Window to the Past

"Shea, don't go too far!!" Aine called after her little sister.

"I'm not a kid, god!" The young woman yelled back, miffed at her elder sister before vanishing into the woods.

The brunette sighed. "But we're leaving soon…"

3 years before Aine's arrival in the Clover kingdom: 25 years old, the middle child of three. Her hair was longer, past her shoulders even, and wore an off the shoulder white blouse with a brown corset and skirt. 

She currently held a basket of laundry as she watched Shea runoff. 22 and the youngest, Shea Alette was adventurous on her own but shy in crowds. It was no wonder she always ran off, she hated large groups, and with the oncoming move everyone in the village was out and about as busy bees. She was taller than Aine, at 5 foot 4. Her hair shoulder length with bangs parted in the middle. She always wore shorts and overalls compared to the skirts her elder sister enjoyed. Then again Aine was the only sister to wear skirts.

"Is she gone?"

Aine turned around to see the oldest of her siblings, Sereia. White hair up in a messy bun, signature cream colored eyes and in her own less than elegant crop top like shirt and shorts.

"Like the wind." The middle sister said dejectedly. "I don't understand why she does this! It's almost everyday since we announced we'd be leaving."

Sereia'a cheeks puffed up to hold back a laugh. "You think this is a recent thing?"

Aine's eyes went wide. "You lie! Don't tell me she's been leaving before this!?"

"Ever since we first camped here!"

"And you didn't tell me!?"

Laundry went everywhere as Aine chucked the basket at her big sister, prompting a small brawl between the two women in the dirt. Everyone around just laughed or shook their heads as they went by and about their business to take down the village.

The village of Tairngire was almost legendary amongst the few settlements that existed in the neutral zone. A village that wasn't truly a village as it was a gathering of large wagons and chariots that were make-shifted into homes. They were a group of people who lived together in a caravan; they settled in one place for a week before packing up and vanishing overnight. They traveled for a week in the hidden paths and strange routes of the land where most could not follow to find a new place to stay, then unpack and settle for another week to later repeat the process.

It was a tedious way of living but it was theirs, and they never complained. After all they traveled all over; seeing beautiful landscapes, ate exotic foods and spices, strange animals followed them. It was all amazing things that the typical kingdoms around them rarely got to see.

After all not everyone could handle or knew how to navigate the Neutral zone. It was a land full of highly dense mana zones with strange magical places and dungeons and other mysterious things that the other kingdoms couldn't really get a grasp on. That's why they never really expanded their land any farther into the neutral zone, it was full of things that by themselves they couldn't really understand.

That didn't mean there were people who couldn't understand it though. After all there were smaller settlements dotting the continent of people who had lived in such conditions for generations, Tairngire was one of those. However they were the only ones to move around, as they had learned in the past that staying in one place for too long drew in unwanted attention to the Alette.

It was often a scary story told at night to children who complained too much about the constant moving; a time way back before the village migrated around. A group of unknown men had arrived in the village wounded and looking for help, so they took them in. Naturally in such friendly surroundings it didn't take long before the men discovered what the Alette were capable of and attempted to kidnap one of the children, it ended in tragedy with the man and child going over a cliff. Adults often told the story in a manner of "if we stay still too long bad men will come and kidnap you away!"

And kids of course didn't want that. But there were a few who would fight back: "Then why doesn't the Alette family just go away! Why do we have to go with them."

"Because the Alette family is important to us. We live the way they do because they know things and give us Grimoires."

And it was the truth.

Were it not for the Alette many people in the Neutral zone would not be able to survive. Every generation they would give out the grimoires they made, as there was no tower or wizard in the neutral zone to receive them from, and that allowed the people to perform real magic. The Alette also passed down stories from their ancestors, the fairies, that told them what plants were safe to eat, what animals were too dangerous and even magical items in dungeons that needed to be avoided.

The village people helped keep the Alette family safe and in return the family gifted them with strange magic and knowledge. That was the nature of the Tairngire village. And they even spread this influence to any other villages they passed. Trading supplies and things for knowledge or on the off chance, a grimoire.

Today was cloudy, with promise of an oncoming storm later in the evening, so everyone in the village was moving as fast as they could to pack everything up and move on. They wanted to try and get some kind of head way in their journey, preferably to the west, before it became impossible to move through the rain. They were too close to the witches forest right now and everyday of staying too long brought them closer to being found by the queen, who was less than hospitable on good days. The plan was to travel away from the diamond kingdom and witches forest, they'd go along the edge of the border of Clover Kingdom before going straight up. They had a village to the north they had arranged to meet in a few days, a small barbarian tribe in the mountains that they often did trades with in the past.

After the mud wrestling Aine and Seirea had they tiredly returned home, their father, Argom, watching them slowly approach their own double wide wagon.

"What happened to you girls?" The man asked with wide green eyes.

The sisters glanced at each other. "We slipped."

The blonde man raised an eyebrow like he didn't believe them, his eyes glancing over their dirty clothes then the ruined laundry in Aine's basket. 

"Right… well we finished packing up so it's about time we head out. No time to do that laundry again-"

As Argom began to turn away and climb into the wagon Aine spoke up.

"Shea ran off though, dad!"

"Again?" His eyebrows furrowed in concern before he turned to Seirea.

The woman sighed and shoved her hands in her pockets. "Yeah yeah, I'll go find her. I think I know where she went."

And then she was off. 

"Hurry back!" The father called. "We'll be leaving soon!" The dark sky rumbled up above, almost as if it was emphasizing his words.

The white-haired fairy girl waved her hand before she too vanished into the nearby brush. Aine only watching with a worried expression, before her father called her attention to other things. 

She put the basket in a corner of the wagon behind a chest and went about organizing; making sure food was accessible during the travel, comfortable places to sit and even a few of their games and books were available so they wouldn't be too bored.

"Aine, come help me with your mother!"

When she heard her father in the other half of the wagon she quickly made her way over, bouncing like a deer over all their things. She pulled aside the curtains that blocked off their parents room to find Elida, their mother, unconscious against the low desk they used for work. Argom was pulling her away and wrapping her in a blanket, on the desk sat six grimoires.

"Was she making these this morning?" Aine asked as she picked the top one up. It was red with a gold and maroon circular pattern on the cover. It reminded her of lace. The three leaf clover on the front made it obvious where the book would eventually be fading away to.

"And all of last night." Argom sighed. "She's been overworking herself lately…"

Elida Alette was just like her daughters: brown haired, cream colored eyes and two "mana stones" embedded in her back. And just like the other Alette women she used Grimoire magic, often taking time to continually use Aira Quill and make new books. Most of the time they vanished away-

And as Aine thought about it the red book in her hand glowed and vanished with a flash of light.

-But they hadn't had a grimoire stay in the village for several days. And it must have worried Elida because the villages they traveled to would be expecting new books for their children coming of age.

"Grab her legs please, Aine." Argom asked as he slid his hands under Elida's arms.

"Yes father." Aine did as she was told and grabbed her mother under the knees, gently lifting her and carrying her to the thick pile of pillows and blankets they called a bed.

The creation of grimoires was a very taxing job, as it required absolute concentration and several hours of condensing mana from not just the air but also from one's own body. Luckily the Neutral zone was full of grand magic zones that allowed the Alette to easily pull magic from the air to make their books, it was significantly less taxing on their body that way. But they were not currently located in one of those areas and so Elida was forced to use her own mana reserves to create the grimoires from scratch.

This results in hours-long comas, sometimes even worse, to recover the mana lost from their body. Seirea would be unconscious for days on occasion when she trained with their mother.

Argom slowly rolled his wife over to gently pull down the back of her dress and inspect her Mana Stones. Aine couldn't couldn't help but lean over to take a peak, she wondered if her stones looked the same. As far as they knew all mana stones held that deep blue color, they seemed alive in their own way. The way the light hit them on occasion made the colors move and glitter like the night sky. But Elida's were dull, no doubt because of the amount of work she just put herself through, a lackluster gray blue color with no shimmer in them at all. The skin around the stones were also starting to bruise.

Argom gently touched the bruising and cursed under his breath. "You girls really need to practice more…. Your mother can't keep working this way or she'll corrupt…"

Aine went pale at the mention of corruption.

Mana and the world always had a way of protecting itself. It was necessary as magic could do amazing things in the world; things that humans, elves, eand even fairies were not ready for. The mana stones were no exception to this; they were pure condensed mana that Alette women walked around with everyday on their backs. The mana could be used for anything, it gave the users deep wells of mana reserves to use spell after spell without tiring (at least normal spells) and sometimes you could even scrape the stones to get fairy dust to use in potions or magical tools.

They were without a doubt other worldly and dangerous items. And thus had a kind of "fail safe" should they fall into improper hands.

First is that you could not remove the stones. Not only were they embedded in the bones of their owners shoulder blades but once removed they lost their magic power within hours.

Second was that if damaged in any way, or should the owner face deeply negative emotional trauma, the dense mana from the stones would begin to leak out into the owners body: changing them physically or mentally and eventually turning them into a walking natural disaster.

That was corruption.

Aine had never seen such things personally but had heard the stories. An ancestor of hers had once been captured and forced to go through unspeakable things so her captors could harvest fairy dust. It all ended with the woman's body corrupting and exploding into water, drowning out entire cities so none would survive.

Shea used to joke that's where the heart kingdom came from. Or that the water spirit located there was the new body of their long lost ancestor.

The bruising around Elida's stones was a sign that she was overworking herself and would soon damage the stones if she kept working at the pace she currently used. Even now her mother was probably not going to wake up till sometime tomorrow, if they were lucky.

"You and Seirea will need to make books till your mother wakes up." Argom said after he fixed his wife so she was sleeping comfortably. "We don't have any to pass off, and Raum will be expecting new ones, especially if we want their crops and fur coats."

Aine nodded. Normally she wasn't the one to make the books, as when she was younger she had no control over her magic and would randomly bring Grimoires into existence, the consequences of which left her bed ridden for almost a month at a time. Now that she's older such things didn't happen and she was instead out for no more than a week.

"Not now though..."

The two looked up when a knock sounded at their door. Aine opened it, greeted by a powerful gust of wind and rain, along with one of the village elders.

Old man Triton was holding a coat tightly around his body in an attempt to protect himself from the gales but it really didn't work.

"We need to go!" He yelled over the wind. "The storm is picking up! If we don't leave now we wont at all!"

"Are the girls back?" Argom shouted back as he came up behind Aine.

"Girls?" Triton looked confused.

"Shea disappeared so Seirea went looking for her!" Aine told him. When the old man shook his head confused, a weight dropped heavily in the girl's stomach. This whole area was full of rivers, waterfalls and cliffs. Even underground caves that, in weather like this, turned into landslides and natural pitfalls. 

Aine snatched up her coat.

"Aine!"

"I'll go find them dad! We can't wait any longer to leave but we can't leave them behind!" She jumped out past Triton and ran for the tree line. Her father screamed after her but it was quickly drowned out by the intense wind and thunder.

She ducked under low branches and over fallen trees. Around bushes she recognized as poison or alive, even in the heavy rain she was swift and accurate, using the puddles to slide faster around or under things, completely ignoring how muddy her clothes got. 

Faster she had to run faster, find her sisters- but where could they have gone. All she knew was the general direction as Shea always went the same way.

Aine froze, breathing heavily as something caught her eye. Amongst all the green and grey she saw red. Not the bright red of flowers but a dark red that the rain had yet to wash away, making it as fresh as it could possibly be.

With fear as her motivator the fairy slowly moved forward, pulling aside branches and vines that blocked her path till she came into a clearing. She didn't feel queasy, as she had gutted many animals to eat in the past, instead the adrenalin in her system had her feeling numb to it.

Before her lay a man, a pile of ashes by his body that she recognized: the remains of his grimoire after he had died. She did not recognize him, he was dressed like a mage with diamond patterns tattooed across his chest. In one hand his relaxed hand held a chunk of white hair, in the other he had a bloody rock. His head was still bleeding profusely, so this was a fresh kill.

As fresh as you could get. Was it her sisters? Did one of them strike this man? Where did he come from- diamond kingdom? That would explain his attire. But that hair, the white hair in his hand was definitely Seirea's.

Aine felt her chest tighten and she quickly gripped at the front of her shirt, willing her breathing to slow and heart to calm. She couldn't assume, she couldn't let this scare her. The sight of her mothers bruised mana stones came to the forefront of her mind and she closed her eyes. Willing herself to calm down so she did not suffer a similar fate.

A loud boom echoed behind Aine and at first she didn't take note of it. But there had been no previous flash of lightning, as one came before the other. She spun around, hood falling back as she stared at the sky. Despite all the heavy rain and clouds the smoke and fire was as bright as the sun to her.

From the direction she'd come from.

"What-" 

Her legs moved on their own, forgetting the dead man behind her she ran for her village, praying to god it was just an unfortunate lightning strike and that the rain around them would take care of it. So many thoughts passing through Aine's mind.

Her sisters, her mother, the dead diamond man, the village- what was happening?!

As she got closer Aine saw the flames, the silhouettes of people screaming and running around. She saw Triton run for a wagon just to suddenly have a piece of metal impaled in his legs. Aine broke through the edge of the trees screaming for her father when a sudden force threw her to the side and into the river she had been washing clothes in earlier that morning.

It was shallow enough that she quickly pulled herself out and stood up waist deep. Her head was pounding and when she pulled her hand away she saw blood, she must have smashed it on a rock, that would explain the dizziness and blurry vision.

She looked behind her to see what had possibly thrown her around, was it lightning?

Aine's eyes slowly widened as her vision cleared and she watched a human form shamble around inside the little village. She was unmistakable, moving like a zombie, hunched over and groaning out in pain as she reached for people running from her.

"S-shea?" Aine asked. She didn't expect to be heard, her heartbeat was so loud in her ears along with the storm around them.

Shea slowly turned to face Aine, the lightning in the sky lighting up her destroyed form. Her clothes were bloody, burned and in complete tatters. Her eyes sunken in as deep red veins spider webbed out from them, her once creamy eye color had gone to a glowing silver. One of her arms and both of her legs were grey, cracked and blackened with glowing orange light underneath the skin. It looked as if someone had completely replaced those limbs with charred hunks of wood. 

Cinders and embers floated away from her body and Aine watched as a little piece came in contact with a nearby cart and exploded. 

Aine was frozen and speechless as her little sister stared her down. Aine's hand clutching her chest as she fought her hardest to control her breathing 

It's not real, it's not real.

Shea slowly turned away, completely unresponsive to the world around her now as she shambled her way into their tiny town like a zombie.

It's not real, it's not real, it's not real. 

Anything and everything her ashes touched was destroyed. Wagons bursting into charcoal, people sent through the air as they screamed for help.

ItsnotrealitsnotrealITSNOTREAL

Aine forced her legs to push through the water, a struggle as the current had dramatically picked up because of the storm. She had to find her dad, her mother was defenseless right now, Seirea was still missing-

"Got one!!" 

Aine screamed as someone grabbed her hair as she pulled herself onto land. Her head yanked back viciously so she was forced to stare up at her captor. A beefy blonde man in a black fluffy coat that was no doubt waterlogged with all the rain. His eyes were as black as the sky and he had what looked like rubies embedded in his chest and head.

"Oh yeah look at those pretty fairy eyes of yours~" he said in a sickenly sweet tone to mock her.

"Let go- aah!" Aine tried to struggle but the man twisted his wrist to pull on her hair again. It hurt- it hurt so bad! Aine's hands scratched at his to try and get him to let go but all it did was make him laugh, prompting him to shove her down into mud where he proceeded to rip apart her dress.

She screamed, tears streaming down her face as she scrambled to try and get away but his grip on her was too strong.

"Did you find her?" A man called but Aine couldn't see him.

"Yeah she's right here! She's got the rocks and everything."

She felt the man tap on her Mana Stones and she cried out.

"Alright." The other voice said. "Lets get outta here, she'll be the only survivor so no-one else will know. That other fairy chick will take the whole village out with her."

Aine twisted her head to look back at the burning wreckage of her village. Shea's body was nowhere to be seen but Aine didn't need to, she knew her sister's body was corroding away more by the second until finally she was overtaken, and if the cinders alone took out whole carriages god only knows what her body would do once she reached her limit.

They had to get away.

Aine dug her hand into the muddy river bank, grabbing hold of a sharp rock buried in the dirt.

She felt the man holding her lean over to grab her other arm. "Lets go little fairy, before the other one kills-"

He didn't get the chance to finish as Aine threw herself back, catching the diamond mage off guard- they both fell back into the river that had now swelled twice its size. 

She took the sharp rock and slashed it through her hair as they landed in the water. Now free from the man they both went rushing down the river, Aine would pull herself up for air just to get thrown back down by the rushing current. She occasionally heard the diamond man screaming for her or help, she wasn't exactly sure as she kept getting thrown to the bottom of the river. In the few moments she did come up to cough and gasp she saw trees going by, heard the diamond man's friends shouting for him from somewhere, but more importantly she saw the oncoming cliff and waterfalls.

Aine panicked and flailed her arms around till one hand was lodged into a piece of driftwood. Pain shot through her arm but at least she had stopped; she quickly grabbed a hold of the log and pulled herself up, coughing and retching as water came up from her lungs. She watched the man from the diamond kingdom screaming as he came at her, reaching for her aggressively as he tried to find something to stop his descent. But Aine wasn't having it, she screamed as she pulled herself up enough to bring a leg out and kicked him in the face.

The blonde screamed and disappeared under the water. Aine took the moment to take several deep breaths before turning to look at the horizon: it glowed as brightly as a sunset with smoke rising high into the sky. She couldn't see the village from how far she had gone down the river but the fire was without a doubt massive. Any people in the area would see it for sure and who knows what kind of attention it would draw. 

She had to get back to them, she had to find Seirea, her parents-

As she looked around quickly, searching for a way to safely get back to land, she heard a sound: it was a cross between a high pitched whistle and a scream. It was sudden and fast, like something had just whizzed past her. She slowly turned her head when a rush of heat over took her and then the force of air. It knocked the wind from her lungs and completely shattered the log she had been clinging to, throwing her with such power it lifted her from the water and straight over the cliff's edge. 

As she descended in the air she watched a rush of fire and debris fly over her. No doubt from the explosion Shea's body had inevitably created. Aine watched as fire reigned from the sky as it suddenly felt like day time despite the time of night, she felt a chill embrace her before everything went black.