The Night Rider

Prologue

If life were easy, wouldn't we be bored? Life is a kind of puzzle. Sometimes you have a piece that fits exactly but sometimes you spend hours looking for the right piece. In Rafiki's life many pieces are lost or even broken. Her pieces are not in the box, she will have to look for them somewhere else.

In a world of nymphs, vampires, werewolves, wizards and dragons those pieces are a bigger mess than we would desire. Everyone has their own customs, rules and magic. Magical lines that run through our ground, magical water and life lines that run through our bodies like veins. Everything is connected with each other. If a piece of that connection is missing, it collapses like a tower.

Thousands of years ago it all started with a few magicians who could no longer control their magic. Each specialized in their power-form connected their magic in the earth. As soon as the magicians left us, their magic was left behind what we see now as the magic lines in our soil: Blood, Light, water and wind. We are each connected with several in particular, some stronger than others. It is the source of each one's magic and life without it will doom us to be human.

You can understand that supreme magic creates greed, the desire for more power. Two powerful wizards could not restrain their lust for power, Yin and Yang. They were aiming for the two strongest lines we have, Blood and Light. They burned their bonds with the other lines until there was almost only blood or light left. They taped off the magic in such a way that they changed the lines too there bodies, possessed to the core..

The dark or white magic took over their souls, drove them to such power that they became a slave to their own magic. They both turned into nothing more than a force that had taken over their souls.
. They murdered, brought doom and sorrow. They became the bearers of magic and at the same time were the nightmare of each one, but life for the other. Their connection was so strong that if their souls were lost, the lines would almost die.

The nymphs found a way to stop the two magicians. They turned them into two fish that would swim around each other forever. The souls of the wizards had perished to such an extent that only the magic seemed to remain. For thousands of years, the two fish swam in harmony around each other under the authority of the nymphs.

For years nothing changed, it seemed as if nothing had happened. Several new superpowers came to protect the lines. Only one of the most important keepers of these lines had been missing for years. No one ever thought to see a Night Rider again. Normally this was a group of dragon riders who kept the balance between all the lines.

Despite their dark powers and their deep connection to Yin, they were the most powerful creatures the world knew. Four riders who were each strongly connected to one of the lines, the bloodline as their point of strength. They oversaw, protected and were the only ones who could keep the lines alive because of their strong ties.

In a massacre of the four riders, they all disappeared. The body of one was never found, only the dragon. After their disappearance, many returned with a thirst for power, many attempted to destroy the lines, but none seemed to succeed. They hoped for a return of the Night Rider but a trace remained. Without them, the lines will eventually die and the magic will disappear.

For years, nothing changed until a fifteen-year-old girl who had been robbed of her magic by her mother at birth, an urge for revenge drove her to the darkest magic. An age-old technique was applied until the moment the nymphs saw no other way for her either. They connected her to the black fish, Yin. Her life was connected to the dark spirit and she was doomed to protect the animal.

I had preconceptions when I met the girl, seventeen years old next to the fish. With hindsight, it would have been easier if I had left the work to the nymphs at that time, but I couldn't do it. Partly because of me, she found a way to break free from this curse. She succeeded in doing a spell that only one magician had performed before. At her liberation from the fish it was thought that Yin had perished, nothing could be further from the truth.

This was the moment this story began.