“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Arraka says. “The only way you can change the past is through a time reversal spell. This is obviously not our world. Neither of you were here five thousand years ago. We are in a parallel world, similar to ours, where the future hasn’t happened yet. No matter what we change, here, it won’t affect our reality.”
“But then, what is the purpose of this trial?” Daren says.
“No idea,” Arraka says. “But I do think I’ve managed to figure out why we’ve been sent here, of all places.”
“What do you mean?” Illuna says.
“Remember how in every one of the rituals so far, Selkram has sent you to relive events from your own pasts?” Arraka says. “Well, like I said before, neither of you have lived anywhere near long enough to have experienced these current events. So by process of elimination, the past that we are now exploring is most likely… mine.”
Not long after Arraka is done talking, the whole sky gradually darkens, as a powerful, sinister aura envelops the area above us. The flying metal vehicles are now falling one by one, and crashing into the buildings below, while a woman in her late thirties is emerging from the dark clouds, and descending towards us. The robes she is wearing are similar to the traditional wizard robes that used to be worn hundreds of years ago, back when mages were still being called wizards, and that only traditionalist mages like Azarius are still wearing nowadays. As the woman gets closer to us, I see that her eyes are pitch black, and that she has a very familiar looking malicious grin on her face.
“Well, well, well…” the woman says, as she looks towards Arraka’s amulet. “It looks like Selkram sent me a little present. You’re all coming from the future, I presume? Let me check my future self’s aura, for a second. Wow… So, you’re five thousand years older than me, huh? I guess I must have gotten really senile with old age, if I managed to get myself captured in an amulet by a glorified circus troupe. Seriously, what even are you people? A little girl dressed like a clown? A giant masquerading as a dwarf? A woman dressed in pajamas? It’s like you’re trying to compete for the most ridiculously dressed wizard group of the century.”
“I’m not dressed like a clown!” Flower shouts, all of a sudden. “These are acrobat clothes. Acrobat clothes! How is it so hard to tell the difference?”
“Aha- Ahahahahahaha!” the woman laughs, as her voice temporarily turns into the three female voices that Arraka always lets out, when she loses control over the way she speaks. “Acrobat clothes, she says! Oh, man, this would be so much funnier if it weren’t so sad at the same time. Is this really where I’ll end up in five thousand years? Trapped in an amulet, while I’m forced to play the role of some clown girl’s pet? What kind of a cruel joke has my destiny played on me?”
“Shut up, you moron!” the Arraka from the amulet says. “This is your one chance to fix your pathetic past. I mean, your future. Don’t blow it! Set me free from this amulet, and we can make all those self-proclaimed gods pay for banishing us to this realm. They might have beaten us alone, but together, we’ll be unstoppable! We will kill every single one of the gods from this cheap copy of a world, and then we’ll go back to my real world, and kill them all over again. Just break this amulet, and we will make a team so unbelievably powerful that even the Magium will tremble before us!”
“The Magium?” the Arraka in the woman’s body says. “Ahahahahaha! You’re treating the Magium as if it were some sort of a person, now? What kind of an idiot have I turned into over the years?”
“Are you going to free me or not?” the Arraka in the amulet shouts.
“No,” the Arraka from the past says, now adopting a more serious tone. “I am not going to free you. You might have forgotten this, due to your old age, but I haven’t yet grown as senile as you. Do you seriously expect me to believe that once you get out of that amulet, you will seek to ally yourself with me? Don’t make me laugh. I know exactly what you’re thinking. As soon as you’ll get out of there, the first thing you’ll do is to attack me, since I am by far the biggest threat to your existence. And with all the knowledge you’ve been amassing in those five thousand years, you may as well end up beating me. Why would I take the risk? It’s much easier for me to just leave you inside that amulet to rot, until I can find a way to get rid of you for good. You should blame yourself for having been stupid enough to get trapped in an amulet in the first place. I assure you that I will not be making that same mistake any time soon.”
“Oh, yeah?” the Arraka from the present says, furiously. “You want me to tell you what your future holds, you arrogant buffoon? I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to get trapped in a mountain for thousands of years, and all of your plans of vengeance will go down the drain. You’re going to be even more useless than I am right now. At least in my current form I can cast a few spells. But you won’t be able to do anything. For thousands of years! And you deserve everything that’s coming to you! I hope you’ll have fun in your new prison, you stubborn piece of trash!”
“A mountain, you say?…” past-Arraka says, with a grin. “How informative. So all I need to do in order to avoid your past mistakes is to stay clear of any mountains, then… Perhaps you’re not so useless after all. Maybe I should snatch you away from that girl’s neck, and make you into a pet of my own, so that you can tell me everything you’ve learned during your extra five thousand years of life.”
“You wish you could do that, you worthless copy of a banshee,” present-Arraka says. “When I’ll be done with you, there won’t be a single speck of dust left from your carcass!”
“How about you keep quiet for a second, while I quickly annihilate all of your friends?” past-Arraka says. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk afterwards, when I’ll be wearing you as a piece of jewelry around my neck.”
“Are you sure you want to kill us?” I say. “Think about it for a second. The Arraka from our present time probably won’t give you any more information than she already did. But the rest of us have been travelling with her for a long while. We know some of her secrets. We could trade you that information… in exchange for our freedom.”
“You’ve got nerves of steel, trying to barter with me, I’ll give you that,” past-Arraka says, with her malicious grin back on her face. “But what kind of information could you possibly give me that I couldn’t find out by myself?”
“Well, there are certain events from your future that didn’t exactly turn out the best for you,” I say. “Wouldn’t you rather have an edge, by knowing these things in advance? It costs us nothing to give you this information. This is not our world, after all. No matter what you choose to do in here, it will not affect us.”
“Your offer would be much more tempting, if your real intentions weren’t so transparent, boy,” past-Arraka says. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to stall for time until your time weaver friend can use her powers to freeze me. It’s not going to work. The first thing I did after I arrived in this place was to cast a spell that prevented everyone in the area from using time powers. I figured that one of you had to be a time weaver, given that Selkram was involved. Your friend over there has been trying to cast a time-freezing spell for the past minute, but she gets hit with a huge headache every time she begins to concentrate. As for your offer, I’m afraid that I’m going to have to—”
As she was talking, past-Arraka suddenly stopped mid-sentence, because she apparently got frozen in time, along with everyone who wasn’t part of our group.
“I managed to freeze her…” the revenant says, as she seems to be suppressing a headache. “But I’m not sure how much I can maintain my concentration. We need to move away from here, and find some shelter.”
“Let’s see if we can find some buildings coated with seredium dust nearby,” Melindra says. “Magical sense doesn’t work through seredium, so we should be able to hide in there for a while.”
We all rush out of the area where we were first transported into,
and we look all around us, trying to find a house with black dust on its walls.
“Man, I’m so pissed off, right now!” present-Arraka says, as we run through the alleys. “If only I had a way of getting out of this amulet, I would rip that fake version of myself in half, and throw her to the dogs.”
“Arraka, aren’t there some houses in the vicinity that have walls you can’t see through with your magical sense?” Illuna says.
“Huh?…” Arraka says, looking as if she’s only now realized what we were trying to do. “Oh, right, let me check… Yeah, there is one. But it’s pretty far from here. Take a left at the next crossroads, and go straight ahead. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“Wouldn’t it be faster for Melindra to fly us all the way there?” I say, as we keep running.
“No offense,” Kate says, “but I think we can run faster than Melindra can carry us with her air currents.”
“There aren’t that many obstacles, anyway,” Arraka says. “It’s just a long way until we get there.”
As we keep running, the revenant suddenly gets a strong headache, which makes her lose control over her time-freezing spell. Once the time gets unfrozen, it unfortunately takes past-Arraka no longer than three seconds to teleport herself right in front of us, and to block our path.
“Such a shame,” past-Arraka says. “You were so close to escaping. It’s too bad that the time weaver couldn’t hold on to the spell for just a little longer. Frankly, I’m surprised that she held out as much as she did. I’m guessing that she must have had a protection from dizziness of some sort? Well, no matter. In the end, it didn’t help you in any way. The time weaver is too tired to concentrate now, so all you can do is—”
An avalanche of flames coming from the right engulfs Arraka, just as she was finishing her speech, and we are forced to step back, because even the air surrounding those flames feels like it could melt off our skin. Arraka was clearly caught unaware, and she’s trying to push back the flames with her hands, as she’s struggling to keep hold of her magical shield. The whole ground below her is quickly turning into lava, while the banshee looks like she is getting slowly pushed back, by the incredible force of the magical flames that just keep on pouring. Eventually, she is forced to teleport away, fifty feet above her current location, which causes the flames to immediately stop.
Then, completely out of the blue, a familiar looking dragon made out of magma appears right next to us, and in the next second, we find ourselves being teleported away from the city streets, along with him. As we take a quick look around to see where the dragon Tyrath transported us, we realize that we are now situated in a large building with a very high ceiling, and from the looks of it, the whole construction surrounding us has been coated with seredium dust. The inside of the building looks like a big, closed, amphitheater, with rising rows of seats, and the illumination seems to be coming from magical devices, rather than torches.
Judging by the size of the amphitheater, I’d say that it could probably fit around a thousand people or more in those seats, although currently there are only a few hundred of them sitting on the chairs, while they’re murmuring and looking towards us. If I were to take a guess, based on the important looking clothing of these individuals, I’d wager that these must be the people ruling this city, who were in an emergency meeting discussing about the city being attacked, before we interrupted them.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the amphitheater, where the dragon and our group are currently standing, there are also quite a few human mages gathered, all dressed in traditional wizard clothing, along with a few women who are dressed in wizard robes as well. A particularly old man with a long white beard, who seems to be the person presiding over the meeting, is now addressing Tyrath from an elevated platform, speaking to him in a tone that is somehow both polite and condescending at the same time.
“Who are these… strangely dressed wizards that you’ve brought before the lessathi high council, king of all dragons?” the old man says. “I thought we’d made it clear that this meeting was supposed to be held behind closed doors. When we invited you into our great hall, we did not give you permission to bring guests as well.”
“Nobody asked for your permission, you old fool,” Tyrath says, in disgust. “You know full well that I wouldn’t be here if the situation weren’t as dire as it was. This… powerful female wizard named Arraka, who claims to have come from another plane of existence is a threat to us all. I’ve fought her soon after she first made her appearance, yesterday, and I can assure you that she is not an enemy to be trifled with. My whole army of dragons was completely powerless before her. Only I was powerful enough to hold her back, but not enough to actually defeat her. You should already have an idea of the extent of her powers, now that she’s attacked your city as well.”
“If you know how dire the situation is, then why do you bring uninvited guests in the middle of this very important meeting?” the old lessathi says. “What benefit could they possibly bring to us, in such circumstances?”
“These people are not what they seem,” Tyrath says. “I overheard Arraka saying that one of them was a time weaver, while I was making my way towards this hall. And if you look closely, you will see that the aura coming from that amulet around the little girl’s neck is eerily similar to that of Arraka. So similar, in fact, that I would be tempted to say that the two of them are somehow the same person. The Arraka we know was about to kill them all, before I intervened. Surely, even someone as limited as you could see the advantage of having these people as our allies?”
“But at what cost?!” another lessathi from the high council says, as he raises himself from his seat. “I’ve only just received word from my men through the transceiver, and they’ve told me that your downpour of flames from earlier has caused the deaths of more than a hundred civilians. Was it worth it to kill so many innocent people just to save this small group?”
“Even if my flames hadn’t killed them, they would have most certainly gotten killed by Arraka a few moments later,” Tyrath says. “Your civilians were practically already dead from the moment when she set foot in that area. There were hundreds of your flying metal vehicles crashed into the nearby houses when I arrived, and Arraka hadn’t even started her rampage, yet. Every moment wasted arguing here will mean the death of a hundred more of your civilians, until we manage to put together a plan of attack that has some realistic chance of success.”
“I will have to agree with Tyrath that arguing any further will get us nowhere,” the old lessathi says. “Please sit down, councilman Hrelezar. We will be interrogating this strange group of wizards shortly, and we will soon find out whether the deaths of our fellow countrymen were worth it or not.”
The lessathi man that stood up earlier is now reluctantly sitting back down, as the older lessathi addresses one of the women dressed in wizard robes.
“Olyrra, can you please continue from where you left off, before we were interrupted?” the old lessathi says.
“Yes, chairman Ezzeloff,” the woman says. “As I’ve said, none of us have ever experienced anything like this before. Our magical powers have simply vanished, yesterday, and we found no way to bring them back. For some reason, only the women seem to be affected, but even some of our strongest female wizards have been reduced to simple commoners, in the course of a day. We’ve tried many methods to stimulate our magical auras, but none of them seem to work. If this doesn’t get fixed, half of our elite wizard troops will be completely useless in the upcoming battle.”
“This is grave news indeed,” Ezzeloff says. “The female wizards from our elite troops were a force to be reckoned with. Our highest priority must be to find a way to bring their powers back, at all costs.”
“Hah!” Arraka says, from her amulet. “You can try all you want. Your women are never getting their magic back.”
“What are you talking about?” Ezzeloff says.
“Didn’t you find it strange that all your women lost their powe
rs on the exact same day that the past version of myself made her appearance?” Arraka says. “Of course you didn’t. You’re morons. Well, let me spell it out for you. The reason why your women were able to cast magic until yesterday was because they were subconsciously linking themselves to female spirits from the magical plane. Since yesterday was obviously the day when I and all the other female spirits got banished from that plane of existence, their magic will never work anymore. You might as well give them some swords and shields to fight with, because that’s the most you’ll be able to get out of those troops from now on.”
“You called the other Arraka a past version of yourself…” Tyrath says. “Does this mean that you’re coming from the future?”
“Impressive, Tyrath!” Arraka says. “I never knew that you had mastered basic logic at such a young age. I guess that’s why the other dragons made you their king.”
“Spare me your insipid humor and answer me this,” Tyrath says. “Why have you come here? Why were you fighting the Arraka from our time? Did you come here to avert some great crisis, or did you simply happen to arrive in this place by pure chance?”
“Actually, we were sent here against our own will,” I say.
“Explain,” Tyrath says.
“Well, do you know anything about the God of Time, and his rituals?” I say.
“I have very little interest in both the gods, and their occupations,” Tyrath says. “Should I take it that this ‘God of Time’ is the one who sent you back here against your will?”
“Yes, exactly,” I say.
“And now you are looking for a way to go back?” Tyrath says.
“Uh… I’d say that at the moment, our highest priority is probably our survival,” I say.
“Then your best chance would be to cooperate with us,” Tyrath says. “If you would share with us the information that you know from the future, we would be much better equipped to fight Arraka.”
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