ULTRAMagic Prelude

Chapter 1

"Where... Where am I?"

"Hey!"

"Who am..." He then noticed the person addressing him. "Uh, me?"

"Yes, you. Hello there, what's your name, stranger?" A woman with long, dark hair and green eyes in a slightly beat up trench coat asked.

"Oh...um... Blood-Wraith, I think?"

The woman slightly tilted her head. "Blood? Quite an odd name given that you don't seem particularly bloody. All of this fire kind of goes against that, ha. I'd say you're more of a 'Fire-Wraith.'"

Blood-Wraith looked at himself as the woman circled and visually inspected him, jotting down notes as she did. His body was shiny gray, sleek, and simple. In regards to his left arm, it was made of fire that glowed calmly and radiated a comfortable heat. And lastly, his torso seemed to emerge from a stream of fire emanating from a point on the ground. "Who are you?" he inquired of the woman.

"Oops, my bad. Ahem, my name is Dragoslava Raynot. I'm an explorer." She then held out her hand.

Blood-Wraith took a second to figure out what the gesture was, but eventually his instincts led him to shake hands. The woman seemed to have quite the grip, but was gentle. "So where are we?"

"Well that depends. We're close to where I live, The Iron City; but as a whole, we're in The Unlight. A truly strange realm if you ask me, but one I call home." Dragoslava pointed all around at the dusty landscape as she spoke.

While that knowledge answered his question, it was not that valuable as he had no idea what those locations were. Blood-Wraith decided to ask a different question as something had caught his interest. "What's this?" He was holding an object he had picked up off of the ground. The feeling of the substance covering it was rough and dry, which made him think he would need to clean his hands later.

"That's a rock," Dragoslava replied. "They're everywhere around here."

"What does it do?"

"It depends on what you want it to do. It can be a tool, a weapon, an ornament, a decoration, et cetera."

Blood-Wraith then looked over at a bigger rock. "What if I threw this at that thing?" he asked as he pointed at it.

"The boulder? Why not see for yourself? Go ahead and chuck it!"

With a deep breath, the rock was hurled at the boulder, shattering upon impact. "WHAT?! What was that!?" Blood-Wraith was quite startled by this outcome.

"Well shoot, you've got quite the arm! You could easily give my big sister a run for her money." Dragoslava then knelt down, retrieving some sparkly objects from the mess and put them in her pockets. "A couple of things happened here..." she said as she stood up, dusting her hands off. "The wind up was potential energy, the rock soaring through the air was kinetic energy, and it ended up shattering because it could not stand the stress of hitting the boulder."

Blood-Wraith nodded... he was still not sure what was going on. It was then that he heard a random noise accompanied by a strange, cold sensation brushing up against his body, completely invisible to him. Both of the resulting feelings made him shudder a little. "Wh-What was that?"

Dragoslava looked around, spotting something in the distance that gave her pause for concern. "Um, perhaps we should head to my place, if that's okay with you?"

"Uh, sure..." Blood-Wraith replied as he looked around nervously.

The two left the area and entered the city, with Dragoslava leading the way. She took this opportunity to explain some of her background and where they were heading. Her quite noteworthy people were mages, warriors, explorers, scientists, and alchemists. In the past, they had settled down in the magnificent Iron City. This sprawling, gothic city made of iron was ancient and had signs of previous inhabitants from truly bygone eras. Sadly the city was abandoned again due to an attack from an ancient creature known as The Beast of Old. Dragoslava's people knew something was not right and chased after it once it had fled. The intrepid explorer had left her people and the chase upon reaching proper adulthood to explore The Unlight and hopefully learn more about the beast.