Time Spiral

by Scott McGough

  Aprem listed obscenely, his head half-swollen and half-collapsed into an asymmetrical horror. Dassene called her tribesman’s name as the last vestiges of rigidity left him. His bones dissolved and his skin lost cohesion so that Aprem poured onto the ground. He did not splash or splatter but spread out across the surface of the cliff top. Neither his clothing nor his features blended into the larger mass as it spread, so the surface of his puddlelike corpse still displayed the distorted, liquefied remains of Aprem’s lips, nose, hair, and eyes.

  Dassene screamed in outrage as she drew her batons. She struck the polished sticks together and both ends ignited.

  Before the Ghitu could focus her magic on the dragon, Radha tackled her high across the shoulders. They both crashed to the ground and as they landed Radha noted the Ghitu’s body was hot to the touch, that smoke was pouring from under the bandages on Dassene’s hand.

  Fire sparked in Dassene’s eyes and she struggled to shove Radha off. “Let me up,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “To avenge. To take a piece of that smug bastard with me.”

  “Stupid.” Radha squeezed and crushed the air from Dassene’s lungs. “Wasteful. You stand down now and I’ll let you go. Otherwise I’m going to knock you on the head.”

  Dassene redoubled her efforts. “Get off,” she snarled. “Aprem and I were trained for this. We volunteered. We are Mi’uto, one-use warriors. We are expendable.”

  Radha looked into the Ghitu warrior’s eyes, so close to her own. She tilted her head back and drove her forehead into the bridge of Dassene’s nose.

  “Not to me,” she said.

  Red blood splashed and Dassene’s eyes rolled back. She went limp in Radha’s arms. The Keldon elf gently lowered Dassene and rolled her onto her side so she wouldn’t choke.

  Radha disentangled herself and stood to face Nicol Bolas. Behind her, Jhoira and the others drew near. “Are we done here?” she shouted angrily. She turned to her party. “Does anyone else want to waste their best effort and die?” She turned back to Bolas. “Hoy, dragon,” she said. “You’re alive again. You’re free. Why are you still here? I’d be very surprised if the thing you want most is on this rock.”

  Bolas’s calm expression did not waver. “Perhaps, but right now, I’m enjoying myself immensely.”

  “All right, but we’re in a hurry. Do whatever it is you’re planning then pop off, will you? There’s five of us standing here and none is stronger than the wizard you just shredded.” She drew her kukri dagger and a tear-shaped blade, emphasizing her words with the tips. “We don’t care about you.” She struck the blades together and flames sprang up along their sharp edges. “Leave us be or kill us now, but Venser and I won’t let you take anyone else. We all live or we all die.”

  Bolas laughed merrily, then he snapped his jaws together with a sharp crack. “Do you now speak for the group?”

  “I do.”

  The dragon peered down at Radha, malevolent joy brimming in his voice. “Prove it,” he said.

  Radha’s lip curled. She turned and looked pointedly at Venser. The Urborg native was no warrior, but he was also no fool. He drew a thin, spiked tool from his belt and stepped up alongside Radha.

  Venser brandished the sharp implement and said, “Radha speaks for us all.”

  Radha grunted appreciatively. “Plus,” she said, “I’m going to stick Venser as soon as the fight starts to make sure you never get near him.”

  “Hey,” Venser said. Recovering, he added, “Well, I’ll stick you, too. Then he gets nothing.”

  Bolas. Teferi’s voice was thin and distant. The dragon gestured, and Teferi’s severed head rose into the air on a column of empyrean light. Bolas extended his hand under the head and it dropped into his palm.

  “You have something to add?”

  I do. Teferi’s eyes were blank white and his mouth gaped lifelessly. The multiverse is changing. The rifts that you plucked us from are expanding. All of them. Dominaria is teetering on the tip of a needle, and Shiv’s return will bring it crashing down. Not even you will be safe.

  “My, my,” the dragon said. “Everyone is in such a hurry to see me go, and all with my best interests at heart.” He sniffed mockingly. “I am quite moved.”

  Look, Planeswalker, Teferi said. See what I have seen.

  Bolas concentrated on the head in his hand. He stood silent and still for several minutes as his face and Teferi’s took on a dim blue sheen. Radha thought she saw the dragon wince slightly, but only once.

  The dim glow faded. Bolas turned his palm sideways, letting Teferi’s head bounce carelessly away.

  “This audience is over,” he said. The dragon spread his wings, and though they did not flap he still rose into the air.

  Radha suspiciously watched the dragon’s slow ascent. Venser still stood by her, clenching the spiked implement so tightly his knuckles popped.

  “Live long, Keldon elf.” Bolas opened his eyes wide and fixed Radha with a penetrating stare. She held it as he rose ever higher. “If this world does end, I will look for you and your Urborg consort in another. Survive the coming twilight,” he said, as his eyes grew dark and malignant, “or I shall be sorely disappointed.” Bolas extended his arms, legs, wings, and tail. Swirling masses of force and light churned behind him, a beguiling pinwheel of magical energy.

  “As for me, I will travel to the place that spawned a plague on Madara. I will find the spirit that infected my empire before it was even truly mine.” His eyes flashed angrily. “There will be a reckoning. I will devour the dark lady who brought Madara so much misery, then I will travel the length and breadth of the multiverse, charring to ashes every root, branch, bud, and leaf on the Umezawa family tree. Even those who have already passed from the world of the living.” The dragon’s face was alive with unholy joy. “Especially those. I made a vow, after all.

  “Farewell, Dominaria. If the time-chaser succeeds, I shall return to you. If not, I shall always recall you as the once-brightest jewel in my hoard.”

  No escape, Teferi called weakly. No safe place.

  The elder dragon had already turned and was picking up speed on his way toward the Talon Gates. His body seemed to stretch as he rocketed out to sea, lengthening into a ruler-straight streak that shifted in color and intensity from electric blue to flat black to vibrant red. The streak vanished several hundred yards from the center of the Talon Gates, but a split-second later the space inside the curved stone spires turned white. The center of the opaque oval became angry red as if heated in forge beyond its capacity, and the ground shuddered.

  Radha and the others watched a massive wave surge up between the gates and the shoreline. The mountain of water gathered speed as it swept inland, seething with salt-white foam. The deluge hit and completely submerged the beach as far up the coastline as Radha could see. Though it barely reached halfway up the sheer cliff face, the wave’s impact shook the whole region and knocked almost everyone off their feet.

  When the tremor subsided, Radha roughly pushed Venser off her and went to check on Dassene. The Ghitu woman’s eyes would be bruised and her nose painfully swollen for the next few days, but she was alive. Dassene might choose to hold that fact against her, but Radha was confident she could dissuade the firecaster from holding a grudge. If not, she could always knock her on the head again.

  Jhoira stood, brushed the dust from her robes, and wordlessly went to Teferi. Radha watched her for a moment, then she rose to follow Jhoira. She caught up to the Ghitu as Jhoira was stooping to lift the larger section of Teferi’s torso.

  “Thank you,” Jhoira said, though she did not sound grateful. If anything, the intense young woman had the air of someone who must continue, though they were no longer sure their goal existed.

  “For what?”

  “For taking charge. For standing off an elder dragon.”

  Radha shrugged, genuinely confused. “I barely amused him.” She watched Jhoira collect Teferi’s upper legs and put them on the gro
und below the torso. His bloodless body was slowly taking shape.

  Radha waited for Jhoira to look up then shot her a questioning look. She gestured at Teferi with her head cocked.

  “He’s still our best hope,” Jhoira said.

  “He’s in pieces.”

  “Earlier he was stabbed through the head, but he got back up then and he’ll get back up now. You heard his voice, didn’t you? He isn’t dead.”

  Radha considered for a moment. She glanced around, spotted one of Teferi’s arms, and went to pick it up so she could add it to the pile.

  Jhoira sat comfortable and cross-legged near the edge of the cliffs. Teferi’s fractured body was arranged to approximate his assembled shape, the pieces separated by a bare inch at the key joints and seams. It had been hours since Nicol Bolas vanished through the Talon Gates.

  Corus and Skive were currently finishing a funeral cairn for Aprem, using their claws to gouge through the rocky soil. Dassene sat numbly by, both eyes and her nose swollen and bruised.

  Venser sat beside Jhoira with his eyes on Teferi but his mind clearly back in Urborg. Bolas had chosen well when he picked the artificer to beguile—Venser’s work was all he had, and Urborg was all he knew. Thankfully, even Radha had grown tired of browbeating him and now dismissed Venser’s repeated apologies.

  “If he had asked me if I wanted to go home,” she said at last, “I would have said yes, because I did.” She shrugged. “He would have gotten me instead of you.”

  Radha herself now stood closer to the edge of the cliffs, watching the Talon Gates for any sign of activity and the sky for nekoru. Nothing had moved since the dragon departed, nothing but the waves and an occasional sea bird. The Keldon elf was remarkably patient during their wait, almost unnervingly so. Jhoira guessed that like Venser, Radha’s thoughts had returned to her homeland.

  Teferi’s head stirred. The planeswalker had not spoken or shared his thoughts since they gathered him together. Blue-white energy glowed in the spaces between his parts and they rose together off of the ground. Teferi’s blank eyes blinked. His body slowly pulled together, knitting together at the ends and merging into one contiguous shape.

  “He’s back,” Radha called. Corus and Skive stood and waited for Dassene, but the Ghitu shook her head. The two viashino nodded and proceeded toward the larger group.

  Teferi’s rich brown pupils rolled down into their sockets as the viashino arrived. He stared for a moment, focusing, then he somberly turned to them all.

  “Hello,” he said. “Thank you all for watching over me. I would like to pay my respects to Aprem.”

  Jhoira read the looks on the viashino’s faces and said, “Wait until later. Are you recovered?”

  “I am. Though I can’t say I am none the worse for wear.” He smiled, but his joy was grim and hollow. “I believe I owe you all an apology.”

  “What for?” Radha said. The others looked at her and she added, “Where would he even begin? There’s so much.”

  “That is the crux of it,” Teferi said. “From the start I have been relying on others to help me complete my task. I went to Freyalise because she had experience, I pursued Radha because she had mana, and I went to Venser because he had interaction with the rift. Even before I started I tried to put the onus and the impetus for my endeavors on Jhoira … which she politely accepted, if only to shut me up.”

  “Did it work?” Radha asked. “You should bottle it.”

  “It was partially successful.” Jhoira looked to Teferi and said, “You were building to something.”

  Teferi nodded. “Shiv will return in two days,” he said, “and I must be there to guide it safely home. I will need at least a day to prepare myself and the receiving ground, so I intend to depart momentarily. I thank you all for your help, given willingly or not. You have all been of great service to me, but that service is now concluded. I will ask no more of you, any of you, from this point forward.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Jhoira said angrily. “Venser aside, we all agreed to help you see this through.” She gestured to herself and the viashino and Dassene beside Aprem’s cairn. “Shiv is our home. It’s my home, and that’s why you took it away in the first place. You and I agreed at the outset that this is all my fault, and I’ll be thrice-damned if I’ll let you make amends without me.”

  Teferi’s face clouded. “That agreement was just a bit of face-saving irony entirely intended to be humorous.”

  “Bolas was right about you,” Jhoira said. “You should choose your words more carefully. Things go badly for you every time you meet someone who cares more about what you say than how you say it.”

  “Nevertheless,” Teferi said, “I won’t ask of others what I wouldn’t do myself, and since I’m the only one who can do what needs be done, I would prefer to proceed alone.”

  “That’s asinine,” Radha said. “If the past few days have taught you anything, clean-head, it should be that you need as much help as you can get.”

  Corus rose to his full height. “I came to see my home restored,” he said. “Dismiss me so close to the end, Planeswalker, and you will have made an enemy for life.”

  “See? Your apology is accepted,” Jhoira said officiously, “but your offer is not. Most of us came only to help you, and that’s what we still intend to do.”

  Teferi watched her sharply for a few moments, then he turned to Venser. “I owe you a special apology, my friend. You never meant to leave Urborg and you never agreed to visit Shiv. You have been literally dragged into this fiasco, and I would have used you toward my own ends without ever explaining it to you.”

  Venser shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t want to go back right away,” he said quietly.

  Teferi smiled, a brief bright flicker of amusement. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Bolas is long gone.”

  The artificer relaxed a little. “Oh,” he said. “That’s not what I meant. Corus and Skive were telling me that Shiv once had a factory that manufactured powerstones.”

  Teferi nodded. “That is true. Though I believe it got up and walked away during the Phyrexian Invasion.”

  Venser tapped the pouch on his belt. “These stones are the only thing I have that’s worth keeping. There aren’t two more in all of Urborg. If I had two more … even one more, it would cut my testing time in half.” He shrugged and laughed a little. “Besides, if what you say is true, the world might end in two days anyway. I might as well be there to see it.”

  Jhoira almost hugged the Urborg native, not just for his casual, selfless grace, but for the effect it had on Teferi. The planeswalker smiled, a long, warm, sustained grin.

  “Thank you,” Teferi said. He turned slightly. “And you, Radha? Do you want to see if the world will end with a bang firsthand?”

  “No,” Radha said evenly, “and not just because I don’t understand or care about half of what you just said.”

  “Oh?” Teferi’s genial mood faltered. “Why else?”

  “I’ve been thinking since we left Keld. It’s been good for me to see things from a distance. I’ve got a few ideas I’d like to use on the Gathans. I need to get back and use them before Greht finishes building his armada and sails away.”

  The others stared at her, some confused, others sullen.

  “What?” Radha said. “He told us we’re free to go if we want. That’s what I want.” She turned back to Teferi and tossed her hair out of her eyes. “There’s still the issue of payment, Planeswalker.”

  Teferi nodded. “Shall I give you all the knowledge in the Book of Keld? I don’t have time to recite it, but I know a few spells that would implant it in your mind as if—”

  “Don’t bother,” Radha said. “I just want a few specific things. How many corpse marker symbols do you know?”

  Teferi tilted his head and stared at an imaginary point just over Radha’s head. “One hundred and sixty,” he said.

  “How many are in High Keld?”

  Teferi stared off into space for a second more. “Twent
y-three.”

  “That’s perfect.” She tapped her forehead. “Give ’em here.”

  Teferi’s eyes lit up. For the first time since his reassembly, Jhoira noticed the buoyant curiosity that normally drove him, the acute joy of new discovery.

  “It’s a bit intrusive,” Teferi said. “I have to open up your mind to put the information in. You have to relax your guard a bit, and … well, doing this will bind us more closely. It will be much easier for me to reach out to you in the future.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s less like sharing your thoughts and more like letting me rummage through them.”

  “So? You’ve done that before.”

  “Not like this. What I’m about to do makes that seem like polite dinner conversation.”

  “So?” Radha shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  Teferi’s eyes flashed blue. Radha choked and snarled as her own eyes mirrored the azure light. There was a pop and a plume of smoke, and the Keldon elf staggered back a step.

  Radha rubbed her eyes. When she glanced up over her pinched fingers, she wore a wide, wolfish smile. “Oh, I can definitely use these,” she said happily.

  “Now,” Teferi said, “if we’re all agreed, I will send Radha back to Skyshroud and take the rest of us on to Shiv.”

  “Wait.” Radha held up her hand and looked across to the cairn. There was no one by the grave site.

  Dassene has silently stolen up on the group, hanging back behind Corus. Radha stepped out to see her and said, “Ghitu. I am glad you’re alive. You also have information I need, but you only owe me a smack in the face. What will it take for you to teach me that fire-blasting spell you use?” She drew two blades and crossed them in front of her. “The one where you do this.”

  Dassene stepped around Corus, edging her way into the group. She was breathing heavily through her swollen nose.

  “I will not teach you my secrets, Radha.”

  The Keldon elf’s face soured. She sheathed her weapons.

  Dassene continued. “There isn’t time. In the coming weeks, certainly, but in the short term you’d better leave it to me.” The Ghitu crossed in front of Corus and Skive and stood beside Radha.