Literature / Lost Time

Lost time, Blake. It will all make sense one day

Lost Time is the first novel in The Azarel Chronicles by M. C. Ashley.

It follows Blake Azarel, a gifted, but amnesiac Christener, who once worked for the Gray Forum. However, he finds himself 107 years in the future from his last memory, only to discover Corpus Christi, Texas, like most of America, has been taken over by the Sanguine Collective an alliance of empathic vampires who rule with an iron fist. Blake swiftly discovers he's alone and outnumbered, so he seeks new allies to discover the reasons for why he was displaced in time, the cause of the fall of the Gray Forum, and how to stop the mysterious Feast that threatens to kill countless innocents.

It was followed up by Deadlands soon after.

Lost Time provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: This is an Invoked Trope, as the Gray Forum built the Silver Fortress underneath the city and created lengthy sewers that the mundanes above wouldn't know about thanks to enchantments placed to prevent people from finding it without knowing where it was. This helps Blake and the team when they need to get to Zoë's mansion, as they can travel in the sewers without being spotted.
• Act of True Love: Blake is completely baffled when he's saved by this, as he had no clue there was anyone he loved that much, thanks to his amnesia.
• Alternate Self: Nathan of Blake's reality is one to Nathan-Prime, who claims to come from Earth-Prime, the reality from which all realities branch off of. Keeping Nathan alive is a side mission Nathan-Prime tasks Blake with, as them being alive gifts him with their excess creative energy with which he can utilize to do his job as the Guardian of the Multiverse. If Blake's Nathan dies unnaturally (i.e.: not as part of the natural flow of space and time), Nathan-Prime would grow weaker if he traveled to their reality and lose some of his power.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: the child Nathan has had his fair share of this thanks to his mental abilities that he had no one to train him in curbing. However, years of reading them has caused him to realize that just because someone thinks something doesn't mean they mean it.
• Antagonist Abilities: Blake notes that one of his old friends, Atanasio Mortis, was capable of entropic invocations, which would normally be seen as villainous, but he used his powers to save others, despite always being under constant watch as a potential problem. Blake himself, though, finds himself with a ring made of bone that he has no memory of on his left hand that exudes necromantic energies he never wants to use, given his religious leanings, so of course he's forced to rely on it more than once.
• Astral Projection: Nathan-Prime does the extra-dimensional version of this at the end to converse with Blake as if he were also in the same reality.
• Barrier Warrior: Blake attempts this, but notes that he was always garbage at it and it predictably fails when tries to craft a psychic shield in desperation.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: many figures from history are mentioned as being Christeners in nature or who once worked with people like the Gray Forum as allies who upkept The Masquerade.
  • Zvi Aharoni was actually a member of the Gray Forum's High Court, a Christener, and was actually born in Spain some time before 1492 when the Jews were expelled from the country. His exploits in taking down escaped Nazis after the war were during a time he took a momentary leave of absence from the High Court in order to not get them involved with mundane politics.
  • Aleister Crowley was a member of the villainous Red Council, a group of Christeners who wish to enforce their magical will on the world, rather than be among the mundanes.
  • Jack Fiddler was a Wendigo working with his fellow were-beasts, but pretended to be fully human to dupe others until he was killed by the Gray Forum in a mission Blake participated in.
  • Sam Houston gifted the Gray Forum with Corpus Christi as their new headquarters thanks to their aid in an unspecified event during the Texas Revolution.
  • H. B. D. Woodcock was also a member of the High Court noted for his proficiency with plants, a Historical In-Joke, as the real man was an amateur botanist.
• Black and White Magic: there are two types discussed in the novel
  • Black Magic: typically used by rogue Christened, who channel their power through evocation, although Blake notes it had gotten used far more often by the Gray Forum in his time with them.
  • White Magic: engaged through invocation, by asking God, as the originator and source of creation, for His help in channeling creative energy to fight, which most members of the Gray Forum were expected to do, given their religious leanings.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: as a result of Zoë's relentless tortures, Cinderella has fallen into this, wanting nothing more than to follow her master's orders, although a small part of her still resists. This is all Nathan needs to convince her to join them, which was the true purpose of their invading her dream, which doesn't fully get revealed to Blake until Cinderella turns on Zoë during the Feast.
• Catching Up on History: Mara does this for Blake's benefit, so he can acclimate to the future. He finds that the Gray Forum was wiped out, the Sanguine Collective controls most of America (save for a small pocket in the southeast known as the Free-Zone), the Fair Folk lost Titania and Oberon to magically-induced madness, the Red Council (a group of rogue Christeners) took control of Europe and northern Africa, The Horde control most of Africa and Asia, amongst other incidents.
• Cavalry Betrayal: but not done to our heroes; rather, it is done in their defense by Cinderella, who betrays Zoë to save them all, having been swayed to their side by Nathan's honest pleas for help in her dream. Unfortunately, this causes Zoë in evoke Beleth's power and makes the fight that much worse.
• Chekhov's Gun: earlier, Blake mentions the existence of demons causing an earthquake at Neot HaKikar, so when Zoë is revealed to be possessed (willingly) by Beleth, a powerful demon, things start making a lot of sense.
• The Chessmaster: Nathan-Prime serves as an obvious example of this, leaving cryptic clues when needed and then blatant direction other times all so Blake can be exactly where he needs to be to attempt to stop the Feast. Eons of fighting in other realities has made him far wiser and clever than the people he works with, making it ridiculously easy to manipulate or nudge them in the right direction without them being any the wiser, although Blake has begun to see some of the trails he's been led down.
• Demonic Possession: Zoë is revealed to have been willingly possessed by the demon Beleth, a member of The Thirteen, a previously-unknown faction created seemingly sometime in-between the death of the Gray Forum and the present.
• Dream Team: Blake was one of five (later discovered to be six for unknown reasons) members of the self-named Dream Team: a group of talented Christeners from the same generation who worked together to protect the world. These included Atanasio Mortis, Akemi Tyson, Brian Poole, Rica Sturm, and Blake.
• Elemental Powers:
  • Blow You Away: Clooney's most adept at using this, making him capable of creating small blasts of wind or near-hurricane force squalls.
  • Casting a Shadow: Blake can uses this to attack as well as create pockets of darkness his foes can't see in
  • Light 'em Up: Blake's preferred invocations involve summoning light to harm his foes.
  • Master of Illusion: Nathan is able to use these, which is noted as a rarity among Christeners, even able to fake being held captive to an unwitting group of ghouls by making them see him bound with rope while he simply walks unmolested. His alternate counterpart, Nathan-Prime, is able to do this as well, but amps it up to eleven by doing so from many realities away.
  • Playing with Fire: Zea's and Cinderella's area of expertise, although is more a Master of All. In fact, Cinderella's ability to use fire is a huge part of the process of enacting the Feast's Human Sacrifice.
• Emergency Temporal Shift: Nathan-Prime explains that Blake's coming to the future was this, as this was the period in time God wanted him to be in to enact His will, as Blake would have died if he had stayed in his present along with the rest of the Gray Forum.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Clooney calls Zoë out on this after he kills all of her crooked cop enforcers, noting that for their many sins they all deserved a far worse fate, which causes her Villainous Breakdown and forces her to reveal she only cared about them because she owned them.
  • Zoë considers her unnamed sire, the ruler of the Sanguine Collective, to be this and is trying to gain his favor by ruling Vice City in his name. She claims to be the last person he ever sired, which she believes makes her special.
• Eye Scream: thanks to his crack shot training, Blake is able to begin killing Beleth by firing a silver-coated bullet into the demon's right eye.
• The Fair Folk: Blake mentions that he used to work with Puck during his time in Alfheim (home of the Fair Folk), but is saddened to learn in the time since he was around last that the pocket dimension has fallen into civil war as a result of Oberon and Titania being inflicted with a magical curse that caused them to murder the other.
• Fantastic Slurs: the word "mundane" is thrown around to describe those without supernatural abilities. Several vampires also refer to humans as "meat."
• First-Person Perspective: the story takes place entirely within Blake's POV.
• First-Person Smartass: Blake is unafraid to offer his opinion at all times, mostly through a sardonic lens at the stupidity of the people around him and even the idiotic ideas he comes up with.
• Fish Outof Temporal Water: other than the pain at losing the people he loves and dealing with the new status quo, Blake takes finding himself in the future rather well overall, easily coming to terms with the inability to return to the past, as he would have died if he'd stayed.
• The Gadfly: part of Blake's biggest passion is to be this to his foes, causing them to grow angry and thus more mindless in their attacks, which will give him an edge over them in a fight. He even playfully does it to his allies, enjoying their confused faces at yet another reference they can't possibly comprehend.
• I Gave My Word: one of the strongest things a Christener can do, if they swear to do something, then they are bound to do so, lest they lose part of their power. Blake offers this many times in a sincere, but almost flippant manner, being one of many subtle hints that he's subconsciously trying to to get himself killed so he can be with the people he lost while he jumped into the future.
• Geas: Blake mentions this as a possible reason for why Clooney is unable to his answer his questions. This is neither confirmed nor denied.
• Guardian of the Multiverse: Nathan-Prime describes his job as such, but limits himself to the rules set by God, so as not to improperly effect the flow of space and time. He is able to aid Blake mentally, but forbidden from physically appearing to aid him as of right now for reasons unknown, save the will of God.
• Hard Light: Blake's bow Ageg is conjured as a form of this and fires arrows of light at his foes. Blake also uses his Light 'em Up powers to hit his foes with physical light.
• Hellfire: used by Beleth during the final battle to stop the Feast.
• Human Sacrifice: the Feast in Corpus Christi is one of several of these happening in Sanguine Collective-controlled North America. The intent is to use the souls meant for the fire to be offered to the Interlopers, a mysterious third party who empowered the Collective to overthrow the Gray Forum so they could rule the world. Blake and his new friends, of course work to avert this and succeed, which Nathan-Prime later proudly notes had a ripple effect Blake possibly couldn't have understood at the time, seeing as how failing to do even one of the planned sacrifices means doing any at all would be seen as a grave offense and the Collective are now in serious supernatural debt as a result. Thus, not a single human life was lost when over a thousand would have been lost had the Feasts gone off on schedule.
• Human Traffickers: ghoulish vampires in The Horde working as human traffickers for their vampiric cousins the Sanguine Collective engage in this. Blake's first recruit, sans Zea and Mara, is one of these victims, Nathan, who he saves from being enslaved after The Horde led a raid on his village in post-apocalyptic America. More of these survivors also end up working for him at his home base, since they've been taken from across the world with very few chances of returning.
• Hypocritical Humor: when Nathan snarks back at him and smirks, Blake thinks to himself how much he hates people who smirk, despite doing that countless times before in the novel.
• I Know What You Fear: Sanguine Collective vampires who feed on fear can utilize this. Enforcer Cole is noted to be a specific example known as a Fear Lord, but he is unable to properly utilize his powers in the book.
• I'm Mr. [Future Pop Culture Reference]: Inverted. Blake uses character names from the past to be pseudonyms, figuring most people wouldn't get the references. This bites him hard when Officer Cole reveals he was turned into a vampire near the year Blake time-traveled away from and understood every single fake name he used.
• Implacable Man: Beleth is this, shrugging off every attack sent his way seemingly without a care thanks to his diamond-like skin. However, during the fight, Blake notices that he's protecting his face, which causes him to realize that Beleth's eyes aren't invulnerable and neither is the inside of his body.
• Innate Night Vision: Zea possesses this ability, which Blake notes as odd, but doesn't have time to ask her about. They later use this to great effect while fighting Zoë Slinden.
• I Know Your True Name: anyone proficient can do this, but it's more effective with the more names the caster is aware of. Zea uses it to help Blake stand up while he's weak and later uses it against Zoë in the fight. Unfortunately for her, it may work the way she intended, but not on the demon Beleth who shares a body with Zoë.
• Latin Is Magic: primarily, Blake invokes his spells using Latin. He says this is mostly because he can invoke in a way that allows him to use words that if he were to use in English could accidentally cause his Christening to activate if he wasn't careful enough. Also, he thinks it sounds cool.
• Leeroy Jenkins: due to once working as part of a team, Blake still falls back on these principles, as he was used to people bailing him out if his rushing into battle got him in trouble. However, now that he's on his own and later part of a group that isn't used to his tactics, he quickly learns he needs to switch up his tactics. Blake is by no means stupid and incapable of planning, but prefers to brute force his way through problems first and ask questions later.
• Magic by Any Other Name: members of the Gray Forum are explicitly said not to use magic, which they instead refer to as the Christening. This is mostly down to semantics, as they don't wish to be associated with apostates and rogue witches and warlocks who inherently abuse the Christening to enforce their will on the world through evocation. Although, Blake notes it was getting more popular in his day to use evocation rather than invocation in his day, which is one of several reasons it's implied that this was why the Gray Forum had to be destroyed. However, it is also noted that using evocation at all doesn't make one evil; it's relying on it and seeking to control the Christening, rather than commune with it, that makes it so terrible.
• Mission Control: Nathan-Prime works as one across realities for Blake, offering him cryptic clues and words of wisdom to help him figure out what he needs to do.
• The Needless: Blake remarks that Christeners can be this for a time, depending on their natural strength, but prolonging this could lead them to die swiftly from the inevitable exhaustion of denying the body's needs.
• The Nicknamer: Blake has known Zea for all of four minutes and gifts her with Zee as a shortened form of her name, because it's just faster to say.
• "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: Zoë claims that all of her past lovers invoked this, but it's plainly obvious she's lying through her vampiric teeth to justify her abusive sexual proclivities.
• Not Now, Kiddo: Blake finds himself guilty of this several times over, as Nathan keeps trying to tell him that their mission to have Cinderella join them was successful. He only realizes his foolishness when Cinderella saves them at a crucial moment in the fight with Zoë. To be fair, he admits he's not particularly good with handling kids, but he really only has himself to blame.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Mara remarks that Blake and Zea are not so different from the vampires they fight. The duo are called out because unlike most Christeners, they were born with immense power and inherently seek out more to get even stronger, much like vampires who are insatiable in their desire to feed, whether it be through blood or stolen emotions.
• One-Steve Limit: to avoid this scenario, Nathan-Prime asks to be referred to as such and for the Nathan of Blake's reality to be called simply "Nathan."
• Our Mages Are Different: Christened are divided into two orders:
  • Psionics, who are built to charge their attacks over time to do the damage a Sentinel could do with fifty attack in just one. They're comparable to a nuclear strike as opposed to a smart bomb. Zea and Clooney are both Psionics.
  • Sentinels are able to cast faster and repeatedly, doing smaller strikes to overwhelm foes while Psionics would need to take longer to charge. They also typically use swords, as they use them to defend Psionics they're partnered with while they're gathering energy to attack. Blake, Nathan, and Cinderella are all Sentinels.
• Our Vampires Are Different: They come in three different flavors:
  • The Sanguine Collective is, despite the name, not a group of blood eaters, although they can do so for pleasure. Instead, they feed on humans' negative emotions. These include lust, fear, greed, and pride. They are faster and stronger than mundanes and hard to kill. They control most of North America and small pockets of Europe and enslave the humans under their thrall to be used as labor and food when the need arises. Blake remarks on them having a pseudo-second form wherein they grow more bestial, but this is merely seen in the beginning without too much to elaborate on how it works.
  • The Horde are also called ghouls, but included under the vampiric naming scheme. Their flesh rots if they don't feast on flesh frequently, but are more feared for their role as Human Traffickers, which they used to gain leverage in the supernatural realm by providing their enemies with humans to eat or experiment on for a price, which funds their own desire to enslave and eat humans. Blake mentions that Gray Forum historians believe they were first created during the reign of King Joram of Israel, when the prophet Elisha cursed cannibals in the city to degenerate into monstrosities. The god Baal is then believed to have prevented them from dying and thus instead of dying in one generation, they remained a plague on the world.
  • Resurrection are referred to as more Stoker-esque vampires, sharing many of the same abilities and weaknesses. Blake is told that in his now present that Resurrection was wiped out at the same time as the Gray Forum.
• Psychic Link: Blake and Zea form the start of one when they meet. It's not perfect and they can't fully read one another's thoughts yet, but they can get sensations of what the other one is feeling, which can overwhelm them if they're not careful with their emotions.
• Religious Bruiser: while it is not a requirement to join the Gray Forum, most Christeners see their spiritual abilities as being tied to energy left over from God creating the world and choose to invoke in His Name to do His will in the world. Blake claims faith in God, although he admits he's not the best follower and Nathan-Prime claims to be working directly for God as His emissary, making him this as well. One of Blake's mentors, Zvi, was a devout Jew, although he had his doubts of God's sovereignty as a result of witnessing the Holocaust's effect on his people, but still worked with the Forum once he was done tracking down Nazi escapees who'd fled from justice.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Blake proves his mettle multiple times over, quoting from his favorite series at the same time.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Zea understands very little of Blake's sarcasm, which deflates his ego immensely, as he's used to having someone laugh with him, but Zea's lack of social skills, and failure to understand his references and any idioms he uses drive him crazy.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Clooney accuses Blake of being interested in Zea, but Blake denies it. Not because he dislikes her, but because they have more important matters to attend with at the time, although they have plenty of Ship Tease moments between them. However, the main reason seems to be that Blake can't remember his wife, who he supposedly married and lost in the seven years he can't remember and has mixed feelings about what that means for him to start a new relationship.
• Shout-Out: as One of Us the author supplies plenty to many different franchises
  • While exploring Vice City, Blake gives his name as Harry Dresden, Stephen Strange, and Remus Lupin, the latter of which gets him in trouble with Enforcer Cole, who recognizes the shout out immediately.
  • One of Blake's middle names is Macbeth.
  • Blake's Signature Move is Fiat lux, which is Latin for "Let there be light!
  • Blake ends up at a bar named Caritas.
  • "Holy Hastur Batman!" With also a shout out to Misquamacus thrown in for good measure.
  • While meeting up with Nathan-Prime in his dream, Blake conjures up an image of Baker Street and imagines a scenario involving Sherlock Holmes. In that same dream Nathan mentions this very website when Blake invokes the Ice-Cream Koan trope. He then claims to have once portrayed the character of Gen Fudo, although it's not known if he's joking or not, as he had just quoted a phrase the character had used before.
  • Upon hearing a similar lead-in line, Blake proceeds to quote Attack on Titan Abridged, saying, "Just loosen up and be tight at the same time."
  • Angered at how a mission goes, Blake swears by saying, "frak me."
• Tele-Frag: happens to Zoë when she's distracted by one of Clooney's illusions and loses an arm as a result, one of many factors that triggers the appearance of Beleth in the fight.
• 13 Is Unlucky: Thirteen cities are hosts of the Feast, which hundreds being planned for the Human Sacrifice required. However, thanks to the group's intervention, not a single one takes place, as failing to do one and doing every other would be seen as incomplete devotion, which spares every single potential sacrifice.
• Tough Love: Zea offers this to Blake as a kind way of making him realize he's out of his element and will cause more problems than he solves if he does things alone. Of course, she does so after sending energy blasts of various elements right at him leaving him wounded, but he appreciates the idea once he realizes her intent.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: Zoë, along with most Sanguine Collective vampires, thrive on this, with most of those being turned having already been attractive before the change enhances their physical appearance to be more pleasing. She would have had her way with both Blake and Zea had Blake not been protected by his love for a women he no longer remembers and was possibly his wife before he was thrown into the future.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: upon seeing an enthralled mundane about to jump to her death, Blake offers her a speech based on this idea to stop her, which doubles as a way for him to overcome his own trauma at realizing he'd unwittingly been trying to get himself killed without committing suicide as a result of losing everyone he ever loved by coming to the future.
• Wizards Live Longer: Blake explains that, as a result of the Christening, most Christeners are able to live far longer than their mundane counterparts, as being in touch with Creation allows them to be surrounded by life in a way few other beings can do. He himself doesn't look his age and notes his own parents were most definitely not in their fifties when they had him, but wasn't ever able to get a straight answer out of them when it came to how old they actually were. It's actually hypothesized that Christeners are functionally immortal, but can still be killed by disease, spells, and weapons.
• You Didn't Ask: Clooney uses this excuse to explain why he didn't reveal that he was a Psionic the whole time.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: while entering Cinderella's dream, Nathan instructs Blake and the others that this trope is in play, although Blake has some difficulty at exploiting it at first, he is able to later conjure machine gun from nothingness to fight a foe who followed them.

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