Realm Keepers 01 - Realm Keepers

Millennia, even. It was not a time of peace, necessarily. Men have always fought. I imagine it is the same on True Earth today. But compared to what was to come, those were happy times. Nations fought, but they reconciled their differences in the end. There was fighting, and theft, and greed; but there were also great deeds, heroic acts, and the building of tremendous civilizations. All the flaws and all the finery of the races of True Earth flourished, fueled by magic. And then Chaos came.”
    “What kind of chaos?” asked Raven.
    “No kind of chaos. Chaos itself. The very raw, undiluted essence of strife and turmoil. You see, there are other worlds in the fabric, and sometimes the loom casts our threads close together, sometimes far away.”
    “What’s that mean?” asked Blade.
    “You know, alternate dimensions, that kind of thing,” put in Calvin. He turned back to Greystone. “And so Chaos came from one of these…threads, right?”
    “It appears you will be good for something in this story, after all,” said Greystone. His words were gruff, but his eyes were pleased. “Yes, Chaos came pouring into True Earth all at once, and like a hurricane. We had never fought something like it before. It was dark, and terrible. Where its creatures spread, the land died, trees and plants fell to rot and ruin, and animals could not survive, unless they changed into terrible, twisted versions of their former selves.”
    “This was on Earth?” Miles asked skeptically. “Listen, man, I may be bad at history, but I’m sure I would have remembered something like this.”
    “It was millennia ago,” Greystone said, shrugging. “Before history had even begun. Very few tales tell of this even here in Midrealm, and they have lost much of the truth of the matter. But some of us have the memory. Some scholars remember and teach it to their pupils, who pass it on in turn. And all accounts are very clear: to protect Earth from Chaos, we created Midrealm.”
    “You’ve said that a couple of times now,” I said. “What is Midrealm?”
    Calvin looked at me like I was an idiot. “This,” he said, waving his arm around. “Where we are. This world, or dimension or whatever. This is Midrealm.”
    “Correct again,” Greystone said. It seemed he was growing to like Calvin despite himself. My twerp of a cousin could be annoying, but right now he was the smartest person in our whole group.
    “Wait, so we’re not even on planet Earth any more?” I asked, feeling my heart leap into my throat. Tightness seized my chest as my breathing grew short. “Oh my God, we have to get back home. I can’t be stuck here for the rest of my life!”
    “First of all,” Greystone said, and his voice was like a solid rock trying to stabilize me. “You are still, technically, on Earth. Just not your Earth. It is…a copy. A duplicate that was created in order to hold Chaos at bay.”
    “A parallel universe, cuz. Remember?” said Calvin.
    “You’re the only one who remembers anything about this, because this is crazy,” Raven said. “Alternate universes? Magic? I mean, this has gotta be a dream, or something. No way I’m actually here with you all and we’re all actually talking about this like it’s not the craziest thing ever.”
    “I’m not a dream,” said Tess, so quietly I barely heard her.
    “Neither am I,” Miles said. “Unless you’re all fake, and this is my dream.”
    “I’m every girl’s dream,” said Blade with a smirk, making a show of brushing back his slightly longish hair.
    “Ugh,” said Raven and I at the exact same time.
    Greystone looked like he was reciting some sort of very private and very urgent prayer for patience as he waited for us all to stop talking again. He caught my eye and asked through gritted teeth, with what I was sure was incredible restraint: “May I continue, my Lady?”
    “Of course,” I said, surprised. “You don’t need my permission.”
    “Not entirely accurate, but we’ll shortly discuss that further,” he said. “Now, the ancient wizards created Midrealm, the world in which you now find yourself. And in order to use it as a buffer between True Earth and Chaos, all magic had to be removed from Earth to Midrealm. Slowly, over the course of centuries, it faded away from your world, and now is felt or seen only as faint echoes of its former glory. For it is magic itself that is the stuff of Midrealm, and the binding agent that holds the entire universe together,