Chapter Text
Long ago, Corona and the other kingdoms were only dreams in the minds of those who rallied by their sides villages that would become cities. Most of these villages were small towns, living from the products of the earth, and hunt, as well as craft industry.
Near a river away from the sea, on the side on a mountain, there was one of these little towns. It had prospered for decades, if not centuries, and sent its richness to its neighbor villages. This town is no more. Few people remember it has ever existed.
In this town, there was an apothecary. The healer was an old man, who had learned with faraway druids if you trusted his words. Many knew he had learned at the nearest big city. He had to help him a woman learning the job. She was young at the time, and till recently, longed to stay young. She was a great student, a fast-learner. Soon, she would take the apothecary and replace the magister as he went for a well-deserved retirement. The old doctor, none remember his name. But his student, all know her as Gothel.
She was born in the town, from a healthy family. One could say she was a spoiled child in her youth. She had pretty much everything she wanted. When she started something, was it reading, cooking, learning, building, she always finished it. She never wanted anyone to mess with her work, whatever it might be. Nor did she ever went to get anyone’s help. When she had decided she wanted to work at the apothecary, getting her to go learn with the healer instead of burying herself in books was proven quite difficult.
Yet, learning with the magister helped Gothel with the social distance she had always put between her and the others. There, she went easily get ingredients for unguents or potions, buy fabric and wood for casts, and go to the people when they needed help. None could have predicted this ever so helpful young lady would turn later into a selfish old witch.
One day in winter, as she was up in the mountain to get scarce medicinal plants, an impressive explosion echoed from afar. Gothel, like everyone else in her village and the whole country, looked up to the sky. There it was, fire in plain day.
There were two comets, or what looked like comets, one yellow, the other blue, whirling together in the sky. From the yellow one emanated gentle swirls of light, while from the blue one came lightning. The comets were falling fast, and as they crossed into the atmosphere, they separated. During a fraction of seconds, a wide dark cloud shaded the sky behind them. It was gone as fast as it as came.
The yellow one went south from Gothel’s village, toward the sea, while the blue one went east, to a land of dark mountains. Never the soon-to-be healer could have thought that day that her life and fate would be linked to these fragments of cosmos fallen on the Earth.
But for the moment, these comets had already sealed her fate. Winter was here, and snow covered big parts of the mountain’s sides. The explosion caused by the cosmic entities coming to the Earth started an avalanche. Gothel had only time to protect herself behind a rock big enough, away from the avalanche’s main track, but she could do nothing for her village, directly down the path of snow. She could only watch. The avalanche wasn’t a normal one, all could see that. It was gigantic, one that could trap cities for ages, one that could destroy civilizations. And with the falling snow from the mountain side rose a blizzard storm. To see only meters away was a prowess worth of godlike eyes. And none had that. Who knows how long the storm longed? Hours, that was certain. To see an end in this freezing hell on Earth would have required precognition.
When at last the avalanche was over, and the storm calmed enough to see part of the valley, Gothel tried to get back down to her home. Her foot found a slippery stone frozen by the wet and chilly air, and she fell down to her village, caught in her furs of clothes.
When she came back to her senses, it was dusk, and the village was lifeless. She blinked, trying to remember what had happened. As Gothel tried to get up, she fell again, the weight of snow on her cloak binding her to the ground. Yet, her short movement saved her. Someone, away, with a fired torch in hand, saw her, and came running.
“Master,” she could hear a male voice say to someone else, “come, there’s a survivor!”
“Get a shovel, Xavier, I’ll start a fire,” answered the other person.
“I’m on it,” said Xavier. “Hang on there, miss, we’re going to get you out.”
That was all Gothel remembered. As soon as she understood she was saved, her mind drifted away from consciousness.
The next thing she remembered was getting warmed with a heavy wool cover, in front of a bright campfire. As her eyes turned around, she recognized the area. It was her village, but the ground must have been meters below her, and only the up floors windows could be seen out of the snow.
At her left, one of the men that saved her was sleeping, while the other, in front of her, was keeping the fire alive.
“How are you, miss?” he asked her.
She recognized the voice as the one who had been called master by the other man.
“I’m fine…” Gothel answered, unsure. “Who else is alive?”
“We came as soon as we heard of the avalanche, but I fear we came too late. You were the only one we could find in the snow. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re not the one who caused the avalanche.”
“In a way, I might be. I am Demanitus. I am a man of science, an engineer, though I do some magic too. And I have been working on the frail paths that exists between this world and others. And I fear my last attempt to open a portal caused these comets to come to Earth.”
“That’s impossible,” said Gothel. “There is no such things as other worlds. And these comets, they were bond to come here. It’s how things are in the sky.”
“Yes, they had to come. I call them Sundrop and Moonstone, as them come from the Sun and Moon. But if my calculations are correct, and they always are, they weren’t supposed to come before a long time. Centuries, millennia maybe. The cosmos time if far from the time we know here.”
“And so, what are you going to do, Demanitus? My village is certainly not the only one to have suffered from these Sundrop and Moonstone, as you call them.”
“I doubt it. But I can’t be anywhere at once. My student Xavier and I have were close to this village when it happened. As much as it pains me to tell you this, your home is gone, miss. You could join us.”
“I… I’ll have to think about it.”
“Of course, I’m not expecting you to follow us blindly. May I just know your name?”
“I’m Gothel.”
“Glad to meet you, Gothel. You should get some sleep. I’ll wake Xavier up to guard the camp. At dawn, we’re leaving. As you said it, other villages may need our help.”
The rest of the night was cold, and the wool cover was just enough to not freeze in place. When they woke up at dawn, the snow hadn’t melt at all, and only the rooftops could help recognize the area, are none of the streets nor roads signs could be seen.
They broke camp as soon as possible and went on the road. Or at least, above what they assumed was the road. They walked for days, and during all those days, the yellow and blue lights in the sky kept shining, beacons of mysteries far away.
The nearest town had been built next to a river. As they took down the path to the streets, a heavy fog welcomed them. Demanitus lighted the way with a flame in his palms, as did Gothel, as she had already learned a trick or two from the scientist. Xavier preferred a trustful torch.
Not that he despised magic, but he always thought of it as being too unpredictable, and relied more on hard facts. Yet, his imaginative mind found within legends the pleasant idea of magic, and each time they encountered anyone with a great story to tell, he was the one to write it down, ready to tell it back to anyone who would listen.
“Anyone here?” shouted Demanitus to whoever could hear him in the town.
“This place is truly one of a kind, master,” said Xavier. “I don’t feel like we should stay here.”
“It’s only a town,” said Gothel, a bit mocker. “You wouldn’t scared of an abandoned town, wouldn’t you, Xavier?”
“Abandoned or not, I don’t trust the silence that comes from it. You know what they say. It’s only the calm before the storm. We should get going.”
“Gothel’s right, Xavier,” said Demanitus. “Let’s see if people need our help and only after, we’ll go.”
“Right, master,” said Xavier reluctantly. “I’ll set a camp and start a fire.”
“Don’t bother,” said Gothel.
With a flexion of her wrist, she lighted a basket of dried twigs against a wall.
“That was someone’s basket!” exclaimed Xavier.
“Well, that was fire wood. They got a fire, and so do we.”
“Stop bickering, my friends,” stopped them Demanitus. “We all have different ways of doing things, that shouldn’t divide us. Let’s get to what we’re here for, so we can move on.”
“Right, master,” said Xavier.
“Whatever,” said Gothel.
She was the first to venture in the dark streets of the town. Demanitus followed soon, whereas Xavier stayed by the fire, in case its lightning and warmth attracted some of the blizzard’s victims.
And soon, indistinct shadows came, three they were, two seemingly flying then coming down to walk, the other, a very massive one, walked on shadowy tentacles, that soon retracted to legs. Xavier didn’t saw them at first. He was tending to the fire, and from time to time, eyed around, but saw no one. Until he saw the three silhouettes coming his way. He stood up, took his torch with him, and walked to them.
“Hey, there, I’m here to help! Come by the fire,” he shouted, hoping they would hear him.
“Fire… Fire…” the tallest silhouette said with a hiss, “yes, fire is all we need. Come, my disciples, come.”
The first person Xavier saw clearly was the one who had talked. She was a tall woman, wearing a black dress and some sort of lace apron, and she had on her forehead a diadem of pearls, with one pearl-like falling between her eyes. Her two followers were a man and another woman. The woman was the shortest of them three, with a small bend hunchback, resting on a wooden walking stick, her gray hair wore in two bunches on the sides of her head. The man was strangely out of the group, with the way he dressed like some landlord of faraway place, and his well trimmed Van Dyck styled facial hair.
“How can I help you, travelers?” asked Xavier, intrigued by these newcomers who seemed like they weren’t at all from the abandoned town.
“We were passing by” answered the tall woman. “Are you alone in this place?”
“That depends.”
“On what, may I ask?” asked the man, who kept solemnly his hands together as if he was praying.
“I got friends. And I don’t think you’re from here, pals. I’m here to help victims of the storm. Not unharmed passersby.”
“Absolutely perceptive…” commented the short lady. “And is it for that you refuse to help us?”
“I never refuse to help anyone,” corrected Xavier. “I just see that you might not be in need of much help.”
From a nearby alley behind him came the rustle of someone walking in the snow. They all turned around to face the person coming. It was Gothel.
“There’s no one here,” she said before noticing the three newcomers. “Oh, Xavier, I see you’ve found some people.”
“Yes,” said the tallest woman. “As I said to your friend, we were passing by. May we join you?”
“I don’t see why not,” Gothel answered. “But you gotta see that with the boss.”
“The boss? And who might it be?” asked the man.
“Demanitus. It is I,” said the scientist as he arrived as well from another street. “This town is truly abandoned. We shouldn’t stay here longer. If it pleases you, Xavier.”
“Absolutely, master. I’m packing our stuff.”
Xavier used this diversion to get the things he and his friends had left near the fire while they were in the town. Though he had a trustful soul, these newcomers didn’t seem like persons he should trust.
“And so, what are you here for?” asked Demanitus to the travelers.
“We are passing by. The lights from the sky pointed this direction. We came,” explained the tallest woman.
“You are not from around here, I can tell that,” said Demanitus.
“Does everybody here despises strangers?” asked the other woman.
“No, I simply meant, you seem quite… Otherworldly,” precised the scientist. “Care to join us in our journey?”
“We’d love to. You can call me Zhan Tiri. My disciples are Sugracha and Tromus.”
“The more the merrier,” commented Tromus.
“Perfect,” said Demanitus. “Xavier, are we ready to go?”
“Absolutely, master. Here, Gothel, can you take this?” he asked giving her a basket of not yet burned wood.
“Yeah sure, whatever.”
She took the basket, quite reluctantly as she had preferred the part of the journey when she had nothing to carry. But now, they were a team, and teammates helped each other. They hit the road as one, and walked together on the road, toward another town to visit.
As the day went on, the Demanitus team and Zhan Tiri’s spoke a bit. Well, it is true that Xavier did his best to keep silent and observe the other group, though Demanitus and Zhan Tiri exchanged ideas on all that was possible to imagine as subject of discussion. And as for Gothel, she spoke vigorously with Tromus and Sugracha. From what Xavier heard, they talked about magic, and the healer-in-training was captivated by the spells and magical history the two others explained to her. No doubt magic would take a great place in her life.
As for their journey, they knew they were going somewhere, searching. A search for what? Right now, each of them had an idea of where they were going, what they were searching for. But none dared say it aloud.