As I entered the third world I knew, I had a grand total of two memories. One of a wizened old priestess expecting the world of me and one of me possibly destroying a world. In the time since I left that research station I’ve come up with a hundred reasons why it wouldn’t have been the end for them. Perhaps the creature was only reanimated due to a unique interaction between the salt and stabilizing gel, and once the salt left its system it would return to death. Or its DNA was likely damaged by millennia in stasis, enough that its cells couldn’t divide properly, leaving it only a short time before it died again, unable to produce new cells. Maybe the station security could get their act together and kill the thing if the previous cases didn’t happen. It wasn’t a military station but I’m sure they could fashion a few crude weapons to beat the thing to death.
But I honestly don’t know. I’ve been to a dozen worlds that could have been the same one, but I’ve never managed to verify it. That might be disappointing to you, not knowing what happened next. But trust me, I’ve had nightmares of finding myself in a world overrun by strange beetles, using dismembered limbs to operate technology they similarly stole.
However, as I fell a couple feet out of the air to land on hard dirt with a few tufts of orange grass I was still in that moment, the parasite emerging from the clean room airlock, using my friend’s head like a smart phone. My body was reset, so the adrenaline and chemicals making me panic were gone. The memory was at once distant, remembered clinically but not emotionally, and yet still right there in front of my eyes.
I rolled over onto my back, barely noticing the blue sky above me as I tried to shut out the sight of Dave’s twitching face affixed to black carapace. I was vaguely aware of movement and voices around me. But I was stirred from my melancholy by the face of a young girl, wearing a rough spun gown and covered in a thin layer of dirt like she hadn’t bathed in days.
“Are you a wizard?” she asked innocently, not old enough to pick up on the tears forming in my eyes as I brushed them away.
“Get back here Naddy,” an older woman called, though even she was barely older than her twenties, grabbing the girl by the arm and pulling here away. By the way she watched me carefully she might have been the girl’s mother, or older sister. Finally realizing that I wasn’t alone I pushed myself up and looked around. I seemed to be on the outskirts of a market or fair, judging by the rows of stands selling various goods from salt to butter. Everyone was in crudely made clothing of thick cloth or leather with similarly basic shoes. Compared to them my jeans and button-up were centuries ahead.
Oddly no one was paying attention to me, busily haggling or looking for what they needed. At first I thought I might have appeared in a renaissance fair, but it extended past their clothing. Their hygiene left much to be desired, and who throws a themed fair just to sell produce? There was also no sign of a technological civilization, in the distance was an old, weathered castle where men-at-arms stood at watch while wains drawn by donkeys made their way over the rough dirt paths, loaded with goods for the market. Even my small handful of sensors, which thankfully did make the trip with me, failed to pick up any radio waves or electronic signals.
“Not every day you see someone fall out of the air,” a voice caught me off guard, turning I found an older man leaning on a gnarled staff with a pipe in his mouth. As I made eye contact, he motioned for me to join him on a rough half-log bench.
“Nor have I ever seen someone dressed as you,” he added as I got closer, pulling idly at his beard.
“I’m… not from around here,” I admitted as I sat down.
“That much I gathered,” he chuckled, “so where are you from?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged.
“Can’t remember? That must be some spell you used to conjure you here,” he replied, “can’t say I’ve ever seen the like.”
“I don’t know if it’s magic, but it wipes my memory every time, only recently did I overcome that.”
“A spell that wipes your memories, sounds more like a curse than a blessing.”
“Never said I was traveling willingly.”
“That’s fair,” the man said with a smirk, “still, you must be a powerful wizard to conjure so powerful a magic.”
“No such thing as magic,” I replied immediately, “only things you don’t yet understand.”
In reply the man reached up and touched a small amber gem in the head of his staff, pulling his hand away my quantum sensors went mad. They reported a strand of energy being drawn forth like a thread from a ball of wool. The man twisted his hand and moved his fingers, twisting and bending the energy into what I quickly realized was some kind of diode. When he was finished, he cut the thread and released the completed knot, causing a small red light to appear in the air above his hand.
Without my quantum sensors all I would have seen is him making some arcane hand gestures before summoning a light. There wasn’t much energy in the knot so it wore out in a few moments, fading away into nothing as its power was spent.
“I might be a traveling mage, but I know magic when I see it,” he said as the light faded out.
“What’s that gem?” I asked, looking not at the fading light but the head of his staff.
“A power source, all magic requires one. Without one you can make the motions, but it would be like a mill without a river. Did you not need one to cast your travel spell?”
“I don’t know how I started… traveling. But now it happens without my input.”
“And without your memories you cannot recall how the spell was cast,” the old man nodded in understanding.
“Where can I get a gem like that?”
“They are a restricted substance; without the approval of a court wizard, you cannot get them. However, I happen to know the local lord, I could introduce you. I’m certain he would be interested in a wizard of your ken.”
“And you want something in return,” I sighed, one of the constants of the world was that people generally wanted something from you.
“Thankfully there is a reward for wandering mages such as myself for bringing in promising new talents,” the old man replied with a smile.
After a short walk through a village of wattle and daub buildings the self-declared wizard led me into the castle I’d seen earlier. Something rarely mentioned in stories about the Middle Ages was the smell, and for good reason. No plumbing, running water or sanitation laws don’t lend themselves to a pleasant aroma. It had to fight to keep from covering my face as we walked, thankfully the castle was better if only because fewer people lived there.
The court wizard was a rather droll man, taking my unusual appearance in without reacting. I got the feeling that many mages in this world worked hard to stand out, the court wizard himself wore a dark blue robe embroidered with stars ranging in size from barely visible to larger than my hand. A similarly garish hat hung from a rack besides the door that I assumed was his. Where the older man I’d spoken with looked very much like the wizened old traveling mage, this man was a more noble specimen of their ‘magical art.’ In that vein while my clothing was unusual it wasn’t groundbreaking, merely the results of another mage trying to stand out.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
The test the court wizard administered was rather basic, arithmetic, logic and history. The math section was easy, even without using the inbuilt functions of my implants, and I was able to ace it, earning a raised eyebrow from the court mage and a stunned look from the foot wizard. Logic was similarly easy, considering their magic seemed to use methods similar to computer circuitry I was able to work through it without difficulty. Of course the history section I had no idea about, how should I know who created the first mage school or invented a specific spell?
Apparently, my test results were so unique that the court wizard ended up calling his liege lord, one Baron Hans, the first man to properly introduce himself as he walked in wearing the finest clothes I’d seen in this world. Which admittedly wasn’t saying much, but it was evidence that looms did exist in this world.
“This is the… apprentice you wished me to meet?” the Baron asked.
“Yes, your grace, he scored higher on arithmetic and logical sections of the test than I’ve ever heard, much less seen,” the Court Wizard explained in his monotone, “however he seems to have no knowledge of the history of magic.”
“Odd,” the Baron nodded, turning to the old man who’d brought me in, “And you are the one who found him, yes?”
“Indeed, your grace,” the old man bowed as much as he could, “he seemed to fall out of the air at market, when I stopped for a smoke. Claims to have limited memories of his past, but knows he isn’t from around here. I believe he was caught up in some spell and transported here, one that messed with his memories.”
“Given his test results he may have been the one to develop the spell,” the court mage added, “I see no reason for him to have such knowledge of magic unless he was a well renown wizard in his homeland.”
“Then we shall treat him with all courtesy!” the baron declared, turning to me, “I don’t suppose you can remember your name?”
“I can’t,” I said, earning some hard glares from the court mage before added, “your grace.”
“Then you shall be The Traveling Mage till you remember,” the Baron said, “if you were a powerful mage in service to another nation far away then it falls to me to see to your safe keeping for now. Could you put him up in your hall, master Jermund?”
“Of course,” the court mage said with the same calm acceptance as everything else he said.
“Give him a Mana-stone as well,” Hans commanded, “perhaps access to magic will spur his memories.”
And so began my short tenure as a court mage. I naturally dove into the study of magic, learning about this unusual energy. I quickly found that the other wizards could see magic, but only as a hazy mist, not the threads of power my quantum scanners could pick up. As such they had only a basic understanding of how their spells worked, understanding how certain hand gestures within a stream of power resulted in certain results but not truly realizing how it was shaped.
I also delved into the amber gemstone they gave me, trying to figure out how it worked. From what I could see the crystal within the gem had formed an unusual lattice that, when exposed to bio-electrical fields generated the stream of energy on a quantum field I barely understood. In short, touching the gem made it generate magic. On my third day I was planning to attempt to create a standing spell, effectively forming a stream of mana into a basic computer, when I was called to the main hall.
Whatever reason the Baron had for seeing me was important enough that a barber quickly saw to my growing beard and I was provided with a basin of cold water to wash up. While hardly a proper shower it did help remove some grime that had built up over the last couple days. As I entered the main hall I realized that it wasn’t just humans present, there were a couple figures standing by the Baron that I could only describe as a mix between elves and the grey aliens I see so often in pre-spaceflight human culture.
They were tall with thin limbs, their skin was pale beyond reason, with long, pointed ears and oversized pure black eyes. They had long golden hair and wore simple robes as if to hide their unnatural physiology. But my sensors could pierce the cloth and even their skin, returning results on their biology that I’m sure would have had Dave bouncing with joy.
Shaking the thought off the biologist I walked up to the baron’s throne and bowed, as I’d been taught.
“A Master Traveler,” the Baron waved me up as he saw me, “I’ve been asking around about a missing mage, and, of all things, the fair folk wished to meet with you.”
The ‘fair folk’ were the two non-human creatures with him, and, now that I was closer, my quantum sensor went crazy with returns. They were positively crawling with magic, it looped around their bodies and flowed through them like water. The knots in the threads of energy told me they knew more about magic than humans, the graceful hand movements I’d seen of human spells were using rocks to count compared to these folk’s smart phones. And, more interestingly, they had knots of the same mana gem the humans used woven into their flesh.
This was interesting because I couldn’t bring anything external with me when I traveled. I don’t know why, but I’d attempted to entangle a data-pad with my main implant in my last world, and it hadn’t made the trip. I had been looking into finding a way to generate this energy without a mana gem but if I could implant a proper crystal lattice into my skin then that should follow me.
As eager as I was to speak with them about this, something stopped me. Specifically, the moment of recognition that passed through one of their eyes as they saw my clothing. I could have been my imagination but my sensors also picked up an increase in heart rate, or what I assumed was their heart rate. They clearly knew something, but weren’t pleased by it.
“Baron Hans tells me you have no memories of your past,” the lead elf prompted.
“That’s mostly true,” I replied, “I recently gained the ability to retain my memory as I travel but haven’t been able to restore my past.”
“We might be able to assist,” the man replied. At least I assume he was a man, I didn’t know enough about the biology of these ‘fair folk’ to tell.
“If your baron approves, we’d like to take you somewhere that might jog your memories.”
“Of course, I shall prepare an escort of-,” the baron started only to be interrupted.
“No, sorry, Baron, but this isn’t something your guards will be able to join us with,” the elf explained, “we’ll be passing through the Forest of Ancients.”
“Ah,” Baron Hans nodded as if that explained everything, “when will you be leaving?”
“Three days hence, that should give us enough time to prepare.”
And like that I was dismissed. The Court Mage, Jermund, explained to me later that day that the Forest of Ancients was a dangerous place that only the Fair Folk walked with any regularity. He spoke of monsters and dangerous beasts within, but he admitted he’d never been.
I was suspicious, to say the least. These fair folk, or Elves as I had taken to calling them, were likely my best bet at learning about the strange energy called magic, but they knew more than they were letting on. I didn’t understand how they could recognize denim in a world without electrical looms, but that’s how it seemed. So I threw myself into preparations.
I spent the next days building a spell that would draw strands of crystal from the mana gem and thread them into my flesh. It took a couple tries, experimenting on an old apple I’d been brought with lunch, before I was willing to try it on myself. And it seemed to work. I ended up placing two generator lattices, as I started calling them, in my wrists so that I could call upon the energy easily. Another two went into my shoulders, just in case. Was I being paranoid? Probably, but after my encounter with the beetle parasites I didn’t want to be caught off guard.
Jermund was nice enough to teach me several defensive spells, incase monsters attacked while I was in the forest, but they were crude. They would work against a beast, but not the fair folk, so I spent another night pulling the spells apart, analyzing them, and optimizing. But, I’ll be honest, I was more interested in the information gathering abilities of this ‘magic.’ The strands of energy could be looped through an object and returned to the spell to give a surprising amount of information, they could perform what amounted to a basic x-ray, break down an object to its elements, and other such things. Compared to my implanted sensors they were rudimentary, but I was still intrigued. Blame what I assume is the researcher in me.
On the day I was to leave on the expedition I was given a simple sword by the Baron along with a leather gambeson. Jermund gave me a staff into which I placed the mana stone I had used for my implants. It was mostly useless now, my internal generators could produce more energy faster than the gem, especially after it was raided for material to make said implants. But it would hopefully keep the elves from suspecting anything.
A group of four of them arrived, said few words and told me it was time to go. I tried making small talk with them as we left the village, but they were clearly uninterested in the strange human wizard. By noon we entered the Forest of Ancients, and I was nervous, but the elves seemed unconcerned. I kept my sensors working, and even cast a few spells from the diminished gem on my staff to look for monsters. They only got upset when loops of energy from my spells passed near them, asking me to keep my ‘human magic’ away from them. Which was interesting, perhaps they didn’t want me knowing about the implanted mana gems. But they didn’t react to my technological sensors.
They barely paused for lunch of dried meats and hard breads before moving on. I didn’t see why the forest was so dangerous, I hadn’t seen any animal I would call a beast, much less a monster, on any of my sensors. Maybe they were staying away from the four elves? Or was something else going on? I didn’t know.
By noon the next day we finally came to a stop, deep in the woods. They motioned me towards what at first glance appeared to be a plant covered cliff. But my sensors picked up more. I walked up to the cliff, pretending to inspect it with my eyes and a few spells, but my sensors told me there was a steel door set into a concrete building beyond the vines.
I pushed aside the vines to reveal a slightly rusted door, turning to look at the elves. They merely watched as I cut away the plants to inspect the object. My sensors picked up spells of theirs, somehow cast without moving, passing through me. Never going anywhere I might see them if I had the same senses as the other human wizards. But I wasn’t an average human wizard, and my quantum scanners didn’t rely on eyesight.
There was an old, barely preserved, computer set into the wall next to the steel door, and I started to feel scared. This wasn’t a magical device, it was a technological one, and a rather advanced one at that. Clearly crafted by humans for humans.
“Do you recognize that?” One of the elves asked.
“No,” I lied. One of the spells passing through me lit up, a lie detector.
“I had been afraid of that,” the lead elf sighed, “we can’t allow you to return.”
“Why not?”
“We put a lot of effort into controlling your races… unseemly tendencies,” the elf admitted, “if you were to reintroduce that technology to them it would ruin centuries of effort.”
“You… did this?” I asked, my blood running cold.
“When we came to this world, we found your people suffering under the lack of magic. You were a warlike race with the ability to destroy yourselves dozens of times over,” he explained, “we couldn’t sit by and do nothing.”
“So you destroyed our culture and history?”
“To start healing you must first stop the bleeding.”
“What makes you think you can stop me?” I asked, “the forest clearly isn’t that dangerous, did you come up with that lie to prevent people from coming here?”
“If it makes you feel better we won’t kill you,” the elf said, “we’ll tell the Baron you were killed by a monster and we couldn’t recover your body. But you will spend the rest of your days in our care. I don’t know where you came from, and you seem earnest in your lack of memories, but if you do know where others with your knowledge are hiding we’ll find them.”
“I’m not keen to be your prisoner.”
“You won’t have a choice,” the elf replied calmly as a wave of magic built up around him and the other elves. Before I even realized I was unconscious I woke up in a simple room, my staff and sword taken, leaving only my clothes. They hadn’t looked too deeply, I could tell, as my generator implants were still present. However the wooden walls of my room were laced thick with spells, if I had years I might be able to unravel them, but something else had happened while I was out. My countdown started.
I had only a couple days left in this world, so I sighed and found a way to entangle the generator implants with me so they traveled to the next world. And I vowed to myself if I ever returned to this world I’d deal with those damned elves.