Hoping to gain any shred of information, Rykker cautiously offered his name.
“I am Grandmaster General Rykker Eunbyeol of the Sunbringer clan and leader of the Arcanian Brotherhood guild,” he stated proudly, his words careful and precise and deliberately unhurried.
“And you?
Under which banner do you serve?
Who holds the oath of your clan?”
Aaron wrinkled his nose in confusion.
There was that strange way of speaking again, he thought.
Rykker’s voice was a relic of a more disciplined age, its melodic, old-world way of speaking turning mundane conversation into a royal decree.
He spoke of the present with a tongue forged in the past.
“We don’t…
we don’t really have clans anymore.
Not around here, anyway,” Aaron answered.
“You don’t?
Hmm…
then might I be so kind as to ask: where do we find ourselves?”
As Rykker spoke, Aaron began to connect the dots.
The ancient dialect, the clans, and guilds all belonged to a world that didn’t exist on modern Earth.
Yet, terms like “general” suggested a military elite or a martial artist from a forgotten era.
It was a strange blend: a voice from a different epoch trying to navigate ‘the now’.
The implication was staggering: was he a voice from the past?
If so, had he somehow traveled forward in time?
While science had long dismissed traveling backward as a feat of paradoxical impossibility, moving forward presented no such contradictions.
It was theoretically possible, but it felt like a different reality entirely.
A shiver ran down Aaron’s spine as the weight of the presence pressed against his skull.
He couldn’t tell if he was a voluntary host for this entity, or merely an accidental radio frequency for a soul lost in the wrong century.
***
Aaron considered how to explain the modern age of technology to Rykker, assuming the General was actually an ancestor, though he was still unsure of the man’s true nature.
He realized he could ask “the voice” a few questions to better understand his own situation.
“Well, General, referring to the question as to where we are, before I can answer adequately, I need to know a few things,” Aaron stated.
“First, what planet do you live on?
I know that sounds like a strange question, but your words and demeanor suggest you might be on Earth, just in a different era.
That leads to my second question: what year is it?”
“Earth?
Where, pray tell, was that?” Rykker gasped.
I inhabit a planet known as Bartuii and the year is one hundred eleven thousand six hundred and twenty-nine.”
Aaron felt the floor dissolve beneath his feet, his mind reeling as the sheer magnitude of the statement hit him.
A completely different planet.
It seemed mathematically impossible.
Yet, as his carefully constructed theories shattered, a horrifying, crystalline truth snapped into place.
This was no localized experiment, no temporal mission mishap.
It was an invasion—just a deceptively small, terrifyingly intimate one.
A lone alien, rather the voice of one, residing inside his head.
“Sufficed to say, General, you are very far from home,” Aaron torted.
“Well, more accurately, your voice is.
It’s possible your body may still be on your home planet, but I can’t be sure.
All I know is that this is Earth and it’s two thousand and thirty-seven.”
Rykker felt his reality fracture.
A different planet.
A different solar system.
Worse: a different timeline.
How does one skip across the cosmos—and time—in a blink?
Unless it wasn’t a blink.
A cold thought seeped in: Have I spent thousands of years in this void?
***
The silence between them was deafening, both shocked from the same realization, only from different perspectives.
They were like two signals from different “planes of the universe” momentarily tuned to the same frequency, realizing they were staring at a cosmic mirror that reflected a truth neither was prepared to own.
They each came from a different place in every way; in time, in space, in different planes of the universe.
Yet here they were; together.
Aaron was the first to break the heavy silence, clearing his throat awkwardly.
“By the way, General, I suppose I should properly introduce myself.
My name is Aaron Mallory and I am a seventeen year-old senior in high school.”
“Hail to you, Sir Aaron,” Rykker replied, his voice booming with archaic formality.
“It is my genuine honor to converse with you.”
Aaron could almost hear Rykker bowing respectfully with his words.
He was remarkably polite, astonishingly proper; almost regal.
Rykker abruptly shifted his questioning, his voice echoing slightly as he demanded, “Tell me, Sir Aaron—what unnatural force brought me to this world?
By what incomprehensible power did I…
materialize here?” This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Force?
Power?
Materialize?
The words felt plucked from a bad sci-fi TV show, bringing to mind dramatic starship captains and special, shimmering beams that instantly transported crews to and from dangerous planets.
Aaron paused, trying desperately to make sense of the strange, antique phrasing.
It was always implicitly understood that aliens were much more technologically advanced than humans, so perhaps their machinery could transport beings instantly.
If that was the case, Aaron thought wryly, the technology was deeply flawed.
Rykker hadn’t truly materialized—he hadn’t physically appeared.
He was existing somewhere within Aaron’s own subconscious… or perhaps he was somewhere even more mysterious.
Aaron asked, “General, what kind of technology does your planet possess?
Can your kind create portals and send people through?”
***
While humanity assumed alien superiority meant high-tech gadgets and gizmos, technology didn’t exist in Rykker’s world—rather, it was ancient artifacts and raw, arcane power that controlled his world.
On his home planet, elemental magic was a practical alternative to modern machinery.
Air mages traveled effortlessly on wind currents, while geokinetics1 constructed buildings with a mere flick of the wrist, eliminating the need for power tools.
Daily chores were effortless as water mages used conjured whirlpools to clean linens and created ice to house perishables in “cold storage” instead of refrigerators.
Finally, in place of electric bulbs, rooms were lit by fire mage conjurations or enchanted crystals.
Gorem, his right-hand man, could tear holes in space itself.
He wielded spatial magic—the ability to bend time and space to his will.
Of all the arcane disciplines, spatial magic was arguably the most mind-bending.
It was the art of manipulating the “fabric” of reality—the infinite grid defining size and location.
Rykker had seen the practical, often impossible applications of this power through Gorem, an experienced user.
Gorem could alter an object’s internal volume, fitting an entire library into a satchel, or compress a mile-long hallway into a few steps.
Defensively, Gorem could bend the air around him, crafting a secure “pocket” of space to act as a shield.
Gorem’s specialty, however, was translocation.
He treated space like a piece of paper, folding the distance between two distant points so he could step between them instantly.
Using this method, he instantly transported from place to place, almost as if he were ‘appearing and disappearing’.
More advanced, and far more dangerous, was his ability to “cut” the air, creating rifts or shimmering portals for transit.
By opening a portal, he could instantly transport himself and others to places hundreds of miles away, even to the other side of the planet if needed.
However, such power required extreme concentration; a premature closure of these portals would yield, quite frankly, “messy” results.
Thinking about Gorem, a chilling thought surfaced: Had an artifact brought him here or had Gorem, in a desperate bid to save him from Feroz’s clutches, thrown him through a spatial portal?
The pieces were beginning to click together.
Ground Manipulation; similar to Earth magic.