FPD#02:

Free Play Spin

I haven’t played a free token in a while. I haven’t played much at all lately, here.

Life, how it gets in the way of dreams, sometimes.

But dreams are tougher than dirt and rock. They fly high above the Terran world.

To far off places, to some well-known. To others, barely the twinkling of an eye.

Let your vision open to all possibilities, and partake of a glimpse of a great story, as it unfolds.

It’s begun in earnest, please read below.

Starting at the end, as great stories go.

What follows is a fictional account.

The Paelstorian Historian Society, A Case of Time, Volume 1

“
The Paelstorian Historian Society, A Case of Time, Volume 1

If one could see into the future for the world of Paelstor, where would it take one?

What time period would best suit this future scenario?

What would be happening there?

Would the people there be busy charting the way forward?

Or would they be rehearsing the past over again?

Well, I cannot stress enough how important this message is, so I must ask for your cooperation and trust. Let all be said first before judgement, so that what follows will be appraised to the best of your possible ability. I want you to take it all in, soak it up as a oneness of information, and only after reading the entirety of this piece, make your final judgment as to the meaning of it.

It will ever and always be up to the mind of the individual who reads it to believe it or not.

At first you may call it a tall story, a fairy tale, mere fantasy. But we call it history from where we stand.

Oh, I apologize. My pronouns must be confusing. That will become clear as I tell you what I must say next. But first you must promise me this: that you will hold judgement above all else for the words which are to follow.

I am from the future as you would see it from your time. You are in the year 5521MC, if my calculations are correct, of the Middle Cronus years of the Era of Magic (as Malthus the Great would have marked it on the calendar in your Regian system). You would just be coming out of the Third Chaos Wars, the War of the Damned.

We, on the other hand, are living in what has been dubbed the New Era of Magic, and we are the stewards of its Golden Age.

There are others with me here. Of course there are, there is a thriving world outside these stone walls. But within them, we are above all else, first and foremost, historians.

Many librarians and researchers enclose themselves by choice in these halls of knowledge. We live for the glory of days gone by, the tales of tragedy, and the woes of wondrous adventure. To read is precisely our purpose.

And some of us write. I am a writer. I write histories of the world we call Paelstor. And I know your history very well. Your time period was of particular interest to me. In fact, it’s something of my specialty.

There is a very good reason for this: you are my ancestor.

Do not be alarmed, and know that I am safe and well. In fact, our time is very peaceful indeed. The dark ages have vanished into the past, a past that wriggled its way into the pages of these books.

Now all is well. There hasn’t been a war in decades. The world today is prosperous and harmonious. It is truly, golden, as you may say.

Yes, this is 5599MC, on the cusp of the turn of the century from your classic calendar. For us, however, it is the year 891*NEM in our Imperial Calendar.

There is some discussion among certain circles that when we enter 5600MC there will be a great shift of some sort. Many call for global catastrophe. That is in fact why I enlist your aid. There is something that you can do for me.

No, I am not worried about things in the least. I do not believe in prophecy. My calendar tells me that there are nine more years to the turn of OUR century. Least of all, many of the so-called prophecies have been proved false throughout the ages. It can be hard to put stock in them anymore.

But there is something amiss here that you can, in your own strange way, assist me with. I will have to get to that later. First, you must understand some things.

Something has happened to me recently. It is hard to describe, and it will be even harder to understand from your perspective. That is, if you’re even still reading this letter by this point. Having held your judgement, of course, as I had requested of you.

Ah, thank you for hanging in. I will get to it all now. Let me tell you what happened to me.

I was working in the cellar stacks in the library, our halls of books furthest underground. It was late at night, and I was very tired but also very determined to complete the task I had at hand.

I must preface with this aside: late one evening a strange man had come to the library with pawned goods. We had bought some small items that were needed, but had told him that we weren’t interested in anything else he had. How he’d pushed fervently to sell. Before going, he had turned to tell us that he had a stack of loric parchments, and that they were very valuable. That he would sell them to us, for a reasonable price.

Our initial appraisal had been that the parchments were merely letters of correspondence. Still, we did agreed that the paper quality, fine ink, and meticulous handwriting showed promise that they may truly be exquisite pieces. We’d voiced interest.

The man’s price was outlandish and we had turned him down to start, but he had countered by half. Our head librarian, a savvy barterer, could tell that the man had asked far too high as a gamble and was now showing a more reasonable value. A counter bid a fraction lower and the man had agreed to sell the parchments to the library.

I’d been charged with filing them somewhere safe at once, for they were old and frail. But our assets were quite full in the upper stacks and the only place I could find for them was in the cellars. I was planning on a temporary holding there until I could make the proper arrangements in a drier, higher level of our library. Luckily there are secure filing sleeves that I’ve used to preserve our more fragile pieces. It does get damp in those deep recesses underground.

At first I hardly looked at the papers, simply finding headers to be loosely alphabetized for ease of study and sorting later. But my curiosity overtook me at some point and I began to peruse the texts. What I found astonished me. For I saw ancient languages there, only most of which I could read, and interactions between the races of voltar that would boggle the mind of any historian.

Soon my ravenous appetite for knowledge was invested in reading the parchments in-depth, and the time passed quickly into the dead of night. The things I learned in those hours of my life are still trying to be reconciled within my mind. And I cannot explain them or repeat them any better than by simply sharing them with you to read for yourself. I will pray that you decide the best conclusion based on what you learn.

So I have included these particular letters and teachings herein, line-by-line, word-for-word. This is only in case you do not also receive the original copies that I am attaching to this letter.

The most important thing that stood out to me about these texts was this: they were most certainly discussing time travel magic! This is a method of magic that the time mages have been questing after for millennia. These parchments not only laid out a foundation upon which time travel was proved, but go on to describe in detail that someone had traveled trough time already!

I must admit, the letters outlined the principle concepts of time travel accurately enough, at least to my way of understanding. And their data and evidences were nearly flawless about their brief experiences in time travel. Still, I held my doubts about the reality of it all. Who’s to say it wasn’t simply too much wine?

That is, until I found the scroll. Among the final parchments there, I found one that was notably different from the rest. It was not written by height but by width, turning the page to the side to create the affect of a banner. Inked details continued this theme with a swooping rectangular border along all edges, with idiographic wings attached to each corner.

The words were written with perfection and precision, as befits the magic of an enchantment spell. The leters were runic, the language of the ancients, the iens, and of the mages.

I could read very little. But some of what I did read frightened me. Even the scroll itself offered many warnings and precautions in regards to time travel, written in subtexts below the main spell.

The real use of time travel did risk endless complications to what I understood to be the continuum of time. Traveling through time could tamper with events and people, even in small ways, that could wreak havoc in the world. And not only the world now, but potentially that of the past and future, too.

Yet I remained mesmerized by the scroll’s beauty, and it seemed to call my name. So I placed my hands upon it, gently stroking the fine paper and ink. My eyes followed runes scripted out in big, thick markings. As I did so, the scroll began to twitter and glow, and the runic characters were emblazoned in red light. In this light, and in my mind, I read the runic words:

“Past, present, future, too; All are one, now so are you.”

I took them in my mind as I read them, sensing the power behind them. I don’t know what compelled me to say them aloud next. I suppose I wanted to practice my runic speech, to really feel the sounds of the characters.

”Past, present, future, too; All are one, now so are you.”

As I read those words in that library basement, I felt a surge of energy buzz about my head. The air shifted in the room, almost as though a gust of wind had rushed through for one moment. It flapped the tablecloths and curtains, flickered the candles, and brushed across my cheeks. It was subtle, sure, and then gone.

I am not sure what happened that night, but I had some validations of what I initially assumed to have happened: that I had time traveled.

Firstly, just before and just after I spoke those words, I had heard a door open in the library. Twice, in swift succession. I knew exactly which door, for it made a distinctive creaking sound unlike any other. And it only made that sound when it was being opened into the hallway, but not when being closed. Plus, it had to be closed with some force and some delay. It was sticky on the release. So to be able to open it twice in succession was impossible.

Yet it had happened. I distinctly remember the sounds, one, two, and how odd it was to hear. I remember sitting there for a moment, befuddled by the experience. There was no way that the door could have been closed and reopened again as fast as it was then. I tried dozens of times afterwards to replicate the speed, but was never able to accomplish it.

My final proof lay in my pocket. For I was fortunate enough to have had my pocket watch with me when I had used the scroll. And the comparison I found between the time on my watch and the time on any clock or watch in the library told all. For my watch was always two seconds ahead of the others. My watch was two seconds in the future to my now present.

My questions about what may have caused it were quickly understood as I thought about it. Anyone with some minor training in magic and the ability to read the text can use a scroll. Some basic scrolls for healing burns and wounds can be read in the common tongue. But the powerful ones require knowledge of ancient languages. So, with the little magical background I’ve had, I could still accomplish the task of this scroll: to travel through time.

Interestingly, I later recalled the thing I was thinking about just before I read the scroll. It was a brief humor in my mind about how funny it would be to travel even a couple seconds back in time. The spell must have focused on the the point at which I intended to go in my mind.

This may account for the gust of wind. To my physical body, moving only a second or two in time would likely feel like a subtle shift in position in the room. And the sudden loss of seconds, however small those intervals, was perceived as the movement of air in the room.

My intellectual brain began to worry that even my slight movement through time might have affected something, however trivial it may be, that could change the course of history thus forth. I thought, maybe I’ll be two seconds late to be somewhere that I am supposed to be, where the perfect occurrences meet to cause a specific event to happen exactly the way it was meant to.

Then I thought how silly that would be. Anything could affect the flow of the future, any choice made at any time, two seconds early or late or no. If things were really supposed to be so perfectly aligned, why did it still seem that most people still bumble around trying to make sense of their lives? How is that all perfectly lined up?

How do we even know what IS meant to happen? Or is it better not to know, to live without foreknowledge? We could wax philosophic on this one for some time, I’m afraid. Don’t get me started, for there is still more to tell.

Later that very same night, I had more experiences unlike anything I could have expected. I believe you will have to make your own call on what it is that truly happened.

I’d sat pondering the possibilities of a time shift for some time, then remembered that I was still in the cellar stacks filing away the parchments. I’d actually been quite near done, so I promptly finished and stored away my work in a safe hanging shelf, well off the damp stone floor.

“I’ll be seeing you again, soon,” I’d said.

Ahem. I got my things together to leave, just some reading glasses, a candlestick, and a thick cloak. It gets cold in the library, but I’d removed the cloak to file. Now I’d need the warmth to ward off the shiver in the halls of the libarary keep. It was time to get myself to my quarters and tuck away deep into my bed.

But as I began to walk up the stairs out of the cellars, another rush of wind came through and whirred dust up into my eyes. I held up my arms, and saw a flash of light. I could barely see, but when the dust began to settle and the wind died down, I opened my eyes to peer through my elbows. What I saw chills me to this day.

The world before me was in some sort of warphole. I don’t know a better word for it. For there was a rippling circle of waves that coursed in front of my vision. The circle pulsed from the center to the edge, glowing and folding in on itself over and over. Within what could be perceived in that whirlpool of energy were sights that did not belong in there.

The library appeared in top notch condition, as if it were brand new, not hundreds of years old. It appeared as though I were seeing the library from the point of view of the distant past, maybe the first days of the library’s opening. The more that I thought about this time period, how interesting it would be to see glimpses of it, the scenes became more clearly visible.

Within the timewarp whirlpool I saw a portal, with it characteristic fingering points of light that stretch out from the ovoid portal door. Through it miraculously I could see the forms of unmistakable figures in history. I was most certain that the two figures before me were none other than the Emperor Illurious Hepertine the I as well as Archmage Gensor Calla the I. They decisively matched the descriptions of both famous history makers in all the texts.

These men were two of the many initial patrons that created this library, and they were gifted with the unfathomable prescience to know that all knowledge and history should be kept within here. All writings from all places, it mattered not the content or bias, could be stored and understood in one place. This effort was shared by the communion of several key figures around the world.

Ours is the most illustrious and complete library know to Paelstor in our day, rivaling the Great Library in T’hordale by tens of thousands of volumes. Soon after the library’s opening, the Paelstorian Historian society was founded, a tradition we carry-on proudly.

So here I was, witnessing the meeting of these two legends. They walked straight towards me, lost in conversation and gesturing widely. But as soon as their forms extended past the swirling whoop of energy spiraling before my vision, they were gone.

And then the vision itself was gone in the blink of an eye. The whole portal, and the time warp spell, was done. It was so sudden, and so complete, that I quickly began to doubt what I had just seen. I wondered if it weren’t just a figment of my imagination, that my expectation of the spell’s power had simply convinced me of its seeming reality.

I wonder if you even believe me. I hold no expectation that you will. I am not sure if I would believe the story if I were sitting where you are.

But, I could not shake that moment from my mind. Ever since, I have pondered what happened. What was the significance of seeing those people, in that time? Did it even have a deeper meaning, or was it simply random?

That all depends on whether you are willing to bear with me for some time, as I tell a much longer tale of how we even got here. And when you’ve heard the tales, I wonder then, what will be your choice? How will you choose to polarize? To what end do you wish to claim as you learn who you truly are?

And that is where I will leave you for the moment, for I must share with you the teaching, here in brief, and later in depth. For upon reading these words, I believe you will know what you must seek and why. However these words are received by you, they will be your unique and only experience. And everyone is allowed their own. But all will have an experience of these words.

And the words are thus:

“All is one, none apart. A light shines in your heart.
The Creator’s gift, love is strength. It bolsters and uplifts.
Yours is always, life eternal. Expressed in each diurnal.
Bless all parts, the infinite. And know that you create it.
Past, present, future, too. All are one, now so are you.”

I can’t be certain of what happened from then on, but I do know that I have this creeping sense clinging to me that something has changed. The world is not the same as it once was.

I think something terrible will happen if time doesn’t get back in order! You must help me. Please!

But you may ask: how did I get this letter to you, in the past?

I will confess, after a series of strange events, I was convinced something was amiss. Things starting getting out of hand. Then it got dire enough that I dedicated myself to finding a remedy. It became clear to me that the cure may be in the past.

I fell weak and decided to use time magic once more in order to send a message. So I bartered with temptation and used the scroll.

I hope beyond measure that my message has arrived in the right time and place, as I’ve intended.

I truly hope you’ve received it, you who are so dear to me, and that its contents will be used well by you. And I hope, I hope, I hope… that you can help save the world….
“

 

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you liked it.

 

Please share and comment if you enjoyed your read.

This is the start of an enormous epic adventure…

Blessings to all,

M.G. Rondeau