“Do you think he’s dead?”

Sound.

“I don’t know, man, could just be a vagrant trying to get some sleep.”

More sound.

“Do you think he’s a necro?”

Ravi really wished there would be less sound.

“When’s the last time you saw a necro with blue hair? Nah, looks more like a hacker.”

“If he was a hacker, I’d know about him.”

A soft rustling noise and he could feel hands on him, moving him, shaking him? It was hard to be sure. Leaping just over 600 years back in time tended to take it out of a person, and fine motor control was still just beyond reach. All he was capable of was trying to keep his mind clear enough to reboot.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” The voices were slowly coming into sharper relief in his mind, they sounded young, or relatively young probably around his own age. Sometimes, when time held little meaning for someone, it was easy to forget how few years he’d actually lived. The hands on him started rifling through his clothes, seeking pockets. “You can’t just steal from a maybe dead person!”

“Eh, if he’s dead he’s not going to miss it.” He wasn’t dead.

“And if he’s not dead?” Which he wasn’t, and he very much would miss whatever the little urchins were planning on taking.

“Meh.” Was the only non-committal response as Ravi felt his body being moved this way and that. “Shouldn’t pass out in the street then.” Slowly, sense by sense was coming back to him. Hearing, touch, taste; he could feel the grit and grime from the street in his mouth, the acrid flavor coating his tongue. Scent, that too was coming back though he wasn’t sure if the stench of the place was residual memory of the time he left behind or if the past truly smelled that bad. And sight, mentally he willed his eyes to open, to grant him the ability to see shadows at the very least.

Gradually motion returned in waves, a growling grunt as he slapped a hand away from him and rolled onto his back. With care, Ravi slit his eyes open, but was met with only blessed dark barely invaded by the fluorescent glow of a neon hologram against a stone laid wall. It was… quaint almost, but what could he have expected from a time so far gone.

“I don’t think he’s dead, Hyuk.” As his eyesight began to come back to him, two shapes began to form. First from shadow and then growing slightly more detailed the longer he tried to focus his eyes. The hair caught him first, both of them were blonde, almost painfully bright blonde. The one near him had his up in slight tufts around a soft face with an all too sharp jawline. The boy standing back behind him wore his shorter locks down, fringed against his forehead and stood hip cocked and as if he were almost posed.

The one nearest him, the one the other had called ‘Hyuk’ stumbled back slightly, and stood tall, dusting off the hem of his shorts. They both looked down at him, neither making a move to help him up, and Ravi could all but see the cogs turning in their minds. He didn’t have time for this. or rather he had all the time in the world, depending on the point of view.

Taking a deep breath, Ravi exhaled a faint pink essence that twined in circles around his body. As it wrapped in wisps around him he could see the world around him, the world so familiar and yet not, come to a grinding halt. The two young men were set in stone, one’s hand lifted half-way up to shove the other.

All around him time had stopped, and he could feel the familiar pressure at the base of his skull, a gentle reminder that he’d used up nearly all of his energy just getting there and his short dirt nap was not nearly enough to rejuvenate him. “You have to move now, Ravi,” he chided himself and forced his muscles into movement. Slowly sitting up, it was his first chance to really take in where he was. In that eerie silence that frozen time brought with it, Ravi set eyes upon a world that had been dead for hundreds of years.

It was jarring to realize that a cozy little town could stand then where eventually the great city Gaulmin of the 10th Holy Empire would be constructed. Gone were the massive gleaming towers of white stone and glass, the smoothly paved roads wide enough to accommodate even the grandest parade of victory.Though it had been years since the Empire had any reason to throw such a parade. It was all a very far cry from the bumpy dirt roads and humble brick and stone homes of the village he saw before him.

Research told him that the village was called Murgeu, and it stood so far on the outskirts of Arxis that people barely considered it the territory of the Starlit Kingdom. History informed him that it was one of the first to fall to the invasion and it, along with a few other border skirmishes, would be just one of the many sparks that caught fire to the guns of war. But he had time yet, if his calculations had been correct.

The pressure at the top of his spine pulsed and he knew the spell was waning. Dusting off his legs, Ravi stood, his muscles protesting in ache. He looked out of place in blue and white jacket and pants, but then again everyone seemed to do so to a certain degree to his eye, but his own fashion was off. He hoped nobody noticed too much. A quick check of his pockets assured him that everything he needed was still on his person. The collapsible rifle that had been a gift from his long time friend before he left for his own event in history hung at his side, and the book that he’d poured hours into refining, that stored all the historical data he could find about the war was safely tucked inside this coat.

Sound rushed back into the world a second before movement. That always struck him as strange, even from the first time he’d learned to weave manipulation through the threads of time. It should have been movement first and then sound, but someone had tried explaining to him that you didn’t just stop movement and therefor the sounds they make, you stopped sound in mid… sounding. To be honest, it still rankled him a little.

“Whoa!!” the one without a name lept back, nearly into Hyuk’s arms as time resumed its flow, “how did…” his words trailed off but they were both staring at Ravi with wide eyes. It was cute almost how they held onto each other so casually, arms wrapped up in each other. A soft pang in his heart reminded him that he’d once had friends that he could be so connected to… but that was years ago. “He’s a void speller.”

“No way, that’s not how casters move. You can see them go through their portals, this was…” Hyuk looked to Ravi with questioning stare. “What are you, man?”

Good, they didn’t seem to be hostile. Ravi wasn’t sure he had the juice to escape if they were, but the display had done its job, it had caught their attention. “I’m Ravi.” He offered with a small smile and dip of his head knowing that it would never explain it.

“That’s not what I… ow! Hyung!” Hyuk darted  look to his companion who had just been starting to disentangle from him before pinching him and giving him a look that must have had more meaning than Ravi took it for. “Oh, sorry, I’m Hyuk and this is Youngjae.” They both gave an awkward sort of half bow before Youngjae nudged his friend again. “Jeez fine,” Hyuk sighed, shoulders slumped and shot a brief apologetic look his way. “Sorry I thought about stealing from you. Now, will you tell us how you… teleported?”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Ravi gave his own half bow before straightening with a lopsided smirk, “tell you what. Buy me a meal and I’ll tell you a story and maybe my secret.”

“Deal.” Hyuk reached out to clap him on the arm even before Youngjae could eek out a token protest. It might not have been exactly how Ravi planned to start his search, that had been meticulously thought out including some independent research so as not to cause waves, but sometimes you fought fate and sometimes you just followed where it led. Plus, a meal was never a bad idea.