The heavy steel blast doors to the magitech laboratory in Eilean Mor slammed open with a thunderous crash, causing several younger lab assistants to jump up from their seats. A deck of cards toppled over the edge of the table nearest the doors – along with a vial of pale yellow liquid, which shattered on impact with the hard concrete floor. Sizzling and spitting and hissing as it spread, the acid burned away everything that it touched – stopping just short of a polished, black leather shoe.

A white-gloved hand reached down and picked up a tiny, blackened scrap of playing card. "Specialists Jones, O'Flaherty," Amanda spoke, the calmness in her voice not reaching her icy glare as she crushed the burned card piece between her fingers. The lab assistants in question flinched and shrunk away, cowering in their boots. "I have only been away from the laboratory for three hours to have a meeting with General Adams – and you two have, in your overwhelmingly developed sense of duty, decided to play cards. In a laboratory. With vials of highly-concentrated acids, bases and explosive hazards close at hand, near priceless pieces of cutting-edge technology that would be ruined by so much as a tiny amount of spillage on them, and unique artifacts that we have no way of acquiring more of. Am I correct in my assessment of this situation?"

"Y-yes, ma'am," the two replied in unison, their voices barely a whisper.

"Am I correct in my assessment of this situation, specialists?" she demanded again, more loudly.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"If you are so bored that you are inclined to play cards in my absence during working hours, then perhaps you might want to consider...alternative arrangements. Do I have something to declare to the General in my next monthly meeting?"

The two of them shook their heads vehemently.

"Then see to it that this does not happen again. Clean up this mess!" she snarled. Turning to the other assistants, she angrily added, "And the rest of you should know better than to allow this! This is a place of science, not leisure! Do you wish to be remembered for idle chatter and wasteful thoughts on gambling theory? Except for O'Flaherty and Jones, you are all dismissed for the rest of the day! See to it that you are all back here by 0400 hours, mentally prepared for some actual research!"

It didn't take much more of her furious ranting for the other assistants to scramble out of the laboratory as quickly as they could. When the last of the acid had been sprayed down and wiped clean, and the two misbehaving assistants had, Amanda took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she took stock of the laboratory.

Papers were still strewn about haphazardly on the desk, with scribbled notes all over them. Yet despite all the apparent work that was being generated by her assistants, every single instrument was spotless; every vial gleaming; and every reagent jar stoppered and sealed. All the computers were turned off, their keyboards neatly covered with sheets of plain cloth.

Yes, that was correct. Everything was sealed. Unopened. Unused.

"Useless. What does it take to acquire some people who are actually competent?" grumbled Amanda loudly. "Yet another late night at work to stay on schedule,"

At the very least, her assistants had managed to remove the runic basin from its packing crate and hauled it to its intended position. Sitting in the middle of the laboratory floor, the marble basin had only just recently arrived from the workshops on the other side of the research facility. Seven large, upright pillars of silver-plated marble stood around it, equally spaced on a large circle; while five smaller ones were arranged on the points of a pentagram within the larger circle. And on the floor, an intricate network of runes and glyphs had been engraved into the concrete; a seven-pointed star encompassing a pentagram, with a triangle, circle and a line carved into the very centre.

Three months to photograph everything regarding the Stonehenge site, in the visible and invisible spectra.

Six months of work to transcribe all the runes written on the basin and the pillars surrounding them.

And another three months for the workshops to meticulously reproduce everything as closely as they could.

As the scientist ran her fingers along one of the runes carved on a pillar, she gasped in shock as every single one of them burst into life. The lights in the laboratory crackled and hissed as they flickered on and off, breaking down completely but a few seconds later. Intense bluish-white flames surged forth from where she had touched the pillar, racing along every inscription, line and carving. Around and around the blaze went, completing the seven-pointed star, the pentagram, and then the glyph in the centre of the runic circle.

When the two tendrils of flame finally met in the basin, a tremendous shockwave exploded from its depths. Computer screens, glass jars and vials all shattered; solid steel beams warped and groaned; reinforced concrete walls and floors all cracked and crumbled; liquid reagents, released from their glass prisons, splattered against everything else that was not broken, spitting and sputtering as they disintegrated everything they touched.

Yet even in all the chaos, Amanda remained still on her feet. The shockwave that had all but demolished her laboratory in an instant had somehow left her untouched. Her feet were still firmly planted, somehow anchored to a large slab of floating concrete.

Floating.

Concrete.

Just like the rest of the other bits of concrete, glass and steel floating about her.

All floating without any source of constant upwards force visible.

But she could not find it in herself to ponder this mystery any further. The light in the basin – the emerald-green flames that burned bright and strong – it reached out to her, inviting her to come closer. Its warmth, even from several feet away, drew her in. With a single jump, she leapt into the innermost ritual circle. The sight before her; it was intoxicating, entrancing, ravishing. The dancing silvery-blue flames; they called out to her. With one pale hand, Amanda reached out into the flames. Even though her mind screamed at her to stop, to not be burned, her hand continued on.

Yet the flames did not burn her. Rather, it felt almost soothing, more akin to being in a warm bath or a hot spring. Higher and higher the flames climbed, consuming the weariness and exhaustion that plagued her fingers, her hands, her arms – until her entire form was engulfed in blue fire.

A hand touches my altar.
A body, from near yet far.
A mind reaches out before my sight.
Come to my warmth. Sit by my light.

Amanda jerked back in surprise. Was she hearing things in her head? "Hello?" she called out, waiting a moment for a response.

The soul sings not with my Gift.
The spirit cries out, cloven by the Rift.
The will recoils in doubt and fear.
Come to my warmth. Lend me thy ear.

She could swear that the voice was coming from somewhere within her mind – and yet not. If she hadn't been imagining things, there was a person striding towards her from within the flames of the basin. A woman with a blindingly beautiful figure, surrounded by a glowing halo of light and six vast wings of purest white sprouting from behind her back. Her smile was calming, and her bright blue eyes so reassuring that Amanda felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders.

"Come hither, my child, and listen well," the woman commanded. Her voice was strangely melodious; a veritable choir of thousands chorusing in perfect unison. A chair – or rather, a tree stump formed into a chair, bedecked with hundreds of tiny fragrant flowers – burst out of the concrete slab between them. "Fear not my presence, for I bear thee no ill will,"

"I'm sorry, but who are you?" asked Amanda, tentatively poking at the tree stump before sitting down on it.

"True names hath more power within them than most mortals know. My own would drive thee weep in madness with the magnificence of my creations. But if thou must have a name to remember me by, then know that many have tried and failed to give me a name. Gaia, Terra, Kali, the Mother – and countless others. None have come close to the true significance of what I represent,"

Amanda's brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of what this woman was saying. The 'true significance' of what she represented? She was far from a religious person, but this woman before her did possess more than a passing resemblance to one of those images of angels. Magic, she had seen many examples of; but divinity? This was too much for her to observe.

"A demonstration would be in order, perhaps. I sense the doubt in thine mind," sighed 'Gaia'. She lifted a hand, an an amorphous blob almost akin to a floating ball of jelly sprang out from her palm. "Consider the infinite potential of creation,"

Letting the blob drop to the floor, Amanda's jaw dropped as she saw what was happening before her. Rising out of a swirling mass of darkness in the floor was an exact copy of her partner, naked as the day she was born. Every single feature of hers was replicated perfectly; the tiny mole on the middle of her slender thigh; the slight tilt of her dainty nose; the coy upturn of her lips; the brilliant shine of her sleek chestnut hair; the small patch of discoloured skin on her collarbone. Everything was there.

"The ability to create with but a thought, a will, a desire," spoke the woman. And then, without warning, she snapped her fingers; and 'Lucille' shrieked in agony as she burst into white-hot flames. It scarcely took more than two seconds before the clone of her partner crumpled stiffly forwards, charred to ashes that scattered to dust the moment that she fell to the floor. "And the ability to destroy, with much the same. Creation, and destruction. The duality of the universe, and the single truth that spans all of reality. All that exists is because I desired it to be; all that no longer exists is because I no longer wish it to. Grasp this simple truth, and thou shalt be one step closer to comprehending my existence,"

The woman took one step closer towards Amanda, forcing the scientist to squint to gaze past the blinding halo of light that surrounded Gaia's face. "In a bygone era, I had thought to myself. The burdens of creation, destruction and preservation had become quite tiresome. Creating the same blade of grass for the trillionth time does get very boring, after all. I sought to create assistants that could help myself with the maintenance of the wondrous world that I hath created. Thus, I created a people in my own image. Yet they, still beholden to my will, proved to be incapable of achieving my goals. They were puppets, little more than creatures of flesh and blood to be directed by my own will,"

"Humans evolved from the great apes over thousands of years," countered Amanda skeptically. "There are numerous pieces of evidence pointing to it,"

"Aye. Seven million years of setbacks and advances, failures and successes," Gaia replied softly, nodding in approval. "The evidence of which, it seems, has fallen into human hands. It makes me glad that some have proven worthy of the divine spark that sustains thy kind,"

"Evolution is not something decided by design," retorted Amanda, frowning. After all, DNA recombination was completely random, was it not?

Well, until Amanda had a hand in it, at least.

"Decided by the roll of Fate's dice, as I have oft heard from those who have passed into my realm. But tell me, mortal child. Dost thou truly believe that Fate casts her dice fairly? That it is not weighted towards one outcome or another? Random chance doth not a very efficient system make. Why then, do you suppose, that humans have risen within the mere span of seven million years, a blink of an eye in the sight of one who has been for hundreds of millions of years, when the great reptiles had not developed so in many times the time given?"

That the geneticist could not answer. It was true that upon the grand scale of creation, humanity had existed for but a brief few moments. Compared to the dinosaurs, who had hundreds of millions of years to grow and rise, it certainly seemed odd that a similar evolution had not occurred.

"Perhaps thou canst now see that it was all by my design. I swept clean the planet once I grew tired of witnessing the wasted potential that was the great lizards of old, paving the way for something new. But enough of the past. My time to speak is short, and you shall be the one to fix the Great Mistake,"

Amanda blinked. "Excuse me?" she sputtered incredulously. "Why would I be the one to fix another's mistake? And what is this...'Great Mistake' that you speak of?"

The woman's wings darkened, and a slight tinge of crimson coloured the bright halo of light that surrounded her head. The serene smile that was on her face melted into a furious scowl, and the air about them whipped up into scorching winds, almost as though she were standing in front of a furnace. In fact, if Amanda had not been imagining things, the very air itself seemed to have acquired the unpleasant stench of sulphurous fumes, and the concrete walls of the laboratory seemed to morph into walls of molten lava.

"The ones that you call wizards and witches," she snarled, "I hath granted humanity a portion of my power. A tiny fragment of the divine spark, if you will, to grant them the ability to form decisions on their own, without any intervention on my part. In return, I tasked them to maintain the garden, the apple of my eye; the planet that I hath tended personally to for so, so long. Yet they betrayed my trust. In an effort to usurp my power, the wizards and witches enacted a ritual to siphon the planet's fragment of divinity for their own use, with a ritual of their own design,"

Gaia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, muttering angrily under her breath. The burning walls receded back into normal concrete, and the stench of brimstone vanished as suddenly as it had come. "They attempted to reach for a power that they did not understand, and one that they could never comprehend. The powers of creation would never obey the wills of those tainted by greed, jealousy and pride. The backlash of their failed ritual severed my control over the planet, which threw my garden into chaos. This was the Great Mistake,"

"For forty days and forty nights, my planet was thrown into turmoil. Day turned to night as the bowels of the Earth spat gouts of ash and fire into the sky, blanketing the entire world. A deluge of water unlike any that had come before drowned countless creatures in rising tides. Starvation and disease claimed most of those that survived the rising waters. By the time I hath reclaimed a semblance of control over my garden, the damage was done. Of every twenty of my children that I hath created, only one survived. And of those, perhaps only one in one thousand would be willing to come forth at my bidding. The rest were too terrified of my powers, fearing that I would only smite them down in wrath with the same. Without accessing my temples and tapping the power of the planet, they gradually lost the ability to wield the divine spark,"

"What of the wizards and witches? What happened to them?"

"The very same thing that would happen to all mortals when their time within my garden has come. They were judged most harshly for their transgressions, I assure thee; I cast them into the deepest pits of hell, where they will serve their punishments for all eternity. Their descendants, however, still roam the world to the present. All the magicals present in the world that claim ancestry from an ancient line are descended from them, one way or another. Of those, five hundred and six were borne from the seed of thy womb, to be exact," she said, though a wry grin adorned her lips. "Though I must admit, I hath not expected one to craft wombs of glass and metal to hold one's own children,"

"Five hun—wait, WHAT?!" Amanda exclaimed, narrowing her eyes. "To my knowledge, I have only instructed the creation of six children from my genetic material. Where on Earth have the five hundred more come from?!"

"Would that thy eyes and ears be more observant of what is occurring around thee, mortal child. Let us simply say for the time being that thou shouldst be aware that there are always forces lurking in the shadows. Creatures of the darker passions of the psyche, masquerading as puppeteers wearing familiar faces. But enough talk of this. Thou hast many questions for me, yet we have little time before I must rest and repair the bridge to my own garden; and I have yet to present my proposal to thee,"

"And what is this proposal, may I ask?"

"It is a simple one. Thou hast heard of the reason that I hath created humanity, and the way that my control over the planet hath been severely damaged. Though I strove to repair my connection with the planet, I fear that I will not be able to restore it in time to prevent a great catastrophe from occurring,"

"What sort of catastrophe?"

"One that may well lead to the extinction of humanity. For all the wrongs that the wizards and witches past may have committed against me, the sins of the father doth not translate to the sins of the child. For all humanity's faults, they are still my children in my own likeness, and I'll not sit idly by as they blunder into annihilation. In this matter, thou shalt be my herald; and I shall not take no for an answer," Gaia spoke grimly. "In the four thousand years since the Great Mistake, the number of my loyal worshippers who tend to my garden hath declined to dangerous levels, while those who hath forsaken my spark continue their destruction of the planet. Without the forests, lakes and seas to act as energy vents, the veins of energy that run beneath the planet's surface run full to bursting. In time, they will discharge that energy in a most hostile manner. One that shall make the largest volcano upon the planet seem like a firecracker scarcely large enough to scare a child,"

A vision assaulted Amanda's mind. Or to be more precise, it was as though Amanda were there, at the moment of its happening. On the edge of a geyser-studded forest of snowy pines she stood; one moment, a great spout of steaming water sprayed forth from its burrow in the ground – and then the next, there was a terrifying spray of sulphurous fumes and ash, mixed with the telltale bluish-white liquid mana that she had seen before.

If she had thought liquid mana was volatile before, based on the small explosions she had in the laboratories, then nothing could have prepared her for this. The mana, mixed with superheated sulphur and lava, detonated with the fury of a blazing sun. She could feel the scorching gale that poured forth from the miles-wide fireball that hung in the air, threatening to flay the skin from her flesh. She could see the towering mushroom cloud that rose rapidly into the sky. The pine forest, once snow-covered and green, had been set ablaze in an inferno that torched all that it touched.

The vision faded, replaced by an all-too-familiar green and blue marble, floating in the darkness of space. The miniature sun that she had witnessed before was but a bright spot in the middle of North America, with a rapidly-expanding shockwave that was racing through the continent. Numerous other bright spots began to emerge all over the world; one over Wiltshire, where she supposed Stonehenge was; one over Scotland, and another over Ireland; a particularly large one somewhere in Greece, and one nearly as large over Paris; dozens of little ones popping up over Asia and India. To her horror, South America seemed to catch entirely ablaze, with the entirety of the Amazon turning into a red-and-grey haze of smoke and flame. Within moments, the entire world had been covered with scorched wastelands and burning cities, with almost all major population centres she could see set afire.

"I've seen enough. Please, stop this," Amanda whispered, closing her eyes tightly and trying to forget the horrible visions that she had seen.

"Then you know what is at risk, child,"

"I do. But...why me? Why not find another?"

"My reasons are my own, though perhaps I shall enlighten thee in the future when we have more time. Farewell for now, and be mindful of what we have discussed. For I do think that we will be seeing each other many times in the years to come,"

A/N:

Wow, it's been a while since I last updated this story. It's going to take a different tack in the coming chapters as things heat up between the factions in fourth year and onwards.

Hopefully the origins of magic would be clearer after this chapter, as well as how muggles came to be. Let's see how this will progress in the coming years, shall we? Especially with a ticking time bomb that is the planet's ley lines hanging over their heads.

/begin rant

A note on reviews; particularly with regards to my other story, Exodus. I greatly appreciate constructive criticism. What I do mind, however, is people telling me what I should and should not do in terms of overall plot. If I have been nice enough to make a note at the very start of the story about what is and what is not being included from the source textual material, and you disagree with my choices, tough luck. Period. It is my vision as to how to guide the story, for better or for worse. It is written mainly for my own entertainment, to let my imagination run wild, and I am sharing it with you all as a point of 'because I can'.

If you enjoy it, great. If you're going to point out problems with spelling, grammar, plotholes, even better. If you're going to complain about the plot before I'd even written anything significant, you can see yourself out the door. Don't like it? Don't read it. Simple. I thought I was being nice by explaining which elements of a base material to shape the story, but apparently that was a big mistake.

/endrant

Okay. That aside, I do hope that you guys actually enjoy reading this.

-ArcturusWolf