So, this is the last true chapter. There will be an epilogue, though. Nineteen chapters in total, then I'm finally finished!!

Chapter 18

What Hypocrites We Are!

Aurelias reared on his furry hind legs, and then turned to Lin. "I see him…Luke. And another, a satyr. She has white hair. Strange." He pointed with his white muzzle at the approaching figures that were becoming clearer through the rock dust and ice chips from the explosion of the crater wall.

Lin's eyes widened. "He was way before our parents' time. And he doesn't look like he has aged!" She ran to Aurelias's side, fumbling at the collar.

The silvery chain fell into her hands, and Aurelias began to glow, growing taller and thinner. He towered over Lin, who was on her knees, Catena in her hands. Lin looked up, her mouth open, and a look of fear in her eyes.

She pushed herself up pulling her curved sword out. She held it out in front of her, by the blade. "I thought you might need this, Aurelias."

Aurelias was a pillar of white fire, too bright to look at, and so hot he melted the patches of ice around him. He rose, taller and taller, twenty feet now. "You trust me?"

"You have served us so well, and you haven't killed us yet." She smiled optimistically at him. "I hope you choose the right path."

"So long…" He murmured, his form shrinking down. "So long…I have not been trusted in millennia, and even then, Caecilia never trusted me fully. Very well, good luck with your journey. I'll hold this motley bunch while you use the Root."

He took the proffered sword, and the bright glow softened to a dull whiteness: Aurelias, back in man form, his grey cloak swirling behind him. And I saw that the grey was lightening, growing closer and closer to white.

Lin dragged me to the Root of Time, an arch of clearest ice, like a glass sculpture or something. "We have to go through it, I think. But you realize that if we go through with this, it'll be changing the past? And if we do that, we will change the future, and this, us would have never happened. I might have never met you."

"But we have no other choice, right?" I smiled, "And we have to save the world. It probably won't be as dramatic as Superman, but we have to do it."

"You're right." Lin pursed her lips, and then came to a decision. "I want to go back more than twenty years. To find Luke, and kill him. We need to cut off the snake's head."

So Lin and I walked through the Root of Time, into some otherworld in between place. We were suspended in a blank whiteness, walking on nothing. And all around us, there were open black doors, and the white light couldn't penetrate it.

"This must be where we can enter any time, any where," Lin whispered. She walked along the rows and rows of black rectangles. "Which one are we supposed to go through?"

"I'm not sure," I replied, following. "But in most fantasy books, when the main characters find themselves time traveling by magical means, all they have to do is imagine the scene. Maybe it'll work this time."

Lin blinked. "This isn't a fantasy story, you know, Alexei. This is real life."

I shook my head. "Are you sure? Perhaps we are the day dreams of some higher order, the metaphysical. Maybe we don't even exist. You should at least try it."

"Fine," she snapped, then closed her eyes, bringing her fingers to her temples in concentration. "I'm imagining a scene twenty eight years ago. It is high noon, and the sun is blazing down on a dock in a busy seaside metropolis. There is a cruise ship at the harbor, a white one with a figurehead of a woman in a spotless white chiton.

"But one strange thing about her is that she looks like she is screaming in terror, like the sculptor is some kind of crazy talented axe murderer, because even though the expression isn't what you would expect, it's flawless: pure emotion.

"The cruise ship has hundreds of windows and three decks. I can see the name painted in black on the bow. It has been christened the Princess Andromeda."

As Lin was talking, I closed my eyes and imagined the scene with her. She was very descriptive, and I saw in my mind's eye, the huge cruise ship docked at the harbor.

"The camera zooms in, and we see the top deck of the Princess Andromeda. It looks like a battle has taken place, because the wooden deck is splintered, and the hand rail on the sides is broken. The floor is wet, and a bear-man hybrid is mopping up, being ordered around.

"He is being ordered around by a young man with a scarred face and blond hair, looking like an angry male model. The man is pointing at the damage and screaming. There are several huge piles of sand scattered about, but they are getting smaller because the sea air is blowing it over the sides.

"Another bear man is walking around the deck, using a broom to push the sand piles off. A snake woman comes up, tapping the blond man on the shoulder, and points him toward the inner parts of the cruise ship."

I could just see it, whirling gulls in the hot blue sky, waves lapping at the sides of the ship. I could almost smell the salty air. In fact, I could smell it.

My eyes flew open. There were gulls soaring above, screeching. The deck below me was gently swaying, and a soft breeze was ruffling my hair. Hang on, a deck? Where was I? And as I turned to look around, a bear man janitor saw me. He pointed, and roared, like Aurelias but somehow with more anger and it was loud.

"HEROES ON THE DECK!!" He waved a mop at me, drops of water flying off and spraying me. "ALERT!! ALERT!! ALERT!!"

Someone grabbed my arm, and I almost wet my pants. "Alexei. It's me. We have to get out of here – this is real!"

"We can't, Lin! We have a job to do!" I cried, my feet slipping as I skidded on the wet deck. I could feel the drumming of feet on wood; the monsters were after us.

Lin pulled open a hatch, shoving me into it. She slid in after me, pushing me, goading me to hurry up. "Keep on going! We need a place to hide. I think I have a plan."

I saw an open door, and ran in, slamming and locking the door just after Lin. "We don't have Aurelias, and I can't hold the door for long, are we just going to die here?"

Lin shook her head. "No, you're not going to die."

I gaped at her, following her words. "If I'm not going to die, what's going to happen to you?"

"Self-sacrifice." She smiled, so sadly, looking down. "I don't have a knife, but I kept these-" she pulled four claws out of her pocket "-and they should be pretty sharp. After all, they came from the Rakshasa. As long as I don't crush them by accident, they should work."

"Lin, what are you going to do?" I demanded.

"Something that I never believed in. What a hypocrite I am." She shook her head, smiling. "But with a blaze of glory."

She picked up a claw, sinking it into her wrist. She bit her lip as the blood poured out. "Alexei…this isn't something you should see…just go! There's a balcony out there, and if you jump, you'll be okay. We're next to the docks, so the water's pretty shallow. Please go, Alexei, for me!"

"Will I be stuck here, in this time?" I pulled open the glass doors for the balcony. I pulled myself over the railing, one step at a time. Just like Rose when she was going for suicide in Titanic. Except that Rose was a spoiled little debutante. And I thought with a grin that I wasn't much different. Spoiled as hell, unable to take care of myself. Leaving someone who didn't deserve it to die for me.

"If you can think of exactly the scene of when we left, it may work. After all it was your idea. And you'll be able to get back; nature abhors vacuums, and you're missing from your time." She replied evenly, and then hissed with pain. I could hear her mutter incantations, words that I couldn't understand.

I jumped.

Hit the water with a splash, the water going up my nose. The impact drove all the breath from my lungs, leaving me stunned and helpless. And when I started be oxygen starved, my brain swung slowly into the situation. I began paddling to the wooden docks, fast as I can. Because I knew what would happen.

The Princess Andromeda exploded. It created a huge wave, pushing me to the docks. It was Lin's last gift. Because she probably knew that I wasn't a good swimmer.

Lin. She was dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, and gone. I closed my eyes, trying not to let tears leak out. I couldn't stop them, and so I thought about the crater to try and distract me.

I whispered to myself, drowning all my emotions out.

"Frigid mountaintop, middle of a crater. Standing in front of an ice sculpture: a warped loop, almost like an '8', except twelve feet tall. Standing, then walking, feet crunching in snow.

"It's freezing, and my breath is visible. I hear the roaring of various monsters, and the high pitched snarl of Aurelias. I hear the curved blade slicing through the air. It whistles past an opponent, and the opponent taunts, screaming that Aurelias has missed.

"Then its toothy smile turns to confusion as it is falls into four pieces. Aurelias has decapitated it. I hear all the sounds of battle. All of them, from the groans of pain, to the cries of triumph, crows of joy."

I could feel the cold, hear the sounds, and see the arch.

I saw that Lin's sword was like the Vorpal Blade in Aurelias's more than capable hands. It went snicker-snack, decapitating, whirling through the confusion. Strangely, Lewis Carroll's rhyme came to my mind.

"He took his vorpal sword in hand

Aurelias held his sword, spinning it through his fingers.

One, two! One, two!

He struck and jabbed and parried and thrusted and feinted. All around, monsters were falling to the ground.

And through and through

Shick! His sword slid into a body cleanly, the thin blade striking the heart without even touching a rib.

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

The blade hit the armor of the monsters, bouncing off their helmets with little pings, and when he hit their sternums, there was a dull click.

He left it dead, and with its head

Aurelias cut off the heads, straight through the neck guard.

He went galumphing back."

And when their heads hit their ground, cracking the ice, he set them on fire. His white fire raged up and down the carcasses, and after a few seconds, they were completely gone. No sand piles or anything.

Some of the dead bodies he had accidentally passed over, and he came loping back, a grin of bloodlust on his face. Fire flew from his fingertips, igniting fresh bodies and hastening the destruction of the old.

Soon Aurelias stood in a field of burning white fires. He watched them in silence, until all the fires had flickered down to nothing and disappeared. Then he seemed to come to his senses, twisting around to me.

"She's not here, is she?" He asked.

I shook my head. "Gone."

"What a waste." Then he drifted off, through the gap in the crater.

I noticed that he cradled Lin's sword, like it was something precious, not just a sadly battered piece of metal. Then he was a bear, the sword in his mouth. And then he was gone.

Author's Note: Yeah, I was in this sort of mood. My star is falling, I'm losing my talent, not that I had much in the first place.