…wave of dizziness struck her. She closed her eyes, feeling a strange sense of… otherness… pervade her. Her mind swirled in strange currents, but as quickly as it had come, the dizzy spell faded. Perhaps it was the timeline, calling to her… it had a strange quality to it, associated with it and yet not the same…
She turned to look at the Prince. He looked back at her, but there was something in his eyes… soemthing she hadn't seen before. But as quickly as she thought she'd noticed it, it was gone.
She shook it off. The deception had been hard for her, and she was just projecting her anxiety onto him.
She blinked, and followed him up the winding staircase to the throne room. "I've been thinking, Kaileena," the Prince said, slowly, hesitantly. "There is little for you on this island, and there will be less still once I've stood by your mistress."
He stopped, and she found herself next to him.
"Come with me to Babylon," the Prince said, simply, yet with a quiet sense of urgency. Something in his clear blue eyes looked at her, something so alien and… frightful… that her breath would no longer come to her. "You have a chance to begin a new life, free from the evil of this place!"
Free. Free of this place. For a moment, for one brief, shining moment, she could imagine herself standing by the prow of a ship, glancing back as the forlorn, dark Castle of Time receded into the distance. At first it was to have been her stalwart defense against fate, but it had gradually become her tomb as she had sunk further and further into her dark torment.
But that vision was swept away, just as all the others always were. And all she could see was blood.
"I am sorry, Prince," she whispered, casting her eyes away, "but I cannot take you up on your offer." She continued up the stairs, and walked alone into her throne room, while the Prince watched her.
He followed, as she knew he would. Must. All the threads had been sewn, all the actors were in place, and the time had finally come, as it had all been foretold.
And Kaileena had made her choice. A choice she should have made a long time ago. A choice that the Prince himself, of all people, had helped her make.
He entered the room… and walked straight toward the empty throne.
What? He did not seem at all confused or surprised! She hurried after him, as he approached the throne…
…and picked up her swords!
She stopped, shocked. So he had known, all along! She had thought him completely deceived, yet it had been she who had been played the fool!
He turned to face her. "It doesn't have to end this way!" he exclaimed, flinging the blades to the side. "Come with me… into the present. My present."
The terrible Empress, freed from the deception, sneered at the Prince. "So you can kill me in your own time, instead of mine?" She gestured with her hands, and her blades flew through the air towards her. Easily, deftly, she snatched them out of the air. "I am sorry, Prince, but only one of us can cheat fate today!"
He jumped onto her throne as she charged up the dais toward him. Pulling out his sword, he struck the wall hard, and it exploded in a cloud of dust, to reveal the secret passage to the portal.
Dumbstruck, she stopped. How had he known? Even Shahdee had not known about that!
He leapt through the opening, and Kaileena followed, swords flashing.
He deftly blocked her swing, then audaciously and unexpected moved even closer to her, grabbing her upper arms.
"Kaileena… Empress…" he pleaded, staring straight into her eyes. "Listen!"
He was trying to confuse her; he was too clever by half, she must not lose her resolve now! "No!" she screamed, trying to writhe out of his grasp. "You listen! The Timeline has said you will kill me, but I will change the Timeline!" Why was she wasting her breath justifying herself to him?! She was the Empress… she answered to no one, most of all not to him! She made to slash with her blades, but the Prince shoved her hard, sending her stumbling back into the half wall.
He was headed toward the portal! She chased after him, sweeping forward with her blades. She must end this now, and end the torment! It had taken her so long to build up her courage to face him directly… she could not throw her newfound willpower away! She had to stop him now, and thus forever be safe from her fate!
And then suddenly, he wasn't there! She felt a swift, hard pressure on her shoulder, and then suddenly felt his presence… behind her! But how?
Before she could even glance back, she felt him shove her forward, hard. Her eyes widened in shock, but it was too late… she fell into the misty clouds of the portal.
She collapsed on the stones near the portal, then looked around in sudden confusion. Everything was in ruins… she had been tricked into the Prince's time!
Her skin crawling, she glanced back at the glowing portal, expecting to see the Prince already there, ready to deal the final blow. But he was nowhere to be found. Perhaps the portal had granted her a few moments head start.
She had to escape, now! This world, this time, was not her own… her head echoed painfully from the strange currents in play here. Where could she go? Where? Re-entering the portal was not an option, not with the Prince potentially waiting for her on the other end. Nothing was familiar… the passageway she raced down that should have led to her throne room had collapsed, and another led off in an unexpected direction.
She hurried down the unfamiliar passageways, then stopped and cursed. Blind, crushing, debilitating panic had scattered her mind and sent her haring off. She should have ambushed the Prince as he emerged helpless from the portal!
Indecisive, she stopped, then started to go back. But she heard footsteps behind her, and her fragile resolve fled before them.
The terrors of a thousand years raced after her as she fled through the ruined corridors. But no matter how hard she tried, how fast she ran, she could not outrace those dark shadows nipping at her heels.
Exhausted now, she stopped in the middle of a large platform, open to the gray skies above. The panic within her had been drained by the sprint, to be replaced by anger. How quickly she had forgotten her resolve, her decision to confront the fate looming ahead of her. As she'd done her whole life, she'd attempted to hide, to hide behind the walls of the Castle, behind the traps and denizens that populated it.
No more, she raged at herself, trying to keep herself from trembling.
Controlled now, she watched icily as the Prince emerged from a shadowy hallway to leap onto the huge platform.
"I know what you've seen," he gasped, approaching her warily, "what you think you've seen in the Timeline."
At least I winded him, she thought grimly. "Then you know I have no choice!" she spat, raising her swords up. Why was she still trying to justify herself to him? Her anger rose, at herself this time. Thinking she had things under control, she had let her guard down, and become vulnerable.
"There is always a choice, Kaileena!" he said.
"Then I choose to live. And for you, to die!"
"Don't you see?! We can change our fate!"
"This isn't what happened the first time we fought."
She stopped at that. "The first time?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you! If you'd just let me explain!"
Something was not right… she had felt that ever since he had pushed her through the portal and into his world. But she could not read the Timeline here… everything was alien. She shook her head, casting those thoughts away. "No more words, Prince!" she snarled, angry at herself for letting him confuse her, distract her. "If you've only things to say and nothing to show then let us finish this!"
Kaileena looked down at the Prince as he dangled precariously from the edge of the tableau.
"Goodbye, my Prince," she said coldly, raising her blade up to cut his fingers off and send him plummeting into the waters far, far below. "I shall remember you always."
"No, wait!" he said. "Give me at least this last request… your ears one last time!"
She chuckled mirthlessly. "I am not a fool, Prince. Unlike you, I shall not rescue my nemesis from certain doom!"
She swung, the prospect of freedom at last driving her blade hard…
…into the stones, causing her arm to ring painfully at the unexpected resistance.
Off balance, she blinked, backing up slightly. He had somehow managed to let go, then find another handhold before gravity could claim him!
"Listen to me, please!" he yelled. "I do not want to kill you!"
"How very generous of you," she said sarcastically, "but I don't believe you are in much of a position to kill anyone, much less me, right now." Her swords flashed out again to lop off his hand.
And again, his hand somehow managed to move out of the way! Impossible!
"But even if you were being sincere, and truly wished me no ill-will," she continued, warily looking at him, probing for some weakness, "Fate and the Timeline would conspire to have you kill me."
"No, Kaileena… Fate is not that implacable a foe! You can change your fate!"
"At least we are in agreement there, my Prince," she replied, calling forth a whirlwind of burning sand and sending it scouring along the edge.
Trembling, she sank to her knees, the strain of maintaining the spell draining what little energy she had remaining to her. But she was so close to freedom… she had to be sure he was dead!
She clenched her teeth, closing her eyes tightly, trying to will herself to continue. After centuries of waiting, what is one second more? she asked herself, trying to maintain focus.
But eventually she lost her hold, and the magic departed. Gasping, she opened her eyes, then was forced to blink and shield her eyes as the still-swirling sands blew back over her as they departed.
And when they were gone, so too were those pesky hands from the edge.
She blinked, in confused disbelief. Throughout the long centuries, the Timeline had never been wrong. Never. This wasn't supposed to be… she wasn't supposed to survive the Prince!
Scrambling on hands and knees, her blades clanging loudly over the stones, she approached the spot where last she'd seen the Prince, and peered over the edge.
There was nothing but the barren, steep wall of rock below her, leading down to the foaming, crashing waves far, far below.
It was impossible… but the eternal, fatalistic pessimist in her could no longer deny what her eyes saw. She had done it. Her millennia-old nightmare was over… and she had survived. The Timeline had been wrong.
A great burden, so much a part of her that she hadn't even recognized it was there, leapt from her heart, its heavy, cloying wings disappearing from around her, its suffocating blanket flung away. Tears flowed, miraculous water flowing from the desert. She shook as sobs wracked her, as the tears that had failed to come to her throughout all the centuries, all the dark, lonely nights, sprang forth at once.
Covering her mouth with her hands, the cold metal of the hilts of her swords pressing against her cheeks, she blinked through the tears, to look up at the blurry, distorted sun shining dimly through the gray clouds above. Has it always been this beautiful?
She closed her eyes again, and let the painful, beautiful tears run their course.
The sobs disappeared, her eyes dried, and she rose slowly to her feet. The breeze from the ocean flowed through her hair, fluttering her dress gently. She felt as if she was as light as a feather, that the next gentle gust might lift her off the ground, to float gently up into the clouds and into blue skies above them.
She looked down again, down to the crashing waves below, and found herself thinking about the Prince. He, too, had been fighting his fate. Mercilessly hunted by the Dahaka, he had made it all the way here, struggled through so much, only to have it end here.
"Farewell, My Prince," she said softly, to the gray water below. "I never did thank you for saving my life, so long ago now it seems. And I am truly sorry things had to end the way they did, but I had no other choice. If only you hadn't been so stubborn, and had heeded my words and fled when I'd warned you to…"
She gasped as she was suddenly grabbed from behind, a strong arm tackling her across her shoulders and yanking her backwards, away from the edge.
"A touching eulogy, Empress," said an all-too-familiar voice by her right ear, while she felt the cold edge of a sword whisper over her back, "but I'm not quite ready to use it. And you're quite welcome, by the way."
"Im… impossible!" she sputtered, barely able to get the words out of her numb mouth, as her mind reeled with the shock. The Prince was alive! But how? He had somehow managed to not only escape her sandstorm, but climb back undetected onto the tableau, and had caught her completely and utterly by surprise!
"Drop your swords!" he yelled, pressing closer to her, the tip of his sword pricking her back.
She closed her eyes, her heart tearing into pieces as black despair consumed it. For a moment, she truly had escaped her fate, lived and breathed in that other world, where she was truly free… and that crystalline freedom that had emerged and taken flight, so heartbreakingly exquisite, had now shattered into a million bitter shards, shredding her soul with their acidic touch.
"I said, drop your swords, Kaileena!" he said hoarsely, shaking her.
"I cannot, my Prince," she replied, tears now in her voice, if not in the flat, dead eyes that were once again open. "You know I cannot." She was dead; only her body was not yet aware of the fact.
"Damn it, Kaileena!" he yelled. "This is insanity! We both want the same thing… to stop the Sands from being created! We should be friends, not enemies!"
"Even if you don't want to kill me, you will," she said softly, regretfully. "The Timeline demands it." The Timeline was never wrong; she had been a fool to delude herself into thinking she had escaped it. She prepared herself to strike one last time, before the inevitable happened. Perhaps she could even catch the Prince by surprise, the logical part of her said, but her detached despair soon swamped that short-lived delirium of optimism. Her fists clenched about the hilts of her blades; perhaps a blind sweep backwards, though he would easily sense the intent in the bunching of her shoulders.
"But I have already succeeded, Kaileena! I have stopped you from dying in the past, and thus ensured that the Sands will not bedevil my life, that the Dahaka will no longer have reason to hunt me down. I have no reason, no desire to see you dead!"
"Then let me go, and leave this place forever," she replied quietly.
He laughed harshly, briefly. "If only it were that simple!" he said angrily. "But I cannot, for I cannot trust you, much though I wish it were otherwise! I thought that I could convince you to stop this madness, if only you would listen to me. But finally, I now see that I've been deluding myself. Your fear has complete mastery over you now, Kaileena. Your fear would lead you to attack me at the first opportunity you see, were I to let you go. And I would have no choice but to fight back, to stop you, to kill you! Can't you see that? Can't you see that you are on the brink of sealing your fate by your very own actions, just as I nearly did?"
There was a pause, then, as what little wind there was died down, and it seemed as if the very sounds of the world around them fell away.
"It appears there can only be one conclusion, then," Kaileena said softly. Thank you for trying, she added to herself, but I was doomed long before you came into this world.
"Yes," the Prince replied, his voice sad.
She tensed, wondering if she would be able to whip around and strike before the Prince's sword impaled her. She felt him tense at her movement, felt his sword press more firmly, she moved, trying to spin and writhe free even as his arm turned solid, as his sword bit…
…and suddenly she was flung out of his grasp and spilled onto the floor as the preternatural silence was broken by a great crashing as the earth around them shook violently.
Looking up, she saw him not too far, on his hands and knees on the stones, a stunned look on his face as he looked up, beyond her.
Despite herself, she found herself turning to track what his eyes saw, and gasped in shock as she saw the Dahaka standing in the midst of a cloud of dust, staring down at them from the vantage point of the walls around the tableau.
"It cannot be!" the Prince gasped behind her. "The Dahaka! But the Sands have not been created!"
In a blink, the floor shook again, eliciting a cry of pain from Kaileena as her bones cracked against the hard stones… and suddenly the Dahaka was standing on the stones of the tableau, roaring in triumph. But the dread creature, the Guardian of the Timeline, was not looking at the Prince… he was looking at her!
I do not belong in this Timeline, she thought to herself with horrible realization. Before she could even blink, black, whipping ribbons had shot forth from the terrible beast's chest, entangling her arms and legs and lifting her easily off the ground. She screamed as they burned like fire against her skin, and vainly tried to slice them off with her blades, but the sharp edges did nothing and the thing actually chortled at her efforts.
Kaileena's head was thrown back as everything suddenly blurred, and she screamed as the entire world blurred, and the ribbons pulled taught and she flew impossibly fast toward the yawning craw of the Dahaka…
…and suddenly there was a flash of white-hot blue in front of her eyes, and she crashed into the stones, the black ribbons falling to tatters around her. She looked up to see the Prince standing above her, wielding an impossibly glowing blade, as the Dahaka screamed in ghastly pain and anger.
"Flee, Kaileena!" he yelled, deftly severing a hard bunch of ribbons that tried to shoot around him to reach her. "You can do nothing here but die; my blade has the power to hurt him!"
Stunned, she stumbled backwards as the Prince waded deep into the black mist surrounding the giant Dahaka. What kind of a fool was he? The Dahaka had no quarrel with him, and could never be defeated! Had their positions been reversed, she would gladly have given him up to the Dahaka!
Her swords may be of no use, but she still had her magic. If she could call it forth; that last sandstorm she had sent against the Prince had spent her terribly.
But he was in trouble, that much was apparent.
Closing her eyes, she stretched out, concentrated, and called forth the magic. A giant fireball coalesced around her hands, and she hurled it at the Dahaka.
The Prince barely rolled underneath it, as it sizzled past him and struck the Dahaka full in the chest. With a roar of pain, it was flung backward from the resultant explosion, to slide across the stones and nearly off the edge. But it managed to dig its sharp claws into the stones and stop itself from plunging down into the water that was so deadly to it.
All this Kaileena saw from her knees, as the effort had felled her. As it was, she could barely keep herself from collapsing full onto the stones.
Kaileena saw a streak of blue arc in the dark mists around the Dahaka, followed by a great cry of pain from the beast as his big body shook. But then she heard the Prince cry out also, in anguish.
She had wanted the Prince dead for so long; for thousands of years longer than his mortal lifespan would eventually stretch. Yet without even thinking, she gestured with her hands, and healing life flowed into the Prince.
Kaileena watched in awed silence as the mighty Dahaka receded, pulled down beneath the waters of the sea.
A little ways off from her, the Prince fell to his knees, exhausted and weary from his titanic battle. He was suffering; only the sword that he now used as a trembling crutch stopped him from falling flat upon the floor.
Swallowing down the dryness in her mouth, she walked over to stand above him. He was so helpless now, his body covered in his own blood from numerous scrapes and cuts where the Dahaka's stinging ribbons had found purchase.
For thousands upon thousands of years, she had dreaded this Man, this Prince of Persia. He had haunted her dreams throughout the Ages of the World, tormented her for millennia. She had raised up a gigantic fortress to defend herself from him, and gathered a massive army of magical creatures to protect her from him. All for naught; the first he had penetrated easily enough, the second dispatched with ease despite their overwhelming numbers. She had sent him off on impossible tasks, cursed the very weapons in his hands, yet he had not succumbed. He had escaped the fearsome Dahaka time and time again, and had even done the unimaginable by finally killing off the dread Guardian of the Timeline.
Yet here he was now before her, helpless as a newborn. One small, swift stroke, and it would be all over. The dread that she had carried within her through the Ages would be vanquished, and she would finally be free. Her grip on the hilts of her blades tightened.
Sensing her above him, he gradually raised his head and looked up at her through the blood and sweat soaking his hair. If he was aware of his precarious position, he did not show it. Instead, he just stared into her eyes.
Somewhere, a door opened, letting light into the darkness that had clouded Kaileena's world. Warmth touched her cold heart, and she felt the sun shining on her face, the wind blowing through her hair, caressing the folds of her dress. She had spent the entirety of her existence fearing him, trying to kill him… and yet he had just risked life and limb to save her, when he easily could have, should have, watched in safety as she perished.
Tentatively, uncertainly, she ventured forth a small, thin smile.
He smiled, laughing a small, breathless laugh.
Slowly, the two made their way through the crumbled ruins of the Castle of Time. Progress was painfully slow, as both were wounded from their battles with the Dahaka. As if the weariness had drained all ability to speak from them, they journeyed quietly, silently helping the other clamber over blocks the size of houses, scale walls of dizzying heights and unfathomable depths, and traverse the narrowest of ledges over the deepest of pits.
They rounded a corner once, to stumble into the midst of a group of the castle's denizens.
"Stay behind me!" the Prince yelled, inserting himself between the slavering creatures and Kaileena.
"My Prince, there is no need," she said, a hint of amusement in her tone at his bravado, as she gestured with one hand. Immediately, the creatures stopped moving, to stare at her. "Do you forget that I am still their Empress?"
"Shahdee was yours, too," he reminded her.
"Shahdee was an… unusual case," Kaileena returned, walking around him to approach the creatures.
"Empress!" one said, reverential awe in its scaly voice.
"My poor creatures," the Empress said. "How many centuries now have you been guarding little but rubble? I fear I have done you a great disservice for all these years. Go now, to the rest that I have so selfishly and unjustly robbed you of."
And just like that, the creatures dissolved into sand, with soft, tired sighs.
"Where did these creatures come from?" the Prince asked.
"Do you really want to know?" she asked. "Or are you afraid it might change your… opinion of me?"
He swallowed, eyes hard. "Yes, tell me."
"The waters around the Island of Time are treacherous," she said, glancing in the general direction of the still-distant beach. "There has never been a shortage of bodies washed up onto the shores. Most were dead, but some…"
He blanched, and Kaileena could see the disgust flicker in his eyes. She recalled that he, too, had been washed ashore, along with the bodies of his shipmates.
She stared at him coolly, as he digested this information. "I cannot sweeten the truth, my Prince, much though you may wish it," she said. "I was never the innocent.
"But I will venture this much. I did many things on this island that are better left unsaid. I did what I had to, to try and cheat my fate. But I did not escape it, after all, though I stand here now before you. You truly did slay that Kaileena, my Prince… the one who lived in terror is dead and buried beneath this rubble now, as the Timeline has foretold. No matter what my fate is now, whether you strike me down now where I stand, or we capsize and I drown in the dark sea, I will accept it as a new person." She turned to look back at a precariously standing tower of the castle. "For now, I no longer know my own fate… and thus am I finally free."
THE END