The Time Master

by Dmitry Bilik

We went into the corridor and descended the staircase. There was some activity by the front door. A few Guards were having a heated conversation with Artan, the Master with the luminous blade. Rather, they were trying to get in but he wasn’t admitting them. The guy with the twice-broken nose was sitting next to the Master on a stool by the front door. He wasn’t convulsing from the pain anymore — evidently he’d already been healed — but the way he looked at me made it clear that we weren’t going to be friends.

  “Yulo?” Artan asked.

  The Abbas made a few complex gestures, pointing first at me and then outside.

  Dammit! The guy was mute!

  “Everything’s fine,” the Master explained to the Guards. “Just a little misunderstanding. This is our guest and friend. He’s just a little quirky. He likes to attract attention, so he came in through the roof.”

  Well not quite. Attention was the last thing I wanted. That’s why I wasn’t about to dispute him. It would be better to slink out and get myself away from here. I nodded to the Seers, elbowed my way past the Guards and exited onto the central square, barely keeping myself from breaking into a run.

  I looked up. Jan was nowhere in sight. OK, I’d wait for them here. On second thoughts, I’d wait in the Syndicate and combine business and pleasure.

  There was hardly anyone inside: mostly humans, with just one Archalus sitting by the door. There was also that Artist_Chick girl sitting back on a chair in the corner and scribbling something in a large, tabloid-sized sketchbook.

  I went into the tiny office next door, fished out two slips of paper with the missions and held them out to the orange-skinned creature. But before he meted out the 60 grams of dust I was entitled to, I read the notification that popped up.

  You’ve completed three missions. You’ve earned the designation Syndicate Messenger. You now have access to missions in neighboring worlds.

  A new marking showing the location of the Syndicate building in the closest city has been added. In order to view it, you need the Cartography ability.

  “Hello! You gonna take your dust or what?” the clerk demanded.

  I scooped up my 60 grams without even rejoicing at the sudden windfall. I had now amassed more than 100 grams, which meant I could probably afford something interesting, including spells and abilities. But right now I had to focus on any missions to the neighboring worlds. I was more interested in them than in anything else.

  I shuffled back into the main room and went over to the bulletin board. New messages had appeared alongside the old ones: they were the same size but written on orange paper.

  Beholder

  Mission from the ruler of the city of Brem

  Charged with: killing 20 commoners and Players

  Sentence: death

  Proof of completion: an eye

  Location: northwest of Brem, Singing Cave

  Reward: 900 grams

  Five-Headed Hydra

  Mission from Commander Sabnak of the fifth legion of Firoll

  Proof of completion: one of the heads

  Location: two leagues south of Ubetrain

  Reward: 4 kilos

  Holy War

  Mission from Commander Archail of the second legion of Elysium

  Task: place yourself under the orders of Archail to raid Ubetrain

  Location: camp near Ubetrain

  Time remaining: 9 hours

  Reward: 500 grams (issued in the event of a successful raid)

  If I understood the first mission correctly, you’d have to go out and kill a beholder. But the second listed no charge at all. What exactly had that hydra done wrong? There was also something nebulous about the last one — you were supposed to place yourself under the orders of some Archail guy to raid a city or stronghold.

  I don’t think so! I was no one’s cannon fodder. Based on the stories I’d heard, Firoll was what we on Earth called hell, and Elysium was heaven. Very well, let them wage war with each other. I wasn’t about to get in the middle.

  A posting down below caught my eye.

  Letter to Fibbian

  Mission from the researcher Savial

  Required: Deliver a letter to Fibbian

  Location: 800 paces along the northern Valley of Silence trail from the Gates

  Time remaining: 1 hour 8 minutes

  Reward: 60 grams. Return travel to Purgator covered

  Level restrictions: under level 10

  Perfect. A delivery job from A to B, easy peasy. Ideal for visiting a world for the first time. I’d take that one.

  To complete the Letter to Fibbian mission, you need further instructions. Please address yourself to Savial.

  Where the hell was I supposed to find this Savial? I looked around and spotted the Archalus still sitting by the door. He was now beckoning to me.

  “Hi,” he said, sticking out his hand when I got close to him.

  “Savial?”

  “Yes, that’s what they call me. I saw you tear that paper off. Look, I need to deliver a letter to my friend Fibbian. I can’t do it myself. I’m waiting for a guy I need to close a deal with. And the letter needs to be delivered as fast as possible. Think you can do it?”

  There was something a bit off about him. He was tall and massive with beautiful folded wings. But he was too fidgety. He didn’t stop waving his arms as he babbled on in double time.

  In the end, he produced a little bag of dust, so heavy that I started to drool involuntarily. He was obviously a merchant.

  “I’m going now,” I said. “I just wanted to wait for my friends.”

  “If we don’t deliver the letter to Fibbian now, we’ll lose a lot of money. He’s busy at the excavations. So, what do you say?”

  He thrust a hand into the bag and took out a handful of dust.

  “Thirty-four grams for the trip. Fibbian will pay the return fare. Do we have a deal? You won’t have to do anything. Just take the mountain trail, and it’ll take you to my friend. OK, I’ll pay you eighty instead of sixty. But it has to be done ASAP.”

  I won’t say I didn’t have my doubts. I had no idea what Purgator was like. On the other hand, if there were excavations going on, that must mean there was lots of life there, including Guards who could protect me if needs be.

  Also, the money issue was no small thing. Eighty grams was a lot. On top of my hundred and ninety — that was a lot more than two thousand bucks. Damn...

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “Will I get it done under an hour?”

  “Of course. If I see your friends, I’ll tell them to wait for you. What do they look like?”

  I only described Jan. It was unlikely that Litius would come into the community, anyway. I took my 34 grams’ fare money and listened to his orders again.

  “Have you ever traveled between worlds? No?” Savial’s eyes lit up. “Then you need to remember this. The place is called the Valley of Silence. Put the dust in the bowl in front of the Gatekeeper and say the name of the place where you want to go. You need to say it loudly and clearly. Then you’ll travel there. Go directly to Fibbian. Give him the letter, wait for his reply, take the dust for the return trip and go back to the Gates. Do the same thing as you did before, but this time say Sorrow.”

  “Sorrow?”

  “That’s what this place is called,” the Archalus said with a helpless gesture. “Then come back to me. You’ll give me the letter and get your reward. Can you remember all that?”

  There was in fact a lot of information, but I nodded.

  “Here, take this.”

  Savial held out a wax-sealed envelope. “That’s it,” he said, waving his hands at me. “Go, go.”

  I guess I was stuck now. I made my way outside and rushed directly to the Gatehouse. I ran in, slightly out of breath, beelined to the statue, and poured the dust into the bowl.

  “Before you set out, I’d like to warn you.”

  I started. I’d never seen a talking statue before.

  “There may be dangers lying in wait for you in the world wh
ere you’re going. Do you still want to take the path of the Seeker?”

  I thought it sounded like an odd question, but I nodded anyway.

  “On the way to the other world, all objects created by commoners evaporate. You can leave them here and pick them up later.”

  Got it. I took out my phone, money, and keys and placed them beside the Gatekeeper. Now I was ready.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “To the Valley of Silence.”

  “Come closer and touch the Gates.”

  If I wasn’t mistaken, the Gates were the rune stone at the center of the platform. I went closer and touched it lightly.

  The giant statue set aside the sword in its left hand and reached out its right hand, making a fist. Some of the dust flew out of the bowl as though it were lifted by an enchanted wind. It sparked, overflowing with colors, and even seemed to be radiating warmth. The dust gradually gathered next to the Gatekeeper’s right hand and he then reached out to touch the stone.

  It felt like being punched in my chest. Everything happened fast, almost lightning fast. One second I was inside a rather shabby but illuminated room, and the next second I was outdoors, in almost complete darkness.

  A cool wind made my trench coat flutter; my bare feet almost instantly started to freeze on cold rock.

  Bare feet? Oh shit! My shoes were regular Ralph Ringers — in other words, ordinary commoner shoes. So just as the Gatekeeper had told me, they’d evaporated. Running was going to be fun.

  Where was I going to be running to, actually? I turned around to ask the local Gatekeeper, since they were so talkative, and tensed up.

  There was nobody there. The circular symbol was there, and so was the stone inside it. But the main character was missing. And the bowl wasn’t just tipped over; it was shattered.

  I had a bad feeling about it. I took a few steps in search of the northern path and stumbled on a few cobblestones. That cheered me up a bit. I walked about a dozen yards and found that the trail disappeared just as abruptly as it came into view.

  On top of that, somewhere far ahead of me, I heard an irritating scraping noise coming from with the impenetrable darkness. It sounded like some giant was sharpening enormous knives with a diamond wheel. Holy shit, what kind of world was this?

  Chapter 17

  THE HUMAN BODY has certain physical reserves that can kick in under stress. We’ve all heard of cases where a feeble woman lifts a car to pull out her child from underneath. Or when a man with an injured spine ignores the pain and gets himself to the hospital.

  Or when a stupid Player who ends up God knows where musters up his willpower and tries to survive.

  Of course, that last one was me.

  Despite the pitch darkness, I didn’t risk casting Light for fear of attracting attention. My feet were standing on cold, dark ground. A massive crimson moon hung in the sky.

  But that wasn’t all. I didn’t know what was going on with this world, but it had two satellites: a blue one and a red one. The blue one was so small I only noticed it by pure chance.

  Damn, I shouldn’t be thinking about that. How was I going to get out of here?

  Valley of Silence? That was an overstatement, really, as I could hear loud screeching sounds coming from somewhere nearby. Still, I was indeed standing in a rocky valley squeezed between two mountains. A narrow trail led downward, apparently to the place where I needed to go look for Fibbian — that is, if Fibbian really existed. I was starting to have major doubts about that.

  Meanwhile, the sound kept getting louder. I looked around and spotted a small boulder that barely reached my waist. I dove behind it just in time.

  A creature that looked like a giant praying mantis rolled onto the portal site. It had a thin, extended body, more legs than you could count, a fidgety head, and dagger-sharp front feet, which it was scraping together, making the screeching noise.

  Famulus

  ???

  Judging by the few question marks, this beast wasn’t top class. But that didn’t mean that I could sneak up on that thing with my toothpick of a weapon, and even the time rewind wouldn’t be much help here. I checked it just in case: it had 19 points of charge already. Excellent. Still, that didn’t make things any easier.

  The famulus turned its head in my direction, no mistake about it. Its angry faceted eyes focused on me. The creature started to scrape its feet harder. Shit, did it sense me or something?

  My hands started shaking on their own accord. My legs grew weak. I wanted to bolt, but it felt like my legs belonged to someone else.

  Just then the Gates flashed open, interrupting the praying mantis’ preparations for his evening meal. The portal stone burst into flames, disgorging a girl onto the platform. I knew her — it was Artist_Chick.

  She held out the sketchbook that she always carried, thrust a hand into it and pulled out a gleaming black pistol. The page shriveled up and crumbled to ashes as though it had been set on fire. Yet the pistol remained in the girl’s hand.

  Bang bang bang bang!

  My ears clogged. All the shots merged into a single drawn-out, droning sound that bored into my brain. The famulus began to squeal, wiggling its mandibles, and sprinted into the darkness.

  Everything happened in a matter of seconds, so fast that I didn’t have a chance to register everything. Meanwhile, Artist Chick had already spread out a long, taped-together sheet of paper that had an elaborate drawing on it.

  I went closer and saw that it was a picture of a spear, depicted in such intricate detail that would have made the finest draftsmen of the past weep with envy.

  The girl’s fingers touched the paper, sinking deep inside the sheet and turning into a two-dimensional pencil sketch of a hand. Immediately the girl pulled her hand back out. But now she was holding the spear — yes, the spear that had only just been a mere drawing.

  The paper shriveled, darkening, and crumbled to ashes.

  “Hold this,” she said angrily, “in case more famuli show up.”

  Reluctantly I took the spear. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Hold it in front of you and try not to get yourself killed,” she said, leafing quickly through the sketchbook until she found the page she was looking for.

  But this time she didn’t pull anything else out. She merely stretched her arms in front of her. The sketchbook disappeared; the girl was now holding a sword in her right hand and a short staff in her left.

  “If you follow me you’ll have a chance of surviving the Red Moon. You can’t stay here.”

  “What’s the Red Moon?”

  The girl pointed upward as we walked. “What do you see?”

  “A moon... a red one.”

  “Any other questions?”

  “Why do we need to survive it?”

  “Just because! Even the youngest child in Purgator knows not to roam the Wild Lands when the Red Moon is out. That’s when all the monsters become stronger. Our time is the Blue Moon. Don’t forget that. It might come in handy if you do survive.”

  “So do you watch over the newbies or something? You make sure nothing happens to them?”

  She must have found my questions amusing because she stopped walking and turned around, smiling. “Yeah right. And then I catch you and watch over you again. Hunter paid me to take you to the closest city and bring you back. He paid me well. Are you his son or something?”

  Hunter? How had he found out about this? And so quickly? “Was he alone?”

  “No, he was with some guy. A short, scrawny type.”

  Jan! So that’s where he’d disappeared to. He must have thought I was in trouble and went back to Litius. And Litius must have called Hunter just like I’d asked him to. In any case, that was quick! When I call Hunter he usually doesn’t answer the phone. I was sincerely grateful to him, anyway, because if this girl hadn’t shown up, right now I’d be getting to know the famulus from the inside.

  “Artist_Chick...”

  The girl swiveled around
and fixed me with a stare. It flustered me.

  “No one calls me that. Call me Arts.”

  “As in Arts and Crafts?” I joked, but immediately shut up because there wasn’t a trace of irony in her eyes. If you’re bad at humor, don’t try. “OK, Arts. So where are we going?”

  “There,” she said, pointing in front of us.

  “All right. If you say so.”