The Chronos Tome

[Cysma]

For a long while I've been wanting to write this series of fantasy novels, and since I plan to become a game designer one day, create games based on them. The story would comprise three books, called the Chronos Tome Trilogy (a series of books about a book, I know) and there would be a prequel book. I have also created a short game with a certain rendition of RPG Maker set in the same universe that tells an original story with a different protagonist, with appearances by characters that are supposed to appear in the trilogy proper. I also started making a sequel to that game on a different RPG Maker and got about 45% complete, though it's already longer than my first game.

I wrote a summary of the first four proposed books in the series, and they are as follows, with some modifications as I have elaborated on the story a bit more:

THE LEGEND OF LEONIS

There is the tale of a young man named Leonis Gran, who grew up in a tavern and was inspired by the tales of its travelling visitors to become an adventurer himself. He soon gathers a band of like-minded adventurers, but one of them turns out to be a half-dragon prince named Dralkor, being a prince because his father is Bahamut, the dragon god. Dralkor's ambition is to usurp his father's throne and cleanse the entire world of humanoid creatures, so that dragons can rule. Dralkor uses some underhanded methods to become powerful enough to murder his father, does so, and to celebrate his succession he has a giant flying palace built for him to reign over the world from. Leonis and his disciples fly to this palace on the world's first dwarven airship (which they helped make possible in their quest) and take the fight to Dralkor, defeating him and ending his reign of tyranny. Leonis Gran is then recognized as a hero, a legend in his own time, and is dubbed Sir Leonis Dragonsbane Gran.

THE CHRONOS TOME: DARK FUTURE

During his adventures, Leonis had found a homeless orphaned boy named Rollard and took him to become an apprentice of the archmage Solaryn, the world's most powerful wizard since Merlin. Seven years after Sir Leonis' adventures, the Chronos Tome trilogy begins. It begins when a warlock named Sammael, one of Leonis' former allies, suddenly reappears in the kingdom after missing all these years, with an army of hellspawn behind him, which he commands to invade Lironus. Thus, the people of the kingdom cry out for their beloved hero once again, and Sir Leonis responds to the call. The hero sets Solaryn's magical tower as his base of operations, but Sammael soon discovers this and orders his battallion to lay seige to it. The warlock himself enters the tower amidst the confusion with the intent to assassinate Leonis and Solaryn, but he ends up coming across the apprentice Rollard in the tower's library of spell tomes instead. In a desperate effort to defend himself, Rollard tries using the spellbooks around him against the powerful warlock, and ends up using the forbidden Chronos Tome. It rips a hole in the fabric of time and sends Rollard, Sammael, and the contents of the library's shelves hurling through the space-time continuum.

Rollard awakens to find himself in San Lironus, a series of big cities with overlapping boundaries where the kingdom had once stood. He has travelled 700 years into the future, and found out that Sammael's forces were part of the Thanatos Empire, a foreign power bent on conquering the entire world one nation at a time. This empire eventually succeeded in its goal, and while it soon fell apart afterwards, it managed to drive all nonhuman races and monsters to extinction, and magic has all but ceased to exist, as not a single person believes in such a thing. In this city with a level of technology similar to ours today, the people have no say in any sort of personal freedoms, and the government rules with an iron fist. They rewrite history as they see fit, and according to them, elves, dwarves, gnomes, monsters, and magic never existed in the first place; anything and anyone they disagree with they erase from history, insisting it never happened, while at the same time making up stories to glorify themselves and touting them as fact. Rollard shows little concern for any of this, however, as he just wants to recover the Chronos Tome and all the other spellbooks and return to this own time, hoping that he can change the future so that it never comes to this. He finds a rebel named Jack Craft, a young man studying to become an engineer, and a wide variety of other people looking to start a revolution. Unfortunately, Sammael has also come to this time, and has been appointed the mayor's new advisor. He uses this position to have the mayor try to get rid of Rollard and the band of rebels that he's in, as well as start an excavation deep beneath the megalopolis. Rollard's quest for the spell tomes takes him all over San Lironus, with the police and local militia and even Sammael's minions trying to stop him at every turn. Eventually they manage to confront the mayor in his citadel and defeat him, only to find out what Sammael was really up to. He was having a team dig a tunnel to an extraordinarily-large object buried beneath San Lironus. This thing is called the Dreadnaut, a powerful superweapon that the Thanatos Empire used to conquer most of the world. Sammael activates this weapon and it immediately rises up to the city above, and begins to lay waste to San Lironus. Rollard and company are powerless against it. The military forces are powerless against it. But when all hope seems lost, Solaryn appears, having mastered the art of time travel himself. He uses his magic to have Rollard and his friends grow to the size of tall buildings to put them on more even ground with the lost superweapon, and through their newfound powers they manage to destroy it before it completely levels San Lironus. In their moment of victory, Rollard realizes that Sammael has returned to his own time, and uses the recovered Chronos Tome to follow suit, to stop this disaster before it ever began.

THE CHRONOS TOME: WAR OF HEROES

One of the people that helped Rollard out on his quest to return to his own time was a mysterious hooded man who they called Black Wolf. It turns out that this is an ally of Leonis' named Kurokami, an immortal who had the power to transform into a giant feral wolf, and was once the lover of the sun goddess Amaterasu. When Rollard returns to his time, during Thanatos' invasion of Lironus, he finds that Kurokami is lending a hand here as well. They both end up joining Sir Leonis, and he gathers more disciples on another journey to drive the Thanatos Empire out of Lironus, and stop the wicked ambitions of the emperor. It is a long and hard journey for them all, and they find that they are no match for the powerful emperor. They travel to the top of a holy mountain to meet the sun goddess Amaterasu, and after she and Kurokami reconcile, she blesses them with the divine power necessary to win this war. They proceed to journey through all the nations standing between Lironus and Thanatos, and before they can reach the heart of the empire they have to battle Sammael once again, and another former ally of Leonis'. A man named Alexander, a paladin, a knight of justice who struck down evil, became disillusioned with his divine mission and ended up becoming the very thing he meant to destroy. His heart was corrupted, and he became a blackguard, the paladin's moral opposite. Greater still was the confrontation with Emperor Thanatos himself. Leonis and his allies slew him, but he returned as a mighty lich. They were finally able to defeat him once and for all, however, and restore peace to Lironus, and the world, once again. As the king of Lironus had fallen in the war, and he had no successors, the people chose Leonis to be the next king. Thus he was known as King Leonis Dragonsbane Gran. Rollard, on the other hand, never got any time to celebrate, as shortly after the war ended he was pulled into the space-time continuum by an otherworldly horror...

THE CHRONOS TOME: THE CALL OF TYRNOTH

Rollard finds himself trapped outside of space and time, unable to return to Lironus in his own time. He does however have the ability to go to other places in time and investigate what has happened. He travels from the dawn of civilization to the far future and ends up making new allies in many time periods as he discovers that Sammael is hopping all over the timeline to further his own ambitions. Once they finally catch Sammael he tells them of his motives, though the truth is not what anyone would have expected. Sammael has discovered that there is an all-powerful being that exists beyond the scope of time and space, an abomination so horrific that no mere human could possibly even begin to comprehend its true nature. To even learn its true name would be to go mad, but it has been called Tyrnoth by mortals, related to the first time it appeared in recorded history. Its true form is utterly incomprehensible to us, but when it does appear in this dimension, it ends up being manifested as an indefinitely-sized mass of jet-black pulsating flesh and tissue with thousands of tentacles lined with either thousands of beady eyes or thousands of gaping mouths full of jagged teeth. Tyrnoth can absorb people and things into itself to make it become a part of its body, for everything that exists has come from Tyrnoth, and so it shall return. Tyrnoth sustains itself by breaking off a part of itself, which becomes a seed of sorts that gives birth to what eventually becomes an entire universe like our own, which starts flourishing with life. Once the universe grows into more than what Tyrnoth started with, it absorbs it back into its being to replenish itself, and the cycle begins anew. This is how the cycle should be, or so Sammael thinks, but Solaryn, as powerful of a wizard as he is, was able to create a seal of sorts that prevents Tyrnoth from entering this universe. Ever since Rollard first used the Chronos Tome, bits and pieces of Tyrnoth have been leaking into this universe and took the forms of the monsters Sammael has been summoning. The Chronos Tome is the key that opens the door to Tyrnoth's domain, and Sammael intends to use it to break the seal and let Tyrnoth do with the universe as it pleases.

In the current timeline, there is a massive asteroid called Wormwood that is fated to crash into and destroy Earth in the year 2666. At the end of their quest, Rollard and his allies discover that Sammael has been using the asteroid itself as his base of operations, having remained hidden for so long by hiding in such an unlikely location. When they get there, they find that the evil warlock has built a grotesque palace on the asteroid's surface, made out of Tyrnoth's own flesh. There, they encounter Sammael for one last battle. When on the brink of defeat, Sammael calls out for Tyrnoth's strength, and allows the essence of Tyrnoth to take over his body, twisting it into a horrifying shape that would make most witnesses go mad. Having become one with Tyrnoth, this...thing that used to be Sammael is too great for the heroes to handle. They have no chance against a being of infinite strength. Just as all hope seems lost, they cry out in a desperate plea for help. With the assistance of the Chronos Tome, their cries are heard by Leonis, Solaryn, Kurokami, Jack Craft, and all manner of friends from all throughout time and space. They send their prayers to them, and call out for other people to send their prayers as well. The prayer chain extends to all people throughout the entire universe throughout all time, giving Rollard and his friends the strength of gods, the power to fight back against Tyrnoth. With the combined strength of everyone throughout time and space, Tyrnoth is vanquished from this universe, the seal fully restored. His work done, Rollard sends everyone back to their own time and destroys the Chronos Tome forever. Tyrnoth will continue to create and devour new universes, but it will leave this one alone. Rollard will never see his friends from the other time periods again, but he can rest easy knowing that the universe will no longer be threatened by Tyrnoth.

And that's a brief summary of the trilogy + prequel. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

 

[Cysma]

I have here the beginning of Dark Future.

Prologue

One Thousand, Three Hundred Thirty-Seven. This was the year in which the Conquest of Thanatos had reached its peak. After crushing scores of countries beneath its feet, the Thanatosian army reached the Grand Kingdom of Lironus, and it was to be the next stepping stone on their ruthless path of destruction.

While the other countries quickly fell to the might and the wrath of Overlord Thanatos, the Lironus Kingdom at least had the Legendary Hero Leonis to give them a fighting chance. Indeed, Lironus would be doomed if not for the efforts of their Champion.

The Lironus military’s efforts against the invaders were futile at best. Even Thanatos realized this, and soon directed his army to seek out and destroy Leonis first, as he was the only genuine threat. The Lironus Institute of the Arcane Arts, a fortified tower populated by scholarly wizards, became Leonis’ main base of operations, thanks in part to the support of one of his disciples, a young mage named Rollard, who resided there himself. But nothing escapes Thanatos’ all-seeing eyes. Not for long, anyway.

Leonis’ whereabouts were quickly made known to the enemy, and a full-scale siege was set upon the wizards’ tower. This being a place where experts in the field of magic gathered, the defenders could potentially offer a marginally better resistance than Thanatos’ other victims. Marginally.

In pivotal battles, Thanatos sent one of his generals into the fray, entrusting them to secure a swift victory. If Thanatos won this battle, Leonis
would be defeated, and the conquerors would go unopposed. Knowing this, the tower siege was commanded by Thanatos’ most trusted general: Sammael.

Sammael the warlock was perhaps the most dreaded of Thanatos’ many generals, as his battalion consisted primarily of demons and vile fiends summoned directly from Hell itself.

The tower was protected by a magic barrier set up by the defenders. The monsters’ efforts to advance and destroy the tower were nullified by this barrier, just so long as the wizards could maintain their concentration of the spell. To Sammael, however, a magical force field was a trivial obstacle at best. He punched a hole through the magic dome with his fist and pried it open large enough for him, and a few of the smaller demons, to climb through. The larger soldiers waited on the outside of the dome as the imps piled through the hole and charged the tower. Battlemages emerged from the tower entrance to hold the line. The imps rushed forward to break through the tower’s next line of defense, while Sammael simply walked towards the tower nonchalantly.

The battlemages were moderately successful in defending against the imps, but by the time they had struck down just a few of them with their spells, Sammael had reached the entrance just by walking at a casual pace. The warlock merely lifted his hand, and all of the battlemages outside fell dead. Sammael and his remaining minions on hand proceeded into the tower itself.

The imps got to work causing chaos by ransacking the inside of the tower as Sammael entered a chamber with nothing inside but a lone levitating wizard, deep in meditation. Sammael conjured a dagger out of thin air into his left hand and unceremoniously dispatched the wizard with it. At that moment, the dome around the tower shrunk several yards in diameter.

Sammael went on in this manner to strike down more meditating wizards, the tower’s protective field shrinking down each time, drawing the surrounding army closer and closer to their target. Soon all that was left for him to get rid of was Arch Wizard Solaryn, and the tower would be defenseless.

The bloodstained warlock entered the tower’s Grand Chamber to find someone there, but it was not who he was expecting. “Sammael! Your conquest ends here!” Leonis’ voice rang out. There, in the middle of the large, otherwise empty room, stood Leonis, the Champion of Lironus. His gold-trimmed plate mail armor shimmered in the light pouring in from the windows overhead. His long golden hair flowed majestically when he stepped forward and drew his glimmering longsword.

“I am honored to meet the Champion face to face.” Sammael said. “We’ll see if you live up to your title.” The warlock held his hands in front of him and they began to radiate an unholy light. A pentagram five feet in diameter appeared on the ground in front of him, and out of it rose a horned devil eight feet tall.

Upon being summoned, the devil reached out and slashed at Leonis with one of its massive clawed hands, but the strike was blocked by the Champion’s holy shield. Leonis replied by making a large gash in the devil’s side with his sword. The fiend screeched in pain and exhaled a burst of flame at its opponent. Leonis was deceivingly fast on his feet considering he wore plate mail armor, and sidestepped the inferno. He went to swing his holy sword at the devil again, but the devil’s claw met his wrist mid-swing, and he lost his grip on his blade, which flew out of his hands and slid several feet across the room. Leonis slowly stepped back from the adversary, and then dove to the side as the fiend lunged at him. This put the Champion right next to his weapon. Leonis picked himself up from the floor, grabbing his sword in his right hand, and straightening his long white cape with his left.
“You are beyond redemption. Now face your punishment!” With these words, the Champion of Lironus lifted his sword to the heavens, and the unholy being was engulfed in a blinding light of divine brilliance. The devil let out a horrible, agonizing scream that would haunt all who heard it. Its body writhed in intense pain. Finally, Leonis leapt toward his adversary, his sword raised overhead, and let it down, cleaving his opponent in two.

Leonis wiped the devil’s blood off of his face and left the room in search of Sammael. He was promptly met by a legion of demons piling up the stairs. The tower’s defensive barrier had been shattered.

Sammael was hurrying up the tower, headed for the rooftop. He stopped when he felt the back of his cloak catch fire. The warlock turned around as he doused the flames with his hands to see a young wizard in a red tunic and a feathered hat with a ball of flame in his hand. “What have we here? Someone who dares invoke my wrath!?” Sammael said as he blasted the apprentice with a stream of lightning from his fingertips. This mage, Rollard, was knocked several yards backward into the room whose doorway he had been standing in. This room was the Arcane Institute’s Library of Magic. Sammael walked into this library to finish off the apprentice wizard that tried to attack him.
Rollard was sent flying backward again, this time by a burst of raw arcane energy. He collided with a large bookshelf and scattered magic tomes around himself. After picking himself up, Rollard produced a ball of flame in his right hand and tossed it at Sammael. The warlock simply batted it away like it was nothing. The mage then conjured up a larger fireball with both hands and hurled it forward. Sammael caught this shot between his hands, holding the blazing sphere like a fisherman describing his catch. Sammael put his hands together like one would to clap and the flame sandwiched between was put out, like a candle in the wind.

At this point the apprentice realized he wasn’t a match for this powerful warlock; he needed to cast a stronger spell. Of course, powerful magic in the hands of inexperienced wielders can prove dangerous, but Rollard was left with little choice. His eyes quickly scanned the books scattered at his feet, and a large green tome seemed to stand out from the rest. He swiftly picked it up and opened it. Much of its contents were incomprehensible to Rollard, but what he did understand, he read aloud. Each word on the page glowed with an eerie green light when he read it correctly. Rollard read with haste, as Sammael was preparing to cast a large sphere of arcane power.
Suddenly, a distortion of the light appeared between Rollard and Sammael. It grew into a whirling vortex in the middle of the library, and pulled in everything around it. The books, the shelves, and all the furnishings were sucked in. Rollard was left with nothing to grab onto, and was swept off his feet. His body spiraled around the room in the air, drawing closer to the center of the vortex. A flying end table flew towards his head, and that was the last thing Rollard could remember of this.

 

[Cysma]

Chapter 1: Same Place, Different Time

When Rollard slowly came to, he was too weak to stand. He could only lay there for a while, and was worried when he realized that he did not recognize his surroundings. There were two structures, and very tall ones at that, made of brick towering over him, and a blue sky between.

As his strength came back to him, Rollard sat up and began to examine himself. He seemed to be pretty fine. In fact, the only notable thing apparently wrong with him was the fact that he was missing his hat. Scanning the narrow corridor in front of him, he quickly spotted it sitting atop a large metal rectangular container. He stood up and walked over to retrieve it, but it was suddenly snatched away by a hand that wasn’t his. A hand coming from the shadows.

“Oh, I’m sorry! Is this yours?” Said a snarky, sarcastic voice. Out from the shadows stepped two young men, more or less Rollard’s age. Both of them were wearing black leather jackets and vests and ripped jeans. The one holding Rollard’s hat was bald; the other had black hair styled into spikes. Both of them had faces pierced with at least one metallic object.

“Yes, that’s my hat. And who are you?” Rollard replied.

“Who the hell are you, faggot!?” The bald one sneered. “What kind of a fucking queer wears a fedora?” The two laughed as the bald guy put on the hat and assumed a mocking gesture. “Oh, look at me! I’m a gay fag!”

“You give that back!” Rollard demanded angrily. He reached to grab his hat, and was promptly punched in the face.

“Aww, is the little faggot gonna cry now?” They mocked. “Does he need a dick shoved up his ass?” The spiky haired one took an aluminum bat and smacked Rollard in the side with it. The apprentice stumbled back in pain only for the bald one to whip him with a chain. When the chain ended up wrapping around his ankle, its wielder gave it a fierce tug and Rollard was taken off his feet. He landed on his back and tried to shield himself with his arms as the two men began beating him savagely, calling him a faggot and whatnot.

The two assailants suddenly staggered backward as their jackets were set ablaze. The stolen hat fell off the thief’s head in the confusion as they hurriedly slipped out of their burning jackets. Rollard retrieved his hat and produced another ball of flame in his hand.

“What is that shit!? Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Both of Rollard’s attackers turned tail and ran, but the one with the chain was hit by another fireball, and burst into flame. “Oh shit! Oh shit! SHIIIT!” The spiky-haired one, now in shock, abandoned his partner, who was left writhing on the ground, consumed by flames.

Rollard stepped out of the alley, and what he saw next made him forget the muggers he just dealt with. People. There were lots of people. All over the place. And they all dressed differently than anything Rollard had ever seen. They all largely ignored the mage, save for a few that did double takes at him, noticing his own apparel. All around them were tall gray rectangular objects looming ominously overhead like trees.

Rollard kept turning in every direction to take in his surroundings, his mouth left agape in awe. He was too amazed by the sky-piercing structures surrounding him to notice where he was going. His awestruck observations were then interrupted by a loud honking noise coming from nearby. He turned to face the direction of the noise and was surprised to see a metal box almost as tall as he racing toward him. He gasped and raised his hands in panic. A translucent blue dome appeared around the young wizard just in time for the high-velocity object to smash its front end into it.

There were dozens more of these mobile metal boxes all around Rollard, and the ones behind the box that collided with his magic barrier stopped themselves and produced more of those noises. The magician took a moment to notice how each of these things had glass windows on each side.

The one in front of him had a large crack on one side which resembled a spider’s web. Behind it, Rollard could see a man sitting in one seat, unconscious, and with blood pouring from his head. Did the impact cause this to happen? What was the man doing inside anyway? No matter, Rollard thought. Someone needed help. He stepped up on to the smashed-in front end and hit the window with his fist. This only made his knuckles hurt. The window was tougher than he expected. He tried setting his fists aglow with arcane energy this time, and the window shattered to pieces.

Rollard reached inside to help the bleeding, unconscious man, but something had him tied to his seat. Unable to free him, Rollard worked his magic right there and engulfed the victim in a blue light. The injured man’s wounds were immediately healed. With that done, Rollard fled the scene.

He continued onward, dodging the vehicles that kept coming his way, and eventually reached another path where it was apparently safe for people to walk. This time, instead of being ignored, someone intentionally tapped him on the shoulder. Rollard spun around to see a man looking to be in his early 20s, Rollard’s age, with short orange hair and a zipped-up gray jacket. “You’re not from around here.” He said matter-of-factly. “That’s what your apparel says, anyway. That, or you’re on your way to a LARP.”

Rollard assumed a defensive stance. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?” His posture and tone of voice were cautious, as he had just had a bad experience with men in jackets just minutes ago.

“Relax, I’m just here to help you.” The orange-haired young man looked and sounded calm, in sharp contrast to Rollard’s bewilderment and confusion. “Just follow me, and we can get this all straightened out.”

Rollard, as one might have expected, was hesitant to follow, but at least this person didn’t make fun of his hat, or beat him up for that matter. No one else was going near him, anyway. Hold on, why was the sidewalk they were on suddenly empty, except for them, and five other guys in black vests? And why did one of them look exactly like one of the men Rollard ran into when he found himself here?

Uh oh.

“That’s him.” Declared the spiky-haired one, the one Rollard recognized. “That’s the fucker that set Frankie on fire. Fuckin’ bastard’s gonna pay!” He drew his bat. Three of the others drew out a metal pipe, a pair of brass knuckles, and what Rollard would later discover to be called a pistol.
The fifth man, sporting a Mohawk and a considerably more expensive looking jacket and vest combo, stepped back and opened his arms as he said, “Have at it, boys!” He ducked out of the scene as his gang charged the red robe and gray jacket. The man friendly toward Rollard quickly sidestepped an oncoming bullet and ran around the group to kick the gunman in the arms, causing him to drop his weapon. He retrieved the gun and used it to blow its former wielder’s brains out. “Name’s Jack, by the way.”

But Rollard was too busy being beaten with metal objects to respond. Jack let out a frustrated sigh and shot one of the thugs in the back. The shot didn’t kill him, but it caused him to stumble away from Rollard. In the moment that followed, the temperature around them suddenly dropped several degrees, and the thug with spiked hair was encased in a block of ice; a look of bewildered terror on his face was frozen with the rest of him.

“What…what the fuck happened to Gary!?” One of them said, just before Jack beaned him on the head with Gary’s aluminum bat. The one remaining enemy, whom Jack had just shot, attempted to flee. Rollard produced a pocket of arcane energy, which physically manifested itself in the form of a radiant, glowing sphere, and tossed it at him. The wounded assailant was struck down while running away, and seized to move.

“Well then, we should make like trees before Mak returns with more of his gang.” Jack said.

“What was that about trees?” Rollard asked, confused.

“We should leave.” Jack replied.

“To where?”

“My apartment. We’ll be safe there for a while.”

“I don’t know what or where that is.”

“That’s why you should follow me!” And with that, Jack began leading him to one of the buildings. “Did I tell you my name is Jack Craft?”

“Mine is Rollard. Where am I?”

 

[Cysma]

Chapter 2: Strange New Time

At last Rollard got to see the inside of one of the many tall rectangular towers that had surrounded him since he arrived in this strange place. The interior wasn’t something Rollard had seen before, or at least the architecture and design. He followed Jack to a pair of smooth metal double doors with no apparent way of opening them.

Jack pushed something on the wall next to the doors, and a few moments later they slid open sideways to reveal a small empty room. Craft stepped into the room and motioned for Rollard to follow.

“But there’s nothing inside!” The mage observed aloud.

“Just get in.” Jack said impatiently. Rollard reluctantly stepped in beside him, and the doors closed behind them. The apprentice felt as if the floor beneath him was shifting as he turned around to face the doors he came in through, if only because that’s what Jack was doing. On the same side of the tiny room as the doors, there were several glyphs with numbers on them. The one labeled “9” was giving off a light. Another number was displayed above the double doors, and it slowly counted up until it reached 9, at which point the doors below it slid open, revealing a different place than where they entered the tiny room from.

Rollard stepped out in amazement. This hall of many doors was different than the ones he went by before. How could he have entered the same door and end up in a different place? Was that empty box some sort of magical transporter? Yes, it must have been. That was the only viable explanation for Rollard. It may sound crazy to most others, but it made perfect sense in the mind of the apprentice of a powerful wizard.

Jack led him to a door with a 950 on it and opened it with a small key. “Here we are – my place.” Rollard looked perplexed as he stood in the doorway. Not far in front of him were some padded chairs and one large padded bench. In front of that was a green carpet over the floor, on top of which was a low table with some books scattered around on it. The chairs were all facing a low cabinet against the wall, and on top of that cabinet was a large black box, one side of it made of glass. On the left was a large balcony overlooking the right side. Rollard couldn’t see much of what was on the second floor from his current vantage point, but beneath it was a dining table surrounded by four chairs, and to the left of that a bar counter, itself in front of a collection of cabinets, more counters, a sink, and some devices unknown to the mage.

“What do you think?” Jack asked him.

“That’s a good question. What am I supposed to think?” Rollard responded. “I don’t know where I even am, but I need to return to Lironus right away. Solaryn’s Tower is under attack as we speak!”

Jack looked puzzled for a moment. The confusion on his face, however, soon turned into a smile, and eventually laughter. “You’re in Lironus right now! The city of San Lironus, to be exact. And Solaryn’s Tower doesn’t exist anymore!” He was laughing so hard he had to sit down.

“Nonsense! I was just there an hour ago!” Rollard looked angry. “And this does not look like Lironus! Stop laughing!”

“Has your family been living under rocks these past seven hundred years? This is 2037!”

Rollard’s eyes widened. “Two thousand…thirty-seven!? That…that’s not…that’s impossible! Last I remember, the year was Thirteen Thirty-Seven!”

“Wow, your family got the year wrong, too?”

“I’m telling you,” Rollard clenched his fists, which began to glow with a phantasmagorical aura. “I was just there at the Institute of the Arcane Arts, and it was under siege by the forces of Thanatos!”

“Woah! Hold on!” Craft leaned forward to the mage in his chair, intrigued by the glowing hands. “How are you doing that?”

Rollard blinked and looked down to his hands. “Oh! Um…” He slowly opened them, and the aura emanating from them faded. “Sometimes arcane energy can be manifested through emotions…”

“Arcane en- you’re saying that that’s magic or something?”

“Of course.” Rollard wandered why Jack still didn’t look like he was buying it. “Solaryn is a wizard after all. And a great one at that. He is my teacher.”

“Uh huh. So how did you get your hands to do that?”

“Do what?”

“How did you make them glow?”

“Like this?”

“Yes! Like that! Where’s the light coming from?”

“It’s magic.”

“Magic? Don’t be silly!”

“How did you think I turned a man to ice with a touch and knocked down another with a glowing sphere?”

“Hmm…you may have a point there. What kind of technology are you using to do that?”

“Magic, if it can even be called technology.”

“No, really, how are you doing that?”

“Magic! Really!”

“Well then, I’ll have to research this at the lab.”

“You have a lab?”

“No, not here, actually. Just a workshop.”

“A workshop? Is that like a forge?”

“Sure, if you want to call it that.”

“And this lab… are you an alchemist or something?”

“What? No! There is no such thing as alchemy! Or even magic, for that matter.”

“If there’s no magic, how do those metallic carriages move without any horses pulling them along?”

“Metallic carria-? Those are called cars! They run on engines and pistons and fuel and, well, it’s complicated. I’d need a lot more time to explain…”

“Sure sounds like magic to me.”

“But it isn’t!”

“It’s complicated beyond our understanding, it is fantastically useful…the same can be said of magic.”

“Maybe so, but this is called science.”

“Is that what they’re calling magic around here?”

“I don’t think you get it.”

Rollard sighed discontentedly and reluctantly dropped the subject. “I’ll need a way to return to where I came from.”

“Try retracing your steps. That usually works.”

“That would lead me to a dead end in an alley.”

“But you said you were in Solaryn’s Tower, right? It doesn’t exist anymore, of course, but another tower was built in its place.” Jack informed him, leading the apprentice to a window. “The view isn’t very clear from here, but no building is allowed to be built taller than the Lironus Citadel, one hundred and eight stories.”

There, out in the distance, one massive building rose up above all the rest. Its sheer size dwarfed everything around it. It was pretty wide to compensate for its height as well.

“I can’t see the top of it from this point!” Rollard exclaimed. Jack opened up the window for him, letting in a gentle breeze. Rollard leaned out to view the rest of the citadel, but was distracted by the other things he could see. The streets nine stories below were teeming with life, and the architecture of the surrounding buildings was unlike anything Rollard had ever seen before. He leaned out further to better examine the outside of the building he was in. Out on the ledge to the right side of Jack’s window, a red bag had been blown against the building wall. Rollard looked closer, and realized that the bag looked familiar to him, and it even seemed to be made out of a similar material as his coat!

Without saying anything, the young mage climbed out the window and stood on the narrow ledge going around the side of the building, much to Jack’s surprise. “Hey, what are you doing!? Get back in here!” He shouted out
the window. Rollard didn’t listen, as he was too busy inching along the ledge, his back against the building. A minute later, he returned to Jack’s apartment holding the silk bag.

“It’s my Bag of Holding!” Rollard exclaimed. “How did it get here?” He stuck an arm inside it, even though it appeared empty. Jack raised an eyebrow as Rollard’s arm went into the bag deeper than what was possible for the bag’s size. The mage pulled out a round bottle filled with a bright red liquid. “Didn’t know I still had any potions in here!” He placed it back into the bag and began digging around in it again.

“How are you doing that?” Jack was perplexed. “It’s as if that bag is bigger on the inside than the outside!”

“Bags of Holding are created with a spell that compresses space itself.” Rollard said as he started pulling out a large yellow book. “Nomadic wizards have been known to fit their entire dwellings inside one of these magic bags. Ah! This must be the Tome of Lightning!”

The cover of the book was labeled with runes the likes of which Jack Craft had never seen before.

Rollard began to read from its pages. After a while, Jack noticed that the mage’s hands began to emanate a yellowish aura of brilliance. Rollard himself realized this a few moments later, and then electric jolts began shooting from his hands to whatever objects were nearby in the apartment.

An electric current hit the black box that the couch was facing, and a young woman in business attire showed up behind the glass screen.

“Welcome to the Five O’clock news, this is Linda Endemann.” She began.

“Hello!” Rollard replied. “What are you doing in that box? Let me get you out of there!” He began grasping along all the sides of it, as if looking for an opening.

“Rollard, that’s just a televi- oh, nevermind.” Said Jack. “Just don’t touch-hey! Plug that back in!”

“Local seismologists have concluded that the Trolsco district of Lironus, famous for its street trolleys, was built over a major fault line, and may be susceptible to earthquakes.” Linda said, a picture of what was presumably the part of the city in question. “Research is ongoing. In other news, the notorious Mak Secker gang struck again just hours ago in the Capital District. According to eyewitnesses, they were seen attacking a young man wearing a 14th-century coat and tunic after he stole a feathered hat from one of its members, who subsequently burst into flames and is now at the Lironus Central Hospital after suffering second-degree burns all over.”

“Hey! That was my hat to begin with!” Rollard cried out. “And how do you know all of this!?”

But the woman in the television set ignored the mage. “Our field team is at the scene with a witness to what happened next.”

The screen suddenly cut to a view of the street where Rollard and Jack first met. The thug that was frozen solid was still there, surrounded by yellow tape and a crowd of curious civilians. At the foreground was a black cylindrical object being pointed at a black-haired man wearing sunglasses and a glittery white suit with a four-leaf clover lapel. A caption below read:

“Lucky” – Witness

“Okay, so this guy in red with the funny hat was walking across the street, right?” He pointed over to the busy street, and the viewpoint briefly shifted in that direction. “He didn’t bother crossing the street at the corner, he didn’t press the walk signal at any traffic light post, he didn’t look both ways, he just walked into a busy street without a care in the world!” The shades-wearing man straightened his necklace, on which a pair of red dice were attached, before continuing his account. “So then he stops for a moment in the middle of a lane, and a car crashes right into him!” The camera pointed to a car with its front end completely smashed in. “But get this! The red guy doesn’t even flinch when the car hits him! He is still standing after that like nothing happened!”

The screen then changed to show a man in an officer’s uniform in front of the frozen thug. The caption read:

Joseph Stone – Detective

“I haven’t seen anything this strange since the Cadavero incident. There isn’t a logical explanation for this that doesn’t sound crazy. Somehow, this man was frozen solid in a block of ice. I’m hoping that our forensics team will be able to figure this out. There is also the other guy who tried to flee the scene. He was shot once, but I don’t think that’s what killed him. As you can tell, we’ve got a lot of sleuthing to do before we can get to the bottom of all of this.”

“What’s going on here?” Rollard looked confused. How is this thing able to see into different places?”

Jack sighed. “If you really must know, I’ll explain how a television works later. If I have time.”

“Is it magic? If it’s magic, you can just say so.”

“Yes, Rollard, It’s magic.” Jack rolled his eyes.

By this time, the news broadcast had gone on to a different story. “Mayor Albert Drake is appointing a new advisor. He has lost his trust of his former advisor and is now looking to hire a new one. Several possible candidates have already shown up. With any luck, he should be able to find the right person for the job within the next week or so.”

“So…” Jack began, “What are you going to do in Lironus? How long until I can have my apartment to myself again?”

Rollard thought about this for a moment, then looked Jack in the eye with a determined look on his face.

“I was sent forward 700 years in time by the Chronos Tome. I do not belong here. I belong back in my own time. I need to find the Chronos Tome in order to return to 1337. However, it seems that more magical relics from my time have found their way here as well. I will need help finding those, lest they fall into the wrong hands. Who knows what magical artifacts would do to a world that doesn’t believe in magic! Well, I don’t want to find out. Jack Craft, will you help me reach my goal?”

Jack nodded and smiled. “Can’t say I believe all this, but sure. I’ll
help you find your junk. What could possibly go wrong?”