The Land of Mages
What once was great
I haven't been there for very long, and most of it I was a child. But I do remember the high towers and the splendors. There is no mere house, the most modest habitation is a palace, held together by complex rituals established eons ago. Nothing is the same, either. From logic-defying shapes to slick ivory obelisks, each landmark is a wonder. There is no cold, no heat, everything is at the right temperature and the sky ever-sunny, but the crops never lack water. What's more, I remember playing on the Rovyis Plaza, you see it had this fountain that covered the whole square like a dome of sparkling fabric. You could draw shapes in the droplets, and if they were close enough to a living thing, it would come to life and swirl around you. I loved this place, I could spend so many hours just looking at the creations of others and make little fishies to play with me. Mind that it wasn't anything special, a barely traveled square that went widely unnoticed. When you don't know anything else, it seems normal, but now that I see how the outside world is... Everything seems so backward. No offense.
Sat atop a high plateau culminating at over six hundred meters, the land of mages was the subject of envy and admiration for centuries. Mysterious heart of magic closed to the world, under attack but never yielding nor countering, it was a nation dedicated to art and progress, deaf to the suffering of a broken land.
As history goes
Admiration
After the Great Tide, when magic fell upon the world, the survivors gave birth to babies with extraordinary power. Mages were rare, but incredibly powerful. They could lift mountains or split the tides with a thought, build palaces overnight and fend off the scariest monsters.
For a time, magic was seen as a boon. Practitioners were councilors of kings and emperors, headmasters of prestigious universities and bricklayers of wonders. They were also wielders of catastrophes, rampaging warmasters and scourge of their foes. Both revered and feared, mages had an undeniably special place in society.
Resentment
Eventually, fear took over admiration. Relentlessly, the Inquisition built distrust toward mages, whispering of their ill intent in the ears of monarchs and powerful merchants. Where they showed reluctant to sever ties with the mightiest beings in existence, the people listened with rapt attention to the rumours. Inquisitors fanned the sparks of a conflict that soon ignited as multiple revolution erupted throughout the lands.
Life was a tough one, and the almighty mages were seemingly unable to improve the existence of the common folks, keeping their magic for the wealthy and highborns. After the downfall of the kingdoms of Revyon and Talie, the other rulers finally turned their back on mages and joined their voices to the accusations.
The Founding Council
Dismal and betrayed, all of the world's mages except for 47 gathered at the peak of Mount Sullyman to decide of their course of action. By then, the entire world was against them and the inquisitorial witch hunters were set on erasing all traces of magic. For 54 days and nights, 2486 demigods debated.
If a good number of mages were advocating for violence and domination over the foolish humans, the majority quelled their anger in favor of peace. If the world rejected them, so be it, they would retire and not cause trouble. They collectively decided to built a new country from the ground up, a country with no contact with the outside world, only ever coming of help to those who first extended their hands.
With the cooperation of everyone, they elevated a desert so high no ladder could reach, warded it against all possible attack and warned of great doom whoever would approach with a dark heart.
But I thought the mages were pacifists? Beside, they never retaliated to the countless sieges.
Empty threats, but they hoped that they would be taken seriously. After all, they were made by the newly declared Land of Mages. Every inhabitants swore an oath to never harm a living being if it could be avoided. An oath that was never broken, until recently.
Wondrous land
At the establishment of the new nation, each mage was given four acres of land. It may seem small compared to the lavish palaces they used to live in, but space is to a mage but a suggestion. Almost every house is deceivingly larger in the inside than on the outside, to the point that buildings fitting to the physical laws were exceptions rather the norm.
Furthermore, they had a lot more space to experiment, create art and explore the limits of their crafts. While building over the work of another mage was seen as poor etiquette, there was no rule for overlapping planes of existence, which were so numerous that room was never an issue, even centuries in the future.
Over the time, some edifices crumbled, sometimes at the death of their maker or from supernatural causes. But most of the time, the mages themselves would tear down or move one of their creation to replace it with something new, or just because they got tired of it. As such, the urban landscape was constantly shifting, feeling as if it was sometimes alive.
Some landmarks were special though, immutable and towering. These, none could modify without the agreement of the community, and were the only reliable buildings.
The University
Of course, I have been to the university. When we are fledgling mages, it is our only home. For how long, it depends on our skills. The most talented apprentice of all times left the academy grounds when she was six, but others spend decades before earning this right. As for me, it took me seventeen years, by which I was twenty. That's above average, but not enough to get me the praises of my teachers.
Center of learning and education, the great University was a behemoth even for the Land of Mages. It sheltered few students, rarely more than ten at a time. What mandated the size was the facilities, and the common issues for apprentices to acutely control their powers. To limit the extent of the damages, it was better to dissipate the raw energy into the air through a series of intricate wards rather than building blast-resistant walls which never held up to their promises.
The building is also home to those who took upon themselves the burden to teach their craft to children. A volunteer duty that few had the patience to accept for more than a few years. As such, the handful of professors were granted a slightly higher social status, as well as the University amenities, better than most.
The Workshop
There is little need for a workshop to mages, as the only tool they ever need is their creative mind and ambient mana. However, that requires heaps of efforts, and can be very tiring. As a matter of fact, burn-out is the most common affliction mages suffer from. The Workshop is there to alleviate the pain by automating life as much as possible.
As with many buildings, the workshop is immensely larger inside. Mechanical belts as far as the eye can see, strapped to automatons repetitively refining raw materials and crafting precision mechanisms, or cooking the same delicious recipes over and over.
I've never been there, but I walked along the walls once or twice, and despite the many soundproofing wards, the buzzing chaos was still insanely loud. I've always wanted to visit, maybe contribute. Too bad I won't have the chance.
The Council Chamber
Honestly, that's the plainest building of all. I mean, at the time it was probably impressive, but now that techniques and architecture have been so refined, it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. The dome is pretty, I guess. Nobody I knew wanted anything to do with it, and that's probably why it was isolated from the city center into the countryside.
In the early days, a grand council was held every month to discuss the matters of the budding country. Every single mage was invited to speak, they could exchange ideas and proposals for days until a consensus was found. They all gathered in the circular auditorium domed by a cupola of light mimicking the splendors of the night sky. Each seat was tailored to the taste of its holder, allowing them to eat and sleep comfortably during the debates.
The council session took a lot of time, sometimes for little improvements. Little by little, the denizens of the land got disinterested in attending, instead electing representatives to argue and share their ideas in much thinner, but much more dynamic assemblies. Then, as all individuals were doing their own things and collective work was not up to the hype anymore, even elected councilor ceased to attend. In the decades before the Riptide, there were still elections and councilors chose one of them to be the head of the council and de facto leader of all mages, but all that hold little importance to anyone.
The countryside
In the land of mages, nearly all the residents lived in the same place, the capital city that spanned half of the surface. It sprawled from the long stairs into the center of the plateau, leaving the surroundings to the wild. However, even the social individualism reigning in the city is too much for some hermits, who prefered to build their home away from the buzzing activity, often hidden in the woods or at the bottom of a lake.
There is a surprising amount of lake for a land where it never rains, and they all have some sort of aquatic palace from which nobody ever comes out. I don't know how unique they think this idea is, but at least thirty seven of them got the same.
Most of the wilderness is an experimentation field for biomancers and landscapers. The woods are full of failed experiments turned murderous monsters, and the ground suffer regularly from abnormal deformation, sometimes in the fabric of reality itself. The land outside of the capital was as unsafe as it could be, with only seasoned mages confident in their combat skills daring to take walks too far.
I wonder what happened there. With magic gone, have the geological phenomenon calmed down? And what of the creatures, some were pure mana, others could live only by channeling their nutrients through magical organs. I don't have any hope, I have no doubt that my homeland has become a dead zone covered in salt.
The Riptide
I still have nightmares of that day. You know, the fountain I mentioned earlier? I was there, fuming about my inaptitude. For the past few days, I've been unable to conjure even the simplest spell. I now know that it had nothing to do with my skills, but I was oblivious at the time. Much like I didn't understand why it was so difficult to draw the fishes I was used too. And suddenly, all the droplets suspended in the air poured down the square and drenched me. My first thought was an unprompted alteration of the edifice, it happens sometimes. Then I saw the mansions surrounding the place turn into rubble. I got blown away in a dust cloud, and hit my head on the pavement. The rest of the day is a blur, I remember being pulled away by a professor of the academy, one whose name eludes me.
The land of mages, as its name implies, was a place built entirely with magic. Some elements were natural, but only a slight portion of the land. From buildings to automatons to the land itself, everything underwent magical influence. When the Riptide severed the leylines that powered the plateau, it all fell apart. Pocjet dimensions and extended spaces crumbled on themselves, trapping the unfortunate mages that happened to be inside. Complex mechanisms ceased to function, going hayware or merely crashing into each others in a dramatic rumble.
A large number of mages died as their entire world collapsed, the rest was left dazed in the ruins of their former glory eclipsed in an instant. They were still counting the dead and trying to make sense of what just happened when the Inquisitorial forces stormed the now defenseless plateau to complete the deed. The invaders were met with little resistance, and by dawn no mage remained on the high plateau, all either escaped or dead.
They came in the dead of night, just when we began to have a semblance of organization. Hooded figures clad in black, rusty sword in hand and a devious smile. The inquisitors are depicted as saints down here, white templars in their shining armors, but this is not what I saw. A band of assassins using the shadows to murder defenseless innocents who already lost everything. Eventually, screams and sound of fight resonated in the ruins. The professor that saved me told me to run away and not look behind while he would go and help the others. I was still in a daze so I listened to him and I ran, into the wilderness to the cliff on the other side, where a secret passage allowed me and a few others to escape. I'm fortunate nothing happened. Or maybe it did. I just ran blindly into the night without a cause. I starved for a few days, until I met you.
Comments