by James Riley
“You were in Hong Kong?” Rachel said quietly as Fort separated himself from her, letting her move to comfort Jia. “Like living there?”
Jia shook her head, rubbing her eyes before finally looking up at Rachel. “I was a soldier,” she said, her voice quavering a bit. “Fighting against the Americans for China. My future self, she just started talking, not even knowing for sure I was there. She told me that when the war breaks out, my parents and I have to return to China, and the Chinese government drafts me into service to teach their soldiers everything I know. She said she tried to keep things peaceful, to encourage everyone to talk, but it just got so bad … and when the fighting started, we … she lost our …”
She began to sob then, unable to talk, and Rachel quickly hugged her, holding her tightly as Jia cried on her shoulder.
Parents. That was what she was going to say, it had to be. Suddenly Fort felt terrible for how lost in his own head he’d been. All this time, Jia had been dealing with a future maybe even worse than his and not saying anything.
“We won’t let it happen,” Rachel whispered, just loudly enough for Fort to hear. “If it takes using Spirit magic to stop it, then we will. I promise.”
Jia pulled away and looked at her in surprise. “But … you hate Spirit magic. And you’re totally right about it. You’d be willing to … ?”
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, not as long as I have something to say about it,” Rachel said to her with a smile, though even the smile seemed shaky to Fort. “We can destroy the book after one of us uses it to save the world. Deal?”
Jia sniffed loudly and nodded. “One hundred percent deal.”
Ellora cleared her throat. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but there’s so much we could do with that book. Just like Camelot, we could make heaven on earth, do away with crime—”
“We destroy it after we use it to stop the war,” Fort said, nodding at Rachel. “If that’s the only way to keep it from happening without … sending my father way, then we do it. But that’s it.”
Rachel nodded back. “And only one of us should use it, just in case. I can do it, if you want.”
An image of Rachel falling victim to the magic the same way Damian was going to, and destroying London, or maybe New York or Chicago this time, filled Fort’s mind, and he shook his head. “It should be me.”
“You?” Rachel said with surprise. “No offense, New Kid, but you’re not as powerful as me or Jia. Don’t you think one of us should use it?”
“That’s exactly why it should be me,” he said, standing up straighter. “Think about it. If either of you fell under its control somehow, who could stop you? You’d be too powerful. But if I use it in a way I shouldn’t …”
“Then we can still take you down,” Rachel said, nodding, then made a disgusted face. “It’s a terrible plan, and I hate it.”
“I know,” Fort said. “I do too. But I don’t know what other choice we have.”
“You’re right,” Jia said, running her sleeve over her eyes. “I’m in.”
“Me too,” Rachel said, then dug her finger into his chest. “But at the first sign that you’re out of control, I won’t hold back.”
He nodded as well, far too relieved about his father to care. Besides, if he did get taken over by the magic, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have there to stop him than Rachel and Jia.
Not to mention that if anyone was going to get hurt in all of this, it should be the one who had caused all of it.
“Okay, so we’ve decided,” Rachel said, turning to Ellora. “What now, Future Girl? How do we get into the tor and find King Arthur’s tomb, anyway? Is there a door or something?”
Ellora shook her head, still seeming a bit distracted by her own thoughts. “Oh, no, sorry. We’re going to have to go in the hard way.”
The hard way? “You mean use the machinery at the bottom of the hill?” Fort asked.
“We’d never have the time,” Ellora said. “Damian will figure out we lied to him soon enough and track you all down by Mind magic. We have only ten, fifteen minutes until he arrives.”
Fort, Jia, and Rachel looked at each other in horror. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” Rachel shouted.
“Because it would have started even more arguments!” Ellora shouted. “You think any of this is easy? I’m over here just trying to choose the best of all the bad choices.”
“Okay, okay,” Fort said, holding up his hands. “No one’s blaming you.”
“I am,” Rachel said, glaring at her.
“But we do need to know how to get in,” Fort continued. “What’s the hard way?”
Ellora winced, then pointed straight down. “We dig.”
“We what now?” Fort said. “Like with our hands?”
Rachel sighed loudly. “She means me. I dig, with my magic.”
Ellora nodded. “It’d be best to start from the tower over there. We can close it off, at least, and give ourselves a bit more time before Damian locates us.”
“Digging, awesome,” Rachel said, tromping past the others in the direction of the tower. “You know what? I’m really beginning to hate this quest.”
- TWENTY-THREE -
THE TOWER AT THE TOP of Glastonbury Tor turned out to be a roofless ruin made of stone, part of what had once been St. Michael’s Church, according to a helpful sign. Even if Fort hadn’t been told that, the religious icons carved into the stones would have been enough of a clue that it’d been used for worship of some kind.
Rachel fell to the ground as she entered and tapped the floor, her hands glowing red. “Okay, it does feel like there used to be a tunnel here leading down. It’s all filled in now, but it’ll still help support my digging, so that’s good. It’ll make the Destruction spell less exhausting, at least.”
“You know, back in the Pendragon’s time, they used to call that Elemental magic,” Ellora pointed out, making Rachel roll her eyes.
“We were just talking about that a few days ago,” Jia said, sounding a bit more like her old self now that she’d opened up about what she’d seen in the future. “Ray actually thinks Destruction magic should be called Elemental magic, because that’s what it is. It controls the base elements, like fire, water, air, earth …” She trailed off as Rachel raised an eyebrow at her. “But that can probably wait.”
“The tunnel I feel down there seems to branch off in places,” Rachel said, looking at Ellora. “Which way are we going?”
Ellora’s eyes turned black again, and she pointed to the floor. “Down, as far as we can. The Pendragon was buried with the book of Spirit magic, and his tomb should be on the lowest level. At least, that’s where I see us going.” She frowned. “But I can’t see the tomb itself. There must be some sort of magical protection down there. I also … huh.”
“Huh?” Rachel said. “Huh what?”
“I also don’t see us coming out,” Ellora said quietly.
Before Rachel could say what she clearly wanted to say, Fort jumped in. “That just means we find a different exit,” he said. “Rachel, we need to get moving if we’re going to find King Arthur’s tomb before Damian gets here. We should start. You know, to find the tomb of King Arthur. Remember King Arthur?”
“Subtle, New Kid,” she said, but even so, she couldn’t hide the excitement in her eyes. “I do want to see how cool his tomb is, I’ll give you that.” With that, she began digging into the ground with her magic.
First, she pulled up the stone floor and floated it over to the tower’s four entrances, splitting the stone to fill them in. Dirt came next, and she solidified it using her power, then filled in the rest of the holes in the tower, gradually closing them in. She even covered the open gap in the roof, fusing the sides of the tower over the top.
Now hidden from outside view, Rachel set to work with a vengeance, digging straight down with her magic. Within moments, the tunnel was large enough for them to enter, so they all jumped in, with Rachel increasing her speed again. No
w the dirt fairly flew past them, filling in behind them and creating a bubble of space for them to stand in beneath the ground.
“Hey, whoa, we need to breathe!” Fort shouted as what little light there was began to fade.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Rachel told him. “Just hold your breath.”
“She’s joking, Fort,” Jia told him. “She can make more air with her magic.”
“Don’t tell him all my secrets,” Rachel said, grinning at her as the dirt closed over the top of them, shutting off their tunnel completely.
Immediately everything went dark, but Jia lit her hands with Healing magic, and the blue glow illuminated the tunnel with enough light to see by. Rachel didn’t pause, moving the dirt from below to above them as they slowly followed her tunnel deeper into the ground.
Minutes passed, and Fort could see the strain on Rachel as she paused for a break, wiping sweat off her face. “Can we help?” he asked.
“Do you have a shovel?” she asked back.
Jia used her Healing magic on Rachel, and it seemed to give her some energy back.
“Maybe distract me,” she said as the dirt flow sped up again. “It helps if I’m not thinking about how hard this is, and how I’m the only one here doing anything.”
Fort nodded and tried to think of what to talk about. After everything that’d been happening in the last few hours, he still had a thousand questions for Ellora, but most would lead to places that none of them would really want to dig deeper into, no pun intended.
But there was one thing he still didn’t understand. “You said you all were lost, when you used Time magic for the first time,” Fort said to Ellora. “How is that possible? What happened to you?”
She didn’t answer for so long that Fort began to wonder if she’d heard him. Finally, just before he repeated himself, she spoke. “It wasn’t our first time using the magic, but it was close. We’d mastered a few other spells already, which you’ve seen: spells for speeding up time, freezing people in it, that kind of thing. But seeing the future, that was the big one. We were all so excited …” She stared off into space, only to get pushed forward by the dirt accumulating behind her.
“Oops, sorry,” Rachel said, but didn’t seem that upset.
“When we first visited the future,” Ellora continued, “we weren’t really sure where we were going. Magic doesn’t use time or dates, so it was more like … we jumped into the ocean of the future, hoping to find something fun. But when we arrived, most of us in different spots, none of us knew when we actually were. It wasn’t like there were calendars waiting for us, showing us how far we’d come.
“Once we were there, we had no idea how to get back,” Ellora continued, still not looking at any of the rest of them. “We knew we wanted to travel into the past, but even that didn’t help, because we had no idea how far we wanted to go. So what happened was we got ourselves even more lost. It was like we’d jumped into that ocean blindfolded and had no idea which direction the surface was, or how far we’d have to swim to reach it.”
Fort just watched her as she spoke, not even wanting to imagine what that must have felt like. Getting lost in the woods or on a street in a city you’d never been to before was one thing, but they wouldn’t have been able to ask directions or touch anything—assuming someone like Cyrus hadn’t been waiting for them.
“That sounds awful,” Jia said, healing Rachel again.
“Definitely not fun,” Rachel grunted, sweating much harder now. “Kinda like this isn’t.”
“At first, the teachers tried to help us from a distance,” Ellora said, like she hadn’t even heard Rachel. “Since our physical bodies hadn’t left the school, we could still hear them, even as we heard everything around us in whatever time we were in. It was incredibly confusing, but I guess magic doesn’t have to make sense. So they tried to suggest things we could look for, places or landmarks that would help orient us in time, so we could find our way back.”
“Did it help?” Fort asked quietly.
Ellora nodded, glancing over at him. “It did … until they decided they didn’t want us back.”
His eyes widened, and this time the dirt hit him in the back as he realized he’d stopped following Rachel’s tunnel downward. “What do you mean, didn’t want you back?”
“To help guide us, they’d been asking us all questions about the future,” Ellora said softly. “None of us knew the others were in the same situation until later, but we compared notes when we got back. The more the teachers heard about the future, the more they began trying to guide us to places and times they had more questions about. They’d describe places or events to help us lock in on them, like landmarks when you’re lost. That included the war, among other things.”
“So they decided they wanted to know the future more than bring you home?” Jia asked, making a disgusted face.
“Not just the future,” Ellora said. “Some of us, like me, they sent to the past, had us overshoot the present. From what little I picked up, it sounded like you Americans were digging up magical treasures around the world. So they told me it was my duty to protect the UK by finding our own. They directed me using stories, legends, anything that might guide me to see what was real and what wasn’t.”
Above them, something loud rocked the ground, and they all went silent for a moment.
“I hope that’s not … from my tunnel,” Rachel said, sounding out of breath. Still, she restarted her dig, and they continued on.
“Were they trying to get ready for the war?” Jia asked, and Fort could hear the edge in her voice when she mentioned it.
“I don’t think it was even about that, honestly,” Ellora said. “They just didn’t want your country to have something they didn’t, so they used us to find their own.”
“Their own what?” Rachel asked.
Another loud rumbling from above made them all look up. As they did, Jia’s Healing light went out for just a moment, leaving them blind.
“Weapons,” Ellora said from somewhere in the dark. “Magical weapons.”
- TWENTY-FOUR -
JIA QUICKLY RESTORED HER LIGHT, and as the blue glow returned, Fort and the others—including Rachel—all turned to look at Ellora.
“Weapons?” he asked. “What are you talking about? What kind of weapons could you find in the past?”
“Before the Dark Ages,” Ellora said, “Britain was a crossroads of great magic. I mean, that’s what all the stories said, but I’ve seen it; it’s all true. Not just humans, either. Lots of those pointy-ear people—what do you call them?”
“Elves?” Rachel shouted, momentarily alive with excitement before her exhaustion hit her again.
“Right, them,” Ellora said. “They made the weapons everyone wanted, I guess. But the stuff I saw, it was so powerful. Maybe stronger than what we have today, even nuclear bombs.”
Fort’s eyes widened. Magical weapons made by elves that were more powerful than a nuclear missile? And the British government had the Time students out looking for these? That was all pretty terrifying … or the plot of a fantasy novel. Maybe Rachel would write about it someday.
“But you were looking in the past,” Jia said as Rachel restarted her digging. “How did that help the government in the present?”
“Mostly I was supposed to see what was real and what was just a story,” Ellora said, shaking her head. “But if something was real, I’d try to track it to its last known spot, and they’d go looking for it in the present in that same place.” She nodded at the tor beyond their tunnel. “That’s why they were going to excavate here next. Fortunately, Sierra brought us back before they could get started, or who knows what they’d have found if they started digging.”
The ground around them shook harder this time, sending bits of dirt and stone tumbling down around them. Rachel stopped digging to stare at the ceiling with the rest of them. “I think maybe the government’s here,” she said, sounding like she could use a long nap.
Except
it wasn’t the government. From the looks on their faces, Fort figured they all knew exactly who it was.
“If someone is up there following us, is this tunnel going to hold?” Fort asked, his heart beginning to beat faster.
“The tunnel’s secure, Mr. Engineer,” Rachel said, turning back to her digging. “But if it’s him, then a bunch of dirt isn’t going to slow him down much.”
Fort started to respond but instead shouted in pain, along with Jia and Rachel, as yellow light flooded over his head, and he heard a voice inside his mind.
I FOUND YOU, YOU LIARS! Damian shouted in their heads. YOU THINK YOU CAN TRICK ME LIKE THAT? I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU, AND IF YOU DON’T TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT WHERE THE BOOK IS BY THE TIME I CATCH UP, I’LL JUST HAVE TO FORCE IT OUT OF YOU!
“Are you okay?” Ellora shouted, reaching out to Fort, but he couldn’t answer, he was in too much pain. It felt like the Old One, Ketas, in his mind again, and that was one thing Fort would have given everything to never feel again.
But just as he was about to collapse from the pain, the voice went silent and left, leaving so quickly that Fort almost collapsed anyway, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “I think it’s him, yup,” he said, wincing as he rubbed his temples.
“I don’t understand,” Jia said, looking just as much in pain as Fort felt. “Why didn’t he just take over our minds?”
“Um, what?” Rachel said, leaning heavily against the wall as she took in deep breaths. “Am I missing something? You wanted him to control us?”
“Not at all, but I don’t know why he wouldn’t,” Jia said. “He’s got the power.”
