Kartar: Return of the Guardians

Prologue: The Musician

It was his natural talent that had secured the Musician his high position in both the Amazonian and Gargarean kingdoms, now finally allied after decades of segregation and separation. People in both lands, equally,  wished to see his compositions and orchestras. The King of Gargareans himself had the Musician play the piano or the harp or whatever it was that the mood struck him every night, right before he retired to the royal bedchambers with the Queen of Amazons. 

The Musician was happy to do so, for it procured the long lasting peace between the long feuding kingdoms. Indeed, it was the Musician's charge when the two monarchs had been brought together many years ago. What once was a neutral, diplomatic alliance had blossomed into true love and romance and the Musician witnessed it all, right from the beginning. It had kept him busy, and it had kept his thoughts away from his previous life.

Until tonight. Tonight, his old life crept up in his memories and pressed upon him urgently. Tonight, everything was to change. He could ignore his own life no longer.

The Musician had only been thirteen years old when he stumbled from his world, Earth, into this one, named Wynd. His teen years had been lawless and adventurous, filled with new friends, dangerous enemies, and countless stories to recount as he grew older.

He had thought he was invincible. He had thought that his life would be wonderful as it was forever. Of course, he was wrong. His young self was mostly always wrong. But it hadn't mattered back then: he had his friends to help him out of any undesirable situations. And they had gotten into many. 

It was this world that he had become a man. He had his first and second and third loves, and many more beyond that. He had lost himself, and found again. Sometimes he would slip and think of this world as home. He had traveled across Wynd much more than Earth, he knew this one more deeply than the other. He had swam in the deepest of oceans, he had flown higher than anything could have in the other. His passion and fury both blossomed here and he had matured here. This was where he belonged, though he had had to break his connection with the other. It was as if he had moved out from his parent's home and made a home somewhere else. It was quite literal, the Musician thought. He had left his home. And he had made a new one.

They had all grown up here. Some of them had gotten married. They'd had children, so had he. They drifted apart. The Musician hadn't seen most of them for many years. He did not miss them though. He missed who they had been. And most of all he missed what he could have been.

Kyler was his name on Wynd. It was a name he had chosen. Sometimes in the middle of the night, when there was no one to hear, he would whisper his real name to himself. His birth name, his name from Earth. He felt as though he were two men. His heart was broken in two pieces. One half stayed on Wynd, the other on Earth. One with his family, and one with his home. He could not bear to be away from either world, and he sat on a precipice of longing, always. He had the decision to stay or go, and he could not do either without wishing for another option. His life was either full of options, or not any at all. It was something that made him who he was, the fire in his anger, the reason behind the rage.

And now, his choices were becoming less and less by the minute.

The Gargarean King was missing. And the Queen of Amazons, who had gone after him, had not been heard from in months. The Musician suspected the King of Irela, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the Northern Quarter, King Samran was behind the missing monarchs. But the Gargareans were blind with anger when the King went missing and the Queen was forced to follow the deadly trail leading to her husband. Then Beryl Island had neither king nor a queen. All they had were the Council and the three royal children who could not agree with anything. 

The Musician had wondered whether the oldest, Princess Meira, would proclaim herself the new Queen, but he had underestimated her badly, for she did everything she could to find out what was going on. She sent diplomats to speak with the King of Irela, but none returned. She sent spies, but they disappeared. She hired seers and magicians, sorcerers and sorceresses, but to no avail. No one could find out what had happened to the king or the queen.