※ ※ ※ ※ ※
“Ah! You have arrived!” Chronos greeted them. “We were just about to begin your first history lesson.”
They had all gathered in the room with the maps, and Chronos held out his hand.
“Take my arm, each of you. Good. Now, I briefly explained the Sight when you first came to the Athenaeum, and I think you should all be ready for your first lesson.
“First of all, the Sight only occurs when you have contact with the aether. When you touch an artifact - such as these maps - you can see into the history of the object. With practice, you can choose exactly what moment in time you wish to see, or you can go straight to the beginning of the artifact's history.”
“Chronos?” Dennis interrupted. “Do people count as artifacts?”
“Only after their soul has left their body,” Chronos replied.
Dennis grimaced.
“A telemancer, or mind mage, can search a person or an animal’s mind for memories whilst they are still alive,” their teacher explained. “But the Sight only applies to inanimate objects, or those without a soul.”
“That makes sense.”
“Good. Shall we begin?”
The group shuffled a little closer and each of them touched his arm.
“When I touch the map, we will all enter the Sight as a group. You will be able to talk to each other, but I would encourage you to just watch for the time being. Good?”
They nodded.
“Excellent. I am taking you back to the beginning…”
He placed his finger firmly in the centre of the map, and everything blacked out.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※
Ryaki blinked, jumping as a hand protruded through her belly. She whirled around, ready to strike, and found herself looking down at Bobby’s laughing face. She reached down to pat his head, but found her hand slipped straight through his own forehead, as if they were ghosts.
“Cool!” Bobby crowed, and then clapped a hand to his mouth as he remembered Chronos’s orders. His hand passed right through his head, and he giggled. Ryaki smiled a little.
He’s so cute. Where are we?
She glanced around, seeing the others a few metres away, looking into the distance. They were standing on a rock of some kind. The sky was very dark, and the air very cold. She beckoned Bobby to follow her as she approached the others. The little boy tried to grab her hand, but his fingers went straight through her, so he settled to walking close by.
Rich glanced over at them as they approached, but Ryaki’s attention was held by what she observed below.
They were standing on a rock that protruded from a sheer cliff, overhanging a valley that lay several thousand feet below. The sky was flecked with shards of orange, and a green wave of light was creeping toward the horizon, stretching forward into nothingness and leaving crumbled brown dirt in its wake.
“This is Gaia, creating the Earth,” Chronos explained in a loud voice. He had to speak quite loudly to be heard over the cracking and groaning sounds emanating from the earth as it settled below.
The orange shards of light in the dark sky were coming together as if drawn by a magnet, and when the last shard joined the others, a muted boom sounded. The ball glowed for a moment and then exploded in a brilliant light. Ryaki shielded her eyes from the brightness.
“Helios created the sun from his own life force,” Chronos explained. “If you turn around you can see Selene creating the moon.”
They did, just in time to see a swirling white light fade into the pale yellow moon suspended in the black sky.
“Why’s it so dark, if the sun and moon are here?” Bobby asked, confused.
“Keep watching,” Chronos said, his stone eyes twinkling in the dim light. “The dawn has yet to come.”
They waited for several minutes, watching the sun pulsing with light, waiting for the heat to pierce the air that hung like an icy shroud. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the world was cloaked in complete silence.
Suddenly, a wave of warmth swept toward them, coming from the direction of the sun. A pinkish glow grew on the horizon, and they gasped as the first sunrise bathed the world in a rosy hue. The barren earth below them was beginning to come alive, slowing turning a hazy green as grass and trees sprouted from Gaia’s offering.
“The sun and moon are the obvious markers of day and night,” Chronos said. “Many forget Eos, goddess of the dawn, and the marker of a new day.”
The barren landscape below was growing greener by the second, and they watched in amazement as a torrent of water spouted from the earth, creating a river that disappeared into the horizon.
“Oceanus created the first river,” Chronos commentated. “You can see Poseidon making his home in the east.”
An ocean was boiling from the depths of the ground in the distance, foaming against rocky outcrops as the sea filled with water. A breeze brushed by them with considerable strength, and Bobby shouted in surprise.
“And that was Zephyrus. He is one of the Anemoi, the gods of the wind,” Chronos laughed. “Have you seen enough? We do need to move on soon.”
They watched the earth springing to life before them, awestruck.
“Come,” Chronos said, beckoning them, and everything faded to black.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※
“Man! Why'd we have to leave?” Bobby complained, jumping up and down. “That was so cool! Let’s go back!”
“It’s not how I imagined,” Daphne admitted. “That was so incredibly beautiful.”
Her Irish accent had thickened, and Chronos’s stone eyes were warm as he beckoned them to take his arm again.
“I am glad you enjoyed that. Now, let me show you the first human.”
“Wait! Don’t we need to memorize who did what and who each god is?” Dennis looked confused.
Chronos winked. “I know you’ll remember. Part of what I am showing you, is the fact that not everything has to be learnt out of a book.”
“Yay!” Bobby shouted excitedly. “I’m not left out, see?”
“Your reading and writing lesson is later today,” Chronos reminded him. “Come, now. Let us go.”
※ ※ ※ ※ ※
They stood in a forest glade, just outside a large building constructed from tree trunks. Two hulking men were standing just outside, working over what looked to be a lump of clay.
“They are two of the Titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus,” Chronos explained.
The two men were more like giants, their fingers stained with clay as they shaped what looked to be a rough human form. The one that Chronos had called Prometheus stepped back and wiped his hands.
“It is done,” he boomed. “Now we wait.”
Epimetheus nodded and stepped back, his movements surprisingly elegant for such a large man.
“We have little left to offer this human.”
Prometheus considered this for a moment.
“We will stand him upright, like the gods,” he decided. “And since he has no fur, we will give him fire.”
Epimetheus agreed, going to the wooden building and bringing back an unlit torch.
A woman entered the grove, dressed in armor and carrying a deadly-looking spear. An owl perched on her shoulder, bobbing its head and eyeing their surroundings with sharp eyes. She approached the two Titans with an air of authority.
“Is this it?” She seemed unimpressed.
“Yes, Athena. The first human.”
The woman appraised the clay figure critically, noting its upright position.
“You will have it walk like we do?”
“It needs to defend itself. We’ve used up all the claws and most of the teeth.”
“Hmmm.”
Athena placed a hand on the clay man’s forehead and closed her eyes, pressing her lips to the clay lips of the human form, breathing deeply.
She stepped back, watching as skin and bone appeared and muscles wrapped around taut tendons. The facial features became defined, and hair grew on his scalp. The man lifted his head and blinked.
Athena was gone in an instant.
“Hello, Man,” Prometheus greeted. “Welcome to the land of the living.”
Epimetheus threw a tunic to the human, and he shrugged it on. Prometheus lit the torch and handed it to the bewildered man, who took it and stared at the flickering orange flames.
“What is this?”
“Fire,” Prometheus winked. An owl had perched on the ridgepole of the building hooted quietly, and flew away unnoticed, heading deeper into the forest.
The unlikely trio disappeared into the house, and Chronos turned to face the group.
“Any questions?”
“Where is the first woman?” Ryaki asked, confused. “I thought…”
“Pandora is the first woman,” Chronos explained. “She was a gift from Zeus. You all know the tale of Pandora’s Box, I trust?”
They nodded.
“Very good. Time to move on.”
※ ※ ※ ※ ※
They were back in the map room, bubbling with questions.
“When do the man and Pandora meet? How many children did they have? Why did Zeus give Pandora the Box?”
“One at a time, please!” Chronos begged. “Let me answer your questions properly.”
The group subsided.
“Pandora and Man met several mortal years after Man was first created. They had many, many children - much like Adam and Eve in the Biblical account—“ he added, with a glance at Daphne and Lissa “—and Zeus unleashed Pandora’s Box on humanity, because he was jealous of Prometheus’s loyalty.”
Chronos paused.
“There was one good thing in the Box, though. Do any of you know what it was?”
“Hope,” Matthaios answered quickly. “It was hope.” The Greek boy had heard the myths many times.
“Correct. Any more questions?” He paused. “No? One more thing before I leave you to do your reading. Hang on tight!”
He winked at them, pressing a finger into the land mass that the group would have called Russia.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※
Icy winds whistled around them at blinding speeds, and the group followed Chronos into the shelter of a white wall. It appeared to be built out of ice, and he seemed to know exactly where they were headed. After a few minutes of trudging through the snow, Chronos stopped and led them through an almost invisible crack in the ice, just wide enough for them to pass through single file.
After stumbling through the uneven debri left by the storm, they looked ahead and could see the yellow glow of candlelight ahead. The path widened a little, and they entered a cavern. It was composed purely of ice, and stood several metres high in the centre. Light filtered through the ice roof as if it were glass, and prisms of rainbow light floated across the room, reflected from a series of ice crystals hanging from the ceiling.
Bobby went to chase one of the rainbows, and Chronos didn’t stop him. The light passed straight through his body, and Bobby shrieked in glee.
A wizened old man was bending over a table, focussing intently on a single pillar of ice that seemed to be growing out of his fingers. He was muttering softly under his breath, and Lissa approached for a closer look.
“Who is he?” Ryaki asked, amazed.
“This is Kudesnik. He is the first human to realize his magical potential. Here you can see him practicing cyromancy, or ice magic.”
“So this Kudesnik guy is the first wizard?” Dennis was impressed.
“That’s correct. In fact, he’s still alive in the time that you will enter.”
“What!? Hang on... What year is this?"
"I would say about 1600BC, if you use the Gregorian calendar."
"Holy mother of green cheeses!" Dennis gasped in shock. "Wait! What time will we enter?"
"At least several hundred years after this," Chronos revealed. "Perhaps 1000BC, perhaps later. It is not certain, even to me."
"Doesn't that mean wizards make themselves immortal?”
“True wizards have control over all the mancers, or branches of magic. That includes chronomancy, or the manipulation of time.”
“That is bloody awesome!”
“They are not immortal,” Chronos warned. “But they are certainly capable of living for a long time.”
“Oh. Still, that’s pretty cool.”
“Indeed. Did you know that Kudesnik created this cavern with his own magic?”
Dennis eyed the ceiling with admiration. “You mean, he created that ice?”
“He did. As you can see, he’s studying the prisms, and the way they split light into the colour spectrum.”
Bobby was still trying to catch the rainbow lights, but they merely passed through his ghostly body.
“What’s so special about prisms?” Dennis asked. “They’re pretty, but how is that magic?”
“Colour is energy,” Chronos explained. “If you can separate light into colours, and harness that energy... Well, light is unlimited, and naturally so is that power.”
Dennis studied their teacher for a moment.
“This has to do with white magic, doesn’t it? Using light against dark?”
“I knew you were a smart boy.”
※ ※ ※ ※ ※
Daphne watched the prisms with wide eyes.
Miniature auras? What does this mean? Are people prisms?
She looked over at the wizard sitting at his desk, his head bent over the large ice prism. Chronos called them, and she walked slowly toward the group, her eyes still drawn to the mysterious rainbow lights.
Could I be onto something here? Or am I jumping to conclusions?
※ ※ ※ ※ ※
GLOSSARY: (Russian)
Kudesnik (кудесник): “wizard”
I hope you liked this chapter! If you did, please remember to vote :)