Just as was the fate of their predecessors, Al-Hazard and The Belkan Empire, the Time-Space Administration Bureau, who, for the last eon or so was the defining superpower in dimensional space, fell eventually.

Of course, all empires fall, but Mage societies seem cursed to leave bigger and deeper scars with their demise than anything else in the universe. It was almost sad, really.

The TSAB had made huge leaps and strides, advanced far since the days of the White Devil and Riot Force Six. Nothing and nobody else could stop them. They were already very prominent when they first started, being one of the scant handfuls to start rebuilding after the fall of Belka, but eventually roads in the universe lead to them, or something that belonged to them, or affiliated with them.

Science, Art, Medicine, everything was advancing rapidly. Too rapidly, some may add.

But their ultimate downfall came in the work of a then-new field of research: Chronophysics. Studying the flow of time and how one may control it via magic. A chance success in a lab at the edge of reality opened a window into a terrifying conflict, a war hidden from them until that moment in time. A time war. A war with past, present and future as the battlefield, control of cause and effect the ultimate prize, and casualty it's worst victim.

The once noble Administration (which was really more of galaxy-spanning republic by that time) was never the same again. Countless perished, as one of the factions in the war sought to use the magic of the Mid-Childians to gain an advantage, and so forcibly dominated them until they ceased to be of use.

The TSAB didn't last long afterwards.

But still, there was hope. A chance to fling a light into the future. Or the past, as was the case.

Mid-Childa, AD 6550718635, just before the end

Chief Librarian Solaris Scrya looked around at his companions, a motley crew of fellow librarians, archaeologists, historians, crafters and engineers.

They were in a mostly untouched section of the Infinite Library, collapsed pillars and bookshelves could be seen all around them. Out there, in the distance, one could almost hear the sounds of magic. Destructive magic.

But in here, there would be no destruction. Scrya hobbles forward, using his staff-like device as a walking cane of sorts. His time in the world in almost over, but for now, he has enough time to do what he came here to do.

In front of him sat a squat, gunmetal-grey vessel which he knew contained several of the most important artefacts in the Beauru's storied history.

He opened it part of the way through and carefully pulled out two of the most important pieces in the collection, a small red sphere of a gem, and a small golden triangle.

[Sir] they both replied, in monotone, robotic tones that were nevertheless, filled with emotion.

"Ah yes. Bardiche, Raising Heart, the time has come. Farewell, you two, and thank you for your service. For everything you have done for your masters, for my family, and for the Beauru. May you bring happiness into the lives of whatever new Masters you may chose, out there. They are lucky, for the Aces will be reborn in them, I feel."

He closes his eyes.

[Yes, sir. Farewell, sir.] the two devices reply.

The Librarian smiles at them, and puts them back in the vessel. There is an explosion behind him. The enemy has found them. They will not survive the night. And yet, the old librarian smiles. He nods to one of personell standing by.

"Open the Dimensional Portal!"

And so a Dimensional Portal was opened, and through it the vessel was shoved. Not just at any old planet, though, but one with people of enough magic potential to be able to use the artefacts within. One far enough into the past that paradox would be nearly naught. Coincidentally, the planet happened to be the same one where two of the Three Aces hailed from: Earth.

Eastern Baltic, 793 AD

The air is filled with the stench of the dead. Bodies littered with arrows, axes and round shields cover the ground like a man-made layer of soil. The clouds are dark and stormy, a pretty afternoon this is not

In the middle of it all stands a man. There is blood dripping down the side of his face, and his breathing is laboured.

He is here to kill men.

One of those men charges forward, a small sword held high. He counters with his axe, but after a brief exchange, the top is cut off. No matter.

He punches the enemy full-on in the face, grabs his sword hand and forces his own sword into his gut.

Another warrior charges. "Ragnar!" an ally yells. Not just any ally, but his brother. He throws him a new axe to replace the one that broke, and they both go straight back to killing.

There are hardly any other beings alive on that hillside other than Ragnar and his brother, but the former soon spots a straggler, a fleeing enemy, out the corner of his eye.

Were he another type of warrior, he might have just let him go. After all, what danger can a fleeing, weaponless man be?

Be he is not just any warrior, he is a Viking.

And so, he pick up a bloodied spear from the ground, and hurls it at the running man. The spear pierces his heart with perfect accuracy, and he goes down.

Exhausted, the brothers approach each other, and embrace. Ragnar says his thanks, and the other man nods, and collapses.

But Ragnar does not collapse. Instead, he sees...

Ravens. Lots of ravens. Ravens circling the dead, heralding the thunerstorm just above.

And in their midst, he sees an old man, wearing a pointed hat, a riding cloak, and a spear.

Odin!

He points his spear at one dead warrior, and then another, and another. As he does so, beautiful specteres of women come down and take them into the heavens. Into Valhalla.

And then, he approaches Ragnar.

Ragnar staggers back, overwhelmed at his presence, but Odin merely points at the ground, near Ragnar. No, something on the ground. He points and keeps on pointing at that spot.

Ragnar kneels down, follows the spear and peers at the undergrowth. In it rests a red jewel. Loot.

He doesn't need the King of Gods To tell him that getting loot from defeated enemies is good, but he feels that this treasure isn't merely something you can sell to some merchant for a sack of coins, or string it as part of a necklace to give to a pretty girl. No, this jewel is far more than merely that, though even great men such as him are hindered by his place and time, and so could not even begin to imagine all the strange and wonderful things that were about to be set loose upon his world.

So instead, he thought about his children. Bjorn definitely does not seem the type to like fineries such as this, and Lagherta would probably take it as an insult that anything but his manhood would make up for his absence, but Gyda...

Come to think of it, he wasn't spending a lot of time with his dear daughter, wasn't he? She would like something like this...

Numbly, he reaches down to pick it up.

The last thing he saw before collapsing from exhaustion himself was, oddly, his beloved daughter Gyda, flying through the skies.

Knee-deep in a river, a mother and daughter stand at ready, fishing tridents at hand, pointed towards the water. They are fishing.

The daughter, Gyda, thrusts downwards. "Eh, I missed."

Almost in response, her mother thrusts downwards, and raises her trident from the water, revealing a fish trapped between tines.

Smiling back at her daughter, she turns to go. "Come on, let's go."

But Gyda feels staying there for a little while longer. She feels the blood-red jewel worn around her neck, a gift from her father after one of his overseas raids to the east. She considers using it to cheat. Just a little. If it can actually be called that. After all, spears are used in both war and hunting, right?

She held the jewel in her hand. Raising Heart, please lend me your strength!

Raising Heart was having none of it, though.

[This combat device prefers that it not be used in trivial and non-combat matters, my Master.]

Oh, come on! Please!?

[… Very well.]

All things considered, Gyda considered it very lucky that nobody noticed the massive amounts of dead fish floating downstream until much later. Or the fact that the river now went up to one's waist instead of to one's knees.

The day after the fishing incident, which is what Gyda dubbed it in her mind, she saw off her father and brother, going on a trek to the thing, her mother holding her by her side. As they left, she spoke with her new friend, Raising Heart.

They did not use mouths to speak, nor did they need to. One could simply "think out" what he or she wishes to say, and the gem was able to respond in kind. Raising Heart had called this kind of thing "telepathy", and says that it is an invocation of magic.

Upon mention of magic, Gyda's thoughts went to the magic users of her society, the seers and prophets and vǫlva. She thought of the Seer that the people of Kattegat visit, the strange hooded man with black lips and forever closed eyes, and while Raising Heart concedes that a few magic users it was familiar with had wielded their in a similar way, the main way it was used back in the lands it was made was vastly different.

After the men of the house has long since left, and when she was sure her shieldmaiden of a mother was not looking, Raising Heart showed her scenes of war and battle, far greater than any account of battle that she overheard from warriors like her father and uncle. No, these battles were vast, and lilting. Colourful, and full of emotion, but with every capacity for brutality as more medievil warfare.

A common element in many of the videos was a little girl named Nanoha Takamachi. Gyda scoffed when she heard about her being one of the TSAB's greatest warriors, but when she saw her in action, she scoffed no longer.

She was amazed at her exploits, and also at the exploits of her comrades, of Fate the Lightning Bolt, and of the Cloud Knights of the Tome of the Night Sky. But most of all, what she was most captivated by, what drew her attention the most, was how they treated their enemies.

They did not kill their enemies in cold blood. No, instead, they would "befriend" them. Make them your allies by showing them they are wrong, even if one has to use excessive force to communicate their feelings to them.

Sure, their magic they use is a big part of it, but the young Norse girl liked to think the difference between her world and Nanoha's world is as much ideological as it was technological.

Soon, she fell asleep, her device at her side, dreaming of magic.

The leaves crushed underfoot as Gyda's boots trampled over them.

It had been a somewhat scary week for the town at the moment. Just after father and brother had left for the thing, a string of mysterious deaths started happening on the outskirts of town. Young men and women, brutally killed with an array of claw markings, like those of an animal.

If that were that, than the whole case would probably have been dismissed as careless hunting, but what made it unsettling, was the fact that the bodies all were found thin and impossibly emancipated, as if someone sucked out all their blood and internal organs, leaving only the skin and bones.

At no time at all, accusations started flying around. Spirits! Monsters! Mad old hermits living in the wilderness! What was known, though, was the fact that they all happened just outside the boundaries of the town.

Which is where Gyda currently is now, both feet resting in he wilderness, but still mindful of the bustle of people close by. Her mother had sent her on an errand to buy some stuff from the marketplace, but the place currently had way more people than she was comfy with. She was born and raised a farm girl, through and through.

She did realise the possible danger she could be in, but in her mind, those attacks happened to other people. She reckoned it wouldn't happen to her.

It did happen to her.

Stepping around the truck of a particularly huge tree, she saw a nasty sight, a wolf chowing down on a dead body.

Except, wait, that didn't look like any wolf she had ever seen before. It was larger than a man, with pitch-black fur that reflected the sunlight like it were made of oil. And when it turned it's head to look at her, she shivered at it's dead grey eyes.

Wait, it noticed her? Shi-!

[Protection!]

Just in time, the jewel on her necklace shouted out, and a glowing pink wall appeared, knocking the beast flat unto it's back.

"Wha, what just happened?"

Gyda blinked, and looked down at herself.

The humble tunic and trousers she'd been wearing just a few moments ago were gone, replaced by a proud green vest and darker forest-green skirt, both with prominent pink trim. She also felt a weight around her shoulders and realised she was also wearing a hooded cloak, this time pink with a dark-green trim.

[Master, we must seal it! Please, follow my instructions.]

"Seal it? Ah, right, is this one of the "Lost Logia" that your former masters used to hunt, right?"

[Affirmative. Now please, this is what we must do to seal it.]

"Right." she says, taking a deep breath, as she saw the monster starting to get back up again.

[Please repeat after me.]

"Lost Logia no. 643, The Wolf of Blackened Oil, Seal It!"

And so it it was sealed. Before the beast could react, she thrusted out her device like a spear at it, reducing it to something smaller than her hand. It looked like a cube. She saw it being absorbed into Raising Heart, who simply said:

[Sealing Confirmed]

. . .

After a few moments, she blinked.

"That was amazing!" she said.

Screaming in pain, a grizzled black hound with eyes an unearthly shade of red struggles to free itself from the yellow binds that tie it to the ground.

It's struggle only gets more pronounced as it sees the flash of a yellow-bladed polearm, flashing with magic.

The magical blade strikes it. "Lost Logia no. 986, Hound of Blacker Darkness, sealing!" a young woman's voice called out.

Whining, the hound is reduced to a trinket, a small card with a picture of the beast it transforms into emblazoned on it's surface. Only the way it catches the light gives any hints as to it's true nature.

The girl with the magical polearm stuffed the artefact in a pocket, and spoke to her device.

"That's the third time this week, do you think mother will be satisfied?"

The device, Bardiche, does not respond, for it has no answer for her. It's crystal blinks, however, acknowledging her question.

"Ah, well, she'll probably be satisfied, I mean, the thing's been terrorising this village for months now. It is truly a good thing that it is now sealed for good. Yes, I think mother will have no choice but be satisfied, who knows how many lives I saved, after all?" she says to her weapon, rubbing her face with it affectionately.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, her mother, the wife of the Earl, watched her from the safety of her home, with warding spells all around to discourage anyone from awkwardly stumbling upon her at this unholy hour. Including her husband, as much as she may love him, he simply wouldn't understand.

Smirking, she leaned back on her chair. Yes, yes, soon it will all be alright. Soon, none will threaten and bring ruin to this family. They won't even think of such a foolish notion, once she has showed them all what her family is truly capable of. Axes and spears may be what occupies the thoughts of most warriors in this land, but they are are capable of so much more than that.

Yes, yes, soon, all will be well.

But not now, no, if there is anything she could say she has learned from being the wife of a feared and respected Earl, it would be that acting too rashly will almost certainly lead to your downfall. No, best not break the secret of magic until the time when she can blindside everyone and their father's fathers with it.

Everything is going according to plan.