Chapter 2 - Triangulation

Teredan is mine.

The moment he appeared, I immediately knew he was an enemy. Also, I don't know why, but for some reason (Probably magic. Either that, or a plot convenience invented by the gods.) something clicked in my mind: Time travel. I then realized that it would fix a lot of my problems. (Don't we all?) But I had a more pressing matter to deal with.

"Who?" I asked.

I'm pretty sure that that remark simply made him mad. He drew his sword and slashed it down at the spot I was sitting earlier. Was, because I knew it was coming. I jumped up, and rolled under a table, which I then tilted to slide all of the stuff into a sack at the end. The Frost Beast looked around, confused, for a moment, and spotted me. He brought his sword down onto the table, breaking it in two, and pinned me down by my wing, plunging his sword into it, making a huge tear. I started to panic, and my second perspective came back, seeing me and The Frost Beast fight. Having a second set of senses did not help in this chaos. Unless...

I hissed, and breathed fire at The Frost Beast. My android body picked up a sword and attacked him. The Frost Beast pulled his sword out and whipped around, and collapsed. I decided to pack up and leave, in case he reactivated. I took my stuff and ran away. As I left, I heard, "CODE UPDATE!" I did not look back to see what it was.

When I got a considerable distance away, I dropped down, and my android self was already there. I focused on my third perspective to see if I could bring that back, like my second perspective, but I couldn't. My android self was holding armor and a featureless mask made of silver that almost exactly matched The Frost Beast's mask. I spray-painted the mask red and put it on. I then took the armor from him. It reformed in my hands to fit a dragon my size and shape. I decided to put it in a sack for later. I walked and unconsciously looked around me. A hand grabbed me and pulled me into a cave. I instinctively fought back, but a hand went over my mouth and I passed out.

I woke up to darkness. Someone was cooking over a fire. I smelled the food, and remembered that I had barely eaten anything for a day. I skipped over and looked at the fire. It had a boar roasting on a spit over it.

The person next to it was very handsome. He had black hair, a torn white robe, and a gray halo casting gray light, if that was even possible. He smiled, and that was when I realized he had dark gray wings. A silver staff rested in the corner. It had a strange symbol on the end. This was a fallen angel.

The angel said, "Hello, I'm Teredan. What's your name?"

This was such ordinary language that it caught me off guard.

"Uh, I'm Pyrox," I said.

Teredan wasted no time in getting to the point. "How would you like to join a secret organization?"

"What's it called?" I asked.

"That's secret."

"What's it do?"

"Gets revenge, protects its members, gets rich, yadda yadda yadda."

"I'm in!" I said.

"Good," said Teredan. He gave me a rock with a symbol that exactly matched the one on his staff. He said, "Show this to a member, and you can secure aid, or make payments to the organization when you deem it appropriate. If you need to refer to it, call us the Habeas Support."

Having said this, Teredan disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving the perfectly cooked boar for me to eat. I shrugged and ate the whole thing. I then thought about time travel.

Time travel! What a novel idea! I could destroy The Frost Beast before he came to destroy me. I could check out how my brothers are doing! I could...

Save my parents.

I vowed to get my revenge on that gold dragon. I made up my mind to make an object that could project me through time.

But first I needed to fix my wing. I decided if things were going to keep going this way, I was going to have a completely robotic body soon, so I decided to do it early. I opened the book on machine building to see if it could help me. It mostly had simple circuitry, fancy clockwork, and large steam machines, but when I got near the end, I saw, in much more messy writing:

Part 2: Advanced Robotics

By Alcoriin

Hmm, that's very...convenient, I thought. Oh, well...

I flipped through this part - its content was packed together much more than the first part, and it had messy notes written all over it - and found a section labeled "Working Prosthetics."

I looked through it. It included a diagram of bones, muscles, and nerves in several kinds of creatures, how to mimic them, and connect up to existing ones. It showed how to build motors, keep a prosthetic lightweight, and have it run on bodily power. There were some gruesome pictures in there I would not like to see again, but it had the information I needed.

I took a very, very, very strong numbing drug and injected it into my wing joint, cut it off (Have you ever tried repairing a wing?), and replaced it with a robotic bronze one I built while referencing the book, and did the same thing to my other wing (so my two sides would be even, you can't fly with an uneven body), and by the time I was finished, it was night. I went to sleep in the cave.

When I woke up, I saw that someone had left an anvil and forge in the cave. Well, that's convenient, I thought. I walked over there -

and was called by name from the back of the cave by a robotic voice. Oh boy...

I grabbed the armor I had gotten and donned it. As I dropped it on my head, it squirmed on, and it seemed to fit me perfectly and was very flexible. This is made of mithral. I faced my opponent, The Frost Beast again, and grabbed a sword from my sack. "So," I said. "What have you done lately, Frost Beast?"

He replied, "It's THE Frost Beast, with a capital T. Primus said so. Do not question Primus."

"Okaaay, how do, or rather did, you do?"

"I got a code update. Now shut up and die."

My android self ran to me. The Frost Beast lunged at me. I didn't panic. I kept myself cool and collected, and so I didn't get my second set of senses to confuse me. Instead, I blocked the blow, slashed him, and teleported my two mes out of there.

A crackling portal greeted me. I decided to forge a magic weapon. I referenced my books, which said that an exotic material is needed to craft one. I then found out that my android self, through which was my second perspective, had snagged one of Teredan's feathers, which had fallen off.

That's convenient, I thought. A bit too convenient. But whatever.

I took the feather and put it on a table. I pulled out some silver and forged it and the feather in lava into a blade that looked wicked enough for revenge, a dark gray, unevenly toothed cleaver that burst into flames on my mental command.

I read a book of lore, and learned of an artifact called "The Gem of Space and Time."

Apparently, it is a very well-known artifact in a location that everyone knows about. The book, though, said that only idiots try to obtain it, as the stone has a curious effect on its surroundings. It twists space and time around it in such ways that no person has made it out alive. (Oh, a few people have made it out dead, though - turning into zombies, marching out, and then spasming and coming back to life with no memory of what happened inside - only that they went inside and failed.)

As I finished it, my android self came back. He had been out hunting and brought back food, which I ate. As I ate, I skimmed the rest of the books, looking for anything interesting. A section about Celestial Stones caught my eye, but I had something else on my mind:

Obtain the Gem of Space and Time and harness its power to travel back in time.