The Following is a Note from the author: Hey everybody, This story is getting some nice feedback. And I had one complaint that I would like to address.

The Explanation thus follows:

When Nightmares plague the Eldest One,

a choking sickness blots the sun,

Mother Earth lies wounded, cursed,

An evil comes, it is the first,

time and time again,

It casts brother against brother, and friend against friend.

But a relic from the Eldest's past,

will come for him, swift and fast,

In his greatest time of need,

******** will come for him and he'll be freed.

With the greatest power seen before,

he'll make the evil Nevermore.

Yes, that is a prophecy, and it is important. That's all I'm saying so far.

On with the story.

Chapter 2: Time Begets Time

The sun is rising up over the treetops in this little out of the way place. It seems quite peaceful at first. The people aren't too rowdy, its out of the way, and its small enough that raiders and bandits don't usually bother with it. I stretch the soreness out of my muscles and my neck pops with a satisfying crack. I fish out one of the home grown and rolled cigarettes Jean gave me the other day. It takes kinda like blue berries and gives me a light heady feeling. I don't smoke them very often, I know normal tobacco is addictive, its hard to tell what almost a thousand years of radiation has done to the plant too. Besides, smoking purple tobacco just seems strange.

I snuff out the odd cigarette and turn to face the true problem of this little community. The lightning around the portal was constant now, and it had solidified into an oval that crackled with dark energy. I have seen and learned much in my travels, and I believe that the town's first temporal visitor would be arriving any moment now.

I ready myself by bringing my magic to the forefront of my mind. Its crackles and pops across my skin and dances between my fingers as the portal seems to swell, and the lightning becomes more unstable. The small group of people behind me are the ones more curious than scared of what might be stepping through.

With a loud snap a large splash of water came pouring through the portal and several large, insect like creatures came out with it. The animals almost looked identical to a modern scorpion, but they were huge in comparison. They stood at around a meter and a half tall at their backs and looked to weigh around 600 lbs each.

When they found their feet they began snapping their large pincers and darting their tails at anything around them. With a snap of my fingers they were hoisted up in the air. With the smallest gesture the large scorpions were compressed into a tiny spot to about the size of a knut. It dropped to the ground with an almighty thud and neatly buried itself several feet into the ground.

"Well at least that was easy." I looked up into the faces of a stunned and gaping crowd. "What?" I say with a grin. "Never seen magic before?"

The crowd slowly came out of their stupor and moved over to me.

"Those things would have torn us apart, thank you so much for stopping them. It may have been a small thing for you, but we are very grateful." Jean grasped my hand for a moment before letting it drop. "Anything you need while you're here and you'll have it."

I smile at her and shake my head. "I need no thanks, I was put here to help people. That you appreciate it is plenty thanks for me."

I look back at the portal and notice that it is very discreetly expanding and contracting, pulsing almost. With each pulse I could see that it was growing ever so slightly in size, preparing for the next time the portal touched a spot in history.

"Right then, this is only the beginning folks. I give the portal another six hours before it sends us a visitor. The only real way to keep this contained is if I deal with each threat individually while the portal expends its energy and then fades from existence. What comes through could be completely harmless, or it could be like those monsters we just saw. I promise that I will do all I can to keep the area safe while the portal slowly collapses itself. "

I look down at Jean and then over at Author. "In the mean time I'm starving, mind if I get a bite to eat real quick? And I'd like to ask you some questions, nothing to worry about, just curious if you know anything is all."

Jean nodded and led me back to the house. She fetched some chicken eggs and set a pan over the fireplace/stove. Within just a few minutes a large plate of scrambled eggs was sat in front of me.

"Feel free to ask me anything Harry, anything I can do to help you I will."

I smile at her as I take a bite of eggs and savior the taste. I should really invest in a chicken. "Like I said its nothing serious, I was just curious if you'd had any news lately. Specifically about a fella up North that claims to be able to commit miracles."

Jean sat in silence for only a moment before answering me. "We don't hear much out here. Don't get many travelers. Anybody that does come through usually only stops for a few hours before moving on. But now that you mention it, about six or seven months a young woman came in to our little town square area and was telling a few of us about this man that had been able to make a blind girl, no older than six, see with perfect clarity. The little girl had been born that way and the woman said she had cried when she opened her eyes."

I digested this information for a moment while I ate. I have met many wizards over the centuries that could heal damaged eyes, but they have always been powerful. As far as I know a lot of knowledge had been destroyed when the bombs changed the world all those years ago. I don't believe that particular piece of information survived. So it was someone that had found a cash of lost knowledge, or they'd somehow managed to rediscover that tricky piece of magic. Either way it was very worrisome.

"I see, was their anything else the woman mentioned?" I asked her as I ate the last of my eggs.

Jean thought about it for a moment and her boy entered. He gave me a quick glance halfway between fright and awe and quickly made his way out of the kitchen and into the house. "Not really, she did mention that he was handsome, with dark hair and eyes, but that's all I know Harry."

I sit in silence as I finish the rest of my breakfast. The eggs are good, if not a little strange, but most things are a little weird now. "Thanks for the gossip. I'm gonna go sit for a spell, see if I can't figure anything more about our portal." I make my way outside, grabbing my bag by the door as I do so, and head out for the little clearing where the vortex formed. A small group of people were loitering about, eying the thing warily. Not that I blamed them.

I sit down cross-legged, about three meters from the opening in time and space and start digging through my bag. I pulled out a length of white wood and an old jar, probably used for canning goods originally. Inside the jar are a few ropey lengths of meat, cleaned and trimmed dragon heart string. The wood was yew. Its the only sample of non-mutated wood I could find so far, and that's saying something considering I've been looking for decent wand material for fifteen years now.

My magic is as strong as ever, and I have no need for a wand, but you never know when I might find someone magical that might need the handy little tool. Most of the few wizards I've run across are using old family wands, that have been passed down through the generations. There are no wand makers left in the world. Those that don't have access to wands, but know of their magic, usually fashion crude foci out of whatever they can find that will channel magic. Its simple, and doesn't allow for more finessed magic, but it allows for more general things.

Using my magic I hoist the wood and the jar in the air. With a few simple hand gestures the heart strings have been removed from the jar and hover with the block of wood. I use my magic to split the wood cleanly down the middle and hollow out a spot for a length of dragon heart string. The small crowd is more focused on me than the portal now but I ignore them, attempting to concentrate of the task I've set myself.

About fourteen hundred years ago or so I was a wand maker that grew up on the outskirts of London. I was good at what I did, but I no longer have access to any of the proper tools necessary to craft a wand using the traditional method, so I'm trying something a little more naturalistic. I had a theory back in the day that if you used magic to craft a wand, it would cause the wand to be more in touch with magic itself, a 'natural wand' of you will. Speculation pointed out that perhaps the death stick, an incredibly powerful wand that was lost to time centuries ago, may have been created in this fashion.

I Snapped my fingers and one of the heart strings broke cleanly in two before it coiled itself tightly between the two halves of the yew wood. With a snap of my fingers the two halves jumped back together and fused without a seam. Within seconds I could feel the wood thrumming with magic and smiled, at least that part had worked. Very carefully, I began to shave off layers of the wood, saving the extra for later in hopes of making another wand. After some time spent doing this, The yew wood had taken the shape of a proper wand, thicker and blunt on one end to form a handle, and thinner, tapering to a point, on the other end.

"Just one more thing..." I have a bad habit of talking to myself while I work, I tend to block out the world around, at least to a certain extent. I pull a thin bladed dagger out of my bag and use my magic to allow it to float in the air. With quick precise cuts I carve a spiraling design into the handle and hid a few dozen runes in the design, stabilizers, cooling charms and strengtheners to ensure that it won't be easy to snap. I'll never understand why Olivander never used strengthening charms on his wands, the damn things tended to fall apart after a couple decades worth of use.

After about an hour's worth of work it was completed, or as completed as it could get given the circumstances. The wand was exactly fourteen inches long, with a mutie dragon heart string as a core. I pluck it out of the air and give it a few experimental swishes and flicks. Red and gold sparks shoot out of the end of the wand and I know I have succeeded. I point the wand at a nearby rock and mutter, "wingardium leviosa." The rock neatly jumps into the air and hovers their obediently. I smile, satisfied and happy that it worked, and store the wand back into my bag for later. The onlookers stand mesmerized at what I've done.

Jean's son, Author, walks up to me, looking a little scared and a lot curious. "Mister, if you don't mind me asking, what did you just make?" I turn to face him, slightly surprised that he built up the courage to speak directly to me, before answering.

"Centuries ago, before the world burned to a husk, wizards and witches, those born with magic, used to have something called a focus to channel this very powerful force of nature. They were called wands. One part comes for a tree that has some kind of magic deep within it. The yew for instance, is best for channeling defensive and offensive magic. The second aspect of a wand is the core. The core was usually taken from a magical animal, phoenixes, dragons, and unicorns were very popular for the longest time."

"When the world changed, a lot of information was lost, including wand craft. I happen to know how to make them, but materials are so scarce these days this is the first one I've managed to craft in decades. In essence, this would help a magic user to point or direct their magic, think of it as a tool to help focus a person's natural magic into what they want."

Author looked perplexed but he nodded anyway before heading back towards his mother's house. The others started to move on and go back to their business, none of them seemed to quite grasp what I was talking about. Not that I could blame them, I have a tendency to over explain things.

I spent the rest of the day testing out the wand and keeping a close eye on the portal, every so often it would bulge and emit a groaning sound, like it was trying to give birth, but so far nothing else had come out of it. As the sun started setting and the sky took on a dusty orange color, the portal began to rapidly expand and contract, and the electricity dancing around it grew more violent. I stood up and dusted off my pants, expecting something to be coming through any second now.

The portal grew and then shrunk, expanding several times its own size before settling back down to about normal. With one last gurgling groan the portal stretched outwards, growing to be nearly five meters tall, and twice that far across. Something huge slithered out of the portal. It had two arms and legs, but they were extended, long and warped looking. Its skin was an ashen gray color, and seemed to be molted, flaked, and peeling. It had no eyes, nor any place where any eyes would have been, just a dimpled and pockmarked slab of skin above two ragged holes that I assumed were its nose. The things mouth was proportionately much larger than it should have been, with an open swinging jaw and needle like teeth that were rotting and decaying.

It released a shriek and I realized I could feel magic, raw and primal, rolling of the monster. The few people that were outside screamed at the sight of the hideous thing and most of them took off running. It seemed that the portal had drug some sort of prehistoric monster out of the primordial past. For all I know this thing was the first thing born that could wield magic. If I had to guess it was some sort of distant ancestor of a wendigo, perhaps a few thousand generations removed from its present counterpart.

It stood up to its full height and stretched. I'd say it was about four meters tall, and at least a meter across at the shoulders. Its body looked frail and powerful at the same time, bones protruded from under the skin, but hard muscles ran along its from as well, the creature was built to look like this. A deep moan escaped it ragged mouth and it inhaled deeply from its nose, a nasty, whistling flapping sound.

It turned to face me, even though it couldn't see me and snarled. Suddenly the air dropped twenty degrees and the sky darkened. A slight glow grew from the creature. I felt a slight itching sensation behind my eyes and then I heard a voice.

"Come to me, become one with me and it will end. Pain will be but a distant memory, bliss awaits you." The monster had one hand stretched out before it, like it was motioning me to come to it. The voice had spoken in my mind, I know that this beast couldn't possibly know English, so it must use part of its prey's mind against it. This was how it channeled its magic. The thing strongly reminded me of a dementor, and I had a hunch I knew what would work.

Within moments a mighty stag had leapt from my hands and charged the beast. The monster shrieked again and went to strike prongs but its hand passed right through the stag. It screamed in pain as its hand began to crumble away to ash where it passed through my patronis. Prongs leapt at it once more, passing directly through its chest and landing lightly on the other side. The thing snarled and twisted about, it groaned and grunted, without any dignity before crumbling to dust and drifting away in the wind.

Prongs trotted over next to me and I scratched him behind the ear for a moment before he faded away to where ever patroni go when their masters don't need them. "You can come out now, the monster is gone." Slowly people started to reenter the clearing. Author, being one of the more adventurous members of this tiny society, walked right over to me.

"What happened to it? The glowin' deer came out of no where and the monster just vanished!"

"That deer happened to be my patronis, think of it as an animal guardian that is conjured by happy thoughts. Those beasts that rely on fear to claim their prey have no hope of fighting it. The darker they are the worse a patronis will effect them. This sucker must have been quite the terror from whenever it had come from. I'd bet an apex predator."

It was dark now, with the sun gone down over the distant hills. I stretched a kink out of my neck. "I don't know when this thing is gonna cut back on, so I'll be camping out here tonight. I'm gonna try to get some rest, I recommend everybody else does the same." Jean was kind enough to bring me something warm for dinner that tasted vaguely like salmon. I didn't take long to eat. Not sleeping seems to have put more of a strain on me than I thought.

I lay out underneath the stars, gazing up at them and marveled at how no matter how long it takes, everything changes, even the stars in the sky. My eyes drifted closed, and I just pray that I can get a decent night's sleep...

THEND

I'd like to start off by apologizing for how long this chapter took. I recently went from being a full time dad to working for time, so my time management has been kinda screwy lately. But, I think I've gotten my schedule reoriented now so I should have a little time to write here and there.

I hope you all enjoyed, hopefully the next chapter won't take nearly as long.