Chapter 1
Disclaimer
[All rights are with their respective owners, and I only claim my own intellectual property. Please Enjoy]
Adrian Thomas was just going to rest his eyes for a bit. It was just so boring. He was an employee at the British Museum. His boss had forced him to do a night shift, cataloguing all the new pieces that would be brought in that night. It was now two a.m., and they still had not arrived.
He had gotten a message that they were delayed and wouldn't be there until around five.
He must had been asleep for around an hour before he was rudely awakened by the sound of grunting. Slowly waking up from his nap, he wondered who was making such a racket.
Opening his eyes, his scenery had changed. No longer was he in his office. He was now in what looked like a cave, laying on the ground. Sitting up, he pondered what we're making those noises. They looked human, but not at the same time. Almost like neanderthals however, that would be absurd as neanderthals died out, by most generous estimates around forty thousand years ago.
The figures were dancing, jumping and making noise. Clearly excited. Bucking up his courage he spoke "Hello, who are you and where am I." Startled by the unexpected voice the beings turned around and instantly quieted down. They were now deadly still, like a pray animal hoping not to be caught by a predator.
Trying to diffuse the tension Adrian stepped forward "Hay now, no need to be nervous. I just want to talk." At his movement the neanderthals scattered, running at top speed out the cave.
Left in the cave by himself, Adrian chastised him-self. He had never been good with people, but this was ridiculous. Looking around Adrian spotted what the beings were hiding with their bodies. It was a painting on the cave wall of what looked like a pig with three figures standing in front of the beast.
Adrian new this painting. It was the oldest known painting in the world located in the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. As he looked at the painting and realised what it was, he suddenly had a splitting headache as new information was downloaded into his brain.
He was The Archivist. A job given to him by a Random Omnipotent Being, or something, that had the purpose of recording, cataloguing and storing information about different universes. In order to do this, he was given a few abilities the most powerful of which would. First, make him ageless with the ability not to need to eat, drink or sleep. Clearly that was given to him in order to do his job. Next, he was given the archive, an extra dimensional pocket space that would be used to store all the things he would collect. He had full control of the archive, and it made him a god of his own domain allowing him to set the rules within the realm no matter how outlandish. Lastly, he had an extra sense that would point him to historical events, items or people. It would also give him a time and location of the historical moment, long before it would come to pass, so that he could travel to record the moment. He had other perks but those were the main ones.
Looking down at his clothes he realised that his outfit had changed. He was now dressed in a set of heavy-duty clothes perfect for any environment. Dressed in a forest green t-shirt, black cargo pants, black leather trench coat and heavy leather boots. The outfit would magically keep him at the perfect temperature, they would keep him and itself clean and fresh at all times and is impervious to damage. Slung over his side was a leather satchel that held an expanded space filled with a resupplying assortment of goods he would need in his job. Whether that be paper, pen, a camera, or different devices he would need.
Finally, he was given the location of where he was in the Omniverse. He was in Harry Potter some fifty-one thousand years before cannon. He knew, due to his knowledge, that when he would be brought to a new universe he would be deposited at the completion of the first historical depiction of information. Whether that be the completion of a carving, writing, or any other form of lasting communication. Like in this case the painting on the cave wall.
He would only be allowed to leave at the completion of a main cannon story line of a world. Such as the end of a set of books in the case of Harry Potter, the end of a movie series part, like Marvel Avengers Endgame. However, he may stay longer to collect information. When he collected things, he gained pointes that he could spend in the shop that could give him anything he could want for the right price.
Pulling out a record paper and pen from his bag, he got to work recording this piece of history. Finishing he snapped a photo with his record camera. Depositing the resulting products into the Archive, he replaced the record items within his bag and started to move on.
The different devices and items in his bag were special. They would do what they said on the tin. The paper and pen could be used to right and the camera could be used to take pictures. However, that wasn't what they only did each item was almost divine for their use. They would create snapshots in time when used, allowing when the final record was finished, for a perspective seeker of knowledge to relive the time record like they were there. Adrian also had more tools at his disposal that could be used to create a more perfect record.
- Time Skip -
Over the years Adrian wandered about, taking records of the time period. Taking samples with his harvester tool of the different local wildlife. And organising his Archive.
Within the Archive itself he created shelves for knowledge, displays for items he collected, and habitats for the different samples he had taken. The habitats were really special in Adrian's opinion. They would use the samples he collected to replicate the wildlife in question and place it in its perfect habitat for it to grow and develop. It would remove the chance of different negative factors cropping up such as the results of inbreeding and the wildlife in question would have an idyllic life without even knowing it was in a display.
Throughout his journey Adrian went everywhere recording everything. From the different weather cycles or phenomena, the air purity, or the soil quality. Honestly, Adrian got a bit bored after a while, but he did it anyways as it was all he could do in this time period. His historical sense rarely went off and when it did it was for minor things such as weather shifts or a new type of wildlife being developed. However, he did get to see a volcano erupt which Adrian thought was cool.
Throughout the years, Adrian had bought lots of quality-of-life perks that he thought he might need. Perks such as All speak, the ability to teleport, or the ability to go intangible and not be seen. Adrian thought the last one came in handy as many animals got skittish when he was around, and it made it hard to record them.
Given that it was a Harry Potter universe, Adrian also catalogued many magical flora, fauna, and phenomenon. Taking samples of all of them. Along with the magical habitats he set up for the different flora and fauna, within the records of the phenomena themselves he discovered what could be magical signatures that Adrian thought could be the first spells cast by the planet itself, a proto spell if you will.
Adrian when he first found magic was so excited. He took samples of everything he could find as it was so new and interesting to him. He discovered what lay lines were, taking reference from pop culture back in his home world, and mapped them out. He discovered proto wildlife that he thought would eventually turn into the different plants and animals that he read about in the movies. He spent a long time on magic and couldn't get bored at all as it was so knew and interesting.
After decades of time spent wandering the earth and recording everything. Adrian eventually picked up on something that was out of the ordinary, even with magic in the mix. In the land that would eventually be the United Kingdom was a ring of trees in the centre of a forest with only grass and a large rock in the centre.
Pulling out his different devices he recorded it down as he had always done, only to find from one of his devices that there was a spatial distortion that had been formed just past the tree line. Adrian began to take more records trying to find out what caused it.
After days of research Adrian couldn't find out anymore. It was clearly stable given the fact that the magical fluctuations had barely moved since he had found it. So, Adrian decided he had nothing left to lose. Either he would die from the spatial distortion, which would mean the end of his journey, or he would be able to record what he hoped would be an entirely new place. Both options meant he wouldn't be bored anymore.
Stepping passed the tree line, with all of his recording items on, Adrian felt weird. Like walking through a layer of reality. On the other side of the portal was a land out of the mind of a madman. The sky shifted between colours with no apparent interval and cycled through every colour ever known and some that weren't. The trees came in all shapes and sizes. The grass was blue then pink then red then green, with it changing for no apparent reason with the only logic being the change in colour being marked by an arbitrary boundary that demarcated the shift in colour.
There was a sea in the sky that surrounded the land and was surrounded by the land in turn. The rocks were like mountains but if you looked at them from a different angle you could pick them up like they were a pebble on the road. As Adrian travelled, he recorded many wacky, wondaful, terrible and disturbing things. After many miles or a step from another perspective he came upon something that told him exactly where he was. A line of pure black stone like the maw of an abyss demarcating between warmth and cold, fire and ice, summer and winter. He knew he was in the fay realm.
- Time Skip -
Time flew by. Adrian travelled through the fey realms recording everything. This was a realm of magic in its purest most physical form. The air was heavy with the magic in it. Pools of magic were formed at the bottom of trenches which of course Adrian took samples of.
After some time, Adrian came upon a village. Finally actual civilisation. This was his first time seeing actual structured civilisation instead of desperate cave huddling neanderthals and the place he found it was in the fey realm of all places. The town itself was a mixture of tree houses, quite literally houses made in trees, and stone buildings. Moving to the village Adrian remembered what he knew of the fey. Mentally prepared he began to see people.
Clearly, he had been spotted earlier on his approach as a group of beings had formed out by the entrance of the village. Big, small, tall, short, humanoid, not. There was a mixture of all types gathered before the entrance.
When he was about twenty meters away from the entrance, a taller figure walked forward. He was humanoid in appearance with dark skin, pointed ears and brown hair. He had a handsome face in that uncanny valley sort of way. Too perfect to the point of being slightly off putting. He was dressed in fine clothes made of natural materials. He was clearly important.
When they were a few meters apart the fey spoke "hello stranger, may I have your name." Adrian with deliberate slowness thinking over every word he said, "sorry but no, however you may call me the Archivist." The fey nodded his head in acknowledgement in response. "Hello archivist, you may call me chief. May I have your purpose here" Thinking about how he can answer without triggering the many bad endings for this conversation, Adrian had an idea. Going into the shop he purchases a perk. No Deal, you may not unwittingly enter into a bargain, pact, deal, or contract without fully knowing the contents and repercussions of this action. This perk costed a lot, but it gave blanket protection in the fey wilds.
Now with his safety measure in play, Adrian speaks freely. "I am here to record the fey realm". The fey's smile widens to an impossibly sharp degree only to pause when whatever magic a fey used to make deals didn't activate.
Now with a frown on his face he said, "what are you, you clearly are not fay so why did my deal not work." Clearly, he was upset. Replying to the downtrodden fey "I am immune to fey deals, chief"
After a small back and forth between the two, now without the constant threat of Adrian losing something unwittingly and on far more equal ground. The chief allowed him to enter the village and for him to complete his purpose. However, he did warn him that if he did something that someone took offence to, they would kick him out, with violence, if necessary, fey deal or not.
Adrian spent many weeks in the village recording everything he could find. He was lucky enough that the inhabitants of the village were so accommodating after some time of living around them. He recorded the different species of fey, there magics, there houses, there societal structure, their diets and many more. After a while he was able to get the people of the town to talk to him about the wider fey realm, there history, there personal feelings and everything he couldn't record through his different items. In return for this he gave the people of the village access to his archive whilst he was in the village.
As it turned out, the fey didn't have a written language and just passed down stories or information verbally. As most of the fey themselves where either ageless or just very long lived they had no need for a written language. This meaning Adrian had to add the ability for anyone to read the records, whilst in the archive, so that even if people didn't know how to read anything, they would still be able to gather the knowledge in the archive.
When he was ready to leave, the chief came to him and gave him a stone. He said that it would allow him access to any settlement he might find.
That restarted Adrian's journey in recording the fey realm. He kept doing what he always had. However now whenever he came to a new settlement he stopped by and was welcomed. The chief had clearly already sent word ahead as most of the settlements didn't try to trap him in any deals. He kept making the same deal with them. Their knowledge in exchange for access to his archive.
When he was close to finishing with his journey, he came upon a city built on the boundary of winter and summer. the city itself was built around two mountains one in winter and one in summer. On top of each mountain was a castle with a bridge connecting each castle to one another.
Clearly, he was in the centre of power for the fey realms where each queen of the winter and summer courts lived. Again, when he came to the city he was welcomed by the people. He did his whole song and dance again, meeting everyone, asking his questions and giving his gift in return. The last people he visited was the queens themselves. He was given a message to meet them on the bridge for tea by a servant of each court.
Adrian thought that meeting them was an experience. They thrummed with power just by sitting there like they could break the world itself with just a thought alone. The conversation that they had was illuminating for Adrian. He found out things about the fey realms that would probably take years of study to discover just from one conversation.
Adrian had many more conversations with the two queens. By the end of his stay, he would consider them friends and they felt similar. When he was ready to leave, he was given two gifts by the two queens. The first was a group of small pixies like fey, they were created by a combination of the queens' powers and were disconnected from the different courts, there purpose was to live in the archive and help him with the management of the dimension, he called them assistant Pixies. The second was a book that detailed the newly created fey runes that were created when the queens thought that the language in his archive was novel and wanted to have their own written language.
In return for the gifts, Adrian gave the two queens a library card each that would allow them to access the archive just by willing a portal to appear. He also said that he wouldn't ever charge them for access like he probably would do with others if he ever made his archive available to people.
Leaving the city Adrian carried on with his journey eventually mapping the entire fey realm. He found every natural portal to the earth and plotted their locations on a map for his archive. Eventually he had to head back to earth after years of study in the fey realm.
- Time Skip -
Thousands of years had passed since Adrian had first visited the fey realm. He had been back many times since then. Other than his expeditions to the realm, he met the queens every hundred years or so, in his archive, in order to catchup. They always delivered him new knowledge of the realm, as a gift for intruding on his domain, even though he said they didn't have to.
In this time Adrian watched human civilization grow and flourish as he kept traveling around the world. He watched as the neanderthals grew and developed from there cave dwellings and primitive mind sets to what could be recognised as a spark of what made a modern-day human as they would later become.
One of the greatest moments was when he watched the birth of the first magical human. This family of people lived near a magical location or nexus where multiple lay lines intersected within the earth, this intern allowed the parents to absorb some of the magic for themselves. The parents however had no capability to manipulate magic however the son that was birthed by the union mutated enough that he could call upon magic to perform primitive spells that would later be called accidental magic.
Over the years he checked up on the family as they grew and developed their magic. Passing it through their children until they had a thriving village a few hundred years later. Most of the village itself was isolationist due to their magical nature, location, and geography however with their talents they grew and developed. Venturing outside their community when needed to pick up supplies or find a partner from other places.
This village hidden on an island in the Atlantic see would later be called Atlantis, the first magical civilisation. In Atlantis they developed ways of harnessing magic that didn't require the crude way of casting magic that they had been born with. They developed their own language steeped in power that could call upon the elements and magic would answer. They developed written text to pass down their teachings to the next generation. They developed magical foci; to help them harness and direct their magic and they developed the beginnings of the arts of enchanting, warding, potions, alchemy, charms, transmutation or transfiguration, and divination. Clearly crude compared to the later examples in the books but in some cases more powerful and firm than what later generations could cast.
Adrian didn't just watch the history of Atlantis. Before and after Atlantis, he watched as proto humans then humans travelled all around the world moving through the deserts of the middle east and Africa. They moved over the frozen ice bridges that connected Asia and the Americas. He watched as people moved all over the world from scorching heat to icy tundra and not only survive but thrive in their different environments. Adrian would sometimes marvel at the adaptability and ingenuity of humanity.
However, Adrians most memorable time would be when he was traveling in the heart of the African continent. Long before any true civilisation had ever developed there, he saw something strange. A distortion in space that set off his senses. It was not like one of the entrances of the fey realm. It didn't connect to a different dimension through a portal. The space was taken out of reality, and covered with a barrier or ward, with no sign of incongruity with the land itself. Almost like the Fidelius, from the books, only also distorting space and time in its function. Adrian could only see it because of his unique situation as the Archivist.
Cataloguing it all he began to explore. Inside the place was a garden that seemed to stretch on to infinity. Again, Adrian began to catalogue all that was in there. From the smallest of fauna to the largest of flora. He explored for what seemed like forever, but what was actually only a few years recording everything new that he could find. Finally, he made it to the centre of the garden, traveling from the outskirts of the garden in a spiral patten inwards, where he found two fruit trees standing alone in a clearing. Doing what he always did he scanned the trees and took samples or his archive. Clearly finished he began to look more closely at the trees themselves.
They both were identical in stature however one was lighter in colour than the other. The lighter one had peach like fruit and the darker had apple like fruit. Picking a peach from the tree he stored it in his archive however when he was about to pick an apple a loud voice came from behind him. "Do not touch that, Adrian!"
Spinning around he saw a beautiful man with white wings and an aura of light radiating from him. Seeing clearly an angel standing before him, Adrian finally pieced together where he was. The garden of Eden. Taking one knee, he bowed in deference to the one the angel served. Then he spoke. "I am sorry for trespassing upon the Lord's Garden. I didn't realise whose it was. Honestly, I didn't think he even existed in this universe."
In reply the angel said "Don't be afraid. The Lord knows your heart and knows that you did not mean offence. He simply did not wish for you to even touch the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Lest you be tempted to eat of it and be punished for it."
Nodding in reply the Archivist said "then I will do as the Lord commands. With the Lord's permission I will take my leave." Getting affirmation from the messenger of God, Adrian stood up to leave. Upon turning his back upon the angel, he heard the voice of the messenger speak once more. "You are permitted back into the garden in order to fulfil your purpose however, you are not allowed to show anything of what you have recorded here to anyone." Turning around he bowed in assertions of the Lords commands and then walked out and away from the garden.
He only returned once more to the garden of Eden. This was in order to record the birth of humanity and their final evolution into Gods children. Then the fall of humanity. Storing the record in his private archive, where he kept all information he was not allowed to spread, He carried on his journey.