He jumped to Teresa’s side even as the first man called Apollyon raised his hand. Gabriel grabbed Teresa and jumped through space again, appearing behind a large rock outcropping.
“You’re supposed to run,” she nearly yelled at him.
“The space-time seal prevents any jumps out,” Gabriel said. “Stay here.”
“Wait!” Teresa said, but Gabriel was already gone, disappearing from her side and reappearing on the far side of the river. His only hope was to draw the fire from the Apollyons above toward himself and away from his teammates. He looked around and tried to follow what was happening. It had only been a few seconds since the appearance of the Twelve Apollyons. Twelve that were linked to at least twenty more throughout time, channeling the power of innumerable negative imprints into the circle above.
Across the river, Ohin had drawn a sword and was jumping through space, grabbing teammates and placing them safely at the edges of the canyon. Akikane was battling with one of the Apollyons at the top of the canyon wall above. Suddenly he vanished and appeared a moment later in front of another Apollyon, his sword imbedded in the stomach of the man he stood before. The Apollyons above all roared in pain at the same moment, a moment in which the space-time seal they held flickered and waned. Gabriel did not wait. He knew that the faster he traveled away the sooner the others would be safe. Concentrating on the sword, using it as relic, he jumped. Blackness surrounded him, followed quickly by the familiar flood of white light.
Even as the whiteness faded, he reached in his pocket to grab another relic. This time a coin from ancient Rome. He barely had time to look down on the sight of the medieval Japanese fishing village before the blackness flowed around him again. As it came, he saw all twelve of the Apollyons surround him, and he felt them attempt to create a space-time seal. But it was too late. He was gone.
As the whiteness faded, he looked upon the Coliseum in Rome, first or second century, he guessed as he jumped again. He saw fewer Apollyons this time. When the whiteness began to fade, he still saw the Coliseum, only this time in ruins, hundreds of years later. His fingers were already in his pocket and holding a pottery shard, the blackness enveloping him as he spotted six Apollyons. As the whiteness faded to reveal the Great Pyramid of Egypt, still under construction, his hand clutched a small stone statue of a man with a sword, and the blackness surrounded him again. He spotted only three Apollyons this time. Whiteness evaporated as Gabriel stood in the middle of an expansive Chinese Palace of wood and stone. He didn’t know when it was, and didn’t care. His hand grasped the last object in his pocket and the blackness followed swiftly, the lone face of a single Apollyon dissolving before his eyes.
Chapter 26: Angel of Destruction
Gabriel stood in a forest, snow floating down through the still air, adding to the thick layer that was already on the ground, the afternoon sky dense with grey clouds. Between the trees, men in snow covered uniforms huddled in foxholes dug deep into the cold, hard earth. He knew where he was. He jumped again. Not through time, but through space, further into the woods. Further from the place in time he had leapt to.
Standing in the snow up to his knees, he looked back through the trees to the spot where he had been only a moment before. He saw nothing. He was tempted to jump again. Another time. Another place. Maybe even back to the castle.
He looked down at his hands, the Sword of Unmaking in his right and the pocket watch in his left. He had not intended to use the pocket watch, but it had been the last object he could try. And this battlefield in Western Germany was safer than somewhere along the timeline where his Grandfather might be even closer. At least here, he could hide and catch his breath for a moment. Looking back where he had been, he saw nothing appear. No one. Apollyon had not been able to follow him here.
He let out a sigh of relief even as he sensed the space-time seal come into existence, even as he heard the voice behind him.
“Very clever,” Apollyon said.
Gabriel felt an icy chill run up his back as his stomach cramped with fear. He wanted to spin and throw the sword at Apollyon. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream out for help. He made himself swallow his fears instead. He remembered all those days in the arena facing the Kumaradevi’s Light Mages. Apollyon was just the same. More powerful. More dangerous. But just the same.
He wrapped the chain of the pocket watch around his left hand and then joined it to the right hand around the hilt of the Japanese sword. He still held the magical energy of them as firmly as he had before, but as he reached out to try and touch the negative imprints of the World War Two battlefield, he discovered they were already held. By Apollyon. Gabriel slowly turned around.
“You did not learn that lesson well enough the first time I see,” Apollyon said, his handsome face breaking into a satisfied smile. “You bring me to a place with dark imprints like handing me a gift and only think to try and hold them yourself as an afterthought. I will teach you the advantage of taking all that is presented to you when facing an opponent.”
“Which one are you?” Gabriel said, hoping to stall for time. Time for something he could only hope would happen, because it was the only thing he could think might allow him to escape.
“It does not matter,” Apollyon said. “We are all one now. We see with three dozen pairs of eyes. Think with three dozen minds. We are becoming something that has never been before. We are becoming the sum of all mages. The sum of all time. You could have seen through the eyes of your double had you left that branch of time you created intact. You would have had a taste of what it means to become something more than merely human. More than a mere mage.”
“So you’re not the original,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t think so.”
“I tell you it does not matter,” Apollyon said.
“I’ll bet it matters to him,” Gabriel said. Where was it? It must happen soon. He hoped it happened soon.
“Spread doubt and uncertainly in the enemy,” Apollyon said, smiling again, but with more of an effort. “You learned much in your short time with my old master.”
“He had very nice things to say about you,” Gabriel said.
“And why should he not?” Apollyon asked.
“He is still upset that you tried to kill him,” Gabriel said.
“It is his own burden to put down, not mine,” Apollyon said. “The past is past. I am about the future.”
“Controlling the future, you mean,” Gabriel said.
“I fear you have gotten a warped perspective of me from those you have been keeping company with,” Apollyon said. “Why don’t you put down the sword and we will speak. Like men. It will be a pleasant change, I am sure, being spoken to like an adult rather than a child.”
“Your turn to sow doubt and uncertainty?” Gabriel asked, keeping the sword held high, the point of its shaft aimed at Apollyon’s heart.
“As you will,” Apollyon said. “You cannot hope to defeat me. I am simply too powerful for you. Too powerful by far. And you cannot escape the time-seal I have set around us. But I believe it will be better for both of us if you come with me willingly.”
“How do you plan to manage that?” Gabriel asked. “Going to threaten me with torturing versions of my parents?”
“Crude tactics are often required for dealing with crude people,” Apollyon said, his smile returning as he opened his hands and spread them wide. “I am suggesting that we talk.”
“Talk all you want,” Gabriel said. “I promise to listen to you as closely as I did to Kumaradevi.”
“I was thinking of someplace a little more comfortable,” Apollyon said. “A little warmer.”
“I feel very comfortable right here,” Gabriel said, shaking his head to free it of the accumulation of snow that had been building up on his hair. He hoped it happened soon. It had to. How long could he stall?
“Then let me put my case before you and allow you to decide,” Apollyon said. “Like an adult.”
“You’re going to give me a choice?”
Gabriel asked.
“Of course,” Apollyon said. “The end result will be the same, but you will have a choice along the way.” Gabriel gritted his teeth at that. Always people making his choices for him.
“So tell me how we can rule the universe together and what a great pleasure it will be for me to serve you,” Gabriel said, lacing his voice with as much sarcasm as he could muster past the fear. If it didn’t happen soon, he was good and truly trapped.
“Not the universe,” Apollyon said, his smile fading at being mocked, “Just the Primary Continuum of this world. And whatever that may lead to after The Great Barrier has been eliminated.”
“Maybe it’s there for a reason,” Gabriel said. “Like a fence around the hen house to keep the wolves out.”
“Or a pointless impediment to a great man’s destiny,” Apollyon said.
“You know a great man, do you?” Gabriel said. Seeing how completely Apollyon’s plastic smile had faded, he wondered if he had pushed the sarcasm too far.
“I will not be mocked by a boy,” Apollyon said, his voice deepening in anger.
“Why not?” Gabriel asked. “Everyone else mocks you.” That had definitely been too much. Too far. Why did he always have to say what he really wanted to say at times like this? Maybe he had said it for all the times he had wanted to speak what was really on his mind with Kumaradevi.
“I could make you serve me and you would never even know it was not your heart’s greatest desire,” he heard Apollyon say in his mind.
“And how weak would that make your powers of persuasion?” Gabriel thought back. “How weak would that prove your grand philosophy to be?” That had clearly been too far to push his luck. He could see the anger in Apollyon’s eyes now and the quickness of his breath. For all his cool exterior, no doubt learned by studying Vicaquirao at close range, Apollyon was just as hot tempered and susceptible to anger as he had been when he lost that fight in Alexander the Great’s campsite while he was still known as Cyril. Gabriel wondered if he could use that weakness. If the thing he was hoping for happened, maybe he could.
“Ah,” Apollyon said, “you see a truly brilliant philosophy requires a truly brilliant mind to comprehend it.”
“So who’s the brilliant person who explained it to you?” Gabriel said. It had to happen soon. If he kept egging Apollyon on and it didn’t happen…He didn’t want to think about that.
“I will explain it to you,” Apollyon said, ignoring Gabriel’s taunt. “In simple language for a simple boy.” Gabriel noticed that any pretense as flattery had vanished. “Life is composed of two manners of people: leaders and followers. Even the leaders follow other leaders. Eventually, you find that everyone follows one leader. Or does if that leader has the vision to claim that place of leadership. If that leader can hold that position. And a true leader must be more than his followers. He must attain more. He must accomplish more. He must become what has never been. He must become more than he thought himself capable of being. And those who follow him, those who lead under him, they too will accomplish great things. And the greatness of these accomplishments will be the proof that their position as leaders is justified. And the followers shall take their proper place in supporting the leader.”
“So what about the people who don’t want to follow?” Gabriel asked. “What about the people who want a different leader? Or who want more than one leader?”
“They will be swept aside as obsolete obstructions,” Apollyon said. “The bringing of a new order requires the destruction of the old order. Chaos must reign for truly new forms, truly new beings, to arise.”
“And what if your chaos destroys everything that exists while this great leader is creating his new order of being?” Gabriel asked. He thought he could hear something. Something faint, but it might be what he needed.
“There is a power beyond chaos,” Apollyon said, a fire in his voice and his eyes. “A power that drives the heart of the universe as it churns out the history of the Continuum. It is a power that can be awoken and grasped and bent to submission. A power outside time. A power beyond life and death. An eternal force that can be commanded to create, as well as destroy.” This part of Apollyon’s philosophy was new to Gabriel. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about some evil power, some dark demon or devil, or if he was talking about some supreme being beyond human understanding. But it didn’t matter. He heard the sound now. Clearly. A high-pitched sound. The one he had hoped for. Now all he needed was the time to use it.
“You sound like you’re saying you want to use the power of God to rule the Primary Continuum,” Gabriel said.
“Not God in the limited and infantile sense you use the word,” Apollyon said, with apparent annoyance.
“Well, that’s good,” Gabriel said. “You only want to use some nameless eternal universal power for your own selfish satisfaction. For a moment, I was afraid you’d really gone crazy.”
“Enough,” Apollyon shouted, as much from anger as to be heard above the sound that now filled the air. The sound of mortar shells falling. “This place will not be safe soon. We must go. You may come willingly or I will take you by force. You cannot resist me.”
“I like your idea of there being one supreme leader,” Gabriel said. “A supreme person becoming what others can’t. I am the Seventh True Mage, after all. I tell you what, you agree to serve me as the supreme leader and I’ll go with you.”
“You have mocked me for the last time,” Apollyon said, raising his hand, his mouth tight with the anger he was barely holding in check.
“I hope so,” Gabriel said, flicking the point of the sword to aim through the trees, creating a field of invisible energy above the men in the foxholes he had appeared next to only minutes before. The mortar shells exploded in the air right where he had hoped they would. Right above the men he knew to be his Grandfather and his fellow soldiers. It was what he had been hoping for. An opportunity to create what he needed to escape. And Gabriel felt it. The fabric of space-time splintering like a brittle piece of ice, a new branch of reality breaking away from the Primary Continuum. A reality where the men in those foxholes all lived. An alternate reality that he and Apollyon now stood in, as well.
Apollyon laughed as Gabriel aimed sword at him again. “You stupid, sentimental little child. You’ve created a bifurcation. The very thing the Council has been trying to avoid for centuries. What kind of training have they been giving you? Can’t you feel it? You’re not in the Primary Continuum anymore.”
“I know,” Gabriel said as the blackness swirled around him. “And a bifurcation is the only thing that can break a powerful space-time seal.” Whiteness became everything and he stood again in the forest, the mortars falling as they had before, just at the moment the new branch of reality had been made, just after the moment he and Apollyon had broken off from the Primary Continuum. He had not doubled back on his personal timeline, so there would be no copies of him or Apollyon. Both had slipped seamlessly into the new branch of reality.
Even as he appeared in the Primary Continuum, Gabriel grasped for all the imprints of the battlefield, embracing both the tainted negative imprints and the grace-filled positive imprints, adding them to the power he wielded in the Sword of Unmaking, and focusing all of the magical power on that slender thread of frayed reality leading to a new world, that slim portal to an alternate version of history. An alternate history Apollyon was trapped in. Gabriel’s head swam with the power of those imprints and he tightened his stomach against the instinctual retching that arose from holding so much tainted power. He focused all of the magical energy he possessed into severing that thin thread of reality.
The magical energy was enormous, amplified through the imprints of the pocket watch and the Sword of Unmaking and the battlefield where he stood. The portal to the other reality began to close, the thread nearly sliced through, when he felt something push back. The portal seemed to hold. The thread did not shear away. And the power behind it was more than he had ever imagined was
possible. Apollyon was pushing back from the other side of the branch of reality, trying to keep Gabriel from severing it. The thread was too weak to allow Apollyon to jump to the same moment of time and space that Gabriel inhabited at that instant, but he was still connected to all the magical energy of the copies of himself.
Gabriel tensed and tried to summon up more magical energy from within using the breathing and energy exercises he had been practicing every day with Ohin. He felt the energy swell in his heart center and radiate down his arms into the Sword of Unmaking. He was holding Apollyon, but he did not know how long he could last. If the thread of reality gained any more stability, Apollyon might be fully connected with his many twins, who might be able to locate Gabriel in this place and moment in time.
This place and time really was a single moment. Gabriel noticed the silence around him. The mortar shells hung suspended in mid-flight and some in mid-explosion. He and Apollyon were suspending time in that moment of the bifurcation’s creation. Gabriel didn’t know how long he could sustain it. He was mustering all the energy he could from within himself. Without more imprints of some kind to focus that energy, it was only a matter of time before Apollyon overwhelmed him. Apollyon was at the disadvantage, in that he needed far more magical energy to re-establish the alternate branch of reality that Gabriel struggled to sever, but he also had far more energy at his disposal than Gabriel.
Trying to break a part of his mind away to think, to plan, to search out a possible source of more imprints, Gabriel struggled to maintain and concentrate the magical energy at just the right spot, just the right moment. No matter what he considered, nothing seemed plausible. There were no imprints left for him to claim. Even if he could release the energy directed at severing the branch of reality that Apollyon was trapped in and tried to jump through time, there was a good chance that Apollyon would follow him. And his wrath was not something Gabriel wanted to see any more of than he already had.
The Wizard of Time (Book 1) Page 30
