#legend179#
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We begin the epic book of tales with the story of Alexia, a middle-aged rebel leader living in the tyrannical monarch of Savaeria, an island nation just northeast of Aika Village. Her story begins during the peaceful time just before the Wrath of Wargoth War, a mere two years after the civil war had failed....
Alexia - Chapter One
The young woman crawled through the rubble of her home, trying to escape the constant bombardment of cannonballs and gunfire. Her dark red hair was thick and curly, unkempt but not in an unattractive manner. Her skin was a shade paler than most, and that only accentuated her dark green eyes. Normally the revolutionist always had a trick up her sleeve in case of an emergency, but she had been caught completely off guard.
Alexia had been the leader of the revolution in the island country of Savaeria. The rebels had nearly managed to overthrow the tyrannical monarchy, but someone very close to had been lost....and so had her will to fight. The rebels were defeated, and she was on the run for the next two years. After all that time, she decided to return to the place she called home before the war, a small cabin deep in the forest. The last thing she had expected was to be attacked here.
She climbed to her feet and looked around for any form of weapon she could use to defend herself, but there was nothing decent. And when she had just managed to find the remnants of an old decorative sword, a cannonball took out the support beam in the center of the living room, letting the roof cave in. A jagged piece of wood stabbed through her left wrist and a large chunk of the support beam fell on her left calf, and she could hear a loud snapping sound.
Alexia wailed in pain as she fell to the floor, slowly and painfully crawling back towards her collapsed living room. She bite her lip and groaned as she used every muscle she could to lift the rubble off the large carpet, revealing the hidden trapdoor beneath. She pulled it open with extreme effort and fell inside, half from wanting to get out of the house quickly and half from exhaustion. She fell four feet to the floor below, slamming her head against the hard stone hard enough to make the vision in her right eye go blurry.
Her body ached and begged her to stop moving, and to just give in to the exhaustion, but she pulled herself forward, pulling herself through the hidden tunnel beneath her home as it lead her deeper into the forest. After half an hour of excruciatingly dragging herself through the narrow tunnel, Alexia gave in to the pain, laying her head on the stone and quickly losing consciousness.
The sound of footsteps woke the young rebel an unknown amount of time later, and she slowly leaned up and looked back the way she had come and froze as she laid her eyes on the assassin that had been chasing her since she began the revolution; a mysterious and cunning man who had unlimited resources and the ability to do get every target assigned to him. He raised his flintlock handgun, one of the only six in existence, and squeezed the trigger, sending a small iron ball flying towards her at an incredible speed. It hit her just above the right eye, knocking her back and rendering that eye unusable. The assassin walked over to her and grabbed her by her hair, looking down at her as she lost consciousness once again.
* * * * *
Alexia opened her eye, then groaned in pain as she also tried opening her injured eye, to no avail. She slowly leaned up, putting all her weight on her good arm as she bent over the edge of the bed and puked into the basic sitting beside her. The room began to spin as she looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. She tried to stand up and found that her right leg was completely fine, but her left felt one like it was made of lead. Barely able to take more than a few steps, Alexia fell to her knees and puked again, this time coughing up a strange blue goo-like substance, leaving a terrible taste in her mouth.
"Whoa!" She heard as the door to the room opened and a very familiar woman ran to her side, grabbing her good arm and helping her stand up. "Take it slow. You've been asleep for a while."
"What's going on Ari-" Alexia mumbled as she fell again, this time hitting the hard floor face first, knocking herself out. When she woke a few minutes later, she was laying in her bed with the woman sitting in a chair beside her. "What are you doing here Ariana?"
"I should be asking you the same question." Ariana said, taking a pitcher of water from the nightstand and pouring some into a cup before handing it to Alexia. "You showed up on my doorstep two months ago, unconscious and barely alive. You were bandaged up, and by the look of you, there was no way you could've brought yourself here."
Alexia gulped down the water in an attempt to get rid of the horrid taste in her mouth. "What the he-" She coughed loudly. "What is that?" She pointed down to the blue goo on the floor.
"Oh yeah, sorry about that. It's an experimental supplement I concocted a year or two ago, but never tried it out." Ariana explained, laughing as she watched her old friend gurgle the water.
"Experimental?" Alexia said, coughing again loudly. "So you just used me as a lab rat? That terrible, blue goo..."
Ariana took her cup and refilled it. "I had no choice. That 'terrible, blue goo' is probably the main reason you're still alive. Without it, you wouldn't have bled to death before I could've even began the first surgery!"
She coughed violently, choking on the water as she shook her head. "Surgery?"
"I'm sure you've noticed that your arm and leg were difficult to use." Ariana replied, looking down at the two damaged limbs. "Along with your eye."
Alexia instinctively raised her hand and touched her right eye...or where her right eye used to be. She was touching something that felt exactly like an eye, and was just where her eye would be, but it was metal and cold. She ran her hand down to her left arm then leg, and found the same thing; a cold and metal replacement that was exactly like the original limbs, except she could not control them. "What the..."
"Relax. You're lower leg and forearm were too badly damaged to be fixed. You could either have lived without them, or..." Ariana said, looking down at the replacements. "You could have a best friend that is a wiz with the forge." She smirked as she looked closer at the arm and leg. "There is just one little problem..."
"What's that?" She asked, running her hand along the metal.
"A power source. These limbs and that eye are incredibly powerful. So powerful, in fact, that they need magic to power them." Ariana replied. "A type of magic that we don't have yet."
Alexia turned toward Ariana. "What sort of magic are we talking about?"
Her best friend frowned. "Savaerian. Old Savaerian." She replied, quickly standing and walking into the other room, then coming back with a book. "The ancient Savaerians built temples deep underground, and in each temple they hid their greatest treasure: crystals made of pure aethium." She explained as she flipped through several pages, then turned the book toward Alexia, showing her a detailed drawing of a large humanoid being made entirely of metal with a first-sized blue crystal embedded in its chest. "If a crystal that size kept a creature of that magnitude alive, then just a small sliver of a crystal will power your replacements."
Alexia let the thoughts settle in her mind for a moment as she laid there, looking at the drawing. "How would we find one of these crystals?" She looked up at her friend with a confused look.
"A fellow mage and good friend of mine has recently sent me a letter saying that he has found a crystal that's emitting incredible levels of power. I figured we would start there."
"Hmm." She thought about the plan for a moment, then looked down at her immobile arms and legs. "Well it doesn't look like I would be of much help. So hurry back."
"I will." Ariana stood and left the room, thinking of how amazing it will be to see an actual Savaerian crystal.
< Message edited by #legend179# -- 8/10/2012 16:09:45 >
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