Fifth of Grune, Year of the Screaming Salamander

2:59:58

Time is wasting. That saying came from his father, a man whom had both passed on long before, and at the same time, lived. Temporal dysplasia, that terrible illness affecting the grand total of one man among all other men, had rendered his mind unable to differentiate the standard chronological order of time.

Zilean shook his head, sending the gray/black hairs wafting in the after-effect. Since his rescue, the occurrences had become more and more infrequent – or occurring less and less if you thought of it backwards – but there were occasional episodes. The trick lay in finding a focus point, and determining if it were receding or approaching … and if he were facing it. And if he was upright. It was always possible he would be walking backwards, away from whatever he faced, but that was unlikely. Vertical positions were also preferable, but not necessary. In any event, the end goal was to determine position in time, not space.

Oh yes, I remember this one. Young Ekko, the clever inventor from Zaun, grinned at him victoriously, pulling his ripcord into the ether. The energy signature floated backward, travelling along an easily predictable path.

Sighing, Zilean considered the plethora of options available. He could stun Ekko with a timed pulse, freezing him in place – but that would risk setting off the younger man's Z-drive. So, no. Instead, he would initiate a tachyon shift around Ekko's endpoint, displacing the entirety to a more accessible location … but that would incur a massive kinetic potential, which had happened fifteen times that session already. The only reason Ekko was still alive was due to the fact that past happenings did not have future effect – if they never happened.

It sometimes paid to be capable of diverting present potential into past matters. Technically speaking, the present was the future's past. Once you stopped believing that every present was something's future, the rest became simple.

A solution occurred, and Zilean acted. Instead of affecting the external chronosphere, he changed the internal chronosphere. Shifting himself was so much easier than shifting others, anyway.

Zilean accelerated, bypassing the meandering trail Ekko's future self followed, and slowed the temporal construct just enough to arrive before it became fully corporeal. The look of utter shock on the younger man's face drew a chuckle form his young-feeling bones.

"How did you do that?" Ekko demanded. "I moved back in time! Nothing goes faster than that, nothing!"

The look reminded him of dear Narcissa's face, when he proved one of her theories incorrect. She loved him for it the little minx, but couldn't resist expressing her outrage when yet another barrier to their research had been brought down. Her brilliance had been one of the reasons he'd been attracted to her in the first place; she'd been one of only three people capable of matching him, theory for theory, in the Temporal Displacement department.

Well, one of two. Joseph had been proven to be a mere hanger-on, intelligent when it came to rewriting others papers, but a charlatan in the end. And so very angry when Narcissa had chosen him. Perhaps that was why the summoner-knights had chosen to pay such particularly close attention to his former home. His travels through time had revealed that much.

Returning to the present, Zilean offered a noncommittal shrug. "I was already there."

"No you weren't!" Ekko stomped towards the elder Chrono-wizard. "I saw you! There was no way you could have moved! How did you do it, you half-wit Piltoven excuse of a wizard?"

Even more like Narcissa than he'd thought. Evidence proved him wrong, yet he still believed his eyes, logic be damned. It brought a tear to his eye, how long had it been since he'd last seen his beloved? Two days? A century? It felt like mere hours at times, and an eternity a moment later.

"And now your smirking at me again! Blast you and all of your family to dust!"

Oh dear, he'd forgotten again. "That … already happened." Zilean tried to focus on the present, evaluating the younger man for what he was; brilliant, intelligent, wise in the ways of sciences … but still just a student. Once, he'd been a teacher, before starting the research in the old Clock Tower. Sometimes, he still was. "Your error is not in how long you could travel backward, but in what circumstances surrounded the initial pulse."

Ekko, already walking away, paused. His back remained turned to the chrono-mage, but his voice sounded curious. "Circumstances?"

Zilean smiled. "Indeed. Your time-stream conveyance is marvelous, an exquisite method of control. But the field surrounding the point arrival does not account for external variables. Normalized circumstances won't require that sort of attention to detail, but with me …."

He broke off, sensing a disruption. To his knowledge – formidable as it was – there were only two possible causes of such a contamination of the timestream.

"You know what, you're just full of it, man!" Ekko started shouting at him. "You don't explain nothing, just keep talking in circles so people think you know something. What happened to you was an accident, you hear me? Accident!"

Zilean focused on the disruption, isolating the depth of its magnitude from the patterns now oscillating through the external chromosphere. Walls, thoroughly warded against incursions of any magical intent, wavered like cloth, rippling in a non-existent breeze. The ground itself, solid bedrock for miles under the city, undulated in gentle whorls, not unlike a slow-moving river. He'd witnessed such a thing only when using his powers to their fullest capacity, something that had occurred merely seven times in his existence.

Existence. It was an easier word to say than eternity. He was not eternal, nor was time … but within time, there were things close to that value. Or as close to it as mortal man could get.

"Wha … what's happening?" Ekko's words caught his attention. Could the space-time interruption actually be felt by someone other than himself? "Is this you? 'Cause it ain't funny! Cut it out!"

Zilean tipped his head back, extending his senses to the approaching ripples. They made contact, intensifying the movement into an agitation, the difference between a languid stream, and someone vigorously stirring the water. "Yes, it's me, but I am not doing it."

The dark-skinned youth glared at him. His next move was utterly predictable, even if Zilean hadn't been through the same situation a dozen times before. Consequently, when Ekko lunged at him with the Z-drive actuator held high, Zilean was already a handful of steps away, approaching the temporal disturbance. The energy curled out to meet him, welcoming his presence in the same way a wolf greets the master of the pack.

"You're not getting away from me again!"

He turned, slightly puzzled. This hadn't happened before, in any memory. The sight of the other time-warper, charging at him in full attack was – inspiring, to be honest. Predictable in some ways, but normally, Zilean had enough memories to fully anticipate physical trauma. It was why he'd never actually died, despite his immortality.

For a given value of infinite, of course.

"Wait, you don't under—" the words couldn't come out fast enough. For the first time since his altered state, he didn't have enough time to get the words out. Ekko's spanner struck the side of his head, knocking Zilean into the rippling field. But, the same momentum also drove the boy inventor into the same energy fields, joining Zilean.

Zilean deftly wove the coronal flare into a protective shield around both himself and the boy, protecting them from the worst of the destructive forces surrounding them. Inside the literal time-bubble, chronological coherence remained – cellular regeneration maintained its normal pace, heartbeats continued unabated, and so on. Outside however … time shredded itself against the bubble. Solid bedrock crumbled in moments, leaving lava behind, only to reform into obsidian shards that broke apart into a fertile grassland that became desert. Massive quantities of water rushed over the bubble, turning the desert into a benthic zone, where shellfish appeared by the millions, vanishing and reappearing by the tens of thousands every moment.

"Wha … what's happening?" Ekko's voice, no longer angered, filled the bubble. Zilean was pleased to see the young man was not panicking; it was difficult enough to maintain the concentration for creating protections strong enough for two, as well as follow the signal tempting him onwards.

"We are within a temporal disruption," he grasped the younger man's shoulder with one hand. "Please move as little as possible, I am accounting for as many variables as I can, but without a Compendium, I am having to calculate mentally."

The Mohawk-haired face turned towards him once, then focused outwards again. "Mentally? What do you mean?"

Once again in the role of a teacher, Zilean adopted the more officious body posture. "Temporal Distortions are isolated points within the Space-Time Continuum that obey their own rules. I've memorized the observed behaviors that Doctors Hildebrand and Guddard created, and they account for the majority of hazardous behavior, but the chaotic nature of a disruption is – by definition – chaotic." A tendril of violet light approached the bubble, and he had to break off in order to determine the proper angle by which he could deflect the unthinking assault. Child's play, he would have called it in his Clock Tower, but at this point in time … this present … there was no Tower, no protective device strapped to his back. Just the sheer breadth of his intellect, and the experience gained over a thousand lifetimes.

The strain increased, throwing his protective field into a minor feedback loop. Zilean corrected the anomaly, adding a covalent loop through the upper hemisphere in case a second such event occurred. After recovering, he continued. "Travelling through a temporal distortion is difficult, it takes at least five years of advanced coursework to gain the appropriate discipline."

Ekko groaned, "I'm feeling sick. How do I get off?"

"You don't!" Zilean answered cheerfully. "Don't worry, you won't have been gone any time at all."

The younger man groaned, holding onto his abdominal muscles. "Yeah, but it'll take forever to get there."

Surprised, Zilean paused in his efforts to look down at him. "That is exactly the conundrum I faced in my thesis work! Transfinite events incurring infinite sensations. Well done young man!"

Unfortunately, the young man in questions seemed entirely incapable of appreciating the genius he'd displayed. "Terrific."

[break]

Zilean braced for the final impact, as the chronal pathways terminated at the edge of his senses. The chaotic patterns began fading, withdrawing beyond their unformed selves, until barely detectable. He relinquished his grasp on the shield, decreasing the intensity until it too died out.

Near his feet, Ekko groaned. "Am I dead? I hope I'm dead, I don't want to feel this terrible and be alive …."

But, his grumbling was ignored. Zilean was too busy, examining his surroundings. They were remarkably familiar, resembling his old study almost to the same pile of books haphazardly strewn across the desks. The sky outside appeared a clear, pristine shade of blue, perfectly imitating the sky over his home town. But … that sky had been destroyed by the summoner-knights, stained a sinful gray by the unholy magics used to eradicate the town's populace.

But, as he moved closer to the window, he could see the familiar horizon. The town walls, a good three kilometers from his Tower, enchanted with runes of his own design. Any time a portion of the wall became damaged, they would activate, and restoring the affected zone to what it had been when the rune was initially carved. Even destroying the rune wouldn't cause lasting damage.

Closer, he could see the shops. The university, near the Tower, had often given much business for the local bakeries. Study halls, professor meetings, official gatherings … all relished the sweetmeats produced by the local workers. And were those students rushing out, headed back?

Overhead, the massive bell struck the hour, gears the size of a horse clicking into position. Zilean froze where he stood; it felt so real!

"Come now, aren't you going to greet me?" A well-known voice asked.

Slowly, Zilean turned. An exceedingly familiar face looked back at him. It was an eternally youthful look, enough lines in the eyes to indicate much sorrow – or joy – framed by graying hair that remained dark at its roots. That had been a problem; the disease made him young, but the further his hair grew from its roots, the lighter it became. A decade or so spent studying the effect had been useless, although a good patent on skin restoration cream had come from the study. The benefit of immortality; you never had to hand over patents to another.

"I presume a paradox has been avoided?" he addressed the other man.

"Indeed," he responded. "You know as well as I that most of that garbage was just to scare children from playing with time."

On the ground still, Ekko forced himself to a half-kneeling position. "You … there's two of you?"

Zilean looked down at him, then up at the other copy of himself. "He has a point. Perhaps you could adopt a separate identifier, for communication purposes?"

The other Zilean chuckled. "Already accounted for. Hello young man, I am Zilean-Alpha. You already know Zilean, do you have any questions? The meeting is about to begin, and I do not want any interruptions."

Ekko pushed himself upwards. "Did I hit my head harder than I thought?"

Zilean-Alpha shook his head, smiling as he did so. "No, you are witnessing a rare event, what we are calling: 'The Causality.'"

"Catchy," Ekko muttered. "What's happening?"

ZIlean felt hope rise in his chest; he'd made plans, spent centuries refining them, writing on anything that didn't move. Then burned the plans, made new ones, and burned those too. "Have I discovered a possible cure?"

"Yes," Zilean-Alpha nodded. "We will, of course have to eradicate your memory of this event, but it will be painless, and not affect the timeline."

"Of course," Zilean felt the hope grow exponentially. "Shall we begin? Or may I have a few moments to assist my colleague?"

Zilean-Alpha raised both eyebrows. "Colleague? I do not remember Ekko of the Legends Guild being anything other than a talented amateur. Has he displayed cognitive coherence within the temporal disruption?"

"Not only that," Zilean clapped a hand on Ekko's shoulder, almost sending him sprawling, "He articulated my thesis statement for the seminal project. Entirely without coaching!"

For a moment, the other man looked dumbstruck. Only Ekko's shallow breathing, gradually getting better, could be heard above the quiet murmur from the other room. His meeting room, if memory served. "Well well … this is indeed an anomaly. Perhaps the catalyst for our contingency. Certainly, we have all the time we need, or will need. No time like the present after all."

"Time is wasting," Zilean agreed. Zilean-Alpha left the room, leaving Ekko and the original Zilean together.

The window called his attention, inviting his gaze to look once more on that which had been gone for many centuries. Involuntarily, he sighed. "I have missed this."

Ekko staggered to the window, looking out its transparent pane. "Where are we? I don't recognize it."

"No reason you should," Zilean gestured, invoking a thread of his power to revive a chair that had once existed in this time frame. The thread wove around itself, winding into a delicate pattern that solidified as it moved, growing larger until it became a comfortable-looking easy chair. He sat down, marveling at the comfort. "This is my home, in Urtistan."

The boy blinked. "That place went blooey before the Rune War. How did we get here?"

Zilean shook his head. "For someone with so much talent, you are remarkably obtuse. Time travel."

"Time travel?" Ekko's eyes widened, "But … this is … like … thousands of years ago! You can't travel that far, I've tried!"

Zilean waved his hand, creating another chair. This one a recalled image of what he'd seen the inventor prefer while in the Guild. He couldn't help chuckling, "You sound like my wife. She was one of the most intelligent beings I have ever encountered, but had a great deal of trouble believing that which was undocumented. Unproven. I could always depend on her to come up with a rational explanation for everything. War, peace, and all that lay between."

Rising, he strode to the window. "Those pillars of crystal? She helped make them. Urtistan is well-known for powerful defenses; I built those walls myself; it took me three days to assemble the rune-carvings. Three months of hard labor beforehand, synthesizing the cuttings I needed. Nothing will destroy those walls; even when the city falls, they will return to their former glory."

"It will fall?" Ekko's expression became puzzled. "How?"

Zilean sighed. It wasn't that he feared talking about it, but the concept seemed wrong, speaking of the past death of a loved home before it occurred. "We are in the past, Ekko. Everything you see, everything you observe, will be gone within months. Chaos, ash, rubble. Not even the superstructure shall remain. I've dreamed it every night for the past thousand years."

"Ah." The information seemed to make the boy pause. He kept glancing out the window, and back at the un-aging sorcerer. "So … how did we get here again?"

A clear voice boomed from the entrance. "That would be me, young inventor." Another copy of Zilean stood in the doorway. "Zilean-Prime, at your service. I take you are Zilean, the original?" The latter comment directed itself towards the sorcerer.

"Correct," he responded. "But perhaps we should refer to ourselves by order terms? It would reduce confusion for young Ekko here."

"Of course," Prime responded, "My apologies, I should have thought of that." For a moment, he appeared to muse, "Odd, I have no memory of needing to say that. We are on the right track. At any rate, shall we begin?"

"Inevitably." Zilean stood once more, his chair disintegrating into dust as he rose. "Ekko? Would you like to join me?"

The young Zaunian shrugged. "Not like I have anything better to do. Can't go home until you take me, right?"

"That would be best," Prime agreed. "Excessive tampering with the localized ephemeral structure would be …disastrous at this stage."

Ekko blinked. "You talk like he does," he pointed an accusing finger at Zilean. "Too many words, not enough sense."

"He means," a new voice cut in, "that if you use your device, you could cause turmoil in the timestream you need to get home."

Zilean beamed happily, "Narcissa!"

A light-skinned woman with high cheekbones entered, smiling at him. "Zil, good to see you dear. Have you been eating well? Remembering to go to bed at night?" She turned her smile on Ekko, "My husband is one of the most forgetful men you'll ever meet. Why, one night I found him chewing on a stale loaf of bread, because he'd forgotten he'd just been to the baker!"

Ekko laughed half-heartedly. When he had a chance, he sneaked over to Zilean, "I didn't know you were married?"

"Oh yes," Zilean couldn't stop staring at the woman who was his wife, but in another time. Emotion surged in his chest once more, affection, care. And finally capable of being addressed to its unrequited source. Perhaps in a few moments. "The love of my life. An anchor that kept me sane in my times of doubt."

"Be off with you," Narcissa swatted at Zilean's shoulder. "The others are waiting. I just hope the Board doesn't find out about this pseudo-paradox, they'd flip their collective lids!"

Prime scoffed. "Wouldn't take much. But she is right, leave us go."

The next room held a long table, lined with chairs. To no one – except possibly Ekko's – surprise, each chair held a copy of Zilean. Some were taller, wearing clothing utterly alien to his eyes while others appeared to be almost transparent. All were eagerly speaking with each other, forming loose groups even without moving from the table. All turned their attention to Prime and Zilean with greater or lesser interest, but inevitably with a knowing look.

Prime strode to the head of the table, and bowed. "I would like to thank me for coming. Alpha, developer of the summoning protocol, has worked tirelessly for fifteen cycles to ensure we all were capable of being here. I created the system that we will be using. Each of you will be given a part to play, and fully realize. It is time to bring Urtistan home!"

The table erupted in cheers, a strange sight for the sanest of men. Ekko flinched backwards as an aged Zilean started dancing on his chair, the copies on either side clapping, cheering him onward. "Are they all crazy?"

"No," a tired voice next to him answered. "They are celebrating. A lifetime, even an immortal's lifetime, becomes weary after an existence of regret.

He looked at the oldest-looking Zilean he'd ever seen. The old man confirmed his unspoken question, "Yes, I'm Zilean from a timeline that never regained Urtistan. My home. But, we will recombine our timelines, so that I will be able to see it once more before I die. If I can."

"Attention!" Prime bellowed. "To work!"

Ekko ducked out of the way as chairs flew across the room. Figures darted past, accelerating at inhuman speeds, some literally flying across the hall to vanish through walls and doorways. "That … is freaky. How are they doing that?"

"Time travel." Narcissa said calmly from underneath the table. "Fortunately, Zil often forgets he can go through anything, so hiding under the table is a good place to be when this sort of thing happens."

Ekko gave her a wide-eyed expression. "This happens … often?" the squeak in his voice could be pardoned for the stress he was under.

"Not quite this large a gathering," she corrected. After a pause while she clambered out, "There have been times when a half-dozen or so of my husband has needed extra assistance. The calculations involved," she shuddered, "Trust me when I say I would rather work them all by hand in the desert than repeat them with a dozen men like my husband. One is enough!"

"Well said!" Prime came floating back into the room. "But we've completed our task now. Are we ready?"

Ekko gaped at him. "But you just started, how could – oh. Time travel?"

"You get used to it," Narcissa tapped his shoulder comfortingly before addressing Prime. "I assume you will be doing a memory wipe on the alternate Zileans?"

Prime frowned. "I wish it were not necessary, but if they remember where they've been, they could throw off our calculations by a few hundred Piltovens."

"Wait, Piltovens?" Ekko's cry caught Prime's attention.

"Yes, a Piltoven is roughly one tenth of a Zaunitican, which in turn is approximately five Hexatams." Prime explained, then shook himself. "Where was I? Oh, yes. He will not remember, but he will know when it is possible to return home. Within a few years of Zilean's time, in fact. Perhaps," he gave Ekko an evaluating glance, "Perhaps you would be interested in an apprenticeship, once Urtistan has been returned to its proper place in time?"

"No time for that now!" Zilean flew into the room, "We must leave! The Convergence will initiate within fifteen picoseconds!"

Prime nodded firmly. "Very good. And Young Ekko," he gave the inventor a formal bow, "Please do think on my offer."

"And keep an eye on my Zil," Narcissa added. "He will forget to take a shower if he finds something new."

"Um," Ekko blinked, "I'll … see what I can do."

Zilean snapped his fingers, "Then here we go! Easier this time, no need for a permanent shield matrix!"

"Wait, what?" Ekko fell to his knees as the bubble once again encased himself and the ageless time-sorcerer. Just as the room began to fade, he glanced at the clock hanging on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. The time read exactly the same as it had when they'd arrived. Each hand, stationary at its point, just one second before three o'clock. As the world disappeared, he saw the second hand begin to quiver, preparing to make the quantum leap from one point in time to another.

"Hey Zil, how long have we been here?"

Zilean didn't look away from his wife, waving at him. "Not long enough my friend. Not nearly long enough."

3:00:00

Ekko stumbled, darting across the ground, avoiding being crushed by a falling tree. The massive plant froze in midair, then floated back to its original place, as if it had never collapsed. He spun in place, looking around, and found Zilean walking around the behemoth.

The inventor blinked at the tree, then down at himself, then back at the tree. "Did you just … where are we?"

Zilean looked around. "Hmm, I would say in the Brecilian Forest, approximately thirty miles from Piltover." A confused look entered his eyes. "I … am sorry. Why am I here? Were we meeting for something?"

Ekko looked at his timepiece, just to confirm. His innate sense of time, honed over a young lifetime of stretching each second to its utmost had trained him well, but the sheer impossibility of what had just happened challenged even his jaded mind. Two seconds had passed.

Two.

Seconds.

"Hey, Zil," the old sorcerer's attention snapped to his face at the name. "Why don't I see you home, okay? Maybe we can talk about one of my ideas on the way?"

Zilean paused, then smiled. "That … would be good. Thank you young man." He studied the youthful man a little more carefully, "You know, I think Narcissa would have liked you. Have I ever told you about my wife?"

Ekko grinned. "Nope. But I get the feeling I'll know about her soon enough."

A wistful smile crossed Zilean's face. "I hope so, I truly hope so."

A/N:

Felt the urge to write League again, and came up with this monster of a piece in two sittings. The concept of time travel isn't new, but kinda hard to get across ... always fascinating to me though. Hopefully, it stretched your imagination as much as it did mine!

C'ya down the lane