Mrythdom: Game of Time

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Malgore!”

  He didn’t even turn to look. His attention was so focused on the task of getting back to Meria that nothing else seemed to matter. A familiar old man dropped down in front of him, and he felt more than heard the near-simultaneous thuds of three more people landing behind him.

  “Give me the relic,” the old man intoned.

  Malgore stopped walking and stood his ground, swaying on his feet. “No, I’m taking it back to the queen.”

  Gabrian’s eyebrows lifted suddenly. “To the . . . queen . . . ?”

  “Get out of my way!”

  Gabrian nodded slowly and held out his hand. His voice returned, but now it was soft and reasonable, as though he were speaking to a child: “We’ll take it back to her for you. You needn’t trouble yourself.”

  Malgore recoiled, shielding the relic from Gabrian. “No! I must take it back to her myself!”

  Gabrian shook his head sadly. The focusing crystal in the tip of his staff began to glow brightly as he slowly brought it into line. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

  * * *

  “Look out!” Esephalia yelled, pushing Aurelius back against the chasm wall just as Gabrian’s staff flashed brightly with a crackling burst of energy. A ball of blinding light hit Malgore and sent him flying through the spot where Aurelius had just been standing.

  The mage fell and tumbled along the pebbly chasm floor. Gabrian ran after him with his staff held high and glowing once more. As he leveled it in Malgore’s direction for a finishing blow, the old mage rose and held out his own staff just in time to catch and deflect the Gabrian’s attack into the rocks. They exploded with a deafening bang! and rained dagger-sharp splinters down all around them. Malgore raised his staff for a counter attack. There came a crackling burst of light, and suddenly Gabrian went flying. He slammed into the rocks and his staff exploded. He slid to the ground with a groan.

  “I need to help him!” Esephalia said. “Find cover and stay there!”

  With that, she rushed forward, her hands outstretched, her lips moving but no sound coming out. Suddenly a hail of sand and pebbles went flying at Malgore. He stumbled backward, clawing at his eyes. He gestured blindly with his staff, and a shockwave rippled out from him, knocking Esephalia off her feet and sending her flying. Her head slammed into a nearby outcropping, and she crumpled to the ground and lay still. Aurelius was likewise slammed into the chasm wall behind him. Reven loosed a frustrated growl, and when next Aurelius looked, the hairy man had been replaced by a massive black wolf, bounding off on four legs, quickly retreating up the other side of the chasm and running away from the fight.

  Aurelius turned back to see Malgore stalking toward them with calm fury, his yellow eyes were red and streaming with tears.

  Gabrian was only now struggling to his feet, and Esephalia wasn’t moving.

  “You should know better than to get in my way, Gabrian.”

  “You never stop underestimating me, Malgore.”

  “That’s because there’s so very little that’s estimable about you. Goodbye, brother.”

  Brother? Aurelius blinked in shock. Could it be? he wondered.

  Malgore raised his staff and his voice, beginning the spell which would end the fight once and for all. Gabrian looked around wildly for his own staff and found its splintered remains scattered all around him. Malgore’s staff began glowing brightly. . . .

  And then Gabrian let out a startling shout: “Abrea hur gatas su timel!”

  In that exact instant, there came a vicious snarl and a massive black shadow leapt down from above. Malgore whirled around just in time to see Reven knock him over. Both Malgore’s staff and the relic went flying. Aurelius watched the relic roll to a stop in the pebbly sand, and he was about to rush out and grab it, but something strange was happening: the world around him seemed to be slowing down; even his frantically beating heart quieted to a more steady pace. The relic was glowing brightly and quickly changing colors, passing through the whole spectrum and back again, faster and faster until it was glowing white hot. The ground around the relic began smoking, and then there came a blinding flash accompanied by a loud bang! and Aurelius was picked up and thrown against the chasm wall with incredible force.

  As the shockwave eased, Aurelius regained his feet and blinked against the bright, lingering glare. He found that for a few frustrating moments he was completely blind, and when his eyesight finally cleared, he saw Malgore making a run for the relic. Above the relic there was now a swirling portal of darkness. Reven was climbing slowly and painfully to his feet, while Gabrian, who’d been standing closest to the relic when the shockwave had rippled out was lying face down and motionless on the beach, far beyond the entrance of the chasm.

  Reven rushed up behind Malgore just as the mage was stooping down to grasp the relic.

  “No!” Gabrian yelled suddenly, reaching out with clawing hands as though to stop Reven, but it was too late. The werewolf collided with Malgore and his momentum sent them both sprawling straight into the swirling darkness. The portal disappeared almost instantly with a loud pop!

  Aurelius was dumbstruck for a long moment, wondering what had happened. Then he was looking around for the relic, but there was nothing where it had lain save for a blackened depression in the sand. Somehow, Malgore had taken it with him. Aurelius felt horror slowly dawning, his mouth dropping open as he realized . . .

  Now he'd never get home.

  Chapter 43

  Gabrian limped over to Malgore's staff and picked it up. Esephalia stirred with a groan, and Aurelius went to help her up.

  “What happened?” she asked, looking around suddenly. “Where’s Malgore? The relic . . . ?”

  “Gone,” Gabrian answered, coming up beside them. “Reven pushed him through the portal, and Malgore somehow managed to take the relic with him.”

  “Then we’ve truly lost. There’s no way to follow him without the relic. He’ll find what he was looking for in the past and return with it here, more unstoppable than ever.”

  “How does the relic work?” Aurelius asked. “If he took the relic with him, is it still possible to open a time portal from here?”

  Gabrian shook his head. “There is only one relic and it exists in all times. It is very old, and indestructible as far as we know. The same relic that existed in your time, Aurelius, exists in ours. All that changes from one time to the next is its physical location.”

  “Wait, so, then how could Malgore take it with him? Isn’t it already in the past?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know it was possible to do such a thing. There could be serious consequences of uniting the relic from our time with the one from the past.”

  “Then maybe we don’t have to worry,” Esephalia said. “Perhaps the relic destroyed Malgore when he reached the other side.”

  “Perhaps, or perhaps there are now two relics in Aurelius’s time. In either case, the world as we know it could be changing drastically with Malgore in the past.”

  Aurelius frowned. “I thought you couldn’t change time.”

  “Not if your reason for going back was to change the past, but Malgore went back accidentally. So long as he doesn’t somehow alter the set of circumstances which led to Reven pushing him through the portal, he won’t ever undo his reasons for travelling back in time. If he is smart, and we must assume that he is, he will return to a point in time after he left, so as not to alter the circumstances by which he travelled back in time. Reven has unwittingly given Malgore complete freedom to change the past. What he did was . . . unfortunate.”

  Aurelius frowned. “Hold on. This relic thing opens a portal from itself to itself, from one point in space and time to another.”

  Gabrian hesitated. “Correct.”

  “Always the same point in time?”

  “Yes . . . unless one were to find the gates of time. Then they could change the time they are travelling to, but the Gates have been lost for untold Millennia.”

  A
urelius was grinning from ear to ear.

  “What is it?” Esephalia asked.

  “Then we have nothing to worry about! Malgore is dead.”

  Gabrian’s eyes narrowed. “How can you know this?”

  “The relic in my time is located in the heart of an asteroid in deep space.”

  “Deep space?” Esephalia echoed.

  Aurelius gestured to the sky. “Where the stars lie.”

  Gabrian’s eyes widened. “In the ether?”

  “Yeah that’s it. I forgot what you people called it.”

  “But that’s impossible, is not?” Gabrian asked.

  Aurelius shot him a funny look. “Impossible? I make my living travelling through space . . . I mean the ether—or I did, before someone used the relic and sucked me into this crazy world.” Aurelius waved his hand to dismiss the baffled looks he was getting. “Anyway, without a spaceship like mine, there’s no way to safely travel through the ether. Malgore will die in minutes of reaching the other side.”

  Gabrian looked unconvinced. “Do not underestimate him. He may be harder to kill than you realize.”

  Aurelius gestured to the staff Gabrian was leaning on. “Doesn’t he need that stick to use magic?”

  “No, that just focuses his power, making him stronger.”

  “Aha . . . well, all the same, a few million miles from Meridia in an airless environment, I don’t think even magic can save him. And if it does, there’s always Reven to . . .” Aurelius trailed off with a frown, suddenly realizing that Malgore wasn’t the only one who’d just met a certain death.

  Esephalia reached out and grasped Aurelius’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know he was a friend of yours.”

  “He saved my life. More than once.”

  “As you saved his,” Gabrian pointed out. “He may yet be a hero if what you say is true. His actions will have rid us of a great evil.”

  Esephalia shot the old man a quick look. “And perhaps unleashed and even greater one.”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Gabrian said.

  Aurelius shook his head. “What’s she talking about?”

  Gabrian and Esephalia held eachother’s gazes for a long moment before Gabrian explained: “You are stranded here now, Aurelius. Whatever consequences Malgore’s actions have had, one thing is certain, wherever the relic is now, we don’t know of it. If Malgore had somehow managed to escape with it, at least we’d know where to look. Now anyone could have it. Until it is found once more, you are in grave danger. All of us are. The Watchers will awaken.”

  Esephalia grimaced. “If they’re not awake already. You needed to get back to your time quickly, and now that’s no longer possible.” Turning to Gabrian, she went on, “We must take him to the high council. They’ll know what to do.”

  Gabrian met her plea with a frown. “The Elves do not have all the answers.”

  “And who does? You?” she demanded.

  Aurelius shook his head, and interrupted the argument with an upraised hand. “Hold on. I have an idea.”

  “I’m listening,” Gabrian said.

  “I know where the relic was in my time. If I’m right, and Malgore died on the other side of the portal, then chances are his remains, and the relic, are still there.”

  The old wizard’s eyes widened slowly with dawning realization. “We must hurry!”

  “Why?” asked a familiar voice.

  They all turned toward the sound and saw Lashyla standing at the other end of the rocky chasm, looking dazed and sleepy.

  * * *

  They explained everything to Lashyla on their way to the Halcyon Courier, but she never lost her expression of wide-eyed childlike wonder. That was no doubt partly because she’d never flown before. She was gripping the armrests of the her chair in the cockpit with white knuckles as they took off, and moments later her gaze was darting nervously as she watched the clouds rushing past the viewports in gauzy white streaks.

  “I’ll bet you’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I th-think there’s a vessel like this one in Meria, but it . . .” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, to steady her frayed nerves. “It no longer works,” she said, opening her eyes once more.

  Aurelius held her gaze with a frown. “Really? I didn’t see it there.”

  She shook her head. “It’s sunken on the sea floor.”

  “Ah . . . okay.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I told you,” Aurelius said. “We’re heading into the ether.”

  She nodded slowly, as if she understood, and then resumed her anxious silence. The others weren’t any less worried. Esephalia and Gabrian hid their wonder and fear a little better, perhaps because they were used to flying Gryphons, but they were sitting far too rigidly to be at ease.

  Aurelius had the ship’s nose pointed up at a steep angle, clawing for the stars. Due to the damaged inertial compensators, he had to accelerate more slowly than he would normally, taking an hour to escape the atmosphere when normally fifteen minutes would do. As they passed cloud layer after cloud layer, the sky steadily grew a darker and darker blue. When the first stars began twinkling into view, Lashyla let out a gasp.

  “We’re travelling from day to night!”

  Not really knowing how to answer her, Aurelius just sent her a big grin. Soon the stars were out in full force and the sky was black.

  “I never knew it was possible . . .” Gabrian marvelled.

  “Never say never, my wrinkly friend.”

  “This is blasphemy,” Esephalia added, her voice quavering. “If the high council knew—”

  “But they don’t,” Gabrian said, cutting her off sharply.

  The cockpit fell into an uneasy silence as they roared out through the last wisps of atmosphere. Out of curiosity, Aurelius toggled through his rearview displays to see what the planet behind him looked like and how it had changed in the millennia since his time. When he saw the planet’s surface disappearing far below, veiled by a thick layer of clouds, his eyes widened and he felt a sickening sense of unreality sweep over him. Just to be sure, he set the computers to filter out the clouds, and suddenly he saw the world in its entirety, as it was now. It was only vaguely recognizable as Meridia—vaguely in that it was still principally green and blue, with touches of brown showing through in the drier places, but nothing else seemed familiar. The continents as he’d known them were mauled beyond recognition, reshaped and formed as though a giant had used them as his own personal sandbox. The oceans were broader. The polar ice caps all but completely gone. High mountains ringed the continent from which they'd left. It was a very different world. . . .

  Aurelius switched off the displays. Whatever had happened to his world, to civilization as he had known it; that was not his concern. He would return to his time and live as though he were none the wiser. Whatever calamity had befallen Meridia had probably happened many hundreds or thousands of years after he’d been born anyway.

  Aurelius began searching back through his flight logs to find the course he’d flown the day that he’d accidentally tumbled through time. It didn’t take long to pinpoint the exact spot in space where he’d disappeared. He marvelled that he’d never thought to do this sooner, to at least retrace his steps.

  He set course and a few settings in the autopilot, and then settled back in his chair. “It’s going to be a few hours before we reach our destination. I could get there sooner if my ship weren’t damaged. Actually—” He rose from the chair and started aft. “I think I’ll go work on that now.” He stopped in the entrance to the cockpit and turned. All eyes were on him.

  “What should we do?” Lashyla asked.

  Aurelius shrugged. “Get to know each other?”

  Lashyla frowned, her gaze finding first Gabrian, then Esephalia. “I think I’d rather go with you,” she said, and rose from her chair.

  Esephalia nodded and also rose. “Myself as well.” Lashyla sent her a quick gl
are, which the elvish woman returned with equal ice and a very bland smile. “Move along princess, you're blocking the aisle.”

  Gabrian turned back to the fore. “I’ll just stay here and enjoy the view.”

  “Okay.” Aurelius beckoned to the two women. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  It took Aurelius less time than he’d thought it would to fix the inertial compensators and shields. They’d overloaded their capacitors by drawing too much power to compensate for the forces when he’d crashed through the time portal. It was a simple matter of finding their capacitors and splicing them in where the old ones had burnt out. The hard part was crawling through the cramped access corridors in order to find and replace the burned-out components.

  Finally, Aurelius spliced the last one in with his cutting torch.

  “There,” he said to himself, lifting his protective visor to admire his work, “that should do it.”

  He began working his way back out of the cramped corridor, wondering how Lashyla and Esephalia had amused themselves in his absence. He'd left them alone for more than half an hour. From what he'd seen before he'd left them, they seemed to share a mutual animosity which kept them both unusually quiet.

  As he drew near, he began to hear the two women’s voices raised in argument. He frowned and stopped to listen.

  “. . . at least elves don’t keep their men for pets. I think Aurelius deserves better than that, don’t you?”

  “They’re not our pets! We treat our men very well.”

  “As equals?”

  Lashyla let out a pretty laugh. “Don’t be silly! Men are not and never could be our equals.”

  “I disagree.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether or not you agree. He’s mine, you stupid elf, so stay out of it!”