Time Spiral

by Scott McGough

  The Keldon elf straightened up, opening her eyes wide. As they skimmed toward the largest clump of black, moss-encrusted trees ahead, Radha tilted her head back and sniffed the air.

  “Phaugh,” she spat.

  Jhoira nodded. “I entirely agree.”

  Teferi glanced from Radha to Jhoira, his eyes crinkled with mirth.

  “Hold your noses,” he said to the larger group, “and draw your weapons. I think we’re about to see something new.”

  Venser worked furiously, prying at the damaged access panel with a pronged metal tool. He had already retrieved the first stone from the opposite side of the device and now he just had to recover the second. As usual, he had to work as quickly as possible, as it was literally a matter of life and death.

  It had been a very successful trail, his most successful yet. The device had not worked precisely the way he expected but it had worked. Part of the engine was fused and the steering mechanism was cracked, but that all happened after the trip was over. In terms of taking him from a starting point to a destination, it was the best he’d ever done.

  The panel popped off and splashed into the watery bog. A multifaceted gem about the size of his fist sat inside the square housing, emitting a dim but steady yellow light. Venser checked all around to make sure he was alone then urgently began prying the powerstone loose.

  It was the best he’d managed yet, but it still left him stranded outside the safety of his compound. The gladehunters hadn’t come yet, but Venser’s arrival had been bright and loud enough to attract them. Hells, simply firing up the engine was enough to attract them. Windgrace’s raiders hated all magical machinery and were constantly on the prowl for artifacts to destroy and artificers to devour. They would rip Venser to pieces simply for being human and in their territory. He didn’t like to think what they’d do if they found him operating his blasphemous (to their way of thinking) device.

  The powerstone came free and Venser caught it in his palm. It was cold for such a significant energy source, and he quickly stashed it alongside its twin in a pouch on his tool belt. He took one last look at the strange, thronelike contraption he had assembled, sorry to leave it behind but confident he could return for it later. If not, he would simply rebuild it as he had a dozen times before by scavenging pieces from the swamp. So long as he had an endless supply of spare parts and his powerstones, he could build and test as many artifact machines as he liked.

  Something clicked and whistled nearby. Venser quickly ducked around the device, putting it between himself and the sound. Hiding wouldn’t help him much against the gladehunters, but it would keep him alive longer than running.

  They emerged from the black-leafed trees and red-berried thorn bushes, their huge spiked legs stabbing into the moist ground. The four dire creatures were unlike any he’d seen before, but each bore the distinctive gladehunter mark somewhere on their bodies. There were four in all, each twice as tall as Venser, each capable of biting him in half with a single snap of their serrated jaws.

  Two looked like a kind of lobster-mantis hybrid, skittering on four spearlike legs as they cradled their huge, clawed forelimbs in front of them. Their rear legs kept their bodies stable and clear of the muck, while their thoraxes bent vertical at the waist so that their heads and shoulders were almost level with the trees.

  The other two were similar multi-legged insects, but they were definitely not mantises. Each was a boulder-sized wedge of sharp-shelled armor that floated forward on flexible, whiplike limbs. They each had two tails lashing from their anterior ends and crested ridges on their shoulders that put Venser in mind of vestigial wings. He counted himself lucky that these two couldn’t fly or, he corrected himself, weren’t flying yet.

  The quartet of gladehunters stopped at the edge of the clearing and sniffed the area. All four quickly oriented on Venser’s machine. If they held true to the credo of their master, these fearsome creatures would reduce the device to splinters and scrap. Anyone they found inside or nearby would receive similar treatment and would be added to the mound of wreckage they’d leave behind as a warning to anyone else who brought artifice into their woods.

  Lord Windgrace’s agents were not evil or bloodthirsty, but they were mindless, cunning, and ruthless, like well-trained but vicious attack dogs. The insect-things wouldn’t ask him what he was doing or try to convert him away from his blasphemous ways; they would simply eviscerate him and flatten his abominable machine because that is what they did.

  Venser’s mind raced. He needed a way out and he needed not to be seen. He couldn’t outrun or outfight the gladehunters with what he had on him. Nothing on his belt qualified as a weapon against such creatures. Even the stones, the most dynamic of his tools, were worthless without a machine to drive. Inside a golem or a mechanized spear gun, the stones would absolutely save him from these enemies, but for now they were little more than shiny rocks.

  Venser tensed, gathering his nerve for a headlong rush toward his compound. If he waited until they started wrecking the device, they might be distracted long enough for him to reach the dense trees. He knew every inch of this area, and with enough of a head start he might just stay ahead of them all the way home. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

  Stand still, a man’s voice told him. Don’t run until I say.

  Venser’s heart began beating faster and cold sweat formed on the back of his neck. Magic was often used to subjugate the mind in Urborg, and Venser had lived in Urborg all his life. To him, someone else’s voice in one’s head was more alarming than waking up with a poisonous snake coiled on your face, its fangs dripping and aimed at your eyes.

  Just relax, the man said. And keep your head down.

  Venser tried to control his breathing. The voice was very friendly and soothing, though Venser did not feel soothed.

  A whirling wheel of flame erupted from the left of the gladehunters, spinning toward them like a saw blade. The insects scattered out of its path, the mantises lunging left and the other two lunging right. Venser took a single step away from the machine toward the safety of the trees, but the man’s voice stopped him.

  Wait for it, the playful voice said.

  A bolt of red-orange fire ripped into the mantis gladehunters. Venser heard an awful, ear-splitting shriek as one of the insects rose high on a single pair of legs, covered in flames from its head to its waist. The other mantis shielded itself with its scimitarlike forelimb, which shunted most of the blast aside. That limb burned as the gladehunter lowered it, and the monster thrust it angrily under the surface of the murky water. Its head flicked back and forth as it searched for its tormentor.

  The voice said, All right, now run, and Venser did, sprinting to the nearest sturdy tree and pressing his back against the opposite side. He closed his eyes and caught his breath before peering around to watch the battle unfold.

  The stranger pair of gladehunters were positioned side by side, one facing the source of the fire wheel and the other that of the flaming bolt. Venser saw huge, multifaceted eyes glittering just above the point of their wedge-shaped heads and heard jagged horizontal mandibles clicking together. Four sharp-tipped tails squirmed like snakes.

  Someone nearby let out a terrifying war cry from directly over the second pair of gladehunters. Someone, some … thing dropped from the tall tree directly above them, igniting into a cloud of green and yellow flames. Impossibly, the fiery bundle accelerated as it fell, its howl growing louder and sharper.

  Venser blinked. Was that a woman under all that? If so, she was doomed. The wedge-shaped gladehunters reared and coiled their tails, ready to spear the fire-woman out of the air with their sharp faces.

  Two blurs of scaly green shot out at ground level before the gladehunters could strike. One swept through first monster’s legs, tearing most of them off as it went. The beast screeched as gore spurted and it toppled into the mire, its attacker disappearing into the bog before Venser saw it clearly.


  The second blur slammed squarely into the last gladehunter’s broad midsection, driving the huge creature back and pinning it against the bole of a stunted tree. The gladehunter struggled against the odd bipedal reptile that held it, gouging the watery ground with its sharp legs and flailing its twin tails. Before it could regain its focus and its full strength, the flaming woman landed with a huge, bent dagger sticking out of her fist. The point of the knife punched through the gladehunter’s armored head, penetrating all the way to the hilt. In a hideous display of strength, the woman’s arms bulged and her neck strained as she sawed the blade around the gladehunter’s sharp front end in a huge, crude circle, the monster flailing and keening all the while.

  When her circle closed, this awful woman grabbed the handle of her knife with both hands. She pushed down, the thick blade acting as a lever, and Venser heard nauseating crack. The gladehunter shuddered, its tails twitching. Its face fell out of its head, whole and complete like an old scab dropping from a wound. The contents of the monster came pouring out as it dropped twitching into the swamp. Impatiently, the woman turned to face the lizard and shouted, “Do it.”

  The lizard nodded then lifted his gladehunter’s faceless but still wriggling body. With no great effort he heaved the corpse on top of its crippled partner. The live insect was crushed down below the surface of the fetid water, but the lizard did not press his advantage. He dived into the marsh, and like his scaly brother, he left barely a ripple behind him.

  The two remaining gladehunters roared in unison. The maimed one struggled out from under its brother’s corpse and slithered through the muck away from the terrible woman. The other, the burned mantis, was still largely intact and so it leaped high into the air, hurdling its dead partner to continue the attack. It landed with a splash near the woman with the bent dagger, who was now alone between two angry, wounded gladehunters.

  The fierce-eyed warrior was clearly insane, because she sheathed her weapon and goaded the gladehunters forward with both hands. She was even smiling.

  The mantis gladehunter chittered angrily. “Outlanders,” he said, his voice brittle and indistinct, “we will not forget your blasphemy.”

  “Sure you will,” the woman said. “Dead bugs don’t remember much.”

  The insects struck together, one lashing out with its long, hooked forelimb and the other with its sharp-tipped tails. The woman nimbly leaped over the first blow and kicked off of the leg that delivered it. She then caught the other gladehunter’s striking tail in her hands. Her left arm twisted and the tail stretched, then snapped, spraying the monster’s shell with sticky green slime. With her right hand, the woman caught the mantis’s claw as it snapped for her, then she hugged herself to it.

  The huge predator was strong enough to retract its limb even with a full-grown enemy clinging to it, and so it did, preparing the killing blow with its other forelimb. As it drew the woman toward him she cast her arm out, and Venser saw something sharp and shiny hurtle into the gladehunter’s face.

  The mantis’s leg went askew as the monster shuddered and fell forward. The woman rolled off its leg and drew her dagger as she landed gracefully on her feet. She turned and showed the blade to the last remaining gladehunter. She carefully placed the weapon back in her belt and made the same beckoning gesture again, only this time with one hand and one enemy to see it.

  The gladehunter roared. It thrashed his remaining legs and tail and thrust itself up, every muscle pushing and pulling its body into a vertical position. The woman was far faster than it was, toying with it as she darted behind and tackled it back down into the muck. Laughing, she forced its head and face completely below the surface of the swamp. Numb and nauseated, Venser watched as the woman cheerfully held the struggling gladehunter down until its thrashing body slowed then stopped.

  She continued to hold it there for several long seconds after it ceased to move. She tossed her wild hair from her face and locked eyes with Venser. Her fierce expression did not change and she did not call out to the man she just helped rescue.

  Instead, she reached out and savagely ripped the gladehunter’s remaining tail from its body. She glared down at the insect, and seeing no reaction, straightened up. “He’s dead,” she said to Venser. Her face split into an evil sneer. “Else he’d have twitched a bit.”

  Turning back, she latched on to the monster’s sharp anterior end, lifting it slightly out of the bog, and planted her foot in the center of its wedgelike body. With a brutal stomp, she bent the gladehunter in half until it snapped in two.

  Panting, the woman hoisted dead monster’s ragged tail overhead and threw the grisly item down on top of its owner. Then she turned back to Venser. “Still dead,” she told him.

  Venser felt cold, his skin damp and waxy. “Who … what?” he said, but there were too many questions jumbled together in his mind.

  The rest of the strange warriors emerged from the trees and the water. In addition to the terrifying gray woman there were two reptilians and two small, dark-skinned humans dressed in red. They all seemed calm and confident, not threatening at all … except for the woman. But even she had protected him. Nonetheless, Venser backed away as they approached.

  He yelped as he bumped into a solid figure behind him. Venser sprang toward his machine, noting two new figures half-blocking his path. One was a young girl from the same tribe as the red-clad warriors. The other was a tall, bald, dark-skinned wizard in gleaming white and blue robes.

  “Easy, friend,” the bald man said. It was the same voice Venser heard in his head earlier. “We’re only here to help.”

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” He pointed to the bodies of the gladehunters. “Do you know what you’ve done? They’ll kill you for sure when they see this. And me.”

  “They’ll try,” the insane woman said. Venser yelped again. She was standing right beside him though he had not heard her approach.

  “Radha,” said the bald man. “Venser is about to go into shock.

  Please don’t hurry him along.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  The bald man smiled, almost guiltily. “Uhh,” he said, visibly searching for an answer. “You know it?”

  “Teferi, please.” The young girl next to the bald man stepped forward and held her hands out, open and placating. “My name is Jhoira. We are on a mission to examine the Stronghold. Teferi is a planeswalker”—she pointed to the bald man—“Radha is from Keld”—she indicated the fury with the bent dagger—“and we’re all from Shiv.” Jhoira waved her hand to include the rest of the group. “Don’t worry. We won’t stay long.”

  “Actually,” the bald man called Teferi said, “we didn’t know it when we arrived, but we’ve also come to see you.” He smiled broadly. “You were born near here, weren’t you?”

  Venser opened his mouth to answer then closed it again. He looked from Jhoira to Teferi, then back at the gang of warriors lined up behind him. “Please,” he said at last. “Just let me go.”

  “Oh, stuff this,” Radha said. “Let’s just knock him on the head and carry him with us like the luggage he is.”

  Venser’s brain started swimming and his stomach seemed to float away inside him. He felt as if he might vomit then as if he might fall down in it.

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” said Teferi. “Radha, would you catch him, please?”

  Venser’s vision went gray and he felt himself lurching forward. The last thing he heard was Radha’s bored voice ask, “What for?”

  Then Venser splashed into the marsh and everything went black.

  Jhoira sat patiently beside the unconscious Venser. She had convinced Teferi that it would be best if only she were there when the Urborg native awoke. The planeswalker agreed, but he insisted that he stay close by in order to observe.

  Teferi’s transport carried them all the way to the edge of the Stronghold without further incident. Now Radha and the others were setting up a perimeter in case any more Urborg natives came l
ooking for them. Teferi had conjured a simple canvas tent to house Venser while he recovered.

  Venser was lean and underfed, but he was not as wasted as the denizens of Keld. His skin was pale, almost untouched by the sun, but his hair was lush and healthy. Somehow, this lone human has taken care of himself in one of the most hostile environments in the world. Alone, unarmed, he was better off than all of the elves she had seen, in spite of Freyalise’s blessing.

  If Teferi was right and Venser was the Urborg equivalent of Radha, the pallid young man represented a rare opportunity. He seemed lucid and intelligent when he wasn’t being attacked by monsters or defended by fire mages. If he was even slightly more cooperative than Radha (which wouldn’t be saying much), he might voluntarily tell them a great deal of useful information about Urborg, the Stronghold, and himself.

  Venser groaned and his eyes began to twitch. As consciousness returned, Jhoira saw that the first thing he did was reach down and check one of the larger pouches on his tool belt. She patiently waited while he verified that whatever he had was still there, and only then did he open his eyes.

  “You’re safe,” she told him. He glanced up at her, still focusing in the dim light. “Do you remember me from the marsh?”

  Venser blinked and scanned the inside of the tent. Still afraid to move, he looked back up at her and said, “Jhoira.”

  She nodded. “You never got the chance to introduce yourself. You are?”

  The pale man sat up, propping his body on his elbow as he extended his other hand. “Venser,” he said.

  “Glad to know you,” she said, and she was. She took Venser’s hand and helped him up to a sitting position. “What were those creatures that attacked you?”

  “Gladehunters. They run in packs.” He shrugged. “In the wild, anyway.”

  “I’m quite interested in the two-tailed variety. They’re called ‘slivers,’ and I’ve never seen them that big. How common are they?”