Frost Arch by Bloomfield, Kate
A note from the author
Thank you for reading this edition of The Fire Mage. I hope it brings you as much joy as it has brought me. I have aspired to be a writer since a very young age, and have always known that it would be a difficult task to accomplish. Though if I make just one person on this planet smile because of something I have written, then surely I have accomplished something.
K.E Bloomfield
Part 1
PROLOGUE
The humans never expected that their precious technology would lead to their eventual demise. Mobile phones, factory pollutions, computers, nuclear experiments, cars and petrol were all contributors.
After hundreds of years of abuse from humans, the earth’s air became toxic and the land turned to fire and ice. The fumes were deadly and the humans fled underground where they had built cities large enough to house them for several hundreds of years. The cities had many generators to create electricity and warmth, and hundreds of underground farms with an artificial sun. It was the only way to save them from the hell they had created, yet they still could not survive without their wretched technology.
The abuse of the earth had brought forth a self-made apocalypse, killing billions of people. Hundreds survived in their underground cities for decades, and bred, trying to save the human race from extinction for they feared that all life on the surface had been turned to dust.
However there were a handful of humans who possessed a rare and hidden genetic code, which allowed them to survive in the radiation – barely. Over time they came to tolerate the deathly conditions, and month by month living on the surface became easier. Yet if a human who did not possess the rare genetic code ventured from the underground and onto the surface they would surely die within a matter of minutes.
And so the underground humans hid beneath the earth’s surface for five hundred years, passing the knowledge of the apocalypse through each generation until the cold, hard facts became blurred and there was no one in living memory that had actually experienced it.
It was one particularly brave, adolescent that broke free from the claustrophobic underground and wanted to see what the world had to offer. The fact that the humans did not properly educate their young anymore about the dangers of the toxic air was a great factor to this break out. However when the young man breathed his first breath upon the surface he found the air to be pure and clean – cleaner than any air the generators underground had provided. His mind had never felt clearer.
The adolescent quickly returned to the underground and told everyone of his discovery – that after five hundred years the earth had finally healed itself and it was safe to live outside again. After much convincing the humans ventured outside and heaved a sigh of relief to be free of their prison and to see the colour of the sky and grass. The earth had returned to its perfect state.
The humans believed that they were the earth’s only inhabitants, and the only survivors of the apocalypse that happened so many years ago. Surely they were the masters of this new land.
Yet there were those who had managed to survive the hell on earth. It was rare for humans to survive the radiation, though some did. Eventually, those humans with the hidden genetic code began to breed over the several hundreds of years that the earth had been unoccupied, and generation by generation their bodies began tolerating the changed environment more and more until they had evolved completely to live harmoniously with the earth.
When the humans from the underground encountered the evolved race they were joyous that they had found other survivors and wondered where their underground cities were located. The evolved race looked exactly the same as regular humans, yet inside their genetic make-up couldn’t have been more different. The evolved race did not refer to themselves as humans, but introduced themselves as Mages.
The humans discovered that the Mages were not regular people for they possessed strange and unnatural powers that had been unlocked within the depths of the mind after hundreds of years of evolution. What usually took millions of years to happen had taken a mere millisecond in comparison.
The humans watched in awe as the Mages demonstrated their powers. Some could read minds, or move inanimate objects without touching them. Others could control the elements of fire, ice and water, and then there were those who could heal fatal wounds in the blink of an eye. One young female Mage could even morph into a bird at will.