A Sense of Time

General Summary

Introduction

Those of the party who had NOT been arrested (again!) just shook their heads in disbelief as Dorian was led from the castle in manacles. Alatsar quietly followed the guards, and noted his younger self in the same jail. Alatsar, Tess, Tala, and Shanna briefly discussed plans and potential outcomes for springing their companions from prison.

Alatsar decided to sneak in alone and see what he could do. He successfully impersonated a member of the guard, and managed to convince the lone guard on duty to swap places with him. Now armed with the keys of the jail, Alatsar prowled the hallway, still disguised as a jailor. 

Teju meanwhile was not hindered in the slightest by the stout locked metal door. She transformed into a beetle, flew easily through the bars, and then transformed into a guard herself. She went to talk with General Blaze, who could be heard arguing with himself over what course of punishment to recommend for the young adventurers. Teju pressed the general as hard as she could to consider sending the group to the island instead of into the army.

Prison Escape?

Alatsar tossed a key into each jail cell as he passed. Along with the key, he also whispered a warning about interference. Although his words were vague, the younger Alatsar seemed to understand. The older Alatsar continued on his way, although he chose not to throw a key into Saiylor's cell. 

Teju had went back to Saiylor's cell after her talk with General Blaze. Saiylor did her best to ignore the chattering youngling. However, when Teju heard keys being tossed into the cells, she transformed back into a beetle and attempted to go and return all the keys to the guard room! The older Alatsar noticed this, and simply used his powers of ferro-mancy to move all the metal keys back into the cells. Teju was quite frustrated, but she could not overcome Alatsar's mastery of metal. Teju returned to Saiylor's cell to sulk about ruined timelines.

The young Alatsar meanwhile opened the door to the cell he shared with the other miscreants who were due to soon become his companions in adventure. Humphrey seized upon his chance and escaped! As he did so, the older adventurer's memories of Humphrey as a data-sphere echo ghost in a bottle faded. The party could remember what was supposed to happen, but it was like they had read it in a book instead of a memory of their own past. 

The young Shanna persuaded all the other young adventurers to stay in the cell. She convinced them that the key was a clever test, and that worse punishment awaited them should they be captured escaping. And so, as night fell, the air became thick with a swirling white fog.

The White Paper Tavern

Sure enough, the mists whited out the world around them, and the party once again found themselves unable to feel, taste, or smell anything. This time however, their sense of hearing remained, in addition to their sight. Delighted to not have to utilize thought bubbles for communication, they also quickly realized they could generate sound in much the same way they could with color. 

The group held a great many discussions over their next course of action. (It was fortunate indeed for them that no time passed in the tavern!) Finally, Saiylor was tired of theory: this glaive wanted first hand proof! Saiylor told Kronos to send her, and only her, to a time ten days in the future from the time that they had just traveled from. She wanted to see if their shenanigans at the castle and in the jail had proved effective.

An Unpleasant Eventuality

Kronos told Saiylor to focus very carefully on the time she wanted to go to, and sent out a cloud of white mist from his hand that swirled around the warrior. Saiylor focused as the mist closed around her. During her time in the mist, she noted three "bright spots" that seemed to be a moment frozen in time. One was a young boy crying. The next was a young man eager for discovery. The final was a military man with an important decision to make. Somehow, these seemed to be important events that Saiylor felt she could navigate to easily.

However, Saiylor firmly focused her mind on her own goal. Soon enough, the mists cleared, and Saiylor found herself in a world now entirely devoid of color. The sounds were all muffled, although if she concentrated she could hear any sound or conversation quite clearly. She appeared to be standing in snow, and she found herself shivering in the cold. A small military camp lay in front of her. 

One of the armed men of the camp approached, and seemed to recognize Saiylor! He chastised her for drifting from outside the camp proper. Saiylor didn't recognize, but played along and suggested she was having trouble remembering after. . . The man quickly filled in "The sergeant must have hit you over the head harder than we thought in yesterday's sparring!" The man introduced (re-introduced?) himself as Joe, and filled Saiylor in a bit.

It seemed that she was now a rookie recruit conscripted into the army of Ghan. They were out on a training march in the far northern mountains. Saiylor pulled her helmet down low over her face as they went back into camp, and adjusted a scarf over most of her face. She noticed a young and miserable looking Saiylor, along with a rather tired looking lot of her companions' younger selves.

The current Saiylor was soon forced to shoulder a heavy pack and march off at a brisk pace along with the rest of the recruits. The sergeant in charge seemed to be completely immune to the cold, and had an infinite supply of energy. The sergeant was seemingly everywhere at once, always moving faster than the recruits in his charge as he berated them for slowing down, or looking around, or not looking around, or really any or no reason at all. Saiylor decided she did not care for this sergeant as her legs ached from marching.

Let's Not Do That!

Saiylor was so tired by the end of the day that she almost forgot why she was there. She was still moving as the mists swirled around her, busy wolfing down some terrible tasting rations. 

Saiylor collapsed onto the floor of the white paper tavern. Her legs ached from the quick march; her back and shoulders cramped from the heavy pack; her lungs burned from the thin freezing air of the mountains. Much to her disgust, the sour aftertaste of the dreadful army rations remained stubbornly in her mouth. 

Her friends helped her to a bench and peppered her with questions over what she had seen. On a hunch, Saiylor looked at one of the mugs of ale on the table and imagined the perfect mug of ale in both color and taste. Sure enough, the white paper turned hue, and the slip of paper inside the mug that simply said 'ale' turned the appropriate golden color. Saiylor dumped said ale paper into her mouth, and although it lacked the texture, the taste was that of a perfectly brewed ale indeed! 

The glaive informed her friends what she had experienced. They quickly agreed upon two things. One, they did not want to go through such an ordeal. Two, they had failed to fix their timeline and so must try again!

A New Plan 

Tala and Tess decided to use the mists to travel back to when Kronos was created. They hoped to either gain administrator access to his programming, or convince creators to fix their program. 

As the mists gave way and their senses returned, they saw absolutely nothing. It was as if they were simply floating in an immense void. They felt with eighteen different senses (eleven of which they had never used before yet now somehow felt) a voice saying "Awe, look at this! Look how cute these are!" A different voice responded "How charming! They can barely even move in the fourth dimension and have no concept of any higher ones!"

The first voice mumble something about fixed linear reference points and then asked "But what would they know? They're probably still in the root eating phase, lets see, a cave would probably work!" Without warning, a cave appeared around the two adventures. They were now seated comfortably by a warm campfire. Shadows flickered on the cave walls in the light cast from its flames.

Tess was getting quite annoyed at being treated like a cute puppy. She reached into her future, and pulled herself back a few moments. There now were two Tess's standing glaring! The first voice seemed quite amused by this and chuckled "That ADORABLE! That one managed to go two ways in its own fourth dimension!" The other voice joined in with laughter and asked "Should we keep them? They're just sooo cute!"

Tess sputtered in indignation, and Tala took over the talking. She asked if Kronos could be fixed so he could send them back to their now. Now it was the voice's turn to sputter. "Have you any idea the level of precision to which we went to create him?" The voice quickly rattled through a bunch of figures that meant very little to Tala, although she gathered they represented quite a bit of work. 

Finally, the second voice chimed in again "We'll add in a few helper functions for you, and try to make the navigation easier. We never intended for our eternal array to run that long without the occasional update or maintenance" With that, the cave disappeared, and Tala and Tess were once again back with their friends in the White Paper Tavern. 

We Have to Go Back!

Tale informed the rest of the group what had happened while Tess expressed her outrage over being patronized to such a degree. After more discussion, the entire party now agreed to go back and try and stop themselves from a day ago from storming into the castle, or interfering in any way whatsoever in the prison. Shanna would use her powerful helmet on General Blaze to get him to agree to send the young party to the islands. Saiylor would stay behind and wait for the group.

Kronos's mists now encompassed the entire group. They all saw the same three bright points in the mist as Saiylor had reported. Nonetheless, they arrived just seconds after their previous day's selves arrived in the timeline. Tess quickly used a powerful cypher to bring the previous day's group far away from the city. She found a pit and deposited them in it, and then instructed both versions of Teju to turn into something big and cover the hole!

The Teju's obliged, and so trapped the day younger party in the hole. Tala found a shawarma shop, bought some, and fed the captive group shawarma for the rest of the day.  Tess kept a close eye on the previous day's group and issued dire threats to them if they so much as thought about getting out and causing more mischief. 

Meanwhile, Shanna disguised herself and went to talk to General Blaze. She convinced him to try the helmet on! As soon as the general did so, he suddenly understood that it was somehow of the utmost importance that the miscreant prisoners and traitors be sent away to the islands. He would simply have to find recruits from somewhere else. The general promised Shanna that he would send the group to the islands.

Shanna rejoined her captive self and her party, and they all passed a quiet day in the woods eating shawarma. They found that although the world around them now appeared totally white and devoid of color, they could all still change the colors to whatever they wished. They could also change or create any sound that they wished, and also focus and "zoom in" on any sound within a long range. 

A Voyage of Doom

That night, as the mists deposited them in the white paper tavern, the taste of shawarma remained. Saiylor was happy to see her friends again, and relieved they had managed to stop her from storming the castle! She now volunteered to once again go alone into the mist to a few days after these events to ensure the timeline had been restored. 

Saiylor traveled the mists, and noted that if she focused she could still see the three bright moments as before, but they were now much more faint and she really had to squint to see them. As before, she refused to allow herself to be drawn away from her goal. 

Saiylor found herself suddenly swimming in a vast, colorless ocean. All around her was wreckage from a ship! She quickly climbed aboard a larger piece of floating ship and tried to figure out where she was. To her horror, she soon saw that the wreck had claimed victims. She recognized a ring on a disembodied hand as one belonging to her friend Tess!

Saiylor looked around, but could see no land. She stuck her head under the waves and opened her eyes. A large shape swam beneath the wreck. In the distance, a pack of something with nasty teeth circled. And down in the black depths below, something gigantic coiled and rolled. Saiylor shuddered and quickly pulled her head out of the sea.

After a time of tense waiting, the sea seemed to calm, and she could no longer detect any life within miles of her bit of wreckage. She pulled out a dragonfly cypher, and used it to scout around. Far in the distance it detected an island, the shape of which she recognized. She was just a few miles from the mysterious islands the group had been exiled to!

As the mists took her that night, the smell of the salt air lingered. And sure enough, she could now create or change the scent of anything within the tavern! She quickly settled on a calming scent and relaxed in its gentle essence. 

However, the entire party now realized that their memory seemed to have a void in it. Their memory of the events was the same as it originally happened, except it seemed to stop after a few days at sea. Instead, they could remember a set of events which they felt SHOULD have occurred, but it was like they had read about them in someone elses journal instead of actually living through them!

Report Date

07 Aug 2021