Heroes in the Mirror

Prologue

On that day, it was said that everything people once knew collapsed, becoming like the rubble that was their cities.  The armies that came destroyed - nay, ravaged - the land of Elemdalya, leaving nothing but the woeful cries of mothers as they watched their children be cut down, raped, and tortured.

It was a mournful day, the elders always recount in hushed whispers.

And it was, because the armies were swift in their attacks, merciless in their conquering, relentless in their pillaging.  They left the cities in their wake in complete decimation.  Our country's army fought bravely, attempting to push back the tide of soldiers, but it was futile.  When people saw the blood red armor of the enemy gleaming in the sunlight, they ran. Rarely a day goes by where someone does not whisper the events of that day into each other's ears, as if they are stuck in that moment of time.

But perhaps they are.

Perhaps the people are stuck on the period of the Collapse. Perhaps their minds are so damaged they can not escape the sight of the sky turning dark with the smoke from the relentless fires or the screams that echoed through the towns, masking almost all other noises.

After the armies had incinerated our cities, including the small towns, they swept toward the capital and took it swiftly. Our country's army stood no chance; we were weakened as a nation. Even the army's Elemendi mages, each one wielding a specific element, could not push back the horde of bloodthirsty men.

On that day and for a week thereafter, all of the Elemendis that survived the initial wave of massacre were hunted down like dogs, executed upon discovery. There were no more Elemendi mages, and there never will be again because it was passed down from mother to son, father to daughter.

However, magic was not destroyed that day, for the armies brought with them a new kind. A gruesome kind. Negatry magic, a power wielded only by those disturbed of mind. It runs rampant through our land, poisoning those who sell their beings to cloak themselves in the magic.

Our new king, the one who ruined our culture of magic, thought that he had saved himself from the possibility of an uprisal by destroying the Elemendis, but what he was unaware of was that our land was not just home to one kind of magic. There remained the magic of a Pursae, though it only blessed two people with its power every hundred or so years. So the citizens of Elemdalya had to wait for their saviors. There was no one to save them in the thirty years they had to endure their oppression, but still they patiently waited, praying each time a newborn breathed its first breath.

And then I was born.