He opened his eyes. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. He heard the wind in the trees and water in the stream. The sky was vast and blue with no imperfection to it. It was pure bliss, like a summer he had always dreamt of, a moment back in childhood he had always treasured and longed for. And now, to have such a moment felt wrong somehow, almost ominously wrong.

He stood up and looked about himself. He had been sleeping on a rocky outcropping not far from a small stream. On the other side nearby there was a huge dark forest which gave off a strange threatening feeling. The ground was sloping down towards where he was facing and amidst the undisturbed grasslands he could see a faint trail following the stream.

He wiped sweat off his forehead and started towards the stream. Seemingly it was the heat that had awoken him. The heat from laying far too long in the sun wearing black jeans and heavy leather boots and jacket. Or was it actually dehydration? The questions ran through his mind as he felt a slight tinge of vertigo as he got to his feet.

No matter, he kneeled down and had a handful after handful of water finally even wetting his face and hair to drink from the stream. Feeling invigorated, he pushed his entire head into cold water and just enjoyed the feeling. When he could no longer endure the lack of air, he pulled his head out and then examined his reflection. Black eyes, dark strong eyebrows, a small patchy stubble on the chin and light brown shoulder length hair, now wet and sticking to his face.

The strong feeling that he had awoken with still haunted him. Now, after dipping his head into the stream it no longer felt like something was wrong. Rather, it felt like he had forgotten something terribly important. As if he had broken some unknown promise.

He got up and checked the pockets of his jacket and pants. Nothing. No wallet, no phone, no keys. It could have been that somebody got to him, rolled him and then drove him out here, leaving him unconscious in a forest, but that scenario felt wrong on so many levels. There was nothing else to do, he started walking down the path. With no wallet, keys or phone, his only option was to come across some people who would help him to get his bearings and finally figure out where he was and why was he here. At least he still knew his own name. At least he thought he knew.

*

"Hand it over!"

Mike could feel the tension of the situation increasing by the second. Yet, he had no plans to do was he was being told. It was his discovery. He was the one who went to the forest to chop some firewood and had come across items so strange that he forgot why he had even gone to the forest. And he was the one who brought them to the village. A decision which he now somewhat regretted.

He was a strong young man of 18 years, had been of a solid marrying age for a few years now, but in this situation his strength was useless. In front of him stood the most influential youths of the village. The first son of the village elder, the second son of the chief of the village guard and the first son of the richest trader in three villages. The three boys had become fast friends and formed a group which took a lot after their fathers. Ruben, the fair-haired son of the elder had the authority. Vincent, the red-haired son of the merchant had the money and Gerard, the dark-haired son of the guard chief had the force.

Against the three of them, Mike, the eldest son of a life-long peasant family, had nothing. There was nothing to be gained from opposing the youths in front of him, yet he did not want to relinquish what he had found. Precisely there were two items that he had found. First was a rather large item which was shaped like a lute. It had a head and a neck which held the strings, but the body was angular, slim and full. The strings made a quiet but nevertheless harsh sound.

It was unimaginable that anybody could play it, that even a single pleasant sound could be coaxed out of it. Yet something in its design clearly said that this was an instrument and it was meant to be played as one. Part of this feeling had something to to with the long thick rope-like line that ran from the strange lute to the other item he could not even name, that did not resemble anything he had ever seen. It was like a section of a black tree trunk, made of smooth material that felt like rough porcelain. In some parts covered with strange letters and knobs, in other parts with a fine circular mesh. And it was heavy, much heavier than the weird lute.

He had no idea what they were for, but he definitely knew what these items were.

"Didn't you hear me!? Hand it over!" a small-statured youth with fair hair, blue eyes and expensive clothes repeated in a determined look. "You know who I am! You know who my father is! Handing it over to me is the same as handing it over to my father! So hand it over!"

"I will not." Mike adamantly refused.

"Hey Reuben," the red-haired young man in purple clothes said in a quiet voice, "maybe were are going about it the wrong way. Hey Mike," he addressed the young man. "You found those things, right? How about you sell them to me?"

"Sell them?" Mike incredulously asked.

"Yes. I can talk to my father. You sell them to me for whatever your family can produce in 3 years."

"Are you sure, Vincent?" the fair-haired youth asked, "you know he has a big family right?"

"I can't sell them, even if I wanted," said Mike, "you know the law as well as I do. All items suspected to be artifacts are to be treated as such. All artifacts are the property of the emperor and any new artifact found.."

"Hey-hey! Don't cite me the law!" the fair-haired young man raised his voice "Gerard is the only one who can do that. So, Gerard, what do you say?"

The black-haired boy flashed an evil smile and replied, "I think we can just take it from him. There is no way he found it, he must've stolen it from some guard responsible fro transporting it. And since stealing artifacts is the same as trafficking in them, we can seize this item with no problems."

"No." Said Mike, even though he knew, he could not stall much longer.

A crowd was forming, and it looked more and more like he was the culprit secreting an artifact and refusing to give it up, rather than a person who just found it. Harboring an artifact was one of the worst crimes one could commit next to harboring knowledge of forbidden magic. At worst, the punishment was death, at best, 30 years of hard labor.

"Yeah, we'll just seize it." Gerard repeated in a confident voice. "If it breaks during the fight it is his fault too."

"Yeah, he might be a few years older than us, but we are nobles, he is a peasant. He can't hurt us." the red-haired boy egged his friends on.

"Okay then, lets do it!" the fair haired boy relented.

"Excuse me!" a sudden strange voice interrupted the fight that was about to begin, "what the hell are you doing with my guitar?!"

*

The young man in black had been walking on the path for what felt like an hour before he came across a strange village. It looked liked one of those villages from the historic movies and books with mostly thatched roofing, walls of hand-hewn logs and cobbled streets. Surrounding the village was a stone wall maybe 20 feet high, with small rectangular guard towers every 100 feet or so. The entrance to the village had also 2 rectangular guard towers which were slightly taller than the rest. Strangely there were walls and towers, but there were no gates.

At first he thought he was in one of those medieval fair villages which was populated with actors, but from the strange looks all the people around were giving him, the guards included, it did not seem to be the case. It was weird though that nobody tried to stop him of talk to him. They just looked at him in a strange way, whispered and moved on with their daily business. Their clothing also looked like medieval peasant clothing with lots of linen, cotton and simple footwear.

This meant that him with his leather jacket, laced boots and black denim really did look weird. In addition, the people were talking in a strange language. It was not his mother tongue, nor was it English. It was some third language he had recently started learning, and these people were speaking some weird twisted version of it he could barely understand or speak. Yet it seemed he had no other option. It was no longer about understanding where he was and what had happened to him, but about something much more personal.

Some houses away he saw four young men and a crowd forming. With them was something he most definitely recognized. His guitar and his stereo.

At that moment some memories came flooding back. He remembered what had happened. Sort of. He had been walking home from practicing with his band. He turned onto a dark side street and then suddenly all street lights went out and he was in pitch black. And then.. he woke up. Here. Somehow he had gotten from the middle of the big city to here. An unknown amount of distance away.

But at this point, this was irrelevant. What mattered now were his guitar and stereo, which in this case was used as an amplifier. He started walking towards the people and started thinking about what words from his limited vocabulary he should use. The tension was palpable, so his time to think was really limited.

*

"Your.. what?! Who the hell are you anyway?"

"You can call me Jack if it makes you happy."

"Jack?!" the fair-haired boy laughed mockingly "Really what is it with those weird names? He's Mike, you're Jack, I bet Jimmy is hiding somewhere too!"

"That may well be, but I still want an answer," the boy in black said.

"So you're saying those things are yours? Maybe you stole them from somewhere? Judging from your clothes, you stole them from the same place you took your clothes."

For Jack, the situation was getting more and more unbelievable. First off, he really did not feel like giving them his real name, so he chose the first thing that came to mind. Also, despite the others speaking a strange dialect of a foreign language, he had no real trouble understanding them, and they had no trouble understanding him, even though he was speaking a different dialect, mixed in English words and in his own mind he was pretty sure he butchered the pronunciation.

"Hey, you, Jack!" Mike interrupted, "you said you know what these are?"

"Yes, I did." the boy replied. "These are my guitar and my stereo."

"A qi-tar..? Whats that?" Mike asked with a puzzled voice.

The unexpected question silenced Jack for a while, making the other three laugh at him.

"Okay, enough of this," the young leader of the gang grabbed the guitar and tried to pull it towards him.

"You don't know what a guitar is?" Jack asked, totally ignoring the spectacle before him. If this was some fake medieval village, then these kids would certainly understand what a guitar was and treat it with care.

"I am a poor peasant who has never stepped out of this village, so really, I don't know."

"Okay, I'll play along." Jake sighed to himself. "A guitar is a lute-like music instrument. This particular one is electric. It means that rather than having the body of the instrument amplify the sound of the strings, it uses an external device for it."

Mike nodded, seeming to understand his explanation. He then exclaimed "So that’s why there is this weird rope! This trunk-thing must be that external device!"

"Yes."

The dark-haired son of the guards' chief tugged the sleeve of his fair-haired friend. "Reuben, this is serious. I think we should leave them and report this to your dad at once."

"What is it?" the blue-eyed boy asked arrogantly, "they're just two peasants throwing words around!"

"Haven't you listened to him? These are definitely artifacts. He wanders here and then explains in the simplest words what they are and how they work. Not even imperial court wizards can do that!"

"I concur," the red haired young merchant agreed, "for our fathers' sake it is better not to get any more involved. The are only two kinds of people who truly know artifacts: high level nobility and artifact traffickers."

"I will not give up!" insisted the blonde youth, "this is my father's village. It will be my village! I will decide if something is dangerous or not!"

The boy advanced Jack and Mike, intent on getting his hands on the artifacts. To present artifacts to his father, this would solidify his position in the village and as the next in line for leading it. By getting them into his hands he would have done what he is supposed to do as the elder's son: honor his father while protecting the villagers as his father did.

Unfortunately for him, he was too late to enact his plan. Mike had already asked the fateful words that would collapse Reuben's world.

"How does it work?"

"Let me show you."

Jack hung the guitar from his neck, pushed and turned the knobs on the strange device and let strange stars and symbols on it light up with a deep blue glow. He set everything up and then upped the volume before he ran his fingers across the strings, enjoying the raspy metallic sound of the tune.

This first sound emanating from the strange box on the ground sent the villagers fleeing. The streets were clear at a moment's notice, people ran as if the devil himself had appeared, hid in their houses and homes, locked their doors and closed the shutters. Jack looked around and noticed Mike standing next to him with a silly face. The three youths who adamantly insisted earlier for the instrument, were now petrified where they stood.

"It's just a guitar!" Jack said.

He let loose a few more ominous riffs and then just started playing a song of his black metal band. It didn't really matter that his friends were not here, nobody to play drums, or bass or rhythm guitar. It was and old song, practiced time and time again, so he could play it sufficiently well to enjoy it himself and get lost into the music. Before he knew it he even started singing. Growling the guttural vocals then fast forwarding his playing to the guitar solo bit. Repeating it again and again.

He finally stopped after the inbuilt battery died and only then did he notice Mike's happy grin.

"What is it?"

"That was awesome!" the young peasant exclaimed "I've never heard such sounds! Such music! Sounds which are so wonderfully dark and evil!"

"Is it really your first time to hear black metal?" Jack wondered

"Black metal? Is that what this music is called?" Mike asked, eager to learn anything he could about this new phenomenon.

"What happened to the three guys who were standing here?" Jack asked.

"Oh them?" Mike started grinning again, "they ran as soon as they heard you sing."

"What are they, religious? I've seen people who can't tolerate extreme metal, but this is ridiculous."

At that moment the bell in the church tower rang twice.

"Alright," Mike hung his arm around Jack's head, "Grab your strange objects! You're coming with me!"

"To where?" asked Jack.

"To my place of course, it's midday, lunch time!"

"If its not a bother.." Jack said, though it seemed Mike never heard him.

*

Mike who was somewhat taller than him, lead Jack towards a rundown house near the back wall of the village. Around the house were small patches of tilled land, where different plants were growing, all of them probably edible. At the corner he saw a few chicken houses and even a glimpse of the town wall which had a hole and a small wooden gate in it.

"This is your home?" Jack asked.

"Yeah, I know it is not much to look at, but this is where I grew up, so it is home. You've probably seen much better abodes in your time."

"And I've seen much worse," Jack replied, "I guess if it keeps the rain and snow out, and heat in, it won't be an issue."

"We don't get snow here. Cold rain at worst, but I've never seen snow."

"So it doesn't get cold either?" Jack wondered, "I guess if your family is happy, then everything is fine."

"Yep. We've lived here for generations so.. come on in," he opened the wooden door.

"""Mike!""" the tall young man was instantly greeted with a chorus of small children's happy voices.

"I'm home, ma." Mike said casually.

"Hi, Mike, where's the firewood?" a middle-aged woman with some gray in her hair asked

"Dammit, that’s what I forgot," Mike scratched his neck with a regretful face.

"And you brought a stranger home for dinner." The woman continued in a displeased voice. "A stranger with some weird clothes."

"These are Maya and Sarah, my little sisters."Mike put his hands on top of the head of little brown-haired girls. "They're still to young to work on the fields so the stay at home and play. And this is Tony, my younger brother." He pointed to a young boy chasing a cat around the house.

The boy paid no heed to things going on around him and soon bumped into Jack as he was taking off his guitar.

"Whats that?" one of the young girls asked.

"It's a guitar," Jack answered.

"What's it for?" the girl continued.

"It's for playing music."

"You can play? Play us something!"

"I can't. It needs.. it's complicated."

"Hey, Jack, just say it needs magic. That's easy enough to understand."

"Thanks, Mike." He addressed the girl again, "that's right, it needs magic."

"Magic.." the girl pondered. "Is it an artifact?"

"A few people in the village did call it that. But I don't think so. Where I'm from, lots of people have instruments such as this, and they all use magic to play it. Some don't and their guitars are much like lutes."

"So you're from a town, huh?" and old man in the corner suddenly asked.

"You could say that."

"Come on, take a load off," the old man kicked the bench next to him with his foot, "any friend of Mike's is a friend of ours."

"So, Mike, where did you pick this guy up? And why is he better than firewood?"

"Mother, please," started Mike but Jack soon interrupted him.

"Sorry to cause you trouble. Mike found this instrument and one other thing of mine in the forest and brought them to the village. And he was kind to keep them from some arrogant fair-haired young man and gave my guitar and that other thing back to me when I asked."

"You had trouble with village elder's son? And he let the two of you go?" the old man asked in a doubtful tone, "just who are you?"

"Just some guy," Jack brushed off his question, "who has no idea where he is."

"Well, whoever you are, you must be from a colder part of the lands. No way you could work all day long in such black clothes around here."

"It it cold where I'm from. There was even snow."

"Snow!" gasped the young ones.

"You've done it now," Mike laughed.

"Hey, mister! Mister!" the young boy tried to get his attention, "what is snow like?"

"It is cold and white. It looks nice and fluffy when falling with warmer weather, but it is not so nice if you have to dig half a day to actually get out of your own house." Jack explaiend gently. "Blizzards in cold are also nothing fun. Feels like sandpaper on your face."

Despite Jack's less than romantic interpretation of what snow was, the young ones listened to him intently and asked at lot of questions about it.

"Seems like there really is a lot of snow where you're from." the old man in the corner said, "I haven't met a person with so much disdain for it for a long time."

"So this is your big family?" Jack asked.

"This is only half of it," Mike answered, "my three elder brothers are working on the fields and two elder sisters are working as maids in the merchant master's household."

"Okay, okay settle down now!" mother of the household raised her voice, "sit down, here's your daily grub, old man, get your butt to the table too!"

The woman with some gray in her hair passed along wooden bowls full of stew as people took their seats on the benches by the table. Before Jack could start he saw the people around the rough table lowering their heads in silence. Understanding that they were praying, Jack refrained form starting despite not having eaten anything since waking up this morning.

Unnoticed to him, only the old man, who seemed to be Mike's father, did not pray, instead keeping a keen eye on his house-guest.

"We thank the All-God Amarita for this meal. Let her favor keep shining on this household."

"Hey you, Jack was it?" the old man started, "do they not pray to the All-God in the Northern kingdom?"

"It is too cold, they certainly aren't as observant as you are. Besides, life in the towns is much more busy than in the villages, so some people have done away with all the praying." Jack bluffed.

"Is that so?" the old man asked in a distrusting tone.

"Father!" Mike interrupted, "stop bothering our guest."

It was true that Jack certainly had no idea what was going on in the Northern kingdoms, or what that imaginary Northern kingdom was like, so he could not know the truth about it's customs. But what he said wasn't technically a lie. People in his home country weren't religious at all. There were some that were religious, but most people had all religion rooted out of them by a neighboring country and its half a century long oppression. And it was also true that his home country had really cold and long winters, with lots of snow and/or lots of piercing cold.

"So, how's your stew?" Mike asked.

"It's great!" Jack answered, "I have no complaints."

"I was just worried, because I was not sure how you'd feel about commoner food."

"Food is food," Jack responded, "if the ingredients are well chosen and the cooking is done by a skilled person then there is essentially no difference in taste between what commoners eat and what -nobility is it?- eat."

"Wow!" all the children were amazed by his words, even Mike and and his mother stopped eating.

"Just don't let the nobles of this kingdom hear you talk like that." The old man said, "here they are really protective of their status and will not tolerate anyone ridiculing their position."

Suddenly Jack noticed something as he was listening to the old man. There was strange movement behind the window. Lots of people were running by the window in silence. It was a wonder that he noticed them at all.

"Hmph," Jack smiled, "seems there are people outside staging a covert operation."

"A... what...?" Mike asked.

"Son, your friend is talking in strange words." the old man said.

"What is it?" Mike stood up slightly and leaned across the desk, to whisper.

"This house is silently being surrounded by a team of well-trained soldiers. It wouldn't be too much to expect a breach."

"A what?"

"First they put a smoke bomb through the window, then ten to thirty seconds after it activates they kick down the door and come in, forcing everyone they can down to floor. Those teams are willing to use lethal force, so any kind of resistance may end in death."

"I understand. I have just one question: why?"

"I don't know. It may be because why people keep calling my guitar and amplifier artifacts. Maybe the story dictates that bringing outside objects into the act is forbidden."

"What are you guys whispering about?" the old man suddenly got up.

"It's nothing! May we be excused for a moment?"

However before anybody could respond there was a knock on the door. The old man walked to the door and opened it. Before he could say anything he was thrown against the other wall by an unseen force, seconds later soldiers poured in and dragged every adult and child kicking and screaming out of the house.

"There was a message that a family in this village is hiding some recently appeared artifacts," a booming voice announced.

As soon as Jack could raise his voice, he saw that the origin of that voice was a towering soldier clad in shining deep blue plate mail adorned with the image of a two-headed griffon. The man did not wear a helmet, so Jack could clearly see his dark red hair with some gray streaks and a lone scar running down the side of his face.

"Milord, we found these." Some soldiers appeared holding Jack's guitar and stereo.

"Why are you holding them?!" the knight boomed, "don't you know that only wizards of Section 8 are allowed to touch artifacts!? Do you not know why we have this rule? Last month we lost the artifact and a whole platoon of royal soldiers, because a page of some idiot did not exercise caution!"

He turned his attentions to the family crying on the ground.

"So you were hiding an artifact. Do you not know the law? All artifacts are emperor's domain. Hiding one is punishable by hard labor alone, and here you are hiding two."

"Let's stop this!" Jack raised his voice, "this spectacle has gone on long enough. These are not artifacts! These are my guitar and my amp. One is a musical instrument and the other is a device that manifests the music of the first!"

"You dare to claim ownership over an artifact!?" a nearby soldier kicked him in the back with his foot.

"Don't listen to him!" Mike interrupted, "he may know how they work, but these are not his! I found those artifacts, and I found him, so they are mine!" Mike too received a kick in his back, forcing him flat on the ground.

"I've seen you artifact traffickers before!" the knight roared, "you find something and invent a use for it, and then try to sell it off as some magical device, which then ends up destroying many people in a gruesome and unfathomable way!"

"This is not correct. I am telling you this is my guitar, my musical instrument! Its like a lute! You know what a lute is, right?"

"Yes, it was described like a lute-like device, but instead of creating pleasant music it imprinted people with lasting fear of the artifact and the user. The whole village was affected!"

"This is their problem!" Jack yelled back, "from where I'm from, people create and enjoy such complicated and dark-toned music!"

"So you're a demon!" a female soldier exclaimed and put the blade of her sword to Jack's neck, drawing blood. "Milord, we should just execute these two right here before their strange magic corrupts us all!"

"Silence, Anna, Ivanhoe!" a tall man in a hood that extended all the way to the ground, advanced from behind the soldiers. He held a strange learned and composed air to him, while every soldier here was lost to their emotions. From the lower half of his face visible form under the hood, it could be seen that he was already advanced in age.

"You two!" he addressed Mike and Jack, "peasant, you say you found the artifacts and decided to bring them into the village, right?"

"Yes."

"And you, stranger! You claim that this artifact is in fact your property. You know what it is, how it functions, and can explain it to us in a simple way?"

"Yes, I can!" Jack responded.

"Very well."

The old man in the purple hood produced two red bags made of fine cloth and handed them to the knight. "The rest are to be let go."

"Are you sure, master?" the knight asked.

"Ivanhoe, you may be a knight of the magic corps, but you are still a soldier. Don't question me."

The knight snorted in displeasure and then handed the bags to a nearby soldier. A red bag was put on both Jack's and Mike's head, after which they were both kicked unconscious.