Chapter 11

Whatever Word's black gear was doing, it was certainly effective. My gear was straining and giving signs of cutting out completely. I drove more energy into it to bring it back to full power in hopes that would keep it going. That did seem to stabilize the gear, but I couldn't keep this up for long since my gold draconium energy was almost exhausted at this point. I had to act fast.

There was no time to try and get the energy cells out of the locked case and back into the time machine. Plus I feared that the effects of Word's counter-measure would increase if I got any closer to the black gear he was holding. Word seemed to know this as well and had positioned himself between me and the energy cells to block any attempt to get near them.

I had a desperate plan, but would it work?

I jumped down off the ramp to where the technicians had removed the energy cells from the pod. I took a look inside the receptacle that held them. In the back, I could see the red and black draconium contacts where the cells would normally engage. It was a long shot, but this might work.

It was uncanny: of all the possible color combinations of draconium, the time machine worked on red and black. That seemed like more than just a coincidence. In fact, it was downright creepy, and it gave me a bit of a chill just thinking about it. The thing that made it creepy was that, other than gold of course, red and black just happen to be the other two colors of draconium energy that I could generate in large quantities. Thanks to Moordryd, I had absorbed all of the intense red draconium energy from the bonemark of the Furox. And thanks to Word himself, I had also been forced to absorb the energy contained in the concentrated liquid black draconium he had gotten me to drink. The energy contained in those was so strong that they nearly drove me insane, but in both cases, Artha had helped me to regain control before it was too late. As a result, I could now use those energies at will.

That made me the only dragon on the planet who could both power this ancient gear with gold draconium energy and simultaneously be able to generate red and black energy which I could use to power the time machine. As such, I was the only living being, dragon or human, who could be here at this moment and do what had to be done. That was a chilling thought. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

The questions swirled in my head: Could my being here and now be part of the prophecy? Could everything that had happened to me up to now, including the trials of absorbing the bonemark of the Furox and the liquid black draconium, been to prepare me for this moment? Was this then all preordained? Was I walking the path of destiny my entire life? Did this mean I had no free will?

I would have liked to have had a thorough discussion of this topic with a dragon priest right about now, but that wasn't an option. But whether I was a slave to destiny or not, I still wanted to set things right. Perhaps that desire was just a side effect of not having free will, but if this was my destiny and I indeed had no choice in my life, then so be it. At least this was a destiny that had meaning and was worth fighting for. I could take solace in that if nothing else.

Time to get on with it.

It looked like there was enough draconium metal in the time machine that it would hold a charge even without the energy cells in place. I had to hope it would hold enough energy to take me back in time to where I needed to be.

There was only one way to find out.