“Jacob!” she shouted. “Jacob, stop! They’re safe. She’s human.”
A man skidded to a stop close to the woman and stared at Galadriel.
“Human?” he asked, his breath ragged. “Where did you come from?”
She didn’t know how to respond. She knew that the concepts that had become so familiar to her in the last several days were still completely outlandish to anyone else, and she wouldn’t know how to begin to explain them.
“Did you come through the portal?” the woman asked.
Vyker groaned beside her and Galadriel realized that he was gripping his shoulder again. She wrapped an arm around him as much as she could and looked back to the woman.
“He’s hurt,” she said imploringly.
“I’m sorry,” the woman muttered, looking down at the bow.
“We need your help,” Galadriel said. “He can’t just stay out here.”
The woman nodded and gestured for them to follow.
“Angela,” Jacob hissed. “Don’t help them. You don’t know them.”
“She said she’s human, Jacob,” Angela said. “How long has it been since we’ve seen another human?”
“What about him?” Jacob said, nodding his head toward Vyker. “What’s he?”
“I’m not human,” Vyker said, “but I’m not a danger to you if you won’t be more of a danger to me.”
Angela glared at Jacob for a few seconds and then continued forward, leading them back in the direction from which they came. Galadriel put her blade back into her bag and followed, guiding Vyker along with her. Soon, Angela approached another section of the rock ridge and slipped into a crack in the face that was even more narrow than the one in the first cavern Galadriel had entered. She worried that Vyker wouldn’t fit through, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Angela pushed her way through, followed by Galadriel. She noticed that Jacob was lingering outside, and she assumed that he was waiting until they entered to follow them, bookending them so that he and Angela could remain in control. Vyker turned sideways and grunted as he rearranged the bags on his back and forced his way into the crevice.
Fortunately, the corridor that the crack opened into was far wider than the entrance itself, and they were able to move relatively comfortably deeper into the ridge. Galadriel could feel the incline of the path beneath her feet heading down and though she was thankful for the rocks around them that kept the stinging chill of the wind away from them, she worried that the further they moved down, the colder the temperature would get. Instead, it seemed that the longer they walked, the warmer and thicker the air around them became. By the time that they reached a large, round chamber, she felt comfortable enough to let the blanket fall away from her shoulders so that she carried it in front of her.
Angela helped Galadriel put her bags aside, and then approached Vyker. Together, the two women took his bags and removed the blanket from around him, trying not to hit his wounded shoulder. Vyker sat down, and Galadriel helped him peel away his torn, bloodied shirt.
“What was on that arrow?” Vyker hissed. “My arm feels like it’s on fire.”
“It was poisoned,” Angela admitted, starting to peel away the layers of bandages.
Galadriel felt a sting of fear move through her and shot the other woman a frightened look.
“Poisoned?”
“Don’t worry. It won’t kill him. It’s meant mostly to disable. He’s strong. The only other creatures that we’ve hit with those arrows haven’t been able to move within seconds.”
“I don’t particularly want to be moving right at this moment,” Vyker said.
Galadriel could tell that his pain was increasing with each passing moment, and she was desperate to help him.
“What can you do?” she asked.
“I can neutralize the poison. He’ll need some rest, but he should be fine.”
Angela stood and crossed the chamber to what looked like a series of bowls hewn from stone. She picked one up and added a few ingredients from other containers. She used another rock to blend the ingredients and then carried the bowl over the Vyker. Galadriel felt a surge of jealousy as Angela knelt down beside Vyker and evaluated his muscled arm with obvious appreciation.
“I can do it,” she said, taking the bowl out of Angela’s hand. “I’m a nurse.”
“You wanted to be a nurse,” Vyker muttered.
“Close enough,” Galadriel said.
She gathered some of the thick paste from the bowl onto her fingers and spread it onto Vyker’s wound.
“You never told us how you got here,” Jacob said from where he continued to linger several feet away from them, his expression still cautious and suspicious.
“I came through a portal,” Galadriel told them. “I was in the desert and I found a cavern. There were some engravings there, and the next thing I knew, I was somewhere else.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Angela looking at Jacob. There were questions in her expression, and Galadriel glanced back and forth between them.
“What?” she asked.
“Why were you in the desert?” Angela asked.
The question sounded almost like a challenge.
“I was researching a historic site.”
“HM-1313.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Galadriel felt like the breath had been taken from her lungs. All of the sound around her disappeared into a high ringing in her ears, and she felt like her mind was swimming. She forced herself to come back into the moment, to respond to Jacob’s unexpected statement.
“How could you possibly…”
“How long has it been since they found it?” Jacob asked.
Galadriel was still speechless. She stammered for a moment, then glanced at Vyker, who nodded at her, encouraging her to continue.
“About a year,” she answered.
“And you’ve seen it?” Angela asked.
Galadriel pulled her bag closer to her and took out the papers. The corners were bent and worn, the imprints slightly faded and smudged from the number of times that she had brought them out of the bag, but they were still clear enough to read. She handed them along with the pictures of the wall and the printed research to Angela. She read through them quickly, her breath audibly catching in her throat when she got to the picture of the wall in the desert.
Jacob came to her side and knelt down so that he could look at the papers as well. They exchanged a glance and then looked back to Galadriel.
“How did you get here?” Jacob asked.
“I told you, through a portal.”
“But you didn’t end up here,” Angela said.
“No,” Galadriel said, shaking her head. “I went to a different stream.”
Just as she expected, they both looked confused. She did her best to explain the concept of the streams to them, using everything that she could remember Rick saying to her and elaborating with Vyker’s explanation.
“Where was the portal that you went through?” Jacob asked when she finished.
She took the papers back from Angela and showed them the map that she had used when she was standing in the desert, trying to orient herself so that she could find the original site of the wall. Spreading it out on the ground, she turned it so that it was facing in the proper direction and then pointed to the portion of the sketch that showed the rock ridge.
“Here,” she said. “Just beyond where they found the HM-1313 wall, there is a cave with a crack in it…”
“That led into a tiny cavern,” Jacob said.
Galadriel nodded. Her heart was racing, and she couldn’t seem to get her mind under control.
“You,” she whispered. “You were on the research team.” Rick’s words ricocheted through her mind, becoming louder as they repeated over and over. “You went into the cavern.”
“What did they say about us?” Angela asked. “When they realized that we were gone?”
“
What is she talking about?” Vyker asked.
His voice was weak, and Galadriel assumed the combination of the poison and the antidote were taking greater effect.
“You need to rest,” Angela said.
“I need to know what you’re talking about,” Vyker said, struggling to sit up straighter.
“They were part of the research team that discovered the wall,” Galadriel told him. “They went into the same cavern that I did with a few others from the team.”
“And we never came back out,” Jacob said. “Instead, we came here. We’ve been here ever since.”
“You haven’t traveled to any of the other streams?”
“We had no idea what happened,” Angela told her. “We were in the cavern one moment, and then the next we were here. We tried to figure out where we were and how we could get back. Pretty quickly, we realized that we wouldn’t be able to go back in the same way that we came. We couldn’t find another way. Since then, we’ve just been struggling to survive.”
Beside her, Galadriel felt Vyker slide the rest of the way onto the floor, and she looked at Angela with worry.
“It’s alright,” Angela told her. “He’s fine. He’s just asleep. Give him some time to rest.”
Galadriel tucked her blanket under his head and wrapped his around his body, running her hand along the side of his face. Suddenly, something that they had said to her snapped back into her mind. She turned to Angela.
“You told him that I’m human,” she said. “What have you been dealing with that isn’t human?”
Angela and Jacob tensed.
“There are other creatures here,” Jacob said. “They’ve been here since right after we came. That’s when the light started going out.”
“StarKillers,” Galadriel said.
“StarKillers?” Angela asked.
“Yes. They eat the starlight. They’re after the temple.”
“The temple?”
“The wall isn’t just a wall. It’s part of a temple that belongs to Vyker’s kind. The real temple exists in his stream, but replicas of it appeared in some of the other streams. The StarKillers have been going after the walls and destroying them.”
“Why?”
“Once they destroy the wall, they are able to take all of the light in the stream. It kills it. If they find their way to Vyker’s stream, to the actual temple, they will destroy the galaxy.”
“What do we do?”
Galadriel shook her head.
“We don’t know. He’s been fighting these enemies his entire life and hasn’t been able to stop them. Time’s running out now. They’re close to finding the stream, and he still doesn’t know how to stop them. What we know now is that the wall still exists in our time, which means that it is possible to stop to StarKillers and protect the wall.”
“In our time?” Angela asked.
Galadriel felt regretful for the way that she had said it. She hadn’t remembered that they were still learning about what was happening and didn’t realize that they had not just moved through the streams, but also through time. She had been too harsh – too bold – with the way that she said it. Now, she had to get through to them as gently as she could while also making them understand the urgency of what was happening.
“When you went through the portal, you didn’t just shift through the streams of existence,” she told them. “You moved to another moment in time. Right now, as we are in this second, none of us have been born yet. Our lives haven’t happened. Everything that we are doing right now is what is building the future of the stream that we understand.”
“But you said that we are in a different stream.”
“We are,” Galadriel told her, “and that’s the problem. We don’t understand how one stream impacts the other. It’s obvious that they do, in some ways, but there are other ways that they don’t.”
“But if we’ve already lived our lives up until the moment when we went through the portal, that means that that’s already set,” Jacob said. “We’ve already done those things, so they can’t change.”
“Yes, they can,” Galadriel said. “These imprints,” she pointed to the papers, “are of the wall since it has been on display at the Central Museum. Look closely at them.”
She watched their eyes trace over the papers a few times, and then Angela’s turned to her.
“They’re different.”
Galadriel nodded.
“Vyker changed them. At least, he will. In our time, the changes have already been made. Right now, they haven’t.”
“So in our time, he saved the wall and recorded how it was done,” Angela said.
“But he hasn’t done it yet now,” Jacob said. “And if he doesn’t figure it out, or if he’s stopped, the wall won’t survive.”
“And neither will anything else.”
“There’s nothing that we can do now,” Angela said. “Vyker has to rest. He won’t be able to move for several hours. The best that we can do is try to get some rest, too, and later we can bring you to see the wall.”
“You know where it is?” Galadriel asked, surprised.
“What’s left of it,” Jacob said. Maybe it can tell you something.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Galadriel settled down beside Vyker, willing her body to sleep. Angela and Jacob had left the chamber, taking the small lanterns that they had crafted with them so that there was only a small fire against one wall to give her any illumination. She couldn’t relax. She couldn’t get her mind to stop churning and her eyes to close, even for a moment. Finding the two missing researchers had startled her, but not because they were alive or that she found them at all. Instead, it was where they had found them that bothered her.
These two had entered the same cavern that she had, and yet they ended up in a different stream. Everything that she thought was starting to make sense no longer did. Vyker had told her repeatedly that the portal that had brought her to his stream was sealed, yet she had moved through it. Now, it seemed as though not only had she gone through it, but that Jacob and Angela had moved through it as well, only to end up in a completely and utterly different stream. She didn’t know what that meant, or how it would impact their journey, but it was enough to make her stomach turn slightly and keep her alert as she tucked herself into the curve of Vyker’s body and listened to him breathe.
Finally, she felt as though she couldn’t lie still any longer. She kissed Vyker’s cheek and climbed to her feet, using the illumination from the fire to guide her back to the corridor so that she could leave the cavern. She brought a different blanket with her, expecting that the chill outside would be even worse now. As she stepped out, she found that the light had dimmed slightly, but not as much as she would have expected. She pulled the blanket around herself tightly and tucked her head to push through the wind. Jacob’s shape was visible ahead, and she forged toward it. It was easier to walk without the weight of her bags weighing her down, and she soon made it to his side.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Patrolling,” he said. “There’ve been more of them lately.”
“They aren’t after you,” Galadriel told him.
“We’ve fought with them before,” Jacob said.
“If they find out that you’re human, they won’t bother to kill you. You aren’t of any use to them yet.”
“Yet?”
“Right now, they care about gaining control of the wall and killing off all of Vyker’s kind. There is nothing useful that you could do for them right now. In their minds, once they get the wall, then they will be able to take over the galaxy and control it as they please. Until then, they have to concentrate on destroying the light. It would take up too much of their energy to actually try to fight and kill you. They know that once they take all of the stars from this stream, you will die anyway.”
“How is your partner?” Jacob asked, sounding as if he were uncomfortable with what she as sa
ying to him.
“Still sleeping.”
“No, I’m not.”
Galadriel turned toward the sound of Vyker’s voice and saw him coming toward them. She ran to him and touched his shoulder tenderly.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “Are you feeling better?”
“It still hurts, but other than that, I’m fine. You shouldn’t be out here without me.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You don’t even have your blade with you.”
“Vyker, look at the light. Look around you.”
Vyker paused and glanced around.
“The light’s going away,” he said.
“Yes, but it hasn’t gone away yet,” Galadriel told him. “Angela and Jacob say that the light started to go away soon after they got here. That’s been a year. You said that the StarKillers are fast.”
“They are.”
“Then what’s taking them so long here? Jacob and Angela have seen them. They’ve fought them. Yet the stars and the sun aren’t gone. The parasites haven’t come. What is keeping them from destroying this stream?”
“Angela can bring you to the wall,” Jacob said. “Do you have torches?”
Galadriel and Vyker nodded.
“Yes.”
“Bring them,” Jacob said. “You never know when it will get darker.”
****
The trudge to the wall was the most difficult part of their journey so far. The cold grew more intense as they went, and the ground was both hard and slippery beneath her feet, making each step unsure but painful as it shook through her already exhausted muscles and joints. It seemed that they had been walking for hours when the darkness around them fully set in. Galadriel glanced up and was relieved to see stars glittering in the blackness of the sky above them. There weren’t as many of them as Vyker had showed her, but there were enough to calm the familiar fear that had started when the darkness crept in.
They continued on without even discussing stopping. It seemed that the three of them all felt the same push, the same need to keep going. Stopping was a waste of time, allowing another moment to slip by that could mean letting everything topple around them. They would go until they finally made it to the temple and then they could rest.
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