Time Loop Book teaser: Chapter 1.1: first half of the first first

Hey guys, I noticed I've been talking about the time-loop story for a while now but you probably don't care since you have no idea what it is lmao. It's not quite ready yet since I'm still waiting for feedback from one friend who's helping me edit a bit, and I still need to generate some images and do some other stuff.

But, just wanted to share this so you sorta know what's coming I guess.

As you'll note in the future it's somewhat inspired by Mother of Learning, but when you see the main character you'll probably see that it's going to be a very different sort of story.

(Jim is currently just a placeholder name. Feel free to suggest a better one in the comments.) Also just general feedback appreciated. Want a strong first chapter.

For those of you worried that this will delay my other stories, don't. Tier 1/2 get 8 chapters a month, while tier 3+ gets 9-10. Since I graduated university and don't work a lot on the UX design agency thing I have (mostly due to my patreon), I will simply be adding the chapters of this story onto that when it comes out. So, starting november it will be more like 12-13 chapters per month (My absolute limit, I don't think I'll ever top that.) To those of you who would rather just have 12 chapters of a single story, I'm sorry, but my brain doesn't work like that. I can work on 4 separate projects when given enough time, but writing more than 3 chapters per story per month just feels like dragging my brain through a field of glass shards (I get bored and write very uninspired stuff)

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Anyway, enjoy! I'm a bit nervous :left pointer finger: :blushing emoji: :right pointer finger:

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The sun threw its hot rays onto the barren hot fields of Ferelden and there was a puddle of sweat smushing around in Jim’s pink leather boots. To console himself, he looked at Lebowski, his poorer and girthier friend. Lebowski’s longer brown hair was sticking to his scalp and he was breathing heavily as was befitting of his station as the third-in-line heir to a wine fortune rather than a second-in-line heir to a mercantile empire.

"You think they sent us here as a sort of hazing for recent graduates?" he eventually asked. 

Lebowski chuckled in the wheezing good humour integral to his character as a person often out of breath. "More like they sent the best to deal with the worst." 

Jim laughed. "Well, regardless of the reason. We have to find the village head to figure out what the situation even is." He ran a hand through his black hair and looked around, using his height to his advantage to look further than other people could have ever managed. It was a very hot September day, so he was surprised to discover a dust-covered farmer tilling the field to the right of the road. 

"You over there!” he shouted, causing the man to look up from where he was stabbing at the light brown ground with a hoe, creating neat little lines of slightly darker upturned earth.   

“Lead us to the village head!" Jim shouted again when he noticed that he’d gotten the man’s attention.

The farmer walked over and looked the two mages up and down. Both puffed up subconsciously at the knowledge of what the farmer was seeing. Two respectable young men of good breeding, about 19 years of age, dressed in black wizards’ robes and fashionable pink leather shoes. One as tall as a reed with black hair and blue eyes, and the other short, squat and stout, rocking long brown hair. 

The farmer respectfully removed his weather-beaten cap. A mark of low social status. No real gentleman would have to spend enough time in the sun to require one. Jim knew that Lebowski had one for whenever he had to help his family out in the vineyard. The Kabaj's were a rich family, owning several vineyards in Orlais; they just had the odd idea of educating their children with manual labour. 

"I'm afraid that I can't stop me work, me lords. But if yer walk down this path, yer should find the old Hanaphres the Third easily enough. He lives in the big building with the village emblem on the front and doesn't like to leave it," the man said apologetically. 

Jim looked down the road seeing the village only a few walking minutes away. It did indeed seem simple finding the village head without assistance now that he'd been given a description of the man's house. It was just impolite for the peasant to suggest it. "Alright then," he begrudgingly said. "Why do you have time for farming, though? I thought the village was facing some sort of threat? Also, Hanaphres the third? Odd name.” 

"We are on the other side of the kingdom, I guess," Lebowski commented with a sigh. 

Some hat-wringing commenced at the interrogation, and the farmer bitterly formed his next words. "Well, me lords, if I die to the monsters, I die to the monsters. If I don't sow my field, I ain't got nothing to eat and die just as well. As for Sir Hanaphres the third, he's named so after his venerable grandmother, Hanaphres the first, who left us just last morn, may god bless her soul." 

"Where did she go?" Lebowski asked, confused. 

The farmer looked up into the spotless blue sky, the sun burning down on the three with weak rays of sunlight. "Well," the man started, "I hope she went to heaven. But before she did, she walked up to the nearest cliff we have to this village. Ten men, tall men, not short fellas- and jumped straight off. So, I guess she went up and down and up in the end, left, that’s all I know for sure.” 

"The mortal coil, you mean?" Jim tried to clarify, but the farmer seemed frustrated by the bombardment of his questions and replied shortly. 

"Aye, me lords. Now if yer don't mind, I have to get back to me work." He made to walk off back to his hoe, without asking either of them for permission. 

"How rude," Lebowski muttered, tutted, and shook his head. 

Jim decided to be magnanimous and not fault the man who clearly lacked education and self-awareness. He turned towards the village and started walking. "Might as well get this over with," he said with a sigh. Lebowski went along without saying anything, likely preserving energy by not speaking, so that he would have more of it when they celebrated their success with some of the wine bottles stashed in his room back at the academy. They still had their dorm rooms for another week, now should have been the time to unwind from the year before going back home, not trudging through Ferelden of all places. 

Considering they were recent graduates of the magical academy's prestigious one-year programme, it seemed a bit overkill to send two of them to protect such a small, meaningless village from whatever monster was pitiful enough to bother with it. However, he couldn't really find it in himself to complain as they hadn’t been singled out. The academy had been in a right mess this morning, and he’d seen that all recently graduated students had been summarily and collectively drafted to do some sort of task. A live exercise of the academy's capacity to support the kingdom in a time of need. What that need was, Jim quite frankly didn't know, or care. 

All he knew was that he'd been woken up very rudely at the ungodly hour of 9 in the morning. 

He’d received a mission briefing -in writing- and a golden amulet with a stylised eye that he was supposed to wear. He’d seen the other students receive it as well, so maybe it was a graduation thing. After receiving the amulet, Jim had been sent out here into the rural part of Ferelden. Very close to the Hrust mountains from which most of the kingdom's wealth was mined. Lebowski had been sent with him with the same briefing and amulet. They'd exchanged surprised looks before deciding that the goal was obviously to use their superior teamwork to solve the issue at hand. They hadn’t said that, of course, nor had either of them mentioned how happy they were to see each other. Any mission would surely become less dreary with a friend, and Jim was already grateful that he hadn’t needed to silently suffer the farmer’s rudeness alone.

He couldn't really say that he had ever wanted to see the entirety of the Hrust mountain range either; blackened by fire and a horrible, horrible history, its jagged peaks shooting up into the sky like a jaw full of broken teeth. It created a basin around Ferelden, a particularly (not) charming region of Rukhsa. Home to mining, farming and general peasantry. Not truly something you sent mages to protect, but the bright tale of their post-education exploits would have to start somewhere. It would impress those who would think that their presence was a sign of magnanimity, not of sheer coincidence. 

Jim put a hand to his inner breast pocket to reassure himself of the presence of the mission briefing and of his money pouch.

'Sending you to a farming village, suspected monster activity incoming. Be on guard and wear the amulet,' the missive had said. Clear enough. The village was in danger; he and Lebowski were there to protect it. The amulet was to be their reward, which they were given early because their victory over whatever troubled the village was as unavoidable as he was talented. Presumably, they wanted them to wear it to show that the kingdom, the academy were willing to protect the integral human resources of the region.

He'd already secured the amulet around his neck. He thought he felt the depicted eye blink every now and again. But that didn’t really matter, as he looked good with any jewellery, blinking or not. 

"It looks a bit abandoned. Like the streets of Cyroia the morning after a festival," Lebowski commented as they got close enough to the little village to make out details. 

His words rang true; there was no one outside in the hamlet, consisting of about twenty medium-sized, shabby houses and farms, and one big building in the middle. 

"Well, maybe they did have a festival. Look, they even have some graffiti, surely the result of some sort of drunken debauchery," Jim answered, pointing at some inane scribbles drawn in a weird red paint on some of the stone houses. Completely horrible handwriting. He couldn’t make out what it said at all. 

Lebowski walked closer to the graffiti and tilted his head. "I think it's a local dialect? It's already hard enough, but with the handwriting it becomes almost impossible. It could say, "The calamity is coming, and we are all going to die," or "Death comes with wings of brown to shed blood of red." 

"How does that even work? Those are two completely different sentences?"

Lebowski just shrugged. "I can stay out to decipher it while you go talk to the village head?" he asked. "I'm kind of curious now." He pointed to another graffiti. "I think that one says, 'Ass of the Missus," but it could also be "Run, you fools."

Jim huffed and crossed his arms. "Alright, but this is getting odd… Did they not know we were coming? If they did, they surely would have staged a welcome party. We would have graciously not attended, of course; these aren't the type of people we want to associate with… But it's the gesture that counts." 

"I don't know, they probably have some weird alcohol around here, could be fun to try," Lebowski said absent-mindedly as he continued analysing the graffiti. 

Jim grew slightly worried, not for his life, but for the state that the kingdom was clearly falling to. He didn’t have time to fret, however, he wanted to finish this foolishness, whatever it may be, and start his trek back. The division of labour was decided. Lebowski would decipher the graffiti, which might end up explaining why nobody was out. Jim, as the more handsome and charismatic of the two, would find the village head. Even without the large emblem on the front of the large house, it was quite obvious to Jim where he was supposed to go. The person with the highest status in any given settlement was always the one who produced the least food, and the house only had a small garden. 

He gracefully speed-walked up to the door and opened it without bothering to knock. Knocking was for poor people. Entering the barely habitable two-story house, of which the first floor was reserved for a large fireplace, the entrance to the cellar and a dining table, Jim looked around for any inhabitants, but was unable to find them. 

Likely to be on the second floor, he decided. At least that part should be more comfortable, considering that one could walk on wood rather than just dirt. He quickly found the narrow staircase leading up and started ascending. The loud creaks resounding with every footstep made him a bit unsure if the stairs were made to hold someone of his intellectual heft.. 

Thankfully, the stairs weren't overly long, and Jim emerged onto the second floor unscathed. There he found a badly lit under-roof room barely tall enough to stand in, along with several straw beds and a family of five, all nearly indistinguishable from each other due to facing another direction and showing him only their backs. They were kneeling down in prayer in front of a small statue of a person nailed to a cross with their androgynous face in a rictus of pain.

Jim loudly cleared his throat, and once that didn't cause anyone to turn around, he did it more loudly. "Hrmm, hrmm, ghrrhrn+" The sound that escaped him once he choked on his own saliva caused one of the figures, the one with the greyest hair, to finally turn around. He only watched as Jim struggled and battled for breath instead of helping. 

Slightly angry now, Jim met the dull, wet eyes of the frail old man. His own much more interesting eyes, blue, bored into the man's brown. 

"Are you the village head?" he finally asked, causing the old man to listlessly nod, shivering imperceptibly, almost as if his very bones were vibrating. He looked like he was about to start crying, no decorum.

"Well, tell me what's going on," Jim queried further. "Where's the fire?" he tried to joke, starting to feel slightly uncomfortable in the oppressive atmosphere of the small space. 

"We're all gonna die,” his breath hitched, “my grandmother foresaw it", the man cried sadly before sobbing and looking down helplessly. The family behind him knelt further in prayer, if that was at all possible, and their murmurs became audible. This was a very large contrast to the farmer of earlier, who’d been tilling his fields with a bitter energy. 

"Excuse me, don't count me into that. I'm not going to die. Maybe you will, but I won’t," Jim gently corrected the obviously disturbed man. "Now, will you please tell me what makes you think that you're going to die? Your name was Hamafreeze, right?" 

"Hanaphres," the man mumbled, before silently clawing at his eyes in a most erratic manner. Deep red gouges emerged in his face. Jim backed off slightly, wondering if the village was even worth saving from whatever threat was coming. Going by the state of the leader, everyone here was likely already too far gone anyway, imminent death notwithstanding. 

"For god's sake, man!" Jim shouted, angry again. "Pull yourself together! You have an academically educated mage right in front of you and another one outside deciphering those red scribbles painted on the houses. Your troubles are solved. Damn if I know why we were sent here to this irrelevant shithole, but we were. Just tell me what's wrong!" 

The anger directed at him by one of his betters seemed to calm the man down somewhat. If he always acted like this, it was probably routine to get shouted at, and thus it anchored him in reality. 

"The calamity," the man whispered with chattering teeth, "my grandmother-" 

"Heiniprenis the first?" Jim interrupted, receiving a confused but frantic nod. 

"She saw it. We have no chance…" 

"Saw what?" Jim asked. 

"The calamity." 

"That hasn't happened in almost a millennium. Considering I'm not currently drowning in monsters spilling out of the mountain range, I somehow doubt your grandmother had anything to see," Jim corrected, but Hanaphres the third only shook his head. 

"She saw it in the future, our doom." 

"Is that why there's no one out in the village?"

"Everyone is praying, other than Strik, the idiot. Will tilling a harvested field assure his entrance into heaven, I don’t think so," the village head said contemptuously. 

Jim rubbed at his temples. 

"If you're so sure you're doomed anyway, then why send for help?" Jim asked exasperatedly, but Hanaphres the third only shook his head. 

"We didn't send for help; the visions have never been wrong. You'll just die here with us," the man said, seeming to take a small amount of pleasure in that, if the slight twitch of his lips was an indicator.. 

"Man!" Jim shouted again, just about ready to tear at his hair, "If an actual mage like me, with real prophet's blood in the family, hasn't awakened the gift, then some old hag in a random village in the middle of nowhere certainly didn't!" 

"She's never been wrong," the man, looking at the wizard with pity. 

"You know what," Jim said, "alright. Your grandma was delusional and convinced you idiots to go along with it somehow. You didn't send for me. I'm sure that academy moron just sent me to the wrong place, the incompetent buffon. I'm leaving-" 

Before Jim could finish the sentence, a terrible quake shook the village head’s house to its foundations. A very human scream started up, but was cut short in less than a second. Jim threw himself to the ground and covered his head with his hands, which he usually did in case of earthquakes.

However, any thoughts about earthquakes fled his mind when a blood-curdling roar followed the quake, shaking the house once again from sheer sound level alone. “That doesn’t sound very high society,” Jim muttered to himself, worried about the human scream which had been cut off by the crash. Hopefully, Lebowski was alright. 

Hanapipi the third simply moaned, scrabbling on all fours to rejoin his family in prayer, apparently staying true to his words of having given up on life. 

Needing to figure out what exactly was happening, and not being particularly religious, Jim considered his options. He could exit the house, but there were no windows on the second floor. He ran to the side of the attic, a ball of blue magic energy forming over his shoulder. The missile shot forward and drilled a hole in the wood. Jim stuck his head through to check the situation outside. He found himself facing the village square, which was about what he had expected. What he hadn’t expected, and didn’t like overly much, was the enormous dragon-like creature that was stomping around the house he was in, looking around curiously at all the man-made structures that it absolutely dwarfed with its immense girth. The creature was an ugly brown colour and seemed oddly childish, with the way it was curiously sniffing the ground and bending its long neck to look through windows with its ugly yellow eyes. 

Jim froze, reeled back as if struck, and then remained undecided for a second between joining the peasant family in their now shouted prayers or running out of the house in the opposite direction of the beast while screaming like a little gir- dignified young man. There was a bloody smear with a black robe on the ground next to the beast, and a pair of pink leather boots lay next to it. Being able to grieve Lebowski and any ability to choose an action was quickly taken out of his hands. The beast spun in a circle with a speed bellying its size. Its gigantic tail followed the movement like a whip and the appendage began smashing apart houses and the people that lived within them like a combination of wooden and human grapes that burst on impact. The air was filled with wooden shrapnel and viscera. 

Jim had just enough time to call up his mage shield before the beast completed the turn, its tail following behind by half a second, coming right at the house he was currently in. In what was assuredly the fastest spell formation of his life, a blue magic shield composed of several hexagons surrounded Jim’s form. Of course, everything happened so fast that rather than having any conscious understanding of what happened, Jim rather heard the crunch of breaking wood from underneath, before the most powerful force he'd ever come into contact with, impacted his defence. His shield broke like a badly formed chicken egg, launching the wizard into the air as if he were a human comet. 

If Jim had stayed conscious after the impact, he would have been able to make out his ancestral home from the peak of the parabola that he made through the mostly unused airfield of the kingdom. 

But he wasn't, so the beautiful view went unappreciated.