Prologue: Cosmic Intervention

A loud slow tap alerted Anjur to the presence of the others outside. He dissipated the time domain and the rapping sped up significantly. With a frown of annoyance, he looked back at the door and spoke.

“Come in,” he commanded, and the door clicked as the Aytac opened it. It was the girl from before, the one who he had received the books from. She shifted her golden streak of hair aside before walking inside. This time a crystaled mind appeared behind her and Anjur’s face softened.

“I think I found it,” she said softly. Anjur looked at the crystal, and she nodded, sending it over to him. It hovered before his face, and he noticed the shades moving in it. He leaned back in his chair and sighed in relief.

More evidence was coming up now, but it still wasn’t a lot to go off of. He noticed the perspective seemed odd, and he looked back at her.

“Feray? What is this?” he asked and she bit her lip.

“I had to look into the recent deaths of animals on that world. This is one of the rodent like creatures. It was hard to get because when the shades appear, they seem to kill most life around them and the crystal minds seem to vanish. I wouldn’t have been able to retrieve it if not for you encouraging me to look at recent crystaled minds,” she answered.

“They vanish?” Anjur’s eyes were wide. This would make sense for why there weren’t a lot of minds with records of the shades. But this alone should be impossible. He drew on the power of the room and summoned another chair for her to sit on. The books she had given to him were of animals who had seen the events of different people. It was then that they began to notice the missing records.

It really was like time was stolen, like missing history, yet far more problematic. He wondered which time thief was responsible for this.

“Can you show me where you found this?” he asked as she sat down. She folded her leg over the other and nodded.

“I figured you would ask,” she hummed as she swept her hand in his space, calling up the crystals she was in charge of. Anjur activated his time domain, and she looked on with wide eyes as the crystaled minds appeared, flashed and then immediately went black. They blended into the darkness, making it nearly impossible to spot them. So they were not vanishing, just being hard to spot. Anjur summoned one of the dark crystals toward him, and it took a long time to respond. When it finally came, it was sluggish before stopping altogether. With a frown on his face, Anjur got up and walked over to this crystal. It bordered the darkness and the light of his room, unable to move forward.

He looked at it and noticed a faint memory with some people fighting off the shades. They were nearly surrounded before it cut off. Anjur bit his tongue before hastily moving to his lines. He snapped a connection and grabbed his glove again. Feray rose up quickly.

“No! Anjur you can’t!” she said, moving to stop him. He let the domain of time drop off her and looked back at her nearly frozen state.

“Sorry. But I can’t let them die like that,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t hear it very well. He scratched at his horns and then his scalp. This was more complicated than last time, but it was still the same. They were on the verge of figuring this out, and he needed to have more survivors.

The line connected, and Anjur grinned as he recalled his last encounter. Perhaps, this time, he could get the answers he sought.

With a move of his hand, he shifted into the connection and felt the tug as he moved to that location.

His golden eyes cast about, drawing on the darkish landscape and the shades that quickly moved away from him. They still looked nearly the same as the last time several decades ago.

“Bard!” one of the locals screamed. Anjur’s horns itched as he drew on the power of the moon. It was severely weakened with the covered sky, but he managed to illuminate his surrounding with a white light. A gunshot alerted him of the new location of some of the people, and he fired out some attacks at the shades in that direction.

“Sen!” another voice shouted from another direction. He quickly moved that way to help.

“Ruegar!” the voice shouted again. Anjur moved over and then paused. He sensed Jay’s song on this person. He quickly attacked the shades and then used the power of the night to settle the place into a preemptive drowsiness. Even if their memories would be without him, he knew it was futile to cover this act up. At the very least, they didn’t need to know of the forces at play here. The sound of the shotgun fired once more as he moved. Then it became silent. He focused on his sense as he destroyed the shades. Jay’s song was growing stronger and stronger.

As his eyes caught sight of the person, he clicked his tongue. He looked like an older version of the boy he had saved all those years ago. Anjur wanted to laugh at the situation. He shifted behind the boy’s line of sight and sighed. He recalled the name the girl had screamed as she moved away from here. Bard, was it? A fitting name. He hadn’t had a chance to find out last time he had helped him.

“Quite the predicament. Seems you can use a bit of help, Bard.” Anjur said near his ear. Bard shifted around and Anjur avoided his line of sight. He drew on the power of the night to let himself hide as he held back his laughter. A coincidence? That he would see the boy again, now a man, and find him fighting against the shades, was amusing, and encouraging. If only he could look at his crystaled mind, but he preferred this. He quickly drew on the power of the moon and took out more shades. He then hit Bard with more of the power of the night to cause him to sleep. Bard slumped to the ground and Anjur continued his work until the clouds overhead had passed. The Shades quickly dispersed. In the sunlight and Anjur paused. Last time he hadn’t paid much attention to the weather, but had it been cloudy back then as well?

He looked over and saw a Dryad and human with one of the lyragons. It surprised Anjur, knowing this war those beings were in, and that species that resembled wolves were notorious for being untamable. He looked at Bard and smiled. The boy had found a place in this world after all, and seemed to be up to big things. He would have to keep a closer eye on the crystal minds as his story unfolded. It sounded interesting.

He knelt next to him and saw the tokens in his possession. He shifted Bard into a more comfortable position, so his limbs wouldn’t fall asleep before rising and looking out. The suns were shining brightly, but they would need to awake before nightfall. It was too dangerous to be around those things, and he was figuring out some of their patterns. He moved away the energy he had cast on Bard’s friends, but let some stay on him. He looked worn out.

“Sweet dreams, Bard,” Anjur said before connecting the lines and returning to the libraries.