The Candyman Cometh

Everything had a beginning, everything an end. Tales blended between realities and sometimes things fell through the cracks. There once was a land where different storyland nodes converged and connected, a land many called the Rhydinverse or Aolverse that knew of its existence. It was a point connected to all times and all dimensions in truth, some connections weak and barely a hairs width, and other connections thick enough to take up planar residence but a dimensional layer away. Or at least that's how it was for a few decades.....but like all things time has a way of sweeping the past away under layers of dust and many things can be forgotten...…And so we come to this tales beginning that was at the start of the end of the place known as the Aolverse…..A time before greed and corruption would make it a forgotten memory.

~Tower of Ebony, Date Unknown~

The times were shifting, the seasons changing, and the days lengthening as a tall figure looked out from atop his tower. Within his black cowl nine eyes shimmer a multitude of colors as he ponders the current plans, he had to explore another connection to the multiverse he had opened a doorway to. In his many years within the lands of Rhydin he knew that times were changing and that a darkness that would change everything he knew was on the horizon. Maybe he wondered if he went to a land of peace and harmony, he might find the answer to how to the questions that plagued his mental madness. For even an insane mind like his desired some semblance of order now and then after all. One of six crimson gauntleted hands poked contemplating the swirling portal of void energies musing to himself how it felt like jellified water at times before becoming somber. He knew that once he stepped through the portal time would act at a different rate in this other land. His training in chronomancy had taught him that long ago after many such voyages into the space between worlds. One of nine eyes swivels from the rest looking around the tower rooftop, his mind recalling so many things and creatures he had brought back as reminders of his travels, now residences in his tower and flying island.

His magics gently touching the leylines and magical weaves interlacing his personal home he had spent so many hundreds of centuries building and protecting after inheriting it from his former master. His mind recalling all the battles he's fought to ward off would be thieves who mistook his home as a perfect dungeon crawl. All the wars fought, and experiments tested, those who once shared his abode and musings of those who might share it in the future. His mind checking the connections just in case he ever needed to bring his home base from this dimension into the one he planned to explore, recalling when he had twice had todo so in the past. Then again in his defense the first time he needed it only to show power to bring peace and the other time was to use the flying island mass as a shelter for an alliance he had found comradery with. Every adventure he knew contained its own risks and perks, a smile touching his lips as he magically ran a spectral touch over a magitech zoid he had stored in the vault of his basements fifth subfloor, sitting next to a full suit of what can only be described as bone mail made from dragon claws. So many adventures, so many memories and so many more memories to come in the years to follow if his intuition was anything togo by.

Nodding to himself Ebony touch out a pocket watch examining it and its intrinsic runic glyphs and sigils, this particular artifact designed to show optimal times to cross between dimensions without causing too big of a time gap. An artifact he had been improving on after centuries of trial and error to prevent missing the dimension he wished to enter and accidently entering a similarly attuned dimension. The one flaw of dimensional travel he had found from the lands called Rhydin was that even if he got the right dimension, sometimes he ended up being flung into the far past or future of his intended entry point due to his own naturally high magics reacting oddly to the flow of the worlds between. It was always a tedious risk but one worth being patient to get through he had learned if one sought to gain the best souvenirs from visited worlds and dimensions.

With a few minutes remaining til the dimensions would be most properly aligned he began to give his minions and servants within his tower final orders, after all it wouldn't do to return only to find a smoldering pile of rubble and a crashed island like the first time he had visited another land for too long. Ebony made sure that from his tower generals to the lowliest book mimic of his tower library each knew their personal tasks and what was expected of them in his absence. Two of his many eyes roaming the notes he had taken from observations he had made of the other dimension through a portal scrying spell. Notations made inside his mind of different key individuals to not kill to preserve timelines, while at the same time pondering where and when he could interfere to prevent himself just having to completely sit on the sidelines, as well as where potentially he could obtain a new souvenir for his tower, be it an object or a creature. The pocket watch within his one of many hands vibrating slightly as an internal alarm alerted Ebony to the fact that the dimensions were closely aligned enough and would remain such for the next full day of time. One hand idly brushing off some dust from his shoes and another from his shoulder while a third hand picked up a rucksack he had prepared, slinging it over his shoulder between his two pairs of wings before he rose fully and lumbered through the portal. He knew not what the future held, but he hoped with would prove interesting.