PARACOSM: The Call

Chapter 1: In Which Craig Dresses Up To Go Out

Have you ever done something so big that it's always in your mind afterwards? Everything you do, you compare to it, was it as good, as bad, as embarrassing. Every decision is made with it in mind. Everything is eclipsed by this one act. 

Don't believe me?

Read on. And a warning to any parents reading this, this could happen to you too. If it hasn't then you can't understand the feelings I was feeling that night. And if this has ever happened to you, then you have my sincerest sympathy and hope that you who have lost a child know that there is someone out there that knows the pain that you are feeling.

My name is Craig Jennings. I'm twenty years old, and I live in Wobbegong, a small town a few hours drive along the Great Ocean Road away from Melbourne. And this all started on a Wednesday night in the summer of 2005. My wife Nessie and I had finished putting up the Christmas decorations for Christmas that year, I'd finished bringing in the tree and making dinner for tonight, and we had moved on to preparing for our plans that evening.

We decided to go out with some friends to a music festival. The sort of normal things couples do normally on nights they have off.

Except for this group of friends were not Nessie's friends from university and this wasn't some country music festival. These friends were my old questing companions, the ones that had helped me in my quest to slay Hesperus the Foul, Scourge of the Stars, and liberate Faltarsia from his wicked menace, and this festival would be taking place in Cassiopeia City, the capital of the Human lands in Faltarsia.

Yeah, I should probably explain all that. 

See, when I was twelve, I discovered a portal to another world in my dad's garage. Wanting to escape the pain of secondary school and my parent's divorce, I went through and would spend the next few years jumping backwards and forwards between Faltarsia and Earth, learning magic and going on adventures with my two best friend, Giovanna of the Sorcerers Guild and Pabulo Longspear, prince of Cassiopia City. 

Things were fun then. Adventures in Faltarsia became the high light of my week. What would we do this week? Learning to sword fight with the royal knights? Hunting manticores with Aldergor? Searching for some rare potion ingredient? These were my escape from the bullies at school, the teachers, my parents and it was great. 

Until they wasn't. 

It started with the goblin attacks on the city. They weren't after the people, they wanted the fallen stars that served as the source of Faltarsia's magic. And after a while, then monsters started appearing on Earth. Yep, actual monsters appeared in sleepy little Wobbegong, attacking, scaring, killing innocent people. 

All in the name of killing the one person that could stop there master. 

Yep, me.

At first I'd tried to play it the same way I'd always played it. Deal with it during the holidays and weekends, go to school, do homework, fight demon dogs that Wednesday, then go back next weekend. That's how I'd always played it and I had a life on Earth, school, friends (kinda) and a girlfriend. I couldn't just leave.

Well it didn't work.

The first few attacks, I got lucky and no one died. Injured and scared, but not dead. Then one of Nessie's girlfriends died, burnt to death trapped in a cabin at the school camp by a fire elemental. All while I was enjoying a beach party at the lifesaving club.

It was a horrible way to go.

And I had no way of excusing myself that that.

I still look back on myself before that night and wonder, what the hell had I been thinking? How had I just through that I could skip parts of the war because I had double maths that Wednesday? Or because I wanted to go to a beach party with my girlfriend? People were dying, monsters were preparing to kill, and I'd been worried about maths and girls and playing hockey?