Author's Note: This series takes place after Confessions of the Magpie Wizard's third story, Dissolution. As such, it contains spoilers for that story. I have striven to make this story understandable and enjoyable without reading it first. If you would like to check the main series out, you can see it here: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/63553/confessions-of-the-magpie-wizard/

Also, for the first week, I will be posting chapters daily. After that, I will settle into a 2-3 times a week schedule.

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Prologue

            Sometimes I wonder what it was like to live before the Grim Horde. When Mum and Dad talk about it, they make it sound like heaven on Earth. I guess that fits, since the Horde brought literal… well, we don’t use that word in polite company anymore, but they brought the other place with them. When people in the old days thought about the future, they were worried about nuclear war or climate change. Nobody could have expected a portal to a parallel world to open up in Alaska, spilling out millions of magic-wielding devils and other monsters. Living in a world where humans sat at the top of the food chain does sound like paradise. I feel sorry for them sometimes; they know what they lost. I never will, since that happened a few years before I was born.

            I mentioned this to Dad once, and it just worried him. “Rose, sweetie, I’m perfectly fine. Let’s think happy thoughts, okay?”

            It sounds like he was brushing me off or being condescending, but I can’t blame him. He wasn’t shutting up his daughter, he was stopping an out-of-control wizard from having another ‘incident’. Ever since my magical affinity, Stormbringer, switched on, people have had to tread lightly around me. I had a bad habit of making storms indoors when I was too riled up, and he was not keen on replacing the carpet in our flat in London a third time.

            That was what I hated, though: the feeling that I had to guard myself, that I could never relax. I had lived seventeen years without magic and two years with, and I don’t think normal people quite understand what having power is like. They think power is freedom, but my Stormbringer was always more of a burden. It always felt like everything around me was made of glass, and my insides were nitroglycerin ready to explode without a warning. If I got too happy, depressed, or angry, people could get hurt. Heck, people did get hurt. My brother Alfred still has the scars to prove it, from when he tried to show me a basic light spell.

            It had made my last days of regular school heck. Either I wore a heavy magic disruptor around my ankle so that my power was too scrambled to generate more than a light breeze, or I had to stop myself from feeling anything. That was easier said than done, and there were… unfortunate incidents. The Anti-Demonic League and Wizard Corps were not amused about that snowstorm in August in Kent, or that hurricane in Hampshire. I didn’t like causing them trouble; I knew they had a lot to deal with keeping the Grim Horde at bay.

 All in all, Stormbringer completely ruined my life. Until I found my magic, I had thought I was the odd woman out. People’s magic talents started waking up when the Horde invaded, and nobody was sure why some had it and others did not. It seemed to run in families. My big brothers all had weather magic of some kind, and they got theirs when they were thirteen. I was such a late bloomer that we assumed I was a mundane. I was fine with that. I was going to go to school, do my mandatory service in the Royal Air Force or Royal Navy, and hopefully never see a demon in person. After all, a Horde invasion was never going to happen to us in England.

It sounds naïve, but that was how we Brits felt. The sons and daughters of refugees who attended my school, the lucky few from Europe and beyond who were able to escape the Horde, always told us we were dolts. The continents had fallen, leaving humanity in command of the seas and the major islands. I cannot remember a time when we weren’t doing evacuation drills in case the Horde got across the English Channel, but I was always sure England wouldn’t suffer the same fate. We were special, after all.

We were not. In 2049, after so many attempts, The Horde got enough landing craft past the navy and the air force to establish a beachhead, and from there…

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I prefer not to say what happened next. It was awful, and I was lucky enough to be whisked away before the fall. It was privilege of having magic potential, when maybe one in a thousand humans have the talent. I was relocated to Iceland, and then Japan, because that was where the best schools were. The best schools that would take me a hard case like me, at least. I tried not to be offended. I understood why most didn’t want me; they weren’t looking forward to repairs any more than Dad was.

The Nagoya Academy of Magic saved my life, really. When I had arrived at that oversized Nagoya Tower in the woods, I worried I would just have a bigger home to destroy than before. All of that glass looked awfully fragile. The staff was mostly useless, since I was such a special case, but my friends were able to help me figure out how to get Stormbringer under some sort of control. I still wasn’t perfect, but as far as I was concerned, I was good enough. I was happy for the first time in years. Not just the stiff-upper-lip I gave the family to keep them from worrying, I mean actual, deep in my bones happy.

I knew it had to end sooner or later, but I had expected to graduate, not to be forced out because of terrorists! It seemed like half of the people I knew had joined the Holy Brotherhood in the attack. We won in the end, but it was close.

Weeks later, after being ferried off to Fort Flamel, a Wizard Corps base near Tokyo, I still wasn’t sure how to feel. That was not how the world was supposed to work. I had been trained to fight demons, not people. It felt like I was in prison. It was not my first time, though does that really count if it was just for a few hours? Either way, I was pent up, frustrated, and I wanted a clear enemy to fight for once.

That late September morning, things finally started to change, and I’d get my wish; I just didn’t imagine how it would happen. They said it wasn’t a combat posting. A simple treasure hunt. It would be an easy job, they said, and I would have plenty of time to work on my tan.

It turned out they were only right about the last part, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Thanks for reading!