Chapter One
Out of Town Guests
Richard stood in the cool early morning air on the side of the street, the 'Do Not Cross' sign blinking in his face as cars sped past. Spring was in full swing in the city, and with that came a light drizzle that would probably stay most of the day. Richard really didn't care that he was getting wet, or that he had forgotten his umbrella yet again; there was a lot more going on in his mind that made everything else seem insignificant. Life seemed insignificant.
For the last two months Richard had been going through the motions and doing what was expected of him, but everything had lost what little appeal it might have ever had for him. He was still trying to piece together what had happened, but hadn't been able to make any sense of it at all. None of it seemed possible, and his brain hurt when he thought about it too much. And it wasn't just the strange trip he had taken, even though it was probably the biggest surprise that had happened to him.
A little over three months ago Richard had magically been transported to a whole other world that was extremely different from Earth. There things that you would only see in movies and books were actually real, like magic and dragons. It had been both the best and worst experience of his life; best because he made actual friends, and worst because he had been forced to lie for them about who he really was. Unlike on Earth, where he was hated by everyone and was simply a high school kid in his final year, on this other world he was a powerful male mage with access to strange and wonderful magic, and the long lost son of a noble woman who was one of the nicest people he had ever met. There he had had friends, a family, and even a fiance.
It had all been a lie though, and that lie of a life had come crashing down around him on one fateful night that haunted his memories and dreams. During the winter tournament at the Academy of Magic, that he attended as a first year student, the royal palace had been attacked. It had happened right in the middle of his duel with his fiance, Daiya, the Dark Elf princess; and he, along with Daiya, and his fake aunt, Lythia, rushed to the palace fearing the worst. And what they found truly was the worst.
He could still smell the horrible stench of blood and flames, and sights of seeing so many bodies littering the once beautiful grounds and palace interior sprouted up whenever he closed his eyes. So many lives had been lost that night, and among them was the Queen of Alysia herself. Queen Lystia, the woman who not only believed his crazy story of being from another world, but also took it upon herself to give him a place to stay and promised to find a way to send him back. Seeing her lifeless eyes and the blood pooling around her limp body had nearly crushed him, but it sadly wasn't even the worst part of that night.
Aura, the woman who pretended to be his mother, had herself been injured pretty badly and was near where they had found the Queen. She had told them that Princess Reiea had been taken, and the three students quickly took off in search of her. And found her they did. However, they hadn't been prepared for what transpired next. Most of that was a little foggy in Richard's mind, and he could really only remember a woman trying to kill him, some kind of magical barrier that he couldn't break even with his most powerful spell, and then being frozen in a block of ice and slowly dying. And it was that ice that dominated his memories of that particular fight, and he really couldn't even remember how he had gotten out of it.
However, what he did remember, and with great clarity, is how the fight ended and who ended it. The barrier that kept him from escaping, and prevented people from coming to his rescue, had been shattered with a single devastating attack that made anything he had ever done look like some petty trick a kid would learn to show off to his friend. It was devastating, but what happened next dwarfed the shock that he should have felt from such a powerful display; because next the person who had cast the spell revealed themselves, and even now, months afterwards, Richard was still having trouble believing what had happened at that moment.
