by James Riley
The magical blow this time was even more powerful, and it slammed him all the way across the street. “Good-bye, human!” he heard Xenea shout from the park as the world spun around him.
“No!” he shouted back, unsteadily rising to his feet and shaking off the force of her hit. He dizzily teleported himself back to where she stood, even though the world seemed to be swaying back and forth before his eyes. “You’re not taking Ember,” he said, trying to clear his head. “I was wrong. She knows enough to decide for herself, and if she wants to stay—”
This time, it wasn’t magic that hit him, but Xenea’s fist, right in his stomach. He doubled over just as she kicked out, knocking him backward for a third time with her foot. “Nice try, human!” she shouted. “I’ll give the queen your regards!”
Fort gritted his teeth and teleported in front of her one more time. He could barely stand now but lifted his hands up to defend himself. “Give… her… back,” he whispered.
“Why do you care?” Xenea asked, kicking out again. Fort managed to dodge her foot, but another magical blast hit him square in the chest, sending him back to the ground. “You wanted her to be given to the dragons, and I’m taking her.” She sighed. “I’ll even make sure she’s not hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about. So stop fighting to keep her, or I’ll have to stop holding back!”
Holding back? Fort’s mind spun with how powerful Xenea actually was, but that didn’t stop him. “No,” he said, only to get hit again. “I didn’t—” Another hit. “I—”
“You don’t even know what you want!” Xenea said, and launched an enormous blast at him.
“Enough!” Fort shouted in the language of magic. The force of whatever spell he’d just cast dissipated Xenea’s blast and left her staring at him in wonder, even as he dropped to his knees, completely out of energy. “I do know.”
“And what’s that?” she asked him.
“I want… to protect her,” he said, just hoping he didn’t fall over. “To protect them all. My dad, my friends, people I don’t know. None of them deserve what they’re going through. And it’s like you said in the movie theater. Even if I’m not the most powerful, I can still help. I can do something. And so I’m going to—I’m going to keep doing something, keep coming after you until you give Ember back. And then she can decide when she’s ready to go to the dragons, if ever. And I’ll figure out a way to keep her safe until then.”
She watched him with narrowed eyes for a moment, then snorted. “There. Was that so hard?”
Her words almost knocked him over again. “Wait, what?”
“You’ve had this coming since I met you,” she told him, giving him her hand to help him up. “Seriously. It’s been all I could do not to slap you in the face most days. You should hear yourself!”
“You just beat me up… to prove a point?” Fort asked, almost too tired to be so amazed.
“I didn’t beat you up, you large baby,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But one thing I’ve noticed about humans is that you’re fairly hardheaded, so it can take something equally as hard to get through to you. Thank you for finally admitting you were wrong.”
Fort just stared at her in shock. “So you’ll give me Ember back, then?”
“Give?” Xenea said, and laughed. “Have you met me? No, but I will make a deal for her.”
Fort’s mouth opened and closed in disbelief, before he finally nodded. “Done. Whatever you want, I’ll find a way. Just give her back, please.”
Xenea’s eyes widened. “No one’s ever agreed to anything I want.” She went silent for a moment, then gritted her teeth in frustration. “Three things, Forsythe! Number one, you will find that older, teenage dragon for me, as you said you would.”
“Done,” Fort said again. “Gladly, even.”
“Two!” Xenea shouted. “Until I receive said older dragon, you will take me to the move vees until we’ve seen every one about aliens.”
Fort laughed in disbelief. “Okay, sure. That might take a while.”
“Well, I’m starting to get used to the smell, so maybe that’s not so terrible,” Xenea said with a sniff. “And three? You cannot tell any of the Tylwyth Teg how easily I let you off the hook here. I’m far too nice for my own good.”
“Easily?” Fort said, every inch of his body aching from her attacks. But seeing her start to get angry again, he quickly agreed. “Definitely easily. I’ll tell them you took everything I owned and more.”
“Good,” Xenea said, and floated the dragon over to him. “You’re lucky I’m warming up to you, Forsythe,” she told him, giving him a suspicious look. “My queen would throw me in the dungeon for centuries if she ever learned I gave you a dragon for so little. But even I could tell Ember was better off here, with you.”
Fort put out his arms, and Ember floated into them. Then, abruptly, Xenea’s glamour ended, and the full weight of the dragon dropped into Fort’s hands, knocking him back to the ground.
Fortunately, the blow wasn’t enough to even disturb the dragon, so as soon as he had pulled himself together, he raised her head in his hands and gently said, “Wake up, Ember,” in the language of magic.
The dragon opened her eyes and looked up at him in surprise. “Father? Why have you come for me?”
“Because he was wrong! ” Xenea yelled.
“Because I was wrong,” Fort said to Ember. “I was scared for you, here in my world, and thought you’d be safer with your own kind. But if you want to be here with me, then I will protect you and watch over you until you decide on your own that it’s time to leave.”
A tear began to slide down Ember’s cheek. “I may stay with you? For as long as I wish?”
“For as long as you wish,” Fort said, trying not to think about how he was going to make that work. “You were right, that I had a choice, and I made the wrong one. Now I’m going to make up for that. Maybe we can find you a place of your own, where you’ll have room to hunt and grow, but I can see you every day like we do now.” An idea came to him, and he lit up in spite of the horrible pain in his body. “A cave, maybe! I know a good one, where no one will find you.”
“As long as I may still spend time with Father, then that is suitable,” Ember said, her voice thick with emotion as she hugged him with her long neck. “Perhaps we should celebrate me being home with a hunt?”
He hugged her back tightly. “Let’s go talk to Merlin again. I need to tell him I’m going to face the Timeless One alongside my friends, no matter what happens.” He looked over at Xenea. “You want to come?”
She laughed. “Are you joking? I’m not going to get myself killed fighting one of the eternal ones. But I’m impressed that you’re going to.” She saluted him. “Good luck with the aliens, Human Female Captain.”
Fort saluted her back, then teleported himself and Ember away.
- THIRTY-SIX -
THEY LANDED IN THE CLEARING outside Merlin’s cottage, giving Fort a minute just to prepare himself. He knew he was in for an argument at the very least, and maybe more. Merlin might even try to stop him by sending him elsewhere in time, so Fort had to be ready with his own magic.
He still hadn’t come to grips with what he’d figured out about the Timeless One, Merlin, all of it. But there was no way he could let Rachel and Jia face the Old One alone. He had to be there, if just to keep his friends safe.
All of his friends.
With Ember at his side, Fort walked over to where the door lay on the ground and reached down to pick it up.
“Be warned!” the imp said as he touched it. “There was an intruder in the cottage, which was extremely not my fault!”
Fort looked over at the imp in alarm, then quickly leaned the door against some debris to hold it up and opened it.
Inside, the cottage now matched the exterior’s destruction. Any illusion that the cottage had been a cozy little cabin in the past was now gone. Smoke filled the air, and alarms blared as Fort stepped inside. A horrifying creaking noise came from t
he ceiling, like it might collapse at any minute.
The living room where earlier Ember had been eating the stewpot was now completely wrecked. Where once the holographic system had shown a wooden dining table, now was revealed to be a futuristic plastic board, split in half. The fire was gone, replaced by an elaborate food maker of some kind, which itself was now on fire, smoke filling the room due to there not actually being a chimney.
“The other two humans were here,” Ember hissed, her eyes half-closed against the smoke. “Them… and something else.” She growled low and threatening.
“Jia? Rachel?” Fort shouted, covering his mouth as he picked his way through the smoke. But there was no answer, and the creaking above was only growing louder.
Ember grabbed his sleeve with her teeth and pulled him to a stop. “We must go,” she said. “It was one of the eternal ones. Do not worry, though, Father. I will protect us.”
She stared at him intently, her eyes glowing with Corporeal magic, and a blue sphere of light appeared around them, which helped with the smoke, at least. Fort took a step, and the sphere moved with him, so he quickly made his way to the room where Jia had given them their disguises, hoping to find his friends there.
Unfortunately, the room no longer existed. The door now led to nothing but black space.
“Merlin?” Fort shouted, and the old man appeared in front of him, at least in part: His hologram was glitching so badly that Fort could barely make Merlin out.
“He… them,” Merlin said, his voice going in and out.
“He took them?” Fort said. “Who, the Timeless One? Was your younger self here?”
The glitchy Merlin nodded, then seemed to rub his forehead. The hologram disappeared, and in its place was a solid version of the magician. “There, that’s better,” he said, looking much more tired than the hologram had. He pushed his way into the blue bubble, which Fort assumed Ember had allowed him to do. “We should leave this place, though, as it won’t exist for much longer.”
“I saw the bedroom, or what used to be the bedroom,” Fort said. “Is the whole cottage going to disappear?”
Merlin nodded. “He made it so this space will no longer exist. I think he hoped you wouldn’t be able to find me in time. Come, boy. I’d rather not be crushed by a disappearing moment of time, if you don’t mind?”
Fair point. Fort led the old man back to the front door as the cottage began to shake all around them. The trembling grew so bad that Fort lost his footing at one point, and Merlin toppled over on top of him.
“Quickly now, boy!” Merlin shouted, and Fort teleported the three of them straight to the front door and out into the clearing, just as the cottage collapsed into a tiny singularity behind them, then blipped out altogether.
And then the remains of the front door began to disintegrate as well, as did the rest of the rubble from the exterior of the cottage.
“Sir!” the imp shouted as the dissolving began to approach it. “Might I have a word, quickly?”
Merlin reached a hand out, and the imp detached from the disintegrating door with a sigh of relief. It crawled over the ground to reach Merlin’s leg, then hugged his shin closely. “Thank you, sir,” it said to him.
“I’d hardly let you be hurt, Quimbly,” Merlin said, bending over to pat the imp on its head. “You did your job well, and now you must return to your proper time.”
The imp let out a quiet sob, shaking his head. “I never thought I’d be done with visitors,” it said, before giving Fort a nasty look. “They were so rude, sir. So very, very rude!”
“I know, Quimbly,” Merlin said. “Manners truly are a lost art.”
“I’m sorry if I was rude, ah, Quimbly,” Fort said, feeling bad now, in spite of everything else that was happening.
“You should be, young man,” Quimbly said, sticking out its tongue.
Merlin smiled slightly, then waved a hand, and the imp disappeared. “Now, Forsythe, to the business at hand: As you know, my younger self wasn’t due to face off against Rachel until just under a year from now, but it seems he’s discovered a bit of a loophole.”
Fort sighed. “Let me guess. Did he pull them into the future by a year?”
Merlin coughed, his face turning red. “Yes, well, ah, you see, I never really considered that he’d try that. He’s not breaking any rules, per se, as he’s still battling them at the proper time, technically, but he’s cutting off any preparation and training they could have made between now and then. They’re just not ready.” He began to mumble to himself. “Should have made it clear that he’d have to let time advance naturally, instead of bringing magic into this. It’s the principle of the thing, you know?”
Fort rubbed his temples, not really believing this. “For someone who can see through time, you’ve sure been surprised a lot by him.”
“Well, he is quite intelligent, if I do say so myself,” Merlin said with a shrug. “And I have been putting a stop to his plans for almost ten thousand years now. Perhaps some credit is due?”
“Sorry,” Fort said, not meaning it. “But we need to figure out how to get them back. They’re not ready to fight him.”
“Agreed,” Merlin said, “but I’m afraid it’s not that simple. As I said, he’s not breaking any rules, and, therefore, he has every right to face them now, in the future. Rachel has Excalibur, and that’s the only true condition.”
“But you said yourself that they’re not ready yet!” Fort shouted. “You can’t just leave them there. If he can bring them there, you can bring them back!”
“To do so would put me in conflict with my younger self, and I’d risk destroying the universe,” Merlin said, shaking his head. “No, I’m afraid there’s very little I can do.”
He went silent, giving Fort a long look.
“You can show me where he is, can’t you?” Fort said. “I know the rules say I’m not supposed to be involved, but you can still show me, and I can get to him myself. I have to try, at least!”
The edges of Merlin’s mouth curled into a smile, but his tone was still deadly serious. “Think carefully about what you’re asking, Forsythe. Even with your knowledge of magic, you still don’t have enough power to defeat him. If you fight, you will lose, all of you. My family will return, and either enslave or destroy humanity altogether. Are you sure you wish to do this?”
“I am,” Fort said, not knowing if he was lying or not. “It might not work, but I think I have an idea. Now that I know who the Timeless One really is.”
Merlin smiled fully now. “That’s my boy.”
“Ember?” Fort said, turning to his dragon. “I can’t ask you to come with me, as it’s going to be incredibly dangerous. But—”
“We hunt,” she said, grinning widely. “I’m interested to see what an eternal one tastes like.”
Merlin flinched at this, giving the dragon a worried look. “Ah, right, well then,” he said, as black Time magic glowed all around him. “Good luck then, Forsythe. You will most assuredly need it.”
“Thanks,” Fort started to say, but Merlin was already gone as a new vision surrounded Fort and Ember, a vision of the location of the Timeless One.
Fort looked around at a destroyed world, and he swallowed hard, suddenly doubting all of his choices. Everything was devastated, a dead world that didn’t look like it could even support life.
This couldn’t be just one year from now… could it?
If it was, all the more reason to face the Timeless One and stop this destruction.
“Here goes nothing,” he told Ember, then stared at the desolate destruction in front of him and whispered, “Travel to this time. Please.”
And just like that, they did.
- THIRTY-SEVEN -
THE VISION WAS ONE THING, but the reality was even worse.
Fort and Ember arrived in a land under a dark, menacing red sky, a bit like during a sunset, though the sun still hung high in the sky. The land around him was destroyed, barren, but not completely unfamiliar. Wh
at Fort at first mistook for rock was actually the remnants of a city.
Though almost everything had been ground down to pebbles, here and there a surviving bit of civilization showed this place had once held life: A broken neon sign that advertised a diner. Metal shelving next to a hollowed-out steel box.
Could this truly have all happened in a year? What kind of power would have been needed to destroy the world like this?
Fort turned around slowly, looking for life, only to jump as Ember headbutted his arm. “There,” she said, and held out a claw to point off to his left.
He looked in that direction and found what could have been a skyscraper, somehow still standing in the rubble of the rest of the city. But as he stared at it, he realized this wasn’t a building like any he’d seen before.
It almost looked like a strangely futuristic castle, like something out of a science-fiction movie. The castle seemed to be made of a kind of black stone, a material that absorbed light, as it didn’t seem to shine in any way.
But the shape, the design was all wrong. There were turrets jutting in unnatural directions, almost looking uncomfortably pointed, even from this far away. The whole castle had an air of sharpness to it, in fact, and it made Fort sick to even look at.
“Father!” Ember shouted, leaping forward several feet and bristling at something Fort couldn’t see. “I can feel them!”
Again he looked in the direction she was facing, and off in the distance, he saw a burst of black light against the red sky.
“It’s the humans,” Ember said to him, not taking her eyes off the scene in the distance. “Them… and one of the eternal creatures.”
Fort nodded and started to open a teleportation portal, only to pause, considering things. Right now, they had the element of surprise… and not much else. They had to use that as best they could.
“Ember, listen to me,” he said to the dragon, squatting down before her. “I promised you a hunt, and that’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to teleport us over there behind the Timeless One. If we can sneak up on him, I want you to try to put him to sleep, paralyze him, anything that will stop him, okay?”