Chapter Zero – Back History of Rewy

As science has told us before, this planet was first a giant molten glob of lava. There was nothing unique about this planet; some debris fallen off of the molten planet mended itself into two moon-like satellites. Once it had cooled off, water collected in the valleys of the planet, and life forms began to appear after it. This period of self-containment for the planet occurred about a thousand years before the first humans arrived on the planet.
The first humans that arrived on the planet had come from another distant world; their home world was galaxies away from Rewy. Since they were coming from another world, they had kept their old ways of technology with them, thus causing for their colony to become increasingly adapt to their new home planet. As time passed, their technology grew, and they began to spread their cities to the moons and the edges of the planet.
About nine hundred years after humans colonized Rewy, a war broke out between one of the moons and one of the continents. The moon’s inhabitants were furious with the planet dwellers because they could not get any more freedoms from the mainland; they were colonies for scientific purposes. So they attacked the mainland, and the war waged for a few years. When the war ended, it was known as a tie between the two forces, for they had found a new discovery about the planet’s being.
Something called ‘magic’ was developed during the war. Named after fictitious optical illusions, it focused on the idea of ‘mana’, or an internal magnetic force within mass that existed on the planet and its moons. Using such a source of energy proved vital for the planet’s inhabitants, which began to use it for everyday use, from things such as extinguishing fires to improved space travel. Since the source was rapidly renewable, it soon became an everyday thing for the peoples of Rewy.
And the history of Rewy came to a halt about a hundred years after the planetary war came to an end. But this isn’t where our story begins. No, it is to begin around the events of how magic was founded, and how the entangling spiral of events came to be….

Chapter One – War-Zone Terror

“Dam this fucking war!” shouted a soldier as the truck in which a troop of soldiers rode in was rolling along a dirt road. “Why the fuck do we have to do anything for some tight-wad corpulent douches who are wasting our lives with their sinecures…”
“Come on, man!” spoke another soldier as he gave the crass soldier a stern look. “You don’t have to cuss and swear to look cool!”
“Seriously,” interrupted another soldier, who was sitting across from the other two soldiers, “you can be angry and all, but watch the language. There’s no one here to impress save us fellows.”
“Yeah,” spoke the uptight soldier who was sitting next to the crass soldier. “Besides, they’re just going to censor your swearing anyway. You’re not going to get the initial point across.”
“Stop using those big words,” said the laid-back soldier, waving a hand in weariness. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“I still think this war is a big joke,” spoke the crass soldier as he leaned back some more.
“Hey,” spoke a fourth soldier, lifting his eyes from a pocket watch. The other three, noticing the quiet one’s presence, looked over at the speaking soldier. “What…what are your names?” he peeped.
“Our names?” the crass soldier replied, sounding rather offended. “We lived in the same town; went to the same damn school, and you still can’t remember our names.”
The shy soldier only chuckled nervously and returned to his solitude.
“Well, if it helps you out,” spoke the uptight soldier, “My name’s James Angelwisp.”
“Mine’s Joey Zephenhyre,” replied the laid-back soldier, giving a slight wave.
The crass soldier glared at the other two. “Conner Deferald,” he finally grunted. Afterwards, he looked away in disgust, feeling defeated by the others’ show-offy attitudes.
The shy soldier gave a glance at the other soldiers; then he looked back at his pocket-watch.
“Well, what’s your name then?” spoke up James in a light tone. “I mean, we have nothing else to do.”
The shy soldier continued to gaze indifferently at the pocket watch. After a few seconds, he mumbled without looking away from the pocket watch. “It’s, uh… Leah.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember you!” replied James in that same happy-go-lucky tone. “That Quistwary that went to our school. Got some bad wraps on things, but it looks like you’ve been able to handle it.”
“Like what?” spoke up Joey, looking over at James with an interested glint in his eyes. “Tell me about something.” Conner grunted at the idea of story telling.
“Oh,” began James, “There was this one day back in the gym. We were playing some dodge ball when…”
Leah tuned out the conversation; he was more interested about the picture on the other side of the pocket watch. Sure, the old-timey pocket watch worked just fine; as a matter of fact, whenever a minute passed, Leah would look over at the time and sigh, thinking on how many more minutes longer he would have to be away from his love. That was what the picture displayed. His girlfriend.
Back in their hometown, Leah Quistwary had been going out with a girl named Sobrina Fyreweir. Besides the town’s affinity of sporting odd names, Leah had an interest in Sobrina ever since he had seen her in school. He had only been dating her for a few days when the draft came and dragged him into this war. Now, all he could do is count every minute that Sobrina’s heavenly smile wasn’t with him.
“…He got a full week’s detention, and he was nowhere near the accident!” finished James, giving a wide sweeping motion with his arms to support his story.
“My God,” Joey replied, his mouth agape. “I can’t believe that even went on while I was there. Dang…”
An eerie silence covered the truck, spanning for a few minutes. James, finally fed up with waiting, looked over at the driver’s seat. His eyes widened as he turned back to his fellow soldiers.
“Uh, guys? No one’s driving the truck.”
Joey only blinked when he heard this. “Uh, yeah,” he replied, mimicking James somewhat. “That stuff’s automated these days.”
“You’re kidding?” James replied, baffled.
“It’s because you’re a farmer boy,” spoke Joey.
James jumped across the truck and waved a fist in front of Joey’s face. “You take that back!” he shouted indignantly.
Joey didn’t flinch; instead, he but waved a hand and continued speaking. “Seriously. You needed to know how to drive manually because farming needed it. Us city folk, however, got the technology of automated-steering vehicles.” Joey looked at the floor of the truck they were in. “Not that they were all that state-of-the-art.”
“Oh,” James muttered, sitting back in his place. He hadn’t expected that.
“Damn this war!” shouted Conner rudely, making James jump. “Ya know what I hate about it?”
“Shoot away,” calmly replied Joey. “We’ve got nothing better to do.”
“This war is so old fashioned!” loudly clamored Conner. “My ass itches, my legs are stiff, and all our weapons are out-dated. Sheesh.” With that comment, he spat across the truck, getting spit on the faces of the other three soldiers. “I would’ve been fine with at least some plasma grenades, but no! ‘Relive the past!’ the commercials said. ‘Show them your skills.’ the media boasted.” Conner then proceeded to spit, throwing it onto James’ shoe; the latter promptly began to shake it off. Conner continued; “Feh! This is a real war, not an reenactment of some distant war. That stuff’s old news, and they still persist! Feh, I say! Feh!”
With the exception of Leah, the listening soldiers began to wipe the spit off of their faces.
“Yeesh,” replied Joey as he rubbed his hand on his army vest. “Say it; don’t spray it.”
Leah continued to gaze at the picture in the pocket watch, ignoring the spit which stuck like sweat to his body. Noticing Leah’s blind stare, Joey looked over the other soldier’s shoulder at the picture which Leah liked so well.
Joey whistled and then spoke; “Wowza. Wish I had such a girl waiting for me back at home.”
“Yeah,” Leah muttered, not really hearing what Joey had said.
James had an expression of bewilderment on his face; Was Joey still whistling at that picture? “Come on, Joey,” spoke James, “it can’t be that good of a picture.”
“Holy crap!” shouted Conner as he jumped to his feet. “Incoming mortar!”
All the soldiers except for Leah began to jump out of the vehicle, Joey shouting a quick “Everybody overboard!” to stress the point. Only Leah was still in the truck, and he looked lazily at the flying bomb that was coming straight for him.

“AH!” Leah yelled, snapping to an upright position. Yet, wasn’t he sitting in that truck moments ago? He tried to look around his surroundings, but his body seemed to be lacking much strength… or mind-power. It was dark out, though, so he assumed it to be night.
“About time you woke up,” Joey spoke as he looked at Leah. “Been out all damn day.” It seemed Joey was holding onto some cup that was emitting smoke. And there was a fire in front of him, too. There were two other forms around the fire; one was warming his hands while the other was reading a book. Leah assumed these two other figures to be Conner and James.
“Huh?” Leah gave with a blank stare. Sitting up was tough work. “Out what?”
“Out cold,” piped up James, barely moving his gaze from his book. “Ever since that mortar hit the car, you’ve been lying around like a dead animal.”
“Mortar?” Leah muttered in response. His head was real foggy.
“Yeah,” replied Joey as calm as he always seemed. “Their mortar blasted our truck to oblivion…”
“Damnit!” yelled Conner, slamming his fists on the soil below him. “Do they even have the fucking right to do that?”
Joey gave no impression that he had heard Conner. He just continued to speak as if he had only taken a pause to think things through. “…Glad you got out okay, though. Not even a scratch…”
“That’s right!” spoke up James. “I’m amazed that all you had was a concussion. Usually those kind of things leave a lot more than a small blank. Such traumatic amnesia like yours is a blessing indeed.”
Joey chuckled as he took a sip of his hot whatever-was-in-his-cup. Once he lowered the cup from his lips, he proceeded with a small joke. “Well, I guess that means we’ll have to walk.”
“Damnit!” repeated Conner loudly, jumping into Joey’s face. “Didn’t you hear a damn thing I said? We’re in the middle of war, and all you can think of is ‘Oh, the truck is gone’. You sicken me. Our enemy might be all around us, and you’d just laugh it away?”
A silence ensued. Leah could see the silhouette of Conner glaring at Joey, shaking a mad fist in front of the other’s face. Joey, on the other hand, was sitting quite calmly, staring at his cup of joe; however, that’s all Leah could see. Joey’s hair was in front of his face, so Leah couldn’t decipher any keen facial expressions; nonetheless, it became increasingly obvious what Joey was thinking when his eyes flickered in the fire, showing two beads of fiery injustice glaring back at Conner.
“Do you think us deaf?” shouted Joey at Conner, who immediately jumped away from Joey. “Or is the air too thick for your liking? Maybe we should thin the air so all can hear what you say!” Conner fell back to where he was sitting, but Joey wasn’t finished with him. He proceeded to stand up and continue his spiel.
“Listen here, Conner; just because there’s trouble about doesn’t mean we can’t take a second or two to recover. We’re all trying our best here, and I’ll be damned if I would let anything happen to the rest of you. That’s why we’ve been here waiting for Leah to recover. We’re all gonna make it through together, so sit down; shut up; and fall in line. If we don’t do this together, we’ll all die alone!”
The fire flickered as it danced its light across Joey’s face. The other three there watched in silence as Joey took his seat back onto the ground. Conner stared into the fire, reflecting on Joey’s rant that he had just witnessed. After a few minutes of contemplation, Joey looked over at Leah.
“We should get some sleep,” Joey finished, looking at Leah but talking to everyone there. “We’ll start moving in the morning.” With that said, Joey proceeded to make a bed for himself on the ground and fell into it, giving an audible sigh.
Leah put his back onto the ground. He stared up at the starry sky, which seemed to twinkle in his recognition. He tried to watch it more, but his vision began to fade…

Chapter Two – Fury and Enlightenment