A/N: Artistic license has been taken with this fanfic because, simply put, some things that work well in one medium (say, video games or prose) don't work as well in another, because you CAN have too many ellipses and exclamation points, and because I said so.
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Prelude
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Once, when the world was yet trapped in darkness, the Goddess of Mana felled the eight incarnations of disaster that guided the world to destruction, the God-Beasts, with the Sword of Mana, and sealed them in eight stones.
As the darkness left, the world was created.
The Goddess of Mana turned herself into a tree and fell into a deep sleep. Many years passed…
Due to the actions of some who plot to unleash the God-Beasts, obtain power surpassing even that of the gods, and make the world their own, conflict has broken out, heralding the end of peace.
Mana rapidly disappears from Fa'Diel. Even the Mana Tree, once the Goddess of Mana, begins to wither, but hope races towards the world in the form of four specks of light in the darkness.
So look north, to the Magic Kingdom Altena, a cold and desolate land kept temperate by the magic of the Queen of Reason. As the power of Mana Fades, the relentless cold begins to seep into the city and the castle…
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Ivira stood with her fellow soldiers before the Queen of Reason, seated on the Golden Throne with the Crown of Reason resting on her pink-purple hair. In front of the Queen stood Koren, the Wizard of the Red Lotus. He spoke for the Queen, as he had so often in recent months.
"My people –" Ivira wondered when they had become his people rather than the Queen's "- as you can see, Mana is starting to disappear from the world!"
Of course they could see it. Hell, they could feel it. They were mages, every last one of them.
"For the people of Altena, this is a dire emergency! Without Her Majesty's magic, we cannot survive in this frozen climate for long."
"There is but one hope. We must go to the forbidden Mana Holyland, and obtain the Sword of Mana."
Ivira stood still and silent, shocked out of speech while around her the others broke discipline in their mad rush to question one another, as though any of them had any answers.
"Silence!" shouted Koren, and the crowd obeyed.
"We can open the gate to the Holyland if we posses the eight Mana Stones," he continued in a less frightening tone. "Of course, few nations will willingly surrender such objects of power… We will need to invade these countries and take their Mana Stones by force, using our superior magical powers!"
The crowd was silent. Ivira had to hold herself back from crying out.
"The war will be long and difficult, but in the end the world will be united in a glorious Magic Empire, and with the Sword of Mana in the Queen's hands, spring will return to Altena at last!"
"Long live the Queen of Reason!" shouted the mage-soldiers around Ivira.
"Long live the Queen of Reason," she whispered.
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Prologue
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"Hey, Jose! Jose!" Angela pushed against the old man playfully.
"You don't have to yell," he said, exasperated. "These old ears can still hear you loud and clear! Remember, I was a great magician once, a long time ago…"
Oh Goddess, not this again!
"Stop!" she said, throwing up her arms. "I don't wanna hear ant more stories!" She'd heard them all several times over. "Just get on with the lesson."
Angela assumed her stance and began a recitation of a basic wind spell.
"My lady…" Jose interrupted, "magic isn't all form. You're having trouble because you're concentrating on the form, not the heart that goes with it."
She was concentrating on the 'heart,' on how much she wanted to be able to do this… and it was doing absolutely no good! She rounded on Jose.
"Oh, I am so sick of your little preachings! That's it! I'm outta here!"
And with that, Angela, Crown Princess of Altena, fled the room.
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"Hey, Victor!"
"Ah, Princess! Are your magic lessons over already? You know I'm the one who has to listen to old Jose complain when you skip class! Please don't do that to me. You have no idea how boring the old man can get."
Angela raised an eyebrow at him, leaning over the railing of the walkway so he could see her clearly from the courtyard.
"Uh, I guess you do."
Angela turned around and leaned against the railing, laughing uproariously.
Victor humphed and walked away as Angela headed off towards the other end of the raised walkway.
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In the castle's main heating room, a fire usually burned so brightly and with such heat that it was painful to be near it.
Angela, no her way through, noted almost with satisfaction that it was burning lower than a non-magical flame.
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She knelt before the stone statue of the Goddess of Mana and prayed: Let Mother notice me. Let Koren remember me. And please Goddess, please, let me learn magic.
Her stomach gave a quiet rumble, indicating it was time to head for the kitchens.
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Among other things, her mother's magic meant that the everyday needs of the castle, at least as far as food went, could be served by a simple duplication spell Angela had know the form of for years, a single stove, and an elderly woman named Olive who doted on Angela and was always happy to give her a pastry such as the one she was munching on now, as she talked to one of the rank and file mages.
"Koren's training is getting tougher and tougher" the woman – Ivira, Angela believed – said. "We're starting to get some major injuries."
"He's changed so much," Angela said, suddenly less interested in her pastry.
The woman nodded. "I think a battle is near. Koren is quite powerful now, maybe even as strong as the Queen herself."
That would have been laughable just months ago, but now…
"Princess, I was looking all over for you!" It was Victor. "The Queen and Koren are waiting.
Mother actually wanted to see her? Or maybe it had been Koren's idea. Maybe he hadn't changed as much as she had thought.
Angela struggled not to run, instead following Victor to the throne room at a suitable pace for the Crown Princess.
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"Miss Angela, please pass," said the guard at the door, and Angela did, looking back to give Victor a little wave. Then she ran into the throne room, slowing only when she reached her mother's line of sight, at which point she assumed once more a suitable pace. She reached her mother's throne and kowtowed.
"Y- you called for me, Mother?"
It was Koren who spoke, in his new cold voice.
"Angela, I will explain. In order to open the gate to the Mana Holyland, we must begin invasions of every country with a Mana Stone, and gain possession of those Stones. Legend has it that when the energy of all the world's Mana Stones is freed, the gate to the Mana Holyland will be opened."
It was ridiculous. It was preposterous, especially coming from Koren! Or, it would have been.
"We have decided to begin by releasing the energy of our own Mana Stone."
"But how -?" Angela began. She went silent when her mother's eyes came to rest on her own.
The Queen of Reason spoke.
"… By using the Sealed Ancient Magic, that is normally forbidden for it takes the life of the caster."
"However, it is not yet time for me, or for Koren, to die."
Oh Goddess, please no.
Angela could see what was coming in the distance of her mother's eyes.
"Therefore we –"
Mother you're supposed to love me! Koren, I was so sure you did!
" – we have decided to use your body as a catalyst."
No.
"If we sacrifice your life, we will be able to release the energy of the Mana Stone."
No.
She looked to Koren.
"H- how could you?"
To the Queen.
"M- Mother!" It was almost a question.
Her mother looked away.
"You cannot use magic."
It's not my fault.
"You are the shame of the royal family."
I never meant to be!
"If you are remembered as a user of great magics, it will be a fitting demise…"
She shook her head, backed away. No.
"N- no…"
There was light all around her. Where was it coming from? Were they going to kill her where she stood?
"NOOOOOOO!!!"
And the light was inside of her and she was outside of herself, and it pulsed, and it grew until it was too bright, too bright, brighter than Mother's fire had ever been –
And then she was gone.
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Angela was cold, and tired, and it was a struggle to open her eyes.
"Uh… uhhhn…"
She managed it and the climb to her feet as well.
"W- where am I?"
But she already knew. She was outside the city gates.
"Mother… why?"
She looked back. "What should I do now?"
She looked forward.
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Angela had discovered that she hated sahagins almost as much as she hated to cold. She'd set out across the Sub-Zero Snowfield with nothing but a cotton robe, the wooden cane she used as a practice staff, and the clothes she'd been meaning to have altered for the encroaching winter for weeks now. So far she'd killed four sahagins with just the staff, swinging madly as they tried to gang up on her. Now she was facing three more all at once.
Angela gulped down the energizing round drop she'd grabbed from the main pantry earlier that day, when the world had still almost made sense.
The first sahagin reached her. She swung once, twice, she had to do as much damage to this one as possible before the others got here, but then they were on her, and she was too busy dodging their crude tridents to think.
One down, keep moving.
Two down, don't let the cold get into you, you'll never get it out.
Last one down, now keep walking. And she did, until the cold got inside of her and she couldn't walk anymore.
"I want to go home… Mother…"
She lay down to sleep.
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"Where am I?"
She was in a soft, warm bed, that much she knew, with her clothes piled on the nightstand and her cane leaning against it. She slipped into the clothes as quietly as she could while she looked around.
Angela was in a small room furnished with two beds, each with a small table next to it, and two oil lanterns. There was one window, which showed a simple, snow covered house across a neatly paved street. From outside the room she could hear small feet running back and forth and a child's voice singing. Cautiously, she opened the room's only door and stepped through.
"Mama, over here!" called the child's voice as Angela emerged. It came from a small blonde girl in a pink and blue wool dress. A woman with long hair o f the exact same shade looked over and smiled at both the little girl and Angela.
"I'm glad you're awake," said the woman. "We found you unconscious in the Snowfield, and for a while we weren't sure you were going to make it. I'm Bara, and this is my daughter Chichi. You're in Elrand, by the way."
"I'm, uh, Cammy. Thank you for rescuing me." Bara smiled at her warmly.
"Mama, can I play with her?" asked Chichi.
"Don't cause her any trouble, Chichi," the girl's mother replied. "She needs time to recover. I'll play with you instead.
A dagger twisted in Angela's heart.
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Angela stayed with Bara's family for nearly a week as she recovered from her experiences, at least physically.
She learned that Bara's husband worked in Altena City and sent money back to his family, coming home on festival days and whenever else he could, and that doing either was becoming increasingly difficult due to the increasing number of monsters. The second day she was there she met Bara's younger sister Eve, who lived with Bara but had been away, working as a ship's cook, for the past two months, and learned to cook by helping to feed the sisters' hundred-and-two year old grandmother Eliza's insatiable appetite. It was a peaceful, simple life.
Angela hated it. She couldn't stand seeing Bara and Chichi together. She couldn't stand the slow pace of Elrand. She couldn't stand not doing something, anything to prove her mother wrong or stop her or something. She hid travel kit, with round drops, medicinal puipui grass, and some rope, all bought from one of the local stores, under her borrowed bed, but something held her back from making use of it.
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On Angela's sixth day with Bara's family, three things happened to finally push her into action.
First a wanted poster with a picture that vaguely resembled her – Mother had never been big on portraits – naming her guilty of high treason and offering a hundred-thousand luc reward for her capture appeared in the nearest pub, and a slightly creepy old man started talking about being the one to catch her.
Second, the last ship for, possibly for anywhere, for a long, long time was preparing to leave.
Third, she met the Fortune Teller.
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The old woman was sitting at a table in the common room of an inn near Bara's house talking to a young man when Angela wandered in, looking for conversation away from Bara and Chichi's constant affection for one another. The old woman and the young man, who were deep in what Angela sensed was a private conversation, were the only ones there except for the thoroughly boring innkeeper, so she settled for sulking in the corner.
She'd been sitting less than a minute when the old woman, easily identifiable as a Fortune Teller by her garb, called her over.
"Young miss, come sit with us. I've come a long way for so little company." The man sitting across from the Fortune Teller gave an exasperated sigh as Angela obeyed.
When she sat down the woman looked her over with a piercing gaze, gave a secret little smile, and spoke:
"A person's life is ninety-nine percent fate. The other one percent is your hope guiding you."
"Tell me, Madame Fortune Teller, what should I do?" Angela asked without thinking/
The Fortune Teller's eyes met hers and she felt a spark of… something… go through her, deep into her, down into a place where something that had always been there, always been in he, had begun to wake the day her own mother announced her intention to kill her via the young man she had once thought herself in love with.
"Sometimes people are in such despair that they lose their spark of hope. That is when they go to the Temple of Light in the Holy City, Wendel."
"The Temple of Light?" repeated Angela.
"When you are lost in the dark, you need a light to guide you. Go to Wendel!"
"That's the same thing she told me!" exclaimed the young man with apparent frustration. "I asked if my child was going to be a boy or a girl and she said 'Go to Wendel.' This old woman has no idea what she's talking about!" There was a note of something like fear in his voice, and Angela got the feeling he was trying to reassure himself. She nodded her thanks to the Fortune Teller and walked slowly out of the inn.
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It was night, and a storm was coming. Angela could see the thick, snow-heavy clouds on the horizon, and she could feel the racing wind that would bring them here. A few flakes of snow fell form the sky now, but this was nothing to what was to come.
"So… the Holy City," she thought. "I don't know what's waiting for me there… but.. I can't stay here. …I'll go. What do I have to lose? Maybe I'll even learn to use…"
She said it aloud: "Magic."
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Chased from Altena, fleeing assassination, Princess Angela set out for the Holy City, not daring to even say goodbye to her rescuers for fear that it would shatter her resolve. Little did she know, the fate of the world was about to be placed in the hands…
ANGELA NO SEIKEN DENSETSU