The TARDIS Book: THE TIME IS NOW (Part 3)
Book Two: TO BE LIBERATED
Chapter 6: At the Top of a Mountain
The Princess felt a guilt that hadn't pained her since she left the Candy Kingdom. As Jake left with Finn in his arms, she decided it might have been best to leave him alone, at least for now. Finn had definitely made an impression on her, though. Even at his most frightened, he chose to face his fear, instead of running as far away as he possibly could. He didn't choose the easy thing to do. He didn't choose to stay away, like she did. She couldn't amount to a boy that had that much courage, but she could appreciate it. In general, humanity ceased to amaze her. They had the uncanny ability to believe so strongly in something, that they really got stuck to it- despite all the logical reasons for questioning, defying and inevitably abandoning whatever they came up with in the first place. And as sticky as the candy people were, they were never as stubborn as humans. She had met many humans in her travels, but never a teenager. She found the adolescent biochemical processes of a human to be quite fascinating. Adolescent humans seemed to perpetually produce hormones and sweat in an almost alarming amount. The gum race never had to worry about that, even though they shared many of the emotional and psychological traits, they never excreted nearly as much of their bodily fluids. Finn seemed to be a smidgen peculiar. Occasionally his skin would grow rather pink, though never as pink as a gum person. Still though, he looked flushed, as if he had a fever. But he seemed to be at prime physical performance, exceeding the standard strength and stamina of an average teenage boy. So the other possibility was that he was embarrassed. But that perplexed the Princess. He didn't seem to have anything to be embarrassed about. Maybe someone else was shaming him in some sort of way? Was it her? Did she shame him? She sometimes had a terrible habit of intimidating other creatures. Well, whatever she did, she could apologize the next time she planned to interact with him. Though, she would probably have to spell it out for him. He never really figured things out on his own. He didn't even notice her until she interacted with him directly. He never seemed to be a careful character, so he never caught her watching the tree fort or the clock factory. Although it was unfortunate what happened to Mr. Pig, she was relieved to have an excuse to formally introduce herself to Finn and Jake. Although, she really should have prioritized observing Magic Man, and what he was up to. Because of both his selfishness to escape and her selfishness to take an interest in something besides work, two lives were completely obliterated, not to mention the damage to the very thing she was involved with.
As for Magic Man, he remained unconscious. She grabbed the rope that he tied her up with and wrapped it snugly around his arms and torso. Very snugly. She tied a Zerra Vylia knot, which she learned while vacationing to Ryconzia's mountain range, rock climbing with the Zerra Vylia Tribe members, Zerra Alva and Zerra Betta. Ahh, lovely people but did try to eat her hair when they stayed the night at the cave of Mount. Revanzia. They all had a good laugh about it the morning after, when their eggs hatched. Don't know why they had to use climbing rope when they had wings- ahh yes back to the rope.
She brought the remaining of the rope over her shoulder and pulled it with both of her hands, dragging the Martian's unconscious body to her TARDIS. She weaved through the trees to find her pink wardrobe, exactly where she had always left it- in an abandoned barnhouse in the grasslands. Which was fairly close to the tree fort where Finn resided. Approximately 4.38 miles. The distance between where she was at the moment and where the barnhouse was from the forest was approximately 6.55 miles so she could walk it in a couple hours.
She thought about what he had said about him. He couldn't have possibly been talking about the Lich King. But how else would he know her name? As far as she knew, time travel was still an underground operation between the Queen and Persephone, so no one outside of the Candy Kingdom has gotten their hands on anything. Maybe he's been to the Candy Kingdom? But even if he has, at this point she hadn't been born yet. Could she have been conceived of yet? She did the math. The Lich reemerged at the time of her and Achilles's conception. The worst part about not being able to save her family was knowing that it was going to happen, miles away and she couldn't dare. Because if she dared to cross with her own timeline, the paradox could cause the vortex to fall apart, causing the timestream and the matter of the planet of the Candy Kingdom to implode within itself, causing a rip in the Mushroom universe.
Magic Man opened his eyes to find that he was in a place that seemed impossible. Especially for something to come out of Ooo, which was only filled by low-life stable creatures who only found the ability of speech after nuclearararar mutations.
"Where am I?" He asked, turning his head to see who was responsible for his current situation. He looked behind him to see that his wrists were bound together, with the rope that he had used to tie up the Princess- the Princess!
"What is this thing that I'm tied to? Answer me!" He yelled as the room seemed to shake and make peculiar, rather unnerving noises.
"It's the tertiary TARDIS radiator, though really I just use it to keep the room cool," the Princess replied while she was frantically turning knobs and pulling levers. Her facial expression seemed to show detachment, as if the frantic knob-turning was an auto-pilot behavior for her.
"What?"
"It's the third thermal regulator that keeps my TARDIS cooled down," she impatiently explained.
"What is this 'TARDIS' that you speak of? Is this powered by some sort of magic?" Magic Man said with utter confusion and growing confusion.
"Magic?" She laughed, dismissing his heritage and his people. He would have cared more if he had met her in his younger years. "Science is what powers this rather studly hunk of a thing. TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Distance in Space. It's a time machine. It takes me wherever and WHENever I like," she said as if it were generally common knowledge. But the important thing was that he was on a time machine. If it really worked, he could go back and change his life. Maybe not piss off his brothers as much. Or see Margles again. Maybe keep her safe this time around.
"Can you take me to Olympus Mons, 1999 A.A.D.? Please, just do me this one favor," he said. He was surprised to feel a twinge of sadness. He was even more surprised that he was begging. He hadn't felt this desperate in a long time.
"Why Olympus Mons?" questioned the Princess.
"I need to warn myself of something. I need to do something for someone very important." Maybe, at least, tell her that I loved her more than any other creature in the universe. Oh, if he could tell Margles all the things he has regretted not telling her enough.
"I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to go to a time where you already existed. It's against the TARDIS rules to cross with your own timeline. If it makes you feel any better, I am taking you to Mars." Magic Man slumped down, realizing that for a moment, he was fully engaged in the conversation up until this moment. He couldn't help but feel dejected. There was no way she was taking him to a time where he could really help himself, so there must have been a catch.
"What's the catch?"
"I'm taking you to WHERE you want to go, but not WHEN you want to go." She paused when the TARDIS stopped moving. She opened the door. The air was chilly, as least compared to Ooo's grasslands.
"This is Olympus Mons, circa 2107." She walked through one of the many openings of the room, mayhaps into another room. He waited a couple minutes before she walked in with a syringe needle. She used her plastic-glove-covered fingers to flick the syringe. There was a liquid in it, spurting a little out of the tip. Before he could say anything, she stabbed his chest and pressed down on the syringe, injecting the liquid in his bloodstream.
"Wha-what is in that!" he shouted, shocked at her decorum. She hid her viciousness well, but now he was seeing some of her true colors. Coldly-calculating yet visceral. He could see the real darkness and cruelty in her.
"A narkozic alkaloid extracted from the opilum poppius that induces slumber. I'm injecting it into your bloodstream so that your mental receptors obscure your consciousness, basically using it as a sedative." She walked away, back into the room where she had originally gotten the needle.
"YOU HORRIBLE SHREWD! HOW DARE YOU! WHAT IN THE WORLD POSSESSED YOU TO STAB ME IN THE CHEST WITH A NEEDLE AND INJECT POISON INTO MY BLOOD?" He couldn't contain his shock and disdain for her. She rushed up to him and tightly gripped his shoulders with her gloved-hands. She stared straight into his white eyes with hers, black as the Ooo night was stark. Her eyes narrowed.
"I told you I would ruin the rest of your existence. I gave you a choice to be better. To live in peace with the consequences you have been dealt with. Then you threw it away, tied me up, and tortured a innocent, human boy. How dare I? What possessed me? I may have been born a princess, but I was made into a warrior over hundreds of years of pain. I do this in a futile attempt to lift off guilt- a guilt so great and beyond your comprehension. You have never, EVER felt anything like it before. Oh, and the poison I gave you- I lied, by the way! The opilum poppius isn't going to put you to sleep. I adjusted the structure of narkozic's effects to induce a perpetual state of skitzopathion: frighteningly realistic hallucinations of terror and catastrophe. Imagine- your worst nightmares- REAL. All of your worst memories- RELIVED. So enjoy however long you have- you'll be alive on top of a mountain, all alone in your perpetual state of psychological torture and agony! Feel what all those innocent creatures must of felt when you forced them onto your transporter! Which I'm keeping, by the way." By the time she finished talking, he couldn't hear the words coming out of her mouth, all he knew was that he felt dizzy and terrified. He had no control over what he was saying, what his mouth slurred out. He felt her hands untie the rope. She released him out onto the cold, barren mountain top. As fuzzy as his vision was, he could see the outside of the TARDIS. He found to realize that he was only looking at a pink wardrobe. The inside of the TARDIS was so infinitely big, yet the outside was impossibly small. Meaning one thing for him: the hallucinations must have started.
The Princess closed the door of the wardrobe. Her destination, was, of course, Ooo. It was time to see what Finn was up to, and to check on the status of his physical and mental well-being. As she began her ritual for initial take off, the TARDIS, having a mind of his own, went on auto-pilot and steered her himself. The TARDIS landed in Ooo, but not inside of the barnhouse, as the Princess had intended.
"Ah my love, what exciting adventure have you taken me to this time? What new wonderous monsters await me?" She eagerly pushed open the door of the wardrobe to see that she was in a castle made of ice. This must have been where the Ice King resided. But where in the castle? Instead of opening the door directly in front of her, she went in the opposite direction, saving the door for last. She pulled out her sonic-sapphire flashlight, using it to detect any exciting- peculiar-activity. She walked down the hall, almost too excited to keep quiet. Ooh, if this was anything like the dungeons of Arrial Desert, or the subterrain of Candy Kingdom, her current regeneration would be the best one yet. She walked down multiple corridors, haphazardly guiding herself through the icy hallways, growing more impatient for any action to leap out at her. At last, she heard a subtle thud. Her two hearts raced, in sync of course. The anticipation could kill her. As she turned a corner, she found the tip of a golden sword aimed at her face.