My Purpose In Writing This
First, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Kaleb Tyris, though I'm most commonly known as K2323. Don't ask. People just call me K23 for short. After all, Kay-Twenty-Three-Twenty-Three, or worse, Kay-Two-Three-Two-Three can be a mouthful. K23 is much better on the tongue.
Now, as to why I'm writing this today, and furthermore, what 'THIS' is. I'm writing a record of events that have occurred over the last several years to myself, my friends, my family, and anyone otherwise associated with us. Actually, a whole lot of people I don't even know are told of in my compilation. You could say this is a history book of sorts, but much more interesting.
Why do I do this, then? Well, history is important. In the old Earth cultures, they had a saying. “History always repeats itself.†They believed that they could prevent the repetition of history by being aware of it. I've learned that it's not always that easy. Still, I think it is important for somebody to know this story. I don't know if any of us will be around to tell it soon enough.
I must warn you, though, that my book shall incorporate over a thousand years worth of stories. That's a lot of stories. Actually, it's more like one big story. In a way, that's life for you. Only, life is more than a story. It's a book. And this publication isn't even a chapter of that book, but a mere character on a page in a word on a line.
Without further ado, then, I present to you my publication. I hope that this reaches at least one person. After all, it is my life. And the lives of my friends. And the lives of my family. And the lives of their friends and their families and their friend and family's friends and family. It's the story of many. It's the story of one. It's the story of opposing kingdoms in a galactic empire state in these ever-so-shattered-planes.
It's the story of us.
I.The Three Siblings
Our story began long ago. Our story began recently. Our story began at times much unlike our own, though. That can be said. If change is a measure of time, maybe our story began eternities ago. Sometimes I question if our story ever began, or if it's always existed with no beginning.
The lands in which my family lived were magical. There was no knowledge of technology. No computers. No electricity. That was foreign to the lands there. That was unheard of. Magic was the only constant.
The specific geographical region in which my family lived was a region known as Era. It was a vast and beautiful land mainly made up of prairie lands, valleys, and forests. It fell neatly into the domain of the Eter Empire, one of the only empire states of the region still today.
My father, Chaos, was one of the founders of the small village in which I owe, in part, my birth to. He and several others from the region built the village nearby the ruins of two once-powerful kingdoms. One kingdom had been known as the Genesis Kingdom and had been a kingdom of dragons, and the other had been called the Phoenix Kingdom.
The Era Village was, then, in some ways a tribute and a temporary end to a war my ancestors had fought. Or, for that matter, several wars. The dragons and phoenix had always been at war. The last war had been about awhile before that time. It was of great meaning that dragons and phoenix gathered together to build the Era Village, in addition to others who were not of dragon or phoenix heritage.
Now, I'm sure you're all a bit confused about the dragon-phoenix thing. Let me clarify. In this context, when I say 'dragon' and 'phoenix' I mean dragon-sage and phoenix-sage. Though for that to make sense to you, I guess you'd need to know what a sage is. In fact, it's very important that you know what a sage is.
In my land, long ago, there were a few different races of life which walked upon those grounds. Humans were not one of those, and they had never set foot on our lands. For that matter, we had not set foot on their lands. Not back then.
Dragons and phoenix were two of the most prevalent races of those times. Yes, actual dragons and actual phoenix. Creatures. They were fairly intelligent and some of the most powerful creatures ever. Some of them mated with sages.
So, what is a sage? I am a sage. We sages look exactly like humans do on the outside. We usually don't look that much different on the inside, either. One major difference exists between us and humans... We are beings of magic.
By the time the Era Village was being built, your typical term 'Dragon' and 'Phoenix' refereed to Dragon and Phoenix Sages. Crossbreeds is one way to describe the phenomenon, but they would look down on you for describing it that way. The sage form comes natural to them. They're inner-power, though, comes from their dragon or phoenix heritage.
To describe the two, that is, Dragon and Phoenix Sages, in a bit more detail, let me paint a picture in your head. The Dragon Sages typically, as they become more and more heated in battle, begin to grow dragon-whispers and claws. The phoenix sage typically has gold highlights (at least a single strand of hair) in their hair and golden eyes and are incredibly beautiful. I guess that's why my dad fell for my mom. Makes sense, right?
My mom, Gloria, came to the village as it was being built. She was young then. Only around eighteen or so, actually. She came with my grandma, a single mother. The two settled down quite nicely and helped to build the village. It was about that time that my mom met Chaos and fell 'instantly in love' as I've been told. Not soon after, my dad was declared the leader of the village.
To describe my dad in a bit more detail, he's always been slightly chubby. Bald, too – or at least, he was back in those days. His beard always was a red color. I guess he'd had red hair before then once too. Overall, though, I guess he didn't look that bad. I'm not just saying that because I'm of his flesh and blood.
My mom was a knockout. My dad had trouble believing that she had fallen for him. Any guy would have killed to be in his place. Of course, none of them got very far with my mom when they tried. She hadn't really loved a man until she met my dad.
My mom's heritage is of great importance, as well. My grandma, you see, had once been the princess of the Phoenix Kingdom. She had fallen in love with Mokai, my grandfather. Mokai had been the king of the Genesis Kingdom. A recent peace had been declared between the two kingdoms. The time for them to fall in love was evident.
I hope to explain more about my grandfather at a much later time in this book, but his story is complicated. We won't get into it now. All you need to know is that he swept my grandmother off her feet. Then, one day, he disappeared. He didn't even find out that my grandmother was pregnant.
So, that meant my mom was an incredibly unique child. A Dragon/Phoenix Sage. The timing of her birth couldn't have been any better. Not soon after, the two kingdoms both crumbled. My mother grew up as a legacy of the two kingdoms. She also was a carrier of sorts for a great power.
You see, Mokai, my grandfather, had only just become king when he started dating my grandmother. The king before him had been known simply in those times as “The Genesis King†and had been a great and powerful man. Probably the most powerful dragon who ever lived. Maybe one of the most powerful people ever. His death was tragic.
A battle against another of the most powerful of people to have ever existed ended the king's life. He fought off Zeridan (“Zereâ€). Zere had once been like a son to the Genesis King. In the later days of the relationship between the two, he had lived in the Genesis Kingdom as part of a radical group of non-dragons. The group grew to despise the dragon sages. They pitted the Genesis and Phoenix kingdoms in a war and, following the conclusion of that war, killed the Genesis King at a peace ceremony. Well, to be more specific, the Genesis King gave his life to stop them from crushing the kingdom.
You see, Shadow Orb Prison is a hard spell to master. It basically traps an individual inside an elaborate series of shadows inside an orb. Anyone who was sealed by the Shadow Orb Prison would be trapped for all eternity in a world of nothing but shadows. It would be absolute hell. Terrifying.
The catch? The spell requires its caster to give up a bit of their very being, their spirit, in order to make it work. The Genesis King sealed all of the radical extremist group to which Zere belonged. He, thus, used almost all of his spirit, destroying himself. That happened when you used that spell on over two hundred people.
Still, the Genesis King was one of the most powerful of people. As he died, he passed on all of his powers and his own dragon form to Mokai. The king did such in a manor that the powers wouldn't come to fruit until generations later, in one of Mokai's descendants. The descendant who would control the full extent of the Genesis King's power would be one of the most powerful people ever, and would additionally be able to transform into a massive dragon unlike any other.
My mother was not the descendant. She was still a powerful woman, but she did not hold the Genesis King's power. She was a carrier for the power, I guess, if that makes sense. But the power wasn't hers. It would be passed on to her children, then. Maybe they'd be able to control it.
The year my mother turned nineteen, she and my dad got married. Following their marriage, my dad took on the last name of 'Tyris'. My mother and my father were Mr. and Mrs. Tyris. The happy couple would soon give birth to their daughter, Hikaru Tyris. People came from far and wide to see if she was the child to finally wield the powers of the Genesis King.
It seemed that she was not. In reality, my sister received a small percentage of the power of the Genesis King. Nothing too powerful. It seemed that she didn't even have dragon powers. She was, like my mother, dominant in Phoenix traits. My sister became known as a phoenix.
Fast-forward a few years. Chaos and Gloria Tyris give birth to two twins. My brother and I. Again, there is hype that the twins may be the chosen children. We were. We were going to be some of the most powerful sages ever. It made my sister of five years old sick to her stomach, in a way.
One day, my sister was playing in a canyon not far away from the village. There, she'd found a little, blue orb. The Shadow Prison Orb. She had no idea what it was. Still, the orb talked to her. It was a friend which she desperately needed. She wanted to help her friend (who she had no idea was actually Zere, a terrible killer and maniac) get out of the bad place he was in.
So she did. She managed to tamper with incredibly advanced magic... It probably, in retrospect, would have been impossible for her to do if she had not had the Genesis King's power somewhere in her veins. Still, she managed to open the door ever so slightly that a single person, Zere, could escape from the orb.
Zere played Hikaru. He played her mind to the point that she snapped. She followed his orders. She burned our village to the ground. Zere helped her, putting the spells she needed right in her hands. She killed everyone but my dad, my brother, and I.
That's what we thought for the longest of times. In reality, at the first sign of my sister's attack, my mother and some of the other villagers enacted a spell to move the village. In its place, Hikaru would be destroying an empty copy of the Era Village. She'd think that she'd succeeded in destroying the village. She'd be wrong, and in reality, the inhabitants of the Era Village would be living happily outside the flow of time, never aging.
Only, a few things went wrong. My dad somehow got teleported – transported instantly -- out of the village right before it was moved. How or by who is still a mystery today, though I have a theory. I think it was Zere. Zere and my dad had known each other, and I think Zere was trying to attack my dad from behind when the village-moving spell was casted, and their magics intertwined to somehow cause Chaos to be teleported away. I don't know how it's possible, don't look at me.
In any case, my dad had no knowledge of the plan to move the village. He went almost his entire life thinking that his wife and friends had been killed by his own daughter. He went his entire life thinking that the only ones to survive had been that very daughter and his two sons. It must have been awful.
So, why weren't my brother and I moved along with the rest of the village? That's another mystery, though it's pretty much agreed that the reason we weren't effected by the spell was due to our Genesis Magic. The moment Hikaru had began her attack, our magic had responded accordingly. It had been forming barriers around us when necessary – forcefields of magic – to prevent anything from happening to us. That was part of the powerful magic of the Genesis King, I guess, and it had seen the moving spell as a threat to us.
It was that very barrier effect that saved my brother and myself from my sister. She came to our cradle that night and was prepared to kill us. She failed. She opted, instead, to use an advanced sealing spell and make it impossible for us to use our Genesis Magic, then she set off with Zere to train and get stronger so that one day she could kill us.
So, I guess we would have been dead. Goners. Two babies which burned down with the village, maybe. Or maybe we would have starved to death. Luckily, Konjan found us.
Konjan was part of an elite group known as the 'Guardians' who were devoted to establishing order and studying magic and science. Yes, science, something my own land had never heard of. The Guardians were from many lands.
They took us in. They trained us. That made it all the harder to go the night Hikaru came to finish what she'd started over a decade later.
