Anachronistic: a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place.

  “Your Majesty,” Tristan said as he bowed his elven head low before the throne.

  “Rise, my friend,” King Wrolfson said in a voice that seemed too gruff to belong to an elf. He smiled as Tristan straightened. “You know you needn’t bother with pleasantries when I’ve been waiting nigh unto a week for your solution!” The king rubbed his hands together with nervous anticipation. “What have you come up with, Mage?”

  “Sire, I believe I've created the Hero Legend spell. It is a complicated spell, but with the help of the court magician,” he paused to nod respectfully at the middle-aged bearded human wearing a red and white robe sitting next to the King. “We can successfully cast it and gain aid from heroes who’re from another world.”

  “Are you certain?” the court magician asked. “That spell has only been theorized. Do you know what will happen if you made a mistake?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Tristan said, looking straight into Derek’s eyes, as if in challenge.

  “Is it dangerous?” King Wrolfson asked.

  “Only for those casting the spell,” said Tristan. “If cast improperly, there is a slight chance the caster will be pulled into the Hero’s world instead. And we’ll cast it away from the castle so no innocent bystander gets hurt.”

  His words hung in the air like tar. Everyone knew this spell was their last-ditch effort to defend the kingdom!

  However, if Tristan and the mages who help him cast the spell are pulled out of this world, the kingdom would be utterly lost without the most powerful mages to protect it.

  The king’s scowl stayed plastered across his face as he began to slowly nod.

  “I see no other way,” he said finally. Turning to the court magician, he asked, “Derek, are you up to helping Tristan with this spell?”

  “It is as you wish,” Derek said with a respectful bow of his head.

  “Then there’s no time to lose,” Tristan said before turning on his heel and leaving the courtroom.

  Derek glared at Tristan’s retreating figure. He had no idea why the king put up with his flippant attitude; the disrespect of leaving his highness’s presence before being excused would get any other man flogged!

  Wrolfson stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  Derek waited patiently.

  “Will there be any problems, Derek?” He asked softly.

  “No sire,” Derek said, quiet and certain. “I will not allow my row with Tristan to interfere with something as important as the fate of this world.”

  King Wrolfson nodded appreciatively.

  “Then you are dismissed to go assist with the spell.”

  Derek bowed and exited without another word, his red cloak billowing dramatically.

  Tristan stood a little ways from the castle and its surrounding fief, next to a copse of trees. He enlisted Hror, a dwarf wizard who held the second highest wizard rank beneath Derek. The two of them waited for another half hour before Derek decided to grace them with his presence. It took all Tristan’s willpower not to clear his throat loudly when Derek arrived.

  “Ready?” Tristan asked Derek instead.

  “Of course,” Derek said simply. He wasn’t rude, per se. Just abundantly annoying. Always. All the time. In every way.

  Tristan did clear his throat then, in order to focus on the task at hand. He pulled out his bag of sand, only a little bigger than a coinpurse. Hror and Derek did the same. They each poured their sand in a circle, so that all three sides barely touched, but didn’t cross over. Once made, they raised their hands in the air and simultaneously moved them into the somatic gestures they’d prearranged from reading the spellscroll. Tristan began to speak the incantation, and once he was halfway through, the three circles began to glow a promising maroon color. Five minutes later, their somatic and verbal components concluded, and the sand’s color darkened and changed to a deep illuminescent purple.

  Hror collapsed to his hands and knees, but Tristan and Derek stayed standing. Everyone was breathing hard, and Tristan could feel his hands shaking from the strain on his emptied mana pool. Hror retched on the grass.

  The purple light filled the inside of the three circles and grew brighter and brighter. Their violet beams shone straight up, as if held within the bounds of their circles by an invisible force.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Brutus saw a growing purple light, just ahead of him. Funny, he thought. I always fought the ligh’ would be white. The purple grew brighter and bigger until it took on a red hue around the edges and encompassed him in its light.

  Brutus’ barometer shifted, and his optics glowed in his vision again. Am I a cyborg in ‘eaven? he mused. He always assumed he’d return to being human, but if he’s honest with himself (which he always was) he much preferred it this way.

  His (standard setting?) optics data slowly came into focus, but he only took notice of the interesting ones:

  FUEL: 100.00%

  RESERVE FUEL: 100.00%

  BAROMETER (in. Hg): 880…887…895…913…944…the numbers got boring after that.

  ALL SYSTEMS CONNECTED AND AT OPTIMAL PARAMETERS.

  He hadn’t seen readings this good since he first installed the engine core in his chest! Even his weapons were all fully loaded! Why would he need weapons in heaven? He could only think of one reason, and that made him really excited!

  He tried to look down or around, but aside from his optics data, all he saw was purple, purple, and a little red. Dark red. Well, brighter red now. Okay now it was more red than purple. Okay now it was only purple on the edges with lots of red inside…

  He had a growing suspicion that it wasn’t heaven he was about to enter.

  In a desperate attempt to save his soul, Brutus started praying as hard as he could!

  Please forgive me for all dem people I done killed! It wasn’t nofin’ personal-like. I’s jus’ doin’ me job, see? An’ anova fing! I’s already apologized to me mum for stealin’ dem crystals she done baked every day, bu’ I didn’t really know if I’s supposed to apologize to you too, see?

  The red light grew brighter, until it felt like he was staring at the sun through closed eyelids, back when he had human eyes.

  Oh dea’ God please le’ me go to ‘eaven an’ not ‘ell! I’ll change mah ways! I can’t promise no mo’ killin’, but I do promise no mo’ bad words will eva come outa me mouf again!

  As if in answer, a pinpoint of blue appeared in the center. The blue grew as the red light dissipated from the center to the edges, like he was exiting a creepy red tunnel and entering a creepy blue tunnel.

  A blue screen covered his vision, and he stared at it for quite a while until he noticed on his optics:

  INCLINOMETER: 93*

  He realized he was lying on his back staring up at a blue ceiling. Wait… no, that was a blue sky. It looked completely unnatural for the sky to be blue. It had no business being that color.

  Then again, Brutus supposed God could make things into whatever color he darn well pleased!

  He sat up with an abundance of ease, as if all his mechanics had been replaced with fresh factory parts! He couldn’t help but grin at that.

  He saw all sorts of bright unnatural colors around him, like green and blue and brown… well, actually brown was pretty natural. Everyone had some brown every day; most natural color in the world, really.

  After taking in the sight of miles and miles of empty ground covered with millions of little green hairs and spotted with trees, Brutus finally noticed the people around him.

  Suddenly someone appeared out of purple and flew into one of the trees at 76 mph! That must have been the Overseer! If he’d still had eyebrows they would’ve gone very high up his forehead.

  He turned to the others and saw one of them started laughing his guts out.

  The moment Sebastian grabbed the Life Stone, he thought he’d had a stroke. But then he remembered he didn’t have a heart, so he just stood in inky purpleness feeling very confused.

  Relief filled him when the pinprick of blue started to grow in front of him. At least something was happening!

  His entire field of vision soon followed, showing him a few trees just ahead, and a magnificent castle like he’d heard about in faraway lands. Lastly, he felt the comfort of Fang’s metallic side against his palm. He also briefly noticed there were two standing figures to his left and right.

  Then time seemed to continue, because he was suddenly moving forward at the same speed he’d been running before. His feet sunk into the soft dirt, and he stumbled a few steps before falling to his side.

  He turned his fall into a roll, and he stood with his laser pistol already in hand, ready to defend himself from this new threat.

  Then the Overseer flew right past him insanely fast and smashed into one of the trees. Branches cracked and splintered, and leaves exploded around her like green fireworks.

  For a moment he just stared at the mutilated tree and the Overseer’s body entangled inside it. Then a bark of laughter burst from his lips. It kept coming. He couldn’t stop it! His sides cramped and he had to put his hands on his knees so he didn’t fall over from lack of oxygen as he laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Tristan stood tense and uncertain as the sand dispersed, allowing the purple beams to start morphing into humanoid figures. In truth, he’s not the one who decided who came through with the spell. The spell simply guaranteed that whoever came would have the power to aid him in this war.

  The first to appear must have had a giantess for a mother, because even lying on his back, his armored chest reached past Tristan’s knees. Being part-elf, that was a good two-and-a-half feet.

  At first, Tristan thought him to be dead, because he wasn’t breathing and Tristan couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut underneath his strange metallic spectacles. Then he sat up in such an elegant and precise manner that Tristan immediately felt impressed!

  But the lopsided and ridiculous smile that followed, distorting his armored face, did nothing to enhance the giant’s foreign features.

  The next to fully take shape was another humanoid with strange armor like the first, but only in patches around his body. Tristan didn’t think that’d work very well in combat, but he reserved judgement until he could witness its effectiveness.

  What Tristan found incredibly odd, however, was the large feline beside the man. It was decked out in full plate, unlike any armor he’d ever seen for a war beast. Steel covered its entire body, including its claws! No animal could hold that much weight and withstand that much constraint and still be effective in combat, could they?

  The spell specifically could only call three beings and whatever items they were holding when they accepted his call, so Tristan was intrigued indeed to discover how this man had tricked the spell into allowing his pet to follow him.

  Tristan did not see the final figure, except to notice that it was a female, before she flew past him at a tremendous speed and smashed headlong into a large tree, pulverizing half its branches and no doubt killing her instantly.

  He and Derek gasped in unison. He felt appalled to think that one of the heroes was already dead so soon after being called! Then he wondered if that’s how the second had brought the feline: a sort of quid pro quo.

  Tristan never expected what happened next: the second man, seeing his dead comrade, started laughing uproariously! He exploded into fits and cackles that left him hunched over and wheezing.

  Tristan exchanged a wary glance with Derek, who looked as concerned as Tristan felt. He knew they were both thinking the same thing.

  Maybe this was a big mistake…