Wrath of the Empire

Prologue

(Cover art courtesy of @NirraTam. She is chained up in my basement and I only feed her when she makes art for me.)

Fading away. A swirling mass of nothingness was where I was. I faintly thought of a dream where I had been falling throughout space, but in this one, it was like I was rising. Everything was dark and heavy, but I still rose through it, and I could see a light where I assumed my objective was. I drew closer and closer to that light, steadily increasing in speed through this thick, dark substance until the light was blinding, and I finally burst through.

I gasped as I quickly sat up. I couldn't see anything, but now I knew that I was definitely awake. I heard the voice of a middle-aged woman utter "Look, Lion's awake!" and racked my brain, trying to remember who it was.

Two people rushed to my side, by the sounds of their footsteps. A man grumbled, "Come on, Lion, don't get up so fast! You've been asleep for three hundred years; your blood's not going to catch up." I couldn't quite recognize these voices, but they sounded oddly familiar. Especially the man. I kept blinking, trying to see again. 

"Why can't I see?" I complained loudly. 

"You sat up straight after lying on a giant stone tablet for three hundred years! Did you expect your body to be ready to just hop up on your feet and start fighting Infernas right away? If you did, you were seriously wrong," the man replied, forcing me to lie down. 

A person next to me -- a female -- awoke, but she, apparently, did not sit up straight immediately.

"Where am I?" she asked. "Why am I on a stone tablet?"

Then I remembered. My vision returned now that I allowed my blood to flow to my head, and I sat up slowly, looking around.

"Maddie," I reminded her, "we've been communing with the Ancients for three hundred years."

There was a second of silence from the Cryomancer that had come from the Null World. "Oh, yeah," she eventually grunted in realization. She steadily sat up as well.

She was a rather attractive young woman, looking to be in her late twenties or early thirties. My mind wondered how she and I had only aged about ten years in the three hundred years that we had been asleep, as we had been about eighteen when we had first laid on this tablet, but the rest of me didn't care. Maddie had a head of short, light hair, and like me, she wore a simple robe that covered her entire body.

I looked at the others, the ones that had been waiting over us.

The man had been Alphonse, also known as the Alchemist, or the Grand Warlock. He was a master in Runic magic, as well as alchemy. Alchemy allowed him to do some amazing and mystifying things, including punching rocks to turn them into controlled bursts of lightning, among others.

He had a head of long brown hair and a beard of a similar length and the same color, as well as a black jacket that reached all the way down to his ankles. Under that, he wore a simple shirt and pants. His limbs weren't exposed, but if they were, one would be able to see a thousand tattoos covering them, just like they did on his neck. Alphonse looked only slightly older than he had three hundred years ago, as his consistent use of magic allowed him to live a longer life.

The middle-aged woman was Sari, who was an Asmerian. Asmerians were sort of like people, except at a certain age, they earned their echo blade, which was some sort of magical weapon that no one seemed to know much about. Also, Asmerians were almost never magicians, but they normally aged at a tenth of the rate humans did, allowing Sari to look about forty-two. 

She had a head of blonde hair, and she still wore her Badland Ranger uniform, but it was likely that it had been remade every ten years or so to keep up with her growing. Her echo blade, which was infused with ice magic, hung by her side, glowing slightly.