What in the world . . . ? She had no idea what to think of it, especially upon seeing that Dak and Riq weren’t with him. That scared her to no end.
Alexander dragged the soldier all the way to the front of the king’s tent and then threw him onto the ground.
“Any man who can’t tell the greatness of Aristotle on sight doesn’t deserve to live!” he yelled, then reared back like he was going to kick the poor guy, but stopped at the last second, looking back at his master, who was shaking his head back and forth. “Mercy, then. Get back to your duties, soldier.”
The man, though obviously hurt, was more than happy to oblige. He jumped to his feet and disappeared quickly into the crowd. Sera acted on instinct, knowing that her chance lay before her like a gift from the Greek gods. She ran forward, straight toward the heir to the king.
“Alexander!” she yelled. “Aristotle! It’s me, Sera!”
A couple of guards around Alex jolted to attention — one of them lifted a spear as if to chuck it right at Sera. But Alexander quickly reached out and stopped him.
“No,” he ordered. “I know this girl. She’s a friend.”
And just like that, Sera was officially free. Not able to help herself, she ran to Aristotle and threw her arms around him, hugging the man as if he were the uncle she missed so much from back home. He returned the hug, soothing her with soft words.
“What happened?” she asked, pulling back a bit. “Where are Dak and Riq?”
A grave look shadowed the philosopher’s face. “It’s been a very complicated few hours. I . . . volunteered myself to die — as silly as it sounds — because I hoped I’d be brought before the king or one of his council members as a matter of policy. Someone finally — finally — recognized me and informed Alex, who arrived just yesterday. However . . . as for your friends . . .”
“What?” Sera yelled, her heart forgetting how to beat.
“It was too late when I had them sent for. They’ve been taken to the front line, and communication on that front is poor to say the least. But don’t worry, I’ll be sure to get them back — as well as the boy’s parents — before any real fighting takes place. Please try not to worry.”
He must’ve read her face, because the worry almost engulfed her. Not to mention the guilt. If she hadn’t escaped from the pit, she could’ve used the Infinity Ring to whisk them all away once they were sent to the front line.
But then she remembered the reason they were here to begin with.
“Have you told him everything?” she asked Aristotle, throwing a wary glance toward Alexander.
The philosopher shook his head slightly. “He knows enough, but the boy seems to have a hard time believing I’m not a cracked pot.”
“I’m standing right here, you know,” Alexander replied. “Listen, both of you. I have more guards around me than I’d ever need. I am keeping an eye on my father. All is well. Let’s go inside and plan our strategies. War is coming.”
Aristotle gave Sera a look that was almost comical, a What’re-you-gonna-do look. They followed Alexander and the rest of the soldiers and guards into the grand tent of King Philip. Upon entering, Sera’s chest swelled with awe. There were fancy carpets and bronze bowls with red-hot coals and thick pillows strewn about for sitting. And, most majestic of all, was the king himself — it had to be him — sitting in a gilded chair, gazing intently at a map rolled open on his lap. Sera was excited to meet him and wished Dak could be there with her — but as it turned out, there was no time for introductions.
The king stood when he saw Alexander, and gruffly handed the map over to a young page waiting beside him.
“Son!” he yelled, with not a hint of joy at seeing him. “Your timing is impeccable. I’ve just been told that the Persians have taken the initiative and are moving in rapidly. Our front line will soon be under attack.”
DAK HAD tried to hold on to hope as he, Riq, and a large group of others were sent in a horse-drawn cart through the massive army toward the front line. He kept telling himself that Sera would make a difference, figure out what to do, save them. That he and Riq would find his parents and have a happy reunion, then hang out until someone figured out that this group of people from the future didn’t belong on any side of an army, let alone the front.
But that hope was fleeting. As Dak saw the countless soldiers and weapons and horses, and the bleak looks on the faces of those ready to fight, fear filled him. He realized through and through just how mighty the army was — which meant whomever they were prepping to fight must be scary as heck, too. What could Sera possibly do to save them from this mess?
They jostled along, weaving their way through a small break in the sea of soldiers, heading toward their deaths. Dak just hoped that he could be with his parents when it happened. That they could die together.
“You’re looking awfully glum,” Riq said.
“I should be more happy, huh? I mean, check this out. I’m about to get killed in a famous historical war. Yippee, right?”
“Right.”
Dak stared at the linguist, a guy who’d sneakily become one of his best friends. He seemed to have so much going on behind his eyes that curiosity won out over all that I’m-about-to-die stuff.
“What in Rasputin’s name are you thinking about over there?” he asked.
Riq yawned, then slightly shook his head. “Just wondering what I can do for this world.”
Dak didn’t know what answer he’d expected, but certainly not that. “What you can do for the world? Really? I’d say you’ve done quite a bit so far. And, hey, if we die, there’s still a pretty decent chance that Alexander doesn’t — especially with Sera on the loose. So, we saved the world, dude. If I had some root beer, we’d celebrate.” He was trying to cheer things up, and he was afraid he was doing a poor job of it.
“No, man, you don’t get it.” Riq stared off into the distance as he spoke. “Yeah, I think you’re right that we’ll fix the Prime Break. Avoid the Cataclysm and all that. But that doesn’t mean that the world still doesn’t have a lot of room for improvement.”
Dak nodded slowly, showing his best face of contemplation. “Well said. If somehow we don’t get gored by a hundred spears, we can start a charity.”
Riq laughed — the worst courtesy laugh Dak had ever heard. “Yeah. But I just wonder about this time and place. About King Philip and Alexander. It seems like . . . I don’t know. It seems like they need better guidance. With all this power, they could do a lot of good for civilization. For the future.”
“What’re you trying to say?” Dak asked. Something in Riq’s tone had scared him.
Riq never got a chance to answer.
People up ahead had started shouting, all their voices scrambling together to make it impossible for the translator in Dak’s ear to pick up anything. A tension seemed to pass through the crowds of soldiers like a visible wave. And somewhere, rising in volume, was the sound of thunder. A rolling, thumping noise that shook the ground.
The guard in charge of the horses that’d been leading their cart turned around to face them, his face snapped tight with fear, eyes wide.
“They’re attacking us!” he screamed, then lifted his sword and, for some reason, severed the ropes connecting the horses to the cart. He slapped their rears and shooed them back in the direction from which they’d just come. “Get out!” he shouted at Dak and everyone else. “Grab your weapons and get out! There’s no more time! By authority of the hegemon, I order you to make your way to the front line and help us stop the enemy’s charge. NOW!”
The soldier held his sword out as if he’d chop off the head of the first person who refused to obey. Riq was already on his feet, reaching out to help Dak stand. They grabbed their own swords — rusty and dented and dull — from a pile in the front of the cart. Then they jumped to the ground to join the others — most of them too old, too young, or too frail to fight off a chicken, much less an army of Persians.
Terror rattled Dak’s heart, made it h
ard to breathe. But somehow Riq was keeping his cool, like he’d done this a thousand times.
“Come on,” he said to Dak. “Come on, we can survive this. Stay by me, and we can do it. Come on.”
As they started running through the melee, going in the direction ordered by the guard, Dak struggled for every breath. He knew Riq was lying, saying whatever it took to make him feel better. And Dak loved him for it.
They ran off to war.
Sera had stood to the side of the cavernous tent for twenty minutes or so, watching the king, his son, Aristotle, and many others excitedly talk about what was going on just a few miles from where they stood. They’d been planning to take the fight wherever they needed to go — and soon — but their enemies had brought it to them instead. The hegemon seemed just fine with that, judging by the expression of something like glee on his face as he pointed at maps and barked orders left and right. The only times he ever paused were to take big gulps of wine from a pewter cup — which his page continually refilled.
A soldier came through the front flap of the tent and didn’t wait for permission to speak before he yelled what he had come to say. “They’ve broken through the front line! It’s all-out war!”
Sera’s heart shriveled like a rotted raisin. Dak. Riq. Dak’s parents. How could they possibly survive? Her only hope was that maybe they hadn’t gotten far before the fighting had begun. Maybe they were stuck in the middle of the huge army safe for the moment.
Dak, she thought. Oh, Dak. Riq. Please be safe. Please! She didn’t know what she’d do if she lost her best friends after all they’d been through.
The hustle and bustle of planning and shouting orders continued inside the tent. Every minute or so, a soldier would leave, sprinting, ready to carry those orders out into the field. At the same rate, others would return with progress reports. The whole thing seemed like chaos, but Sera was sadly familiar with it by now. It seemed to her that war was all too similar across cultures and epochs.
She then noticed something. Something very odd, that everyone else — amid that very chaos — had failed to realize yet. The king had sat down. Just a few minutes earlier, he’d been animated, throwing around his arms, stomping his feet, yelling and screaming. Now he sat as others continued in his place. And he looked weak. Pale. He slumped in the gilded chair, seeming to shrink right before her eyes. Every ounce of blood had drained from his face.
And then she knew.
Poison.
The wine.
Then, to her horror, she saw Alexander with a cup in his hand. The page must’ve just handed it to him — his hands had been empty before. But now he had some of the wine. He was raising it to his lips.
“No!” she screamed. She was running. Jumping over bunched-up carpets. Pushing people out of her way. The cup was almost to Alexander’s lips. She ran harder, the tent suddenly feeling like it was a mile wide. “No!” she screamed again.
Alexander opened his mouth.
Sera took another step.
Alexander tilted the cup, tilted his head.
Sera reached him.
Diving, she lashed her hand out and knocked the cup away from the man’s hand, sending a spray of red wine all over the place. The cup fell to the ground with a thump and a bounce, and wine fell like droplets of rain onto the carpet. Sera landed and rolled, now on her back, looking up at Alexander, who glared down at her with more surprise than fury.
“What in the name of Zeus?” he called out.
But all she could do was smile. Despite it all, despite knowing her friends might be dead, despite the loss of the king, she smiled — a thing of triumph, not glee.
In that moment, without a shred of doubt, Sera knew she had just prevented the Cataclysm. Once and for all. Mission complete.
DAK HAD once daydreamed of moments like this — so often. Lying in bed, sitting in class, staring at a book without comprehending the words. Imagining himself in one of history’s great wars, wielding a sword, bearing down on his enemies with all the wrath of a Greek god on the cusp of defeat.
If he’d learned one thing during his travels, it’s that real war was far from glamorous. This battle was no exception. Most of the time, he just tried to avoid getting trampled by people on his own team. And he’d yet to stab or maim so much as a big toe. Sticking close to Riq, they weaved their way through the chaos of battle, doing their very best not to kill or be killed.
An enemy soldier loomed over them, appearing out of a thick knot of clashing warriors, a spear raised with both hands. His face wore a scowl of hatred, like he’d been oppressed his whole life by two kids from the future. Riq swung his sword upward just as the man’s thrust came down, shattering the wood of the weapon into a dozen pieces. The man screamed bloody murder, but a tide of battling bodies swept him away, and Riq and Dak ran, threading through and dodging the clashes as best they could. Dak had no idea where Riq was trying to go, but he had a sudden and desperate dependency on the older boy.
Dust filled the air, along with screams and grunts, the clang of metal against metal, the peal of horses in pain, and thunderous roars of battle that all melded together into a chorus of war and rage. As much as Dak loved history and reading about wars, he’d never again wish to be in the middle of one.
Soldiers attacked them. Dak and Riq survived moment to moment, deflecting weapons, dodging, running. On they went.
They broke into a rare clearing, and what Dak saw before him made the entire world freeze into a bubble of silence and wonder, every sound a buzz in his ears, barely heard over the hammering of his heart.
Ten feet away, his parents lay on the ground, clasped in each other’s arms.
Sera rode on the back of a horse, her arms holding on to Aristotle’s waist. She gripped him so hard that her muscles ached, but she was terrified of falling off the charging beast. Alexander rode beside them on Bucephalus, the new king standing in the stirrups, his right arm brandishing a sword forward as if it had the power to cut through the sea of battling soldiers before them, which seemed to stretch to every horizon. Other soldiers, also on horses, flanked them on both sides as they surged ahead, moving like an icebreaker ship hacking its way through the Arctic.
Sera just squeezed her grip and rested her head on Aristotle’s back, wanting to close her eyes — as if that would make it all go away. The scenes of battle — the horror of it — made her wince. It was all just so awful. She hoped — desperately — that they could achieve what Alexander had promised once her explanations had been given in the tent: to find Dak and Riq, to find Dak’s parents, and to take them away from the raging war. To take them to safety.
Sera had saved Alexander’s life, though not until she’d seen the hegemon die from the poison. But perhaps that’s what was fated to happen all along. For Alexander to lead the armies of Greece, here and now. For Alexander the Third to become Alexander the . . . Great.
“There!” Aristotle roared, shockingly loud considering the noise around them. “I see them!” He was pointing madly to their right. And then came the words that eased the cinch around her heart for the first time in hours. “They’re still alive!”
Alexander altered course.
Dak hadn’t lived that many years when it really got down to it. But in his decade or so of life — especially since being recruited to the Hystorians — he’d experienced a lot of different emotions. Happy and sad. Victorious and disappointed. Despair. Anger. Love. Hate. Lots of stuff.
But never, not once, had he ever felt the thing that swelled within him at the sight of his parents, alive, huddling in each other’s arms as armies fought around them. It was a thing that he’d never be able to explain and would probably never feel again. Tears stung his eyes and a wonderful pain filled his chest. There they were.
His parents.
“Mom!” he yelled. “Dad!” He was already sprinting toward them, almost oblivious to the danger that swarmed in from all directions. From what he could see, it looked as if his mom had tripped and fallen ov
er a wounded soldier, and then his dad had joined her, practically on top of her, like a shield.
Dak slid to the ground on his knees, coming to a stop just a few inches short of his parents. Finally, they both turned their heads to see their son. Even as they did so, two men clashed swords right above them, the crack of metal against metal vibrating through the air. Luckily, the soldiers, swords locked, moved to the side. The sounds of war everywhere else raged on.
“Dak,” his dad said. The poor man’s face was pale with worry, his skin tight, fear burning in his eyes. The word came out almost as a whisper, more disbelief than anything else.
“You’re safe now,” Dak replied, having no clue what else to say.
His mom saw him, but her whole face was pinched up and tears streamed from her eyes. Finally, Dak just lunged forward, and they all hugged, gripping one another and crying and trying to say words but none that came out intelligible. Death and mayhem surrounded them, but for that moment, they were all alive, and they were together. After months of chasing through time after time.
They were together.
It took a universe of effort for Riq to stand still and allow Dak to have his moment with his parents. He couldn’t think of a much worse place to have a family reunion, but the Smyths hadn’t had much choice in the matter. Finally, when the hug and joy had gone on for a good twenty seconds, Riq had to speak up.
“Dak!” he called out. “None of this will do much good if we get ourselves killed. We need to protect ourselves!” He did a quick turn, his weapon held out, ready to fight off anyone close. They’d been lucky enough to find themselves in a random clearing of the fight, but that wouldn’t last much longer.
Dak scrambled to his feet, slyly wiping a tear on his shoulder. He helped his parents stand up, then they all moved closer to Riq, forming a circle with their backs to one another. A man with a veil over his face, spear held high, charged at them, screaming words too laced with bloodlust to comprehend. Fear thumped inside Riq, but he kept it at bay, waiting, forcing himself to remain still until the very last second.
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