Short Part 1
The flyer on the community bulletin board had promised “A Journey into the Echoes of the Past.”
Arthur Pendelton, a man whose greatest daily excitement was successfully peeling a hard-boiled egg without tearing the whites, had envisioned a quiet afternoon of watercolor paintings, perhaps a lecture on Victorian pottery, and definitely a complimentary tea biscuit.
Instead, he was currently standing in the middle of a damp forest, wearing thirty pounds of mismatched steel plating, holding a broadsword that felt suspiciously like a motorized weed-whacker chassis, and facing a man named "Gary from Logistics" who was screaming about the blood of his ancestors.
"To me, brothers!" Gary bellowed. Gary was wearing a tunic made from what looked like a faux-leopard skin rug from IKEA and a helmet that was clearly a modified colander. "The dark forces of the northern realm approach!"
Arthur blinked behind his visor, which kept sliding down and clipping the tip of his nose. "Excuse me, Gary? I think there’s been a clerical error. I signed up for the historical appreciation seminar. The one in Room 4B?"
"There is no Room 4B in the Kingdom of Oakhaven!" Gary roared, raising a foam-padded battleaxe. "There is only victory, or the crows!"
