years after Osirus and the beginning of the Second Age of Humans. At the time, however, it was noted to be much,

much

smaller, perhaps the size of a large lake or so. As time passed, however, somehow the desert rapidly overtook almost all land to stretch into the vast emptiness that it has become today, with no true explanation for it's continuing growth.

Regardless of the 'mystery' surrounding these two boundaries, the fact is that they exist, and perhaps even because of the two of them, two vastly different human cultures arose on each side of the pangea.

On the western half of the pangea lived the culture of the Magi, and nearly all Magi were practitioners of magic in some form or another, it's use a common part of the daily life of the Magi. Magi were also very steeped in tradition, and thrived in a survival of the fittest type of society. If you were strong, and your magic was strong, more opportunities and respect would be given to you than those whom the Magi insultingly dub 'weak-bloods', Magi who were just that, weak-blooded Magi who were unable to use magic in the fashion that normal Magi can. This mindset has mostly turned the Magi world into a survival of the fittest society, where the strong live at the expense of the weak, and the weak accept their place at the bottom of society.

Magi were also traditionalists in the fact that they have shunned almost all forms of technology, seeing it as little more than compensation for those who were too weak to whatever that was required with their own two hands and power. Of course, this 'shun' of technology was hardly full proof, for there were plenty of 'convenient' objects or ideas that Magi took and applied in their own lives from those who lived through technology, those who lived on the other side of the pangea, the Techs.

Unlike the Magi, who were united completely (although loosely so, and the Outlands in particular were considered to be a separate state of their own, though they are officially claimed to be a part of the Magi), the Tech nations were not unified, and there were several different nations of the Tech world, with the major powers of the Tech world being Xerxes, the oldest Tech nation in history, and was considered older than even the Magi unity, though the reason for that was complex and shrouded in mystery.

All that was known for certain was the nation of Xerxes was established around two hundred years before the time of Osirus, and that Xerxes, as one nation at the time, had rapidly expanded into the unoccupied eastern half of the pangea. Although the Magi had expanded into the also unoccupied western half at a fast rate as well, Magi records of this time were scattered at best, and it was believed that the Magi were going through a dark period of disunity and lack of an overall culture from what few records of that time indicate.

Disaster, however, soon struck the nation of Xerxes when Lokar the Great made his greatest and only true mistake during the time of his rule, when he had set his sights west during the rise of Osirus.

Knowing that there were more humans that he could rally under the banner of Xerxes, he, along with warriors pulled from all corners of Xerxes, set out west to bring those who lived on the western side of the pangea under his banner either through negotiations, or by force. This would ultimately cost Lokar's life and most of his forces that he had brought with him. He had started with a force of 500,000 troops, and less than 8,000 would return from the failed campaign against Osirus, who had managed to rally and defeat the Xerxes force with 100,000, all of whom were practitioners of magic, and had been cut down to 10,000 before all was said and done.

Both the question of Lokar's successor back home, who did not have a male child and only one daughter, as well as the question of Lokar's abuse of power which had wasted so many lives in what was ultimately deemed a useless quest of greed, caused the southern half of Xerxes to rebel, and the rebels emerged victorious as they formed the nation of Atlantis which as of today is another major power in the Tech world. The invasions of Lokar's forces also began the bitter hatred between the two different cultures of Magi and Tech, with the Magi deeming their enemy as greedy barbaric weak-bloods who were attempting to gain power they did not deserve. The Tech nations, on the other hand, saw Magi as 'unnatural' creatures who wield powers of divine beings, and their existence was an affront to the Supreme One.

Shortly after Atlantis was formed, however, disagreements immediately emerged and civil strife threatened to tear the new nation apart. However, due to them having just fought a civil war against Xerxes, those who did not want to remain instead simply left to create their own nation further into the east, the nation of Ouswa. Ouswa would unfortunately have the most chaotic history of the great nations, which was now currently occupied by Atlantis, Xerxes, and the current superpower of the Tech world, Montania.

Despite the civil war, Xerxes continued to press east all the way to the sea, discovering what was initially named the Montanian Range, and is now known as the Great Mountains of Montania.

Ironically, on the other side of the pangea, a similar set of great mountains also resided in the top corner, which are referred to as the Dragon Mountains.

Seeing an opportunity when they first discovered the Great Mountains, Xerxes commanders began training legions of soldiers in the harsh and ruthless mountains, even going so far as to leave full families at the mercy of the mountain. In return, after a few generations of full training, the elite Montanian Corps began, and their mission, to go deep into the sea that lay before them and conquer any land that they discover.

Eventually, a force of 800,000 forces were assembled, which led to the eventual victory of Visigoth and the creation of the Great Storm mentioned earlier.

Once again, the failure of a large campaign caused another uprising, and Xerxes, believing that they had learned their lesson from Atlantis and could put down a second rebellion more effectively, attempted to put down the Montanian rebellion by force, only to be defeated once more and the nation of Montanian was born.

Unlike the nation of Atlantis, whose leaders were divided after the birth of the nation, and divided into two separate nations and avoided further confrontation with Xerxes, the Montanians held a much stronger sense of unity, nearly of the all families trained under the harsh conditions of the Great Mountains together, and together, decided to attempt to take the 'weak' empire of Xerxes for their own.

The Montanians eventually took half of Xerxes before they were stopped, leading to an almost never ending bloody history between the two great powers, with many victories and defeats on both sides until the boundaries of today were established after the Great War of the 1960's, when Xerxes, finally exhausted all of it's supplies in a war which had gone on for twenty years, ended up spilling over into all of the nations of the eastern half of the pangea, each nations picking and choosing sides, and came to an abrupt end when Xerxes broke an unspoken truce between all nations. Xerxes dropped four atomic bombs at the advancing enemy army to broker for a truce, the bombs themselves having been created in the early stages of the war. Montania had won the race, but Xerxes had only turned out to be six months behind, and while the two nations scrambled for the weapons, both had also been hesitant to use them.

Casualties during the Great War had already been in the upward of fifty to sixty million at the time the bombs were dropped, and most were already tired of the destructive twenty year war. But it would be the Four Great Disasters which had, in a flash, added hundreds of thousands to that list, plus the countless more who had been affected by the fallout, and had nearly led to the end of almost all life in the eastern pangea, but ultimately instead led to the established peace as well as the Tech Alliance Organization, or TAO for short. TAO was, in lament's terms, an open assembly of all Tech nations which could act in the interest of the all Tech nations. All of this would go through normal channels of diplomacy, and eventually put to vote before the five TAO Councilmen. Each Councilmen represented each of the five major powers, Montania, Xerxes, Atlantis, the current representative of the occupied Ouswa, and lastly the Coalition of Smaller Nations representative, who held the tie breaker vote between the four major powers.

The purpose of this organization? To prevent another full scale war like the Great War, and many times during the turbulent 70's and 80's era, the council worked around the clock as tensions between the great nations rose, fell, and rose again until the 'Peace' decade, the 90's, finally eased off a great portion of the tension between the nations with near endless demonstrations for peace all across the great nations, ranging from worker strikes to protests to throwing false votes during election years until finally the nations yielded to their people and established more friendly and open relationships as TAO's authority over it's members was increased.

Unfortunately, however, TAO has come under active fire by many, and the Coalition of Smaller Nations had withdrawn from TAO as a result of the ongoing Ouswan occupation, which a number believe either Montania, Xerxes, Atlantis, or even all three of them, have been using TAO as an excuse to continue their occupation of Ouswa and the failure of TAO to bring any form of peace to Ouswa, which was currently in revolt all across Ouswa.

In 2003, an extremist named Jackie Harnigan rose to power in Ouswa, promising that Ouswa, which was in a state of depression at the time, would be restored to it's former glory and began establishing Ouswa as a military state. TAO immediately began to take action, calling for sanctions and such, but it was finally when the invasion of the Smaller Nations begun that TAO called for a military intervention, a short 3 year campaign which would ultimately end in disaster as Jackie, who had been sure to keep a nuclear bomb close to himself at all time as a form of 'personal insurance', ordered the launch of all of Ouswa's nuclear weapons as he 'led the way', detonating his 'personal' nuke in Haphster, the capitol of Ouswa, killing himself and over six million with him.

Fortunately, Jackie's orders were never carried out as the remaining Ouswan commanders surrendered, since Jackie had taken all of his loyal followers with him, and no one retaliated with their own nuclear arsenal. For the first few years after the Tragedy of Haphster, the TAO occupation forces, led by the superpower Montania, were praised as liberators, but the seeds of discord had already been planted, for the people were divided into two separate ideals. One was the more pacifist side, who wanted everything to return to the status quo before Jackie Harnigan had gained power, the other were the ones who wanted to carry Jackie's initial vision of a strong and powerful Ouswa, and began to believe that the occupation forces were secretly attempting to undermine the power of Ouswa.

Just four years after the Tragedy of Haphster, an armed revolt began in Ouswa, one that would plunge the TAO forces in the midst of a civil war, and suffer many casualties thanks to the underground networks in Ouswa and the effective hit and run terrorist strikes against the occupation forces, turning the initial planned five year occupation and restoration of Ouswa into a land plagued by civil war which continues to drag on.

Unfortunately, however, the written word can only reveal so much, and even more so, the history written by imperfect humans must by default, be imperfect. Even facts which are acknowledge by all on Magicka may ultimately be fallacies. Many stories of Magicka's history contains elements of both fact and fiction, and the dividing line which separates the two is very rarely identified as fact and fiction permanently become entwined into one, and the truth becomes lost and forgotten.