by Amanda Churi
Not another word climbed out of me for what felt like forever. Ok… That was an introduction. Now what? Which of the many “whys” would I ask first? His eyes were open, accepting of me—the opposite of what I expected from that first belly-flop into one hell of an electrical web.
The most generalized of all questions came out: “Why?”
Why? he repeated. Why what? I did not a thing. The me you look at now is the me you made.
“N-no!” I bleated pathetically. “You started it! You shocked me that first time through the portal! You came through every time, messing with me! Saying all sorts of ominous stuff that—!”
I said nothing that wasn’t true.
“You urged me to solidify you! Don’t think I can’t remember! Your visions practically gave me PTSD!”
Ah… I am coming to understand. My apologies. His pendulum grew the black arms of a clock and spun in a whirl until it reached and projected its desired scene: the never forgotten sequence of my father and his original wife, Madelyn, fighting their way through Raddison as merging skies raged, birthing a multiverse storm. I could hear their screams for my name, still looking for a me that would never come back into that world. When you stepped through me, it did not sit well… You were changing my very body: humans get grumpy when they’re hungry; I get grumpy when I’m forced to change. Sorry if the me you saw was a bit… Undesirable. You were a bit of a bug passing through my system.
…What? So, time wasn’t just an abstract concept but… Him? “So, whenever I went through time—”
Me, he corrected. You went through me.
“…Right, you… You mean I basically entered your body and traveled to another point inside of you? Another point on the timeline? Like a fast-track through the intestine?”
Humanize the concept however you need to.
Well, that was just a disturbing image, but I guess it made sense. “So… You were never trying to hurt me? Never out to get me?”
He smiled. No, never. See, the term “timeline” is a bit misleading—a time “network” would be a better way to describe the flow.
He put his hands to his chest. The pendulum swung faster; the edges of his body churned as a crashing sea. Time: I am not a straight path, but a system, a world upon which Earth travels. I have many different roads that can be taken, but in the end, they all culminate to one ultimate fate. However, when something drastic enough happens, when a sudden rogue path is taken, one that leads off my very body, I have to rebuild my system—rebuild myself. Whatever interference you encountered was me reconstructing myself. I have but faint memories of our encounters… It was a different me that you saw, one that no longer exists.
He tapped his chain, initiating a slideshow of images—ones that I had never seen but knew of. The early European countries, the founding of new lands, governments, rebellions, World Wars I, II, and III, the falling of icebergs, the destruction of oil rigs—
The rise of the Nobles.
It is all but an unreachable layer now, he said. Only those who exist outside my realm of influence can remember all my forms—all the paths involving them that I have ever taken. It is why, for example, Reeve went through with destroying Hell; you betrayed her, but she also recalled that had she not merged with Tah, she would have lived a life of exile. Angels, demons, they remember all of me—you too, because of that spell. But to everyone else, these paths never were.
The stacked pile of “whys” toppled as he plucked the main block out from the base. There was only one question I could think of. “Why am I here?”
The push and pull of the pendulum slowed; the images dispersed with it, pushed away into the void as a puff of granulated pixels. They floated right past me, twinkling and descending through the air like mica flakes before melting away into the blackness.
Another image bloomed. A burning forest and my naked corpse among it—bloodied, mutilated, a blob of gushing wounds and snapped limbs. A shadowed figure with his gritty, rusted scythe loomed over my shivering body; a girl of blue and made of sky watched as well. You are here because when the Sword of Maeve struck, your human soul was spliced from your Essence. You are here because my children have told me that this is where your time stops.
I would have questioned it, checked my hearing if those crippling words hadn’t sprung from every chasm of the world. What…? No, whatever had put me in that condition didn’t matter, but I couldn’t be done yet! I knew the risks when I let my demons take over, but I wasn’t ready! I didn’t want it yet! I was greedy when I was young; I subconsciously wanted death every day of every hour for years, but now, even when I had so little, I had never wanted so little so much.
My protests came clawing up my unseen spine and ribs, ascending the ladder of my body with wicked howls of protest until they exploded. “No! You can’t do that! I’m not leaving! I’m not done until I’ve repaid my debt! Fixed what I’ve destroyed!”
You cannot fight what we have all agreed is destiny.
“Destiny?! Look at yourselves! You literally make the world what you want it! You control everything!”
Wrong. I am a mere road.
“But if you have the power to take me away, then you can make me stay! Even if it’s just for a bit longer! I can’t go until—”
You have nothing left to battle for.
“What do you mean I don’t?! I—!”
You don’t.
His blunt reply and stretched down face made me pause. “Huh?”
You have nothing.
My fraying conception of his words put my focus back on his ticking heart that saw through my decimated body. I tuned in tighter, concentrated my focus until my spirit released a worried flare. Coruscus, my inseparable Coruscus, where was it? Where was Ryze’s necklace? Aponi’s tattoo? Laelia’s bracelet?
…Where was Mabel…?
She had to be there. Fire that strong was something only she could conjure, but the window to the universe through which I peered didn’t show nearly enough. “Let me see!” I ordered.
There is nothing to see, he said flatly.
“Liar! I know there is!”
There is nothing you have to see.
The image of the prophecy combusted before me; the cogs were whirling in blurred rings and billowing smoke; the streamers of crossing fire were faltering; the ice was melting; the sword was turning to ash.
Everything was falling apart.
“LET ME GO!”
The wail slashed through me and out my soul; it took me away and slingshot me through Time’s heart, the stars snapping into lines, every planet, every speck of light falling away into streaks that outlined my race. The crushing burden of time travel came back over me in flattening, beating waves, but I wouldn’t allow myself to let go. Not yet…! Soon, but not yet…! Not without knowing what happened…!
And not without saying goodbye!
A brigade of smoke speared my throat and lungs; the runways of galaxies and stars burst into a hellfire, a melting forest. My air sacs stapled themselves together, heaving with every piping breath my busted body took. I recognized my mutilated hands—the ones smashed so badly that the finger bones were missing and only flaps of flattened, bloodied skin existed. My palms just barely held up my arms, ones sheared of skin and muscle, barber poles of twirling blood and bone.
Steam and sweltering heat attacked me all over. I was sickened not from just looking at my body but from the effects of the environment rolling over me like felled logs. This clearly wasn’t the Encryption base… Maybe not even the future; after all, I couldn’t recall the last time I had seen a blade of grass, let alone a forest.
I lifted my head, yowling with strain. The region around my trachea and beneath my chin felt extra wet and heavy; even my sight was weighed, streams of gore running into my eyes and down my sizzling cheeks. I didn’t attempt to wipe it away; I was sure I would topple over for good and never regain balance, so I just looked, stared at the murky lake overrun by massive palls of smoke and debris—and the
goliath beyond.
The monster whose hunched spine nearly scraped the top of the rock dome hundreds of feet up stood on bones of condensed soot, spouting black gases and Underworld magic. Only a skeleton—no skin, muscles, or organs, but the gales running through their gigantic figure surged like dusty blood: at the center of the chest, an orb of gold spun, a golden heart, shrieking under the pressure. Fractures were shooting across the surface and reaching farther into the core; entire sheets of power fell off as layers, the heart getting smaller and smaller as shining leaves of gold split off and launched into the titan’s gusts, absorbed by the blackness of its soul. A broken trident built from festering nightmares burned a night flame in their grip, nearly as tall as the body itself. In their other deformed clutch was a flaming tree, but only for an instant before the creature chucked it across the arena and it exploded into a plume of bloody glitter.
What… Was that thing?
A rocket of white burst from the cascading timbers and flew through the air, trapesed with jagged bands of lightning as they aimed for the monster’s face—a flea leaping for a dog.
The skeleton stepped forward and rocked the earth, nearly sending my insides toppling out. They swung, hefty and mighty with their pitchfork to swat the lightning bug from the sky, but their opponent easily avoided the strike. It passed between the spires, landing on the titan’s face and letting its electricity loose.
A grievous roar rattled the dome. The skeleton teetered, toppling aflame trees and pushing swarms of embers into the air. The striker stayed perched on the rotting face, a juicing fist in each hollow eye until the power suddenly turned. The monster began absorbing the electricity that zapped it, sucking it from the aggressor’s body. They tried to pull away, but the shadows seeping from the skeleton’s eyes held on tight, squeezing every drop of power that they could out of the attacker until they ripped their fists free with a massive detonation of light, backflipping through the air and landing on the wall.
The monster laughed, rattling the electricity around in its empty rib cage. Much like the cracking orb that empowered the beast, the received voltage turned to mist and joined the malevolent storm, strengthening the monster.
Earth’s massive quakes brought my head back down as the challenger shot once more toward the godly skeleton. The thin yet heavy air was choking me; the jumping ground and smothering sky shoved my existence closer to the edge that I had already been teetering around.
I really was that close… That ready to slip away…!
“Mabel…!” My cry was hoarse and strained; I wasn’t even sure if I had called out or if the plea only echoed in my mind. I tried to curl my fingers and hold onto life tighter, but my knuckles only rotated, unlinked and tilling the soil.
How was I supposed to find her like this?! The army of flames was rushing closer; they were burning more air and taking harsher swings at my brittle link. I didn’t know sweat apart from blood; I couldn’t tell what parts of me had been scorched and others skinned. My heart thundered, stronger and louder; more blood fell as it tried to revive my deoxygenated body, inadvertently doing more harm in the process.
I looked back at the cloudy, steaming lake as a bolt of lightning flashed my peripheral vision white. The fires had yet to reach the shore, though the red-washed greenery had already shriveled with the scorch. There was a rock in the center and a cobble path leading to it. If I could just get there, I could live a little longer and heighten my chances of finding—
Wait. Someone was already there.
I leaned on my knuckles, squinting for a closer look. Even being only a dozen or so feet away, the thick vapors lifting from the evaporating lake made capturing a clear picture difficult. I finally identified the skin as white… The hair was brown and long, dangling off the platform and into the water.
Mabel!
Trying to go from my knees to my feet killed me, and I yelped pathetically. I had some toes, but I felt that same, chilled exposure with popping nerves that my knuckles endured. Standing would have dropped me; it was impossible, but there… I just had to get there! “MABEL!”
I hobbled on knuckles and knees, hunched, moving like an injured gorilla to the lake bed. The simmering stone that burned like frying pans added little pain to my already waning presence. My knuckles and palms slipped and slashed against the rocks; I took mini spills into the gaps between the stepping stones, but I scrambled back up on shivering appendages and kept moving, kept sauntering, scribbling on pencil-thin arms to the platform she lay on.
“Mabel!” I hollered, arriving at the rock and hurling myself up the small step with my raw elbows. I flopped onto my oozing chest beside her, fighting to lift myself up. Her eyes were closed; I couldn’t see her breathing, and the blood…
I nearly puked. I think my bladder let loose, but it was hard to tell. Skeleton and warrior of light clashed in the background sky—the gnat went flying again and tumbling into the wall, shattering the shimmering tiles.
“Come on…!” I moaned. I sloppily punched her shoulder with my nubs, trying to make her get up. Where did all the blood come from anyway?! I saw a good bit of nicks to the skin—her hands and feet had blistering holes drilled through them, and there was one to the abdomen that was by far the bloodiest…
But she had survived worse! She always survived! “Mabel!” I put a hand on each shoulder and shook her, whimpered like a lost animal, hoping she could hear me. “Wake up! Come on! Wake up already!”
Her neck moved. I gasped in relief, grabbing her head. “Mabel! Thank goodness…! I have to tell—”
The head and neck fell apart from one another.
I stared at my torn hands wrapped in her locks. A chasm of an inch, maybe, that was all they moved apart, but her head… Her body…
They clearly weren’t connected.
“MABEL!” I knew I screamed that time; the cry tore open my chest and eyes that exploded with blood instead of tears. I pawed at her head frantically, trying to put it back and undo the damage. “No! No! Come on, this is a joke! Some sick joke, right?!” I whisked my head around, throwing my sight through the burning forest. “Come out! This isn’t funny! This…!”
A sob stabbed my throat to shut me up. No. She wouldn’t do something so cruel. She wasn’t hiding… She was…
You have nothing.
“M-Mabel…” Her name sputtered off my tongue, a faltering engine.
Time knew she was gone… Of course, he did. Death and Fate had already claimed her. I was sure the infamous brother-sister duo was standing on that rock with me, too; I just didn’t want to look back and give them permission to finish it.
I had made it all this way, me, and she hadn’t… No one else had.
In the end, I really was alone. Everything I had tried to do… The future that I had tried to save, the people that I loved… None of it was ever meant for me. Not a prophecy, not a wife, not a friend… Not even a life.
I killed everything I touched. Future included.
I couldn’t move. Why I kneeled there with her sleeping head next to my knee, letting myself keep bleeding and suffocating, I didn’t know… I didn’t feel like anything I did had a reason, so why did I still fight to stay…?
A shooting star peaked in the sky, screaming with all their might with a spinning whip flying behind them as they closed in on the skeleton. The monster ripped up a burning tree and launched it; the enemy lashed and knocked the tree out of the way, redirecting it to the fiery earth. The skeleton uprooted tree after tree in a blur, chucking them, but each time, the whizzing gnat knocked it aside or broke it in half with their strike. They finally landed on the arm of the skeleton and ran on with the power of light behind them, hacking apart the road as they went. Pure flames cut through like butter; rotten bones fell as steps behind them, turning to dust and dispersing like insects. The monster swung with his pitchfork; it nearly struck itself with each thrust, but the assassin leaped over every hurdle, tumbling in the air, flipping over the crashing waves of black fire and s
mog while continuing to dismantle the skeleton. The attacker reached the neck, bellowing with rage, and with a wind up of the arm, they lashed their whip and cut clean through the neck of the titan.
I watched the skull crumble into the air as the killer quickly leaped away and vanished on the burning horizon. The headless corpse creaked with rust; it swayed and then fell headlong toward me, smashing the burning trees and tossing up carpets of soil. The tip of the spine crashed into the shore and threw a downpour into the air, draining the lake by several inches. Its smoldering body turned the water around it to mist; heavy drops of rain pummeled down, pulling the circulating smoke with it and extinguishing much of the raging fire with a powerful hiss. The spine as thick as an ancient tree just rested; the golden life force had been reduced to the size of a kernel, darkening as the skeleton’s black, misty blood settled amongst the ground.
As the downpour turned into a drizzle, the slayer of the beast came parting the night. The mastery weapon that had ended it all was crackling in his clutch as he heaved, coming closer—come to think of it, it looked like a spine.
I had never seen such a man—no, a monster, like him, but the name still found itself somewhere deep within me, coming off my lips and sending my insides reeling. “Gannon…”
My broken voice that came from my shattered heart was far too weak to make it beyond my ears let alone to him, but the name gave me such vigor and hate that a burst of air shot from me, warning my looming debt collectors to wait. Eyes flew knowingly from Mabel’s body to Gannon’s weapon, and everything crashed together, a complete picture.
He did it. He killed her.
“My, my, what do we have here?!” he bellowed with a nasty cackle, climbing onto the fallen skeleton’s pelvis. He unfurled Mabel’s spine and smacked it down beside him as a threat. The depths of his eyes sparked to illuminate his blood—pools that were flowing in swift, life-threatening currents, but not enough to take him down.
Ha… He asked that like I was going to fight. If I so much as stood, I would lapse into death… What a pompous, narcissistic moron…