“My lady!” he yelled out. “We have counseled with my teacher and master, the wisest man who has ever graced this world. And our decision was an easy one. We reject your foul proposal and order you to leave the lands of my mother, Olympias of Epirus, daughter of King Neoptolemus. Leave, or the punishment will be severe.”
“So be it.” Tilda nodded, then took slow and steady steps backward, her eyes never leaving Alexander. The soldiers she’d hired parted to let her pass, and soon all of them were once again in front of her, a shield of armed and angry men.
“Kill them,” she said, as calmly as the most seasoned battle commander.
“But, Tilda!” Olympias screamed, finally coming alive. “You were my friend! We were like sisters!”
Tilda frowned. “Be sure and kill her, too.”
ANY EMPATHY or understanding Riq had felt for Tilda vanished as quickly as a drop of water thrown into a fire. He almost sensed it leave his mind, like a tangible thing. The woman had been doing her best to brainwash them, but the spell was finally broken.
The soldiers she’d brought along started marching forward, drawing swords and daggers and spears. Their walk turned into a trot, then a run. Roaring battle yells, they charged in to do as their master had ordered.
A cold rush of terror washed through Riq, knowing they had absolutely no chance of fighting against all those muscles and weapons. Unless somehow they could wrestle a couple of the soldiers down, maybe steal their weapons . . .
He looked at Sera, and his heart hurt to see how scared she was. Dak, too. It was up to him, then. He would gladly sacrifice himself to ensure all they’d fought for wasn’t lost now, with victory so close.
He took a step forward, but Sera grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Hold,” Alexander suddenly said. Riq had been focused on Tilda’s group, but now he saw that Alex and his two guards had formed a line, swords drawn, their bodies rigid in a fighting stance.
“Hold,” the future king repeated, louder because the small army of soldiers was almost on them, screaming and yelling and clanging their weapons, feet pounding the ground like horses’ hooves.
“Hold!” Alex shouted again, a thundercrack of sound that overwhelmed everything else. The charging army was only fifteen feet away. “NOW!”
Riq actually jumped at the boom of the last word, its echo bouncing off the shields of the soldiers as if they were cliff walls. And then he witnessed a flurry of movement and speed that he hadn’t known possible.
Alex and his guards swept forward in a burst, their swords swinging through the air as if powered by great machines, cutting and slashing. Their free hands held daggers, which jabbed and stabbed in unsuspected places, felling their foes as surely as the huge blades. One by one, Tilda’s soldiers fell to the ground, writhing in agony, bleeding, screaming. Alexander in particular was like a tornado of human flesh, his movements a blur, his feet dancing, his sword flashing in the sun as it cut down one man after another.
Riq watched, stunned, caught between surprise and wanting to jump up and down to cheer their hero. Dak had no reservations. He was cheering, pumping his fists as he did so.
Olympias had a huge smile on her face, beaming with pride. She turned to the others and spoke over the sounds of clashing battle. “He’s the greatest soldier to ever live. Someday he’ll make a great king. I’ve given my whole life to making sure that happens.”
That last part gave Riq the chills because he knew exactly what she had up her sleeve to ensure Alexander became the hegemon sooner than later.
“Guys, look!” Sera shouted, pointing beyond where Alexander and his two buddies were slowly but surely winning their small war.
Riq did as she said, and saw Tilda running. She had the Eternity Ring gripped in her hands and was sprinting all out for a thicker grouping of trees on the edge of the huge lawn.
“Not this time,” Riq said, mostly to himself, already on the run to skirt around the soldiers and pursue Tilda. He was not going to let her get away. “Come on! Before she warps again.” He was surprised she hadn’t preprogrammed the thing already, just in case. It showed how overly confident she’d been that victory was in hand.
Dak and Sera stayed on his heels — he could hear them breathing but he didn’t dare take the time to look. Riq watched his step and watched Tilda, taking as direct a course as possible without risking a sword chopping off his head.
Tilda reached the trees and disappeared behind a huge oak, just as Riq cleared the last soldier and started sprinting across the expanse of grass. He sucked in each breath and spit it back out, his chest heaving with exertion. It had been a while since he’d run so hard. They were so close to victory. So close. And he just knew that if Tilda got away again, she could ruin everything.
“Hurry!” Dak yelled from behind him.
“What do you think I’m doing?!” Riq shouted right back, though he could barely get the words out.
He reached the trees and didn’t slow, bursting into the relative darkness of the shade. Whipping his head back and forth, he searched for where she’d gone, terrified that she’d already whisked away into a wormhole. Riq finally slowed, knowing he couldn’t risk passing her by, and Dak ran into him, knocking both of them to the ground. Riq grunted and struggled to get back to his feet, pushing Dak off of him.
“Over there!” Sera yelled, pointing.
Riq didn’t pause to ask questions, pushing off the ground and exploding in that direction like a runner off the blocks. He rounded a tree and saw her, kneeling on the ground, furiously working at the controls of her Eternity Ring. Riq ran, going faster than he’d ever thought possible. Tilda looked up at him, her face fraught with worry, tensed and tightly pulled over her skull. He saw her hand moving toward the final button, the one that would take her away.
“NO!” he screamed, diving into the air.
His shoulders slammed into Tilda’s body, knocking the Ring out of her hands. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it land and bounce, finally coming to a rest in a big pile of leaves. He and Tilda rolled, one on top of the other, about three times before they, too, came to a stop.
“Get off of me!” she yelled. “Get off !”
Surprisingly strong, she was able to push him away. Riq quickly got to his feet to run after the Eternity Ring, but Sera had already snatched it up in her hands. She held it close to her body, cradling it with both arms. Dak stood next to her, and both of them looked like they’d been underwater for five minutes by the way they were breathing so heavily.
Riq turned to Tilda again just in time for her to slap him across the face. It stung, made him stumble backward.
“How dare you!” she screamed at him, her eyes burning with hatred. “You brats have no idea what you’re doing! No idea! If you had half the vision that my people and I do, you’d grab a dagger right now and go stab Alexander in the heart!”
Riq didn’t respond. Neither did Dak or Sera. They stared at the woman, seeing the insanity that barely kept itself hidden beneath her exterior. She was cracking, cracking for good. Riq knew without the slightest doubt that Tilda could never be trusted with the Eternity Ring.
“Give it back to me,” she said in an almost scary, calm voice to Sera. “Hand it over, nice and easy, and I promise the SQ will leave your parents alone.”
Sera let out a little gasp, and Riq knew the woman’s words had hurt his friend. And just like that, he hated Tilda a little bit more. And made his decision.
Walking up to Sera, he held out his hand. “I know what to do.”
She hesitated a second, and Riq could see the doubt in her eyes. Tilda had almost gotten to her. But she came to her senses, giving him a grim nod and handing over the device. He felt its cool, smooth surface, could sense the outrageous amount of power contained within its infinity-shaped shell. Turning back to Tilda, he said, “You could’ve done so much good for the world.”
Then he gripped one end of the device, reached back, and slammed it into the t
runk of the closest tree.
“STOP!” screamed Tilda. “STOP!”
But Riq didn’t stop. He hit the tree with it again. And again. And again. With all his strength, throwing his hatred for the woman into every single strike, he pummeled the trunk over and over, until he heard a crack, then a bigger crack, then a metallic splintering, followed by more cracks.
Finally, on one last heave, the Eternity Ring exploded into a mess of broken fragments, falling to the ground in a rain of sharp debris. All the while, Tilda wailed like a lost child.
DAK HAD mixed feelings as he watched Riq go crazy-town with the Eternity Ring, smashing the thing into tiny bits. On the one hand, he relished the painful cries coming from Tilda — the woman deserved what she was getting — but on the other hand, destroying such a valuable piece of technology might not be the smartest thing his friend had ever done. But in terms of showmanship, the guy got an A-plus.
When Riq was finally done, letting the last little piece of metal shard drop from his hand, he took a step backward and stared along with the rest of them at the ruins of the Ring. Tilda’s haunted screams had faded into more of a hitching series of sobs. Dak almost felt sorry for her, but then remembered what a master of manipulation she’d proven to be.
Riq looked a little embarrassed for what he’d done, but Dak wanted to high-five him, though that seemed slightly inappropriate for the moment. Instead, he walked over and lightly patted him on the back.
“You did the right thing,” he whispered. “She brought it on herself.”
Sera was right next to them, and agreed. “Let’s go back. She can’t hurt anybody anymore. The Eternity Ring’s destroyed and she probably spent every last penny hiring all those soldiers. Come on.”
Riq eyed Tilda, who seemed to be in total shock, still staring at the smashed parts of the Ring as she cried. “How can we just leave her? Who knows what kind of trouble she can stir up? She’s Tilda, man.”
“What’re we going to do?” Sera replied. “Kill her? Throw her in jail?”
“Maybe in the opposite order,” Dak said, hoping a laugh could relax everybody a bit. But instead he got two cold looks in response. “I don’t know. Aristotle can figure out what to do with her.”
“You’re right,” Sera said. “It’s not really our place. We’ve done enough damage making sure she’s stuck here forever. Let’s go back and check on Alexander.”
Riq muttered something that Dak couldn’t hear, then stormed off through the trees in the direction of the lawn. Sera followed, and Dak had taken one step when he heard Tilda say something from behind him.
“You’ll regret this,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Oh, please,” he responded. “Leave it alone, Tilda. Aren’t things bad enough?”
She didn’t respond. She only turned from him and walked away.
Quite the sight awaited Dak when he caught up with Sera and Riq. Every last soldier that had come at Tilda’s command to kill Alexander either lay on the ground with nasty wounds, some of them dead and unmoving, or knelt on the ground, their hands tied behind their backs. Swords and daggers and clubs, smeared with blood, littered the green canvas of the lawn.
Alexander stood by Aristotle, surveying the scene, while Olympias was gone, maybe to call help to clean up, arrest people, whatever needed to be done.
The philosopher seemed quite relieved to see that Dak and the others had survived their own little mission — the relief on the man’s face made Dak feel happy from top to bottom.
“Do you think we’ve done it?” Aristotle asked them after congratulations and explanations were done. “Have we saved Alexander, prevented the Prime Break you told me about?”
Dak was at a loss for words. The man seemed to think they had all the answers, and he guessed it made sense since they were from the future and all. But he was the dude who started the Hystorians. Deep down, Dak was hoping the guy would tell them “You’ve done it! All is right in the world! The Cataclysm is no more! Let’s party!” Instead he was asking them for reassurance.
After an awkward silence, Sera finally answered. “Honestly, I don’t think we know. Things haven’t happened like we expected. I mean, we were supposed to save Alexander from a guy named Pausanius, out in the army camps of his dad.”
“Pausanius?” Alexander repeated, his tone harsh. He’d been cleaning his sword, but he was now all ears, his body rigid with attention. “The nobleman? The man who’s been serving as one of my father’s bodyguards?”
Sera stammered to answer, but nothing coherent came out. Dak took over since he was the one who knew the history the best.
“That’s him,” he said. “I know it can’t be good to hear, but your mom hired that guy to kill King Philip so that you could become the king sooner rather than later. She didn’t want him to kill you, of course, but you showed up and . . . Well, you know how things go sometimes. Bada-boom bada-bing, and you died, too.”
Riq gave him a sharp look. “Seriously? What a way with words you have.”
“I’m just telling him how it is. Or was. Or whatever.” He faced Alexander again, whose face had grown about five shades of red darker. “But then Tilda started jumping around time and changed everything up. We had to come back here and save you, and now that you know what’s going on, you’ll be safe, right?” He hated to think Riq was right, but Dak didn’t feel like a single word popping out of his mouth had made a lick of sense.
Alexander didn’t look well. He stared at the ground, his eyes afire, his face growing even redder. And his chest heaved with breaths.
“Alex?” Aristotle asked. “What’s wrong? We’ve made things right, and there’s still plenty of time to stop your mother from her ill-fated plan. Just let me handle her, okay?”
But Alexander wasn’t listening. He backed away, still not looking anybody in the eye, shaking his head, fuming with anger. Olympias appeared then, with a host of servants and guards to start the clean-up process. When Alexander saw her, he went ballistic.
“How could you?” he screamed, the words ragged as they tore from his throat. “How could you do this thing?” And then he was running toward the stables, not listening to anyone who tried to get him to come back.
Dak looked at his friends, then back at Aristotle. Everyone seemed frozen to the ground, stunned, unsure of what to do. Olympias marched toward them, pulling up in front of the philosopher, furious.
“Why?” she spat at him. “Why are you meddling so much? I know what’s best for my son and his future. Only me! I want you to leave here at once!”
The philosopher was unfazed. “You have to stop this nonsense, Olympias. Let matters follow their own course now.”
“Philip will die!” she yelled, not a trace of her dazzling self left from when Dak had first met her. She shook, and her skin was an unnatural color of rage. “My son must be the hegemon and lead the world to glory!”
Before Aristotle could reply, a horse came leaping from the stables, breaking into a gallop that tore up the grass of the lawn. Alexander was on top, reins in hands, leaning forward.
“Alex!” Aristotle yelled. “What are you doing on Bucephalus?”
Bucephalus, Dak thought. What a weird name for a horse.
The heir to the king didn’t slow, certainly didn’t stop. But Dak heard him answer as animal and rider flew past them.
“I’m going to save the king.”
Dak’s insides melted. That’s how the whole mess happened in the first place. It appeared the Prime Break was still in play after all.
IN THE next few minutes there was a lot of yelling. A lot of arguing. Also a lot of standing around looking at one another with blank faces. Riq watched it all in silence.
Aristotle scolded Olympias. She scolded him right back. Dak and Sera tried to convince a whole host of different people to get on horses and chase Alexander down, force him to come back before he got himself killed just the way the original history played out. No one seemed too keen on that idea. It
was like telling a zebra to go talk a pride of lions away from fresh meat.
As for Riq, he was lost on the inside. It had felt so good to lose himself to his anger. Now that it was gone, he felt empty. The truth was that he liked having an enemy to focus on. Tilda had been the source of so much fear and fury and anxiety in his life. And now she was defeated, pathetic, and Riq was left with fears that weren’t so easy to punch or kick or bite.
He rubbed his hands together, wiping away the last droplets of fuel from the Eternity Ring.
Suddenly Sera was standing before him. She touched his elbow and spoke low, out of earshot of Dak. “Riq, what was that all about back there?”
Riq grimaced. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I overdid it a little.”
Sera shook her head. “Tilda had that coming to her, and worse. I mean before. You were ready to jump right into the fight with twenty heavily armed men.”
“Sera,” he began. Then he paused, searching for the words. “You know this is it for me. I can’t risk going back to the future when we’re done here. The mission —”
“The mission is important,” Sera cut in. “But so are you.” She gave him a look that was somehow friendly and dangerous at the same time. “Ever since 1850, you’ve been way too willing to sacrifice yourself for the mission. You’ve thrown yourself in front of swords, spears, and bombs. It’s got to stop, Riq. Even if you really can’t come back to the future, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a future of your own.”
Riq blinked mutely, unsure what to say to that. Had he really been that careless? Had he been acting like a hero or a lunatic with a death wish?
“You two want to join us?” Dak hollered. “We need to make a decision.”
“Well, you won’t do it in my home,” Olympias announced. She’d recovered some of her earlier hauteur, and once again looked like a princess. “Aristotle, you’ve done great things for my family, but you were also paid in kind. You’re no longer welcome here.” She raised a hand when he started to protest. “No. Please. Enough quarrels for one day. Please respect my wishes and leave. Immediately.”
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