The Hidden World

Yuki flipped up the paper stuck to the front of the notebook. There wasn’t anything scrawled on the cover. It looked old though and worn out as if someone had flipped it over and over again. 

‘Get over it,’ Yuki thought, repeating the words written on the paper. ‘It sounds like a note to herself.’

Opening the notebook, she noticed the papers inside were aged lightly. They felt stiff to her fingers as if no one had touched it for years. The writing was still preserved for the most part, just a tad faded.

‘It’s written in runes,’ she noted. ‘That’s interesting.’

She began to read. From the first few pages, it seemed like the notebook was a diary that was meshed together with notes on magic and ideas. The beginning sections weren’t titled, but from what was written, Yuki pieced together what it was about.

“Gaea’s core,” she murmured to herself as she repeated two words written in the notebook.

There was a small sketch of an orb on one of the pages with the dimensions of it written out. The notes around it were on the amount of mana present in the core and the density of it. Questions interspersed these neat scribbles that wondered about possible weak points that were present in the object.

It was about breaking Gaea’s core, the task that Gaea had given Sophie upon her passing. It was the task that she had told Yuki she failed to do. 

‘This can’t be what she was talking about though,’ she thought. ‘She wouldn’t say get over it for such a thing. She came up with a plan to hide the shards.’

Yuki continued to read, following Sophie as she struggled to devise ways to destroy the core completely. She came up with a number of ways that included overloading the core to explode it, sheer force, and various spells. 

At the end of it, all she could do was shatter the core. How she did it, though, intrigued Yuki. She had never bothered to ask Sophie when she was first told about this, the idea of asking never appeared in her mind. But in order to break such a powerful object, Sophie had to have devised some clever method.

The method, Yuki found, was something she had assumed as impossible to do. Every textbook and study and paper Yuki had read had always driven one idea into her mind. Her own experience enforced that idea to the point where Yuki accepted it as fact. 

Mana could only be controlled by the one it came from.

But Sophie had done the impossible.

In order to shatter the orb, Sophie created a way to control the mana within it and break it from the inside out. The control she had was fleeting, only around a second at most from what she wrote. It was why she could only shatter it into fragments rather than destroying it completely.

The spell she used was one that was complex in its conception. The theory behind it and the trial and error she went through expanded to several pages filled with cramped writing and scribbled runes. Ideas were crossed out with bold black lines and others were circled carefully.

‘I’ll need to look into this some more when I have the time,’ she thought. ‘There’s still around half of the notebook to go through right now though.’

She flipped through the next few pages quickly, scanning them with a passing gaze. They were on how to destroy the rest of the shards, but Sophie had ultimately given up and decided to spread them around and hide them. 

Then she flipped the next page. There was a sheet ripped out based on the left over strand in the bound. The page after that was titled “Investigation”.

‘Investigation. Into what?’

The demon struggles in Libra have accelerated at an astounding rate. It is being called a war now, the Demon War. The skirmishes in the cities have increased in number and more and more demons are being ousted. A worrying number of them have disappeared. The council is now debating on whether or not it is time for us to intervene.

My concern is the pattern of these attacks. The areas that have been struck do not stand out to the normal dragon. However, I see something else. Gaea’s core has been destroyed and its pieces have been dispersed. Some, I have hidden myself across the land. The rest however, have been delegated to trusted individuals through connections that do not tie me directly to them.

Some of them live in the demon lands, but the rest reside in Libra. I know every city and town they are in and if needed, I can track the shard they have easily. And because of that, I’m worried.

Others will be able to do such a thing. The elemental energy that these shards radiate are immense. It has fallen many levels since the core was broken, but they still far outclass that of a normal elemental jewel. Any earth elementalist worth their weight would be able to detect them when they come near one unless it was masked or an even stronger source of elemental energy overpowered it.

These attacks are striking the towns and cities these demons are in. They’re not random at all. There is no reason to suspect these towns as I know personally that there are no reports from them. So, the shards are being targeted.

I will need to look into this matter more as I cannot let the shards be collected. Together, whoever holds them has elemental energy akin to that of one of the most powerful dragons ever to live if not the most powerful. I hold a shard as well, but I worry that the ones trying to collect are from within. If it becomes necessary, I will go into hiding. For now though, I will continue to watch.

That was the beginning page of the section. It was an important one as well. Yuki set the notebook down as she considered the implications of what was written. Sophie disappeared years ago most likely because of what she wrote in the notebook. There could be other reasons as well since she did say that she went her own path to find a way to help Ethros and its people, but this looked like a more pressing issue.

‘Maybe it's both. I’ll have to think about this more later.’

She flipped through some more pages, looking at the notes Sophie wrote about the locations being attacked and the demons in the towns that she knew. There were somewhere around twenty seven shards scattered throughout Libra. Another one hundred were in the demon lands and in various forests. She made a record of the ones in Libra, scratching them off one by one as the towns that they resided in were attacked.

Finally. The council has decided to intervene. It’s been months since the first skirmishes began and one month since they’ve escalated. Dragons have been calling for intervention and others have begged us to come. 

Kilik really needs to be more forceful when it comes to lives. I understand that dragons cannot intervene until it threatens our stability, but it would take a blind fool to not see that demons being slaughtered and driven out has dangerous implications as to the safety of the demon lands. I’m also glad as it gives me reason to travel down and make sure that those that hold the shards are safe or at the very least, the shards are.

I need to check on Vivian and Jared. They decided to have a child. I thought it was a crazy idea with what is happening right now, but I can only support them.

Yuki stopped. She remembered what Sophie had told her before. Sophie knew Yuki’s parents and had given them a shard to safeguard. Her egg was made during the Demon Wars and her parents were lost around that time.

‘Were these their names?’ she thought. She touched the words with her fingers. ‘Vivian. Jared.’

She quickened her pace, reading faster in hopes of finding out what happened with them. She flipped past more notes and various anecdotes on Sophie’s experience in Libra during this time. Then she found a section where the words were written noticeably messier than the rest.

I knew it. I should have told them to come back. I knew that small town they live in wasn’t safe enough. That shard is a black mark. I should have never given it to them. 

The town is razed to the ground. There were bodies everywhere; elf, beastkin, and a few demons. Of the rest of the demons, none can be located. The shard’s power is no longer there. I can only hope that Jared was able to hide it in time. And that they might have gotten away. 

I've tried to search for them, but everything I did turned up nothing. I won't give up though. There must have been something that I missed somewhere. I just need to try again.

I worry about their egg. It is unhatched. There is no possible way they can raise a hatchling now. They have no home, no possessions, and nowhere to hide. That’s if they haven’t been taken. Or worse. I couldn’t find the egg either. I would have raised the hatchling in their place if I must. Repayment for what they have done for me. And I couldn’t even do that.

I heard it was going to be a daughter. They sounded so excited, so proud. They dreamed of having a child for so long and I could understand that feeling, though it wasn’t as strong for me. 

I shouldn’t have given them that shard. This was my fault. I branded them. I gave them a beacon of doom. 

I killed them.