Why Fate Was Fought (Book 2 : Before The River's Crescent)

By R.M. Plaiscia

Brought together by forces far beyond themselves, three witches will unite. Forging a path against the grain of fate, their true intentions become apparent. After first being introduced upon a mighty river’s crescent, they were last seen atop a mountain settlement, the day that Peace was torn asunder. Now they fight against the mistakes that were made, on that day and before, the mistakes left burned eternally within the stones of time. These are the memories of those three witches, a short yet insightful glimpse into the mysterious pasts of Chelsia Starbroken, Heather Hopewoven, and Jane Saint Marie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.M. Plaiscia
• Release date: Nov 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311762412

R.M. Plaiscia

R.M. Plaiscia was born on June 8th, 1983, and raised in St. Bernard, Louisiana, just a footstep outside the city of New Orleans. He is but a humble soul with too many stories to tell. As a child, he created a universe combined both Star Wars and Star Trek into one cohesive story, at least for a 9-year-old. As his passion for professional wrestling grew, by the age of 13, he was filling 5-subject notebooks with his own scripted content known as the Notebook Wrestling Alliance. This lasted for years and spanned thousands of pages.In 2002, R.M. Plaiscia helped form the Backyard Wrestling Federation called EPW (Extreme Psychopathic Wrestling/EPW504 on YouTube), serving as Head Booker and Extreme Champion (wrestling under the character of Runko Butcher) until the group folded in the fall of 2004.In late 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated his hometown, flooding his own home with upwards of 15 feet of water, R.M. Plaiscia was one of the few to return home to live out his days in a FEMA trailer. Spending the next few years rebuilding his home while finishing his schooling at Nunez Community College, R.M. Plaiscia first discovered the original journal entries that unlocked this past long forgotten, and began work on his Shroud of Ages Saga.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Favorite Authors/Writers (Books/Manga/Comics) - J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Terry Goodkind, Timothy Zahn, J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Akira Toriyama, Rumiko Takahashi, Robert KirkmanFavorite Musical Artists - The Doors, Megadeth, Alice in Chains, Cradle of Filth, Sepultura, Avenged Sevenfold, Gravediggaz, Three 6 Mafia, Nas, Nightwish, Within Temptation, One OK Rock, BabyMetal, Caleb Hyles, Smooth McGroove, Jonathan Young, Lindsey Sterling, Raon LeeFavorite Movie Franchises - Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Godzilla, Gamera, Cloverfield, Alien, Die Hard,Favorite TV Shows - Stargate (SG1, SGA, SGU), Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, Star Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9 - Still Need To Watch V & E), Babylon 5, I Love Lucy, Friday Night Lights, The Walking Dead, Arrested Development, Homeland, Spartacus, V, The Expanse,Favorite Anime/Manga/Cartoons - Dragon Ball (DB, DBZ, GT, Super), Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Yu Yu Hakusho, 7 Deadly Sins, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Blue Gender, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Zoids, Pokemon, Invader Zim, Rick & MortyFavorite Sports Teams - New Orleans Saints (WHO DAT?!), New Orleans Pelicans, LSU Tigers, Las Vegas Golden Knights

Book preview

The Hurricane Journals

Before The River’s Crescent

Prequel 2

Why Fate Was Fought

By R.M. Plaiscia

Shroud of Ages Series

The Hurricane Journals

Before The River's Crescent

Why Fate Was Fought

Copyright 2013 Ronnie M. Plaiscia Jr.

Published by Ronnie M. Plaiscia Jr. at Smashwords

All rights reserved.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

(Introduction)

These are the journals of an age left shrouded by shadow, a time hidden away, a time blotted out, concealed by the annuls of human history… but time, you see, in this journey we are about to embark upon, can sometimes be an odd thing… birth, death, rebirth… around and around it goes.

Never ceasing, never ending, on and on and on it stretches.

Bending, breaking, snapping, twisting, folding, regenerating… backwards, forwards, up, down… and even that does it no justice. Words such as those cannot even begin to describe its reach, nor can life or death, or never or forever… not even eternity. But… for now, this will have to suffice…

This is a story about not only fate, but the events that help to guide it forward, and sometimes fight against it, all for the sake of, as those who wage this war say it, ‘setting things right’. And many may believe that these events involving fate have to be magical or guided by some unseen and omnipotent hand, some destiny, some god… but I am here to reveal that thoughts such as those are only for the modest… because it’s all quite the contrary, actually.

The hands that truly guide and tip the scales of fate are no more than our own, whether by accident or design. But hands, I must admit, don’t always have to be human. Sometimes, and more often than one may think, those scales of fate are manipulated by the hands of an ancient race that most know as Witches. And not only witches, but Warlocks and Wizards, as well, even Vampires every once in a full moon.

And I’m not talking about any Witches that ride brooms, or Wizards that go to school, and definitely not any Vampires that sparkle. This is no fictional tale, and it is filled with no fictional creatures.

This is reality.

These events happened.

And these creatures have walked this Earth far longer than any human.

But that fact alone is exactly what brings about the problem of where to begin.

Of course I could easily go on to say that this all began upon a mighty river’s crescent, within a vast swamp at the bottom of some newfound land in the year of 1722, but I wouldn’t really be creating a good lead-in for the journey we are actually about to take.

Sure, that may be where all the questions stem from… namely, for the sake of this writing, how in fury did Chelsia, Heather and Jaxon find the exact same swamp as Jane, thirteen-thousand years after their initial separation? And how might a being, any being, even live for thirteen thousand years in the first place?

Well, to be simple and answer the second question first, the answer would be… because Witchkind lives by a much different life cycle than any currently breathing species left on the planet. While the cells of most beings degenerate over time, thus beginning the process of that being’s inevitable death, for witches the process was much different.

When it came to Witchkind, meaning all descendents of the bloodline Wicca Urth, those cells are forever regenerated as long as a connection with Terra is present, and Terra was no more than the essence of all things, flowing through both time and space and connecting everything to everything else. The witches saw it as their world, thus the Earth was named their Terra, and their connection to it was strong. It was exactly what allowed a single one of their lives to last for thousands upon thousands of years, and the only way to sever it was to sever their breath from their body.

So now that we’ve gotten that simple explanation out of the way, the answer to my first question will be a bit more difficult to explain. However difficult the question, though, the answers to all of them cannot be found in the swamp of New Orleans that I’ve previously spent so much time in, no… no, instead, many of those answers rest only within the past, a time already set in stone, one not normally glanced upon because it is a time that exists only within the minds of those that experienced it.

Memories, you see… they are all that makes this experience we call the past a real thing… and though many of the memories that we are about to follow into this unseen past were stirred to the surface by the Terrible Storm of that wet September night in the human year of 1722, upon that river’s crescent and within that settlement surrounded by swamp, this is a journey that took place long before that river’s crescent was ever even forged.

And it shall be those memories that we follow, not the storm nor the great conflict that followed… that’s for those other books… and our story here, once those memories can be stirred to the surface of her mind, it all stems from a mighty mountaintop peak known as Peace, within a time that only one witch could ever remember.

This is the truth of Chelsia Starbroken…

Chapter 1 - The Truth of Chelsia Starbroken

Echoing off the stone walls of an underground chamber, one tucked beneath the swamp of a 1722 New Orleans, merely a tiny settlement within the vastness of a thick and unforgivable swamp, a settlement without yet even a name, were the charging footfalls of a witch named Chelsia. She’d just seen a face she hadn’t seen in over a hundred-thousand years, and was rushing to stop her ancient friend Heather from performing the same exact spell they’d attempted atop their former mountaintop home, a home that came to be dubbed ‘Peace Peak’.

It was the exact spell that had gotten her into this whole mess in the first place, and she was more than happy to put a stop to this particular attempt. Bright yellow hair was flung from one shoulder to the other as she slid her way into the far off room, hidden away from the rest of the chambers, but as she entered she saw that Heather had already ceased her preparations, and was sitting down along the far wall with her arms at her sides.

I know… no point, the younger Heather acknowledged with the downward swat of her hand.

So… it’s really true, isn’t it? Chelsia asked her, shaking her head in disbelief.

You saw him, right?

Well… yeah, but… the older witch shrugged her shoulders.

So, yes… everything is in order once more… just as I said it would be.

Nine hours later, however, complete mayhem was brought upon them.

The swamp they lived within bore the brunt of a mighty storm, one that pushed the neighboring Lake of Pontchartrain deep into their swamp home, and then, with the shifting of the winds, the winding river that carved through the land, the Mighty Mississippi, quickly became a part of it, as well. Chelsia had found herself atop a tree upon that river’s crescent, clinging to it for all her life. And that’s when that life of hers began staring her in the face.

It may not have been a life that many had lived… defying time, rearranging fate… but it was the life that she’d lived. And that’s when her thoughts began to drift back to a time she hadn’t thought of in quite a few centuries, her very first memories of that mountaintop peak known as Peace…

It was atop that mountaintop peak where some of the very last survivors of Witchkind had resided unscathed, led by the witch sisters Katrina and Rita Tytanicus. They were both part of a very powerful bloodline, and they took the survival of their race very seriously. That’s how they had kept safe the hundreds of witches that lived in the two mountaintop villages for the thousand years that they had been there… by treating the survival of those few hundred witches as if each one was the very last of their kind. They had been like one huge family, and they kept completely to themselves atop their mountain peak.

And hiding atop that snowcapped mountain seemed to be the only way to survive against the Sapien Race of that day, the highly evolved apes that had already claimed much of the land. But hiding was exactly what they were doing on that day when the Sapiens finally found them… the day when Peace was torn asunder… and it served them not a gram of good.

Chelsia remembered her failures well as she clung to her tree, but it was her original mistakes that had scarred her the most. Peace Peak may have been where the fight had begun, yet it had led her not to any sort of victory, but on a journey of redemption… a journey of ‘setting things right’. And her memories, as that terrible storm of 1722 flashed her life before her eyes, they focused in on that first and forever unspoken experience upon Peace Peak… where it all began for her.

* * *

The push of the chilled breeze was soft upon Chelsia’s cold cheeks as the witch stepped out of her stone chiseled home to begin carving out her garden for the coming winter. She was at it all day, carving three bushes into twirling snakes and another into a leaping dragon, and then moved onto carving the thick line of bushes that surrounded her home into a rolling set of waves.

It had been quiet on her end of Upper Ishnano all day, with the only visitor being an older witch from the lower village, Chalyette. She’d asked for some Teradyn Dye, a substance used for healing various cuts and abrasions, but Chelsia had already given the last that she had to Heather. She kindly apologized and Chal went on to hunt anyway.

She smiled before leaving, That just means I’ll be coming to you if someone gets hurt. And knowing my company… I’ll be seeing you then

But Chelsia’s smile in response was much more somber, knowing that it would be the final time she would ever see the witch again.

The spell they’d dug up would assure that… and she knew that Heather and Jane were already working towards finishing that ancient spell before nightfall. But by the time the sun began to set, Lower Ishnano became suddenly overflowed with attacking Sapiens.

The heart of the witch seemed to stop in place, trapped without a beat within her ribcage as she watched the massacre begin… rows of Sapiens swarming into the village below with weapons swinging, bashing and slashing the skulls of unsuspecting and unprepared witches as they fruitlessly attempted to defend themselves.

Then, before she could even make a move, the elder witch Katrina was running alongside her garden, her arm glowing blue and facing the land-bridge that connected the two villages.

No, Chelsia screamed out, You can’t…!

But she did, and her blast of Terra ripped through the rock and crumbled the bridge along the mountainside, canceling any hope for those witches below to escape, and dropping Chelsia dramatically to her knees.

You’ve just killed them all… She mumbled to her elder, Do you realize that?

Katrina held her chin up high as she defended herself, I realize that I’m saving your life… so maybe you should do better to appreciate it. The elder then left the younger witch to shake her head in complete disbelief.

Her eyes kept turning down to the carnage below, wanting nothing more than to run down there and save them, somehow, but she saw how large that mass of mortals was, the violence they carried upon their shoulders, and she knew that she was only one witch… one witch that could do nothing against such a plentiful and vicious foe.

Instead, she rushed through the upper village, otherwise known as Upper Ishnano, to Heather’s home, where she found her and Jane rushing to properly arrange the ancient spell.

Frening Sapiens, Heather hissed beneath her breath, The stars aren’t even ready yet!

And neither are we, Jane yelled at her, "So you get your