Dear Diary
I should be honest and say that you're not my first diary. That's on my desk beside me now and I've just finished LYING to it. You see that's my official diary, the one that I've been writing in for the last year and the one that'll match up with all the other ones at home. I've told that one the truth for the last ten years and now I'm lying to it.
Why? Because today I learned something incredible and DANGEROUS: magic is REAL.
Today I saw real magic, not the stage tricks of illusionists or magicians, but real, true magic. Call it what you will: Wizardry, Magery, Magik, it was REAL. I saw a tree grow fast enough to trap a Were, Jeremy leap a twelve foot fence and a dozen other impossible things. I saw nothing more than the complete obliteration of the physical laws. What is impossible now? What can't be done?
What's worse is what happened to Jeremy. Oh, sorry, I forget, you don't know Jeremy, do you? That's all in my old diary, the ones' that are all fake now. Jeremy's my oldest friend. We've been together since kindergarten, always in the same schools. He's odd, no doubt about it, but I know him.
But that's all changed. He's got these two stones, one red, one blue, stuck in his hands and this girl, she says that they can't come out, that they're bonded to him for the rest of his life. Worse, they're magical, some sort of crutch or focus which lets him cast magic through them without any training. Problem is, these stones mark him for every magical force out there and they all want him. It turns out that he's the only person in the WORLD who has two of them, which automatically makes him one of the most powerful mages in the world.
The problem is, I know Jeremy. His entire solution to this problem's going to be run away. It's what he does, it's WHO HE IS, but I don't think he can this time. He doesn't know enough to get out of this. Heck, I don't know enough yet.
Here's what I do know. There's four groups out there and he's in trouble with all of them:
First, there's the Were. Honestly, I was part of the big group that thought they were some made up horror, a glibly crafted nightmare to justify all the money the government's spent, but they're real. I've seen one, I've been attacked by one and they're terrifying. Mana says they're humans with a magically enhanced animal soul bound to them, but all I know is that they're ugly, dangerous and after Jeremy.
Second, there's the Corvid. I watched these guys come and grab the Were after Mana had restrained it. They're the government anti-Were unit and I should trust them. I mean, they're the good guys, right? But you should see the expression on Mana's face when she watched their drones come down from the sky to grab the Were. She was terrified. She won't say why, but I'm nervous.
Third, there's the Technocracy. I don't know anything about them, but when Mana mentioned them, you could see the hate in her expression. All I know is: they like to capture people like Jeremy and Mana to experiment on them.
Finally, there's the Stone Circle, the group Mana belongs to. She says they're a secret group of people with stones like her and Jeremy, trying to protect each other from the Were, the Corvid and the Technocracy. I don't know how much I trust any secret society, but as far as I can tell, they're the only people who'll be even vaguely on our side. We're going to need them, by the sounds of it.
Diary, I don't know what to do. Yesterday, I was just trying to get my studies done, keep an eye on Jeremy and be a school kid. Today? Today it feels like I've got the world on my shoulders. Jeremy is some sort of magical messiah, which is possibly the worst piece of planning I've ever heard. What that means is that every magical force going is gunning for him and, well, he's JEREMY! He's going to run and keep running, but this time, I don't think he can.
What am I going to do?
