The Timeless One

by James Riley

  Except it wasn’t wood beneath him. It was grass.

  “Where am I?” Fort asked. He tried to remember what had happened, but that just resulted in a weird mix of pain and something… comforting, something much bigger than he was.

  “You’re outside,” Rachel said. “You blew right through the front door. The dining room is a mess, but Ember’s okay. She’s right here.”

  Fort felt a warm head nuzzle his hand. “Father is okay?” the dragon said, and he looked over at her in amazement.

  “I can understand you?” he said to her, a grin slowly spreading over his face. “It worked, Ember. I can speak your language!”

  The dragon glared at him. “You took on too much, for such a beginner. You are too new for such magic, Father! I would not have shown you the spell if I had known what you intended to do with it. This is what I get for listening to the Merlin creature.” She gave him a sad look. “I mostly wished you would stop reading, and take me hunting.”

  He smiled at her in spite of the situation. “I didn’t realize. I’ll… figure out a way to do that, okay?”

  Instantly the dragon smiled. “Father promises? Then I have great happiness.” And she rubbed the top of her head against his hand.

  “Um, what are you doing?” Rachel asked.

  “What?” Fort said. “I was talking to Ember.”

  “It sounded like you were speaking in magic,” Jia told him. “When did you learn so much of her language?”

  Fort winced, not looking forward to telling them.

  “I… used a spell on the dragon dictionary,” he said, slowly sitting up. A new wave of pain passed through his head as he did, and he quickly braced himself, but this one was thankfully just temporary. Apparently even Jia’s Healing magic couldn’t fix everything. “A Learn spell. I thought I could just take in the entire language that way, so I’d have spells to help us get Excalibur back.”

  Rachel groaned loudly as the Jia golem took a step back in surprise. “What? You can’t be serious!” the doll said.

  “Do you know how dangerous that was, New Kid?” Rachel asked, glaring down at him. “You could have died! What if the book had protection against that? What if it was too much for you? Because from this side, it definitely looked like your head was going to explode. Think about what would have happened if Jia hadn’t been here!”

  “What made you do such an insane thing?” the Jia golem asked.

  “I wanted to… to help get Excalibur back,” Fort said, rubbing his head. “I decided that even if I’m not as powerful as you two, I still need to step up and help. And I thought this might be a way to do it, help you get the sword, and maybe even fight the Timeless One.”

  Rachel and the Jia puppet looked at each other, and Jia sighed. “We should have told him. I… I should have told you both… everything.”

  “Too late now,” Rachel said, but her tone was more gentle than her words. She reached down to help Fort to his feet. He stood up a bit shakily, a wave of dizziness threatening to overtake him, but with Rachel’s help, he steadied himself, and handed Jia’s puppet back to her. “You’re staying here, though. You’re in no shape to come with us.”

  What? Was she joking? “No, I can do this!” he said. “Please, let me help. I can make a difference in there!”

  “And all you did was make yourself a liability,” Rachel said, giving him a sympathetic pat on his shoulder. “Look, I get that you want to be there for us, but you can’t take shortcuts and expect them to work. This is just like when you stole spells to avoid getting kicked out of the school in the first place!”

  “That wasn’t exactly my choice,” Fort said, looking down at the Jia golem with more guilt than he’d expected. “Sierra did that to me.”

  “Because you were desperate to stay,” Rachel said. “Just like you can’t wait to send Ember to Avalon. But this is what happens when you don’t think things through.”

  Ember, who had been prancing around happily, abruptly stopped and looked at Fort strangely.

  “We could have used your help, yes,” Rachel continued. “But you would have been great the way you were. Now—”

  “Rachel, just give me to him,” the Jia golem said. “I’ll make sure he’s okay, heal his pain if it comes back. We do need him.”

  “Please, Rachel,” Fort whispered, hating to practically beg, but not knowing what else to do.

  Rachel scrunched her eyes closed in annoyance. “We’re going to be fighting our way through half the TDA, not to mention any students Colonel Charles has guarding the sword,” she said to the Jia puppet. “Yes, we need him, but not if he’s going to hold us back in a fight.”

  “Oh, we’re not going to be fighting,” Jia said, her little sculpted smile widening. “Because while I’ve been stuck here, I think I came up with a new plan.”

  - TWENTY-SIX -

  THE COTTAGE’S DINING ROOM HAD been wrecked. Fort stared guiltily at the various cleaning instruments fixing his damage, wishing he could remember doing it. Whatever was in his head now was a lot more dangerous than he’d thought.

  Though weirdly, the memory of that strange, comforting feeling was there too. He wasn’t sure where it had come from, or why it now made him feel almost relaxed when thinking about magic, like his problems weren’t quite as bad as he’d thought they were, but the feeling wasn’t unpleasant, and right now, he could use anything that wasn’t straight-out panic.

  “In there,” the Jia golem said, pointing her little hand into one of the side rooms. “We need a mirror.”

  They passed through a doorway into what looked like a bedroom, complete with bed, bureau, and large, full-length mirror. “Okay,” the golem said, as Rachel put her down on the bed. “Fort, I’m going to use some of the magic I’ve been studying on you, so don’t be alarmed.”

  Fort’s eyebrows rose, and any comforting feeling he was getting from the magic in his head disappeared. “Um, what? You’re going to make me a puppet?”

  The Jia doll rolled her eyes. “That’s not all I’ve been working on. This is Corporeal magic.” Her hands began to glow with a blue light. “I’m going to make you both look like TDA soldiers, so we can sneak around without anyone knowing it’s us.”

  Whoa. She could do that? Of course Fort knew she was able to change Ember from a dragon into a cat, but somehow it seemed stranger to just modify their looks.

  “What about their uniforms?” Rachel asked. “I didn’t know you could do clothing.”

  “It’s easy, as long as I use cotton clothes, or anything that used to be alive,” the golem said. “Doesn’t work on anything human-made, like polyester.” She pointed at the lone bed in the room. “I tried using it on my sheets last night while we were training, just in case anyone looked in.”

  The bed began to glow with blue light, and the sheets formed into what looked like a Jia-sized lump, rising and falling as if Jia were curled up beneath them, sleeping.

  “Creepy,” Rachel said, her eyes widening as she started to smile. She looked at the doll, and her smile faded. “Um, nice job, though.”

  The golem looked away sadly as the sheets faded back to their normal shape and color. “Thanks. Ready, Fort?” Jia asked, and, this time, gestured at him.

  Instantly Fort’s T-shirt and pants changed into a soldier’s uniform, just like the ones the TDA wore at the Oppenheimer School. “Um,” he said, holding up some long sleeves. “I think you made it a bit too big.”

  “That’s because I’m not done,” Jia’s golem said, and now her blue light shone over his body. A weird feeling spread throughout his legs and arms, and the room shrank a bit around him—no, wait, it wasn’t the room. He had grown. And now the uniform fit perfectly.

  “Whoa!” Rachel said, looking at Fort in surprise. “He looks completely different! You should keep this new face, Fort.” She grinned at that.

  Fort reached up to touch his mouth and cheeks, then quickly moved to the mirror. A stranger looked back at him, and for a moment, Fort couldn’t beli
eve this wasn’t some kind of magic mirror.

  Instead of his normal brown hair, now he had short blond hair, buzzed almost to the scalp. His face looked nothing like his own, instead resembling a man in his twenties, at least.

  And he had so many muscles! He flexed, wondering if he could beat up Colonel Charles now. Probably not, since he had no idea how to fight, at least not without a staff, thanks to Sergeant Tower’s training.

  “Fort’s a private, but I’m going to make you a major,” the golem said to Rachel. “That way you can order people out of our way if you need to.”

  “Perfect,” Rachel said as the blue Healing light bathed her. “I’ve been ordering people around my whole life anyway. Hey, do you want to go higher in rank, maybe? I’d be okay with general, honestly.”

  As Fort watched in astonishment, Rachel’s hair shrank into her head, and her face shifted completely, both adding more lines around her eyes and mouth while also shrinking her cheekbones. When Jia had finished, the woman standing before him looked like a completely new person, nothing like his friend.

  “I, ah, made you less pretty, so you wouldn’t stand out as much,” Jia told her as Rachel went to look at herself in the mirror.

  Though Rachel didn’t turn around, Fort could see her blush in the mirror. “That’s, um, nice of you to say. Your golem’s pretty cute, by the way.”

  This time the golem turned red, which itself was a trick, considering it was made of wood, and Fort hid his smile in spite of the situation. Whatever it took to bring these two back together was fine by him. Still, the room had gone silent now, and someone needed to talk. “So, um, don’t we have a sword to steal?”

  “You, quiet,” Rachel said, and Fort instantly recognized her angry look, even on the new face. “You’re lucky to be here, with all that nonsense in your head. Do not mess this up for us, Fort. I need to be able to depend on you.” She pointed at the golem on the bed. “Now put Jia in your pocket so we can get moving.”

  Fort did as he was ordered, sliding Jia’s golem into his front chest pocket. From there, she could peek out if she needed to but otherwise stay hidden.

  “How are we going in?” Fort asked.

  “My room is actually open,” Jia said. “Since they’re holding me in the cafeteria. You can open a portal there.”

  “One second,” Fort said, and moved back out to the dining room, where Ember was watching the cleaning process. “Hey, Ember, stay here and don’t eat anything, okay? We can go hunting when I get back.”

  The dragon looked up at him and nodded, looking far less excited than she had the last time he’d said that. But at least she understood him clearly and seemed to be going along with it, which was all he could ask. He nodded back, then returned to the cottage’s bedroom.

  There, he opened a teleportation circle to Jia’s bedroom. Fortunately, the TDA had isolated her in her own room, so there were no roommates to worry about, and the room was empty. Also, it was incredibly clean, which made Fort feel guilty about the state of his room back at his aunt’s house.

  Though to be fair, some of that was Ember’s fault.

  Rachel moved to the bedroom door and put her ear up to it, listening carefully. “We’re good,” she said, then slowly opened the door, peeking out into the hall. She gave a slight nod to Fort, then pulled the door all the way open and stepped out. Fort followed, closing the door behind him and canceling the portal, just in case anyone came looking for Jia.

  “They usually guard my room,” Jia said, sticking her head out of Fort’s pocket as they moved down the hall toward the rest of the school. “But since I’m in the cafeteria now, there’s no one else in this section, so we should be good to go until the elevator. They don’t let me near any other students, which is bad, because I might have gotten Sebastian or one of the others to help us.”

  “I doubt it,” Fort said. “He’s probably enjoying Agent Cole being in charge.”

  “Shh,” Rachel said, giving him a dirty look as they reached the elevator, and she clicked the button. “I don’t want to take a chance that you cast some random spell by accident.”

  “It’s all under control,” he said, not mentioning the ocean of vocabulary swirling around in his head and the pain still throbbing at the back of his skull. “Don’t worry—this is all going to be fine.”

  The elevator dinged, and the door opened.

  Colonel Charles and a man in a business suit were standing inside.

  - TWENTY-SEVEN -

  FORT’S ENTIRE BODY FROZE IN shock at the sight of his former headmaster, and his mouth dropped open. He fumbled for something to say as the colonel just stared out at them, like he was trying to place them.

  “In or out, Major,” Colonel Charles said to Rachel. “We don’t have all day.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, awkwardly stepping into the elevator. “Sorry about that, sir.”

  Fort followed right behind, her movement snapping him out of his paralysis. The doors closed, and he turned to face the front, trying not to look at the colonel or whoever the man in the suit was if he could avoid it.

  “What floor?” the man asked.

  Rachel threw a look at Fort that told him she had no more idea than he did about where the sword was. “Level four, sir,” she said, apparently improvising. “We were ordered to guard the weapon that just appeared, but I’m told the location was changed for security purposes.”

  “You were told wrong,” Colonel Charles said, and the hair on the back of Fort’s neck bristled at the suspicion in his voice. “It’s still in the trophy room.”

  The trophy room? Did he mean the room with the dragon bones? “So, floor thirteen, sir?” Fort asked, keeping himself facing forward.

  “Do I need to walk you there, Private?” the colonel said. “I didn’t realize I was your personal guide around the base.”

  “No, sir!” Fort said, pushing the button for floor thirteen. “Sorry, sir!”

  He felt a pull on his arm, and he turned to find the colonel staring at him closely. “Your voices sound familiar, but I can’t place your faces,” Colonel Charles said to them. “What are your names?”

  “Major… Paine, sir,” Rachel said, somehow keeping a straight face.

  In spite of the situation, Fort let out a quick laugh before immediately catching himself as Colonel Charles whirled on him, glaring suspiciously. “Sorry, sir,” Fort said quickly. “I had something caught in my throat. Allergies.”

  “You should go to the medical bay once we’re clear from lockdown to get something for them, soldier,” the colonel said, still staring intently at Fort. “And your name?”

  “Private, ah, McHenry, sir,” Fort said quickly, blanking on everything except the various names of forts from his American history book. At least it sounded real, not like Major Paine next to him.

  “I don’t remember seeing either of you on the duty roster,” the colonel said. Just then the elevator dinged, and the door opened.

  “We were just transferred here, sir,” Rachel said quickly. “After the London situation, to cover for the soldiers still recovering. We heard about your, ah, heroic actions there, sir, and might I just say, we’re all in your debt?”

  Fort almost laughed again, but this time at how much she was pushing this. He glanced at Rachel disbelievingly, but she looked completely sincere, so hopefully there’d be no way for the colonel to know she was mocking him.

  “Thank you, Major,” the colonel said, then nodded at the open doors. “This is your stop.” With that, he then turned back to the man in the suit, who seemed bored with their conversation. “Our timeline has changed, and we’ll be leaving for Berlin tonight. I’ve got the assets secured, and from here, the Gathering Storm will be—”

  And then the doors closed, cutting off whatever he was saying.

  Rachel leaned back against the wall, a huge grin on her face. “Well, that was fun!”

  “What were you thinking?” Fort hissed at her, trying to keep his voice down as he could see other
soldiers at the end of the hallway now. “Major Paine?”

  “Hey, read some history,” she told him. “Thomas Paine was one of America’s founding fathers!”

  “Oh, I know,” Fort said, his mind filling with all kinds of details. “He wrote Common Sense, a pamphlet that called for independence from Great Britain. And John Adams was quoted as saying about him, ‘Without the pen of the author of Common Sense—’ ”

  “Wow, did you use that spell on Wikipedia, too?” Rachel asked. “C’mon, McHenry, we’ve got a job to do.”

  He sighed, but saluted her and hurried to follow her down the hall. “Still, Colonel Charles could have known you were mocking him.”

  “Good,” she said. “I want him to know. I hate the man. But I don’t look anything like me. Even if he was suspicious, there’s no way he’d know it was Rachel Carter, who’s home right now with no memory of this place.” She grinned. “Though I’m sure he’s going to go back to his office and look up Major Paine!”

  Fort groaned. She wasn’t wrong, and as soon as the colonel found there was no record of Rachel’s snarky made-up name, he’d sound the alert. And if the TDA didn’t know exactly when thieves were showing up to steal the sword, they did now. Or would, in a matter of minutes.

  “Let’s just grab the sword and get out of here,” he said, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

  “You shouldn’t even be here,” Rachel told him as they rounded the corner, only to stop. “Where is this room, by the way? I’ve never been to the one in this school.”

  Fort moved past her to lead the way, knowing how to get there by heart after using the room to study.

  The last time he’d been there, he’d run into Gabriel, the colonel’s son, having no idea that Gabriel was after the same thing Fort was, to find a missing relative. But that was before Gabriel had threatened to kill him if he didn’t take them both back to the Dracsi world, so the last thing he wanted to do was remember how much he’d liked the other boy at one point.