Another week has passed us by. I hope everything is going well for you guys.
Relina16: Thank you for reading! I'm glad you're enjoying my plot-thread spaghetti extravaganza. I'm probably not going to have Wulf show up soon, because a lot of my plot is involved with going from place to place in the Ghost Zone, and Wulf, with his portal-making ability would break that.
Thornrose270: Yay! I wasn't the only one who thought that was funny. I wonder, sometimes. :)
Rhonin Magus: Yeah, I can see that. That would have been interesting, actually. But I was thinking more of Heh/Clockwork's journey into the future when I wrote the title, I guess.
DarkFoxKit: I don't get the reference, I'm afraid. :( You will get more Dan... soon... soooooon... :)
Black Cat: Yeah, he really should have asked.
Thank you for your reviews! They give me life!
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Chapter 184: Between Death and Time
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Heh collapsed as soon as Daniel was through, the portal flickering out as he did so. He closed his eyes, and ran mental fingers over the fabric of time, smoothing it.
The merest whisper of air signified the entrance of his fellow Anunnaki.
"Is it done?" asked Nebet-Het.
Heh nodded and rose from the ground. "It is." He held his staff with both hands. He was tired, on the edge of exhaustion, but he wanted to do this next part now, rather than later. He couldn't put Nisaba off, anyway. "Time out."
The air went blue and still. It took concentration, and power, but at last, he was done with this, too. He looked at his hands. His robes. His body. This was what Daniel had seen. The paradox was resolved. His past self might have ignored one message from a distant and uncertain future. He had not ignored a second from a much closer one.
"Time in," he intoned.
Nebet-Het blinked. "Did you... Did you change your hair? Or something?"
"What are you talking about?" asked Zaqar. "He has always looked like this."
Heh chose to ignore them both, for the moment. "It is up to you, now, Nisaba." He glanced at where Daniel had last stood. In the last seconds, a white tree had sprouted there, unfurling delicate, ice-colored leaves. A tree, just like Daniel had said.
Nisaba nodded, then smiled, just a little bit, and shifted her grip on her jug. "This may be... uncomfortable."
"Give it to me."
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The ship shook. The moaning of the timbers was matched only by the moaning of the passengers. Actually, the ability of the passengers to match the moaning was pretty impressive, as, in Ghost Zone fashion, the timbers had eyes and mouths, and were truly moaning.
Sam wasn't sure how she felt about that, but the crew was insistent that neither they nor the ship as a whole were sentient, so...
Something outside rumbled. Another good, strong moan started up.
Sam sighed. She hadn't ever been caught in a storm quite like this one before, but she'd learned that sometimes she just had to take things as they came. Drool and all.
Wait, no. She didn't have to take the drool.
She glared at Tucker, who had somehow managed to fall asleep between her and Jazz. He was lucky that she was being very nice and that she wasn't going to wake him up and make him take his drool away.
A deep breath. She held it. He'd been having just as hard a time as she'd been, plus all the stuff with the Egyptians. Exhale. Remember, she was working on being more considerate. Right.
She had to admit, she itched to be angry at someone. To yell, to shout, to belittle. Some of her classmates really needed it, after the Tower, and everything else. But it wouldn't do any good, at the moment.
The ship tipped all the way to one side. Sam almost wished she could sleep like Tucker.
She searched in her bag for something to do, and her fingers brushed her camera. That wasn't a bad idea, actually.
"Hey," she said to Jazz, holding up the camera. "Want to see what Danny's doing?"
"Sure," said Jazz. "I forgot you could do that, honestly."
Sam tried a laugh. "Me too. It is kind of new."
Jazz nodded, her smile a little tight. "Yeah. You think Danny's gotten to Mattingly yet?"
"He has to have," said Sam. "Everyone who went is fast."
"I just- I don't want to catch him during surgery."
That... Was a good point. But... "We don't have to look closely."
"Yeah," said Jazz.
"If you don't want to, we won't have to. I could try and take a picture of somewhere else. Home, if I can even reach out of the Ghost Zone. Or Danny's lair. Or Ellie. Maybe I could even get your parents." Sam just wanted to do something.
"Maybe..." started Jazz, "maybe Danny first, and then we'll try the rest."
Jazz glanced into the room, and Sam abruptly became aware that everyone else in the hold was focused on her.
"Hey," said Elliot. "Do you think you really can look in on Amity Park?"
"I- Maybe. Just, let me check in on Danny first." She raised the camera to her face, and she quickly snapped a picture, mentally focusing on Danny.
The picture popped out, a black square with a white border. Everyone watched silently as the photo began to develop, the timbers wailing mournfully in the background.
Sam frowned at it. "What is he doing?" she asked.
"What's he wearing?" asked Dash, who had somehow craned himself over Sam to look at the picture.
"It looks like stars..." started Jazz. "But- Argh! What's happening?" Jazz's patience had apparently reached its limits. "He was supposed to go to Mattingly! Where's Pandora and Ellie? They should be with him!"
Well, now that the picture had cleared a little more, it looked like Danny was falling into or out of a portal while wearing a star-spangled cloak and carrying a rather ornate box. Which was par for the course, when it came to Danny. He would wind up getting separated from Pandora, Ellie, Iceclaw, and the Elysians. He would wind up on some chaotic and probably painful adventure. The universe seemed to hate letting him have peace, and Sam had a strong desire to sock the universe right in the face.
"Take another picture," ordered Valerie.
Sam glared. "I was going to," she said, raising the camera.
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Issitoq passed pieces of glass to his immediate subordinates. It had been foresightful, to save it, even though the power it had once contained had been consumed.
Because that was just it. Once, it had contained Clockwork's power. It was resistant to it. It was imbued with it. It would protect a ghost holding a piece of it just like one of Clockwork's medallions. Better, even. Clockwork had never put quite so much power into those toys.
With these in their hands- or, more accurately, tied in place around wrists or secured in pockets- Clockwork's infernally devious lair wouldn't touch them, nor would the traitor's powers.
The monster outside was another story, but it could be distracted. All the lower Observants would see to that. It was, perhaps, cruel to use them in such a way, but more than the Observants' powers were at stake. The Realms were already being shaken by Clockwork's madness, and it would not be long before the mortal realms felt the same. It had to be stopped. Clockwork had to be put back in his place, firmly beneath the Observants.
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Danny felt the moment he came back out into normal (for certain definitions of the word) space. He didn't see it. Less than a minute into the journey through the portal, he had wrapped the cloak protectively around himself and curled into a ball around the nucleus of the box.
By the end he had, sadly, been jostled out of that protective little ball. The cloak was dislodged, and he was in a much less comfortable position. Still, he fell out of the portal with only a few bruises, and none of them particularly bad.
On the other hand, he had, apparently, been deposited in the middle of World War Three. Which was less than ideal.
He got a shield up just in time to deflect something made of death and age and the slow alteration of ideas to their antithesis. Something that might have been the slow deterioration and betrayal of the physical form bounced off the shield from the other direction, followed by mortal illness, and the trickle that wears down the tall mountain. Near-black ectoplasm whirled around him in snaky clouds, licking at his protective bubble.
Was that lightning?
Couldn't Clockwork have set him down somewhere nice? Like back in Mattingly?
Unless this was Mattingly, in which case: What the absolute heck?
Fate jostled him, sending him spinning in a new direction, and then the end of all things, even change made its terrible appearance as a storm of dissolution. And so change shall change and change and change again made a riposte. Danny was coming to realize this was a battle, and the combatants were beginning to make themselves clear.
They also so happened to be familiar. Which led to the questions: What the absolute heck? Why were Clockwork and Nephthys fighting? They were two people who, above anyone else, should not be fighting each other, and for just this reason. But if they weren't fighting each other, then they were fighting something or someone really bad. Danny could feel the reality warping and crisping, bubbling like plastic or film held to a flame. This needed to stop.
Then it did.
Abruptly, and without warning, the ectoplasmic clouds stilled and began to thin. The air grew quiet and calm. No more dread concepts came whirling at Danny from the dark. The power began to fade from the air. Danny's heart stopped trying to beat its way out of his chest.
He used the reprieve to go ghost and strengthen his shield. He didn't know if this was the calm before the storm.
"Grandfather?" the word warped strangely in the gloom, the slight ghostly echo in his voice magnified. "Aunt Nephthys."
"Daniel?"
Danny recognized Clockwork's voice, but he sounded... Off. Scared.
The clouds billowed again, but only to rush away. The dark pulled back like a curtain, the ectoplasm resumed its customary dull glow, and the two worked together to reveal a vast and nearly uninhabited void.
To the left floated Nephthys. Her veil was torn, her robes tattered and grayed with decay. One of her sleeves was missing. A wind picked at her veil, and as it fluttered over her blue-gray skin Danny saw the impressions and outlines of bare bones. Her right hand held a long scythe, her left a short one. She bled green from tiny cuts and abrasions, and her eyes burned like green stars, pulsing and dying and being reborn. The patterns of her clothes changed as Danny watched. Her skin swirled, one-hundred-thousand colors, but still blue. Still gray. He looked away.
Across from her, still half-lost to shadow, was Clockwork. He looked just as bad, if not worse. His hood had been knocked back, and his hair was wild, hanging from his head in snarls and ragged sweeps. A long cut ran up one side of his cloak, and into the robes underneath. The hole leaked green sand. One of his hands was pressed to the glass door of his clock, with cracks running out from beneath his splayed fingers. His other held his staff, but the staff was wrong. The face of the clock set on it had too many hands. Too many numbers. Too many dimensions. It branched and twisted like the tree in his garden, and leaked time in tortured arcs, each severed second a suffering eternity. Clockwork's eyes whirled a thousand colors of red, and his body, rather than switching between ages as it normally did, was arrested, ageless, on the precipice of infinity.
"Daniel?" called Clockwork again. His voice wavered, weakly, but carried more clearly than before, without the clouds to dampen it.
There was no one else around. No one that Danny could see, anyway. He flew to Clockwork, and Clockwork met him halfway. The surface of Danny's shield dissolved as soon as Clockwork touched it, and the older ghost pulled the younger into a tight hug.
Danny hugged Clockwork back, relief warring with worry in his mind. This was Clockwork, his Clockwork, finally. He was back in his own time, back when he was supposed to be. He wanted to melt into Clockwork and let him take care of everything. He wanted to sleep for a year and process everything that had happened to him. He wanted to ask about his friends and family. He wanted to know if Clockwork and Nephthys had really voted him king.
But first-
"What happened to you?" Danny's question was muffled against Clockwork's shoulder, but he was sure Clockwork could hear it.
"I thought I had lost you," said Clockwork, holding Danny tighter.
Was he crying? Danny certainly was. Actually, Danny was sobbing.
"But, you sent me back here, didn't you kn-?" Danny broke off, as he realized Clockwork didn't. Back then, he had been planning on getting Nisaba- later called Mnemosyne- to edit his memories.
Clockwork pulled away, horror writ across his face. "No," he whispered. "No. I did not. I didn't- Daniel," he put a hand on the side of Danny's face, "please, tell me I didn't know of this. Tell me I didn't almost- that I didn't... just to free myself..." A tear that sparkled with sand crept down his cheek.
Danny didn't understand what Clockwork was asking, exactly, but he knew Clockwork was hurt, and he was begging Danny for this. "You didn't," he said. "It's okay. Really."
Clockwork wrapped himself around Danny once more. Danny wiggled.
"You're hurt," he said.
"It is nothing."
"It really isn't," said Nephthys. "We should go back to Long Now. I don't want to leave Dan unattended for longer than I have to."
Danny twisted to face her. "You caught Dan?" That would be a relief almost worth having to fight Inanna.
"In a manner of speaking, yes," said Nephthys. "In the manner you speak of, no." She reached up and pulled off her veil. Her skin had stopped moving, and her small scythe was back on her belt. The long one was nowhere to be seen. "I've put him to work fighting those ultimately responsible for every death he caused. But they won't distract him for much longer, and I mean to have him a changed man before I put him out into the world."
"What do you mean, 'put him out?'" asked Danny, with only the edge of panic. "You're not letting him go, are you?"
"The branching path has many ends," mumbled Clockwork. "He hasn't held them all off."
The native tongue of the city of Dis did not include the concept of 'foul language.' However, the words that rolled off Nephthys's lips would have been incredibly vulgar translated into anything else.
"I was worried about that," she finished.
"What do you mean?" asked Danny. "What happened here, anyway?"
Nephthys quirked her lips up. "The end of a millennia-long gambit. At long last, we are again without any secret plans. Unless you're holding out on me?"
Danny shook his head.
"The short version is that there was a flaw in Clockwork's contract with the Observants, and we're in the midst of exploiting it, but Clockwork must be well, truly well, before we're home free."
Danny gasped, suddenly understanding. "Their side of the contract is keeping him sane. You really were fighting each other!"
Clockwork murmured an apology into Danny's hair. Nephthys nodded.
"You need me to do something, don't you? Otherwise we'd already be moving. Or going through a portal, or something."
"She'll tell you in a moment," said Clockwork, "but you already know what it is."
"Madness doesn't pass off in a moment," said Nephthys, "and I won't force another change on him so soon. It wouldn't be healthy in the long run. He won't heal, except in Long Now, and if there are Observants there, they will take advantage of that to bind him again. You'll need to chase them off."
"How?" Like Clockwork said, he thought he might already know the answer.
A more genuine smile graced Nephthys's lips this time, and she seemed to relax, apparently reassured that Danny would cooperate. "The Observants aren't exactly bound to follow the king's will. None of the Judges are. But they have duties they owe the Realms, and as the representative of the Realms, you can tell them to get back to them. The Observants have been lax in their judicial responsibilities. I think the last case they tried was Vortex's."
"What do I need to do?" asked Danny.
"First," said Nephthys, "it might help if you wear the crown."
