Author’s Note: This is written not for serious prose, but just as a hobby, so no constructive criticism would be compromised. However, spelling or grammar mistakes would be appreciated. Also, this was written in my Gmail for safekeeping (and for the fact that it saves automatically every few minutes), so vocabulary might not be accurate. I only check occasionally. Other than that, please enjoy. Think it as a break from my very manga-ish Project Elimination.

If I could turn back time...I would want to prevent 'that' from happening.

Lightning flashed, and thunder clapped. Strong wind whipped against trees, caused unfastened windows to bang against its sill noisily. Following alongside these melancholic sounds was a boy's scream in agony, and a young child's sobs. Unheard among them were the dripping of blood, and the fast beating of hearts.

But I can't turn back time...I can't prevent 'that' from happening.

The lady in long dark cloak lowered her head so that her face was unseen beneath her hood. She was soaked from the storm, but her wicked smile made by full brown lips showed pleasure and satisfaction. She was looking at the bodies of two adults---a couple, which lay lifelessly at her feet.

Perhaps, though...I may be able to change all that will happen in consequence.

The lady tossed a red gem across the floor. It slid and stopped when it met the foot of a child. The child, a boy aged no more than seven, bearing fiery red hair and large emerald green eyes, stared at it. He quickly folded his fingers over it, fitting it perfectly in his palm, and then looked up again. She was gone beyond the door into the storm, leaving nothing but disaster behind.

I will change our fate...even if I have to break the laws.

The laws that kept two worlds apart until now...

---

"Look, Alyza, look!"

The door behind the wooden cottage was thrown open with a bang. The red-haired boy, now twelve, marched in with his hands before him, palms up. A rock the size of his head was floating a couple of inches above them, though trembling in instability. He was excited beyond comparison from his bright shining eyes as he stopped behind the woman, who was busily preparing lunch by the stove.

"Hold on, Manx, I'm trying to cook," she said without turning around. She was eying at a pot of boiling stew while trying to reach for some ingredient on the shelf above her.

"But Alyza, this is important!! Look!" Manx looked tired and exasperated now. The rock was getting more unstable.

Alyza ignored him. "Maybe some pepper will do the trick..."

"ALYZA!!"

"Yes, what?!" She spun around sharply, knocking a salt shaker off the shelf. It fell into the stew, its cover undone. The racket surprised Manx, and the rock dropped into his hands. He caught it clumsily, but had to let go so that it fell on the floor instead since it was too heavy for him.

"My stew!" Alyza gasped in dismay, grabbing a ladle and fishing the shaker out of the stew.

"My magic!" Manx whined in unison, eyeing at the rock in disappointment.

"My goodness. What's going on in here?"

Footsteps approached the kitchen from the hallway. A teenage boy with shoulder-length golden blonde hair emerged, groping around the wall with his hand while the other was extended before him until he felt the table that was in the middle of the room. His eyes could not be seen---clean white bandages were wrapped around them.

"Brother!" Manx exclaimed, rushing to the older boy so that he could help him into a chair. "Brother, I made a 20-mine rock float! You should have seen it! ...I mean, I wish you can see it!"

His brother smiled in Manx's direction. "I wish I could see it too, but I can imagine that it was great. Congrats, I'm very proud of you!" He reached up and ruffled Manx's hair.

"I'm proud of you too, but now the stew is ruined," Alyza sighed, taking the pot off the stove to the sink. "Colt, will you do me a favor and take Manx outside? I've had enough distraction for the day. At this rate, we'll never have any lunch."

"Will do. Come on, Manx, I just had a really good idea that I want to share with you." Colt got up and turned Manx towards the door, patting his shoulder to tell him to lead.

"Don't get into any mischief, Manx," Alyza warned as the brothers were leaving. "You may know magic, but you can't use it for pranks. It's not honorable."

"Yes, Alyza!"

---

Anonya was a world of magic, science, and beliefs, inhabited by two groups of people who were bound by laws of nature.

The majority was the Commoners, who were not users of magic and did not understand it, therefore resorting to science to explain them. In some cases, they looked up at Gods as the creators of such fate. They were believers of logic and faith. The minority was the Magicians, or Mages, who were users of magic and accept it just as it was. They were believers of fantasy, though it was not fantasy in their view.

The laws of nature were that one who was born a Commoner would never be able to perform magic as the Mages. The Commoners and Mages would never live together as a whole. The Commoners depended on the Mages for everything including their lives. Mages ruled Anonya. These laws could not be broken for thousands of years---until recently. The sentence, now, could be rephrased this way:

The laws of Anonya should not be broken.

At least, that was what everyone thought.

This was an exception for young Manx Shayed, who was born a pure Commoner. Ever since the incidence which left his parents lifeless and his seventeen-year-old brother blind, he had made a vow. He would do everything to bring back the ways his life should have been, even if he had to practice magic for it.

The incident was five years ago. Manx had tried for that same period, and did his first magic exactly three months ago. He had been improving since then.

A law of nature had been broken. A Commoner could now do magic.

"You think there's really a magic where we can release Mother and Father?"

Manx and Colt were by the wooden fences outside the cottage, the younger leaning against it while the older was sprawled on the grass with his hands behind his head. It looked like he was staring at the cloudless sky through his bandages. Manx held up a red gem by its chain, letting it gleam under the sunlight. It was not see-through---instead, he saw a kind of substance swirling within it.

He swore that those were the souls of his parents that the lady Mage had trapped five years ago.

Colt shrugged in response. "I don't know. Alyza said it's a curse, isn't it? Something that even us Commoners can't explain..."

Manx lowered the jewel. "But they said that everything can be explained, right?"

"That's what you told me from the books." Colt sat up. "You know what? Our resources are too little. You can't get much from a small little village like this. Besides, Alyza doesn't even know how to fix the problem. We need to travel, find the true answer!"

Manx looked at him incredulously. "Travel? You mean us? But Brother, there's no one who can go with us. Alyza is in charge of watching over the town, and our neighbors do not have the time to do that."

"Who said we have to travel with adults?" Colt snorted.

"You're crazy, Brother!" Manx got up to his feet, brushing himself. "I'm only twelve! You're blind! We definitely can't do this!"

"What choice do we have? Manx, you want Mother and Father to come back, don't you?" Colt was seemingly glaring at the younger boy with invisible eyes. Manx could feel it.

Alyza was their guardian ever since they lost their parents. She was the one who had found them that night, having planned to visit them. She was a Mage herself---a good one, which was safe to say. She was like the mayor, helping villagers when they encountered daily problems. Most of them, she would cure the sick. Healing was her specialty, and she treated everyone like her children.

"Boys, time for lunch!"

Manx turned towards the cottage. Alyza was waving her ladle at them. Her long dark braid was slung before her, beautiful dark eyes glinting in cheeriness. She had a motherly look on her young face, which was the kind of Mage everyone liked.

Alyza had been the one who trained Manx, even though she had doubted him before. In fact, she was still doubtful as to whether it was wise to counter against nature. However, Manx was young, and she had soft spots for young children with great ambitions. It was a weakness, one which she knew would cost her precious possessions if the Council was to know. Up until then though, it had been quiet and no one knew. She had made sure that Manx would only use it during emergencies, which, so far, there had not been any.

"Hi, Brothers!" A boy at the age of ten with soft blonde hair and big green eyes to match with Manx's greeted as the two older ones entered the dining room. He was sitting at the table, his feet dangling a little above the floor, already helping himself to lunch.

"Hey, Philip," Manx greeted back, helping Colt into a chair next to his younger sibling and then taking his place across from them.

"How was school, Philip?" Colt asked, tapping his fork across the table until he found a plate and helped himself to the food in it. He had to hold a napkin below the fork as he brought the food up to his mouth, being careful not to spill.

"It was fine," Philip said, mashing some vegetable in his spoon. "Mrs. Gravier had us draw a picture. I could show Manx to describe it later."

"It's okay, there's no need to. Ah, Alyza! Can Manx and I go traveling?"

Colt had gone straight to the point, surprising Alyza more than she should be. The spoon she had dropped clattered on the plate.

"Travel to where?" she asked after regaining her posture.

"Nowhere specifically, just travel. Wander, if you like to use the word, but we have a purpose. We need to find out how to lift the curse off our parents, and---" Colt clenched his fist on the table. "We can go ourselves, we don't need accompaniment."

"No," was Alyza's own straight answer. "I am not about to send a blind teenager and a young boy on such dangerous journey. Your parents would not be pleased. If you want to know how to lift the curse, you will let me figure that out myself---"

"That's what you said the first time you took us in, and how long has it been?!" Colt was getting impatient now. "We can't wait anymore, Alyza."

Alyza was annoyed. "Colt, please, this is not an easy situation to deal with! I don't want to wait either, but it's all I can do to keep this town and you kids in order---"

"Alyza."

She turned to Manx, who had interrupted her. He had not spoken a word in the argument until now. Alyza could see that he wanted it to stop---and that he was on Colt's side. The pleading look in his eyes was winning her heart over. She put her hand to her head in defeat. "Are you sure about this, Manx?"

Manx nodded vigorously. "Besides, there's nothing else you can teach me, right? You said that yourself. I could meet other mages and learn more from them. It would be a greater step for a Commoner like me, don't you think?"

Alyza smiled at Manx, though it was a doubtful one. "Yes, I suppose it is. Well, it looks like there is no way I can talk you out of this. In that case, I'll help you too. I will let you use my name so that they would teach you, but they might provide tasks for you to complete before they do. And I suggest you head to the Royals, if you want to find out about the curse-lifting. They might know who can do it."

Her speech was mostly drowned out by Manx and Colt's shared cheers of victory. Philip had to shout at the top of his lungs in order to make himself heard. "I said, can I go with you, Brothers?!"

"What? No, Philip, you have to go to school!" Alyza told him.

"But Brother Manx didn't have to go! Now I'm smarter than him!" That made Manx a little ashamed, since it was true.

"Manx didn't have school because he was training with me. Colt stopped when he was 12. I don't want you to go around with the lack of education now, or I would be responsible for it!"

Philip had to give in. He pouted as he finished his share of food and left the table to do his homework. Manx and Colt, on the other hand, was beginning to plan out their journey. They were excited, of course. They had never been anywhere else but their village, and this could be proven to be a large step for two young boys and their dreams.

"Perhaps...we'll finally see Mother and Father again," Manx whispered, grasping his breast pocket that held the gem.

And that was how it began, from a catastrophe to a journey of hope. What seemed like an end, brought out the beginning...and this would follow on until the end of life, because the end of all end must come eventually.

Especially when a lawbreaker was roaming around.

" 'Magicians possess a kind of power that allows them to use their surrounding energy and perform what they call 'magic'. For example, when summoning an object to them, they use energy to break the object down into molecules, then bringing forward those molecules, and finally reforming it on the spot. This can be confirmed as Summoning requires the magician to know the exact location of object before performing it'..."

"Stop reading that nonsense, Brother."

Colt turned his head so that he was facing Manx, who was trying to read under the weak light from an oil lamp. Colt, on the other hand, was sitting at a dark corner on his bed, his fingers merely running over inscriptions that were protruding from the page of his book.

"Why, I need to brush up on my Braille," Colt pointed out. "Besides, this is the only book they have in it. As if it's very important or something."

"Brother, I read that to you before, and you have a very good memory," Manx scoffed. "You don't know much on Braille."

"I could pretend!" Colt exclaimed, tossing the book onto the floor, wincing slightly at the sound of a hard thud. He had thought that there was a chair, but he missed it.

Manx frowned a little in concern. "Brother, are you sure you want to come with me? You might get into danger as soon as I let go of you."

"Nonsense, I'm going," Colt insisted, feeling for his blanket before pulling up over him and he lay down. "I'm not all that disabled. I can hear, feel, smell and taste. I have a conscience, too. Moreover, I want to experience the world, even though I can't see them. Anyway, we're not just questing for a cure to the Anonyan Gem---we're questing for a cure to my eyes as well, aren't we?"

Manx knew that. Colt had lost his vision when the woman who trapped their parents' soul attacked him with a curse. Although Manx did not know what kind of curse it was, he found that not even Alyza was able to cure it. It was still a mystery, in fact, as Colt often refused to relieve the bandages. He claimed that there were ugly scars over them and did not want his brothers to see them. But how would he know they were ugly if he had not seen them?

However, if Colt did not want to reveal them, that was fine with Manx. He respected his brother greatly for everything he did, even though he was quite a mischief maker at times. But for someone who was blind for five years and yet made good progress with excellent senses, there may probably be no one else to beat that.

"What are you reading anyway?" Colt asked, slipping his hands between his head and the pillow.

"Some of Alyza's books," Manx replied, flipping a few pages. "Just need to go through before we head off tomorrow morning. I can't take them with me anyhow. Oops!"

A piece of paper fluttered out of the book that he was flipping. He quickly caught it before it escaped off the table, and glanced at it. He realized that it was a photo, though a rather old one. "Hey, this looks like Alyza," he commented aloud.

"What looks like Alyza?" Colt turned over and perched himself on his elbows.

"This lady in the photo. Only her hair is not braided, and there's a man with her. He's got short silver hair, gray eyes, and dresses like a mage...he also has his hand around her. I think he's her boyfriend. But this photo is pretty old...decades old."

"The last time I asked, she said that she's not married," Colt noted. "If she is, she wouldn't be here."

Manx shrugged as he slipped the photo back in the book and shut over it. "Maybe he's a relative then."

Colt nodded, turning over and pulling the cover over him. "It's not really important. Go to sleep, Manx. We have a big day tomorrow."