CHAPTER I
Checkup Day

Anika sat cross-legged on the floor. Her sweaty hands gripped the dirty carpet.

It was checkup day.

The entire house was quiet and as tidy as Anika and her brother could make it. No electronics, no movement, just darkness and stillness. Those were the rules.
Their parents still hadn’t come home. What was going on? They were never usually this late.
Anika willed her pounding heart to be quiet as the harsh buzzing of the drone became louder and louder.
The pneumatic door slid open, and then got stuck halfway.

There was a high-pitched electronic whine, and then a sizzling noise as a large hole was cut in the door.
Anika winced as a wave of misery crashed over her. Anything they had they had to earn, and now the door they had only just managed to fix yesterday was now broken again.
The cutout from the door fell with a loud thump, sending a cloud of dust swirling around the room.

Anika’s body began trembling as the drone entered the house.
It was made out of a jagged dark metal, and had an eye on the front. The eye acted as both a camera and a laser beam, and emitted a burning crimson light, bathing the room in a ghoulish red glow.

It buzzed around the room, scanning things in a calculating manner. It detected the basic structure of the house, any life forms within it, and anything imbued with any type of magic.
Anika sighed longingly at the thought of magic. Her parents would tell stories of how things used to be, before the Empire arrived and took everything.

Any time she moved, even just to turn her head, the drone would whip around and garble angrily. That was against the rules. If you moved, it would be seen as a sign that you were trying to hide something, escape, or threaten the drone.
Anika glared at the drone as it turned around and went back to scanning things. If the Empire was anything but tyrannical, it was paranoid. Every month, and sometimes randomly, an automated drone would barge into your house, scan everything, terrify the life out of you, and then leave, likely having created a huge mess.

Anika’s brother pulled faces and made rude gestures at it behind its back.
She watched, never taking her eyes off the drone.
Eventually, it slowly and ominously began drifting towards her and her brother.

Anika’s stomach rolled like an elephant seal. The final task before the drone left.

It had to scan you.

Anika held her breath as she felt her molecules being disassembled, processed by the drone, and then reassembled at lightning speeds.
Realistically, it should be the worst pain in the world, but the brain doesn’t really know how to process such pain so it throws up a deep, tingling feeling instead, that leaves you feeling so sick and disoriented that you almost wished you could experience the worst pain in the world to make it go away.
Somewhere to her left she heard her brother being scanned too. With his eyes squeezed shut, he shuddered and shook like a metal scooter on a dirt path.

Finally, the drone left, and Anika only breathed out when she couldn’t hear the metallic buzzing anymore.

CHAPTER II
Warmth

Anika walked over to a patch of wall and scratched another line next to the words “# OF CHECKUPS WE’VE SURVIVED”
Her brother, Bear, was only a year older than her, but he acted and carried himself as an adult.
He walked slowly and carefully over to the ruined door and knelt down.
“I’m going to need glue, masking tape, and a blowtorch.” He mumbled sleepily as he combated the awful feeling coursing through his entire body.
Anika tried to stand up, but she fell backwards into a pile of cardboard boxes.
“I’ll get it myself.” Bear sighed as he tripped over his own feet and fell flat onto the dusty carpet.
“Why do they have to scan us, anyway? What could we be hiding inside our own bodies? It’s stupid!” He growled in frustration as he got back up.

Anika didn’t know.
As she stared woozily up at the ceiling, she thought of what it would have been like before the Empire came and took everything.
The stories her grandparents had told - of green, sunny hills, forests full of animals like kangaroos and lorikeets, and best of all - magic.

The Empire tried to suppress the memory of magic after they forbade anyone from using it, bar themselves.
In the small town in the heart of Australian bushland they live in, magic used to be everywhere.
The idea of being able to do anything from summon a rainbow to shoot lightning from your fingertips amazed Anika, and it would often be the thing that captivated her mind for the rest of the day.

As the effects of the scan wore off, Anika stopped daydreaming and began helping Bear fix the door.

“I wish we could still do magic,” Grumbled Anika as she fiddled with some wires, “I remember grandpa told me about a spell that gave you better eyesight and better control over your fingers. Perfect for fixing stu-”
“NO!” Hissed Bear.
“Magic is the whole reason the Empire was such a jerk to our town in particular. If no-one in our town could do magic, then none of this-” He gestured around the room at all the damage and neglect - “would be happening to us.”

Anika opened her mouth to say it wasn’t true, but shut it again. It was true. The Empire had cracked down on their town so hard was because of the huge magical presence here.

The huge amount of magic is also why they’re building…whatever that is, Thought Anika as she stared out the gaping hole in the door at the bustling construction site outside.
It was enormous - it could be hundreds of metres tall and hundreds of metres wide - and was surrounded by watchtowers with searchlights and giant laser cannons, and cranes so tall they looked like they could reach the moon.

Anika’s parents worked on the construction site. They were forced into gruelling work for hours on end with no breaks.

They didn’t even know what they were building.

Almost nobody on the site did.

What could they be building, that called for so much secrecy and security…?

Anika felt like trembling again. Her parents were really late. They should have arrived almost an hour ago.

Suddenly, a distant siren located somewhere around the construction site began wailing.
It had to be the one of loudest noises Anika had ever heard in her life.
She immediately dropped to the ground and clapped her hands over her ears.
The alarm was so loud and sudden, she almost didn’t notice the two figures that had appeared in the twilight fog.
They were making a beeline for her and Bear.

Bear felt the hefty metal pliers in his hand, and considered throwing them at the two figures.

But a few seconds later, he was glad he didn’t.

“Mum! Dad!” Cried Bear and Anika together.

They couldn’t be happier, but their parents didn’t look like they could be more frightened.

“SOMETHING’S HAPPENING!!” Yelled their father over the blaring alarm.
“TAKE COVER!! RUN!!!”

For Anika, the whole world suddenly ground to a stop. It was happening.

CHAPTER III
The Storm

She could feel it now. The ground was shaking like a pressure cooker, surging up her body and addling her mind. An army of thick clouds of deep crimson blanketed the sky , and jagged bolts of lightning began ripping across the sky and jabbing down into the ground around them.
The clouds swirled around the centre of the construction site like a tornado, with lightning bolts lashing the surrounding area like a thousand whips.

And in that moment, Anika felt a sudden surge of energy rip through her body, like nothing she had felt before.
It screamed in her ears, clamped over her lungs like a vice.
She unconsciously turned her body to where she felt it was coming from.
The construction site.
The energy screeched in her mind, SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS HAPPENING. HE’S COMING. HE’S COMING. HE’S COMING…

The words in her brain were now almost as loud as the sirens.
Her head pulsed. The world unfroze. She bolted.

Leaping over the gaping wounds in the ground that the earthquakes had created and swiftly dodging the lightning strikes, Anika raced through the streets, watching them get more overgrown with vegetation until she reached the forest.
The Empire had forbidden anyone from leaving the little town, but now was an emergency, and with the ground heaving and the sky howling and the lightning crashing, Anika barely stopped to consider it.

She stumbled blindly through the forest, tripping on tree roots and getting stuck in the branches.
Suddenly, the voices in her head built to a crescendo and she fell to the floor, clutching her aching skull.
HE’S COMING…HE’S COMING…HE’S HERE.

With those words, Anika opened her eyes and saw something.
A huge man, of unimaginable power…magic?
He was looming over the construction site at a machine vibrating so fast she could make out what it was.
The huge man laughed, and reached toward the machine…

Flashing back to reality, Anika heard a series of cracks that rang out across the land, watched the sky fall down onto the ground like a sheet of fabric and then shoot back upwards, with an enormous, earsplitting,

KABLAM!!!

Paired with a red flash from the construction site that seemed like it engulfed the entire Earth.

CHAPTER IV
Fallen Down

When Anika came to, her head was throbbing, but it appeared that the Storm was over.
The sky had returned to normal, the alarm was no longer sounding, and the lightning and earthquakes had stopped.
But Anika could see all across the landscape that the Storm had taken its toll.
There were sizzling craters everywhere, embers drifting through the air, and giant cracks and gashes in the ground.

Suddenly, Anika felt the ground shift beneath her.
She looked over her shoulder and her eyes widened.
Just behind her was a giant chasm, cutting deep into the Earth.
She tried to scramble to her feet, but the outcropping of dirt held up by grass roots that she was lying on gave way and sent her plummeting.

The wind whipped at her face and she braced herself for death when she splashed into a pool of stagnant water.

She clawed for the surface and paddled blindly forward, giving a squeal every time she felt a tendril of slime brush past her leg.
After what felt like an hour, she hauled herself up and out of the water and onto the cold stone ground with a wet plap.
She squinted up at the shaft of light coming down from the surface. She must have fallen almost 20 metres.

Shivering slightly from the cold, Anika shuffled over to the foot of the cliff.
There’s no way i’m climbing that, she thought.

“HELP!” She yelled.

No reply.
Then, suddenly,
“HELP!” Yelled a voice identical to hers.
Anika jumped and turned around to a peculiar sight.
It was a greyish bird, about as tall as her waist, with magnificent plumes of feather on its tail.
Anika gasped. She had heard stories about this bird, from her grandparents.
It was a legendary lyrebird.

“Well, hello, frie-“
“HELP!!” Squawked the lyrebird.
Anika smiled. I thought grandpa and grandma were fibbing about how it can perfectly copy things, bu-
“HELP!!”
Anika’s smile faded a little.
“Ok, that’s probably going to get annoy-“
“HELP!!” Screeched the lyrebird, running and flapping about.

Anika sighed and turned back to the cliff. I may as well try, she thought.

She clambered awkwardly, searching for grip with her fingers, all the while under the judgemental eye of the lyrebird.

“HELP!!” It screamed, almost in a mocking tone as Anika was startled and fell back down again.

“You stupid bird!” Grumbled Anika, rubbing her head.
“yOu StUpId BiRd!” Mimicked the lyrebird.
She chased it away, shooing with her hands.
“HELP!” It yelled.

Suddenly, Anika heard something coming from above.
The garbled radio static and the electronic buzzing was all too familiar.

The Empire was here.

CHAPTER V
Library

Anika began hyperventilating. If they find me here, they’ll kill me! She thought as she clenched and unclenched her fists. If I just stay completely quiet…

“HELP!!” Screeched the lyrebird.
Anika turned around and gave the bird a death stare.
“yOu StUpId BiRd!” It said.

As she heard the buzzing of the drones and the clomping of boots getting closer and closer, she turned around and bolted into the dark, wet cave.

The cavernous roof was speckled with stalactites, and the floor was covered in stalagmites. Anika wound her way through them, terrified that they were hiding Imperial Drones.
It was almost pitch black. Anika had been running for what felt like years, but she could still hear the soldiers and the drones, not so far behind.

While she was busy looking behind herself, Anika tripped on a rock and she was sent tumbling down a slope, shooting through cobwebs and getting a million cuts and bruises until she came to a stop on a hard wooden floor.

She groaned and lifted her head. It was pitch black.

Wait…hard wooden floor?

She rubbed the ground with her fingers. Indeed, the floor was no longer the rough stone, but a smooth, textured hardwood.
In the darkness, she slowly got to her feet. Her entire body was battered and bruised, but luckily-

Suddenly, as she straightened up, there was a loud, sharp WHOOF, and a multitude of candles hanging from the ceiling burst into life, illuminating rows and rows of dark wooden bookshelves.

The ceiling was so high it seemed almost nonexistent.
There weren’t just books on the bookshelves. There were rings in little cases, scrolls, yellowed parchment, bottles full of suspicious-looking liquid, and even what appeared to be a fossilised dinosaur skull.
She peered around the corner. It appeared that this place was a vast maze of bookshelves and oddities.
Above her, there were bridges and platforms that could only house and lead to more books.
Every now and then, a statue made of black marble dotted the place.
She walked up to one and examined it.
It seemed to be a depiction of some sort of god. It had a long beard that seemed to be made out of flames, talon-like fingers, and three piercing eyes that seemed to stare down at her.

The hairs on the back of her neck pricked up like needles. This place was quiet. Too quiet. She needed to-

“HELP!!” Screeched a raucous voice behind her.
Anika’s soul nearly left her body. She had never had a worse scare in her life. Suddenly, her stomach agreed, and emptied itself all over the floor.
She turned around, coughing and hacking.

“Cough, cough, ergh, ergh.” Mimicked the lyrebird.
“How did you get here?!” She spluttered.
“HELP!!”
“Shut up!”
“sHuT uP!”

Anika sighed and tried to ignore it.

The wire that was holding up the candles is really hard to see, thought Anika as she waved her hand above the candle.
But there was no wire.

The candles were floating.

“What…how…” Anika was dumbfounded. There was only one explanation for all of this.

Magic.

Real, fantastic magic.
Right in front of her.

With growing excitement, she walked along the aisles of shelves, running her hand along the spines of the books and glancing at their titles.
CHANTS AND SPELLS, said one.
QUAZARCHS AND OTHER MAGICAL BEASTS, said another.
THE COSMIC GODS OF OLD.
HOW TO SEE THE FUTURE, GRADE FORTY-SEVEN.
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.
THE FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE.
HOW TO SUMMON A RAINBOW, AND OTHER PRETTY SPELLS.
THE SPIRIT REALM.
TIME TRAVEL AND ITS PARADOXES.

Eventually, Anika found a book that, unlike the others, was tattered and weathered and looked like it had been hastily shoved in and hidden behind a bunch of potions.

It had metal bindings and decorations on the front cover, which was black with a faint red hue.
There was a hole carved in the centre, in which sat a beautiful antique compass, encrusted with jewels and what appeared to be gold.

It captivated Anika.

The needle seemed to be spinning around and around in no particular direction, as if it was already at the place it was trying to point at.

She gingerly opened the book. It appeared to be a journal.

Suddenly, Anika heard something from behind her.
The garbled radio static and the electronic buzzing was all too familiar. She didn’t notice it at first, but it gradually got louder and louder until it was unmistakeable.

The Empire had found her.