Out of Time the Grand Quest

by Christopher Douglass

  Amy detected the smell of rotting flesh before they came upon the body. It had an odor nothing else could quite match. So when Kimberly pushed the bushes to the side, Amy wasn’t caught by surprise. The carrion crows ripping chunks out of the dead man’s chest however were as they scattered into the sky with angry calls.

  At their feet lay the woodsman they were looking for. The axe nearby left no doubt as to his profession. There were large boils on his neck, that forced his head to the side. His fingertips, what was left of them, were as black as charcoal, the coloring reached down toward the palm. His clothing was ripped by the beaks of birds and the teeth of rodents trying to get at the meat underneath. The smell of feces and urine was stronger up close, but had a faded quality to it, as if he had released his bowels a few days ago.

  It was at this moment Kimberly gave a gasp and the glove on her hand unraveled, disappearing into the nether. The moment it was gone, Kimberly stepped to the side, holding a hand over her mouth while doubling over. She didn’t throw up, but Amy took pleasure in watching her gag. It served her right. Amy did think it was weird she acted so squeamish. It was like she had never seen a dead body before. As if she herself hadn’t killed people. Unfortunately, Kimberly pulled herself together quickly, sheathing her dagger as she stood up.

  “Don’t get too close. I know this bacteria can transmit through blood, but I don’t know if it is airborne or not.”

  “Well, this is a bit anticlimactic, seems our job is done already. We didn’t need to even come out here.”

  Kimberly shook her head at Amy’s words. “No. Now the job is actually harder. We need to take care of all the animals that fed off the body. One thing I do know about the Black Death, is it was originally spread by rodent bites and scratches. So anything that ate this man, or the grass he bled unto, could potentially spread the disease. Not to mention anything that ate those animals. It is strange though, this man has been dead for a few days, yet Vletch said he and Isabelle talked to him this morning.”

  “Perhaps--” Amy felt dumb for even opening her mouth. She didn’t like to admit just how clueless she was, so she shook her head when Kimberly looked in her direction. Frank was right, Kimberly probably was the smartest out of the three of them, so she would know how foolish Amy’s words would be.

  “Perhaps what?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “It’s a stupid idea. But I was just thinking perhaps time is being condensed down in this Paradox Rift. I mean, this is technically the merging of four timelines right? And under normal circumstances, a rifts Due Date is at least a few days at a minimum. But only in an Echo is it twenty-four hours. Maybe that’s because time is compressed, making that week or whatever of a normal rift get condensed into a single days time span. What if the shifts I’ve been seeing is ripples where time folds in on itself. You know, like folding a piece of paper to make it smaller. Maybe I can see them because my specialized magic makes me more in tune with the changes in the surrounding magical fields.”

  Kimberly and Frank both looked at her strangely. Amy felt heat rush to her face as she turned away. It really had been a stupid idea.

  “That-- doesn’t seem so stupid to me actually. It might sound a bit crazy, but then again, as a Phaser who is pretty clueless about Aerth and magic, this entire situation sounds crazy. I think you might be on to something. It would explain his advanced state of decay, and why it overtook Isabelle so quickly. Until we get information that proves your theory otherwise, I think you might be right. Good job. But that still doesn’t solve the problem of how to keep the disease from spreading to the town.”

  “We just have to keep the animals from biting the townspeople or having the townspeople kill and eat them, right?”

  “In essence, yes. I don’t know how we can accomplish that though. We would have to quarantine, and most likely kill, everything in this entire forest and capture every bird we see.”

  “Well if that is all we need to do, I can handle that.”

  Amy enjoyed the look of surprise Kimberly gave her. The way the girls head jerked and her eyes widened gave her a small bit of satisfaction. Now that Amy wasn’t so angry, she realized the girl really wasn’t all that bad. Amy still got irritated by the sight of her, but perhaps she had formed a hasty impression after watching her kill Ryan and his partner.

  Slipping the small staff holding the levitation spell off her back, Amy popped a tiny sliver length out of its groove. Barely longer than her hand from wrist to fingertip, it didn’t look like much. But as any artifact mage could attest, it wasn’t about size, it was about the spell held inside. Wood and metal conducted the artificers sealing spells well, though the best ones could even turn something as simple as a rock into an artifact.

  “Stand close to me.”

  The two gathered behind her, not trying to second guess what she said. This was her magic, her specialty. Amy knew they were trusting that she knew what she was doing. Just as she would trust Frank when he spoke about transformation magic. Replacing the half-staff in its holder along her back, Amy grabbed the pendant around her neck and activated the spell held within with a twist of the mind. A pale, aqua colored, bubble expanded around the three of them, barely big enough to protect the group. Her grandmother had spent three years of her life trying to capture this protection spell, in the end she had to kill the mage in order to keep it. It was also the first artifact Amy had ever managed to master.

  “You are going to feel massive heat, but don’t leave the protection of this bubble or you will die.”

  Amy extended the sliver of wood, pushing the tip through the film of magic that surrounded the group. And this spell her grandmother had given her life to capture. It was one of the strongest spells in her families arsenal, a coveted treasure her father had killed more than one person to keep safe. Unlike other artifacts, this one needed a voice activation keyword as well as the spark of magic. While being of the fire branch of magic, this was a tier five spell. One that only one in a thousand might ever hope to cast.

  “Conflagration.”

  The world around them became a furnace. Flames shot miles into the air, swirling in an ever expanding circle from their position. Everything turned to ash within seconds. Trees charred and crumbled to the ground. Birds flying overhead fell as dust. The ground turned to sand and then glass between one eye blink and the next. Nothing would survive unless they were buried half a mile underground, three miles in the air, or inside protective magic.

  “Impressive.”

  Amy smirked at the awe in Kimberly’s voice. “I know. That is the only charge though. It will take at least six months before it can be used again.”

  “How far will it spread?”

  “Five miles.”

  “Well, I must say, that definitely solves the problem of keeping the disease from spreading. Since animals are territorial, I doubt anything outside of that five miles came anywhere close within the last few hours, or days, or whatever kind of time frame we are looking at.”

  Amy released the protection spell as she grabbed her levitation staff once more. While she was putting the sliver of wood back in its groove, her stomach did another one of those flips. Only this time it felt more like her guts had rotated sideways instead of tumbling over itself. The world around them grew normal once more. Glistening black glass returned to dirt and grass grew from nothing. Trees shimmered into existence, as if a veil had been pulled away that was hiding them. Animals burst from hiding and birds took flight from treetops. The pile of dust that had once been the body of the woodsman was lost under the sudden greenery. Within the space of a breath, all signs of her destructive spell had been obliterated.

  Kimberly stepped up next to Amy, looking around with mouth open. “Hey, Amy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not imagining this am I?”

  “I don’t think so. Unless you are imagining the same thing as me.”

  Frank slid into view on her
other side, also dumbstruck at what they had witnessed. “And me. If this is a hallucination, we three are all sharing it.”

  Kimberly nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought. And Amy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sorry for not believing you earlier about the world fracturing thing. It seems you were right and I was too blind to see it for myself.”

  “You should be.”

  “Amy--”

  Frank’s voice had a note of warning in it, but Amy had already clamped down on the rest of what she was going to say. She was partially to blame as well, egging Kimberly on as she had. The girl had apologized, something she had never expected. Rarely had anyone apologized to her. That just wasn’t how the world worked. Apologies’ made you look weak. If you were proved wrong, you just moved on and forgot about it. That’s what she had always believed. It was what she had always done before. She wasn’t sure exactly how to respond. The three looked at the new growth in silence, Kimberly bending to inspect the grass and run her fingers on the tree bark.

  “Hey, Kimberly.”

  Kimberly looked back at Amy from her crouched position, one hand filled with dirt. “Yeah?”

  “Sorry about the whole not believing you heard anything.”

  “You should be.”

  “Kimberly---”

  Kimberly ignored Frank, meeting Amy’s eyes as she gave a half smile. Amy knew the girl wasn’t trying to start another fight. In that moment she saw into the girls soul just a little bit. It almost felt like the moment when her and Vletch had bonded with a contract of blood. Kimberly was trying to speak Amy’s language. Trying to understand her. The problem was the two of them were polar opposites. Where Amy was foul mouthed and rough, unable to get along with people, Kimberly was more of a social flower, able to blend in and speak with others easily with soothing words.

  Amy instinctively knew Kimberly didn’t feel comfortable acting tough and egging her into a fight. The girl just thought that was how she could connect and become Amy’s friend. With that revelation, Amy saw how scared Kimberly actually was. How she was hiding it all behind a mask as thin as her protective barrier had been. Kimberly felt she needed friends to support her so she didn’t break down. So she didn’t fall into a dark abyss in her own mind. An abyss created by her Other power. While it gave her immense versatility, allowing her to take on the abilities of other people, each time she used it, a little more of her real self was lost. That abyss growing ever larger. If she wasn’t careful, that black maw would suck her up, forever trapping her in her own mind.

  That moment of connection was lost and time resumed its normal course. Amy returned the half smile, adding in a dip of the head to let her know she understood. Amy wondered if Kimberly had figured out what a double edged sword her power was yet. She opened her mouth to say something but Kimberly shook her head slightly, glancing over at Frank as she did so. With those small movements, Amy knew that she was aware. Just as she was aware of the insight Amy had picked up. Had Kimberly picked up anything about her as well? She probably had, such things tended to go both ways in her experience.

  As Kimberly stood, Amy replaced her levitation artifact for a second time, looking around the woods as she did so.

  “So, Kimberly. What now? I can’t burn the forest down again. And I have no clue why it re-grew instantly. So what does that big brain of yours think?”

  “I’m not sure, but what if-- what if we aren’t on the same timeline? You said this Echo is all four timelines squashed into one right? I assumed all four groups were on the same time stream. But maybe that’s not exactly the case. Well, maybe it is. If we are all on the same timeline, and we screw with that timeline, say kill someone. What if the Echo compensates and fixes itself by jumping us all to another version of the same time line?

  “Think about it. If all four of our groups are at different stages of this time frame, and Maria, or Bree kill a man, the logic as we know it so far will kill him in the past as well. When Vletch knocked those men out, they all passed out at the same time in our time frame right? If this was a normal flow of time, they would have woken up and left, yet they all dropped unconscious the same moment their counterparts did. At least, we can assume they did. We didn’t get a description of the men, so we don’t know if the ones you saw laying in the streets were the same ones.

  “Anyways, if Bree kills a man in the her timeframe, that is-- our future-- than that will create paradox. Because how could that man be in the future for Bree to kill if his counterpart in the past also dies? So what if this rift resolves that paradox by shifting us all over into another timeline where that man is still alive? An echo of that man if you will. We know that the timeline of Earth A and this current world are similar, so the history is also similar, with a few minor details. If that were true, he would do many of the same actions, go to the same places, and eventually end up in the same place where Bree could kill him, thereby completing the cycle. There is supposed to be a forest here. You destroyed the forest. So the Paradox Echo shifted over a new one so there would be a forest here.”

  Amy grunted in reply. It made sense in a twisted logic sort of way. Only Grand Wizards really knew anything about Paradox Echoes since they were such rare occurrences. A common magi like her only knew they could destroy Aerth if they were not fixed within the allotted time. Why did such powerful magic always have to be so complicated and convoluted? And why did Grand Wizards have to keep so much about them a secret? Wouldn’t more information on things like this Echo help magi deal with it more effectively?

  “Until we get information that proves your theory otherwise, I think you might be right. Good job.” The two of them shared another quick smile, now that Amy understood the woman a little better, it wasn’t that hard to get along with her. “Again though, what now?”

  “We leave I guess. We can’t really do anything here. And the animals that ate the body are definitely dead. If I am right and these animals are from another timeline, we have nothing to worry about. They shouldn’t be infected. If I’m wrong, we will just have to deal with it somehow later. Waiting around is pointless, our Due Date is still fast approaching. Maria and her team are watching over the hostage. Vletch is off doing something or other, we don’t know exactly because he wasn’t in the barn when we got there and Isabelle didn’t say. We can assume he went off towards the black spot where the Emishi are supposed to be. Bree’s team is also on their own. I would guess they have gone to investigate the Emishi area as well, since last they knew we were working on the disease and hostage aspects of completing the conditions.”

  “So then we go back to the barn. If two teams are already in place over at the black spot, two teams can hold down the fort with the hostage.”

  Kimberly shook her head at Franks suggestion. Before she could speak though, Amy answered. Even she could see that wasn’t the right course of action.

  “No, we go check out the Emishi camp. If Kimberly is right, and we are all spaced out along a single time line that happens to transport us all to a new one at need, we would have been at the barn when Santalada’s group got there. Since we weren’t and that would create paradox, that means we went to the black area. That’s basic time magic theory. The forces of the world have a way of preventing time paradox. It is integral in how the world fixes itself after we close a rift. Not to mention the fallacies of self- fulfilling prophecies. Knowledge of the future makes you change your actions, thereby making the future you learned about come to pass.”

  “Correct. Seems there is more than hot air filling up that head of yours.”

  “And it seems you’re not so useless after all Kimberly.”

  “Call me Kimi, all my friends do.”

  “As If I’d be friends with a four eyes like you.”

  “Fine, be that way midget.”

  “I was planning on it even without your permission.”

  The two of them grinned, then began to chuckle as Frank’s head whipped between the both of them. His brows furrowe
d in confusion which made the two laugh even harder.

  “Did I miss something here? Are you two friends now? Since when?”

  Amy wiped a tear from her eye as she spun the big man around, giving him a hard shove in the back to get him moving. “Nothing at all troll. Just get moving, time is wasting. When would we have had time to become friends? That is, if I even had an inclination to be friends with someone like her.”

  “But that exchange just now---”

  “That was girl talk, nothing more. Something a brute like you would never understand. So go drag your knuckles up ahead while the two of us continue our veiled threats in private without you stopping us.”

  With a last look over his shoulder, and that puzzled expression still on his face, he lengthened his stride until he was about a foot ahead of them. When Amy met Kimi’s eyes the two of them started chuckling again.

  “You could try being a little nicer to him you know.”

  “I don’t want him to get any ideas. I have an image to maintain you know. Besides, I don’t do nice very well. It hurts my teeth.”

  “I see. Then I suppose I should be honored.”

  “Naturally.”

  Amy strolled next to Kimi companionable. If she closed her eyes she could easily imagine it was Vletch walking quietly next to her. She had never really had any girl friends before, few boy friends either. Amy wasn’t sure what it was they were supposed to talk about, she wasn’t into the things the other girls liked, such as clothes and boys. Glancing at Kimi out of the corner of her eye, she realized Kimi didn’t mind the silence either. She was content to just be nearby, giving Amy her space and not thinking she had to fill the air with conversation. Perhaps that was why she reminded her so much of Vletch right now.