In the fading light of evening after meeting people for the first time in centuries, Richard cast his gaze over his home. The greatest fortress of the north; standing forgotten under stoic snow capped mountains. Forever a bulwark against the darkness that broke the world so long ago, guarded eternally by the last soldier of the grandest army ever assembled in the history of mankind as a species.

He winced.

“I’ve really let this place go, huh?”

A cozy little forest with well maintained paths and a river flowing lazily through surrounded… what could generously be called a ruin. Circled by a weed choked pile of stones that was once a great fortified wall, a cleared area for a garden with plants growing in uneven lines, a big pit filled with cold muddy salt water, haphazard piles of dried and cut wood, and a few pathetic looking racks for smoking meat, discarded projects and rubble randomly placed... The crumbling stone edifice of the fort was the nicest looking thing in the area and it was clearly… old.

Richard rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. If he was the great scholar coming to relieve the lone soldier and this is what he was greeted by… he wasn’t sure what he would think. It wouldn’t be good, though. That situation had been a dream for so long that when confronted with a similar situation in reality forced him to take a ‘fresh’ look at his home.

“Well. I guess I could fill in the bathtub. Maybe make a nice seating area of cut logs around a stone lined fire pit? I can pile up most of the debris so it’s out of the way, but forget working on the garden. I just can’t bring myself to care too much.”

Richard sighed. He realized that might be the issue - he just didn’t care enough. Everything had looked this way for so long that he just couldn’t muster the energy to begin the work necessary to make it look nice, even if he was hopeful that he may have guests soon.

Shrugging, he decided he would worry about it all tomorrow. Foisting jobs on the Richard of the future was a time honored tradition even back when he was part of the army. Complaining about it when he was the Richard of the present that had to deal with his procrastination was also a sacred tradition. Who was he to look down on such historical precedent?

Snorting in amusement he walked into the fort and sneezed. He looked around and noticed all of the dead leaves and dust in the hallways and empty rooms. Looks like future Richard has his work cut out for him!

Settling down on his furs he began to ponder the world shaking events of today as he removed his boots (never got around to working on those, either… damn it).

The moment when Saravren had dropped out of that tree would probably be with him for the rest of his life… er… a long time at any rate. When he closed his eyes and remembered, he could see everything as if it was happening all over. He could feel the wind, smell the dirt and grass, the sun on his face and the beads of sweat underneath his gambeson. Her golden eyes, almost glowing in the shadows under the tree as she slowly stood up. It gave him shivers just thinking about the whole thing.

When Ethren and Gloast had joined her, his emotions had begun to stabilize, but he was just so stunned and happy to see other PEOPLE that he could hardly get a handle on himself!

His emotions were in turmoil. There was so much desperate hope all twisted up with fear and loneliness among a few others that he didn’t know what to feel. Well, except exhausted.

He cleared his mind as much as he could and thought of what he wanted to accomplish.

First and foremost was trying to determine if he could figure out a translating spell of some kind. Even if he had to meet those cat people in only ratty leather pants with a week of beard and smelling like death, being able to communicate was paramount.

Ok. On second thought, he might actually have to work to look that bad, so that was silly, but it’s the thought that counts.

Secondly, he would try to make a nice place to meet guests. His woodworking skills were… subpar… but he could at least cut a tree trunk up into nice places to sit and dig a fire pit. Clearing out the majority of the detritus from the fort would take barely half an hour blasting everything with wind spells from top to bottom. He could set up one of the ground floor rooms with more seating and some light spells, maybe? Sure. Oh, and he should probably fix up the ‘bridge’ across the river. A single tree was probably insufficient.

Right. Third - appearance. He would be taking out his uniform and working to make everything as nice as possible. Polish all of the metal; his rank badge, armor, blade, belt buckle, boots and such. He would probably leave his hair long, because cutting it close like he preferred was always a challenge with just his tiny little hand mirror. He could just comb it well and put it in a warrior tail with a leather cord.

Fourth... There has to be a fourth thing. Just three doesn’t seem like enough for such a momentous occasion. Ummm. Oh, food! Well, he has plenty of food. Maybe just having a bunch ready to cook up would be good enough? He wondered if cat people ate the same stuff as he did... Oh! The salt!

Yeah, he could make a gift of a nice big bag of salt. Add some fun detail work to a big leather pouch and finely grind some salt to fit in it. That would be perfect!

“Alright, that feels better. Plan for tomorrow is set! Ahh future Richard, the poor bastard. Let’s work on that translation spell.” Richard stated to the empty halls. He leaned his back against the wall and crossed his legs, getting comfortable.

“First things first. Can I remember how to cast it normally?” So asking himself, he closed his eyes and fell into meditation.

He meditated almost every day for a half hour or more to keep his mind calm, but there were many types of meditation. He hadn’t gone into his memories too deeply recently because it could be dangerous to dredge up. There was so much pain in the past that he could find himself despondent for days afterwards.

This time however, he was looking into his spell knowledge. While most of the combat spells he knew were almost ingrained into muscle memory, there were plenty of utility spells he had known at one point. Spells like his light spell, communication spells, voice amplification, night vision, camouflage, silent steps, etc. There were even some simple warding spells that would last for set times, like pest control, scent removing, or breeze producing wards. Most of those spells were fuzzy even now thinking about them, but he had at least cast them a few times over the years. Not so with others, like the translation spell.

He recalled now that it wasn’t actually a single spell, and it wasn’t wind-based as he thought. There was a warding spell that could be cast on a room or tent, a version that is self-cast on his mind to interface with spells on other people’s minds, and then the spell to cast on another person.

He could recall that there were three versions, but the details… were lost.

He went deep into his memories and tried his hardest to remember, but it had just been too long. It was mental magic, and while he had been very skilled at it - it simply hadn’t been taught to the battle mages as a priority. The translation spell would rarely need to be cast individually as there were portable formations that would blanket an entire battlefield with the effect, so using energy to cast it yourself was just a waste.

He opened his eyes, knowing several hours had passed, and he felt terrible. There was still the Arcstone to check, but it was so complicated that it would take a while to go through everything and his failure just sapped his strength. He was just too tired to do anything else tonight.

He crawled under his fur blankets and it took a while for his eyes to finally close and longer still for his mind to calm and drift off into a troubled slumber.

The next morning came around and Richard was still feeling a little sorry for himself. After lying around for a while he decided he might as well do something productive and easy to knock out. He only put on some leather pants and stomped petulantly to the top of the fortress.

“Alright dust. Your crimes have been called to account! Prepare for the end!” Richard said as he began to monologue and pump himself up and improve his mood.

He started blasting controlled but powerful wind spells into each room and hallway, moving from one corner to the next, then down one level at a time. The fort didn’t really have windows so much as thin slits all over the place, but it was enough to direct the massive clouds of dust outside.

He almost choked when he cleaned out the Arcstone’s room. He had forgotten how much dust was all over the place from writing his notes, and he was temporarily blinded.

After a quick dip in his muddy salt bath to get the worst of the stone dust off, he finished clearing out the fort.

It ended up taking an hour instead of his self-scheduled half hour, which he should have expected. “Always double or quadruple the ETA of a task to your superior officer, that way they are impressed when you complete it ahead of time! Yes, even if that officer happens to be yourself!” he reprimanded Richard of the past. That dumb slacker.

Saluting the cleaned out hallway, he moved back to the Arcstone room. He could access the stone in his mind, but it was always a little more fuzzy and not quite as quick as if he had physical contact with it.

He stopped before the metal door, with it’s pretty blue glowing runes on it. He didn’t actually get a great look at the room now that it was all clean and sparkly. He wondered if it would look more ominous or something with it’s harsh-but-not-harsh golden light filling all of the lines of notes chiseled into almost every surface.

He remained rooted to the spot, staring at the door.

He should just open it up and get started.

Any second now.

...

He was afraid.

And he knew why.

He didn’t want to fail. Not again.

He didn’t want to interface with the stone only to find that there was nothing he could do.

The fear of failure made it so he didn’t want to begin. He had felt this feeling every single year when he woke up for the first time from stasis. It was cold and invasive, and it had dug itself deep over time.

But he remembered something new this year.

Brilliant golden eyes reflecting the light from within the shadows beneath a tree. Words spoken from mouths other than his own. The ember in his heart was warmer today.

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open into the room.

The room was, indeed, more impressive with the dust removed. If Richard pretended that all of his notes were actually runes of some incomprehensible work being lit from the golden light of the Arcstone, it was pretty amazing looking. It would probably look better if his handwriting was a bit nicer, but eh, can’t be awesome at everything.

He moved to the Arcstone and placed his hand on it without hesitation. It was floating in the air and would slowly rotate on its own in the pillar of light. At first glance it seemed like it might just pop out of the beam it rested in with a quick nudge, but it was actually anchored very securely in place.

As Richard delved into his soul to find the connection, his mind opened up in a way hard to explain or conceptualize. He could ‘see’ different aspects of the stone. He could then ‘feel’ his way along them and trace the different functions. Over time he had begun to imagine a place in his mind that somewhat felt like a hallway with five branches leading off: one in each direction, and another straight down.

He needn’t worry about the ‘down’ connection, as it was the physical anchoring functions of the stone itself. It was what connected to the leyline, the power connections, the physical reinforcement of its structure, etc. It was waaaaay too complicated for Richard to figure that out, and he’d had a long time to attempt it. Even if he did want to fiddle with them, messing with that much energy was a terminally stupid idea with his level of ignorance.

The ‘forward’ path was one he was very familiar with. In it were the actions that had been added when it was decided to interface the stone with a human mind. Inside that ‘hallway’ were all of the mass battle spells and the connection to Richard’s soul and body. Almost everything there had been deliberately placed for Richard to use. The spells were easy to understand as was the ability to channel the ley line. The architecture of how it interfaced with himself - less so.

The ‘backward’ path was one that was now defunct. It dealt with communication between other Arcstones, and by the time Richard had been connected, there were few remaining. Over time all of the other connections had fallen silent, and eventually there were no links left.

To his ‘right’ were the functions that dealt with the fortress and its wards. He was somewhat familiar with them, though he usually just focused on the particular connections he dealt with during yearly maintenance. He would check there last if he couldn’t find anything else.

His ‘left’ followed a path that Richard flippantly labeled ‘miscellaneous’ because it had lots of functions that normal Arcstones would be used for but this particular one didn’t have installed. It was here solely for the purpose of war. Most of the functions were inactive and would need particular physical objects or wards to interface with. It was a mess inside, and he had rarely tried to make heads or tails of it.

What he needed, he thought, was spellforms that might be stored within. Mages who had access to an Arcstone would often use it as a repository for spells, but this one only had some random spells that Archmage Hollister had placed inside. There had been three Arcstones at the major magical university in Eideron for instance, before it had been stomped flat by horrorfiends anyway, which had contained thousands of spells. This particular stone didn’t have much, and it was very unorganized.

Richard worked through the section for hours. It was full of possible functions that the Arcstone could be tied to, but he didn’t know what they did, and there was no way to anchor any of them anyway.

He found a few dozen spell forms that had been stored, but most were confusing or obviously notes on the anchoring spell that had been used for the ritual to attach the stone to Richard. He was sure he had missed things, but nothing had stood out as anything he could understand or use.

Frustrated again, Richard decided to take a break as a headache was beginning to settle in.

He figured that he would tackle the bathtub (hole in the ground) and clear out a nice pace for a firepit first. While he was out and about it would be a good idea to quickly check outside the wards to see if he could sense anything. It wasn’t yet noon, and he hadn’t eaten anything yet either.

After a quick food break, he used some force blades to cut down a nice large flat area of any weeds or grass, then used some more wind spells to blow all of the detritus away. He found a nice big thick tree and sliced all of the bark and cumin layer off in a circle near the base so it could start to dry out with the help of gravity.

He wasn’t going far today, so he just had his leather vest, pants, and boots on as he popped outside of the wards. He left out on the southwest side, because he figured it was in the right direction and sent out a powerful pulse to see if he could get a clear return.

Unfortunately, besides a few wandering monsters there was nothing he could sense. Feeling a little sad about that, even if he wasn’t really ready to have guests yet, he walked back into the wards.

Picking up a big leather sack he went to the river to grab some stones so he could lay them out to dry before placing them around where he wanted his fire pit. Filling in his ‘bath’ only took a moment to move the mound of dirt back into it. There was a chance nothing would ever grow there again because of the salt but.. eh.

Made up chores complete, he headed back into the Arcstone chamber and dove back in.

This time, he decided to see if there was anything in the wards section of the stone that could be used. One of the versions of the spell he could barely recall was a ward, so he was cautiously hopeful.

Richard moved past the more familiar aspects he already knew everything about and looked at the more esoteric portions of the stone. There was actually some good stuff in here, as he looked through it. There was some sort of rain barrier, a function to create a signal pillar of light, some illusion spells Richard could tell were illusions but had no idea what they did…

He had been looking through the stone for about an hour when he suddenly stumbled on something at once familiar, but also odd. It was a mental ward of some kind, he could tell that much. There were aspects of it that reminded him of the ward to keep the monsters outside, but the actual function was a mystery. However, if there was one mental ward, chances are there were more!

Ten minutes or so later, he found it. It was so recognizable to Richard that he knew instantly what it was for, but there were other parts that he didn’t really understand. It was definitely the translation spell. He could tell that much, though it was wholly different than the half remembered bits of the spells he knew.

It was tied into a warding scheme, but he wasn’t sure which one. It also seemed to have a few other bits to it, but Richard honestly had no clue what they were for. Frankly, he wasn’t completely sure that it was safe to activate. He just didn’t know enough about magic at this level to understand what it would do.

Well.

Hmmm.

“Fuck it.”

He activated the warding section and followed the energy with his senses as it began to warm up.

He felt the spell begin to pulse out a field that started to latch onto the inner warding scheme for the fort slowly. The outer ward did this too when it was just being initialized. He knew this because he had taken them down a few times over the years just… because.

Unfortunately, as the ward began to complete itself, it looked like it was being anchored to the inner ward. That field ended halfway through where the wall used to be. It looked to be functioning properly as far as Richard could tell, but it was unfortunate that it wasn’t going to the outer ward. There was a bit more of a drain coming through the ley line, but it was mostly negligible.

Damn.

So. This wouldn’t work unless one was standing inside of the ward, and probably someone had to be keyed in for it to work. I mean, if someone was going to get inside the inner wards at all he would have to key them in regardless or they would just bounce off or turn into charcoal if they got belligerent about it, but it was still annoying.

That was a tiny bit of a problem, because Richard only knew how to do that from inside the chamber, but the person who was being added to the ward had to be outside of the area while he did so. I mean, obviously. The inner wards were pretty robust and it would take siege engines or spells to break in, even without the wall intact.

There was a tiny silver lining. Because it was an inner ward anchor, that meant it actually anchored to the Arcstone itself. If the rift could be fully sealed, it would be possible to take a portable translation bubble around with him by removing the Arcstone from it’s anchor… however one did that. Also, if he survived the process. Also, if losing access to the ley line… you know what, that’s on future Richard’s shoulders.

So.

Translation spell? Check.

Now he just had to get cautious cat people who he couldn’t effectively communicate with to not only walk through the outer ward, which would most likely feel unpleasant, but then stand near the inner ward all by themselves while he came inside to key them to said wards.

Easy!

Richard moaned. “Well at least it is now possible… I just need to figure out how to get them to trust me a little bit…”

After standing and glaring at the Arcstone for a few more minutes, he decided he would just worry about that bridge when he came to it. For now, he had to deal with the mess that Richard of the past had left him. It was almost a novel experience, because usually ‘let future Richard deal with that’ was jargon for ‘this will probably never get done, but I’ll forget about it eventually if it doesn’t matter’. He had salt to gather, clothing to polish, and a tree to chop into uncomfortable seats.

He probably had enough extra pelts to at least make a little pad for each of them, now that he thought about it…

Richard walked off and got to work. He checked every few hours to see if anyone was incoming, or if there were many monsters showing up, but it seemed quiet. He had at least a day or two worth of work anyway. There were some new monsters coming in from the north into the cleared area. He might need to take a few hours tomorrow and clean it up.

He really hoped they would come back soon.