‘’Digging in Rakenia’’

The sun shines through the curtains of my room. I don’t feel like standing up, but my body throws me out bed anyway. ‘Gah!’ I fall face first to the floor. ‘Well that’s a great start…’ I stand up and open the curtain. The sun is already up in the air, and people are filling the streets. Chatter fills my ears, as I quickly dress up in some common clothes and head downstairs, in search of Evander. Today I’ll take a trip through the city, before departing.

‘Brandr, you’re awake.’ Evander walks up to me as I walk the stairs.

‘Haha, I slept in for a bit…’ He strokes his beard and smokes a pipe. ‘I didn’t see you with a pipe on our journeys.’ He laughs a bit, while magically keeping the pipe in his mouth. Wait, how did he do that? I need to figure that out later.

‘Hahaha, I didn’t have one with me. I left it back home in the village. So, I bought a new one.’ He’s stupid… I have breakfast with him, while he’s reading a huge paper. I presume it’s a newspaper. I remember that being created in Yarren, the trading city. It’s the mass-produced way of spreading news to the commoners, which has been implemented in Brixia as well. Only the Iron Coyote Tribe and Edelweiss don’t have this, mainly because the major population cannot read or write. Either way, Evander’s face gives a troubled look.

‘Something interesting you found?’ I try to look at what he’s reading. He simply closes his eyes and hands the paper over, telling me to read it myself. When I look at the big title, I get shocked. [Children search still at square one. It’s been a month since Rakenia has been plagued with the kidnapping of children. All those children have disappeared when they were alone or in the middle of the night. The local sheriff and volunteers have yet to find any evidence or a lead on the missing children.]

‘You were planning on going out today, right?’ I nod nervously at him, as I hand him the paper back. ‘Just be careful out there. I know you aren’t a child anymore, but you don’t know what will happen if you drop your guard,’ Evander tells me before he goes on with his reading. I silently eat my given breakfast; egg and beans with toast, before I head out. I wave Evander goodbye for now, and head into the dry, dusty streets of Rakenia.

…………..

‘Aah…this is nice…’ I stroll through town and browse a bit through local stores. There are a lot of hardware stores and other things which don’t really peak my interest. ‘I’m going to get bored like this…’ It takes a short while before I stumble on a weird store. ‘MagicWare?’ I tell myself, as I enter inside with a lot of curiosity and anticipation. ‘Wow, amazing…’ A lot of weird items lie around. I walk through the store and see a lot of self-powered equipment. Little propeller-like equipment that turn automatically, creating small gusts of wind to cool the place off, as well as little machines with wheels riding over a fixed track. ‘Don’t tell me…magic?’ I pick up a small doll.

‘That’s right.’ Evander materializes out of nowhere.

‘WAH! Don’t scare me like that…’ I fell to the ground from shock.

‘These are all magic items.’ He completely ignores me being on the floor and keeps talking like nothing happened.

‘Magical items, you said?’ He nods a few times and grabs on of the items.

‘This one is for children, but guests like you might find it interesting.’ He grabs a doll, and hands it over to me. It’s a bear doll, one that’s standing.

‘Place it on the ground.’ Evander gives me orders, and I quietly follow them. He goes through his knees and places his hand above the doll. He doesn’t even look like concentrating, and the doll starts moving.

‘Argh, a possessed doll!’ I scream from shock and crawl a bit backwards. ‘M-M-M-Magic!’ I already saw it a few times, but it still amazes and scares me like the first time.

‘A lot of things are empowered by magic. This is just a doll, but we have entire machines automated by magic, but there are only a few of them, since they’re hard to make, and there aren’t that many mages with the capacity to make them. Dolls like these require a very little amount of magic, and normal people can use them as well.’ I listen carefully to Evander’s explanation. ‘Of course, mages are doing research on these kinds of matters. The biggest researches going on nowadays are magic tools that can enhance the power of a person faster, so they can use bigger magic items and higher concentration of magic in a small space of time.

‘So, these little dolls are like small magic items.’ Evander nods in confirmation. ‘Can you use them as weapons? Because they are merely vessels for our magic. And since magic can be used in any way, you’d be able to use this small bear to make an explosion in your hand or something…’

Evander smiles like a teacher who just heard his favorite student ask the most important question of his profession…which is actually more accurate of a description than I thought… ‘That’s a very good question you’re asking, Brandr. The answer is yes and no at the same time.’ I nod at him, while he continues his explanation. ‘Technically, you can use any magic item for combat, but remember that every magic item needs a purpose and a specific filter.’ He points at his magic walking stick. ‘This item is solely created for battle, but even though I can use magic to turn it into a sword, that doesn’t mean that it’s filter and properties were created for that particular activity.’ Evander tries to explain further, until the clerk suddenly walks to us. We get chased out of the store, because we are lingering to much in the said store.

‘Ahaha…sorry, Evander. I got us kicked out…’ I slightly bow to him, asking for forgiveness. He hits my head with his staff as punishment.

‘Idiot, I told you enough times to stop apologizing for things that you are not at fault at,’ he says sternly. I don’t respond. We buy some sandwich and start walking as he resumes his explanation. ‘Where was I…uhm…’

‘Something about filters and properties not being made for certain activities…’ I remember well, because I got confused at that comment. I was solely thinking that it was just a vessel.

‘Ah, yes. Every system has its rules and restriction to bring everything to an equilibrium.’ Evander says jovially as I get lost at the final word. He notices it immediately, shown by his annoying-looking smirk. ‘It means balance.’ I don’t change my annoyed expression. He doesn’t care at all though. ‘Anyway, balance. Like I said, the item has to have a certain purpose, which certain filters are attached to. Let’s take the building process…very, very simplified of course. You grab a stick,’ he says as he grabs a conveniently placed stick from the ground. It’s as if he planned the entire conversation. ‘Let’s say…you want to shoot balls of fire with this stick. You’d need a filter that amplifies the conjuring of elemental attacks. You’d apply the filter to this stick, and now it’s able to shoot fireballs. Now you’ll need to steady the stick and make it durable,’ he says as he grabs another conveniently placed stick, that has wrapped cloth on both ends. This is starting to get ridiculous. ‘You’d have to strengthen the stick, so it wont break the item. Remember that every time you cast a spell with a magic item, you will reduce its duration and will damage the filtration-process. If the filter dies first, you’ll have to reapply a filter. The only upside with that is that you can replace the filter with a different kind of filter. Let’s say you want to create a sword out of a stick. You’ll pop out the filter, place and new one and boom, you have a new kind of magic item.’

‘Weren’t you talking about balance just now? That sounds completely unbalanced in my ears.’

‘Well, a downside of changing filters is that your body will have to get used to that. Your body is currently getting used to the Arc, while I am completely used to my magic. If we were to change the filter in our item, we’d have to adapt to the filter newly formula of concentrated magic. How did you feel after using magic for the first time?’

I clearly remember that moment at the Hero’s Monument. I felt dizzy for a moment, but just a slight moment. ‘Dizzy…nauseous? But only for a moment though.’

‘See, that is your body getting used to the new formula. You never used magic, so your adaption was a lot easier that if I would switch. My body is completely stemmed of on my formula to cast magic, and if I were to change that, I’d have to get completely used to that new magic. It isn’t just a case of skill, but also of adaptation of the body.’ I feel completely drained by his explanation. ‘It’s okay, Brandr. If you feel like you need to learn more, you can always go to the library here and buy some books on it.’

I sigh slightly. ‘You make it sound so easy. And where would I find a library here anyway?’ He points up to the building next to us. It says ‘’Library’’. ‘I have no idea how much you planned this exact conversation, or if this is all disturbingly coincidental, but I’ll take you on that offer.’ He says goodbye again, going God-knows-where, while I head into the library for books……

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‘Well…that was unexpected…’ I tell myself as I have gathered yet another huge pile of books. While some are about magic, which I want to purchase, I also got a lot of history books and articles about Rakenia. Why has this city fallen to the state it’s in? After seeing Lamia and Rotson Village, and to some degree Hero’s Monument, I’d expect this city to be lushes and beautiful, and not this barren state of a city.

I remember Evander talking about an assassinated governor. Things changed around that period. I start my research there, reading through a few articles that has anything to do with the assassination of the governor. After looking through a few dates articles and papers, I stumble upon the incident. ‘’The saint meets its creator’’ says the title. Upon researching it further, I figure out that Rakenia was indeed in a much better state. The ground surrounding it was still dusty and sandy, but the economy and poverty were completely flipped around during that period. Going back into the history, this man, called Kingsley Goodwin, was a fair governor with ambitious plans. With his council, there were many plans to overshadow Lamia, and make Rakenia superior over the current capital. Rakenia-born-and-bread, he never hid his dreams and goals from anyone, which made him popular, not only in Rakenia, but surprisingly in Lamia as well. There are rumors that he and the Royal Family met with him to turn his declaration into an official challenge, to grow their respected cities, so that future generations can profit for their growth, passion and love that was put into the cities. That was until one night, while he was working late in his office, he got killed. The city was left in turmoil, since nobody wanted to take the role of governor…the reason being…

‘What in the world…?’ I grab another paper, and it shows a symbol for a bolded fist raised to the sky, with the name ‘’Cinder’’ above it.

////I know, this is cringy to look at...well, tell that in court. Sue me for the cringe!////

This looks like a cliché rebellion logo, so I have a bit of trouble to take this seriously, but if they were able to assassinate the governor of Rakenia, I cannot take them lightly. Anyway, this paper tells the moment that ‘’Cinder’’ claimed the assassination of Kingsley Goodwin, and that they will ‘’Be the Embers that will put this World to Flames’’. After Rakenia, many more assassinations of important people started to take place, as well as the missing of children in other cities concentrated in the north, which would soon spread out through the south. The article of this morning comes to mind. ‘Cinder…I’m quite sure…’ I am sure that the Queen already knows about this, and the link, but that they still haven’t found ‘’Cinder’’ yet. ‘So…Cinder is behind these disappearances…but why?’

‘But why indeed…that has been the question for years now,’ I hear from my side out of nowhere.’

‘GAH!’ I scream out, startled by the sudden appearance from the stranger. I get shushed by everyone in the library. I get a slight feeling of Deja vu, before I start up again.

‘So, you’ve been researching Rakenia, it seems. What made you so interested suddenly in this city?’ I look at the man asking me questions. He looks quite young, around his mid-twenties. His eyes are sharp, which gives him an unsettling smile. His messy white-brown hair looks unnatural, while he wears very neat and tight clothes.

‘Do you always ask so many questions when you meet someone?’ I tell him, trying to get back at him.

‘Only to those who look…very suspicious… Why would someone go so deep in researching Rakenia? A spy perhaps?’

‘From which country? There are no other countries here to be spied by, and even if I was, I’d thought they would confess so easily…’

His unsettling smile doesn’t go away, as he sits down to the seat next to mine, and puts his legs across each other, while ticking his fingers against each other, like an inpatient person. ‘Fair enough…so…what do you want to know about ‘’Cinder?’’