Chronosphere

by Adam Witcher

The two guards apparently had enough. They took off from the base of the great machine, running for the castle entrance. A high-pitched whirring emanated from T’liah’s machine, and the two gun-toting limbs began to glow purple. Before the guards reached the doors, she fired. The needles blasted from one of the massive guns, and the two reptilians were suddenly riddled with them. They screamed as the spikes pierced their armor and dug into their flesh. The ensuing explosions obliterated the guards. Chunks of scaly flesh and armor sprayed against the side of the castle. Some pieces crashed through the glass doors.

  Then the reptilian queen turned the other gun on Anton and his companions.

  “Move!” Anton shouted.

  She launched another volley of needles from the other gun. Anton and Gregor leaped to the left, Ana and Petra to the right, and the glowing death shards whizzed through the space they had just occupied. They hit the ground and exploded.

  The guns were out of needles, but the heads of new ones already began to show as they formed around the barrels.

  “Quick, rush in!” Anton cried, “She’s recharging.”

  Though her guns were temporarily out of ammunition, T’liah still had two more limbs. One of them launched toward Anton, the other toward Petra.

  The mechanical claw was only a foot away from Anton’s face when Gregor caught it with his battle axe. His force almost severed one of the sharp fingers. Gregor’s muscles rippled with the strain of holding it back.

  “Attack her, sir!” he grunted.

  Anton shook off his shock. He pulled out the laser pistol and aimed it at the reptilian queen, but she only grinned. Before he had a chance to fire, a smaller robotic limb grabbed Sabina by the rope binding her and held her in front of T’liah’s glass cockpit.

  “Shit!” Anton lowered the gun. “We’ve got to cut her loose. Gregor, can you hold this thing off?”

  “I will do my best, sir.”

  He glanced to see how the ladies were faring. Petra viciously battled the other claw-limb with her dual swords. The claw retreated, then struck like a snake at her again and again. The princess was too fast to be bested so easily. With each strike, she parried expertly, sending showers of sparks with each metallic collision.

  Behind her, Ana analyzed the situation. She pointed her pistol at the first gun-toting limb, which had nearly recharged. She fired half the needles at the first gun, then turned and launched the other half at the second.

  The needles connected with the first gun, and the two weapons cancelled each other out. Ana’s needles exploded on impact, knocking T’liah’s weapon backward and destroying the budding ammunition.

  The second volley missed their target as T’liah pulled a lever that made her gun retreat. The pistol’s needles rocketed off into Jagari’s night sky, exploding like purple fireworks over the city.

  Anton dashed to get closer, but T’liah was watching him. She fired at the spot in front of him. The needles connected with the pathway in a blinding light. He staggered backward, then jumped to retreat as far he could.

  The explosion sent them all reeling. Searing heat and brilliant light bombarded Anton. When his vision returned, he realized that the gardens all around him were on fire. Flowers, bushes, and ferns all engulfed in flames unlike anything he’d seen before. The fire didn’t flicker. It was a solid, deep, purple that clung to the vegetation and burned quickly. And it was spreading.

  He quickly glanced around to make sure his companions were unhurt. Though all three were still gathering themselves, they appeared to be okay. Should Eliza recharge her guns again, though, that wouldn’t be the case.

  Luckily, even the reptilian queen herself seemed surprised by the explosion’s power. Her device stood motionless while she stared at the flames with wide eyes. Sabina screamed louder.

  “Cover me,” Anton cried out to his companions. “I’m going in close.”

  He didn’t wait for confirmation. With burning plants all around him, he sprinted toward the monstrosity that had once been Eliza’s palanquin. It took her a moment to register what he was doing, but when she did, she retaliated. Pulling two levers, she moved the two gun-limbs back out of harm’s way to recharge. With the two clawed hands, she struck at him.

  Anton ducked, and one of the claws whizzed above his head as he ran. Petra caught the other with a sword and parried it out of the way. Ana took a few steps back and aimed at the guns, sending needles flying out of Anton’s sight.

  He kept moving. T’liah pulled another set of levers and the machine lurched backward on its mechanical legs. But Anton was moving in quickly, and the gardens would drop off before she could retreat very far.

  The clawed limb came whizzing back from the other direction, but Gregor intercepted it. With both claws locked in combat, Anton realized this was his chance. He moved as fast as he could and launched himself onto one of the mechanical legs. He clung to a gear in its joint, using the teeth for traction. He reached for the metal bar over his head and climbed until he managed to plant both feet on the gear. With what little balance it afforded him, Anton jumped and latched onto the bottom of the palanquin with his fingertips.

  Above him, T’liah contorted her controls wildly, making her device writhe back and forth trying to shake Anton loose. He managed to hold on. Using every ounce of his upper body strength, he managed to fling himself upward and grab onto one of his own lights that jutted from the upper side of the palanquin. He couldn’t help but grin. The reptilian queen had placed the lights there to taunt him, but now he was using them to his advantage.

  “Anton, watch out!” Petra shouted from below.

  He looked over his shoulder. T’liah had retracted her clawed appendages and was turning them toward him. Before they smashed into him, he jumped to the side, and one of them decimated the spot where he’d just been hanging.

  Anton surprised himself at how nimble he was in the heavy armor. Whatever the material was, it not only absorbed energy blasts, but was impossibly light. No doubt, this frustrated T’liah. She was beginning to lose her temper.

  “Get off of me, scum!”

  She pulled the claw out from the destroyed side of the palanquin and attacked him again. With one hand and his feet still clinging to the lights, he drew his dagger and parried the attack. The force almost sent him toppling, but he managed to keep his footing. The other claw was ready to strike.

  Anton grunted as he lifted himself to the top of the horrible device. Sabina now dangled helplessly only a few feet overhead, while T’liah herself sat in the cockpit directly behind her. Rage clouded the woman’s yellow eyes. Her sharp teeth were clenched.

  His dagger still in hand, he jumped and swiped at the rope that bound Sabina’s arms. The voluptuous scribe slipped free and collapsed next to Anton. He wanted to embrace her, but there was no time. She may have been freed, but they were still twenty feet in the air.

  “Ana, get her!”

  The android answered with a volley of needles. Now that her view of T’liah was mostly unobstructed, she aimed for the cockpit. T’liah jerked a control to the side, moving herself out of the way, but several of Ana’s needles slammed into the glass casing of the cockpit. The reptilian queen braced herself for the explosion. Before it went off, Anton unfurled the rope, tied it to the top edge of the palanquin, and helped Sabina climb down.

  The needles exploded, and the queen cried out in pain or terror. Sparks shot out from her control panel. Anton and Sabina clung to the rope as the explosion rattled them in midair.

  As T’liah gained her bearings, Anton instructed, “Climb down, quick.”

  Sabina nodded nervously and lowered herself down. When he saw Sabina running across the burning gardens to safety, he slid down to the ground.

  When he turned around to face his foe again, he was blindsided. The reptile queen didn’t have full control of her equipment, but she managed to swing one of her claw-limbs sideways and Anton was struck hard in his midsection.

  If not for his new armor, the blow might have sha
ttered his bones. Even so, he was hurt. Badly. His ribs ached. His arms and legs all felt as though they’d been pulled out of socket from his body hitting the ground. All he could do was writhe and moan. He laid back, vision swimming, until he was able to look up and see two sets of beautiful eyes above him.

  Ana and Petra yanked him to his feet, and he cried out in agony.

  “I know it hurts, but this isn’t over,” Petra said.

  “Sir, ladies!” Gregor called out from beside them. “I suggest we move.”

  Still bleary-eyed, Anton looked at T’liah’s machine. She fumbled with the controls, and the thing stomped around drunkenly. She was losing control.

  From behind her, the two limbs that brandished powerful guns raised above her head. They were again full of needles and ready to fire, but she was still struggling to aim them. Ana’s gun needed a few more seconds to recharge. T’liah gradually regained control until the guns shifted into position.

  “Move!”

  The purple spikes were more erratic than before, and they littered the ground all over the gardens. Miraculously, no one was pierced, but they had only moments before either the explosions or the burning gardens would melt their flesh.

  “Inside!”

  The four of them retreated as best they could toward the castle, trying to stay as far away from the volatile needles as possible.

  And then they exploded.

  Light filled the night sky. The heat was unbearable. Screams came from indiscernible directions. Stone cracked. As they reached the doors, he heard what was left of the glass shatter.

  In the post-explosion stillness, the ringing in Anton’s ears was louder than the crackling fire. Then once more, the entire garden began to shake. Huge chunks of rock disconnected and tumbled down the hill to the inner city below. As the ringing faded, he recognized shrieks of terror. The whole city must be watching from afar, and now the hellish scene was raining upon them.

  The once-elysian gardens were now an apocalyptic landscape. What wasn’t cratered from the detonations was engulfed in violet flames. In the middle of it all, T’liah’s apparatus staggered precariously. The glass of her cockpit had shattered, sparks streamed from the control panel, and she struggled to steady the machine.

  Anton felt more pain than he ever had before. In addition to his bruised limbs and ribs, his face and hands were badly burned. His vision swam again, making T’liah and her machine swirl in a surreal, colorful display.

  He had to ignore the pain. T’liah was distracted, and this was his last chance to catch her off guard. Beside him, his companions struggled to stand. None of them seemed to be mortally injured, but they were not looking good. Petra had a few nasty burns on her side, and she’d gotten an ugly abrasion along her arm from skidding against the ground. Blood dripped from Gregor’s ears. His shirtless torso was covered in small cuts that trickled more blood. Ana had several exposed wires, and a few pieces of her artificial skin peeled back to reveal scuffed metal. She looked dazed.

  He managed to get up and rally. It was all up to him.

  Grunting through the pain, he charged at her. He pulled the laser pistol from his vest and fired several shots toward the cockpit. His aim was shaky, but one of the beams hit the controls and sent sparks and smoke into the air.

  “Human scum!” T’liah was so enraged that she clicked the words in Draconian.

  The machine’s legs buckled. With a last cry of frustration, T’liah jumped out of the cockpit and landed on the ground several feet in front of him. From beneath her billowing green and black robes, she produced another needle pistol.

  “You will die one way or another,” she growled, “It does not matter to me.”

  She fired the entire gun’s worth of ammunition into Anton’s chest, and he felt slight impacts as the needles lodged into his armor. When she saw that he was still coming, T’liah gasped.

  “Your armor,” she said. “It can’t be… where did you…”

  There was no time to take the armor off before it exploded. Desiring nothing more than to destroy the creature with her own weapon, he continued his charge. If he died in the process, at least he was taking the last of the scum with him. T’liah staggered backward, but she had nowhere to go.

  Just as the needles in his chest exploded, he collided with the reptile queen. The last thing he would remember from that moment was the squish of the spikes digging into her chest before washing the scene in purple light.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Anton, can you hear me? Please wake up…”

  The words trickled into his mind from the depths of a dreamless sleep. He began to stir. His head ached. His body felt stiff and sore. But when he opened his eyes, none of that mattered anymore.

  Anton was surrounded by angels. Though scraped and bruised, the women were as beautiful as ever.

  To his left, Sabina looked down at him, eyes watering, cheeks rounded in a tender smile. Her green dress clung tight to her breasts, which bulged invitingly.

  To his right, Petra beamed. Her arms were folded across her pink bodice. She winked at him, as if to say about time.

  Ana beamed, at least as much as could be expected of an android. She stood at the foot of his bed holding a metal stand that carried what looked like an IV drip.

  “What do you know, I’m alive,” he said. “Good god, I’m alive! What happened?”

  “You kicked some Draconian ass, that’s what happened,” Petra said. “It was crazy!”

  “We thought you were dead for sure,” Sabina added, lovingly caressing his face.

  “Yeah, why aren’t I dead? And how long have I been out?”

  “You ran at T’liah while covered in explosive needles,” Ana said. “When they detonated, your armor absorbed most of the explosion. In an impressive display of self-preservation, you managed to cover your face with your arm plates, protecting you from irreparable damage. It was, as a human might say, rather badass. You have been unconscious for eight days.”

  “Eight days?” Anton tried to sit up, but dizziness pulled him back down. “But Eliza… uh, T’liah, she’s dead?”

  “So dead,” Petra answered. “A green stain on what used to be our gardens.”

  “And Matteo?”

  “Also dead. Gregor disposed of his body,” Ana said.

  He sat up again, this time more slowly. The ladies helped him. A sight both familiar and foreign greeted him. He was in his bedchamber, but the room looked more like a small hospital. The IV bag that Ana held led to a tube into his arm, and on the table to his left was an assortment of liquids in jars. He looked at them curiously.

  “I used my medical database to synthesize some medications with supplies from the outpost laboratory,” Ana said. “In addition, the apothecary and alchemical shops in the inner city were happy to provide what they could when they discovered what you had done.”

  “So they know?” Anton asked. “Everyone knows about the Draconians now?”

  “No,” Petra chuckled. “Only a few of us do, but that’s enough. As far as Jagari needs to know, we were infiltrated by foreign aggressors. We just didn’t specify how foreign.”

  “They do know about the poisoned crops,” Sabina added. “The fields are already improving.”

  “What about the outpost?” Anton asked. “If it’s been eight days, surely the mothership has checked in.”

  “Stop worrying so much, Anton!” Petra laughed. “We took care of everything. Well, Ana did. She perfected the translator. Those idiots up there don’t know the difference.”

  “Still, someone’s got to man the outpost,” Anton said.

  “I’ve volunteered for that duty,” Sabina said. “I’m going to live there with my sons. I’m tired of this damned castle, anyway. I need some time out in the countryside.”

  Anton had a million more questions, but the grins on the ladies’ faces told him that he didn’t need to worry.

  His stomach rumbled, and he was suddenly aware of the most intense hunger he’d ever
felt.

  “I’m guessing I haven’t consumed anything but IV fluid for the past week. How about some dinner?”

  “The king and queen have asked that you join them in the dining hall when you are well enough,” Ana said. “I believe they have a few questions of their own.”

  ***

  Anton sat with Petra at the long dining table. Though there were still chunks missing from some walls, and the gardens were destroyed, the castle’s staff had done a remarkably good job repairing things over the past week. Most of the rooms looked good as new.

  The food was the best he’d ever tasted. Cuts of juicy lamb, roasted corn, and scalloped potatoes melded together into a beautiful symphony of flavor. When the king and queen sat to join him, he forced himself to swallow and greet them.

  “We’re eternally grateful to you, Anton,” said Queen Orpha. “If you want a place in our castle, you may have it for as long as you please.”

  “Thanks,” he said, his mouth still full of potatoes.

  Anton glanced at Petra, shifting his eyebrows as if to say, how much do they know?

  She nodded. He supposed they’d had to tell them.

  “I can’t accept, though, I’m afraid. Once I get the chron-, uh, my magical time travel device up and running, we’ll have more work to do. Those bastards will be gone for a while, but they’ll return.”

  “Oh god, no!” King Gareth said. “We’ll have to be prepared this time. What to do, what to do…”

  “Don’t worry,” Anton laughed. “You’ll be long dead by the time that happens.”

  The king and queen stared at him, both horrified.

  “No, not like that,” Anton said, laughing again. “It’ll be more than two centuries. You can enjoy your long and happy lives. I’ll be helping out your descendants.”

  “Oh,” Gareth said. “Good. I have no intention of going back to that dungeon. Do you know how dark and depressing it is there? There’s nothing to see or do at all!”

  “Those poor prisoners.” Anton stuffed some more lamb into his mouth.

  “At any rate,” the queen said. “I’m sure Petra’s great-great-great-grandchildren will be kept safe. You’re a good man, Anton, even if you lied about being magic.”