Firdan's Return

[Firdan_Corca]

Firdan went to the right place going to his father Byron first. Firdan didn't want to give his reasons for wanting to take a time walk (the term for living out a number of hours, weeks, years or even a life time out of normal time within a short interim in comparison). Byron insisted on him explaining his motives and so Firdan told him a partial truth. His age was a detriment to him and the duties he had to perform. He was seen as a child no matter how well he performed as a warrior, leader and political figure, even on his own world. Byron saw his point and as one who had taken enough time walks to attract negative attention from the chronesian time travel authorities, he took no issue with Firdan taking the chance. Had Firdan told him it was for a girl he wanted to age himself? Byron would have tried to hinder him instead of helping him. As it was Byron personally attended to the matter and called in Victor Greed of Urik and Esscha Endor to assist. Byron hadn't tampered with time without backup for a very long time. It was unwise to should something unplanned occur.

It turned out that what Firdan requested was NO small matter. Where a time Walker could just walk through accelerated time, making an entire world pass out of normal time was completely different. Firdan didn't wish to just live out some years on some alternate time line but on his own home world in his time. It was imperitive that his people and his surrogate mother, all who he impacted or was impacted by, had to live out these years with him. Byron saw the wisdom in this as did the Chaosian hierophant of chronomancy Victor Greed. It was a high difficulty process of time manipulation nevertheless and Byron was thankful Victor had been available to not just help but take over the project. It was all very complicated and involved creating a great time corridor around the living world of Mordigoth, the planet itself the goddess that was Firdan's surrogate and adopted mother. The corridor isolated the world from normal time and other parallel time lines so as to create what time travelers referred to as a stable time paradox. Time would be accelerated within that corridor. When the corridor was withdrawn and the world fell back into sink with normal time the planet and all its inhabitants like Firdan would be however much older than everything else beyond that world but without altering time in any way beyond his home world. If anyone left that world they also left that time pocket and entered normal time. If they then returned to that world they would return to the accelerated time there but would be completely unaware of time being accelerated.

They went to Victor's palace of glass, which appeared white like ice from the distance but from within the entire structure was made of thick clear glass and crystal. The entire palace both refracted and stored temporal and dynamic energies. They went to a high tower called the temple of time where near its apex which I overlooked a great chasm in the plane of time, Victor and Byron worked together to set up the corridor over the chasm then harness, capture and direct all the immense energies needed to move the corridor around Mordigoth via a planar shift, stabilize and power the time corridor and manipulate the time acceleration rate within it.

Firdan was fascinated by the entire process and all the mechanisms and power storing crystals involved in pulling off such a feat. He had no idea it would be so complicated. Time wise though, it didn't take the chronomancers all that long to set the whole thing up. Firdan stayed over one night, had two wonderful meals with his father and the impressive chronesian vampire who was the Astraeus clan priest, and by midnight next day Byron and Victor were ready for him and sent him on his way. There was a bridge of clear glass which extended into the time corridor his home world was captured in and he walked out onto that bridge and into the corridor where he gated home to Mordigoth. He could feel no difference at all between the normal time he left and the accelerated time he entered into. If not for knowing for a fact it wasn't a trick he might have thought the whole thing an elaborate practical joke. Firdan went to his kingdom and took up his throne as his mother wished him to, and there ruled for a total of thirty-eight years without ever leaving to visit the realms of his real mother and father. He stayed twenty-three years longer than originally intended because of two back to back campaigns and one war he had to see to the end before he could think of leaving.

Firdan had to remind himself often of Gillette, Valerien and Robrek and that only a little time was passing for them out there. For them only a few days would have passed, while for him it had been thirty eight years. Even with those daily reminders that were as a prayer for Firdan, life had a way of taking charge as it had to make him stay an extra twenty-three years. Loneliness too had challenged his untested potential relationship with Gilly. Firdan had been through a great deal in those thirty eight years he had been gone before he finally took leave of his home world to trigger the withdrawal of the corridor and end of its accelerated time span. His mother had never been the wiser, nor had anyone else on Mordigoth. There just happened to be no chronomancers or time sensitive inhabitants on that world.

When Firdan lapsed through that gate and stepped out onto that glass bridge, only two days had lapsed for Gilly, and everyone else beyond his world. He was wearing clothes very similar to those he left in, leather biker jacket and black jeans, a black NIN concert tea-shirt, and black engineer boots. He wanted to try and reacclimate himself. He spoke at length to Byron and Victor about the past thirty-eight years he had lived. The two ancient fellows gave Firdan some very good advice, some of which reminded him of how young he still was. He had left RhyDin when he was fifteen and was fifty three years old now. He still looked twenty-two and that was spring green for an immortal. When an immortal was young though, fifty felt like fifty, or for Firdan it felt like a hundred sometimes for all the wars he had fought in, for all he had lost, very often leading the charge. He wasn't a wait behind the lines ruler at all. He had lost people he cared about deeply in those wars, especially the last one.

When Firdan returned to the streets of RhyDin he had a lot on his mind. He had promised Gilly he wouldn't change, but years of war, all the loss and grief that came with it he had carried, it was a lot. He had grown up a lot. But that was what she had wanted, right? He was a child with an adult's appearance and mind, and now he was an adult with the very same appearance and a far more worldly mind. He was the same because he hadn't lied about being who he was, but now he was who he was after many experiences, some of them so harrowing he had nightmares about them. One thing he had learned about being crown Prince of a world. You couldn't trust ANYONE with ambition. NO ONE. Especially not your own kin. But he had held onto the throne this long. He would continue to do so for as long as he could bear it. His people depended on it. Theirs was a better world for having Firdan as their ruler, whatever his age.

Firdan soon arrived outside of Gilly's shop and drawing in a deep breath he went inside to look around for Gilly and Rob. He felt so... out of his element now in RhyDin after being in Mordigoth for so long a time without leaving.