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The chamber was cold and damp, with both floor and ceiling invisible behind thick layers of mist. Lit by blue-flamed torches which no mortal had ever touched, the room's pale stone walls looked almost alive as the light danced and flickered. There were only two exits - the first, a door to the rear, led back to the horrors he'd contended with and barely survived for the past two days. The second, the great stone portal directly in front of him, led to his mortal enemy, the evil creature he believed he had been born to fight.
Tystus, one of the most powerful magic-users currently alive in all of Asler, was very, very weary. He was a scholar, not a warrior! What was he doing here, at the top of the Pale Tower beyond the Undead Nations, girding himself to fight for his life against the Lord of the Liches?
And where in God's name was that last flask of brandy he'd stowed away in his backpack just a few days ago?
The Chronomancer let out a sigh. He was stalling, and he knew it. He'd come here for a reason, and he'd known from the beginning that he might not survive the quest. Some things were worth dying for, and ridding the land of Lord Death... not to mention restoring his good name... was worth it. And after what his friends had been through, there was no way he could turn back now.
So Tystus stared at the portal anew. Lord Death, the most powerful of all the Liches, lay on the other side. The greatest battle he'd ever known was certainly about to begin.
Looking back on the amazing and somewhat disturbing history of the Chronomancer Tystus and his battle against the undead terror known only as Lord Death, the storyteller is not quite sure exactly where and when to start his tale. After giving the matter some thought, the storyteller might decide to start at the very beginning, with childhood tales of Tystus, and how the future wizard was always fascinated with the arts of temporal magic. As a boy, Tystus rarely played with the other children in Harmondale, preferring instead to read, study, and pretend that he was one of those heroes of legend, battling evil, saving damsels in distress, and accepting the admiration and adoration of the formerly oppressed.
Sometimes, this imagination would get a bit out of hand, and Tystus would do odd things like running around without his tunic or pants and screaming, "I'm invisible!" And then there were the times when bold little Tystus would lay a hand on a schoolyard bully and boldly proclaim, "Ha ha, Burning Hands, you're burning to death!"
These activities usually resulted in Tystus coming home with several bruises and bloody welts, and did little to increase his popularity with the other children. But the resilient little boy never lost his cheery disposition - after all, in his own mind at least, he was a great hero!
Eventually, his parents became fed up with the irrepressible youngster and sent him off to study under the Guildmasters of Cedarleaf (technically Newest Cedarleaf, but the history of that accursed city is nothing we have time to discuss at this moment). Tystus excelled at his studies, and by the time he'd reached his twentieth year, his masters had even convinced him that he wasn't really invisible when he ran around in the nude. When Tystus was twenty-five, he was pioneering the study of a whole new field – temporal mysticism.
Within years, Tystus had perfected the art and begun to teach the complicated magicks to others in Cedarleaf. As the very first Chronomancer, honors were heaped upon the scholarly Tystus. Never before had magic been used to pierce the veil of the future, and never before Tystus had any mage had such financial success in the trading of commodities. Lauded as a genius and rich beyond his wildest dreams, Tystus had truly achieved a lasting measure of success, and all before his fortieth year.
However, because of the Chronomancer's duties as Headmaster of Cederleaf State University (so renamed after yet another wildfire had torched the old school, but again, the storyteller gets ahead of himself), Tystus's heroism gradually came to be in question. When the Chronomancer did not join the campaigns against the otherworldly intruder known as the Dark Savant, few noticed. When Tystus did not immediately go to the aid of Erathia after the underworld kingdom of Nighon attacked, popular opinion chalked it up to a total dedication to the school. But not even the most forgiving of the public could ignore his complete absence from the front lines of the Mad God Wars. When Tystus finally emerged from seclusion, after the long and bloody five-year conflict had reached its end, he proudly presented what he called, "the result of six years' labor": a treatise on the precise results of mystically causing two rabbits to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time, resulting in a fantastic implosion and very little in the way of rabbit.
At a later meeting of the School Masters, Tystus sealed his own professional doom by embarking on a speech in which he opined that perhaps the large number of human men in the militias of Cedarleaf, as opposed to human women, elves, Halflings of either gender, or the peaceful Garden Gnomes, was due to the fact that human males were naturally bigger, smellier, and more prone to mindless violence than any of the others (especially the gnomes, who, if one were to be honest, spent most of their time just sitting around and admiring their lawns). Scandal immediately erupted at the school, and Tystus was forced down from his comfortable Headmaster's perch, called a bigot and a coward. False accusations were made against him, including public lewdness and raving insanity. He was firmly asked to leave his comfortable School Lodgings, and judging by the marks he found near his garden wall, some irate mage had even thrown fireballs at his house! Tystus left in shame, but with a mind to redeem himself.
The Chronomancer's first thought was to go back in time and warn himself not to make those particular remarks at that particular meeting. He'd never before attempted going back in time physically, you see – he had always opened a portal into the past, stayed safely on the present side, and used it to passively view events. His own research into the timestream had hinted at drastic results if the past was mucked about with, such as the all-too-real risks of becoming your own father, eradicating yourself from existence, or worse yet, altering the circumstances of your family history just enough to change your parents into gerbils.
Now, though, determined to prevent his own disgrace, Tystus resolved to throw caution to the wind and approach his one-week-less-old self. After all, he reasoned, this was a bold new frontier of Chronomancy, the field he himself had discovered, and why should he wait for someone else to be the first to experiment with actual physical temporal displacement? And so it was that Tystus spoke the incantation he'd never dared to cast and sent himself back to the appropriate time of one week previous, an action he would forevermore regret.
When Tystus arrived in the garden just outside his private quarters, one week earlier than it had been a few seconds ago, he almost immediately felt a blunt pain in the back of his head. The stars circled his vision, and he quickly sank into oblivion. There was no time for thought, reaction, or reflection - one instant he was standing in his chambers casting the spell, the next he was a week in the past and quite painfully unconscious.
When the great Chronomancer awoke, he found that he was lying in his garden and missing his robes, his purse, and many of his magical effects. It seemed that Tystus, one of the most powerful magic-users in the entire realm of Asler, had been mugged. Luckily, the mage was no ordinary victim, and he knew exactly how to catch the criminal. Casting another spell, Tystus moved himself several hours back in time, and thirty feet to the right – directly behind a wall of concealing shrubbery (the very same shrubbery, it so happens, that he had once used to satisfy the quest requirements of a terrifying gigantic knight, but again, that's a story for another time).
Now, watching safely from the cover of his coveted shrubbery, Tystus set himself in to apprehend the mugger. Before long, he saw the telltale trace of purple energy that marked his magical arrival from the future, and then he saw his own appearance. Sure enough, just as he saw himself appear (a very disturbing experience, that), he saw a very strange sight – an odd little man, bruised and naked as the day he was born, ran from the back of the house toward the materializing mage. The little man quickly clubbed Tystus-of-a-few-hours-ago in the back of the head with a large stick and began to loot the unconscious body.
It should be stated here that Cedarleaf was a relatively progressive town, and that the penalty for mugging fell well short of the death penalty. Despite this, one must take into account that Tystus had led a leisurely life of scholarship, and was unused to such foul treatment. Current-Tystus, enraged at watching the abuse of his past self, chanted a few quick words of magic and hurled the most powerful fireball he could muster at the intruder.
However, the naked mugger (who Tystus could not clearly see through his fiery rage, but who Tystus was thrilled to notice was not particularly gifted in the department of manhood) looked up in time to see the massive fireball's approach. He held on to his ill-gotten gains, chanted a few words, and disappeared. The Chronomancer screamed and gaped in astonishment – not only had this vagrant known exactly where and when to attack him, he was also skilled enough in the magical arts to cast a quick teleportation cantrip. Tystus was intrigued and angered all at once, and resolved to catch this cunning evildoer and win back his clothes and possessions.
The fireball, meanwhile, a bit disgruntled at the thief's disappearance, continued on through the air and happily struck the garden wall.
Our hero had noticed that his enemy had emerged from the back of the house. Thus, feeling quite crafty, Tystus cast yet another spell of time travelling, one that would move him again several hours into the past – but this time, to the back of the house. His plan was simple: now that he knew which direction his assailant would attack from, he could apprehend the evildoer just before he committed the cowardly act. Surely, thought the increasingly befuddled wizard, this cunning plan would finally end his indignities.
The spell was cast and Tystus put his plan into action. From his hiding spot behind an old oak, it wasn't long before Tystus heard somebody approaching, running with a shortness of breath. The Chronomancer took in hand a stout stick from the ground, hoping to use it as a cudgel against his nemesis. Judging his distance by the volume of his gasps ("in such poor shape, this evil creature," Tystus thought to himself), Tystus jumped out in front of the intruder and grabbed him.
And then they stood, face-to-face – one, a Chronomancer with righteous indignation displayed across his features, cudgel raised to smite his enemy; the other… the same Chronomancer, looking nervous, bedraggled, beaten, naked, and very, very annoyed. Tystus looked with shock at his doppelganger, wondering how this could be possible. The other Tystus, noting the confusion, took the opportunity to wrest the cudgel from his grip and run off, away, toward the garden and his appointment with destiny.
Present-Tystus sat, confused. How could this be?
From the garden, Tystus heard a series of noises: a heavy thunk as the cudgel (his cudgel, Tystus lamented!) met with a just-arrived-head. A rustling of flowers as the Chronomancer's body hit the ground. More rustling as his body was looted, and a scream of outrage from further back that he recognized as his own. The sound of a huge fireball being summoned and thrown. The smell of burning plants as the fireball singed his garden flowers and struck the wall of his lodgings.
At this point, it should be mentioned that Tystus was in remarkably foul spirits. In addition to his disgrace in the future, now he had an aching pain in his head where he'd been knocked out, he was scratched by thorns from hiding in the bushes, he was still missing his clothes and his purse, and as if all that wasn't enough, he'd even insulted his own masculinity just a bit earlier. One would have to forgive him if he jumped to extreme measures – after all, even the greatest of wizards are still human (unless they're elvish, dwarven, or some other race, in which case they're still elvish, dwarven, or some other race, but I'm sure you understand the idea).
Resolving to regain his possessions once and for all, he again cast himself a few minutes back in time to stop this madness. Upon arriving, he immediately ran in the direction he had seen himself come from. He passed his own house without seeing anything suspicious and cast a quick spell to find the nearest magic-user in the vicinity (reasoning, of course, that this would be some past or future version of himself). Feeling the emanations of magic from just a hundred or so yards away, in the forest that neighbored the campus, Tystus ran with determination toward his goal. He very quickly encountered two of the School's most honored Professors, collecting herbs for the many Potions classes.
"Headmaster Tystus? Is… is that you?!?" asked the younger of them, Instructor Henrison.
"I say, sir, what is the meaning of this?" demanded High Professor Arcanum, looking with disapproval at the Chronomancer's disheveled nudity.
Tystus stood there, mute, without the singlest clue as to how to remove himself from this awkward situation. Finally, instinct set in, and the worn, pain-stricken headmaster turned and ran back toward his house as fast as he could.
Panic had set in by now and totally clouded Tystus's normally rational mind. The most powerful of Chronomancers ran all the way back to his house, panting all the way. Just as he thought he'd reached safety from his investigating colleagues, a naked man with a cudgel jumped from behind a tree and grabbed him. Tystus found himself caught, held tight, by a face quite familiar… as his own.
Luckily, the other Tystus (past-Tystus, as it turned out) was as shocked as the Present-Tystus. It was a simple matter for the panicked wizard to overpower himself, grab the stick, and run away toward the front of the house. Turning a corner, though, he stopped dead in his tracks as yet another wizard appeared (this one clothed), directly in front of him.
It is probable that in some corner of his brain, Tystus understood what was happening. It is highly likely that at least at some level, the Chronomancer realized that this was his past self appearing before him. However, all trace of logical thought had escaped him; all he knew was that he must not be seen, that a potential adversary was appearing in front of him, and that he was currently carrying a rather heavy stick. The course of action, to the addled mind, seemed obvious.
WHACK! went the stick. Down crumpled poor past-Tystus in a painful, unconscious heap. And down atop past-Tystus went the delighted current-Tystus to finally recover his personally belongings – and perhaps most importantly, his robes.
But just as he was gathering up his own possessions, he felt the twinge of a powerful magic spell being cast just off to his left. Looking up, he saw a massive fireball being directed at him by yet another naked Tystus. Holding on to his robes and purse, present-Tystus instinctively cast the last spell that his dwindling energies would allow him – a safety incantation that would immediately transport him to his own true present, and back to the safety of his own chambers.
When the magical energies faded around him, Tystus sighed with relief. He was again in his own beloved chambers, and the calendar above his desk clearly showed that he had arrived safely back in the present. His purse lay beside him on the floor, and he clutched his robes to his thorn-scratched chest. A terrible trip, he thought, but at least a trip that was finally over.
"… and these will be your new quarters, sir," said the House Butler as the door swung open and he entered with the school's new Headmaster, Professor Arcanum. It was with some degree of surprise that they both looked down at the exiled Tystus, not only trespassing in his former home, but lying on the floor holding his clothes and his purse.
The next day, as the magistrate solemnly issued a restraining order denying Tystus the right to come within two hundred yards of the Cedarleaf campus, the fallen Chronomancer swore an oath to himself that his days of mucking with the past were forever behind him.
The Wizard's adventures continue in the secondest part of our tale....
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