Chapter 1- The Start of the Journey
Maral, a planet created by the collision of countless worlds throughout the vast universe over uncountable eons, and while its current civilization is on the newer side, from its origins it has become a planet full of ruins of many ancient magical civilizations; one of the specialties of the inhabitants of this planet is to recover and preserve the ruins of these lost civilizations both on their own world and throughout the cosmos. Many of the inhabitants are good with excavating through the ability to control and harness the mana within themselves, what is referred to universally as magic. This is especially true of a young boy named Lance Scrya. He is 14, has light dusty brown hair and brown eyes. One day as he was helping his father look around an already discovered ruin for anything they might have missed. They had been through most of it thoroughly already, but then Lance saw something. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something shine, as if wanting to be seen, though Lance didn't notice any sort of light. He walked over to the center of the room where he though he had seen the glint and to his surprise, he found a weird box like handle of some sort on a statue of the god Plarem. His father was very impressed with the find, but was cautious nonetheless. He told Lance to step back in case of it being trapped. Lance did so and his father turned the knob in. As he did, a door opened above the statue and a ladder fell down. His father climbed up first, opting to look around and test for any traps or dangers first before letting Lance come up. After a few minutes, he judged it safe and told Lance that he could come up. What was more, Lance could see his father's expression glow up as he walked to a pedestal in the middle of the room with a medium sized box on it, as if the elder Scrya couldn't believe what he was seeing. That said, by the time Lance had fully raised himself up, his father had already moved over to the box and touched the lid.
Suddenly, the box started glowing brightly and pulsing out power, so much that they were feeling ill from it. The lid suddenly popped off and out of the box rose what appeared to be stones of some sort, Lance's father eyes going wide at the sight of them, for he knew what they were, and thus he also knew what was about to happen, which made him go pale with terror. Lance though was in the dark about what was happening, but not before he felt himself glowing in a white light being emitted from the stones. That said, before it could envelope him completely, his father rushed over and with a jump, pushed him out of the light's path and down the trap door to the room below just in time. Lance didn't know what was happening, but he saw his father give him one last smile before white light enveloped everything in the ruins, and Lance suddenly blacked out as an indescribable force overtook him.
Lance woke up a few moments later, the ruins now dark and void of any of the power he had felt from the mysterious stones. That said, he immediately knew something was wrong, he didn't see his father anywhere, and he knew that he would have been right next to him if he had seen him unconscious on the floor. He started looking around frantically for his father, knowing something was amiss. That said no amount of warning could prepare him for the sight he found. His father was lying on the floor, stone cold and motionless, his eyes looking glazed over. Shock flowed over Lance as he realized what the stones had done as tears started rolling down his face as he yelled out through the ruins as if trying to get his father to wake from his last rest, but he stopped for a moment when something caught his attention. His father ,in his last moments of life wrote a note that Lance found on his chest.
It was written in magic as Lance's keen eyes could easily notice, probably the only way his father could write it in the few moments he had before his demise. That said, given that it was on his father's special security paper, he knew the only way he would be able to read it currently was to get to his dad's secret office and read it under his lamp, which could reveal hidden messages he'd written. He had set up this system in order to protect his research. As an incredibly famous archeologist, his work could easily have been turned around for a profit. The only problem was that to keep that security, his dad was the only one who knew where the office's secret entrance was. Lance had been in there many times before but he was always teleported in by his dad as to not reveal the location to any wandering eyes, and so he had no way of getting in.
Lance suddenly heard people screaming out his name from a far in the ruins, the rest of the excavation team no doubt, and went to find them, trying to get them to his father, but as soon as he left the secret room, he found himself in a completely different area of the ruins, and looking back he could not find any trace of the place he had come out of, finding himself near the entrance. Eventually, they did find Lance, and it was clear that they already knew what happened. Everyone on the team including Lance had a magic seal on them to let the others know if they were in trouble, like a panic button in case of an emergency, and so the others knew to start looking immediately when they felt Lance's father's seal disappear. Looking at Lance, they confirmed what they had thought, and proceeded to rush Lance out of the ruins, as well as anyone else in case of any more traps. They found themselves out of the ruins in quick order, so much so that if any of them were paying attention, they might have thought the ruins themselves had moved in order to lead them to the exit much sooner than they should have been able to.
The next few hours all passed like a blur to the young boy named Lance. His fellow archeologists had made sure that he was properly taken care of, having immediately brought him to get checked out at a local clinic, and helped him through the process of telling the authorities what had happened, and then just stayed with him at his father's archeology firm's public office while everyone was trying to figure out next steps and let the shock wear off. They spent who knew how long there, all of them trying to comfort Lance, but Lance didn't feel like taking people's sympathy right now. He was sad, his heart filled with grief and sadness and guilt, it had been him who had found that room. But even with all of that going through his mind, the initial shock had started to settle and his thinking was becoming more level headed. Thus he realized that if his father had spent his last moments writing a note to him that it was important. Thus when everyone wasn't looking, he snuck out and left for home. He had to find his father's office and see the message. On his way back, he passed a few people who gave him pitying looks, so it was clear that news had long since spread through the town. This was made more apparent when he got to his own house, where his best friend and her mother were waiting out on his porch, waiting to comfort him while still teary eyed themselves, but he wasn't in the mood and just passed by the auburn haired duo before either could say anything. For a moment, the girl looked like she was going to chase after him, but then her mother held her back with the thought that he might be better served by having some time to process in private first.
Lance was still watery eyed, but he began looking through the house for any form of a clue, but he turned up nothing. Then an idea hit him. He went into the family room where there was a picture of his mom, dad and himself as a baby. It was huge, his father use to come in here and look at the masterpiece when he needed to think; he said that looking at it calmed him. Lance's mother had died from a rare genetic disease 7 years ago. He looked at it hoping to get the same comfort as his father had when he looked at it. His father had told him once that everything he held dear was in his and his mother's hands. Lance knew his father was both an expert in the use of spatial magics and about as corny a person as one could be in good nature. Thus Lance moved closer to the portrait and touched where her mother's hand was on the canvas. He immediately felt his father's magic in the portrait, and before he could do anything he was sucked through the painting and landed in a dark room. He used some magic to create some light. Looking around, he saw a desk and a lamp along with a bunch of filing cabinets in a small but cluttered room with old looking wood paneling and no windows. He had found it, his dad's office. Lance grimaced inwardly, "Leave it to dad to have something as corny as this set up as a secret entrance."
He rushed over to the desk and put the note from his dad in under the light. He saw the letters form on the paper and started to read…
"Dear son, if you are reading this, it means that I am dead. As sad as you may be, I need you to keep a level head, you are the only one I can pass this message on to, and there is pressing matters to attend to. I am sure what I found had to be the Saren Stones. I have come across mention of them in other ruins and throughout my study of the greatest and most ancient of civilizations, Al-Hazard, but until I saw that box I always thought they were just legend. The Saren Stones are powerful relics of Al-Hazard, the most famous lost magical worlds that was destroyed in an inter-dimensional catastrophe. They contain amazing power, so great that it is said that they can materialize themselves in virtually any form to defend themselves, and some translations can even use this power to enact the impossible. But this is obviously very dangerous since if they release too much power at once, they'll inevitably start to go out of control and eventually turn into pure chaos. I don't need to tell you what will happen if these things are left loose, or even worse if the wrong people find them first. Thus I ask you to honor my final request, you must reseal them and return them to their rightful place before they can cause any harm. I know that this is a tall order, and I don't want to have to put this burden on you, but there is no one else I can trust with such an important task. There is too much potential for their misuse to leave to other people. That said you should have someone with you, maybe take Nanoha with you. She will be a lot of help. You know how powerful she can be. I can only apologize for this immense burden I am placing upon you and wish you the best of luck. Stay safe.
Sorry about Dying on you
Dad"
Lance was shocked for a second after hearing about the Saren stones power. Then a thought came to him "what if he got one and have his wish to revive his parents granted by it." This idea left as soon as it came into his head. If you knew about magic, you knew two things. First is that it is impossible to bring back the dead and the second was that using any magic that had more power than the user was incredibly dangerous and possibly even fatal and if nothing bad did happen to you, the powerful magic usually didn't work right or even at all due to the lack of control the user had over it, which in turn lead Lance to understand his father's worry, for he was sure his father meant that the stones probably had an incredibly high chance of going wild and destroying everything around them.
He didn't even need any time to consider it, he was going to fulfill his father's last request. He had left his father's office and reappeared in his house just in time to find someone barging through his front door. It was none other then Nanoha Takamachi herself, his best friend since forever, and normally she was a nice, happy, sometimes borderline bubbly air-headed person who enjoyed life to the fullest. That said right now she had puffy eyes showing that she had been crying a lot and in fact was still sobbing. She instantly ran over to Lance and pulled him into a powerful embrace, trying to console him. Nanoha's mother was in the doorway, originally having tried to stop Nanoha from running in on Lance, but seeing the sight, she could tell that her daughter knew best, that it wasn't good to leave someone alone to grieve for too long, it only made it worse, and decided to come back later.
It took a bit of time for Lance to feel like talking, but he knew he couldn't wallow in self-pity forever, especially with all the effort Nanoha was putting in to try and cheer him up despite the fact that she was also sad at the loss of Lance's father, whom she and her entire family had been close to since well before she was born, and he had more important things to do. Lance decided to explain everything he knew to Nanoha. It was clear that she had wanted to hear the details on what had happened, but had known better then to ask, but Lance obliged and told her the whole thing, including his father's note and the last task he left for Lance. That said, before Lance could even bring up the idea, Nanoha was already on top of it, "So when do we leave?" she said before Lance even had a chance to ask. Lance though knew better then to try and dissuade her, and even his father had said it would help him to have her along. Lance suddenly smiled, "Thank you Nanoha." Nanoha just smiled, "I know you would do the same. So do we have a heading?" Nanoha said expectantly. Lance had already figured out where to go. He had pieced it together with help from his father's notes and traces of the power of the stones that had soaked into the paper the note had been written on. "Well I think I've tracked them down to Classified Non-Magic world 10296, so at least it's not a completely foreign world to you." Nanoha, "Earth huh, it's been a very long time since I've been to Earth." Lance remembered that Nanoha had some distant relatives there, but he had never been himself.
It took some prep-work and Nanoha some convincing for her mother, but in the end she relented, knowing that having something to do would probably be better for Lance, and she knew they were both strong enough to take care of themselves. Despite their young age, they were gifted magically, immensely so to the point that no normal mage could even hope to keep up with them. In terms of skill, Lance was a literal prodigy, and in terms of power Nanoha had few equals. Thus the next morning, all packed and everything they met at Lance's house after they said their goodbyes, it was time to go so Nanoha got her device out, in this case a device being a special piece of equipment or a system that a mage used to cast their magic faster and more powerfully then it would be without them, sometimes man made or others like her that had formed from her very essence. It also negated the need for some kind of control incantation in most cases as well.
Nanoha's was a unique device she named RAGING HEART and it looked like a red marble. Most custom devices had an intelligence of their own so a mage easily bonded with their devices after awhile. "RAGING HEART, SET UP," said Nanoha and RAGING HEART activated. It magically reappeared as her trusty staff, a pink and white weapon with a gold head that looked like a G and in the middle of that head was the red marble RAGING HEART. Nanoha was also in her Barrier Jacket which consisted of a white dress with blue stripes going up the sides and matching shoes with a white and blue top finished off with a red bow in the middle and white hair ribbons. It was somehow both very practical and yet childishly girly at the same time, but it worked for her. Lance himself didn't use any kind of device, as he never found himself needing one, being a super prodigy of both academics and magic. He could fight a little if he was forced too, but his main power was in defensive, healing, support, transformation and other non-combative magics that we was more suited for. He was also extremely adept at changing into a ferret for reasons that no one knew. It was something his dad said he was born with a talent to do. It was his favorite thing to turn into.
As Nanoha was not as good with teleportation magic, especially a complicated type like the multi-person inter-dimensional variation they were about to use, Lance was getting the spell ready. He started to say Earths teleportation code, "0845-9343-3443-5456-1324-8723-3678-1003-0698-5603" A green magic circle appeared under them with Lance and Nanoha in the middle (a magic circle generally appeared when a person used complicated magic.) With one last look, they grasped each other's hand and then in a flash of light, the magic circle vanished along with Lance and Nanoha.
Authors Note:
So this and the following several chapters are, by far, the shortest chapter of the series, but I didn't feel they needed to be any longer than they are, so they are here in their current form, but later chapters will tend to be much longer as the need for further development and world building increases. This is done on purpose though, as I didn't want to fall into the trap that I feel many writers, both on fanfic and professionals, fall into where they spend too much of their early introduction time delving into complex world building while neglecting the progression of their plot and characters, which I hope I've succeeded at avoiding. That is not to say that I am ignoring those parts of story building however, as they are just as important, and so you can expect that they will be included more and more the further into the story you go, as I believe it should be. Now this is technically my first real chapter upload for this "new" story, even though it is an update to one I wrote over 10 years ago. To those that read it, (of which I don't think there was that many originally), thank you back, and to all the (hopefully) new readers, thank you for your interest and time, and I hope you'll stick with it.
Now there won't always be an author's note or anything like that for every chapter, but as this is the real first chapter, I thought it would be nice. Now as the author, I don't wish for much other than if people could read, and hopefully enjoy this story, but I'll keep an eye on it, and if any reviews come my way, that would be amazing, but only if you feel the inspiration to do so.
Now for the real reason for this note, the explanation of the setting. Maral is a fictitious world made up entirely for use in this story. If it wasn't already abundantly clear, it is a mostly desert world, with vast sands and rocky formations. That said, the name itself is based off of the scientific name of the Caspian Red Deer, so named "Cervus Elaphus Maral", for the single and only reason that when I originally wrote this story, I was doing a project on them, and so the name came to mind readily, but they do have an interesting history to them if you care to google them. In any case, Maral is a temporary setting, and one that won't be featured again for a long while, but it is an important setting none-the-less as a starting point and home world for the beginnings of our cast.
