'Know your audience,' Risa told herself, silently.  She was only making herself look pompous using fancy words with common folk.  Keep it simple.

Risa held her hand, palm out, between herself and the helpful barmaid.

"No ale, dear.  Thank you."

"This meal is wonderful.  Who ordered it for us?" she asked the barmaid.

Their host was probably waiting on Clip and Ixion to arrive before making his entrance.

A hound, the knowledgeable among you identify as a pointer, trots into the room, out of the mist.  Walking past the table, it sits to the opposite side of the table, from where it emerged from fog. It then lets out a loud howl.

"Owooooooooooooo"

While the dog drew the attention of those assembled, an interloper quickly used the distraction to gain the element of surprise.  Charging through the obscuring mist, Ixion got this hand on Risa's shoulder, just before she could turn.  Pointing at the empty seat next to her with a drawn blade, Ixion confusedly asks

"Uh, is this seat taken Ris?"

"That's it, Myron. That's what I feel too...not spells, but my reflexes seem duller, my blade feels heavier...it's as if that green flame erased all I have learned over the past years.

I still feel the same age, I still remember my life, but the skills I have honed over that time is gone!

Fram...is it possible that we died or we are dead? And we are in some purgatory that will force us to live our lives again?

But then, why would we have memories of our previous life?"

The elf ponders this as he finishes off the eggs and pours a large mug of coffee.

Fram shrugged at Brumrok, not knowing the answer. "Twice I prayed. Once for morning offering it was; second the mist before my eyes to clear. After the second time I here arrived."


"Life written is. If written, someone to read it there must be... Maybe reader to earlier chapter turned? Ha ha, maybe our knowledge from reader's marginalia comes."
This message was last edited by the player at 16:06, Wed 19 Jan 2022.

"I was only able to find first level spells in my book! And I was very limited to how many I could memorize, I feel like a newborn wizard in an old man's body with memories of the old man!"

Brumrok pours a cup of ale and downs it.  He refills it as the first seemed to help his pounding head.

He is finishing putting crumbled cheese and bacon on his eggs when the tracker arrives.

"Ah, the mangy beast has arrived! Well, at least it brought his dog with him..." Brumrok chuckles showing the jest well just that as he tosses a slice a bacon to the hound.

"Where ever we are, possibly when ever, at least we are not alone in this new adventure.  Maybe the gods so enjoyed watching us, they've sent us back to do it all over again".

Dag stopped his yowling and snapped up the bacon.

Sitting down, Ixion grabbed the jar of honey, he gleefully poured himself a handful and ate it. "OOOH they have HONEY! They musta knew I was comin'.  Come over here Dag and get some vittles!"

The pointer trotted over to Ixion's side, eagerly waiting for scraps.

"Could be you are right, Keth, and we are dead.  This one <nodding at Dag> died years before that last entanglement with the green flame.  I always knew my friends were gonna be here too."

Then with a chuckle "And you also made it Brum, congratulations!"

Ixion dropped some of his eggs on the floor, which the pointer devoured.

"Oh!"  The barmaid had returned to the room.  "I suppose he doesn't need a chair."

She pulled the chair away from the table, and then brought out a plate of eggs with a hambone with a bit of meat still attached and set that on the floor for the dog.

"I don't know," she said to Risa.  "I am just to bring food when people sit at the table."

She then dragged the chair behind the bar before retreating to the kitchen.

Fram looked up from his mug and stared off into the distance. "Green ... flame..."

"Yes, yes. There green flame was. Pillars. To the center drawn. And... and a message: 'Another chance. From the beginning.' These their words were." He looked around the others. "Not dead, but from dying prevented. The Seven over all of us watched... they us here brought."

He finished with a downcast voice. "Because what we today begin ... we already failed."

Kethryl goes pale, the piece of bread slathered in jam, almost falls from his fingers.

"Fram! I remember those words too. We were betrayed...somehow...by someone...and we were dead...or at least dying...or something."

The elf absently started eating the bread, a look of puzzlement on his face.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:46, Fri 21 Jan 2022.

Risa smiled up at Ixion over her shoulder.

"It's all yours, big guy."



Risa thought that was nonsense, them being dead, but as she mulled it over she could not latch onto a fact to disprove it.  Troubling.  Maybe Clip had somehow escaped their fate.



No host.  That sealed it for her.  No one had done this to or for them.  They had done this to themselves.

"Don't worry Kethryl.  We aren't dead."

Risa took a long drink of cider before rising theatrically and delivering a dramatic piece of exposition.

"The four fiends overpowered and outmaneuvered us, maybe even killed some of us, at the time.  They twisted the very link between our world and the afterlife.  There would be no repairing it.  The gods did not save us.  They could not save us.  All things divine were thrown into turmoil.  We had lost, true, but we had a failsafe.  We created the Mobius Stone for just such an emergency.  When the Axis Mundi was disturbed it shattered the Mobius Stone.  Arcane green flames, the color of that which is essentially temporal, flung us back far enough for us to reverse our destiny."

She made flourishing gestures with her body and hands as she spoke that well fit the gravitas of her words.

"The fact that we have returned to the fourteenth year, or thereabouts, of the reign of King Rogier IV without our youth restored means we knew our memories, shattered and incomplete though they may be, would be absolutely essential in setting things right the second time."

"So fret not.  Eat up.  Drink your fill.  Enjoy the last bits of this spell.  Recharge your body and soul.  For we have a lot of work to do.  We have four fiends to defeat and all the nine realms to save."

Risa took a well practiced bow and sat down to eat more of these deliciously cheesy eggs and perfectly crisp bacon.

Myron's jaw dropped with Risa's tale. She was right, it made sense and she figured it out! He felt foolish for not knowing, but to start over as a first circle wizard was hard! He had been an Eighth Circle Wizard, quite the power! This was almost disgraceful at his age!

He continued to eat and drink. "So I'm a first circle wizard again, oh well, I did it once, maybe I can do it again."

Brumrok stops eating, runs a hand through his thick golden beard.

"Story sounds unlikely, ridiculous even....."sighs"...probably true".

Entering cautiously, Clip relaxed a bit at the sight of familiar faces. He smiled and nodded to everyone, seeking a chair and food. Sitting, he noted he was running late, observing, "With the head start on this mystery, I suppose you have solved it already? I can go back to bed after, well, whatever meal this is, right?"

As the last arrival took a seat at the table, the barmaid returned yet again with another plate of cheese-sprinkled eggs.  She also added another platter of bacon to the center of the table, as it had been significantly depleted.

Seizing bacon, eggs and cider, Clip began to feed what must be a fierce appetite. He grinned at the others between bites, confident that fun was near at hand.

"Why am I so hungry?" Kethryl asked no one in particular as he placed strips of bacon between two slices of bread slathered in butter.

"Risa, do you remember all that blather about fiends and Mobius Stones and...what was it...Axiom Mundi?

And do you mean that we are living our past life because we thought that it would be a good idea to rewind time and to lose our skills and powers attained?"

The elf shakes his head, "It seems to me that if this is by design...our design...then we are...were...or will be...complete and utter buffoons!"

"Do... do we only one former life remember?"

The dwarf's elbows on the table helped him prop up his head, hitting it occasionally as he tried to think...

Her mouth full of food, Risa nods to Kethryl while she finishes chewing.

"For the most part, yes.  Like the rest of you, I'm frustrated about my incomplete memories, but I have reconstructed events as best as I can working with the things I do remember."

She narrows her eyes at the buffoons comment.

"What you are really saying is that Myron and I are buffoons, which I do not take kindly to.  With magic at this scale, nothing is free.  The humans at this table have made a greater sacrifice than your immortal highness.  Ten or fifteen years of our lives are not just a drop in the bucket.  Perhaps you'd like us to find some way to send you back to live as a skilled and powerful guildmaster in a world of ruins where the link between the heavens and earth has been irrevocably crippled and The Four Fiends rule all while the rest of us try to find a way to fix things, lest people think you a buffoon."




"Just one," she said to Fram more soothingly.  "If we had pulled this stunt even a second time I would've been just a tot the first go round."

Risa giggled at the thought of her as a baby adventurer.

"A wizard of the First Circle AND a buffoon. Wonderful. Should we just slit our throats and get it over? I'm a fighter and refuse to take the easy way out. Is this just a new chance to right wrongs in what we did? Relive the mistakes, or can we change the outcome by making different choices?

Myron continues to eat his fill, bacon, eggs, cheese and bread, until he was full, then he sat sated.

Clip ate but groaned as he heard the others. He said, "I don't know about you but I've had many lives. I was rich and neck-deep in women in all of them but this one, so I have that to look forward to." At Risa's comment and giggle, he said, "I did start early this time around the wheel but not that early. Tell me, what was a baby Risa adventurer like? Knife in your swaddling?"

Kethryl pushed is chair back from the table, his hunger finally sated. As he sipped his coffee, he smiled at the wizard.

"Oh Risa, still thinking that the sun shines only on you. My comment encompassed all of us!

No doubt you and Myron concocted our passage through time...although I don't recall...but the rest of us likely agreed to it...since we are all sitting here.

As to your greater sacrifice, you will live the number of years that the gods have ordained, as will I. The fact that we may end up repeating some fraction of those years does not reduce the total number!

Really you should have paid more attention when learning your numbers in magic class!"

"Myron, that question worries me. If we are destined to simply repeat our previous actions, then will we not continue to end up in this tavern, breaking our fast, and being a decade or more older each time?

I do trust that you and Risa would have given us free will as part of this plan...I know that neither of you were incompetent with your thoughts and your magicks."

In reply to Kethryl Palar (msg # 37):

"I was quite adept enough to scorch your butt a few times! We should have free will."

"Wait," Clip said, stuffing a final bite into his mouth and washing it down with ale. "If we moved through time, why didn't we retain all our skill, memory and equipment? Why the er, 'reset'? That makes no sense. What fits is that we have traveled somehow but have also either been transformed or transferred. If you big brains can reason out why that happened, perhaps we would have a leg up on the situation instead of floundering about like the novices we seem to be."

"Well Risa? What do you have to say? I don't know. Never knew everything though I knew a lot. I honestly don't remember what we did."
This message was last edited by the player at 13:46, Sat 22 Jan 2022.