Intermission I: Concerning a Knight and a Seer's Time Shenanigans

Chapter Twenty-Three: Temporal Rollercoaster

"Take us back," I demanded. "Take us back right now."

Anna blinked at me, taking another sip out of her flask. "Say pleeease," she grinned.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me… "Okay, fine. Please take us back."

Anna pretended to think about it for a moment. Then, "Yeah, no. Can't do it! So, uh, how's the-" Anna gave a choked cry as she was suddenly cut off midsentence, grasping at her throat. Her mouth opened and clothes as she tried to speak, but something was obviously stopping her.

Mr. White Scales advanced on Anna, his dark metal sword bared. He was clearly choking her with his Vis. "No one takess me againsst my will. No one."

"Dude, White Scales, calm your tits!" I exclaimed, breaking Mr. White Scales's grip on Anna with my own Vis.

"My name iss Xolotl!" White Scales shouted, pointing his sword at me, now. "I am the Firsst Warrior of Aztlán, grandsson of He Who Sees All, and I demand to-"

"By the Great Sky Flame, will you jusst shut your mouth?" Glimmering Scales grumbled. "If the Female brought uss here, she iss the only one who can bring uss back. And she cannot do that if she iss dead!"

Anna picked herself up off the ground, still clutching at her throat, her smile long gone. She pointed an accusing finger at White Scales. "You…you try anythin' like that againsies, and I'll send you into time-out! You hear me? Time-out! And I'm a fuckin' Hero of Time, bitchez, so you really don't wanna know what my version of time-out is!"

Xolotl still looked like he wanted to take Anna's head off, but he relented, thankfully, and sheathed his sword. "Very well, I will absstain from adding your sscalp to my collection…for now."

The four of us settled into kind of an awkward silence, so I decided to step up to bat and be the one to break it. "So, uh… Three hundred years in the past. You, uh…you mind telling us what gives?"

"Like Gwen, I've become a bit of a history buff, concerning the past of this incipisphere. 'Course, while Gwen's read all about it, I've fuckin' lived it," Anna murmured, brushing past me. We'd appeared at the top of one of the tall hills of the Golden Grasses, and Anna was walking down the hillside into the valley below. We had no choice but to follow her. She started to speak, but then hesitated for a moment.

I was losing my patience really fast. "What is it?"

"I don't wanna be a bitch, but…can you guys, like…hang back a bit?" the Bitch asked the two consorts, who both gave her murderous glares. Anna was completely unfazed, however. "Give us a lil' privacy, maybe? Jus' for a minute, so I can explain shit?"

After a good deal of coaxing on my part, Scales and Xolotl tentatively agreed to hang back out of earshot, though they both threatened to shatter the bones of Anna's limbs at the first sign of trouble. I don't think they quite understood who she was—I may dislike her, but I had nothing to fear from her.

When we were finally alone, Anna started to help me understand jack shit. She took a deep breath, trying to focus a good amount of her willpower into conveying her thoughts. "Okay, so first thing you need to understand is that I didn' choose to bring you an' your friendz here. I had to. There's gonna be a lotta important shit goin' down on your planet, but none of that shit will happen unless we do some fuckin' time travel shenanguns. The important dude right now is your friend Mr. White Scales, over there."

"I wouldn't call him a friend," I corrected her. "Tried to have me killed before you stumbled in… But you still haven't answered my question. Why the fuck have you brought us back here?"

I noticed that Anna had been getting more and more tense, constantly clenching and unclenching her fists, her breathing getting faster and faster. She looked at me and, for once in her life, she looked completely serious.

"Anna, you feeling okay?"

"I'm sorry," she said to me. "I really wanna help you out, but I can't. I really wanna explain shit to you…but I can't. Not now. If you know too much about the future, you start second-guessing yourself, and then doomed timelines start happening…"

I was barely even paying attention to what she was saying. She wasn't quite hyperventilating, but she was still breathing really fast… Her skin had gone ghostly pale, and I could see her sweating. Yeah, I hated her guts, but… I mean, I couldn't help but be concerned. "Okay, seriously… What's with you?"

Anna took a deep breath and blinked, trying to calm herself down. She then looked at me one last time. "I'm about to get shot in the head."

"Wha-?"

I felt the splatter of her blood all over my face before the sound of the rifle shot even registered in my brain. Energy rifles made different noises than the ones we're used to… It's kinda hard to describe. It's like a cross between a gunshot and a hissing snake. I think the closest thing I can compare it to is the sound a Halo 3 beam rifle makes. But describing the sound of the rifle shot wasn't exactly the first thing on my mind.

What was on my mind was the back of Anna's head getting blown out, and the…the…stuff getting splattered across my face. All I could do was blink. Anna's head flopped back and her body hit the ground. She lay there on the ground, completely motionless. Staring. I couldn't get that stare out of my head. Dead, unblinking cyan eyes…

How had I never noticed that she had cyan eyes? I thought they'd been brown… Maybe I wasn't the only one who'd worn colored contacts on a regular basis.

I could hear Scales and Xolotl shouting in the background, as well as the sounds of…other things. Vehicles, footfalls, shouted orders… I just stood there, in a daze. I couldn't stop looking at Anna's body. After a couple minutes, the initial numb shock finally began to wear off. I touched a hand to my face and it came away red.

Then I did the one thing anyone else in my position would have done. I staggered off to the side, fell to my knees, and vomited every single scrap of food that'd been in my stomach. And even after my stomach was empty, I still continued to dry heave. That was…that was just…

I've been dealt my fair share of wounds. I've learned about the deaths of a few of my friends, even though they were able to revive via dream self. I've even had the body of my dead dream self dumped into my bedroom, slit throat and all, blood staining my carpet and everything…

I've never seen someone get half their head blown off right in front of me. I… Just…

We were attacked by underlings first. Imps, ogres, flying basilisks… I could hear Scales and Xolotl tearing them apart, but there must have been too many. Eventually, Scales fell to an ogre's fist, knocked clean out, lying unconscious in the grass. Xolotl was holding up pretty well, until the Dersite commandoes entered the fray and stunned him with their energy weapons.

Wait, Dersite commandoes? What were Dersites doing here?

The underlings had ignored me. I was still in shock, still kneeling in the grass near Anna's corpse, trying with an almost feverish desperation to get her blood off my face and hands. It was all over my shirt, too…but unless I wanted to go shirtless for the rest of my time here, I'd just have to deal with it.

Anna's corpse then began to glow with a bright red light, snapping me back to reality. It started to glow… Not like there was a light over her body—I mean her actual body was glowing. Then it really started to get weird. Her body started to rise into the air, and the red glow began to cycle through every single color in the spectrum, until it looked like Anna was cocooned in a rainbow haze.

The glow grew brighter and brighter until I could no longer look at it without having my eyes tear up. I had to look away. And as I kept looking away, the glow seemed to reach a critical brightness…and then it subsided. The next few things were a bit of a blur for me. Before my eyes could readjust to the sudden absence of bright, multicolored light, I felt someone grab my hand, winced as there was another flash of red light…and then…

Home.

I was back in my bedroom. My bed had been overturned, the mattress ripped to pieces, the stuffing strewn all over the floor. My posters had been torn up, one of my windows was shattered…the underlings had really done a number on the place. There was still a bloodstain on the carpet, where my dream self's dead body had been dumped. The stain continued out into the upstairs hall, and down the stairs…right where it had been prototyped with the eaglesprite. I made my way downstairs, walking slowly like I was in a trance. I wondered if I'd find my iphone—when Cruz had told me what the countdown on the alchemiter meant, I'd dropped it when I ran upstairs to complete the entry process.

No such luck. No matter—I still had the dream version of my iphone, which I could use when I was asleep. Bleh, I don't know why I'm having these random thoughts…maybe I was just glad to be back home, If only for a little-

"Sorry 'bout that."

I turned around to see Anna emerging from the kitchen, tipping the last of whatever was in her flask into her mouth. She stared up at the empty flask opening reproachfully, as if it chose to be empty.

Anna. Alive.

Her head was no longer half blown off. There was absolutely no trace of the wound that had killed her. It was almost as if it had never happened…and I might have even wondered if I'd dreamed the whole thing, if not for the fact that I still had Anna's blood all over my face and shirt.

All I could do was gape. "You…you're…"

"…alive?" Anna prompted me.

"I saw you die!" I exclaimed. "You… I've got your fucking blood all over me! You were dead!"

"Sorry to dispoint—disappoint," she giggled. "I guess I shoulda given you more of a warning."

"Ya think?" I snapped. "You don't think it was worth mentioning that you were gonna get your head blown the fuck off?"

"Oh, that's what you're freakin' out over?" Anna made a face. "Dude, I gave you a warnin' for that shit. Fuckin' told you I was gonna get shot in the head, didn't I? I mean, it's not like it was exactly enjoyable for me, either, you know…"

"You call saying Oh, I'm gonna get shot in the head, a fucking moment before your head gets blown off right in front of me a goddamn warning?" it took all my willpower to keep from exploding. "And barring that, how the goddamn fuck are you fucking alive right now? I have your fucking brain matter all over my shirt if you haven't already fucking noticed!"

I was beet-faced and breathing pretty hard by the time I finished screaming there. Boy, I sure can yell when I'm super-agitated… But I'm reasonably sure you've already figured this out about me, by now. I've already had a few really good rants… But, still, I would recommend cutting me some slack. Brain matter all over me, okay? Fucking brain matter. Fucking… God, I'm just so wound up over this, I can't even think straight…

Whew, okay… Deep breaths… In, and out… In, then out…

Anna's frown melted into another one of her maddeningly smug grins. "That's an even dumber reason to freak out over! I revived because I reached the god tiers; why the fuck else would I go 'round wearin' these crazy Seer robes?"

God tiers. I remember Theo talking about the god tiers… I didn't really understand much about them, beyond the fact that reaching them apparently makes you immortal and gives you crazy awesome clothes. And if you were an alcoholic, reaching the god tiers obviously wouldn't make you any less drunk…

"So you vanish for…how long've we been here, a month? You disappear without a trace for a month, then you show up with no explanation or anything, and you yank me back in time three-hundred years… Where the hell have you been?"

"Yeah, well, time travel's kinda finicky like that," Anna hummed. "It's not exactly easy for a Seer, and I could barely do it before I reached god tier. Even now, I still kinda have trouble with it… TTUI, time-traveling under the influence…" her voice trailed off into a series of unintelligible giggles. "Cops'd have a fuckin' ball with that… You have anythin' to drink, tonight, ma'am? You know how fast you were time-traveling?"

"So…when exactly are we?" I asked. It occurred to me how ridiculous that question sounded. Then it occurred to me how even more ridiculous it was for such a ridiculous-sounding question to actually make perfect sense.

Anna gestured for me to follow her upstairs. I didn't really put up a fuss, or anything; as long as I got some answers, I'd force myself to be patient for a little while. We went upstairs, back into my bedroom. Anna grabbed hold of the ladder Cruz had placed in the center of my room which led up to the roof, but she hesitated when she saw the blood on the floor. "What happened there?" she asked.

"Someone dumped my dead dream self through the window, got blood all over my carpet," I grunted, pulling myself up the ladder after the Bitch. "And as fucked up as that sounds, it's actually one of the more tame things that's happened this past month…"

Anna made a face as we emerged onto my roof. "Your dream self is dead? How'd that happen?"

"Yeah, that's the thing—he's not dead," I muttered. "I mean, my dream self's already almost died twice, but he's still alive and kickin'. So I really don't know what the whole deal is—what the fuck?"

I looked up to the sky and saw that the rainclouds over my house, over the seven gates, had parted, revealing the night sky above. And I could see streaks of fire shooting through the darkness, all of varying size. Some looked like tiny lines of light, while others looked like small jets of flame. It was a meteor shower…but no ordinary meteor shower. They weren't burning up in the atmosphere of my planet, like normal meteors would.

No, these meteors were all flying away from my planet. Away from my planet…towards Skaia. I could barely see the blue-white world in the distance…and it was wreathed in flame. Those meteors were pounding the crap out of it.

"Looks like the Reckoning is in full swing…" Anna remarked. "Didn't mean to take us this far forward… My bad! See what I mean? It's hard for a Seer to use their Aspect like this!"

The Reckoning… I remember Gwen telling me about the Reckoning. Derse was destined to triumph over Prospit in the war that was raging in Skaia. When the Black King defeated the White King on the Battlefield, he would take the White King's scepter and use it to draw the meteors that made up the Veil into Skaia. This would destroy the whole place, thus fulfilling Derse's overall objective in this incipisphere; the destruction of Skaia. Our job as Heroes, it would seem, was to stop the Black King before he fucked things up. And if this was the future…

"You're taking me back," I declared, suddenly overcome by a strong urge to leave. The meteors in the sky were making me anxious. And after the fuckin' apocalypse we all went through to escape Earth… I think I was allowed to feel a little anxious from seeing a fuckton of meteors roaring through the sky. "We left my friend three hundred years in the past, and we're going to get him back."

Much to my surprise, Anna actually gave a nod of agreement. She was going to be helpful, for a change. Imagine that!

"We'll get the red snake guy back," Anna said to me. "But we won't be getting him back from when we left him. I jus', like, wanted to wait for you to calm your tits before I took you back. Figured seein' your house again would calm your ass down. We'll be doin' some serious time traveling, and I can't have you freakin' out!" Anna then reached into a pocket under her shirt and pulled out two silver rings. "Some of Gwen's handiwork," she explained. "Makes the wearer invisible. Dunno how they work, she mentioned somethin' 'bout bendin' light, which makes sense I guess 'cuz she's the Witch of Light, and she's an absolute goddess when it comes to alchemizing-"

Oh my god, just shut the fuck up and take me back!

I didn't actually say this, but every fiber of my being was aching to. I just let Anna ramble for a bit until she held out the rings. When I took one of the rings, Anna slid the other one onto her finger. Her body seemed to shimmer for a second before suddenly vanishing. The invisibility wasn't perfect—I could still see a kind of haze in the air, almost like heat distortion, wherever Anna walked…but the only reason I could see it so easily, I feel, was because I was looking for it. If I wasn't looking for it, I probably wouldn't see it.

Then I put on my own ring, and Anna popped back into view. I gave a grunt of surprise, holding out my hands. I could see them, as well as my body. "Did, uh… Is it working?" I asked.

"Yep!" Anna's grin widened, holding up her hand and wiggling the finger she wore her ring on. "Workin' like a dream! An awesome-sauce, invisible dream. You ready to go?"

"Yes-" I started to snap, but I bit down on the insides of my cheeks and forced myself to give a more calm response. "Yeah, I'm good. Let's go."

"And one more thing," Anna quickly added. "There's a reason I had Gwen make those rings. We're gonna see some fucked up shit, you an' I. But we can't interfere. You're only here to witness shit. If you decide to go an' interfere whenever and wherever you want, you'll create a doomed timeline, and trust me—you do not want to be in a doomed timeline. The only reason I'm bringin' you alongsies is 'cuz there'll come a point in time where you'll actually need to interfere, but only once. I'm callin' it the Push. And you should really be the one to do it."

"Fucked up shit, no interfering except when Skaia says it's okay, something about pushing," I rattled off each thing Anna had said like a shopping list. "Got it. Let's get the fuck outta here…"

I glanced up at the sky as Anna grabbed my hand, getting one last glimpse of the meteor-ridden sky before we vanished into a vortex of Time shit.