Prologue – Night Gods

The pocket dimension having sound was a curious and ominous surprise, like finding a pirate cutlass in one’s birthday cake. Ken’s eyes were still closed from stepping through the portal. He took the opportunity to listen, and maybe figure out where he’d misplaced himself this time.

Ken considered himself a musician first and a mage second. Folks paid more attention to the latter, but he paid attention to sounds. So often people relied on their vision, but that was the easiest sense to trick. It was rare that he encountered an illusion that included sound as well as sight.

He heard distant, mighty winds, the kind that rushed over oceans and snowy peaks. Smaller sounds occasionally got through. The effect was similar to standing in a hallway with parties going on behind every door. But the kinds of beings having those parties, and their precise where and when, was anyone’s guess.

In Ken’s long existence he’d learned Magic wasn’t overly concerned with the order of times or places. Only that it had all the parts, like some ethereal junk drawer.

And one didn’t tamper with the contents of the drawer. Magic forbade it. Ken had learned that lesson time and time again. There was one story on one timeline, the knotted mess that it was.

Pet, if he were here to hear Ken’s thoughts, would say he needed to stop thinking up doomful metaphors and open his eyes, be in the moment. On the other hand, their colleague Luce would say Ken was observing just the right amount of caution for this unprecedented situation.

Refocusing his senses, Ken quickly decided that hearing wind but not feeling it was very off-putting. His long fingers twitched and encountered mild resistance. He was in something fluid and marginally closer to air than water. Wriggling his toes in his sandals confirmed that he was floating.

He also still had his eyes firmly shut.

Pet would say he was stalling.

But he wasn’t supposed to be here! There wasn’t supposed to be a here. Teleport gates went to real places, the kinds marked on maps. Or to the Void, if you knew it was secretly in the middle and had the proper credentials. Layfolk didn’t know Magic sorted out the travel details, but the traveler did have to know the destination for the trick to work.

Thus, ergo, and therefore, Ken finding a new space felt very much like a cosmic-sized clerical error.

It had also been far too simple. Pet had called it accident-level easy. ‘Just imagine stepping sideways halfway through your teleport.’ Ken had expected nothing to happen. There’d been no sensation of pressure, or the ocean-sized, kidney-lurching undertow that came with poking holes between the planes. He’d bypassed the foreboding, you-really-shouldn’t-be-doing-this feeling entirely.

This was exactly the sort of thing that got mages into trouble.

And yet now he was floating and breathing in a pleasantly warm not-here space, hearing sounds instead of Void-silence and gathering up the courage to open his eyes.

Ken hated when Pet was right. He was stalling.

And also probably hopelessly lost.

He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

Ken un-pressed his copper brown eyelids and distinguished white eyebrows and had to shield his eyes.

“Ah. Well. This is beautifully disturbing.”

Before him were sunsets layered on sunsets, if they included colors like green, cooked sausage, and tarnished silver. He was floating because there was nothing below but gray fog. A pinkish-gold glow marked the horizon in all directions. He was reminded of the early strokes of a landscape painting, before the land, or the celestial bodies, or other details were added. Clouds the size of castles passed around and through him at a good clip, feeling the winds that he did not.

His ears had been impressively accurate, or this place was building itself around his musings. Ken hovered at the landing of an endless hallway. Though he was pretty sure trees did not exist here, it had an inlaid maple floor, and two rows of arched mahogany doors. He was a luthier’s grandson, he knew tonewoods. But it had no walls, and no ceiling. The clouds occasionally careened into the doors, bursting into colorful vapor trails.

Given one of Ken’s acquired names, a hall of doors was painfully ironic. He was beginning to think Pet had built this space just to tease him.

Ken briefly thought of the scholars back in the Capitol’s archives. Normal, reasonable, intelligent people, everything mages weren’t. They’d be hastily jotting this discovery of the not-space down, right after praying he not use it to unleash another calamity upon the world.

His last one hadn’t been all bad, had it?

And regret was what had brought him here. Surely that had to count for something?

He sighed an old man’s sigh.

Cades, bless him, would say Ken was beating himself up again.

Well, he was here to make things right.

Ken requested to whatever Powers-That-Were-Here if they could kindly set his feet on the floor. It was amazing how often simple politeness worked. He strolled, inspecting the doors with his hands stuffed in the gold velvet pockets of his green traveling robe. The passages obviously represented choices. Literal fates. He’d sought Pet’s dubious advice because he needed a place between the real and the abstract, somewhere he might see his past and future in a way he could interact with it.

And just maybe, if he could, and if he still wished, modify it. A number of magically-inclined beings had meddled in his existence over the years. Seemed only fair he have a go.

But only after much keen observation and testing, of course. This was his own timeline he was talking about. He might get himself killed off early, or not be born at all. All manner of unwanted paradoxes could befall his tender personage. But perhaps only a version of him would bear those outcomes. It wasn’t clear yet if multiple dimensions existed. That was impossible to know while standing in one’s own dimension, hence the need for the not-here.

And oh, Magic would not like what he was doing in the slightest!

It was again so disconcerting that nothing was telling him not to do this.

Ken snorted when his strand of Fate materialized across his palm at his behest, because it had the exact weight, tautness, and texture of a lute string. It sped off before him and behind, bypassing the doors and disappearing into the dusky horizon sea. And wrapped around his timeline was a viscous smudge of pure, black, liquid magic.

Musician first and mage second. This was definitely his.

For the first time in many a time, he was giddy.

That might have also been the abject lostness sinking in.

Perhaps he could have conjured a chair, but he crossed his knees and sat on the floor, nestled in his robes. Ken kept his movements slow and never let go of or pulled on the string. There was no telling what that might do.

Was he holding his past? His future? This very moment? How did this work?

“Time to shine,” he muttered.

The string reverberated back, oscillating down its length. He held his ear close. A warbled sound resolved into two teenage boys laughing. A lute played in a village square.

Ah, of course. This was the first time he’d bumbled into Magic.

When his carefully-planned life had all gone to shit.

Reasonable enough place to start.