Sentarian Magick

Once, Sentmar had no humans.

It was a place of beauty, of magick, of innocence.

Power whispered and lingered like wisps of morning moisture upon the air. It glistened and sparkled like fortune’s gems and trilled its sweet magick like the song of the tweeterlings.

Then, the Sidhe brought to Sentmar humans from a realm where violence and fear subverted magick.

These humans, they swore, understood all magicks. They swore they were creatures of peace who only sought to escape the death that followed them for their loyalty to the Sidhe.

Our councils protested this addition. Our Seers saw a darkness on the horizon arriving with these creatures. Our rulers listened to the sad tale of these humans with trepidation. And we denied the Sidhe their request. We wanted not the humans they sought refuge for, though we knew great sympathy for their plight.

The Sidhe, being the Sidhe, listened to naught but their own wants. They brought these humans and placed them in the one place they knew we would not sense the darkness in their souls.

At least, not for a while.

By the time we found these creatures they had multiplied. Like nothing we had known on Sentmar, they rooted themselves to the land the Sidhe had placed them on and called it their own. A land that had once thrived with the fragile buds of magick spreading into it. A land whose magick became hidden, frightened and cowering in the shadows like the children those humans would strike at their whims.

The Sidhe refused to remove them. They refused to aid us in transferring them back to their own realm. We, the magickal beings, the children of Sentmar, were in danger of extinction.

We were the many, they were the few.

We were the strong, they were the weak.

Yet we could not will them to leave, and our laws forbade drenching the land in their blood.

And what we feared came to pass.

The humans soon began spreading even into lands that magick had held from the beginning of our creation. Each step they took upon Sentmar, soon, magick would ease away. It would hide. It would watch in fear, uncertain and frightened as the dark hearts of these beings began to look toward even the lands of the greatest power.

Lands fed by the Raging Seas of Magick, a monstrous body of water that fills half this wondrous land. The waters of mystery, strength and power where creatures of wonder, of brilliance and power lurk within its liquid magick and watch as they feed into the streams, the channels and the lakes that build and run beneath the very lands themselves.

Or they once did.

We begged the Sidhe to remove their wards.

They refused.

We pleaded with them.

They turned a deaf ear.

And the humans moved over Sentmar like a plague as magick slid slowly to the shadows, even within Cauldaran.

Our Seers became weak.

Wizards were being birthed as one rather than as twins. Sorceresses were being condemned for their power, and in terror we watched as our magick began to hide even within us.

The feel of magick strangling within the lands awakened our creator, the father of all magick. The One.

Traveling across Sentmar he saw the invasion, the fear, the cruelties of humans and the dimming of the glory of the sun that warmed the skies and heated the magick that ran in vast pools and molten streams beneath the lands.

It was being destroyed by creatures whose darkness could not be denied. Even they, try as they might, and try often, could not deny it themselves.

On the throne of Cauldaran at this time sat a princess, ruling alone. One whose magick was great and as pure as her flesh who had never known a lover’s touch. Serving as her most trusted guards were one of the few sets of Wizard Twins who still yet existed. Wizards whose power was as pure as their princess’s innocence and fed by the Raging Seas themselves.

To these Wizards and to this princess Sorceress he came in a dream. He showed them magick like none had ever known. He showed them the hidden moon within the skies behind its brother. He showed them the power of the twin moons as both became revealed. The thick, luminous rings that would surround them, that would wrap around the sun as well and add to the power of the magick of the land. And they would be the first to know this wondrous gift.

On the night the twin moon forced itself from hiding and the rings of magick began to surround both, the Wizard Twin protectors and Sorceress princess would Join and their magick would build. They would Join, and they would pull Wizard Twins from hiding and magickal Sorceresses from the shadows.

In their Joining, magick would build once again. That magick would give his children the power to push back the darkness that had come to Sentmar with the arrival of the humans.

As the One promised, the day came that the twin moon moved out of hiding and its thick, pillowy clouds surrounded both moons and the sun as well. That day, Wizard Twin Consortors took as their Consortress the princess Sorceress.

The Raging Seas began to whip as though in fury. Great waves pounded at the shores, flooded the human towns that had grown upon them and forced the pestilence back to the lands from whence the Sidhe had bid them stay.

Magick invaded the streams, the lakes. It boiled and burned and spewed from volcanoes in far-off lands. Spores of magick began to fill the air, infused the soil, the lakes and streams, the creatures of four legs and the creatures of two and all the creatures the One had meant for it to fill.

Humans were the invaders. They were alien to the land and to the magick, and they were driven back. Magick seared their senses, caused great boils of darkness to rise beneath their flesh and turned their eyes a bloody hue, marking them as a creature unwanted by the magick lands.

The rules the One had given all of magick, he was forced to abide as well. He could not shed the blood of the humans and wipe them from the planet. He could not take from the lands he had created what the Sidhe had brought to it. He could banish the darkness-diseased forms instead.

He could push them back to the lands they were given by creatures who had no rights to bequeath it. Between that land and the rest of Sentmar, great mountains rose. A dark, putrid channel formed at the base of the great mountains, so wide, so deep, that even to magick it appeared daunting and fearsome.

Creatures of vengeful magick were placed there. Creatures whose hatred of humans consumed them, rose from the muck, the mire and the pools of bubbling magick. The air in this place of disease and death was commanded to burn and to sear those who lacked magick.

The creatures the darkness of that place gave birth to were filled with but one purpose. To hold back the dark death called “human”. These creatures alone were given leave to spill the blood on the interlopers, whether crime was committed or not. Whether first blood was drawn or not.

No matter the reason, the why or the excuse. Should humans attempt to cross the causeway the One had created, then their lives would be forfeit.

Turned he then to the Wizards and Sorceresses he had gifted. He bade them, hear him well. As long as Wizards and Sorceress came together by natural magickal selection, so then would they always grow in power.

As long as Wizards knew gentleness, as long as they knew love. As long as Wizards aligned with their natural Consortress, so then would they always know peace.

Should Wizards force their Sorceresses to unions of power, rather than love, they would know regret. Should Wizards steal a Sorceress’ will, steal her strength, her freedom and her magick, so then would they lose the gifts the One had bequeathed them.

Should Wizards ever, at any time, force a Sorceress to turn from her natural Consorts to a union of power, while taking to their bed the Sorceress who should have been their own, so then would he take from them the one gift that would surely weaken them forever.

He would take from them their Sorceress.

Then, from the Winter Mountains, at the very boundary of Cauldaran, he drew the great Snow Owls where they hunted and nested. Those great feathered beasts emerged from within a wintery landscape of such chill that even magickal beings were known to find death’s arms awaiting their journeys into them.

The pure white owls, fierce and strong, would carry the Wizards high above the lands to ensure humans never invaded again. They would protect and transport their Wizards and give to them their fierce loyalty and devotion.

From the frozen, ice-filled vales of those mountains and the valley beyond where spring always bloomed, the One then drew the great winged lions to forever serve the Sorceresses who may one day have only the strength of the fierce beasts to save them.

Each gift was strong, sure, fierce in battle and determined in loyalty. Each placed their fates in the hands of those the One sent them to serve and to protect. To watch over these children the One so adored and forever see to their survival.

For a time, magick reigned. Wizard Twins and Sorceresses of love, beauty and magickal centers so pure and strong they infused the air around them, united as the One commanded.

Until Twin kings looked at the daughter who would rule and knew regret. A daughter who refused the Wizard Twins brought to her, who searched desperately for Consorts who seemed forever distant. She would take the throne, she would rule as one rather than as one of three. And this they could not abide.

To Wizards of power he sought a bargain. His daughter and her throne in exchange for a Joining of power rather than of love.

It was a bargain they eagerly accepted. One they were grateful to be given, for the Sorceress destined to be theirs had been lost to them forever by another such bargain but a short time before.

Wizards were trading their daughters to unions of power rather than love. Parents were promising their newly born Sorceresses to boy Wizards while their parents profited.

All the One had said was forbidden was now practiced often. And after a time, it soon became rare for natural Joinings to find approval. From there, it was not but a step to a law that made illegal any Joining not approved by the Wizard Chancellors to each province of Cauldaran.

And soon, all too soon, Wizard Rulers took as Consortress a Sorceress who longed for her natural Consorts. Outside that Joining they took the Sorceress their hearts longed for, and denied her forevermore their magick souls they had aligned with another.

What had once been ecstasy, a pleasure so incredible that only those of magick could bear its sweet bite, became agony instead. One Sorceress taken by Twins who knew no love, no tenderness. Twins whose magick knew only regret and resentful greed.

And it was the Sorceresses who paid the price. With their pain, their fear. With their hearts and their compassion. They paid for the greed of Consorts, power-hungry fathers, mothers, sisters, aunts and cousins filled with cold misery and loss and unable to bear the sight of another Sorceress finding that which brought the greatest pleasure.

Until those of the first Joining, that princess Sorceress and her Twin protectors whom the One gave rule to Nirvana once their lives upon Sentmar expired, heard the wails and felt the tears of their magickal descendants below.

The twin moons, it is written by some, knew compassion and aided their Consortress in leading their daughters from Cauldaran to a land some said only the Griffons knew the way to.

Others have written that the goddess looked down upon hearing a single heartbeat expire. A Sorceress of her direct line, taken, imprisoned within a cold and lonely castle, the mistress of Twins who had aligned for power rather than taking the Sorceress their magick reached out for. A Sorceress who could no longer bear the pain, both of body and of spirit. The first Sorceress ever recorded to have committed the ultimate sin and taken her own life.

Musera, the Sorceress the One chose as goddess to his lands, it is written by some, aided the Sorceresses’ bid for freedom and sent to them the knowledge of the lands filled with magick that lay across the great frozen expanses of Winter Mountains and the Feral Glaciers that lay beyond.

Those same historians wrote that when the Twin gods saw what their goddess had taken from their sons, that rage struck all of Sentmar. They wrote that on that day, Wizard Twins and Sorceress Consortresses battled with the same fierce fury and determination as the Twin gods and their goddess fought above.

Anger, pain and rebellion surged through the lands, it was written, no matter the historian writing it.

The Raging Seas swept upon the shores and pounded at the base of the mountains. Blinding magickal snows and ice pelted Winter Mountains while volcanoes opened upon their snowy peaks and shed their molten magick, melting ice and snow as they fell to the mountains below.

The historians wrote the event as the day Cauldaran lost warmth. The day the magick set back in shock and pain and watched as the heart of Cauldaran was torn asunder.

And both wrote the Keepers of the Power of Cauldaran, those entrusted with the heart of magick, the secrets, the power, the very spirit of magick, used it to strike against the most tender, and yet the most fierce of the children of that land.

The daughters of the One.

Sorceresses and Twins battled as the great flying lions, the Griffons of Sentmar, fought to protect the Sorceresses given to their keeping. Blocking the paths, roaring out their rage as the magickal Twins struck them down and filled the base of the mountains with the Griffons’ blood.

What they did not kill, they enchanted. The females and babes were blocked from their inner magick then sent to the dark, violent realms of the Shadow Planes. A place so infected with the darkness of evil that survival was highly unlikely.

For centuries rage filled Cauldaran.

Wizards warred for lands, for power, for the few Sorceresses of lesser magick and the magickal descendants of human Joinings whose power was minimal, yet still, ’twas power to access.

The Raging Seas boiled with the fury of the gods. Storms swept the land, fought to cross the Winter Mountains yet rarely crossed to the Valley of Spring beyond.

For a hundred years Wizard Twins existed in a haze of blood-red rage. Until the descendants of those first Keepers crossed the great icy barrier and kidnapped the Sorceress the magick of that newly discovered magickal land had claimed.

A Keeper of the Power is bonded with the land and the magick it holds. In Cauldaran, she built the power of the land she oversaw, fighting to strengthen it, to hold back the weakness that unnatural Joinings had brought to it.

In Covenan, a Keeper controlled the magick of a center of power that boiled and surged, burned and raged beneath the land like an ungoverned child. Her magick centers it, soothes it and gives it purpose.

On that day, the Keepers of Cauldaran magick, Twins who harness the power of the Raging Seas, slipped into the lands the Sorceresses hid within and stole the Keeper the lands had just chosen.

Once forcing an alignment and taking the Sorceress their magick longed for, they cruelly and without thought tore from her soul the bonds the land had made with her.

Suddenly bereft, a piece of her heart, a portion of her soul missing, the Sorceress wept and grieved until her young heart could take no more. Leaping from the tallest tower of the castle she was imprisoned within, the Keeper of the Power of the Royal Forests of Covenan threw herself to her death.

The magick of Covenan grieved.

The magick of Cauldaran threatened to tear the lands apart with its rage.

If the gods were in opposition over the separation of Wizard Twins and Sorceress Consorts, then in their horror and disbelief at the actions of the magickal Twins they were united.

A surge of power swept over the lands of both magickal sects. Musera closed the remaining portals between Cauldaran and Covenan. Her Twin Consorts blocked their sons’ magick from ever breaching the divide from Cauldaran again. And together, the three ensured no Sorceress could ever be taken by force from her lands again.

The wound created that day was one the gods feared would never heal within their daughters. They watched as the centuries passed. As the divide between the magicks continued to grow.

They watched as the magick of all of Sentmar began to weaken.

The great billowy clouds of magick surrounding the twin moons began to dim. Humans began to strike and something dark and malevolent began to fill the land.

The One awoke once again, looked out at the danger to the daughters he so loved, and knew he must act once more.

The darkness that lurked in Shadow Hell could only be held back by the magick of Wizard Twin and Sorceress unions. Joinings natural to the hearts and souls of those unions, rather than the forced alignments his daughters had once suffered.

A millennium passed, and still, Wizard Twins had not seen past their arrogance and the mistakes of the past. If he did not act, if he did act quickly, then all of magick would be destroyed and the humans would persecute his children until nothing remained of them.

But he must be careful.

He must be diligent.

The darkness was strong, the magick was weak, and still his children knew a division that threatened all of the lands of magick.

That threatened their very existence.