A Shift In The Balance- Prologue
****
Cerryl felt the massive upwelling of chaos and order mere moments after it began. He was up and halfway down the tower stairs, chaos and order building around him, before anyone, including Leyladin knew what had occured. He didn't even know what had occured, but any concentration of chaos and order on such an enormous scale couldn't bode well for Fairhaven, the White City. By the time he reached the lower floors, Cerryl was breathing heavily and had a group of over a dozen guards and mages following after him.
"Stay back`" Cerryl shouted. Their a dozen feet in the air above the center of the Wizards' square, a mass of such twisted order and chaos hovered, that Cerryl feared for the entire city. Only a few mages could see it as he did, but the others knew to do as the High Wizard said.
The Wizards' square never really had many non-mages in it, and they all disappeared as soon as any trouble with white wizards began to look iminent.
Cerryl stood by helplessly, unable to comprehend what was happening, all thoughts of banishing the disturbance wiped away by its very power. Others were beginning to sense the chaos, if not the order, and soon nearly two score mages, almost all of those in Fairhaven, had arrived at the square. Chaos smouldered around every last one of those men and women, except in the case of his consort, who marshalled so much order that she almost seemed to glow with a luminescent blackness.
Someone, probably the overmage Kinowin, had the foresight to call in several score lancers, all of whom stood by with white bronze sabers bared. Long minutes passed, and whispers began to flow through the square. Many knew of the prophecy that Fairhaven would be destroyed by a second sun, could this be it?
Cerryl sought out Kinowin, the man who's once proud frame was now stooped with the onset of rapid aging that most chaos wielders eventually faced. "Have the lancers begin evacuating the city," Cerryl told the man. "Do it quietly and by sections. We don't want a riot and I'd prefer not to have to loose chaos fire on our own citizens." Kinowin nodded solemnly then shuffled away. Cerryl still couldn't believe how fast is friend's decline had been.
To Leyladin, he said,"You, too. Gather your sisters and their families and get as far out of the valley as you can. If this is the time of the prophecy, I won't have you be part of it." Myral, the mage responsible for almost all that Cerryl was, a gray mage, the lover of a Black Order mage, even High Wizard, had foretold that prophecy, and as little respect as Myral had commanded, everyone knew of his honesty.
The woman didn't even have time to respond, as the disturbance suddenly became a visible distortion in the air, then with a flash of blinding white light, disappeared from sight and order-chaos senses. As the aftereffects of the blast of light faded, Cerryl saw the figure of a young man staggering in the center of the square. He couldn't have been any older than Cerryl himself had been when he had joined the Guild as a student mage. Before the High Wizard could say otherwise, chaos fire flashed towards the dazed boy.
The young man shook his head and looked around. Cerryl could sense the confusion and anger even over the white-red globules of chaos fire that were less than a second away from striking their target. Cerryl tried to wrap order around the boy while simultaneously using it to deflect the fire bolts, but the effort was small and wasted, too much of his power tied up in a defense of himself and Leyladin. Beside him, Leyladin attempted to do the same, but she too was too far away and had too much of her order gathered to herself.
The least Cerryl and the woman could do, though, was to build a wall of order around the boy to stop any further chaos assaults. It wasn't much, but if he survived the first round, he'd be safe for at least a few more minutes.
****
Ranma's head throbbed and his ears rang. His equilibrium was screwed up and he felt like he'd been thrown in a blender. The images before his eyes wavered and pinpoints of light flashed through them. Then he felt an approaching heat, felt it growing in instensity into something that could harm him. Acting on pure instinct and his danger sense, Ranma threw himself flat, the smooth stones beneath him feeling cool compared to the white firestorm above.
The heat became a searing balze and he felt the skin on his back blister and smelled the scent of his own hair burning. Then it passed, all but the lingering pain that made him want to cry out in anguish. Adrenalin surged through his system and it allowed Ranma to focus past the pain, to ignore his disorientation. He called on his battle aura, pulled the chi energy from deep within himself until there was so much life energy floating around him that he felt his wounded back already beginning to heal. The chi burned through him almost as if it, too, were a fire. In its wake, though, came power.
The wavering images in his eyes snapped into tight, almost unnatural sharpness and his other senses followed suit. Ranma knew he was surrounded without having to survey the area. Fire, or an energy very much like fire, crackled around small groups of men and a few women. It reminded Ranma of Saffron and the memory jarred him into forcing his emotions back, to fall into the soul of ice. The battle aura became thicker, growing outward but losing its deep blue intensity in favor of a paler shade that chilled the surrounding air and began to form a wispy puddle of mist around Ranma's feet.
Surrounded by powerful foes and outrageously outnumbered, Ranma waited, taking up a defensive crouch that would allow him to sping into action at a moment's notice. The cold generated by the soul of ice further served to sooth the lingering pain in his back and Ranma began to feel confident of himself and his chances at getting out of this situation alive. Chi, focussed and strenghtened by towering confidence, began to gather in each of Ranma's hands. He could use that energy to attack at a distance or channel it into his physical attacks to do more damage if necessary.
A man, in his early thirties at the most, with short brown hair and unremarkable features came into view. He was flanked by four sword wielding soldiers, but Ranma could tell at a glance than none of them posed a threat. The man who walked between them was another matter entirely. White fire swirled around him, but there was also a kind of crisp blackness within that fire, and instead of lessening the power of the aura, it seemed to enhance it, make it somehow intangibly stronger.
When they were a dozen paces from Ranma, the man called a halt to his escort and shouted to Ranma, "If you come with me, I can assure your safety, but not if you take any hostile actions towards my men or my fellow mages."
It was Japanese, barely. The accent was even worse than Shampoo's, but at least he had the proper forms and vocabulary as far as Ranma could tell. "And you crazy people just go around throwing fireballs at people for no reason?" Ranma snapped, still conscious of his injured back and unknown appearance...wherever he was. "Who are you and where am I?" Ranma didn't release the grasp he held on his chi or the energy he'd called to his hands, but he dropped the fighting stance and took up one that most other people would look upon as casual.
"I'm, Cerryl, the High Wizard of Fairhaven, and as you may have discerned, this is Fairhaven. I apologize for the actions of my mages, they were startled and it is out nature to lash out against that which suprises us. I can offer you medical treatment and a place to rest. My consort is a most accomplished healer." Cerryl stepped back and he and his guards doubled the distance between them and Ranma.
Ranma wasn't the best judge of character, but sometimes trust was all a person had. He was in a strange city, in a strange land, with dozens of people capable of throwing fireballs like Saffron. He 'might' have been able to fight his way of the city, but how far could he go before they chased him down? He'd progressed in the art since his fight with the phoenix, and was confident that his aura combined with the soul of ice would be enough to ward off a significant number of the white fireballs, but that wasn't a guaranteed defense given that he didn't know what else the wizards could do. Ugh, if only they didn't use magic.
Ranma pulled his aura back in, drawing the pooled energy back only until it would no longer be visible, but could be unleashed at a moment's notice. With a nod to Cerryl, he began walking towards the man.
****
Ranma was anxious. Nearly everyone eyed him with suspiscion or outright hostility. Cerryl and his consort, as well as a few others, however, seemed made of sterner stuff and reserved judgement until they better understood the new arrival.
He groaned as he felt the somehow chill warmth seeping into his back. Whatever Leyladin was doing, Ranma appreciated it greatly. His own efforts to heal the damage had been rushed and incomplete, but with this treatment he'd be fully functional within a day.
"You're a very strange young man, Ranma," Leyladin, Cerry's consort said as she spread a rather pungent ointment onto his back. Consort meant wife, Ranma concluded from the signs he'd seen in the few minutes the two people had been together before he'd been herded off with the healer. Cerryl had gathered his mages and gone off for a council meeting or something.
Strange didn't even begin to describe what Ranma was. Strange definitely described how Ranma had gotten wherever this place was. He'd been walking to school, like any other day, and then he'd appeared in midair on some other continent, or world, he couldn't even tell which.
Ranma remained silent, trying to think of what may have caused him to appear here. Leyladin continued,"You have absolutely no order within your body, yet order seems to heal you much faster than should be possible. The same is true for chaos. There is none within you that I can detect and I am most sensitive to such. Your brush with chaos fire should have caused much greater injuries than these." Ranma didn't say anything about his own efforts to fix himself up. "Of course that glow you manifested in the square is another unheard of phenomena. I believe we all felt the power it embodied, but no one, myself included, has ever seen anything like it."
Ranma shrugged as best he could from his position of the cot and finally said,"I don't know what chaos or order are, at least not the way your talking about them, but all that other stuff is just because I'm good, nothing unusual about that at all."
Leyladin gave Ranma puzzled glance but shook her head and continued to apply the ointment and her order to Ranma's back.
****
The High Wizard and the two overmages stood on the raised, gold-shot marble dais, all the mages currently in Fairhaven save those serving on gate duty arrayed before them. The mages whispered among themselves, some shouting down opponents or raising their order shields in a silent threat. Cerryl eyed the gathering and turned to Kinowin with one eyebrow raised sardonically. Kinowin grinned, a gesture that made the wrinkles on his face even more prominent. In his still deep voice, the once powerful overmage cried,"Quiet, the High Wizard speaks."
The conversations died down, if unwillingly, and after a few inconsistent mutters from unidentifiable sources, silence held sway. "This meeting has been called simply to announce my decision, a decision supported fully by both overmages. The stranger is not to be harmed, under any circumstances. If he attacks a anyone, mages included, he will be brought to me for questioning and confirmation of the assault. If I find that the attack was falsified, the dishonet individual will be executed. At all times within the city he will have an escort of two patrol lancers and an aprentice mage. Until otherwise decided by myself, he has free access to the city. That is all, you may go."
THAT didn't make very many of the mages happy, and Cerryl felt as much as saw many of them gathering chaos and raising shields. They weren't stupid enough to attack him, not publicly anyway. Besides, he had a reputation of killing people; mages, rulers, pretty much anyone who threatened him. It was vastly overblown, and the product of self defense more than anything, but it had its uses.
Kinowin and Redark, the other overmage, followed closely behind Cerryl as he departed the council hall. When they reached the outer hall and were out of anyones sensory range, no matter how talented they may be, Redark spoke,"This decision does not sit well with the Guild, and most of those present today were the younger, more accepting of our Order. News will reach the mages spread out accross Candar and many will seek to replace you as High Wizard, no matter how effective you have been in the office."
Cerryl smiled indulgently towards the well-meaning, but less than bright overmage. "They are scared. Everyone knows the prophecies of Myral, and whatever chaos-order disturbance brought Ranma to this world, reminds many of them of THE prophecy." Cerryl had no doubt that Ranma wasn't from anywhere on their world. The display of power earlier in the day had helped him reach that conclusion, but the lack of all chaos and order within the boy was the major factor. Cerryl suspected that as he stayed in Candar, though, Ranma would begin to take on his own internal order-chaos balance. Until then, someone had to protect him.
"Overmage Redark makes a valid point, ser. No one has been happy about the recent shift in Guild practices that you have established, and this event will seem to many as a perfect opportunity to sieze your office. They may fear you, but you've kept the true extent of your powers hidden so well that few understand what you are capable of." Kinowin would have made a better High Wizard than Cerryl, at least that's what Cerryl felt. Unfortunately, the man had few years remaining and handling of much chaos now could hasten an already rapidly approaching end.
"We will see, we will definitely see." Cerryl had no intentions of endangering himself or Leyladin, and the first sign of any attempted usurption would be met with swift and fatal retaliation. Now that he looked at it from the proper angle, Ranma's arrival was the perfect excuse to get rid of the last few dissident factions within the Guild.
****
Author's Notes- I couldn't help myself. I had some writer's block but still wanted to write, so I've made another fic. It's a crossover with the Recluce Saga, coming within a few years of the two books 'The White Order' and 'Colors of Chaos'. Not much has happened yet, but the pace will pick up in the next few chapters. You don't need to have read the Recluce books, though it would help you understance some stuff I'll mention. I'm gonna try to write this where just reading it will eventually explain enough about order and chaos and the workings of the Guild that the fic itself will be all the explanation needed. C&C welcome at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com
****
Cerryl felt the massive upwelling of chaos and order mere moments after it began. He was up and halfway down the tower stairs, chaos and order building around him, before anyone, including Leyladin knew what had occured. He didn't even know what had occured, but any concentration of chaos and order on such an enormous scale couldn't bode well for Fairhaven, the White City. By the time he reached the lower floors, Cerryl was breathing heavily and had a group of over a dozen guards and mages following after him.
"Stay back`" Cerryl shouted. Their a dozen feet in the air above the center of the Wizards' square, a mass of such twisted order and chaos hovered, that Cerryl feared for the entire city. Only a few mages could see it as he did, but the others knew to do as the High Wizard said.
The Wizards' square never really had many non-mages in it, and they all disappeared as soon as any trouble with white wizards began to look iminent.
Cerryl stood by helplessly, unable to comprehend what was happening, all thoughts of banishing the disturbance wiped away by its very power. Others were beginning to sense the chaos, if not the order, and soon nearly two score mages, almost all of those in Fairhaven, had arrived at the square. Chaos smouldered around every last one of those men and women, except in the case of his consort, who marshalled so much order that she almost seemed to glow with a luminescent blackness.
Someone, probably the overmage Kinowin, had the foresight to call in several score lancers, all of whom stood by with white bronze sabers bared. Long minutes passed, and whispers began to flow through the square. Many knew of the prophecy that Fairhaven would be destroyed by a second sun, could this be it?
Cerryl sought out Kinowin, the man who's once proud frame was now stooped with the onset of rapid aging that most chaos wielders eventually faced. "Have the lancers begin evacuating the city," Cerryl told the man. "Do it quietly and by sections. We don't want a riot and I'd prefer not to have to loose chaos fire on our own citizens." Kinowin nodded solemnly then shuffled away. Cerryl still couldn't believe how fast is friend's decline had been.
To Leyladin, he said,"You, too. Gather your sisters and their families and get as far out of the valley as you can. If this is the time of the prophecy, I won't have you be part of it." Myral, the mage responsible for almost all that Cerryl was, a gray mage, the lover of a Black Order mage, even High Wizard, had foretold that prophecy, and as little respect as Myral had commanded, everyone knew of his honesty.
The woman didn't even have time to respond, as the disturbance suddenly became a visible distortion in the air, then with a flash of blinding white light, disappeared from sight and order-chaos senses. As the aftereffects of the blast of light faded, Cerryl saw the figure of a young man staggering in the center of the square. He couldn't have been any older than Cerryl himself had been when he had joined the Guild as a student mage. Before the High Wizard could say otherwise, chaos fire flashed towards the dazed boy.
The young man shook his head and looked around. Cerryl could sense the confusion and anger even over the white-red globules of chaos fire that were less than a second away from striking their target. Cerryl tried to wrap order around the boy while simultaneously using it to deflect the fire bolts, but the effort was small and wasted, too much of his power tied up in a defense of himself and Leyladin. Beside him, Leyladin attempted to do the same, but she too was too far away and had too much of her order gathered to herself.
The least Cerryl and the woman could do, though, was to build a wall of order around the boy to stop any further chaos assaults. It wasn't much, but if he survived the first round, he'd be safe for at least a few more minutes.
****
Ranma's head throbbed and his ears rang. His equilibrium was screwed up and he felt like he'd been thrown in a blender. The images before his eyes wavered and pinpoints of light flashed through them. Then he felt an approaching heat, felt it growing in instensity into something that could harm him. Acting on pure instinct and his danger sense, Ranma threw himself flat, the smooth stones beneath him feeling cool compared to the white firestorm above.
The heat became a searing balze and he felt the skin on his back blister and smelled the scent of his own hair burning. Then it passed, all but the lingering pain that made him want to cry out in anguish. Adrenalin surged through his system and it allowed Ranma to focus past the pain, to ignore his disorientation. He called on his battle aura, pulled the chi energy from deep within himself until there was so much life energy floating around him that he felt his wounded back already beginning to heal. The chi burned through him almost as if it, too, were a fire. In its wake, though, came power.
The wavering images in his eyes snapped into tight, almost unnatural sharpness and his other senses followed suit. Ranma knew he was surrounded without having to survey the area. Fire, or an energy very much like fire, crackled around small groups of men and a few women. It reminded Ranma of Saffron and the memory jarred him into forcing his emotions back, to fall into the soul of ice. The battle aura became thicker, growing outward but losing its deep blue intensity in favor of a paler shade that chilled the surrounding air and began to form a wispy puddle of mist around Ranma's feet.
Surrounded by powerful foes and outrageously outnumbered, Ranma waited, taking up a defensive crouch that would allow him to sping into action at a moment's notice. The cold generated by the soul of ice further served to sooth the lingering pain in his back and Ranma began to feel confident of himself and his chances at getting out of this situation alive. Chi, focussed and strenghtened by towering confidence, began to gather in each of Ranma's hands. He could use that energy to attack at a distance or channel it into his physical attacks to do more damage if necessary.
A man, in his early thirties at the most, with short brown hair and unremarkable features came into view. He was flanked by four sword wielding soldiers, but Ranma could tell at a glance than none of them posed a threat. The man who walked between them was another matter entirely. White fire swirled around him, but there was also a kind of crisp blackness within that fire, and instead of lessening the power of the aura, it seemed to enhance it, make it somehow intangibly stronger.
When they were a dozen paces from Ranma, the man called a halt to his escort and shouted to Ranma, "If you come with me, I can assure your safety, but not if you take any hostile actions towards my men or my fellow mages."
It was Japanese, barely. The accent was even worse than Shampoo's, but at least he had the proper forms and vocabulary as far as Ranma could tell. "And you crazy people just go around throwing fireballs at people for no reason?" Ranma snapped, still conscious of his injured back and unknown appearance...wherever he was. "Who are you and where am I?" Ranma didn't release the grasp he held on his chi or the energy he'd called to his hands, but he dropped the fighting stance and took up one that most other people would look upon as casual.
"I'm, Cerryl, the High Wizard of Fairhaven, and as you may have discerned, this is Fairhaven. I apologize for the actions of my mages, they were startled and it is out nature to lash out against that which suprises us. I can offer you medical treatment and a place to rest. My consort is a most accomplished healer." Cerryl stepped back and he and his guards doubled the distance between them and Ranma.
Ranma wasn't the best judge of character, but sometimes trust was all a person had. He was in a strange city, in a strange land, with dozens of people capable of throwing fireballs like Saffron. He 'might' have been able to fight his way of the city, but how far could he go before they chased him down? He'd progressed in the art since his fight with the phoenix, and was confident that his aura combined with the soul of ice would be enough to ward off a significant number of the white fireballs, but that wasn't a guaranteed defense given that he didn't know what else the wizards could do. Ugh, if only they didn't use magic.
Ranma pulled his aura back in, drawing the pooled energy back only until it would no longer be visible, but could be unleashed at a moment's notice. With a nod to Cerryl, he began walking towards the man.
****
Ranma was anxious. Nearly everyone eyed him with suspiscion or outright hostility. Cerryl and his consort, as well as a few others, however, seemed made of sterner stuff and reserved judgement until they better understood the new arrival.
He groaned as he felt the somehow chill warmth seeping into his back. Whatever Leyladin was doing, Ranma appreciated it greatly. His own efforts to heal the damage had been rushed and incomplete, but with this treatment he'd be fully functional within a day.
"You're a very strange young man, Ranma," Leyladin, Cerry's consort said as she spread a rather pungent ointment onto his back. Consort meant wife, Ranma concluded from the signs he'd seen in the few minutes the two people had been together before he'd been herded off with the healer. Cerryl had gathered his mages and gone off for a council meeting or something.
Strange didn't even begin to describe what Ranma was. Strange definitely described how Ranma had gotten wherever this place was. He'd been walking to school, like any other day, and then he'd appeared in midair on some other continent, or world, he couldn't even tell which.
Ranma remained silent, trying to think of what may have caused him to appear here. Leyladin continued,"You have absolutely no order within your body, yet order seems to heal you much faster than should be possible. The same is true for chaos. There is none within you that I can detect and I am most sensitive to such. Your brush with chaos fire should have caused much greater injuries than these." Ranma didn't say anything about his own efforts to fix himself up. "Of course that glow you manifested in the square is another unheard of phenomena. I believe we all felt the power it embodied, but no one, myself included, has ever seen anything like it."
Ranma shrugged as best he could from his position of the cot and finally said,"I don't know what chaos or order are, at least not the way your talking about them, but all that other stuff is just because I'm good, nothing unusual about that at all."
Leyladin gave Ranma puzzled glance but shook her head and continued to apply the ointment and her order to Ranma's back.
****
The High Wizard and the two overmages stood on the raised, gold-shot marble dais, all the mages currently in Fairhaven save those serving on gate duty arrayed before them. The mages whispered among themselves, some shouting down opponents or raising their order shields in a silent threat. Cerryl eyed the gathering and turned to Kinowin with one eyebrow raised sardonically. Kinowin grinned, a gesture that made the wrinkles on his face even more prominent. In his still deep voice, the once powerful overmage cried,"Quiet, the High Wizard speaks."
The conversations died down, if unwillingly, and after a few inconsistent mutters from unidentifiable sources, silence held sway. "This meeting has been called simply to announce my decision, a decision supported fully by both overmages. The stranger is not to be harmed, under any circumstances. If he attacks a anyone, mages included, he will be brought to me for questioning and confirmation of the assault. If I find that the attack was falsified, the dishonet individual will be executed. At all times within the city he will have an escort of two patrol lancers and an aprentice mage. Until otherwise decided by myself, he has free access to the city. That is all, you may go."
THAT didn't make very many of the mages happy, and Cerryl felt as much as saw many of them gathering chaos and raising shields. They weren't stupid enough to attack him, not publicly anyway. Besides, he had a reputation of killing people; mages, rulers, pretty much anyone who threatened him. It was vastly overblown, and the product of self defense more than anything, but it had its uses.
Kinowin and Redark, the other overmage, followed closely behind Cerryl as he departed the council hall. When they reached the outer hall and were out of anyones sensory range, no matter how talented they may be, Redark spoke,"This decision does not sit well with the Guild, and most of those present today were the younger, more accepting of our Order. News will reach the mages spread out accross Candar and many will seek to replace you as High Wizard, no matter how effective you have been in the office."
Cerryl smiled indulgently towards the well-meaning, but less than bright overmage. "They are scared. Everyone knows the prophecies of Myral, and whatever chaos-order disturbance brought Ranma to this world, reminds many of them of THE prophecy." Cerryl had no doubt that Ranma wasn't from anywhere on their world. The display of power earlier in the day had helped him reach that conclusion, but the lack of all chaos and order within the boy was the major factor. Cerryl suspected that as he stayed in Candar, though, Ranma would begin to take on his own internal order-chaos balance. Until then, someone had to protect him.
"Overmage Redark makes a valid point, ser. No one has been happy about the recent shift in Guild practices that you have established, and this event will seem to many as a perfect opportunity to sieze your office. They may fear you, but you've kept the true extent of your powers hidden so well that few understand what you are capable of." Kinowin would have made a better High Wizard than Cerryl, at least that's what Cerryl felt. Unfortunately, the man had few years remaining and handling of much chaos now could hasten an already rapidly approaching end.
"We will see, we will definitely see." Cerryl had no intentions of endangering himself or Leyladin, and the first sign of any attempted usurption would be met with swift and fatal retaliation. Now that he looked at it from the proper angle, Ranma's arrival was the perfect excuse to get rid of the last few dissident factions within the Guild.
****
Author's Notes- I couldn't help myself. I had some writer's block but still wanted to write, so I've made another fic. It's a crossover with the Recluce Saga, coming within a few years of the two books 'The White Order' and 'Colors of Chaos'. Not much has happened yet, but the pace will pick up in the next few chapters. You don't need to have read the Recluce books, though it would help you understance some stuff I'll mention. I'm gonna try to write this where just reading it will eventually explain enough about order and chaos and the workings of the Guild that the fic itself will be all the explanation needed. C&C welcome at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com