Prologue

After Tomalara recovered from the events of Sacerbus; unicorns roamed the lands of Tomalara living in harmony with the living-beings that inhabited the area for roughly 289 years. Unicorns were known to be the protectors of the domain, an unspoken rule that no one ever challenged. Preventing any evil that would arise, to say the least it was peaceful. Each unicorn held a special attribute, from being enchanted or being born with it. Some were fast, faster than any human or animal in the domain. Others were simply strong or could fly. Some could manipulate the elements like fire to their discretion, the same could be said with water, and earthly materials. But the rarest attribute to be found in unicorns were the espers. Whether their attribute was simple or powerful, each one held a responsibility to maintain the peace. During this time wizards were gone. But the unicorns knew of the magic that resided throughout Tomalara through books written by the humans and stories of the elder unicorns who were there for the events, and so they never meddled with it as it would affect the peace of the domain.
You see, in past times, unicorns were just regular horses, they did not have the extraordinary abilities which they hold now nor did they have their horns. The presence of magic was a new thing, the few that could wield such power were the ones that were assigned by the gods that we know little about. But what is known is that these mortal individuals who were unrelated to each other were tasked to be the mediators of the domain. There were a total of 6 individuals that we know of who held this responsibility, whether by luck or misfortune, however you may see fit. They became the first wizards of the land, together they created the council of wizards called the Wizardry Foundation.
For a while they were all true to their responsibility. Some wizards created enchanted tools to suit their responsibilities, others specialized in creating new enchanting spells, one of those new spells was the ability to enchant a horse to assist the wizards all the while maintaining the order. Well, now these wizards of course were once mortal humans, meaning that some still held human emotions. Unfortunately the deities overlooked this flaw, as mortal humans they once were, for some their weak point was their innate human desire. Though not all of them had this feeling, all it took was one to disrupt the flow of life in Tomalara. Sacerbus was a wizard that had been fighting his internal human desire for power and ultimately turned on the others.
Since wizards cannot die by means of simply being killed it was not going to be an easy feat. Sacerbus spent the next century and a half crafting a spell that would banish the other wizards from this plane of existence. All the wizards were equally powerful so Sacerbus couldn’t just battle them head on. Instead, when Sacerbus was ready he had conjured a trap in which the wizards unknowingly would walk through a portal of banishment and disappear from this plane of existence. One by one Sacerbus was successful in banishing 3 of the wizards. Sacerbus attempted to trap the last 2 wizards but failed since by this point the remaining wizards were aware something was off.
Sacerbus brushed this off, feeling powerful enough to battle them if they ever appeared; he initiated his acquisition campaign for control over the continent of Tomalara. After 5 years, Sacerbus was in control over 80% of Tomalara, those who opposed his authority would end up being killed, or worse, be tortured. Of the two wizards that remained was Brandalt. Brandalt was a specialist with animals of nature, he had been the one who had created the spell to create unicorns. Brandalt attempted to find the last remaining wizard for a decade but was unsuccessful, Brandalt continued to search for a way to stop Sacerbus and find the others nonetheless.
Eventually, Brandalt had confronted Sacerbus and tried being diplomatic but Sacerbus was not interested in being stopped and thus after a brief conversation a wizard's battle had commenced. The ground started to hum, with every passing second getting louder, giant tears big enough to swallow homes would appear. As if the ground was regurgitating, lava and anything that wasn’t melted propelled out of the tears, raining down like a storm of lava. Those by the mountains described them as crying, sudden outbursts of cracking echoed out of the pockets of caves from the mountains, followed by an avalanche of boulders, dirt, trees and anything that lived on it. Those by the coast described a sudden retreat of the ocean, as if scared of what was happening. Many that have lived by the coast knew what this meant, and with urgency many fled alerting others to leave before the ocean came back. In the meantime, the wind began to sing, as if orchestrating the events that were beginning to unfold. Over time, the singing became stronger, it started to bellow, wind kicking up in force; it started knocking down stones off of buildings eventually causing castles to collapse if not by the earthquakes. After a fierce moment, everything halted to a standstill, the wind died down, the only sounds you could hear were of falling stone, the ocean waves, and lava spewing.
The survivors of these terrible events wrote books about it and stories to ensure that future generations were aware of the horrible attributes that are associated with the magic of which the wizards held. In the coming years, communities began to rebuild in Tomalara, the people's views on magic and wizards remained the same across the board, they despised it. When everything had gone back to normal, the nations in Tomalara had banned any use of magic. But one thing remained unanswered, where did the wizards go?
During the era of unicorns, a group of explorers had entered a small opening on the side of a mountain, having traveled deep into the undiscovered cave they seeked out natural gems that formed in the heart of the domain. For the explorers nothing was out of the ordinary, as they continued to mine through the bedrock they all staked out directions in which each explorer would mine. One of the explorers came across a jutting piece of polished colored stone, thinking she had found a precious gem. She quickly started mining it out of the soil, once she had it in her hand she examined it. Putting a light next to it to get a better look; with a subtle surprised expression she noticed that it wasn’t natural-made, but she didn’t know what it was. She looked around and noted some irregularities of the surrounding walls, so she continued to mine in the direction in which she found the stone. After some time she came across a small grotto, upon finding this opening her excitement had quickly turned to fascination as she looked around. This wasn't a normal grotto, she could see that the ground had small portions of rotted wood that had been preserved from deterioration, the stones on the walls, crumbled and parts of it missing, still showed signs of human origins. With her new discovery she turned around and called for the others. When the explorers grouped up, she explained what she came across and with the help of the other explorers they discovered a trove of items from the past, chests full of books and scrolls, ornate items and precious elements heavily covered in ground matter, portions of torn clothing and furniture.
The explorers knew some of these things were valuable. They spent the next 2 and a half months excavating this area for more goods and once they decided there was no more they moved on. Throughout that time, the explorers sold items they deemed useless to the traveling merchants and kept what they thought was valuable. Some of those items sold were the scrolls and books. The books and scrolls eventually landed in the hands of a history buff named Rendurmor.
Rendurmor was only 17 but full of energy, always springing into any situation that related to the topic of magic. He came from a family that had dealings with the wizards in the past. Back in the era of the wizards, Rendurmors ancestors were rulers of the ancient nation of Vorstel and before his ancestors would impose a new decree they would first consult with a wizard. Well, Rendurmor was fascinated with the wizards even though he only knew about them from passing, he would often intercept the traveling merchants when they came to town and ask them if they had anything new. The merchants of course thought nothing of it, in fact they knew Rendurmor and often reserved items they thought would pique his interest. The books and scrolls were among the things Rendurmor bought along with a few other items.
Emanating with excitement, Rendurmor ran home to immediately dissect the information in these books. Over the coming years, he would frustratingly comb over every page, and scroll, never coming to an answer, but rather theories. By this point, Rendurmor was 25 years of age and an advisor and overseer of the archives that stored historic items. One day, when he didn’t have to work he decided to look over the pages of a particular book, as he has done before.
Rendurmor kept noticing that some of the smudged paintings throughout the pages shared the same lines, each starting a new section. He sketched whatever he could make out on a piece of paper even though he knew he was not an artist by any means. After 3 hours he finally had a somewhat drawn sketch. Dumbfounded by his discovery he ruminated on his past on overlooking this simple idea. It was a unicorn! Knowing about the past he knew the origins of the unicorns and how they were helpers of the wizards, he couldn’t believe that he didn’t find a correlation to the books sooner. The books and scrolls he had bought all those years ago were written in an unknown language, he had theorized that they were enchanted by the wizards to protect the contents or written in a language only wizards understood.
After ruminating for a moment, Rendurmor grabbed the book and bolted out of his home and towards an isolated field of grass outside of town where unicorns were known to be. Though most unicorns can’t speak they are known to be sophonts. With that being said, people are aware of this and by natural order so is Rendurmor. He knows he can’t touch a unicorn as they do not allow themselves to be, but he figured that he might not have to anyways, so he decided to get as close as he can without spurring a reaction. When he arrived at the grassy field, he spotted a couple unicorns, he nonchalantly walked near one as if looking for something in the grass. When he decided that he was close enough, he opened up his pouch to grab the book. Doing so, Rendurmor noticed a slight blue hue illuminating from the book. He pulled it out and opened it; he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, with swiftness he turned the pages over to a random section, he saw the characters morphing into readable text, as this was happening, he looked up to make sure the unicorn wasn’t paying any mind to him, he proceeded to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. “After all these years, am I finally seeing magic in real life?!” he thought to himself. When the text was done morphing, Rendurmor pondered for a second, “What does this even say? None of this makes sense,” questioning out of surprisement. Realizing what he said out loud, he looked over at the unicorn again to see if it was looking at him, but instead the unicorn was sauntering away. Relieved, Rendurmor looked back at the page and saw the texting were becoming illegible again, “What happened?” he thought. Rendurmor looked up again, and saw that the unicorn had walked away, which is when he realized the book was being affected by the unicorn, “I have to get close again, I just can’t let the unicorn think that I’m following it”. So Rendurmor kept the book out and started pretending to read the book, and looking at the flowers surrounding the grass, and slowly walked his way near again keeping an eye on the unicorn to make sure it wasn’t alerted. When he had gotten close enough, he again saw the pages radiate light and the lines morph into readable text. The text itself was now in characters readable to Rendurmor but he thought perhaps in a language from another nation. Without wasting any time, he spoke a couple words from the page, “Encenir Boliro,” at which in an instant, an intense burning sensation coursed through his body and towards his palm causing him to drop the book and grab his wrist from pain. Unable to react to anything else, a ball of fire had shot out of his palm and into the air, causing Rendurmor to collapse. The two unicorns that were in the vicinity ran away leaving Rendurmor to agonize in pain from the spell. Rendurmor passed out from the pain for a while. After gaining consciousness several hours later, he sat up disoriented. By this point it was dark out, as he was sitting there he started to analyze what happened earlier that day. Rendurmor looked at his hand that shot out a ball of fire, and to his concern it looked normal. He started looking around his body and though it was dark outside he could sense that his body was fine. Rendurmor turned his attention to the book. The patches of grass and flowers reached Rendurmor's knees, to find the book was going to be a nuisance. After 10 minutes of looking he found it. He expressed a sigh of relief once he gave the book a look over and nothing was damaged. On his way back home, he kept going over the events of that day. He guessed that the unicorn had some sort of magical property that unlocked the secrets of the book. Rendurmor wasn’t confident with this theory, but he had to test it out again. After the events of that day he wasn’t too sure if the unicorns would ever get near him again. After several attempts to get near he finally was able to get close to a unicorn, it looked to be a small adult unicorn with the ability to fly that was too focused on eating to pay him any notice. Like before, Rendurmor quickly opened up the book and turned over to a page, once he was ready he stuck his arm out, his palm facing towards the sky and repeated the words on the page, “Cie ko don encadilizar." With anticipation he braced himself for a burning sensation that he once felt. But instead a heavy sensation overcame Rendurmor and he fell to his knees, although his palm faced the sky a wave of energy pulsated out of his palm but turned towards the unicorn. Unable to stop it he eyed the energy beam and couldn’t believe what was happening. The spell started to ensnare the unicorn as if chaining it down and paralyzing it, the unicorn clearly scared started flapping its wings to get away to no avail. Over time its wings became stiffer to the point they were unable to move, then after a moment of fussing the unicorn fell to its side like it was paralyzed. Bewildered by the altercation, Rendurmor got up and slowly crept his way up to the unicorn. Scared, Rendurmor poked the unicorn with a stick but the unicorn didn’t move. Rendurmor's first reaction was to pet the unicorn since that wasn’t a common thing. Afterwards, Rendurmor kept his distance in case it jumped up and retaliated, he collected his composure and then pulled up the book and opened it. He skimmed through the book and more text had become readable, some of the text were of the common tongue and others in a tongue he wasn’t familiar with. In it were names of spells and what they did, and other portions explained items and what they were for. He couldn’t read it all at that moment, his mind was preoccupied with the unicorn he accidentally ensnared, he knew that if he let it go, he would run the risk of it retaliating or running away. There weren’t any books on how to handle a trapped unicorn, because this had never happened. Unicorns are elusive, and human attempts to catch one would always end up in failures. Rendurmor was faced with a moral issue, to let it go was to risk never being able to get close to a unicorn, or keep ensnaring it to use it for his studies. Rendurmor knew that even though he was in a secluded area; the longer he stayed out in the open, he ran the risk of being seen by another unicorn or a passing traveler. His mind settled on a decision. Scouring through the book, he came across a page that contained a spell that encapsulates objects but it requires some sort of pre-disposed container. Rendurmor chugged the remaining water in his glass bottle and poured out whatever was left. Closing the bottle with the cork, he got up to the unicorn and overshadowed it and said the words on the page, “Cos go unt kaj’n,” while saying it, he imagined the unicorn being encapsulated in the bottle. With energy emanating from the unicorn he felt the energy coursing through him again, this time he planted his feet and pointed his palm towards the unicorn and in an instant the unicorn's body disappeared and reappeared inside the bottle. Rendurmor was pleasantly surprised to see he was still standing and that the spell also shrunk the unicorn to fit in the bottle. Although he worried now that perhaps the unicorn was now too small to affect the book, he was right. He noticed the book was no longer illuminating, as he put the bottle in his pouch he flipped through the book and noticed the text had become unreadable again. Feeling a variety of emotions, he quickly put the book away as well and hurried home before the paralyzing spell wore off on the unicorn. In the coming years, Rendurmor would slowly learn the ways of the wizards. Through experiments using the trapped unicorn, he discovered that the unicorns radiated a sort of arcane magic which enabled him to cast spells as long as he was near a unicorn or carrying a vial that contained the blood of a unicorn. Unfortunately, keeping a unicorn alive proved harder than expected even through the means of spells, so Rendurmor ended up killing the ones he captured. His actions of murdering unicorns over the years altered his brain, causing him to no longer have remorse. By the time Rendurmor turned 30 he was aware of the potential he had. His mind was set on conquering the nations in Tomalara and using unicorn blood to fuel his ambitions. And just like Sacerbus, Rendurmor rose in power by using spells to alter the minds of the people. Among the commoners something didn’t seem right, how is it that a single person cropped out of nowhere and rose to power so quickly? Those who knew him supported him, not knowing about his experiments, they saw Rendurmor as a suitable choice to run the republic of Plimengal. After winning the elections to become the leader, he turned his interest towards military action, in the meantime he instated a decree allowing the use of magic. To the public, this was confusing, magic was not to be found even if people looked for it. Mixed opinions were prevalent, some were indifferent because they have only ever heard of magic from the past, while others voiced their concerns of the use of magic often referring to the Battle of Wizards. Rendurmor didn’t do this for the people but rather himself. He knew that if he openly engaged in magic, people would call for his imprisonment as use of magic was prosecutable. As time went on, Rendurmor trapped more unicorns. Only Rendurmor’s select few knew this, and they were introduced to the old ways of the wizards. An issue arose and that was when the new mages learned to cast spells, they ran the risk of depleting the arcane essence of the unicorn's blood requiring more. On top of that, the use of spells continuously wore out the mages from their lack of endurance requiring them to rest and ready up. As Rendurmor and his new mage guild planned their next action, Rendurmor and the mages decided to create a pact. They chose Rendurmor to become a monarch, thus creating the Kingdom of Rendurmor unbeknownst to the public. As unicorns became more elusive due to the poaching, less attempts to maintain the peace were made by the unicorns as they started to become aware of the missing unicorns. Rendurmor had noticed this, which gave him the opportunity to begin his militaristic crusade throughout the continent of Tomalara. Nation after nation, each one bending a knee to Rendurmor became subject to the newly formed kingdom. Rendurmor and his mages were unsuccessful in unlocking the secrets to enchanting, so they had to stick to casting spells they learned from the old books and scrolls. Although they weren’t able to enchant anything, they discovered a method to keep the unicorns alive in order to ensure a constant supply of blood. As cruel as this was, it was the reality for the poor unicorns. Over the next 40 years Rendurmor would reign as the king, but once he got too old, he decided to crown his son as the next ruler of Tomalara. Of course this was without its repercussions. Rendurmor had instated his eldest son Dorvisun as the new ruler, but his daughter Vorlstelia was not too happy about this outcome. Over the years, the two siblings grew apart, with Vorlstelia often opposing her brother's ideologies. With constant arguing the two siblings eventually tore the kingdom of Rendurmor into two nations, with each sibling as the ruler. Dorvisun kept the kingdom and renamed the nation to Adrissol, and his kingdom kept the name Lunarxia. On the other hand, Vorlstelia founded the new nation of Tiftenor and named her kingdom Miloeyn. The two newly found kingdoms would eventually plot against the other.