Before the Mad King rode off into the darkness, searching for elfin tribes to gather for his great assault on the monster hordes, he was a young man trying to fit into the role he had been born into. He did not have many retainers, but everywhere he went, the elves would venerate and honor him. Only the elders of the tribes had known about him, but even if a tribe did not have elders who had lived in the time before monsters, their children would know to look for the king from the line of Jora.

Jora was an ancient elfin king, according to the stories I heard from Barson’s retainers. The First King Jora, is what they called him, but it became clear they didn’t know much about him, since all of their stories seemed to contradict one another. Sometimes, he was a dashing young conqueror, fighting to bring the separated tribes of the elves together into one nation. And sometimes, he was a divine being, one of the other gods that the elfin Jora tribe’s elders had once told me about. Over the years, I had concluded that these other gods were mortal beings deified after their deaths. Even in my old world, people deified emperors and heroes after their deaths, elevating Gilgamesh or Julius Caesar into godhood for political purposes. It would make sense to deify the legendary first king of the elves in order to build a national identity around him.

As I went deeper and deeper into the past, I began to truly appreciate how terrible the arrival of monsters had been. Watching the entire continent nearly succumb to the darkness was one thing, but then watching that encroaching darkness ebb and flow like the tide, spanning across multiple generations of people’s lives and bringing with it immense misery and tragedy, was another experience altogether.

I saw the monsters destroying tribes and settlements, driving sentient beings to despair all over the place. The elfin royal family was an especially valuable target, and my first sight of Barson Jora’s parents was at the scene of their death. They were eaten whole by a massive serpentine monster. Young Barson was barely rescued by a loyal band of knights, many of whom would give their lives to make sure the last king of the elves would survive.

Before that, the old king and queen scurried among the darkness, trying to survive and never thinking of any kind of resistance. Their forces were weak and constantly on the run. The old king lacked the vigor of Barson and the old queen lacked Barson’s courage. The idea of gathering the other tribes to lead a large offensive against the monsters was the furthest thing from their minds. It made me wonder how Barson had even thought of that in the first place.

My suspicions grew as I went further back. Before the old king and queen became old and had their first and only child, they were still cowering and trying to survive. Their supporters dwindled and were replenished once every few years by wandering warriors or tribes on the brink of starvation. All the king and queen could really offer was their own names and titles, which were usually enough to gather a few people around them who could help them grow and collect food.

And before the old king and queen, there was a widowed queen. Then her soon to be brutally murdered husband. And their predecessors. And then the king and queen before them. A few times, the line did not pass down to the children of the previous rulers, since the children might have died or the rulers might have died young. This meant the Jora family was kept alive by brothers or cousins or even distant relatives who could not remember their family tree but knew they were from the line of Jora. Somehow, while tracing them through time, I was able to confirm that this line truly was descended from each other, and even the flimsiest of claims were genuine.

But I had gone back many generations, and yet, the monsters were still around. The elves of this time did not live as long as the elves in my time, probably because they were finished off by monsters before they could live out their lifespans. Still, this was a long period of time, and I had yet to see where the monsters had come from.

I also needed to know why Barson Jora had started acting that way before his death.

Music and dance and even maniacal laughter. I knew exactly which Immortal was associated with those things. Barson Jora was called the Mad King, after all, so I wasn’t surprised. However, I had seen the Mad King’s life and with my understanding of the Past, I knew that I hadn’t missed any significant moments in his life. To the best of my knowledge, Barson Jora had never met with Madness, and yet, he was acting as if he was an agent of the silver moon, perhaps even an Ikon of the Immortal of Madness. If the Immortal had really gotten to him somehow, then he had done so inside Barson’s head. Perhaps in a dream or through the hallucinations that afflicted Barson after his army’s defeat at the hands of the monsters of the North.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen much of the Simurgh in his past either. I had seen a few moments from when he was taught emotional manipulation magic, and the Simurgh did mention that he had become its Ikon, but there were no grand conspiracies or anything. I felt pretty safe in my belief that the Simurgh had not been the one who put the idea of uniting the elves into Barson’s mind. After all, their first interaction seemed to occur after Barson’s defeat to the monster army, and before he began teaching the elves some magic.

In fact, I didn’t see much of the Immortals at all as I went back in time. During the age of monsters, the Immortals were nowhere to be seen. Even the moon looked duller and the red star glinted less brightly as the land was covered in darkness and generations of sentient beings struggled to survive.

And then the darkness was dispelled by a flash of light brighter than the sun but more like a cold breeze on a winter evening.

The monsters were gone and the elves were together and the fairies, the spirits, the demons and the beastmen, all continued fighting each other for land and power on the other side of the continent. I blinked my eyes. How could things change so quickly?

I used magic to fine-tune my jumps and began moving around the time that the age of monsters began. Soon, I figured out that the arrival of the monsters had been a frightfully sudden thing. In just one day, the whole continent was shrouded in darkness and ferocious monsters appeared, all of whom were far beyond the abilities of regular mortals.

I searched the land the timeline for clues, but came up with nothing. Where had these monsters come from? Who had created them? What were they for? All questions left unanswered because I did not know who to ask.

The elfin cities were wonderful. One of them was also strikingly familiar. Bek Tepe, with its imposing temple cut into the rock, and the stand-alone hill overlooking wide plains, was probably the most important but least visited temple in the land. The elfin king and queen owned this piece of land directly, and the temple was used mostly for secret rituals known only to the royal family. ‘Secret rituals’ is code for food and drink, by the way, since that was all they really seemed to be doing at the time.

Life had been peaceful before the monsters and everything had changed in a single day. I kept going further and further, unsure of what I would find, and hoping it would give me a clue about how to get home.

On and on and on and on I went, until I finally found the First King of the elves. I confirmed the theory that he had been a dashing young conqueror, since the elves didn’t really have kings before him. Local chieftains ruled the cities and villages, and no two cities shared their rulers. All of this changed with the First King Jora. He united the scattered cities and villages to forge a massive empire, covering the entire continent on this side of the mountains. He began a period of peace and prosperity that would survive for many years.

And as I stepped into the far flung past, I found that dashing young conqueror, the First King Jora, kneeling in front of a familiar man in a toga. He was humming a tune and making the world dance and I did not linger just in case he met my gaze.