The rings of bruised time tightened and Greyblade saw the building towards which they were heading in its centre. Even without the effect on the surrounding landscape it would have been hard to miss, because it was classical Time Destroyer architecture. Gant and his crew had made themselves at home over the past ninety years.
Çrom saw the massive, oil-rainbow-walled structure and grimaced.
“Guess that settles it,” he said. “There are definitely Time Destroyers here.”
“Can’t you see the … fine,” Greyblade said. “Yes, there are Time Destroyers here.”
He wasn’t particularly surprised to find the crowds thinning and then ceasing altogether as the circles tightened and they stepped into what would be the shadow of the grotesque structure if the only light sources hadn’t been the street lamps some distance behind them. Gant’s outpost stood in a little island of gloom, a muscular rainbow exiled for unspeakable crimes against the natural order. There were no visible openings and the wall towered a dozen metres above their heads, but Greyblade knew enough about Time Destroyer architecture to know that the segment immediately intersecting the street would be permeable – on invitation.
He stepped up, hand on sword hilt, and rapped his knuckles against the opalescent surface.
“Welcome, travellers,” a booming voice spoke from directly in front of them. Greyblade had been expecting it, but Çrom jumped and swore under his breath. “Please, enter. Peaceful assembly begins in one minute.”
“That means try not to upset them for the next fifty-five seconds,” Greyblade told his companion. “They’ll be nice after that, and they’ll give us another minute before assembly ends.”
“Will that be enough time to get to a safe distance?” Çrom asked. “I assume you have a bomb or something you’re going to plant.”
Greyblade shook his head and stepped through the wall.
He was more familiar with the theory of Time Destroyer technology than its practice, but membrane seals were by no means unique to the Elder Race. This one was thick and clammy and made him distinctly grateful he was wearing armour. He pushed through into a passageway that was just as bright and greasy-looking as the building’s exterior, and resisted the urge to wipe himself. A few seconds later, Çrom lurched through beside him with a grimace.
“Okay?” Greyblade asked quietly.
“I think some of it went in my mouth.”
“Parts don’t come off it when the membrane is open,” Greyblade said absently, and looked at the floor. A queasy pulse, half-light and half-movement, ran along the surface in the direction they were supposed to go. He followed. “Thirty seconds.”
“This assembly thing is pretty important, huh?” Çrom remarked.
“Never really been forced to deal with Time Destroyers?”
“If I have, I’ve suppressed the memory.”
“That’s probably a good approach,” they stopped at another membrane where the guiding pulse turned and ran into the wall. “This is probably it,” Greyblade said. “Fifteen seconds.”
“We should probably wait until the very last second,” Çrom suggested. “I’m going to hold my nose this time and it might offend them.”
“I thought you didn’t like dying.”
“I don’t. But I’d rather be killed by a mad Time Destroyer scientist than be smothered by his office door.”
“Really?”
“Now I come to say it out loud, no.”
Greyblade pushed through the door, and into Megalorn Gant’s assembly chamber.
His first reaction was surprise and suspicion, although since suspicion had been there already he supposed it was just surprise. Gant was sitting in an ornate armchair on one side of the room, and opposite him were two smaller couches of a human-standard design. Even their colouration was muted.
“Peaceful assembly begins,” Gant’s voice was a hollow, oddly jovial boom.
“You were expecting us,” Greyblade said immediately, crossing to the slightly larger and harder-cushioned of the chairs. It wasn’t Burning Knight military issue, but it was damned close. He lowered himself into it. He’d known the Time Destroyer had been expecting them, he reminded himself. He’d sent them a greeting at the spaceport despite their surreptitious entrance.
“Indeed,” Gant replied, “but we should wait for – ah,” Çrom stepped through, his face scrunched up but his fingers blessedly not pinching his nose, and looked around. “Welcome, Çrom Skelliglyph.”
Çrom sidled over to his own chair, eyeing it and their host in turn.
“He was expecting us,” he hissed.
“That’s what I said,” Greyblade remarked.
“Like, specifically us,” Çrom pointed at the chairs. “That’s really bad.”
“Sit down, Çrom,” Greyblade advised, keeping most of his attention focussed on the Time Destroyer.
Megalorn Gant seemed to be a basically standard example of his kind. All Time Destroyers were essentially the same anyway – humanoid, scaled up to slightly taller than Molran height, enormously muscular and flamboyantly dressed – the only differences between them being their helmets. Different groups, families, individuals wore helmets fashioned to look like different sorts of skulls, formed of different sorts of metals and other substances. Gant’s appeared at first glance to be a Molran’s skull, heavy and flat-topped and fanged, with sweeping ear-spines on either side, in a bronze-coloured metal jarringly reminiscent of the living guns and associated technology found on Earth. Greyblade’s anatomical database, however, identified several minor but essential differences that suggested it was one of the common Molranoid subspecies – probably a Godran, Atrogoyna AgaXidh.
He didn’t know if that was important, but he filed it away.
The enormous skull-helmeted Time Destroyer was dressed in a set of arm and chest straps decorated with runes and military insignia, a pair of armour-plated trousers, a pair of huge reinforced boots and matching elbow-length gloves in deep crimson. A heavy drape in the same colour that Greyblade had originally taken for a decoration on the chair revealed itself to be a cape connected to the straps across Gant’s shoulders.
The entire ensemble was highly traditional, painfully tacky, and Greyblade just hoped Çrom wouldn’t say anything. Anything more than he’d already said, at least.
“Guess every day can be Dress Up Like A Sexy Hood Ornament Day when you can manipulate time,” Çrom raised his voice to address their host, and dropped into his couch with a cheerful bounce. “Am I right?”
“A human being,” Gant said, his tone unchanged. “And a Burning Knight of the Pinian Brotherhood. Both a very long way from home. As, I’ll grant you, am I. I would offer you refreshments, but I fear we are ill-equipped.”
“Understandable,” Greyblade said cautiously.
“Not if they were expecting us,” Çrom retorted. “Where’s my bowl of pub nuggets?”
Gant laughed. “We knew you were coming,” he said, “except, of course, not in the prescient manner. We knew you were coming because this is the point at which you came. After this, you will leave. Those are the waters in which you swim.”
“You fucked around with the Belt, didn’t you?” Çrom accused. “Of course you did.”
“Yes,” Gant replied levelly. “We did.”
“The Belt?” Greyblade asked.
“You will see,” Gant told him. “Soon enough,” he settled back in his couch. “Yes,” he went on, “we established a research post here on Tomberland Mighty, from which we launched several expeditions into the region towards which you are headed. As a result, we have been … encouraged to remain here. Indefinitely.”
“Oh boy,” Çrom was still bouncing in his chair, but it was delight at this point. “Oh man, they actually – I mean – so you guys – you’re just chilling here, forever, zero interaction?” he stopped. “What about this?” he waved his hand at the three of them.
“This is allowed,” Gant said, sounding amused. “You are inbound, and it was inevitable
that you would see us, and any attempt to engage us non-peacefully–”
“Of course,” Çrom grated. “If we’d tried to destroy you, it would have interfered with your…” he waved a hand vaguely. “Whatever you’ve got going on with them. Wouldn’t want that.”
“Do you happen to know if I manage to continue taking all this on faith, and don’t toss Çrom into the Liminal for being an enigmatic son of a whore?” Greyblade asked.
Gant laughed again. “You are headed into a dangerous place, Sir Greyblade of the Ladyhawk,” he said. “It is a place that has already ended us. I can’t say what will happen to you, but this will be the limit of our interaction.”
“It’s like the Hellpath,” Greyblade said, “isn’t it? It was afraid to even kill us.”
Çrom nodded. “Only this time, we’re the Hellpath and Gant and his team are the poor bastards in harm’s way,” he said. “The best thing we can do is just close our eyes and get this interaction over with as fast as we can.”
“And the most efficient way to do that was to invite us here under a flag of truce and convince us of your situation,” Greyblade concluded. “Peaceful assembly was your Dûl code.”
“If you like,” Gant shrugged his broad shoulders.
“So you’re all just going to stay here?” Çrom asked. “What, forever?”
“Perhaps,” Gant replied. “Do not mourn. I have been to places you would not believe. Seen things you would never accept. I have danced with the Relth, and only at the end of things did I realise they were not my enemy.”
“I wasn’t mourning,” Çrom said.
“And yes,” Gant continued, “I have travelled in time. And now, in a sense, I am doing it again. This has been a good life.”
“Uh, that’s good,” Çrom said, “but I really wasn’t mourning.”
“I did not imagine you would,” Gant said in amusement, and waved a huge gloved hand. “This – our very existence here – is what you might call a self-correcting problem. Would you still like to try … hastening our demise?”
Çrom paled. “No, that’s fine.”
Gant stood. It was like watching a monolith being pulled upright by an army of slaves. “Good luck, Greyblade of the Ladyhawk.”
“Gant,” Greyblade said, mystified. He rose to his feet as well, and Çrom stood too. “I find myself with little recourse but to return the sentiment,” he paused. Time Destroyers did not shake hands, although some were known to exchange salutes. Greyblade settled for putting his hand on his sword hilt and inclining his head. “If there is anyone I can carry word to back in the Corporation–”
“No!” Çrom and Gant both snapped, identical edges of panic in their voices.
“Mm hm,” Greyblade said, “that’s what I thought,” he turned to favour Çrom with a stern visoring, and Çrom looked sheepish.
Gant gestured at the door membrane.
“Peaceful assembly ends in one minute,” he told them.
ÇROM GETS TO THE POINT
It was a twenty-one week hike to Gateway. At over five months it was their longest stretch so far, almost as long as their previous legs from The Falling Damned and Blackleaf put together, a full month longer than the stretch from Dûl to The Falling Damned, and Çrom insisted they make no intermediate stops.
In fact, they couldn’t really stop anywhere – most of the leg took place on the Highroads, with only the briefest and most occasional dives through the grey from Highroads Portal to Highroads Portal through some Dimension or other. Because they seemed to be taking the Highroads and avoiding extended complex Portal-routes, Greyblade calculated that this leg was technically shorter than most of their other stretches … but that was a meaningless and impossible thing to really measure once interdimensional and extradimensional transit came into it. They weren’t plunging through Portal after Portal into the wilderness, anyway – now they were cruising at breakneck but somehow cautious speed along the blue strip of the Highroads, inching closer to their goal.
Five months. Now, more than at any stage on their outward journey, Greyblade found himself counting the days that would be passing back in the Four Realms. The disasters that could be unfolding, the point of no return that could be approaching, could be passing at any time. The Drake, locked in a human prison. At best, imprisoned. At worst, simply disposed of like the inconvenience she was.
Of course, if the Drake was going to be destroyed, it didn’t matter if Greyblade was away for weeks or decades. In fact it didn’t even matter if he was there. There was nothing he could do. It would already be done, and the only people who could stop it were Gabriel and the TrollCage team. And it was entirely possible that not even the Ogres would be able to protect the Dragon. An army of them – and an army of Dragons, for that matter – hadn’t been able to prevail during the war.
Within the first day of their flight from Tomberland Mighty, Greyblade had nevertheless knocked on the door of Çrom’s stateroom.
“Morning,” Çrom, dressed in his usual lazing-around-the-ship loose-fitting garments and holding a cup of coffee, stepped aside and let Greyblade enter. “I guess it’s time to talk shortcuts.”
“If you think it’s safe,” Greyblade said. He turned to glance at the human. “I’m not being sarcastic, by the way. If the last couple of stopovers have shown me nothing else, it’s that this shortest possible route to the Godfangs is just as insanely dangerous as you’ve been saying all along. But if you can explain–”
“I can,” Çrom said, “I think,” he hesitated, then crossed the room to his little bar-kitchen setup. “Coffee? Something else? Mozo juice?”
“Sure.”
Greyblade sat down, Çrom poured him a tall frosted glass of the pale purple beverage, and fixed himself a fresh batch of coffee while he was at it.
“The harmony fluctuation we noted outside Blackleaf has come back,” he said, “but it’s milder than it was. It sort of emerged from the background engine song as we settled into long-haul Highroads flight. Still absolutely no idea what’s causing it, but any mechanical flaw that gets better rather than worse as time goes by is good news,” he considered this. “Or really, really bad news,” he added. “But I guess there’s not much we can do about it.”
“Finding any good coffee beans in that bush you’re beating around?” Greyblade asked.
Çrom chuckled in concession, finished fixing their drinks, and sat down opposite. Still he didn’t immediately get to the point.
“I’m not immortal, Greyblade,” he said after looking into his coffee cup for a time. “I’m … I’m a sequential mortal. I can die, but not permanently.”
“I’ve witnessed that,” Greyblade allowed.
“You know how this normally goes?” Çrom asked. “First they don’t believe I’m Çrom Skelliglyph. Then they see it, and then they ask a ton of questions.”
“That’s pretty much how it went with me.”
“Oh, you think you asked a ton of questions,” Çrom said moodily. “You had several questions. That’s it. I appreciate you not asking all the questions you could have asked.”
“I did tattoo you.”
Çrom chuckled. “That was somewhat new,” he admitted.
“But not entirely.”
“No.”
Greyblade shrugged. “I figured, if you’d been around remotely as long as Gabriel, you would have heard and answered every question multiple times,” he said.
“I used to have a data card,” Çrom told him. “It had a summary of all the main questions and my best explanations. I’d just hand it over whenever I had to deal with a new interrogator,” he chuckled. “Then the card technology went out of date seventeen times and after the fifteenth time I didn’t bother to upgrade the data.”
“If there was anything you felt I needed to know, I guess you would have told me,” Greyblade said. “I’m essentially programmed to gather relevant and strategy-affecting information, and not factor unknowns into my tactics once they’ve been identified as non-relevant. In t
his case, I’ve had to take an uncomfortable amount of information on faith when it was assigned non-relevant without my full process, but … that’s the nature of the mission sometimes.”
“You haven’t wondered what happens, for example, if I have a limb amputated? What happens to all my skin flakes and hair and nail clippings and stuff that I shed over the years?”
“I’ve done my best not to.”
“My favourite one is ‘what if there’s a wild animal that takes your leg and uses it to feed its starving baby, which then returns to full health and recovers, and it grows to adulthood while you get your stump sewn up and carry on, and you get around with one leg for a few years, then die? What happens to the leg, which is already digested and pooped out and has become part of the animal’s body? How does Limbo justify the adult predator being alive if the nutrition that let it survive infancy ceases to exist?’,” he shook his head. “And you know what I generally say?”
“‘You’d have to ask Limbo’?” Greyblade guessed.
“Bingo,” Çrom said. “While you’re at it, ask Him why He hasn’t just undone the curse and made me mortal again. It probably would have been more convenient for Him.”
“Right,” Greyblade said, a little lost as to what this had to do with their shortcut. “The Ghååla don’t interfere with one another’s works. It could lead to a struggle between Infinites that would risk cancelling Them out – and probably the urverse with it.”
“Right,” Çrom echoed Greyblade’s response, “that’s pretty much it. But then. But then, you come out here. And ‘you’d have to ask Limbo’ becomes a bad joke. Because Limbo doesn’t regulate anything out here. For all I know, you could’ve been lopping off my arms and legs and storing them in the cargo sling ever since we left Serdios, killing me every couple of weeks and basically living off Skelliglyph steaks.”
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