Chapter 1
The anti-magic zones were normally safe. Designated by the military to ensure the safety of civilians without a grimoire. Once a grimoire had claimed you, there was no removing it. Everyone in the anti-magic zones were supposed to be safe from magic users at least. Most people carried on with their lives cautiously, only trying to make it themselves. Selfless acts were seldom. Even though laws existed, they weren't enforced. All of the efforts of the military were spent on defending the country from attacks. The borders meant nothing to mages with teleport spells. Most of the states broke out into warzones years ago, it seemed like such a normal thing to everyone else now. Civilians rarely left the anti-magic zone if at all. Most would either come back immediately, or not at all, presumed dead.
After the discovery of the Vault of Grimoires, people from all over the world flocked to the tunnels beneath Yellowstone. Many were claimed by members of the expedition crew, most of who are now dead. Their grimoires claimed by their killers. One of the surviving members of that initial expedition into the tunnels had a spell not found in any of the other grimoires. The ability to create anti-magic zones. He used these spells to hide himself until he could eventually create large zones to protect regular people from the fighting that the grimoires caused. To this day he is still hidden however, he must still be alive, as the zones would fall the second his life ended.
The grimoires often caused their users to become drunk on power. The stronger the spells it contained, the more likely the user would go mad. A high ranking official in the military had acquired a grimoire that had a spell powerful enough to command others to do his bidding. He used this ability to command his forces to seek out other grimoires and collect them to assign to other members. After a year or so there were about twenty thousand members of the military who had become mages in the battle against the world for possession of the grimoires. The vault was cleaned of it's grimoires and was turned into a base of operations for the military to investigate the awakening of the grimoires. It seemed as though there were small amounts of grimoires that were already scattered throughout the world but when the vault was opened, they were awakened. They would attach to the first person to read the excerpt on the first page. If that person was killed, the next person to read the excerpt would be bound to that grimoire. The spells in each grimoire were set in stone and were unable to be changed. Supposedly there was a secret society of mages thousands of years ago who created these spells and bound them to the grimoires, but no one knows for sure.
Some of the anti-magic zones were poverty stricken, lawless, and gross. Others near the capital or other large cities were blooming with life. Everyone lived happily, safe from the war of magic going on around them. Most anti-magic zones were maybe a few miles wide but, some were cast over an entire city. Then there were satellite zones. They were much smaller, usually places where people would go to work for the day and then go back to the larger zone. Often times people were killed on the way to a satellite zone due to the fact that most conflicts happened near anti-magic zones. The government would sit in their bubble of safety giving orders to the military.
At a certain point, people forgot why the war started in the first place and why it's still going on. All they knew was how to go about their lives doing the same thing every day, whether you were inside or outside the zones. Those who hoped for a different life outside the zones usually sat at the edge of the zone, staring out at the war torn wasteland daydreaming about the day that the fighting stops and that traveling to new places would be safe again. Six didn't just daydream about it. He imagined all the places he could go. He would look at old magazines or books of trees he had never seen before. He would think about the animals that used to live abundantly throughout the lands. He would stare at the dirt at the bottom of the craters that surrounded the Houston anti-magic zone hoping that he would be able to one day walk across it, and out into the world.
