The Dark Mage

Chapter 20: Primordia Protogen Solara

   It was long ago on the planet of Celestia, centuries after the end of the last of the human remnants in the war between them and their creations. It was roughly the time of the Ver Tauc and Szolsuran legends of their origins, a time period approximately 1200BC. And during this time the Szolsurans and Selenese lived on the same land. The Szolsurans ruled by day through industry and technology and the Selenese ruled the night through magic, sorcery, and manipulation of the natural world. Both groups lived in harmony and were able to rest in each other.




     But this harmony and balance would be disturbed when the empress of the Selenese people had fallen to the primordial temptations of all those who fall to it. She was exceptionally beautiful with an immaculate figure, gifted in magic beyond all other Selenese people as were her 13 sisters, eloquent and speech, and had resources above all except the image of Inari amongst the ancient Kitsune empire. Because of this, she believed herself deserving of more than her domain of her land and to rule over the night. She wanted to rule over all of the day as well and eventually the rest of Celestia.


     So, Luna and her 13 sisters conspired with the Nymphs and the Fae to create a means to overcome the Szolsurans. And because of their pride, they sought to become as gods through the use of forbidden magic and created the 14 Stones of Power that would siphon the magical energy of every living thing around them. It had to be this way for the Stones of Power to work, because unlike God, Luna and her sisters were created and had no true eternal power within themselves. So, they had to steal the life and power from other beings. And when the Stones of Power had been placed in their bodies, the Nymphs and the Fae had realized their error in collaborating with them but were too late. Luna and her sisters had become magical parasites like all dark magic artifacts.


     And so, Luna and her 13 sisters used their newfound power to utterly destroy the might of the Szolsurans making all their industry and technology useless against them. And within 10 days, the Szolsurans had nothing left with the Selenese having taken over all that was left of them. The Szolsurans were now their slaves as Luna and her 13 sisters demanded sacrifice of the firstborn of each household that wished to live and not be killed.


     But among the Szolsurans and Selenese that were given no rest under the tyranny of Luna and her false divinity, there was a Szolsuran named Solara who led an underground cause to overthrow them. They called themselves the Sons and Daughters of Liberty Rising with their aim to rebalance the rule of Selenese and Szolsurans through destroying Luna and her false pantheon. The only question was how to go about doing it so that they would not be seen and be successful with the only chance they had.


     So, they found the Nymphs and Fae who created the Stones of Power and destroyed the research and recipe with how they were created. And using the vast magical knowledge of the Fae and Nymphs, Solara and the Sons and Daughters of Liberty Rising began their work to turn Solara into the weapon they needed to destroy Luna and her sisters. And for Solara, they created the crown jewel of the prehistorical Szolsuran civilization, the magical fusion core that could make whoever wielded it capable of all magical elements and amplify their abilities beyond all normal measures. For it combined both the best of the Szolsurans industry and the magical abilities of the Fae and Nymphs. And not only did the Szolsurans and Selenese have reason to rebel against Luna but so did Sylvanus, queen of the Fae and Nymphs, for Luna's betrayal and forcing her to make the Stones of Power.


    The next phase was to create the body for Solara to be modified into so he could handle the magical fusion core and have the enhanced ability to defeat Luna in a battle of 14 against one. Then the artificial body parts were added to replace the organics. His limbs became mechanical, his legs from plantigrade to digitigrade, quantum computation installed into his organic central nervous system, and the addition of organic Kitsune body parts to his Szolsuran flesh to greatly increase his magical ability. He had become all but unrecognizable from the person he was, but he was still the same Solara inside. And to make him even more unstoppable, they modified the software of his artificial body to interface with his newfound magical energy and the magical fusion core so that he could integrate all known technology into himself and interface with any electronic device as if it were a part of his own body. Then the Szolsurans installed the one-way magical suppression device that would leave Luna and her sisters' magic suppressed but leave his own unaffected, far more advanced than the modern magic suppression technology that would be reinvented thousands of years later.


     But Luna would eventually find out about this creation of Solara being turned into a weapon to be used against them, so the 14 sisters sought to leave their opulent temple and genocide every last Szolsuran man, woman, and child. But Solara was ready and standing between Luna and her false pantheon and the Szolsurans and Selenese that created what he became. And so, their duel began for the lives of the Szolsurans and Selenese against the tyranny of the monsters Luna and her false pantheon had become.


     But even though it was 14 against one, it was an even fight. Solara had suppressed their magical abilities and used the magical fusion core to synthesize his magical abilities to be the elements resistant to his enemies and attack them with all the elements they were weak to. But even with their magic suppressed, there was so much magical energy being drained from the environments through the Stones of Power that it destroyed entire cities and country sides to the point that where the Selenese and Szolsurans lived could no longer be described as the same continent. 98% of the population had disappeared in a single day only for the battle between Solara and Luna with her false pantheon ending in a draw.


     But while Luna and her sisters were weak, the Selenese used the last of their collective magical ability to seal them away a mile underground in a special extreme magic suppression vault with a permanent stasis spell to make sure the Stones of Power could never be acquired by anyone ever again and that the 14 sisters could never come back to destroy their world again. And this was because the Stones of Power had turned their bodies mostly into a hybrid of magical energy and distorted matter, so destroying their body wouldn't be enough to kill them without destroying the source of their magical energy being the Stones of Power themselves. And knowing how the Stones of Power worked, there was no safer way to dispose of them at the time than sealing them away and hidden deep underground to be lost to the sands of time.


     Years would follow since then, and those that served under Luna's thumb began to form their own cult around her and her sleeping sisters. This would become the first iteration the Ver Tauc religion of the Selenese people. Then they banished the weakened Szolsurans who no longer had their technology to do their work for them, and they had no choice but to become banished and set up the remnants of their civilization on a new continent that thousands of years later would become the Confederate Republic of Szolsura and in the ancient world become the birthplace of philosophy and the rule of law. But before then, Solara had helped rebuild the factions of the Szolsuran people in their new continent.


     But fearing that one person shouldn't have so much power, the Szolsurans used the last of their magic ability to also permanently seal Solara into a stasis spell. Solara would no longer be seen or heard from again and fade into legend. And when he had faded into legend, the Szolsurans began to worship Solara as one of their 12 gods of nature as the patron of the most important city-state in the ancient Szolsuran world and patron for the development of technology for the benefit of civilization and head of their pantheon as representative of the sun. At this time, the Szolsurans had been reduced to using stone and bronze tools as were the Selenese and it wouldn't be until the Christianizing of the Szolsurans in the 2nd century that the Szolsurans changed their colloquial name from the sons of Solara to Szolsurans as a name that is defiance to worshiping the work of their own hands. For the name Szolsura means in their own language "Land of the Slayers of the Sun" as in destroyers of the idolatry of Solara and the natural world.


     But Solara himself did not cease to exist. He was rediscovered in stasis, dormant in the form of a crystalline statue, and kept held in a military warehouse in the Confederate People's Republic of South Selene. And now he has been stolen by Prince Darius to be reused as a weapon against his enemies. And now the dark magic artifact the dark Neko mage Isis had given him to break permanent stasis spells began to resonate when close to Solara and the presence of the 14 sisters buried deep under the old temple of Luna in the ruins of the Old Lunsaro city that had been destroyed in 1957 during the War to End All Wars.


*******


Yako's Catechism


     Although it had been the first time Yako had willfully to the best of his focusing ability partake in the Divine Liturgy as a catechumen, Fr. Anthony had noticed that Yako was not nearly as ignorant of Orthodox Christian customs and liturgical rites compared to many of the catechumens who had come from the Ver Tauc religion like the former queen Paxsura before her life sentence. After all, Yako was close friends with friar Victor and even attended some of the liturgies out of curiosity. Yako even remembered parts of the liturgy from then even if there were small differences in the Great Litany done in the Kitsune clan vs the Selenese empire. And although Yako had never read the Bible, listening to the short segments from the epistle and gospel gave him the words to understand the things he himself was doing. For although he never had the gospels read to him privately and only ever on rare occasion heard segments of them, he realized that in reading his close friend friar Victor's example that he had read the gospel almost every day.


     And there was even a saying friar Victor had towards his spiritual children over the centuries, even some that would go on to become Saints like Moshi the Blacktail, "Live in such a way that if we were to lose the gospels that they could be rewritten by the way you live your life."


     And because Yako wasn't totally ignorant of what the church believed and was already inquiring much into the life of the church, Fr. Anthony didn't think of making Yako wait a couple of weeks to initiate Yako into the catechumenate like former Ver Tauc practitioners. And when Fr. Anthony asked Yako what Saint's name he would pick for himself upon entering the catechumenate, despite Saint Sozon of Cilicia having a similar sounding name Souzun Yako and a name that means "savior", Yako chose the name Moshi the Blacktail after the Saint he martyred. And he did this as a way of honoring the legacy of the Saints who had been martyred at his blade by his former master's authority and counting himself amongst them. He considered himself dead to his old masters of Inari and luxury and false friendship, and in their place, Souzun Yako threw off the old man and chose his new identity amongst those who had died for a Master truly worthy of their lives that no earthly fox queen nor country could ever fulfill.


     And before Yako began his initiation into the catechumenate, Fr. Anthony prayed the prayers of exorcism over Yako before performing the rite followed by Yako spitting out the door of the church as a sign of renouncing the devil and his old way of life. And even though Yako would never be punished under the civil laws of the nations and international conventions, he saw it as his duty to do whatever was in his power to right the wrongs he had done to people and fulfill the good he failed to do. He saw it as his duty to go above and beyond merely meeting the letter of the laws of the lands but to truly embody virtue and not merely obey out of fear of punishment. And when Yako had begun to contribute to the village community and will the good towards those outside himself, he felt the burning sensation in the base of his 8 tails that he had felt when he first confessed his sins to Fr. Anthony days before. And for the first time it seemed Yako had thought that he may live to see himself gain his 9th tail. But when he thought about the future and what having his 9th tail would be like, the burning sensation ceased.


*******


     I have to say that I feel like my research into the Keys of Prosperity and their origins is now yielding results. I have discovered that according to some ancient clay tablets found in a Tanuki archeological dig site dating back to the time of the early days of Kitsune civilization, the Keys of Prosperity were already old and predated Kitsune civilization. According to the tablets, the Keys of Prosperity were a spoil of war from when our ancient ancestor and the first Image of Inari was victorious over the previous civilization. Although the tablets have been weathered severely over the course of a few thousand years, we now know a little bit about our civilization and the one that came before us Kitsunes and what this conflict was all about.


     Apparently, the previous civilization was something akin to what we would colloquially refer to as an economic hub that claimed to have created us Kitsunes for some specialized job in that system. They dabbled in the newly discovered magic and attempted to harness it to make their system even more prosperous.


     But the weirdest thing about these tablets is that they claim humans lived on Celestia before us, because for all we know, there was no sign of any human activity on our planet until the 200s in Szolsura where it's unknown how some humans even got here. Anyway, these tablets also speak of a mythical Orb of Ingenuity that was also created by this supposed human civilization with them also claiming to have created the Tanukis, Inus, and Nekos to serve different aspects in their society.


     Inus were created to fight for them because their "machines were too predictable and stupid" compared to living breathing creatures. They also weren't created to be very intelligent but rather obedient and unthinking which describes the Inu tribes of today pretty well. Most only have the intelligence to be manual laborers and fighters leading much of their society to be nowhere near as prosperous as us Kitsunes.


     And then you have the Tanukis who were allegedly meant to fill the roles of entertainers and caretakers and instilled with a natural predisposition towards family life. They were also "bred" to be more independent than the Inus. Perhaps this partially explains why Tanukis are so much more touchy feely than rational like us Kitsunes and more focuses on having excessively large families with 4 to 8 children.


     Then there are the Nekos which seem to come from an experiment where humans were modified to make them more cat-like for spectacle. They seem to be the most human-like on our planet besides the Selenese and Szolsurans which are hardly distinguishable apart from magic. And perhaps it's this human intelligence in the Nekos that enabled them to build one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world being the Great Ziggurat to the first pharaoh of the Neko kingdom.


     But it seems for us Kitsunes, this civilization created our kind to be something that was only meant to be in "limited production". I'm not sure how I feel like my existence as a Kitsune seems to be some sort of commodity and not an actual person. Apparently, the sole purpose of us Kitsunes in the eyes of this pre-Kitsune civilization was basically to be a magical energy battery to power the Keys of Prosperity and be exotic servants to the highest caste of the that society. So, as safeguards, they made us born blind and reproduce far slower than any other anthro race, only capable of having kits one season out of the year and even then only one or two every couple of years as kits need constant attention for the first 4 years of life. And even then, our bodies don't fully mature until we're almost 60 years old. It's like we were designed to grow slowly so that we would be too weak and easily killed if we showed any sign of defiance to the humans that created our kind.


    But whether or not what these tablets describe is true, I will not be like those humans that saw our kind and other people as commodities and not people. And knowing what it feels like from that to be thought of as nothing more than a commodity, a mere means to an end, I don't want that on anyone else.


With love,

From your sister Inari



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Did you know this?


Saint Sozon of Cilicia: This is a real-world Saint venerated in the Orthodox church and is commemorated on September 7th of the liturgical year. Key moments of his Saint Sozon's life include going into the pagan temple and breaking off the golden hand of the idol and selling it to make money to buy resources for the poor in Cilicia. This led to the governor of Cilicia to torture innocent people to get to the bottom of who cut the hand of the idol, and seeing this, Sozon spoke up and claimed responsibility and said why he did it. The governor then proceeded to have Sozon tortured and beaten to death in the year 304.


Sons and Daughters of Liberty Rising: This is an inside joke if you're familiar with YA fiction. Someone had told me that this story reads like a very niche YA novel, so I added a little meta humor with how every YA novel has to have the trope of something rising and it's almost always about some kind of revolution from a dictator. Also, this person who thought this seemed like a niche YA novel really likes the Red Rising series, so it was a little nod to that as well.