  
Present;
"I have a mission for you, Stocke."
For many centuries the continent of Vainqueur had been slowly turning to desert - but up until recently this erosion had been manageable. In the past ten years, however, the desertification had sped up to the point that Vainqueur's two dominant powers were waging war over arable land. Granorg - the gigantic military power to the west, ruled by a long royal line - fought Alistel - the eastern nation, born when a faction led by the Prophet Noah had split away from Granorg.
Amongst this political turmoil lived a man named Stocke. Stocke had begun his military career in Alistel some time ago, originally serving in the army - where he had met his best friend, Rosch - but was eventually poached for Specint, an unofficial military agency created by a man named Heiss. Stocke excelled and quickly became Heiss's top agent, albeit not without whispers of favoritism.
One day, Stocke was called into Heiss's office and told his next job would be to rescue another agent from contested territory, and that despite his protests, he would have two subordinates on this mission - Raynie, who excelled in offensive magic and wielded a spear, and Marco, a swordsman who was skilled in healing magic. He also recieved a book - according to Heiss, the "White Chronicle". "Think of it as a lucky charm," Stocke was told.
The mission went horribly wrong. Granorg command had somehow been warned of Alistel movements, and Stocke and the others were trapped. Marco and Raynie sacrificed themselves to give Stocke a chance to escape, and the man himself was heavily wounded. Perhaps the story would have ended for him there, but then, suddenly, the White Chronicle pulled him into Historia.
Historia was a realm outside of time, run by two beings appearing to be children - Teo and Lippti. The duo told Stocke that he had been accepted as a wielder of the White Chronicle, and that he would now have the ability to time travel, to redo events. They warned him that he would be limited to events that he had himself experienced, and that if he died, his own timeline would cease permanently; however, they asked only that he share with no one anything about the White Chronicle.
At first, Stocke's only focus was saving Raynie and Marco. With foreknowledge of events, as well as some extra strength granted to him by Historia's guardians, he succeeded. But then Rosch visited him in the infirmary after the mission, asking him to leave SpecInt and rejoin the army to help with a new brigade. And here Stocke had a choice, one that split the timeline violently in two: stay with Heiss, or join Rosch.
Teo and Lippti once more appeared to him, informing him of the magnitude of this decision, and finally telling him their goal - to prevent the extinction of the world. There was only one timeline where the world survived, among many, many others where the desertification smothered all life, and Teo and Lippti could only intervene through a wielder of a Chronicle. Even worse, the White book was not the only one - there was also a Black Chronicle, wielded by another who was trying to accelerate the death of the continent.
The timelines were split. In the first, Stocke remained an agent of Specint, and was sent to assassinate Eruca, princess of the royal family of Granorg. He soon learned that the royal family of Granorg had for many years been performing a ritual that delayed mana drain from the land, slowing the spread of the desert. However, the current queen Protea, who had married into the family, was unable to perform it, and was self-centered enough to keep Eruca from doing so instead. Prioritizing Alistel's survival over its victory, Stocke joined with Eruca - who, oddly, seemed to recognize something familiar about him - to try and rebel against Granorg's current rulership and perform the ritual. He became known as a traitor to Alistel.
In the other, Stocke became a Sergeant under Captain Rosch, and their unit was deployed to fight against Granorg. They soon discovered that Alistel was being sabotaged from within. General Hugo, effective leader of Alistel through faking his status as mouthpiece of the Prophet Noah, had been leaking information for his own gain. As a result nearly the entirety of Rosch's unit was destroyed. Stocke and Rosch were forced to take refuge in Celestia, the smaller, hidden kingdom of the beastfolk, while Hugo proclaimed holy war against the entirety of the continent. From Celestia, Stocke and his companions - joined by Aht, a young Beastkind shaman, as well as a Beastkind of a different race named Gafka - plotted to defeat Hugo.
Past;"You're... actually my...!"
The intrigues, however, went even deeper.
First was Eruca's ritual. To both her and Stocke's distaste, the way the ritual worked was this: one child in each generation of the royal family was designated as a Sacrifice. At some point in their life, they were killed - and then, their sibling would lend half of their soul to revive the first. The original sibling would use the Chronicles, possessions of the Granorg royal family, to travel through time until they became willing to sacrifice themselves to pause the desertification. Then their soul would be returned to the second sibling, who used the power from time travel gathered within to protect the world. The return of the soul would kill the first permanently.
Initially Eruca had been the sibling designated as Sacrifice. However, Eruca's brother Ernst had spoken up against their tyrannical father and - in a moment of the king's temper - been executed. This left the royal family no choice but to use him as the Sacrifice instead.
Unfortunately, shortly after he'd been revived with half of Eruca's soul, an assassin had entered the palace. They seemingly killed both Ernst and his father and vanished with the bodies. The ritual remained incomplete, and the desertification continued.
Years later an older Eruca, though traumatized by the events of her brother's death and deeply disgusted by the ritual, was forced to concede the necessity of somehow performing it.
Then the wielder of the Black Chronicle was revealed: Heiss.
Heiss had, many years ago, been the uncle to Eruca and Ernst - though he favoured only the first. He had also been the the designated Sacrifice of his generation; he had escaped, also leaving the ritual incomplete. He'd hidden in Alistel under a new name and woven himself into that nation's government.
When Ernst was executed, Heiss was horrified to learn of his nephew's fate. Angry about the fact that no one, no one in the royal family had ever tried to create an alternative to the ritual, furious about the various atrocities he had witnessed over his years using the Black Chronicle, incensed about all the corruption he'd seen among the leaders of not only Granorg, but the other nations of Vainqueur as well, he decided - the world didn't deserve to continue. It should all turn into desert. Heiss would be the last living human on the continent - bar one other.
Heiss traveled in time and kidnapped his beloved nephew at a time when Ernst was newly revived - pausing to kill Ernst and Eruca's father along the way. He used the Black Chronicle to wipe clean Ernst's memory so that his nephew wouldn't remember the ritual and wouldn't willingly return to die. Then he dropped Ernst off in a nation where he wouldn't be recognized as a royal sibling - Alistel. A nation where the young man joined the military, and was moved into the new Specint branch, under the watchful eye of his uncle.
Ernst became Stocke.
Future;"Very well... Then I'll just use the Chronicle again!"
The whole time, Heiss had been interfering in the timeline, causing events to speed up the desertification of the world, in order to save Stocke's life. It was immaterial to Heiss that this would end the rest of the world; he wanted it to end. He had only given Stocke the White Chronicle because he assumed his nephew, after learning of the ritual without the burden of royal duty, would join him willingly.
Unfortunately for Heiss, his memory-wipe backfired. Where Ernst had been angry about the ritual, but honor-bound, Stocke had made close friends in Alistel and elsewhere. He valued their lives far, far higher than his own; whatever Stocke thought of the ritual, not going through with it wasn't ever a choice for him.
Stocke, in both timelines, pushed events to a resolution. In the main timeline, Stocke and his companions recruited the desert mercenary nation of Cygnus, as well as the Beastkind kingdom of Forgia, to fight against Granorg. They deposed Protea and replacing her with Eruca. In the second timeline, Stocke and the others fought their way through Alistellian troops to Hugo and managed to slay the now power-crazed man. The resolution of events caused the timelines to merge into the main one, leaving only vague impressions of the alternate on everyone but Stocke and Heiss. Finally, Stocke prepared for the ritual.
Heiss, in a last-ditch effort to save Stocke's life and make the man join him, attempted to force the issue by escalating events in ways that would cause the desertification to be irreversible. Stocke and Heiss battled furiously across time - and Stocke won.
Eruca, refusing to take Stocke's life, attempted to perform the ritual on her own, and failed. Stocke convinced her that his sacrifice was necessary, said farewell to all of his companions, and entered Historia to allow his soul to be absorbed.
The defeated Heiss was still in Historia. In the last moment, he refused to allow this to happen to the man he still thought of as his nephew. For a soul to be eligible for the ritual, it needed a longing to protect something, and though Heiss didn't care about the world, he did want to save Stocke. He forced the ritual to accept him as Sacrifice instead - leaving Stocke free to return home.
...in theory. In practice, there's still so much time-travel clean-up this boy's gotta take care of you don't even know, and ideally shouldn't he make sure the ritual doesn't have to happen again?
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makehistoria) wrote2014-08-13 10:45 pm
