They need the apple, as the Sage insists the golden spheres are called (and, honestly, it's as good a name as any) before Bayek can start any travel through time, so they ride out from the Sage's tiny village in the middle of nowhere, and back toward where Bayek himself had left the apple.

"Why me?" Bayek asks, when they're halfway there. "It can't just be that I helped start the Hidden Ones, can it? I'm not the only one involved in that."

"Part of it is your bloodline," the Sage admitted.

"What's wrong with it?"

"I think you might be descended from the isu," the Sage said. "The way you and your eagle work together was a dead giveaway." He glances upward in the general direction of a few circling birds of prey, but Bayek shakes his head and gestures off in another direction, to were Senu is preoccupied with hunting. He's long since stopped questioning how exactly he and Senu work together. They just do, they fit, they work together like this is what they were born to do it.

"The isu were connected to eagles?" he asks, looking to the Sage.

"They had other… I don't know. Senses. Like you do, with your Senu."

That's slightly concerning, but Bayek refuses to let it tarnish his link with Senu. That's special, and it has nothing to do with the isu. It's theirs. Instead, he steers the subject back to the reason of why him. "You said part of it was my bloodline," he says. "What's the rest of it?"

"It's you," the Sage says. "It's everything else. Do you think saving the world is going to be easy? Of course not—I have no idea how you're going to do it or what it's going to take. But I know that you've saved all of Egypt, Bayek. That seems like exactly the kind of person we want in the future, trying to help."

"There have been many people that did that though," Bayek says. "Saved Egypt—there have been pharaohs and generals and heroes that saved Egypt before—"

"No." He's laughing a little. "No, not like you, Bayek. I'm not going to argue that other men have marched their armies out before, and fought off invaders or whatever else—but Bayek, you literally walked the length and breadth of this country, and when you saved all of Egypt I mean that you saved every city, every village, every port, every field, one at a time. You saved all of Egypt, individually."

He's still laughing so much that Bayek grins, although he's a little uncomfortable with all that praise. He hadn't done anything more than what was right. "I hope you don't expect me to do that to the whole rest of the world, when I get to—when I'm in the future." As always, his tongue trips over the words, because as always, he can't totally make himself believe it. No matter how convincing the Sage is, no matter what magics he's seen from the apple already, two thousand years is a lot to wrap his mind around. "There's probably a few more people in the world than in Egypt, right? The planet's… I don't know how much bigger, but I'm sure it is large."

"Have you ever heard of a man named Eratosthenes?" the Sage asks, still smiling.

"No."

"He lived about 200 years ago. In Egypt. Very smart man, and he decided to calculate the distance all the way around the Earth." He pauses, possibly for dramatic effect.

"And?" Bayke prompts.

The Sage tells him, and the number is so much larger than Bayek had been expecting that at first he just laughs—it's not until he looks over that he realizes the other man had not, in fact, been joking. "That is a very large world," he says.

"With a lot of people in it," the Sage agrees. "Don't worry, Bayek, I'm sure you won't have to save all of them one at a time." He spurs his horse on, a little faster, so that Bayek is left with just the echoes of his laughter as the younger man races on ahead. "Just stop the sun from burning it all up, yes?"

Bayek scowls, and spurs his horse after him.

-/-

The apple seems to hum in Bayek's hands when he's finally holding it again, a thin, persistent sensation that reminds him oddly of a purring cat. Bayek is surprised by how excited he feels to finally be holding it—this is it, this is the moment when he learns how he's going to travel in time. Assuming it really is possible. And this Sage isn't just… insane. And he's not insane for believing him.

"You're not going to want to head straight for the end of the world," the Sage says, watching the glow of the apple swell. Bayek can feel it sort of tugging at him, and he's not sure whether to fight it or give in. For the moment he fights, gritting his teeth and digging his heels in.

"Makes sense," he says. "I'd want to be a little bit before then, right? If I want to do any good?" He still has no idea what he's supposed to do, but he's spent days questioning the Sage on the way up here, which hadn't helped at all—the man hadn't been able to tell him any more about what exactly he's supposed to do, just that he'll have to figure it out when he gets there, and that if anyone can do it, he can.

"Aim for after," the Sage says.

"After?"

"She's there," the Sage says. "The woman that can help you."

"Who?"

"I… don't have a lot of answers for you, Bayek. I can't just stare into the future and see what's happening. I just… some stuff's been passed down from Sages before me, some of it comes all the way from the isu, and I don't know what all of it means." He takes a breath, and in that moment looks very young. "I just don't like thinking about the end of the world, even if it isn't coming for another two thousand years."

Bayek stares at him for a second, processing that. Then he nods. He'd like to see the world not end as well. "It's okay," he assures the man. "I can handle this."

He's not entirely sure that he can, but it's worth it because he can see the Sage relax when he says it. "Good luck," the Sage says.

And that's the sentiment that follows after him as Bayek finally loses the fight to resist the apple—it snaps at him, and the world just disintegrates. Bayek is falling through a dark space, and the apple is growing more brightly, and this is it. Bayek grins tightly as a course of excitement just shoots through him. This is time travel, and he's going into the future.

For a long moment there's no sound, and then Bayek hears Senu. He knows it's Senu's cry the same way he'd recognize Aya's voice, and he instinctively reaches out through their connection, straining to see what she sees. She's not here, is she? He should have thought of her before he ever picked the apple up, he should never have tried this before making sure she'd be okay—

Their connection works, as instantly and smoothly as it always has. But this time, instead of being treated to an overhead view of Egypt, Bayek sees… time. It's indescribable, the way it looks, and Bayek only has a very vague idea of what he's looking at. He can sort of recognize the vague shape of his own life on the timeline, and with a slight sense of unease, he lets Senu carry on, flying forward for what feels like forever. He's just starting to worry about how he'll know when he gets to where he's supposed to be, when he sees it. A bright slash through the timeline that makes Senu's feathers stand on end. Dimly, Bayek can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising in unison. There. That's where they're going.

Senu spirals downward, coming in for a landing just a little past the end of the world, just the same way she would if they were landing from a normal flight. As she gets close, Bayek returns to his own body—for a second he's still falling through that same blackness, and then abruptly it ends. He's in an old tomb somewhere, half covered in sand as the desert tries to reclaim whoever's been buried here. That much is familiar, but there are odd items scattered here and there whose purpose Bayek can't begin to guess, mostly connected by thick black strings.

The apple's glow fades, and Bayek takes a second to tuck it away in a pouch before he takes a step forward, curious. It's odd to see something as familiar as a sarcophagus right next to all these unknown items. He's just realizing that he's not alone in this cave, there's someone sitting at a table, hunched over it and staring at something, when Senu shrieks and comes flying into the cave. She lands on Bayek's shoulder and shrieks at him, so clearly offended that Bayek forgets where he is and laughs. He should really know better than to try and travel through time without her—next time he'll know.

The sound is enough to attract the attention of the person a the table, and Bayek's smile fades as she turns and jumps to her feet. It's a woman, dressed in clothes so strange Bayek doesn't even have the words to describe them, and she's staring at him like she's just seen a ghost.

"Bayek," she says.

"You know my name," he says, not even surprised at this point. She's silent, just staring at him, so Bayek presses on. "Can I have yours?"

She swallows. "Layla. Layla Hassan." She stares for another second, then actually shakes her head, trying to deny something to herself. "How can you…?" She strides forward, and Bayek raises his eyebrows at her as she reaches a hand out and just touches his shoulder. "You're real."

"Yes."

She slides easily into another language for a second, ranting in apparent shock, then turns back to him, and speaks again in Egyptian. "You've been dead for two thousand years," she tells him. "You know that? You know you shouldn't even be here?"

"Then I guess that means it worked," Bayek says, as if he definitely knew what was going on, and was not still confused, and had a real, actual plan for what to do next.

Senu shrieks again, and flaps her wings just enough to clip the side of his head, because she knows him better than that.

-/-

Bayek is so hard to get into time travel. xD I feel like with anyone else they can just pick up a piece of Eden and just get zapped into another timeline, and they're like 'argh, curse these pieces of Eden, they're always doing weird things like this! Oh well, guess I better just accept it and get on with the plot!' And Bayek just has 0 idea what's going on or what pieces of Eden are, and he needs soooo much more buildup...

But anyway, he knows how to do it now, and next chapter will have Layla freaking out so that should be fun.

If you're still reading, thanks for sticking with me, if you're not, then-I guess I have nothing to say to you, because you're not reading this :)