Out of Time the Grand Quest

by Christopher Douglass

  Finally, the two sat back, panting heavily after only managing to fix a small portion of his extensive injuries.

  “I’m tapped for now. Sorry I’m not stronger, but healing takes a lot of energy.”

  “Yeah, I’m tapped too, but at least I stopped the little bit of internal bleeding you still had. I’ll say one thing, Maria might be a fail-- might not be much of a mage, but she knows her herb healing.”

  “I’m just happy to be able to breath a bit more normally without pain, thank you.”

  The two women began wrapping him back up again, hiding his partially melted flesh from view once more. Kimi though was getting impatient waiting on Maria, after all the trouble she had gone through to find her, Kimi wanted to finally get things over with. The raptor’s head turned towards the path, a small sigh escaping her lips.

  “And how long do you plan to hide out there? You keep complaining about other people being cowards, so you wouldn’t think about being one yourself would you? I believe that is being called hypocritical.”

  Kimi looked at the path, watching Maria come out from behind a tree blushing and looking at the ground.

  “I wasn’t hiding. I just didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “Right. I can read minds remember? But whatever. It’s your life.”

  Maria’s head lowered a little further, finally lifting to meet Kimi’s eyes.

  “Hi.”

  Chapter 16: Truth, Lies, and Everything Between

  “I’m not going back!”

  “You’re going to die out here if you don’t!”

  “I don’t care! At least I’ll die being remembered as a hero, not a failure! At least everyone will know I’m no coward! That I wasn’t too scared of the unknown to hide away in town. That I’m not a coward like you who would rather wait for other people to fix the problems than do something about it yourself by becoming a mediator!”

  Kimberly had finally had enough. The arguing had gone on for five minutes now and it was getting nowhere. She was sure she hadn’t helped matters much by telling Maria she was taking her back right after the girl had said hi. And her accusation of being a coward stung. With a yell she launched herself at Maria, tackled her to the ground, grabbed her head between her hands, and beat it against the dirt.

  Coward! Coward! Does this look like the actions of a coward to you! Stop me if you can! If you can’t even stop me, I am going to beat you senseless and drag your corpse back with me if I have to! Do you have any god damn idea what I have been through already? I’ll show you cowardice!”

  Kimi struck the girl across the face hard, clawing her nails into the flesh and ripping long bleeding gouges into it. Maria was underneath her sobbing, what little will to fight having been knocked out of her already. Her hair already sticky with blood. Kimi brought her other hand around to gouge the other cheek, all reason fleeing her mind. She just wanted to hurt this pretentious self-centered girl. Make her bleed. Make her feel pain like she had never felt pain before. Make her feel all the fear she herself had felt the last few days.

  When she raised her left hand to strike down one more time, it was caught at the wrist. She snarled, turning angrily to meet whoever was stopping her, only to find Bree shaking her head lightly. The fog around her mind began to lift, the tension and anger fleeing as quickly as it had surged up. Bree’s eyes were soft, conveying she understood the turmoil going on inside Kimberly, her voice was soft and compassionate to reflect that.

  “Enough. It might make you feel better, but this isn’t you. I understand how you feel, but this won’t solve anything. Come, cool your head, and let her cool hers. Try again when you are thinking more clearly.”

  Kimi let out a sigh, her head dipping in agreement. “You’re right.” Looking down at the still crying girl she felt she needed to get one last blow in. But an emotional one, not a physical one. “Partner.”

  Kimberly felt Maria stiffen under her, so knew the girl had heard and understood what that single word signified. Standing up from where she was straddling the girl’s hips, she took one final look down at Maria, looking so pitiful all of a sudden as she curled into a ball hiding her face. With a final shake of her head she stalked off into the woods, down the single path with Bree, a mage light floating overhead to illuminate the darkness.

  They walked in silence, Bree content to just be a shadow presence as Kimberly collected her thoughts. Soon enough they came to a stream, the path veering off to the left and right. Kimi took the right hand path, stopping at a downed tree half blocking the path. There she sat, pulling her knees up to her chest and watched the river. Bree settled herself next to Kimberly hooking a knee with both hands and watching the river as well. Waiting for Kimi to speak if she so felt like it.

  “That wasn’t me. I mean, it was me, but it wasn’t. I didn’t jump into some character , I was still me, yet not me, if that makes sense. I’ve never done something like that before. At least, not without jumping into a character.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s probably my fault.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course it’s not your fault.”

  Kimberly felt Bree shaking her head next to her in the dimness. “No, you don’t understand. I guess no one has ever properly explained the contract with you. I never thought about it until now, just taking it for granted that everyone knew the positives and negatives. Everything has drawbacks, even the mage-mediator contract. One of those drawbacks is feedback. There is a connection between us, allowing you to always use your Other power and me to increase my magic. But any connection can go both ways, and more than just power is shared between us. Emotions also bleed through. I felt your intense feelings at her words and became angry myself. That anger added into the feelings and desires I already felt. Those magnified feelings and my own desire to attack her fed back to you. In your heightened state of anger, you acted on that, thinking it was wholly your own thoughts and actions.”

  “So it will always be like this?”

  “I’m told it gets easier with time. It’s always the worst right after a bonding. Every strong emotion from either of us is fed to the other. Anger, sadness, love, joy. But with time the mind unconsciously creates filters, separating what are your emotions and what are mine. I think it was that overload so soon after our bonding that made you handle the situation unlike how you normally might.”

  “I could easily hate this world sometimes. That doesn’t seem too fair.”

  “In this world or any other, things aren’t always fair. Our world might be a little more advanced socially and mentally than your reality, but that doesn’t mean unfairness has gone away. If it had, I wouldn’t have to worry about going on quest just to increase my son and families status.”

  Kimberly fell silent, resting chin on knees while the sound of babbling water lulled her senses. Every time she thought she was beginning to understand magic and the laws that seemed to govern it she learned something new that threw her assumptions off.

  “Am I doing the right thing Bree? I mean, All I am doing is trying to impose my views of how things should be onto her. I know what she is doing is stupid. So does just about everyone else. Even she admits her power is laughable at best. If I asked a hundred people, ninety-nine of them would say she will die without question. The other one would say she might survive if she is lucky. I told Grell I would bring her back, but that is still someone else deciding what is best for her. She made the decision to leave, to team up with Frank and go on quest-- despite knowing her own shortcomings. So is it right of me to say what she is doing is wrong? To tell her she can’t go and drag her back in order to keep her alive? I mean, maybe she really wants to die, that’s why she left to begin with. If she can’t be a great mage like her mother, or her grandfather, maybe she would rather be dead. She would just rather that death come by another’s hand while she was out here than by her own.”

  “I don’t know, Kimi. To be honest, that kind of thinking is too deep for me. On my wedding day, my foster father said that ri
ght and wrong is a decision each person has to make. Sometimes what you feel is right does not match what society accepts as such, or what other people accept as such. When this happens conflict arises. Both sides claiming they are right and the other is wrong. And in a weird way, neither side is wrong in their claims. That is where compromise comes in. He said marriage is learning to navigate that minefield of head butting and compromise. To learn when and how to compromise, and when to stand for your convictions. Fighting is inevitable, even in marriage. Sometimes compromise hurts a relationship, and there has to be a clear winner and loser of an argument. But it is these things that make the marriage stronger. Pacifism is a nice word, but that is all it is. Humans aren’t so evolved as to listen to mere words. Even after all this time, they respond and listen to violence and strength. They listen to the alpha male so to speak. If they recognize that they are weaker than another, they will back down and follow without complaint.”

  Bree picked up a rock, throwing it into the river, the splash getting lost in the darkness. “I’m not sure how much truth there is to all of that. But I always thought Richard was a smart man. And I always tried to listen to what he had to say. Henry and I, normally we can talk things out and compromise, but we’ve had our share of fights too. Both growing up together and while married. He’s beat me good a few times in anger, and I’ve cut him with wind or burned him with fire a time or two. Each time, I always thought that was the end of us. That we would never be able to mend things. But somehow, it always works out. Either he or I apologize for our actions and we manage to work out whatever it was we were fighting over.”

  She threw another rock, this one skipping along in the darkness before sinking.

  “Sometimes, I wonder if I am just too young. Lots of people get married at fifteen like I did. But lots more also wait until they are eighteen or nineteen. It isn’t like there is any laws saying you have to be married by a certain age. You can get married from the moment you are considered an adult. Sometimes younger. A part of me came on quest to grow up. To live a life. If I didn’t, I’d just be Bree Hakra, dull, weak, mage and mother who never ventured outside of town. Who never did anything exciting and who lived and died only knowing the town called Yandor. If I was lucky, I might get a chance to go to another city, maybe Haven, or Felsetch. Probably have another two or three kids, but never really doing anything with my life.

  “I didn’t want that. I said I came out on quest to give my child a better life, and that’s true. But I mostly did it for me. I know I will probably die. I knew I was a weak mage, even contracted to Emry. I definitely never expected to find and contract with you to become stronger. But I felt this was the right thing to do. I felt I needed to do this, no matter what anyone said. Does that make me wrong? Henry was against it you know, got into a big fight over it. He even broke my legs to stop me from going. But Isabelle and Jasmine patched me up after I crawled out of the house away from him. I hid out with them for a week before the Grand Quest actually started so he wouldn’t try to stop me again.

  “He said some of the same things you said to Maria. That I wasn’t strong enough, that I wouldn’t be of much help and I would only get in the way. So I do know how Maria feels. Yet, now that I am on the other side of that same argument, I’m agreeing with all those same points that were thrown at me by Henry. So who is right and wrong? If I say you are right, then that negates the whole reason I wanted to go on quest. If I say you are wrong, that says I don’t believe your points are valid, and I do. I do think Maria shouldn’t be on quest, that she is only a liability. But I also think she is in the right as well to make her own choices just like I did.”

  Kimberly continued to stare out into the darkness. She was glad Bree was there, it was a comfort having someone to listen. As Grell had said, it felt like she was whole for the first time in her life. As if Bree was the other half of her soul she hadn’t known she had missed until now. She felt calm, secure, and confident in herself with the girl around. The only thing ruining her peace of mind was a buzzing that kept getting louder and louder. It almost sounded like a monotone scream that had melded into a single note.

  “What is that noise?”

  “What noise?”

  “That wailing sound, don’t you hear it?”

  Bree shook her head, looking at Kimi in puzzlement. “I don’t hear anything.” Her eyes widened and she lifted her head with a jerk. “Your Map! Check your Map! Hurry!”

  Listening to the note of urgency in Bree’s voice, Kimberly pulled out the white book. Only, it wasn’t completely white anymore. The bound edge was black, and two of the compasses on the front were slowly creeping closer and closer together. As if being drawn together by invisible hands. Kimberly dutifully described what she was seeing when Bree asked what she saw.

  “We got to go. Now! Back to the others!”

  “Why? What is it?”

  Kimberly got to her feet, running after Bree as the girl dashed off. Her voice flying back in clipped tones.”

  “A Paradox Echo. It must be close if you hear the warning.”

  “A what?”

  “Somebody failed. Not just failed, failed miserably. Changed the histories too badly. Basically they broke time.”

  “What?”

  “Two time rifts are merging. That’s why the Map shows you the two coming together. Every Mediator in a five mile radius hears that wailing. It is a call to arms. Once they merge, we have exactly twenty-four hours to straighten out both rifts.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “This world of magic, and Atlantis, cease to exist. Along with everyone and everything tied to it. That includes anyone with magic. Our world would effectively be a dead end.”

  “Can’t we stop it somehow? Enter the rifts while they are moving?”

  “No. They bar entry while they come together. They are only stable when they are stationary.”

  The two entered the camp where everyone was already moving. Packing up equipment and preparing to head off into the wilderness. Even Frank was lugging a few things on his one good shoulder and hobbling into the darkness after his partner. Kimberly and Bree followed, slowing to a fast walk as they merged with the group. The wailing sound kept getting louder and louder. All she wanted to do was plug her ears, but that would do no good. The sound was in her head, not outside of it.

  From out of the darkness on the left and right came more pairs, the petite girl and her hulking mediator who had floated down the pathway on a bed of air, and the two who had worn matching midnight clothing speckled with stars. Ahead, Kimi could make out the wavering anomalies signifying a rift, there were two of them and both were visible sliding closer to each other. Everyone stopped in front of the expected merge point, waiting for the moment it stabilized. The look on every face was determined, even Maria’s. Kimi was hesitant to speak, but her need for information won out.

  “Does anyone know what to expect?”

  Every head shook back and forth silently, but it was the mediator who could transform into animals that spoke. “It is a Paradox Echo. The only thing we know for sure is it will be two timeframes coming together. And since each one is already messed up by the bleed over from the first timeline, it will be a mix-up of four total timeframes. I heard the last Paradox Echo happened almost a thousand years ago. But there are no records of what happened inside.”

  Maria spoke quietly, the wounds Kimberly had given her already healed by Jasmine or Isabelle. “Grandpa said it will be a-a-an enclosed space. He called it something else but I can’t remember the name. But what’s important is that those who enter tend to be separated. They can occupy the same spot but be in different time dimensions. That’s why it is called an Echo, because while there is only one true timeline, there will be multiple echoes of the same moment. Anything that happens in one echo, affects the other echoes.”

  “So if I cut down a tree in my time echo, that same tree will appear felled in another one?”

  “Yeah. And if you kill a perso
n in one time echo, they die in all of them. Holding hands is no guarantee you and your partner will end up in the same space either, the rift just deposits you where it feels like it. But since there are only two rifts converging, there will only be four possible echo timelines. At least, that’s what my grandfather said.”

  The mediator who could transform into animals looked at Maria with a small snarl of disgust on his face. “If your grandfather knew all that, why didn’t he tell us before we went on quest?”

  “Because that is confidential Grand Wizard information. Since he didn’t say anything, he had a good reason not to.”

  “Then why did he tell a Scrub like you?”

  “Because I will be a Grand Wizard someday. Unlike you, who will still be a flea bitten cur no matter what you do.”

  The man snarled again, leaping forward to attack Maria, instinctively Kimi swung out her hand, a sword appearing from thin air to cut lightly into his chest as he jumped backwards.

  “Leave off. This is no time to be fighting now is it? I’m in no position to talk, since I attacked her not long ago too. Plus she can be self-centered and pretentious in my eyes. Her words were uncalled for, but so were yours. I’m not entirely sure what Scrub means, but I can guess. If you really want to get to her, you go through me. And I assure you, I will kill you. I have the power to do so and I won’t hesitate to leave you laying here on the ground for vultures to pick at. Your power is to transform into animals. My power is to conjure weapons to kill animals. Many of which you could never dream of. Now, do you want to test me?”

  The man’s eyes darkened as he bared his teeth at her. Finally he backed off, spitting at the ground next to her feet.

  “You best hope we aren’t in the same echo. Because if we are, you won’t be leaving.”