Chapter 1: The Beginning In The Middle

James - AKA: Landar

“Just lie down, Landar, the circlet will do the rest.” The high priest of Grey Order within the western duchy said. His voice was calm and reassuring, or at least he was trying to be.

“Sure,” I said as I laid down on the couch in his cramped office and closed my eyes. The high priest, Sigvold, was a good man, as far as I knew. But I had always held a lingering doubt about him. He was cold and controlled on the outside.

But if you got past that exterior?

Well, you usually found more cold and control.

But it was self-control. The cold ruthlessness was always pointed inward towards self improvement.

I had never seen him be cruel to an underling who had failed at a task. Or been overly demanding of someone on a task he was unwilling to do himself. He was a good man, and a good leader. At least as far as I had seen. Which made me think that whatever motivated the man had to be good.

Exacting, competent, fair, and ruthless. Those would be the words I would use if I were forced to describe him to someone else.

I felt a cold lance of power rush through the circlet around my head and my fingers lifted to touch it instinctively.

“Don’t remove it.” I did as instructed and lowered my still incongruously youthful hands down to my side. I had grown since coming to this world, and I was a far cry from where I had started. But I was nowhere near what I had been on Earth in terms of size. “You might feel some feedback from me, as the magic works to sync our minds. Ignore it, calm your heart, and focus your mind.”

I did just that, and soon I found myself in another place.

***

Can you hear me, Landar? It was Sigvald’s voice, but it filled my skull like someone ringing a bell right next to my ear. I winced, and I felt a shudder run through the world I was now trapped in.

Yes, I managed to say. But it was a whisper compared to the other man’s shout.

Sorry, that should modulate my connection with you. His voice was quieter now, more like him speaking loudly than shouting. Do you know why I asked you to do this, Landar?

I did. It was that girl, the one who knew too much, and seemed to see right into my soul. She was insufferable, and yet intriguing. She seemed possessed, though by what I wasn’t exactly sure. And those pets of hers everyone spoke about in hushed whispers were probably worse. Her grip had been like iron. Our fight had, well, it had caused Sigvold, and a lot of other people, a heap of trouble.

Uh, no. I don’t even know what this is.

Right. I shall explain. Your explanation of where you came from and what you can do is baffling. We have not had such cases in a long time, and what few scraps from our history tell us does not seem to be factual. But, purely mythological. The Eastern Empire has had much more success with dealing with such situations, and our guests from there have been most helpful in better understanding your nature.

The guests being the girl and her mother of course, and an image of the girl was conjured in my mind. I found it smug and eminently punchable.

So, I need to ensure you are not a threat to the kingdom or the priesthood. The incident yesterday in the courtyard proved you could easily grow into one if you are not one already. So I have been given the task of determining if you are in fact a threat or not by our Duke. I crafted this circlet specifically to allow me to connect with you and to see these things you say you’ve seen and done. Understood?

I-I think so. I had screwed up. And he was doing his best to protect me. That was clear.

Do you trust me?

I wanted to pull back, to tell him in very definitive terms, hell no. But when I examined my feelings and instincts, I found I did trust him. He was one of the few people with any genuine power in this godforsaken city that didn’t abuse it uproariously.

Yes. I dropped my defenses and relaxed like I was about to get a shot in the arm. “I trust you.”

There was a pause before Sigvold answered. When he did, his voice was softer than it had been yet in this strange place. It was solemn and severe.

Thank you. Now, show me.

Show you what?

Everything.

***

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I slammed my massive meaty fist against my reinforced, specially made desk. The hardwood under my strike didn’t so much as bend, but my hand ached.

I wonder if I broke it; I asked myself before extending my pinky and finding nothing but a bruise along the bottom of my now open hand. That’s good. I don’t think an ER visit would help much right now. I thought as I felt the rage I had just experienced dissipate into a mix of shame and frustration.

My fingers ached as they closed around my phone, and I dialed the number of a moron who was about to do something idiotic. The phone was one of those extra large screen phones, the ones with X or XL in the name. I wasn’t sure; it was the third phone I’d had in as many months. But even it rested in the palm of my hand like it was a twig rather than the hardy brick of a phone it had been advertised to be.

The phone rang and rang and rang again. Until finally a soft feminine voice with a Japanese accent answered the line.

“Hello Mr. Brown. My husband is—”

“Your husband is—” I stopped speaking. My voice was already furious. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. “Your husband isn’t available? I take it?”

“Yes sir. He’s with the children.”

“I am sorry, Ms. Shiato, for interrupting family time. I know how important it is,” I said with a glance towards the picture of my daughter and her mother on my desk. Divorced, my time with Lillia was precious. I had chewed out more than one subordinate, and fellow ambassador, for interrupting it with nonsense phone calls. “But this is an emergency. I need to talk with him, please.”

Ms. Shiato sighed deeply, no doubt thinking she couldn’t be heard through the house phone’s speaker. “One moment. I will see if he can take a moment for you.”

“Thank you,” the phone went quiet for a few seconds. When someone else came on the line, it was a much deeper, clearly annoyed voice.

“This is Prime Minister Shaito. James, is that you?”

“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“What could you possibly want so badly that you had to call me during my family time? I get little of it. So help me if it’s not important, you’re getting shipped back home to America.”

It wasn’t entirely an idle threat; I knew. It had happened to two of my predecessors, who had both been overly political appointees rather than career diplomats. Not that I was a career service diplomat myself, but I had a hell of a lot more experience than those two morons had.

“My apologies Mr. Prime Minister. I just received your email about tomorrow’s announcement regarding joint military operations.”

“Yes, what about them?”

“Well, sir, we had discussed the exact opposite of what the announcement is calling for.”

“Yes, and you can read my reasoning in the email. What about it? My government’s decision is final.”

“But Mr. Prime Minister. . .!” I nearly yelled at the smart phone in my hand. I forced myself to calm down before continuing. “We had agreed just two days ago, in session with your cabinet, that we would double our efforts. You’re cutting them completely. That will send the wrong message to the Chinese. You’ll look—”

“I’ll look wise. The expense was too high for our budget this year. We moved the money over to health services.” I gritted my teeth as the prime minister went on explaining his moronic choice. Japan had an elderly population that dominated its politics more completely than in any other industrialized nation. The baby boom hit the US pretty hard, but it hit Japan even harder. Which meant health services were almost always the political hot button of the day domestically.

Still, the Chinese and their allies had been getting bolder and bolder in recent years, going so far as to sink civilian fishing boats out of nothing but spite. They couldn’t be allowed to continue their brazen disrespect, despite the elderly Japanese population not having the stomach for conflict with the Chinese.

“I am sorry James, my decision is final. This was something both the opposition and my party agreed on. We needed to find a few million in the budget to expand end-of-life services. And these training operations are a clear place for us to cut. We are not cutting defense. But the training is gone.”

“What if the US offered to pay for them through a defense grant?” It was a long shot, but possible. It wasn’t in the defense budget, but the state department had a lot of cultural exchange funding they hadn’t used for several years in a row because of pandemic scares that had locked Japan down to outside traffic for most of the last decade. I knew the secretary of defense and state would both be on board with using that money to ensure these operations went as planned.

“We considered that already, James. It would look like we were being controlled by the United States. We are allies, my friend. But Japan is our own sovereign State. We can not and will not accept money like this so blatantly. If I did, everyone who received that email, practically my entire government, would see me as nothing more than an American puppet.”

The prime minister was quiet for a moment before speaking again. “If I didn’t know you better, James, I would have taken offense to the offer and this phone call.”

Ice ran in my veins. The Japanese were a proud people, in many ways that were difficult for an American like me to understand. “I—I understand Mr. Prime Minister. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.” I sat in my chair as the Prime Minister thanked me for the call, and hung up, returning to his children.

I leaned back in my office chair and stared up at the bookshelves I had sitting there. The ones visible inside my camera for when I did television interviews or held remote discussions with Japanese and other Indo-Pacific leaders were all about work. Primers on American-Japanese relations, translation guides, an almanac of cultural foods of the region, and so on.

But the top shelf above the rest, outside of camera view, held my guilty pleasure. At a time like this, I needed a little Progression Fantasy in my life. I plucked one of the new books, one I hadn’t started yet off the shelf high above my head.

War Core, by Dean Heneger. An old war dog, the author had a penchant for punchy prose and interesting hard core main characters. Whether they were old ladies or grizzled war veterans.

Soon I’d have to email my staff, and the secretaries of defense and state about this debacle. Maybe Sec Def can talk some sense into the Japanese Defense Force. Or perhaps the state department could get the opposition on board with accepting the grant funding through some subsidiary.

But first, I needed something to calm my nerves.

“One chapter won’t hurt.” I said as I pulled the cover open and began reading.

Half way down the first page, the ground shook. Not another earthquake, I complained as I stood. Before I could, the two shelves that held my work books collapsed, pinning my left arm under them.

“Gah!” It’d bruise, sure. But I’d be free in a moment. I started moving the books and broken shelving away.

The earth shook again. I looked up, and the wooden shelf holding my favorite books by my favorite authors fell. The large hardback edition of He Who Fights With Monsters fell, corner first, down onto my unprotected skull.

One thought filled my mind before darkness consumed me.

This is a shitty way to go.