Chương 1: The Dumbest Timeline

In the hot, barren fields of Mitelos, a puddle of sweat smushed around in Jim's pink, leather boots. To console himself, he looked at Lebowski, his poorer and girthier friend. Lebowski's longer brown hair was sticking to his scalp and he was breathing heavily as was befitting of his station as the third-in-line heir to a wine fortune rather than a second-in-line heir to a mercantile empire.

"You think they sent us here as a sort of hazing for recent graduates?" Jim eventually asked. Lebowski chuckled in the wheezing good humour integral to his character as a person often out of breath.

"More like they sent the best to deal with the worst." Jim laughed.

"Well, regardless of the reason. We have to find the village head to figure out what the situation even is." He ran a hand through his black hair and looked around, using his height advantage to peer further than other people could even conceive. It was a scorching September day, so he was surprised to discover a dust-covered farmer tilling the empty field to the right off the road.

"You over there!" he shouted, prompting the man to look up from where he was stabbing at the light brown dirt with a hoe, creating neat little lines of slightly darker upturned earth.

"Lead us to the village head!" Jim shouted again when he noticed that he'd gotten the man's attention. The farmer hurried over and looked the two mages up and down. Both puffed up subconsciously at the knowledge of what the farmer was seeing. Two respectable young men of good breeding, about 19 years of age, dressed in black wizards' robes, one tall and athletic, one short and fat. The farmer respectfully removed his weather-beaten cap. A mark of low social status.

No real gentleman would have to spend enough time in the sun to require one.

"I'm afraid that I can't stop me work, me lords. But if yer walk down this path, yer should find the old Hanaphres the Third easily enough. He lives in the big building with the village emblem on the front and doesn' like to leave it," the man said apologetically. Jim looked down the road - the village was only a few minutes' walk away. It would indeed be easy finding the village head with the description of the man's house. It was just impolite for the peasant to suggest it.

"Alright then," he begrudgingly said.

"But why are you out here farming if there's danger? Also, Hanaphres the Third, odd name."

"We are on the other side of the kingdom, I guess," Lebowski commented with a sigh. Some hat-wringing commenced at the interrogation, and the farmer bitterly formed his next words.

"Well, me lords, if I die to the monsters, I die to the monsters. If I don't sow my field, I ain't got nothing to eat and die just as well. As for Sir Hanaphres the Third, he's named so after his venerable grandmother, Hanaphres the First, who left us just last morn, may the gods bless her soul."

"Where did she go?" Lebowski asked, confused. The farmer looked up into the spotless blue sky, the sun burning down on the three with weak rays of sunlight.

"Well," the man started, "I hope she went to heaven. But before she did, she walked up to the nearest cliff we have to this village. Ten men, tall men, not short fellas- and jumped straight off. So, I guess she went up, then down and then maybe a lil' bit up again. Either way, all I know for sure is that she left."

"The mortal coil, you mean?" Jim tried to clarify, but the farmer seemed frustrated by the bombardment of his questions and replied shortly.

"Aye, me lords. Now if yer don't mind, I have to get back to me work." He made to walk off back to his hoe.

"How rude," Lebowski muttered, tutted, and shook his head. Jim decided to be magnanimous and not fault the man who clearly lacked education and self-awareness. He turned towards the village and started walking.

"Might as well get this over with," he said with a sigh. Lebowski went along without saying anything, likely preserving energy by not speaking so that he would have more when they celebrated their success with some of the wine bottles stashed in his room back at the academy. They still had their dorm rooms for another week, now should have been the time to unwind from the year before going back home, not trudging through Mitelos of all places.

Considering they were recent graduates of the magical academy's prestigious one-year programme, it seemed a bit overkill to send two of them to protect such a small, meaningless village from whatever monster was pitiful enough to bother with it. However, he couldn't really find it in himself to complain as they hadn't been singled out. The academy had been in a right mess this morning, and he'd seen that all recently graduated students had been summarily assigned to some fieldwork.

A live exercise of the academy's readiness to support the kingdom in a time of need. What that need was, Jim quite frankly didn't know nor care. All he knew was that he'd been woken up very rudely at the ungodly hour of 9 in the morning. He'd received a mission briefing -in writing- and a golden amulet with a stylised eye that he was supposed to wear. The others had received one too – maybe it was a graduation gift. After receiving the amulet, Jim had been sent out here into the rural part of Mitelos.

Very close to the Hrust mountains from which most of the kingdom's wealth was mined. Lebowski had been sent with him with the same briefing and amulet. They'd exchanged surprised looks before deciding that the goal was obviously to use their superior teamwork to solve the issue at hand. They hadn't said that, of course, nor had either of them mentioned how happy they were to see each other.

Any mission would surely become less dreary with a friend, and Jim was already grateful that he hadn't needed to silently suffer the farmer's rudeness alone. He'd never really wanted to see the Hrust mountain range either. Blackened by fire and a horrible history, its jagged peaks shot into the sky like a jaw full of broken teeth. It created a basin around Mitelos, a particularly (not) charming region of Rotto. Home to mining, farming and general peasantry.

Not truly something you sent mages to protect, but the bright tale of their post-education exploits would have to start somewhere. It would impress those who would think that their presence was a sign of magnanimity, and not sheer coincidence. Jim put a hand to his inner breast pocket to make sure that the briefing and his money pouch were still there.

'Sending you to a farming village, suspected monster activity. Be on guard and wear the amulet,' the missive had said. Clear enough. The village was in danger; he and Lebowski were there to protect it. The amulet was to be their reward, which they were given early because their victory over whatever troubled the village was as unavoidable as he was talented. Presumably, they wanted them to wear it to show that the kingdom, the academy were willing to protect the integral human resources of the region.

He'd already secured the amulet around his neck. He thought he felt the depicted eye blink every now and again. But that didn't really matter, as he looked good with any jewellery, blinking or not.

"It looks a bit abandoned. Like the streets of Sredina the morning after a wine festival," Lebowski commented as they got close enough to the little village to make out details. His words rang true; there was no soul in sight. The hamlet held twenty or so shabby houses and farms, all encircling one large building.

"Well, maybe they did have a festival. Look, there's graffiti, surely the result of some sort of drunken debauchery," Jim answered, pointing at some inane scribbles drawn in a weird red paint on some of the stone houses. The handwriting was atrocious. He couldn't make out a single word. Lebowski walked closer to the graffiti and tilted his head.

"I think it's a local dialect? Already hard enough, but with the handwriting it becomes almost impossible. It could say, "The calamity is coming, and we are all going to die," or "Death comes with wings of brown to shed blood of red."

"How does that even work? Those are two completely different sentences?" Lebowski just shrugged.

"I can stay out to decipher it while you go talk to the village head?" he asked.

"I'm kind of curious now." He pointed to another graffiti.

"I think that one says, 'Ass of the Missus," but it could also be "Run, you fools."" Jim huffed and crossed his arms.

"Alright, but this is getting odd… Did they not know we were coming? Where's the welcome party? We wouldn't attend, of course. These aren't the type of people we want to associate with… But it's the gesture that counts."

"I don't know, they probably have some weird alcohol around here, could be fun to try," Lebowski said absent-mindedly as he continued analysing the graffiti. Jim grew slightly worried, not for his life, but for the clear decline of the kingdom. Regardless, the division of labour was decided. Lebowski would decipher the graffiti and Jim, as the more handsome and charismatic of the two, would find the village head.

Even without the large emblem on the front of the large house, it was quite obvious to Jim where he was supposed to go. The person with the highest status in any given settlement was always the one who produced the least food, and the house only had a small herb garden. He gracefully speed-walked up to the door and opened it without bothering to knock. Knocking was for poor people. He entered the ground floor which consisted of a fireplace, a table, and the cellar door. One shelf.

Jim looked around for any inhabitants but was unable to find them. Likely to be on the First floor, he decided. At least that part should be more comfortable, considering that one could walk on wood rather than just dirt. He quickly found the narrow staircase leading up and started ascending. The loud creaks resounding with every footstep made him a bit unsure if the stairs were made to hold someone of his intellectual heft.. Thankfully Jim emerged onto the first floor unscathed.

There he found a cramped attic room, dimly lit and barely tall enough to stand in. Five figures knelt before an altar – backs turned, faces hidden. They were kneeling down in prayer in front of a small statue of a person nailed to a cross with their androgynous face in a rictus of pain. Jim loudly cleared his throat, and once that didn't cause anyone to turn around, he did it more loudly.

"Hrmm, hrmm, ghrrhrn!" The sound that escaped him once he choked on his own saliva caused one of the figures, the one with the greyest hair, to finally turn around. He watched as Jim struggled and battled for breath instead of helping. Slightly angry now, Jim met the dull, wet eyes of the frail old man. His own, far more interesting blue bored into the man's brown. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Are you the village head?" he finally asked. The old man nodded, trembling so slightly, almost as if his very bones were vibrating. He looked like he was about to start crying, no decorum.

"Well, tell me what's going on," Jim queried further.

"Where's the fire?" he tried to joke, starting to feel slightly uncomfortable in the oppressive atmosphere of the small space.

"We're all gonna die," his breath hitched, "my grandmother foresaw it", he cried before looking down helplessly. The family behind him knelt further in prayer, if that was at all possible, and their murmurs became audible.

"Excuse me, don't count me into that. I'm not going to die. Maybe you will, but I won't," Jim gently corrected the obviously disturbed man.

"Now, will you please tell me what makes you think that you're going to die? Your name was Hamafreeze, right?"

"Hanaphres," the man mumbled, before silently clawing at his eyes in a most erratic manner. Deep red gouges emerged in his face. Jim backed off slightly, wondering if the village was even worth saving from whatever threat was coming. Going by the state of the leader, everyone here was likely already too far gone anyway, imminent death notwithstanding.

"For god's sake, man!" Jim shouted, angry again.

"Pull yourself together! You have an academically educated mage right in front of you. Another one outside deciphering those red scribbles painted on the houses. Your troubles are solved. Damn if I know why we were sent here to this irrelevant shithole, but we were. Just tell me what's wrong!" The anger directed at him by one of his betters seemed to calm the man down somewhat. Routine, likely, if he often behaved like this.

"The calamity," the man whispered with chattering teeth, "my grandmother-""Heiniprenis the First?" Jim interrupted, receiving a confused but frantic nod.

"She saw it. We have no chance…"

"Saw what?" Jim asked.

"The calamity."

"That hasn't happened in almost a millennium. Considering I'm not currently drowning in monsters spilling out of the mountain range, I somehow doubt your grandmother had anything to see," Jim corrected, but Hanaphres the Third only shook his head.

"She saw it in the future, our doom."

"Is that why there's no one out in the village?"

"Everyone is praying, other than Strik, the idiot. Will tilling a harvested field assure his entrance into heaven, I don't think so," the village head said contemptuously. Jim rubbed at his temples.

"If you're so sure you're doomed anyway, then why send for help?" Jim asked exasperatedly, but Hanaphres the Third only shook his head.

"We didn't send for help; the visions have never been wrong. You'll just die here too," the man said, seeming to take a small amount of pleasure in that, if the slight twitch of his lips was an indicator.

"Man!" Jim shouted again, just about ready to tear at his hair, "If someone like me, with real prophet's blood, hasn't awakened the gift, then some old hag in a random village in the middle of nowhere certainly didn't!"

"She's never been wrong," the man, looking at the mage with pity.

"You know what," Jim said, "alright. Your grandma was delusional and convinced you idiots to go along with it somehow. You didn't send for me. I'm sure that academy moron just sent me to the wrong place, the incompetent buffoon. I'm leaving-" Before Jim could finish the sentence, a terrible quake shook the village head's house to its foundations. A very human scream started up, but was cut short in less than a second.

Jim threw himself to the ground and covered his head with his hands, which he usually did in case of earthquakes. However, any thoughts about earthquakes fled his mind when a blood-curdling roar followed the quake, shaking the house once again from sheer sound level alone.

"That doesn't sound very high society," Jim muttered to himself, worried about the human scream which had been cut off by the crash. Hopefully, Lebowski was alright. Hanapipi the Third simply moaned, scrabbling on all fours to rejoin his family in prayer, apparently staying true to his words of having given up on life. Not being particularly religious, Jim needed to figure out what the hell was going on instead of praying.

Unfortunately, there were no windows in the attic, so he ran to the side of the roof, an arrow of blue magic energy forming over his shoulder. The missile shot forward and drilled a hole in the wood. Jim stuck his head through to check the situation outside. He found himself facing the village square, which was about what he had expected.

What he hadn't expected, and didn't like overly much, was the enormous dragon-like creature that was stomping around the house he was in, looking around curiously at all the man-made structures that it absolutely dwarfed with its immense girth. It was an ungainly, shit-brown; huge and oddly childish in the way it sniffed the ground and peeked through windows with bulbous yellow eyes.

Jim froze, reeled back as if struck, and then remained undecided for a second between joining the peasant family in their now shouted prayers or running out of the house in the opposite direction of the beast while screaming like a little gir- dignified aristocrat. There was a bloody smear with a black robe on the ground next to the beast, and a pair of pink leather boots lay next to it. Being able to grieve Lebowski and any ability to choose an action was quickly taken out of his hands.

The beast spun in a circle with a speed contradictory to its size. Its gigantic tail followed the movement like a whip. The appendage began smashing apart houses and the people that lived within them like a combination of wooden and human grapes that burst on impact. The air was filled with shrapnel and viscera. Jim had just enough time to call up his mage shield before the beast completed the turn, its tail following behind by half a second, coming right at the house.

In what was assuredly the fastest spell formation of his life, a blue magic shield composed of several hexagons surrounded Jim's form. Of course, everything happened so fast that he didn't have time to process it. He just heard the crunch of splintering wood. His shield broke like a badly formed chicken egg, launching him into the air like a particularly handsome human comet.

If Jim had stayed conscious after the impact, he would have been able to make out his ancestral home from the peak of the parabola that he made through the mostly unused airspace of the kingdom. But he wasn't, so the beautiful view went unappreciated. -/- Headmaster Leigh frowned and stroked his long grey beard, focusing on one of the moving images that were being projected into his mind via the gaze-sharing amulets. It seemed to be flying in the air.

He'd seen that whoever had worn it had been smashed by the tail of one of those mutated brown wyverns spilling out from the mountains, but it seemed that instead of simply dying on the spot, the mage had managed to get launched up. Whether they were alive or not was up for debate, but it was an interesting thing that one of Leigh's mental partitions took note of.

"17th mutated brown wyvern spotted," he said from his cypress desk in the corner of the cathedral of the god of magic. The only reliable place large enough to hold all of the required intelligence gathering efforts, alongside the ritual. There were many more such desks, all surrounding Paladin Albun, who was kneeling in the centre while different mages shouted information at him. Surrounding the paladin was a large seven-spiked star drawn on the floor in chalk and blood.

At the end of each spoke stood silently and without moving, the most powerful mages the conspiracy could gather. A group that Leigh did not belong to. He would have been the replacement had any of them died or failed to show up. But none had. This was more important than any single one of them. The circle and the star were filled with runes, all leading to the middle.

"The reports are starting to slow down," the bishop said from the corner that she'd been banished to, sitting in an ornate chair and tapping her finger on the armrest. Her red dress clashed horribly with the white interior of the cathedral.

"564th filth demon spotted," Leigh remarked, his voice interspersing with all the other voices prattling onto the fully concentrated paladin. As more and more amulet wielders died, their corpses covering up the view that the artefact gave, Leigh was able to free up more and more of his mind to focus on the situation of his body.

"Down to 6 projecting amulets out of 43," he said.

"5 out of 30," another mage said.

"0 out of 32."

"2 out of 27."

"Realistically speaking, the ones that aren't showing anything interesting by now won't suddenly start doing so," the bishop said.

"The calamity started an hour ago already." Leigh, the most senior of the mages currently capable of speech, spoke up.

"Initiate ritual, let's not risk the monsters reaching here somehow with fast fliers. Our defences are too barebone for that, the ritual circle too fragile," he commanded and shared a nod with the bishop. The seven mages started chanting, and all of the observers stopped speaking, letting the ritualists concentrate. Garbled words filled the room in a disharmonic chant. Each of the seven had their own words, and they clashed horribly.

Bright gold started overtaking the white and red lines on the floor, spreading inwards from each spoke. Slowly, but surely, the magical energy crept upwards, exhausting the living conduits and channeling the effect closer and closer to the paladin's body. Leigh started paying minimal attention to the links he had to the amulets, ignoring the fact that one of them was still flying in the air.

Had he paid attention, he would have seen the amulet pass over progressively bigger villages and cities, which lined up in an almost perfect straight line all the way to Sredina. He was too anxious to notice however. The god of time could only be tricked once, and what they were attempting today was the biggest trick of all. Time being a stern and overcorrecting overlord would likely wipe out humanity's ability to use time magic completely after this ritual. It didn't matter.

This one task was more important than any single branch of magic. Paladin Albun would use the brand he was going to be given to eradicate the calamity once and for all. He would lead humanity against the dark forces that rested in the earth's core and forever win them the undisputed ability to mine however deep they wanted. Minutes which felt like hours passed and Clarisse was the first of the seven mages to drop on the floor. The collective golden magic had progressed half of the way towards Albun.

Hramon, undoubtedly the most powerful mage present, took one step towards the fallen form and began covering both of their channeling with seeming ease. The gold started progressing more slowly. Then another form dropped. Paitana, the second strongest magic user present. She'd been placed next to number six to take over if the latter collapsed. A hushed gasp resonated through the cathedral, as number six attempted to take over for both himself and for Paitana.

He held out for barely ten seconds before crumpling as well. A chain reaction began. People stood in horror, powerless to stop it. Once the participants infused their mana into the ritual, they couldn't be exchanged, only removed. The progress of the golden glow halted to a crawl, barely a metre away from Albun, as one after another, the mages dropped. The only two left standing were Hramon, the will of the earth and Akash, lord of fire.

Leigh ached to help, but he could only watch helplessly as the two more powerful mages swayed in unflinching concentration and took steady steps around the circle. Careful not to step on the bodies of their fallen comrades, never stopping their chant. If this ritual failed, then humanity would once again be doomed to pay in blood to repel the incoming invasion, never truly solving the root cause of the issue and remaining under the iron-fisted rule of the royal family.

Thankfully, the two remaining mages continued their flawless performance. The golden glow soon reached the naked pale feet of Albun, who unsheathed his broadsword and held it in a reverse grip to point the tip right at his heart. The weapon would cut through the man's enhanced body with ease. Leigh was suddenly distracted by one of the partitions of his mind, still monitoring the amulets.

If something truly momentous happened, it was still worth distracting Albun for a split second to give him that information on his way back in time. However, the image that distracted Leigh wasn't really one of a particularly dangerous monster that he wanted to forward, but rather, a snapshot of the cathedral in which the ritual was taking place. As seen from above… As if, by a bird... Leigh's eyes snapped all the way open as he realised what he was seeing. He desperately tried to disconnect from the amulet.

Too late, he realised that through the presence of his magic, it would be keyed into the wards and allow entry into the building. The headmaster failed to snap the bond in time. A body clad in black robes and those ridiculous pink boots crashed through one of the stained glass windows. Leigh tried to form a spell, any spell, to deter the flying object obviously directed maliciously towards them, but it all happened too fast.

Everyone's eyes snapped in the direction of the approaching human missile, and they could only look, horrified, as the body smacked right into Albun, unable to move and forced to watch as he was flung out of the middle of the circle to be replaced by the interloper, just as the golden runes reached their completion. Most of those present screamed, stuck in aborted gestures of deflection that had all come too late. The ritual had to continue. Any disruption would erase all hopes of ever repeating it.

As Albun was thrown out, his blade flew from his grip, spinning through the air toward a new target. The sword whirled in the air, once, twice, three times, before landing tip-first in the chest of the person who'd flown in, just as the figure in the circle began to lift a hand. The sword penetrated the body. The hand dropped. The interloper's head fell back onto the stone. Leigh unfortunately recognised the face as belonging to one of the students who'd barely scraped through the final exam a few days ago.

In fact, they'd only let him pass due to his relatively powerful shield. Before Leigh could curse the gods and lament that humanity's fate now rested in the hands of the worst student he'd ever passed, reality shattered like a broken mirror and the timeline was erased.