Chapter 1: The Beginning

Well, fuck me! How does a twenty-first-century thirty-five-year-old Earth guy survive in the Dark-Ages as I saw them, and on an unknown planet?

Not bloody easily is what I’m telling you. It all started out innocently enough.

I’d gone out early one morning to do some shopping. On the way home, I noticed a Flea market was going on at the local school when I rode past on my pushy. On a whim, I stopped and went in. I didn’t really need anything, as I was just cruising and amusing myself.

No one was waiting for me to get home. I didn’t live near family and had been single by choice for several of years. I decided to justify my stopping by deciding that I could pick up some cheap books to cover my flight to Mt Isa the next day if there were any worth selecting.

My name is Gray Green, yeah I know, my mother’s sad sense of humour. I worked as a Travelling Trainer and let my company send me all over the State to fill in when other trainers were sick, left suddenly or were on long service leave.

I lived in a single bedroom apartment in a high-rise building on the outer edge of Brisbane’s City Centre in a suburb called Southbank. I didn’t own any pets, as they are way too much trouble when I could be away for a month or more at a time.

I’m about 190cm high and about 85kg’s ringing wet. I run and ride a pushy in town and don’t even own a car. My hair is kept short and is a reddish nutmeg colour. My completion is what I call a light olive. I tan rather than burn and don’t have any freckles.

My eyes are a green/grey. Storm eyes my dad used to call them. Storm was his nickname for me, and I use it as my name. He’s been gone for a long time now. The nose doesn’t own the face but has a bump on the top and a slight twist from being broken.

I guess I’m good looking enough that I can find company if I feel like it. The shoulders are broad enough and pecs passable. I think my legs are my best feature. The running and bike riding kept them in shape.

Apparently, I have a cute butt, but I don’t look at it often enough to say otherwise. I do know it’s a pain to buy pants long enough to fit my waist as well. I’ve been told I don’t look as old as I am. Possibly the short hair with no grey and a healthy body gives that impression. I take care of my body and have never had a wife or kids.

Anyway, as I walked around I spied this young guy that had a big sign that said ‘Estate Sale’. Not many people were at his tables, and he was bored, so he was happy to explain why he was there. It turned out that his Grandmother had died.

She’d packed a heap of her stuff up into about twenty odd transport sized book boxes. Her last will had stipulated he had to sell the stuff as is. If he just threw it out, she would haunt him, and he wouldn’t get the rest. Each box had a number and a price tag. They were ridiculously cheap like a tenna for the whole box.

He had to record the number and price for his solicitor. He even took a picture of the buyer, if they didn’t mind. The old bat had a few million put aside and some expensive property worth, even more, he said. I guessed that was what he really wanted and he was going through the motions to get his hands on it.

Unless he could prove he sold the stuff, the money would go to an Animal Aid Society, as well as her haunting him. He said if I’d had met her that would be enough to scare anyone. He had the boxes open so we could see what was in them. Some of the stuff honestly looked like junk.

I came across one with rows of old fantasy fiction novels on top, written before the year two thousand. There were quite a few books that I was sure that I hadn’t read. I love to read real books in spite of the modern technologies, with mobile phones, portable pads, computers and Peepers being the norm.

With all the travel that I did, books were a good way to kill time. You didn’t have to turn it off on the plane, and they didn’t go flat. I decided for ten bucks, it was a bargain, just for the top rows of books.

Some of the books looked like they belonged to a couple of fascinating series’ that I haven’t read. There were even novels that were written by authors I knew and liked, but I couldn’t remember reading these particular books.

I paid the man and then wondered how I was to get the box home. Luckily, I lived close by. I got him to put a sold sign on the box, and we taped it back up. I took the bike and my shopping home and walked back.

He’d sold a couple more boxes and we chatted a bit longer, about the crap people would buy. I wished him luck in selling the rest.

I collected my treasures and headed home again.

I put my shopping away.

I sorted out my camping backpack and my smaller day pack ready for my trip. I cleaned up the apartment, as I was going to be away for seven weeks. My eighteen-year-old niece was going to house sit, and I realised how little I owned when I cleaned. She had a set of keys, and she would take possession tomorrow.

On a whim, I scribbled on a piece of paper, “Mary, if I don’t come back, I, hereby will my apartment and all it contains to you. Mum can have the bank account. Love, Uncle Storm.”

I didn’t have a real will, and I didn’t know if this was legal or not. They were the only two people in my family I had any time for anyway. I couldn’t stand the rest and avoided family parties like the plague.

My mate Tom Gillian from next door dropped by for a beer, and I reminded him Mary would be here tomorrow. I asked him to look out for her. He saw the note on the table. “You have to have a witness for that to be legal,” he said.

Jokingly, I told him to sign it, so he did. He said I had to sign it too, so I added my signature and pinned it to the fridge for Mary. We finished the beer, and he left me to my packing.

I made a quick dinner of sandwiches and decided to rummage through the books as I ate. I knew that Mary would read any of the books I left behind. Then I found the metal box.

I found that its length was equal to the width of the book box. Its width was about half of the longer side. It was also about 15cm high when I got it out of its snug fit. It intrigued me, as I couldn’t for the life of me; see how to open the box.

I wiggled it, shook it and looked at the sides, but I couldn’t even see a seam or determine which side was the top. It was to light weight to be a solid block, but heavy enough to indicate it wasn’t empty. It didn’t make any noises so what was inside wasn’t loose.

I gave up and went back to looking at the books. I put the two series on the bookshelf and dropped the loose books on top to collect in the morning. I had to be up early, so I grabbed one of the books and headed to bed, as I was not ready for sleep.

For some odd reason, I had taken the metal box with me. I remember that I had one hand lying on the box when I read a strange passage in the book I had selected.

The hero had been orphaned and sent to a Priests Sect. To enter, he had to swear the following phrase: ‘I promise that I will learn to serve and to act in the best interests of the one people, to the best of my abilities’.

The phrase struck me as odd, and I said it out loud. I heard a clicking sound and then watched as my hand rose several centimetres off the bed with the top of the box pushing it up. The hair on the back of neck rose with it. I felt a shiver run through me and wondered what the hell had just happened.

We have all read the story of Pandora’s Box. I was wondering if I had just opened mine. I also learnt that like Pandora, I could no more shut the lid without looking than she could. I picked the box up and worked out which side was the front and opened the box.

I gasped. Inside, lay several pieces of jewellery in the padding. One piece was a thin woven band made with different precious metals for the bands. I suppose one would call it a diadem. It wasn’t that fancy or girly. However, it did have several precious gems studding the front.

I picked it out of the padding and placed it on my forehead. I shivered again as I received this really strange sensation that it was happy and content to belong to me. I was just about to pull it off when the lid of the box creaked.

I looked down and got distracted by the medallion on a chain. The chain seemed to be made of alternating links of the different metals that formed the thin bands of the diadem. It had a roundish medallion about 3cm by 4cm hanging from it.

I picked it up and looked at the medallion. A pale green square cut gem about 10mm square and about 4mm thick was in the centre. Four symbols were etched into the medallion surrounded the crystal. There was a hill, a flaming torch, a leaf and what looked like a cloud or wind, I wasn’t sure.

I turned it over to see the writing on the back. I know bloody well that I had never seen the language before but I could read it. This in itself was amazing, as I’m usually terrible at learning other languages.

The words on the top said, ‘I learn to serve’. The word underneath said what I interpreted as ‘Builder’. I smiled.

Well, that was appropriate.

I’m an electrician by my first official trade.

When I was growing up, I worked for my dad who was a builder and brickmaker. I had over the years, acquired a lot of knowledge and even completed the units of study to get accreditation as a builder.

I can build a modern house from foundation to roof in brick, steel or wood, then legally wire, and plumb it up, while I was at it. Dad and I built the house my mother still lives in.

I love my mum, but I just can’t live with her. I hate being nagged at and she and my older sister were champion naggers.

I’ve had a lot of jobs since I turned seventeen and scored my apprenticeship with a mate of my dad’s. Somewhere along the way, I had also picked up basic welding skills and their credits.

I even worked for a Smithy for a while in Tasmania. I had spent a couple of years backpacking Australia in my mid-twenties. He made his own horseshoes and nails and smelted other metals to make things to amuse himself with, and then he sold them as art objects.