Wild card segment 2

My planned format for this story is going to be an alternating switch between third person limited, past tense (from the perspective of Sparhawk) and first person, present progressive (the isekai character Anthony). This piece here follows Anthony and will be directly appended to the first I did when the actual release chapter comes out.

Working on this project has been... enlightening as to how far my tolerance for certain aspects has tightened. Some of it is practice, some of it is having a lot more reading and writing under my belt. It's reassuring, in a way. I'd hate to have stagnated for the nearly thirty years since I first picked up the Diamond Throne and read it.

Needs a little more polish, imo. Not the final version, I think.

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Anyone who knows me could tell you that I'm something of a bibliophile. With the arrival of my forty-eighth birthday, therefore, the arrival of a thick, leatherbound book wrapped neatly in cloth, packed in padded cardboard with no return address, this was not exactly inexplicable. I've received anonymous book gifts before, usually gag gifts, and as a sort of passive-aggressive retaliation I've always made sure to read them thoroughly and then drop commentary in future conversations to try and figure out who sent it, at which point I will never let them forget it. This is why, among other things, I've ensured my best friend Richard always hears a random My Little Pony factoid whenever we hang out, my baby sister receives at least one comment regarding refrigerator compressors when we talk on the phone, and my wife gets a note about the history of ambergris in perfume and cologne making at least once a week.

As such, that night as I would ordinarily get ready to write, I instead sit at my desk and open up my new tome.

I feel an alien sensation come over me, and my hands feel buzzily numb. My head becomes floaty and a feeling of serene calm comes over me, one that a distant corner of my mind screams is not right. That corner of my mind tries to force my hands to open, to let go, but like a remote with a dead battery, no response from the operating equipment comes. Instead, as pages slowly, then more quickly, begin to turn before my eyes, strange thoughts and icons pass through my mind's eye. A lexicon, a catalog of symbology as interconnected as mathematics overcomes me, and the panicked corner of my mind begins to relax as I lose myself in what feels like an ocean of knowledge. Ways of thought completely foreign are introduced to me, and an instinct, an inner sense, for mysterious, eldritch energies takes shape in my thoughts. Deeper, really, burying themselves in and etching onto my very soul.

I float over waves and troughs, examining the surface but delving deeper only in tiny places. Some few parts disinterest me, and I avoid them; others disgust me, and I shun them. Still others I examine more closely, more intricately, learning the shapes and shortcuts to their weaving, the ability to mold and reforge objects like clay, to generate wealth from personal suffering, to control fire and water and create food, to act swiftly, to hide. To change my body as easily as changing my expression, and more.

I barely notice the first of my shackles settling onto my mind until the second rests in place, and the panic from the corner of my mind takes hold again, this time gaining my attention in full. My hands were my own again, and I note dimly that my living room is aswirl in a vortex of wind. I stagger to my feet, and with the greatest exercise of will I have ever managed, pull my right hand away from the pages.

The wind seizes the book, shredding its pages and intensifying, pulling me closer to the center of the whirlwind. Above the howl of the living room storm I can hear my wife's panicked shouts from upstairs as I reach the glowing center of the cyclone, and then sight and sound go away for a brief moment.

The book is gone; my living room too is gone, and I can dimly feel myself in freefall. Fire surrounds me, and I can't help but freak out even more as the fire roars, wind howls, and below me, I can see a poorly lit series of uneven streets populated by stone and thatch housing. It's not a particularly large settlement, no more than a few thousand buildings at most, and a part of my mind not focused on my impending death from terminal velocity reflects on the absurdity of how very far I must have gone that I can't see any city lights or their secondary glow on any horizon.

Then, with a thunderous crash, my freefall comes to a painless but calamitous end, as fire and stone and gravel sprays out in all directions from my impact site. For a moment I lay there, expecting the shock to wear off and the pain to hit, but it never comes. After a few seconds I get my adrenaline-wobbly legs under me, to discover I'm standing in a shallow crater at least twelve feet across.

Also, the large building in front of me is catching fire.

It's almost reflex, my mind assessing this and then my new knowledge replying, telling me the incantation needed, the forces to channel and the motions of hands and fingers to direct it. There's plenty of nearby fog; I pull it above me and the building, and condense it, the vapors forming dense clouds that further compact and pour a brief but intense downpour of water like rain. The fire, still smoldering the thatch roofing, is quickly snuffed, leaving me in wet darkness. Mostly.

There's still dim lights down either direction of the cobblestone street- cobblestones? How ungodly far from Vegas did I go? The only place I can think of within three hundred miles of Vegas that has cobblestones in the street is a small part of Henderson, and the utter lack of street lights or the dirty orange glow of light pollution tells me I'm nowhere near either.

Down the street a ways, as my eyes adjust to the dim lighting, I can make out a group of a dozen or so men carrying long spears and wearing crudely printed or patterned cloth over what looks like... is that armor? Actual, boiled leather cuirass and vambrace? Wait... Those are tabards?

On autopilot, like a reaction to my confusion and growing alarm, I feel speed settle over me. The world slows to a crawl, giving my befuddled mind more time to think. I take in the details of the men who, with an almost glacial slowness, are raising hands to point at me and hollering in slow syllables that I don't recognize. The rustic nature of these streets, the stonework construction, the actual, honest to god torches and torch sconces, piles of horse shit swept to the gutters, and the slowly dawning scent of woodsmoke and human habitation and shit but no car exhaust or buzz of power lines anywhere.

I'm not in Nevada anymore, Toto.

The shifting postures of the soldiers is moving at a snail's pace but there's no mistaking the fear and hostility. I can't understand their words but those spears look long, sharp, and extremely bad for my health. As such, I turn and hustle away as quickly as my accelerated time frame and out of shape body will allow.

I'm rapidly coming to realize, in my own slow stupidity, that the book I received as my birthday present seems to have granted me the ability to use magic - and not just a little bit. Along with it, though, those shackles I felt are resting like a weight in the back of my mind. I can feel them, like a live wire feeding my newly gained magic, some of those shackles immutable, others fragile and promising dire consequences should I fail to adhere to them.

Speak no Lie. Obey my Handler. Adhere to a Neutral Good code of conduct. Neither wield nor use any tool or object that is not by my magic altered or crafted.

I feel like all of these things should be familiar to me but attempting to chase them down in my mind leads to dead ends, places in my mind and memory that seem to have been overwritten by my newfound knowledge and magic.

As I jog in my middle aged, out of shape way, looking for somewhere to lay low and get my bearings, part of my shackles inform me that I am, in fact, running the wrong way, and that my handler is behind me, either among those men with the sharp pointy sticks and medieval looking regard for my personal well being, or perhaps behind them. My speed- no, my Haste- is beginning to fade. I refresh it on the go, marveling at the experience. Magic. Real magic.

And real angry men coming along behind me with real dangerous weapons, I remind myself, taking a turn down a reeking alleyway and nearly stepping on a small, terrified animal in the process. Not enough time to think about that, hurry through lamplight, huh, people are yelling, forget it, go go go.

It quickly becomes apparent that, while my immediate pursuers are not my handler, someone following along behind them has to be. I can feel the direction to them, to him, and in my mind's eye I get the impression of hard muscles, hard eyes, and a long healed broken nose. A man whose orders I must follow until my geas completes, under penalty of my magic being partially stripped away and being compelled to follow ANYONE'S orders permanently thereafter. How long? A full year. Empty hands? A year. Neutral Good? Also a year. No lie pass my tongue? Six months. Why is that one different?

My handler. I explore that notion a bit more. Some actions I will be ordered to do may be distasteful to me, or humiliating, but nothing that will violate my other strictures and nothing that will directly harm me. And I'll know what he wants me to do regardless of whether we share a language, and no matter how far apart we are. Shit. There goes the avoidance idea.

But where all of this came from or is going? That information seems to have been overwritten, frustratingly. But I can manage. Just do whatever this guy needs me to do until the year has passed, and then I'm in the wind. How bad could it be?

Eight castings of Haste later, as I Blink down to alleyway level behind him, exhausted, my handler abruptly spins around and thrusts a spear at my face. It stops about an inch from my left eye.

I can feel the shackle closing down, and my timers starting on all my strictures. Lovely.