by Cale Plamann
“But”—a mad smile occupied Martin’s face—“what if Dakkora’s ritual works? What if we can transfer years from an old man like me and give them to refuse? Then we can put our malcontents and prisoners to work while giving the elite of the Kingdom a second life.”
Understanding dawned on Micah’s face. This was why he hadn’t been put through propaganda classes extolling the virtues of the Royal Knights. His absolute loyalty only really mattered if they planned to let him do unsupervised field work. Holding his family hostage would be more than enough.
Micah was never going to be allowed to leave the Royal Knights’ headquarters. He’d been treated differently from the beginning, because this had been the plan from the beginning. He might become a Knight at some point, but it would be in name only. In reality, he’d be nothing more than a piece of equipment, tuning up and maintaining their top agents’ peak physical condition for years if not centuries to come.
“I know my place.” Martin bowed from his chair with a self-deprecating flourish. “I’m an old man that’s getting close to his limit. I’m useful to the Kingdom, but if I die, it won’t be crippling. I am our test case. Your job is to get that formula to work. Once you succeed with me, you’ll return the truly powerful to the full glory of their youth.
“Then”—Martin’s eyes shone with an unhealthy fervor—“the Kingdom will stand tall. Pereston will finally have a Blessed above level 100. Once their classes evolve, they’ll practically become demigods. None of our neighbors will be able to stand before us. We’ll unite the continent in a generation.”
Micah looked down at the formula before glancing at Brenden. The older man was standing in front of the door. His only escape would be when the cooldown on his blessing ran down. Until then, he could only grit his teeth and try to survive this bleak timeline.
28
Third Time’s the Charm
The spell worked. It took four tries for Micah to get the feel of the ritual and how it interacted with Temporal Transfer, but it worked. Each attempt left him sick to his stomach. The one time Micah actively wanted a new spell to not live up to expectations, it performed flawlessly.
Gheb screamed and begged Micah through his gag the entire time, but there wasn’t anything he could do. Brenden stood just outside of the circle, a summoned daemon at his back just waiting for Micah to hesitate. There was no question in Micah’s mind that any failure on his part would spell the death of his entire family. Micah’s only option was to grit his teeth and count down the days until he could use his blessing again as Gheb deflated before his eyes, the Time magic wilting him like a week-old bouquet.
The spell “only” stole a year of Gheb’s life for Martin, but that was enough for it to be declared an unqualified success. Performing the ritual and Temporal Transfer in the laboratory became Micah’s new world. Each day, Brenden would escort him to the room, where a new prisoner would be waiting. Some truly deserved to have years ripped from their lives: murderers, kidnappers, and rapists. Many were political prisoners, members of the Resistance, or even just outspoken individuals that annoyed the wrong noble.
The first month was mostly devoted to “treating” Martin, performing the spell over and over again until Martin shed his age like a used overcoat. The difficulty of the casting steadily pushed up his Spellcasting and Ritual Magic skills until Micah was able to transfer two to three years at a time.
He didn’t dare voice his suspicions, but after the third or fourth use of the ritual, it became obvious to Micah that this wasn’t about “testing” the magic. Each time, Martin looked at the prisoners with an off-putting sense of hunger, but he always insisted that the spell needed more “fine-tuning.” The spell and ritual worked fine.
Given the secrecy of the project, the way Brenden constantly prevented Micah from talking to anyone in the Royal Knights except for his family, there was only one conclusion: Martin was just trying to reclaim his youth before someone else in the Knights learned the significance of the ritual. Finally, once Martin looked to be in his early twenties, he announced the project a success.
The next day, Micah vaguely hoped for a period of rest, but once again, Brenden retrieved him from his apartment. When they walked into the laboratory, it was practically humming with tension. Martin stood in the center of a cluster of older, well-armed men, showing off his new body.
“Squire Silver,” he called out as soon as Brenden brought him into the room. “The man of the hour is here.”
Micah’s breath left his body as all six of the other men turned to look at him. Every one of them carried a palpable aura of power, a weight of energy and gravitas that demanded respect. They stared at him with vague disinterest, cataloging and immediately dismissing him as beneath their notice. Micah would bet his last point of attunement that all of the newcomers were above at least level 60. He was a rabbit, shivering and alone in the midst of a pack of wolves.
“As I was discussing, gentlemen,” Martin said with a hint of nervousness as he draped an arm over Micah’s shoulders, “this here is Squire Silver, the Time Magi that performed the treatments on me and restored my youth. It should just be a matter of time and effort for him to do the same for you.”
Their gazes intensified, but no one responded. A cane clacked on the stone floor, and the men parted, making way for a wizened old woman who slowly approached Micah. She was almost a foot shorter than him, her hair a stringy tangle of white and gray, but her rheumy blue eyes didn’t miss a thing. Micah couldn’t look away. She glowed like the sun. A corona of power leaked off of her, her very aura creating heat mirages in her wake.
“You’ve kept him at level 20?” she asked Martin, her voice the crackle of paper crumpling.
“Yes, M’lady Ikanthar.” Martin hastily bowed at the waist.
“He’s compliant, then?” Ikanthar continued, peering at Micah’s shaking form. “You haven’t treated him too badly, I hope? I don’t want a spy or saboteur working on me.”
“Yes, M’lady,” Martin responded unctuously, his eyes flashing a threat at Micah. “He was discovered by the Golden Drakes, a high-tier adventuring guild, where he demonstrated the power of prophecy. They sold him to us and we’ve been training him ever since. Squire Silver has a perfect 10 affinity in Time, so we’ve been able to train him to use Time magic and the ritual at a much lower level than would otherwise be expected. He’s already gotten his hands dirty on my orders several times and his family is being held against his good behavior.”
Micah twitched slightly as Martin laid out his entire life story, describing him as an auctioneer would a prize head of cattle.
“Good.” Ikanthar hobbled to the seat next to the restrained prisoner. “If this works, your research into the black rituals will be forgiven, Knight Osswain, and you will be rewarded. If this doesn’t work, you knew the risks when you began your research into Dakkora’s rituals. They are forbidden for a reason, but as you know, success forgives all sins.”
“Success forgives all sins,” all of the Knights reverently repeated in unison, as if it were some sort of talisman or prayer.
Martin flinched at her words, his usual bluster gone and a haunted look in his eyes. Apparently, he wasn’t nearly as important as he’d led Micah to believe. A good thing to know.
“Now”—she waved a wrinkled and veiny hand in Micah’s direction—“boy, work your dark magic on me, but be aware, if you fail or try to harm me, you and everything you love will learn the true depths of human misery in exquisite detail.”
“Archmagus Ikanthar isn’t prone to idle threats, Silver.” Martin turned to him, his face deadly serious. “I’d suggest trying your hardest.”
Micah coughed nervously, very aware of how dry his throat was. He approached, smiling weakly and not even looking at the political prisoner he’d be draining today. Micah found that it helped. Their screams still haunted him, but at least he didn’t have to look into their eyes as the age flowed into them. He still saw Gheb staring at him every time he tried
to sleep.
He traced the circle, placing the ritual’s reagents and components, his hands shaking slightly under the gaze of the powerful Knights. Now that he’d had a moment to calm down, he recognized almost half of them from the bards’ tales. Noble men, renowned for their valorous deeds and service to the Kingdom. Men he’d grown up respecting and wanting to emulate. All waiting to kill him if he didn’t perform an unnatural act of magic on a defenseless prisoner.
Micah enacted the ritual, once again using his body as a conduit to transfer the monstrous power of age and authority built up in Archmagus Ikanthar’s elderly and twisted body. The temporal energy passed through him toward the prisoner, but for the first time, he felt something new in its wake, a vague sense of the weight and majesty that the temporal energy represented.
With Martin, it’d simply been a chore, channeling a massive amount of energy from one spot to another. The ritual and spell were little more than an equation in which he was a variable. He played his part, but there was a lack of vital understanding. He knew that the temporal energy existed and that it was powerful, but he couldn’t harness or control it.
It wasn’t mana. Temporal energy was something more than that, much closer to the anima used in ritual magic. Primal energy that moved outside the safe boundaries of regular magic, only restricted by the natural phenomena of the universe itself.
His mind went back to the ritual he used to graduate. As the energy passed through him, he could see how the spell forms and reagents would interact with it, transforming it into something that he could begin to use. It wasn’t a complete thought, just the beginning of a concept.
There wouldn’t be a way to use it as mana; the energy was too wild for that. It would overwhelm the limits of magic almost immediately and backlash on Micah, consuming him in a moment. He squinted his eyes, trying to see the shape the ritual would take.
Then the spell was over. Absently, Micah realized that he’d fallen to both knees, gasping as sweat poured down his back. The prisoner had aged visibly, wrinkles appearing around the corner of his eyes and gray gathering at his temples.
Archmagus Ikanthar stood up from the chair, stretching her back briefly. The room’s silence became electric. The various Knights grasped the hilts of their weapons, each training their eyes on Micah, waiting for any signal from Ikanthar of his betrayal. She waved her hand, a ball of fire forming in her palm without her chanting a single word to the spell. Quickly, it turned into a writhing snake and wound in between her fingers.
She snapped her thumb and index finger together, dissipating the tendril of flames. She turned to the crowd of Knights and nodded with a quick smile.
“You’ve done our Kingdom a great service, Knight Osswain.” She inclined her head ever so slightly at Martin. “No one else thought to harness the black rituals in this way, molding an untrained talent into the vehicle of our Kingdom’s rebirth. For this, you will be removed from your duties at the Royal Academy and rewarded greatly. From this day forward, Squire Silver will be entrusted to my care.”
Micah started blankly at Martin as the older man opened his mouth to respond, then closed it bitterly. His entire fate had been decided before his eyes without even a second glance. Like he was a bolt of cloth or a loaf of bread to be sold at the market.
“Yes, Archmagus,” Martin replied, the reluctance audible in his voice. “It shall be as you command.”
The hour or so after meeting was a blur. Micah was ushered away by the Archmagus’ servants. Soon he found himself in a new, slightly more luxurious apartment with the notable addition of bars on the windows. Any slight chance he’d had of crawling out the window and using Updraft to cushion his fall was long gone. Even if he chose to abandon his family, he was truly and completely trapped.
Micah pulled out the Folio and began sketching his thoughts on the new ritual. He’d need more experience transferring temporal energy to perfect it, but if he had to guess, temporal transfers looked like the entirety of his near future.
He just hoped that Archmagus Ikanthar wasn’t the type to destroy her tools once she was done with them so that no one else could use them. He only had about four months left before the cooldown on Blessed Return finished off. It would be a painful kind of irony if she simply killed him right before he was able to use the blessing to escape this bleak timeline.
Luckily, those four months passed quickly and productively. Ikanthar literally never spoke to him during that time. Servants would fetch him and ensure that Micah was dressed appropriately before ushering him off to a much larger laboratory, where he would perform the same ritual time and time again. At some point, when Ikanthar was a beautiful and vibrant young woman, she stopped appearing, and one by one, Micah found himself casting the spell on a series of geriatric senior Knights.
Transferring energy for the Knights wasn’t nearly as beneficial to his research as the times he’d performed the ritual on Ikanthar herself, but it hardly mattered. By that point, Micah had already created most of the theoretical framework for a ritual to harness the temporal energy. He wouldn’t be able to cast the ritual before reverting the timeline—too many eyes were on him at all times—but the Knights provided ample research material he needed to polish off his final draft.
He didn’t know for sure what the difference between Ikanthar and the Knights was. Maybe it was her total level eclipsing theirs or her status as a Chosen of Katton, God of Fire and Forge, but for some reason, the energy flowing from her was just on another level. He hoped that when the time came, it wouldn’t matter, but really there would only be one way to find out. In his next life, he would need to do everything he could to avoid falling into her grasp once again.
He looked up at the ceiling of his room. It was two hours past midnight, and the moon was high in the night sky. Hopefully, Mursa would be looking down on him—a minute was a long time to wait while trapped amongst enemies. The guard had long since changed and none were nearby. Just in case, he’d pushed one of his bookshelves in front of the door.
“Blessed Return.” The voice, not his own, issued forth from Micah’s mouth and time began to blur.
29
Ritualist
Micah opened his eyes. He was thirteen for the third time.
Rolling over, he buried his face in his pillow and screamed out his frustration until his tiny frame was breathless and red. Two years of biting his tongue and serving as a slave for the Golden Drakes and the Royal Knights. Two years of smiling at his family while Brenden’s mocking eyes bored into his back. Two years of betraying everything his parents had raised him to be on a fundamental and systematic level.
He rolled over and looked at the wooden ceiling of his childhood bedroom, his breath coming in ragged sobs. Those last few months when he’d been treated as nothing more than a piece of meat had tested him. It had taken everything Micah had in him to not mouth off. Maybe he’d even have gotten lucky and one of the Knights would have killed him. Only the knowledge that he had a way out of his servitude had kept Micah going.
This time, things would be different.
He stood up, stretching his scrawny limbs and shuddering in the morning air. Weak. Defenseless. With a creak, the bedroom door slid open and Micah whipped around, his heart pounding in his chest. Esther’s hand, pudgy with baby fat, was barely visible inside the entryway.
“Come on in,” he said, relaxing slightly. Mentally, Micah made a note to act more like an actual thirteen-year-old. Emotionally, he might be twenty-three, but everyone would expect age-appropriate behaviors.
Shyly, Esther slipped into the room, her eyes on her socks. When she spoke, her voice was soft, the consonants stretching out in a childish lisp.
“I heard you yell.” She shuffled her socks across the hardwood floor. “I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a mouse or spider scaring you.”
Micah smiled at Esther as he crossed the small room to meet her. Whatever else may come, this was what he was fighting for. These little islands of normalcy in a
n uncaring ocean of chaos and danger.
“And what would you do if there was a mouse?” Micah asked, reaching down to tousle her hair. “That would be pretty scary.”
“I’d get Trevor!” Esther exclaimed proudly. “He’s big, and he said that if there were any kids being mean to me or any monsters, he’d fight them. He’s going to be an aven shurer.”
“What about me?” Micah feigned outrage. There was just something about Esther’s attempts at heroism that melted the years of stress and nightmares. “I’m pretty strong and I’m going to be an adventurer too.”
“But Trevor beats you every time you race or wrestle,” Esther replied dubiously, inspecting his stick-thin arms. “Even Becky beat you last week when you tried to race her, and she’s a girl. I think I’ll call Trevor if there’s a monster.”
Micah winced as Esther wriggled from his grasp and ran out of the room, apparently satisfied that there wasn’t a spider or rat in his bedroom. He’d forgotten that Becky, the tomboy daughter of a neighbor, had been his rival until he began working for Keeper Ansom. Of course, the word “rival” overstated Micah’s role in the relationship. Becky trounced him fairly thoroughly every time they tried to compete.
Frowning slightly, Micah pulled out the Folio and paged to his previous memories of Becky. Sure enough, she received a combat-related blessing and became an adventurer for the Sword Disciples. They were a mid-tier guild like the Lancers, and as of the end of his first timeline, she’d been put in charge of a low-level team. Even with a Mythic Blessing, she’d managed to one-up him once again.
Closing the Folio, he sighed. He truly did have the build and reflexes of a spellcaster. Both Trevor and Becky grew up with the muscle and agility of melee combatants, but even after all of his work in the previous timeline, he’d barely reached an above-average physique. It seemed that leadership escaped his grasp once again. After all, it was hard to earn the respect of an adventuring party casting spells from the back line.