Every hero needs a day off, right? Even if she is supposed to be responsible for saving all of Lore, preventing the planet from being destroyed is hard work. A hero sometimes deserves a vacation, and this was one of those times, especially after what had been happening recently.

So, I was taking what I felt was a well-deserved day off. After going through the reveal of that Doom Weapon guy, the horrid encroaching darkness, fighting that gigantic, horrid ultra mega darkness dragon, and having Warlic disappear, and generally being in a confused muddle, I was exhausted. So, all day, I had been trying to find a quiet space for myself to hide in. First, I holed myself up in the library of Oaklore Keep.

Maya was kind enough to leave me alone, and I was finally able to glean some relevant information about the Reset from one of the tomes. Ever since Lyra and I quested for the Wind Orb, I've puzzled over what the magical projection (which I found out was a technology-based imaging system called a hologram) named Kordana had meant by her comment about "the Reset." Apparently, Artix was a part of it, along with Cysero. It had something to do with very advanced technology that would make Lim cry with joy.

Before I could get very far though, Sir Ano came and started asking for my opinion on his (very terrible) new puns. As I was not in the mood for humor, I took a griffin over to Falconreach, and hid in the storage room at the back of the inn. I wanted to hide in the Guardian Tower library or the Libraseum, but the tower was always full of Guardians and the Libraseum wasn't open. They seemed to be short on librarians.

Serenity doesn't like the two guys who had recently started hanging out back there. This may be partly attributed to the fact that one of them, San Robin, wears a bright orange costume with an apron embossed with a picture of cheese. Ironically, he also seems to think that cheese is a fruit. His friend, Roblos, dresses like a bandit, so I can see why Serenity disapproves of them, although they do provide some pretty good weapons upgrades. She probably just doesn't want them to lower the reputation of her establishment.

I got to spend some very nice quiet time back there. Roblos and San Robin just sort of stood there, occasionally getting into fist fights about whether or not cheese was a fruit. Lyra was courteous of me as well, snuggling up next to me while I tried to formulate a plan to help Anomaly prosper.

My peace was disrupted when Milodith, accompanied by a stranger, barged in. To put it simply, I cannot stand Milodith. She's too loud and brash for my liking. She desperately wants to become a Guardian, and will do anything in her power to achieve her goal. Unfortunately, this includes challenging me to a duel when there's really no need to. She spent most of her time over in Doomwood, staying at Hunter's Paradise while battling the undead alongside Artix and studying the ways of a paladin. This, luckily, meant I rarely had to see her.

Unfortunately, it seemed like she was here now.

"Selene! A big metal box-thing with the word Phone on the side appeared in front of Cysero's forge. She was riding in it." The warrior stuck her thumb out in the direction of the stranger, who was wearing some rather unusual attire. Her clothing sort of reminded me of the people I met in Popsprocket, except she was human, and much taller than they were.

"My name is Astra, ma'am."

She looked incredibly uncomfortable, fidgeting awkwardly and avoiding my gaze.

She was kind of cute, actually, with her light green hair in buns with braids coming out of them. I forced myself to focus on the issue. This was not a time to be getting a crush on a girl from what was most likely from the past.

So, the phone booth was causing trouble again, huh? Typical. That thing has been trouble ever since it was first made, and I should know, since I was there.

I had been helping out Lim, the resident crazy weapons smith in our happy town of Falconreach. Cysero kept messing up his experiments, though, so Lim was not very pleased about that. Then, Cysero asked Lim for help on a project that he said "combined the power of science and magic together!" or something along those lines.

Although Lim was skeptical, he agreed to do it.

So, after I helped a bit by affixing an umbrella that had been struck by lightning to the top of a very familiar-looking phone box, Lim and Cysero, along with our Ravenloss liaison, worked some science-y magic on it, and we were introduced to the people we were building it for. Who turned out to be future versions of Cysero. One of them was a past version of Cysero, who apparently spelled his name Sys-Zero, actually, who I can only assume came from before the Reset.

And that wasn't even the first time I had encountered the phone box! It was right after Lyra had hatched; it had shown up, carrying future versions of Artix, Cysero, and Zhoom. They took me to a future version of Battleon, which now had its own Guardian Tower, apparently, and Lyra and I fought this gigantic titan intent on destroying the town!

That didn't actually damage the space-time continuum, though, so I guess it worked out in the end…

The last time I had seen that thing, Cysero and I were trying to defeat the Mysterious Stranger. Apparently, Cysero had been keeping the Bacon Orb in the basement of the Falconreach Guardian Tower. He had the brilliant idea of going back in time eight times and getting eight different versions of the Bacon Orb. Of course, as soon as we got to the eighth and final orb, this… thing showed up and started shooting at us with this laser wand-ish device.

According to Cysero, the thing was called Doctor When. I had heard of the Doctor, of course, the time-traveling alien vigilante who traveled around in something called a "Police Public Call Box" and looked like a human but had two hearts. This was obviously an alien trying to impersonate him. All of the books that I've read say that the Doctor carries something called a "sonic screwdriver" around with him. I asked some people from Popsprocket about it, and they said that it wasn't a weapon, and that it worked by manipulating sound waves. Well, the thing that Doctor When was shooting us with was basically an equivalent of a laser screwdriver, except for the fact that it wasn't really a screwdriver and was more like a chrono-blaster. After we knocked the alien out (and let me tell you, it took a long time, as well as the help of a good friend of mine), we were able to combine all the Bacon Orbs together to form an Ultimate Bacon Orb, which I fused with Lyra (who suddenly became gigantic!) to defeat the mega ultra darkness dragon formerly known as Fluffy, the Mysterious Stranger, the Ultimate Orb, and Prince Drakath.

I later found out that the reason that Doctor When was so angry at Cysero was because the maniac had once borrowed the alien's box. Apparently, that's where Cysero got the plans to build that thing.

Anyway, seeing the girl reminded me of one of the versions of Cysero that was in Cysero's tower when we completed the time machine. He had kept on insisting that his name was Sys-Zero, not Cysero.

I studied Astra more closely from my position on the floor. She was holding a book with the embossed symbol of an eagle on the cover, and was carrying a staff that looked like it was made of some kind of metal. The eagle symbol I recognized. I had seen something similar at a temple I had investigated at Valencia's request, on a piece of pottery that I had put back together.

"Hello, there. I'm Selene." I shifted into a more comfortable sitting position. Lyra was still hiding in my cloak. "Astra is such a beautiful name." I sent a soft smile up at her, and she blushed.

I mentally berated myself. No flirting! I cannot flirt with the girl from the past. Bad things will happen, she will have to leave, and I will be left lonely again. Therefore, absolutely no flirting.

"Thank you," she replied, looking down at her shoes.

"So, what do you need?"

Before Astra had a chance to answer, Milodith butted in. "She's a mage. You have connections. Get her to someone. Preferably someone sane, though. I don't think she'd appreciate getting shoved off onto Xan or Cysero." Astra hesitantly nodded in agreement.

So, Milodith wanted the time-traveller off her hands. Apparently she thought she had better things to do than play baby-sitter. Well, I wouldn't let her off the hook.

"Alright, but Milodith, you have to come with us."

Milodith crossed her arms and stuck out her lip in what was meant to be a tough version of a pout. "Why do I have to come?"

"Oh, I don't know… maybe because you're the one who brought her to me in the first place?"

Milodith ground her teeth together, but failed to come up with a good comeback. I turned to Astra. "So, you're a mage, huh? I have some friends that are really good at magic, although they aren't all mages. I can introduce you to them, if you like." I really didn't want her to have to deal with Nythera and her moods. Even if she had her dragon magic back, and had discovered and begun to master her void magic, she was still grumpy, especially after Warlic had disappeared. With all the times she had complained about him, I was sort of surprised how negatively she reacted to her mentor's disappearance.

"What about Warlic?" Milodith asked. I was tempted to facepalm. Trust Milodith to forget that Warlic had disappeared. Her (idiotic) question seemed to make Astra remember something, though.

"Warlic? Oh! Dean Warlic told me to deliver this letter to him before he sent me here. I didn't exactly know what that meant, but since you have a different version of Sys-Zero, I suppose you have a version of the dean as well! Can you take me to him? It's important."

I shifted uncomfortably. "Milodith? Don't you remember what happened to Warlic?"

Milodith gave me a blank look. "No. He came back after the Elemental craziness, right? Isn't that why there's a memorial statue of him? He supposedly died and came back to life, right?"

I sighed, putting a hand over my face. That's right. Milodith hadn't been with me at the final encounter with the darkness dragon. She didn't know about what had happened to the ancient mage. I hated to break the news to her, but I figured that she wouldn't really care one way or the other. Astra, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. Luckily, I wasn't the one to break the news to the (incredibly cute) time traveler.

"Warlic disappeared after the darkness," intoned Lyra, coming out from where she had been hiding under my cloak.

Astra didn't seem to acknowledge what Lyra had said. Instead, she was fixated on the dragon herself.

I had only been with Lyra for a year, and already we had a great bond. Before I had even known her, everyone seemed to be after her egg. Well, not everyone. Mainly Prince Drakath, Sepulchure's (incompetent) minion at the time. I still didn't know what exactly he was the prince of. I initially encountered the egg when I was wandering around Oaklore, trying to find someone who would be willing to train me.

I was looking out over a cliff, minding my own business, when suddenly, this gigantic red dragon landed right in front of me. I was scared out of my wits. I thought it was going to eat me.

Instead of devouring me, it bowed its head, and revealed a woman in white priestess garb, holding a black box with the image of a dragon head on it, and a red moglin with a staff. Both of them just walked past me, and I followed them. Then the moglin, apparently named Twilly, came flying back, and I had to fight a gorillaphant to save the priestess. Her name was Lady Celestia, and she disappeared after that. I told Captain Rolith about what she said, and had to rush to go save her from the psychopath who was trying to steal the box. That was my first battle with Drakath, and I must say, I felt pretty proud of myself when I beat his face into the ground.

But the box wasn't with Lady Celestia anymore; it had been stolen by a sneevil. I had to go all the way to Surewould Forest and help out Robina the Hood and fight Drakath again, only to discover that the contents of the box had been abandoned in the middle of the sneevil dump site. So I met Valencia and got to the egg, only to have it taken away by a vultragon, so then I had to go to the vultragon lair and kill that, and somehow ended up with six identical eggs… oh wait, I broke one of them, make that five eggs.

Valencia then sent me to Warlic, and you wouldn't believe how much trouble I went through to figure out which one was the dragon egg. That's what was in the black dragon box. I made one of the eggs into an omelet, then fought demented sock monsters, elementals, and a giant stone head to gather air, fire, water, and earth materials for Warlic. Only to find that these materials would be used to summon a creature that would be able to distinguish the dragon egg so it could eat it. I ended up having to kill it (no easy task, mind you), and Warlic didn't help in the battle at all.

So after the Doomkitten was defeated (seriously, that's what it was called), I had my dragon egg. I quickly got bored waiting around for something to happen. I tried several different things to get it to hatch, including but not limited to: singing lullabies, trying to rock it back and forth, giving it encouragement, and even downright begging it to hatch, only to discover that Twilly knew the exact date it was going to hatch and didn't tell me. When Lyra did hatch, though, she promptly fell asleep with Twilly in her mouth, so I suppose I got my revenge.

We've been through a lot together, including fighting various other (hostile) dragons (including the one that carried Lady Celestia and Twilly to me, who we had to deliver a package to) and other titan-sized enemies. Lyra has a very special ability: she can transform into a titan-sized dragon whenever he wants, despite only being a juvenile.

Astra had knelt down to look Lyra in the eye. She seemed to be awestruck. "You're beautiful," she said, admiring Lyra with wonder.

I was surprised. Usually, when people complimented Lyra, they addressed their compliments to me. Maybe, because Lyra had spoken, Astra understood that dragons were intelligent creatures.

"Thank you," replied Lyra. She looked distinctly smug, glancing from her back over to me. Oh, no, she was going to try to play matchmaker, I just knew it. This was going to be a pain.

Finally, Astra seemed to realize what I had said. She frowned.

"How am I supposed to complete my mission then?"

I finally got to my feet. "We're going to Ravenloss. Hopefully we can find you some help there."