"A couple of customers came into the bakery the other day. They were tourists, I think," Dennis, a confectioner, said. "Business was pretty slow, so I was kind of out of it. I raised my hand the way we would when greeting a fellow acolyte without thinking. It must have been strange for them because they just kind of left after looking around." He chuckled to himself, a self-deprecating laugh that Ina had heard all too often recently.
Another former acolyte, a woman named Karris, peeked out from behind her easel. "I get that! It's the smallest habits that are giving me the most trouble," she said. More voices rose in agreement. A chain of similar stories were told, and soon everyone was laughing.
Real laughter, not the self pitying sort. Dennis's mood improved considerably, his spirits synchronized with his peers. They could all relate.
And so could Ina. "I caught myself frowning at the sun last week," she said, dragging her brush across her own canvas. "It's embarrassing to admit, but I got this feeling that it wasn't real. Like I was passing through the oasis, you know?" Many of the former acolytes grunted and nodded. "It's like Karris said; the hardest habits to break are the ones we never had to think about. It's only natural that we'll fall back on familiar routines when we're experiencing so many big changes."
There was an even mix of smiles and frowns among the group. That was fine. Everyone would process and cope at their own pace. It was Ina's job to support them no matter how long it took.
She finished her piece and turned the easel so the rest of the group could see. The praise she received made her blush. In the order's complex the acolytes would celebrate every little thing she did, good or not. Although many of these people still thought of her as their priestess, Ina was confident that they didn't feel pressured to compliment her.
She stood and wandered between the easels arranged in the spacious loft acting as their meeting place. Between offering artistic advice and asking after their struggles on a more personal level, Ina didn't have much time to breathe during these meetings. She wouldn't have it any other way. This was something she could do for the people who used to worship her. Something she had to do.
A therapist she was not, but at the very least she could help them help each other. And honestly, she needed the help as well. Her former station didn't make the transition away from the order any easier.
As difficult as it had been in the weeks following the order's collapse, Ina was incredibly impressed by everyone's progress. These groups were much larger when they first started, but now there were no more than a dozen people at a time, and they only had to meet a couple of times a week!
The acolytes had abandoned the outside world when they moved to the complex, but so many of them had already found jobs and reconnected with their friends and family. The scars were there, some of them still fresh, but they were recovering.
Ina smiled and laughed as the meeting wrapped up, saying goodbye to everyone until they next met up. Apparently, they saw her as their strength. She was the reason they could make the progress they did. The reason they could keep moving forward. But the reverse was also true.
A couple of the acolytes stayed behind to help her clean up, folding chairs and easels. She managed to convince them to leave the paint to her, though. They bid her farewell–a touch too formally–and descended into the shop below the loft.
These meetings often took place in locations that had some connection to the order. The loft, for example, was situated above a cafe that was itself a front for a ritual site. In a way, even the places that had been entangled in the order's schemes were being cleansed. There was beauty in that, Ina thought.
She stepped out onto the balcony to watch the others leave. She was up high enough to get a clear view of the road as it melted into the rest of the city. The surrounding buildings weren't tall enough to block out the sky, which she appreciated. It was so incredibly blue!
It wasn't just the sky, she realized. The glimmering silver of the skyscrapers in the distance, the black of the roads, the gray of the sidewalks, the little pockets of green and all of the flowery colors sprinkled within them were so vibrant. Deep, rich color as far as the eye could see.
It was a little morbid, but she imagined Castor rolling in his grave and smiled. The world was beautiful without the intervention of some great cosmic entity.
"Ina!" Kiara's voice reached her from the road. She waved up to the balcony. "Do you need any help cleaning up?"
Ina shook her head. "All finished up here. I'll be down in a second." She collected her things, lugging a case of art supplies down the stairs and through the cafe.
The world wasn't as dull as Castor and the heralds thought it was. It was brimming with beauty, vibrant and saturated. It wasn't just nature, either. It was the people. All of them.
And if that still wasn't enough for the ancient ones, Ina and her friends could show them how vibrant the colors of their world could be.
+ Break +
Sparks danced across the thick mask covering Amelia's face. She'd cannibalized her time machine to create various weapons and gadgets, now she had to put it back together. It wasn't an easy task, but if she'd done it once, she could do it again. Especially since her workspace was so much nicer.
Consistent electricity, abundant fuel, a solid roof! Things she could only have dreamt of in the future came standard here. No more working in squalor for Amelia Watson! Of course, this ideal situation hadn't just fallen into her lap. She had Kiara to thank for this setup.
Having the opportunity to meet so many people sure had its benefits. Amelia stifled a chuckle. Technically, she could count herself among Kiara's seemingly endless list of personal connections. Maybe someday the phoenix might call her for a favor. Wouldn't that be something?
The world felt so much bigger now, even as she worked in the cramped confines of the time machine's chassis. She knew many more people in the future, but the vast majority of them were passing acquaintances. She crossed paths with them once or twice and then never again. Relationships could end at the drop of a hat for various reasons.
Now though? She was making connections she knew would last. She could go to sleep and wake up knowing that her friends would still be there. They could go out, see sights, meet people, and generally enjoy life. The weeks since the destruction of the order had been a blast and a half!
She wished she could stay like this forever. But that wasn't in the cards.
Amelia had come back to the past with a purpose. She wanted to save her time, and as far as she could tell, she'd succeeded. She had to at least return and check on things. She had to be sure.
She caressed the plate that she'd just welded on. Heat radiated out from the seam, warming the entire surface. Parting ways was sad, but she was building a time machine. There was no reason she couldn't come back and visit every now and then. Heck, there was no reason she couldn't relocate to this time entirely. The idea made her feel as warm as the metal under her palm.
It would be easy to stop where she was and never finish rebuilding the time machine. If she was going to come back anyways, what was the point?
The answer was possibility.
How will the world have changed in a future untainted by the order's machinations? What kind of technological advances will have been made? And what about the people? If the course of history had been altered, there was no guarantee everyone would be the same. Amelia wondered about Carlos in particular. Will he have been born? She hoped so. Above all else, the thought of seeing that kid smile in a clean alligator t-shirt drove her to finish.
A crash elsewhere in the workshop made Amelia jump. She scooted out from under the machine, rubbing her forehead, and set about investigating. A cursory glance around revealed nothing out of the ordinary. At least, that's how it would have looked to anyone else.
Amelia preferred working in a kind of orchestrated chaos. She filled every nook and cranny with some project or another, so when she spotted a suspiciously clear section of table, she knew she'd found her culprit.
Gura sat on the ground behind the table, wires and metal scrap draped over her legs and shoulders. Amelia crossed her arms and tapped her foot, but the shark girl smiled. She held out a particular piece of scrap–a small metal box with all sorts of wires sticking out–and said, "This is the one you were looking for right? I found it!"
Amelia inspected the piece. Sure enough, it was the right one. She held out a hand and helped Gura to her feet. "You know," she said, "it's a lot easier to sort through this stuff when you lay it out on a table instead of the floor."
Gura's cheeks flushed, but she was quick with a comeback. "Oh, sure, dump the box of scraps out on the other piles of scrap. That'll make things so much easier."
They exchanged rude gestures all the way until Amelia was head first in her machine again. She liked to poke fun, but Gura really was making the whole process much easier. Who knew having an assistant could speed things up? She was going to have to work in a pair more often.
Amelia's hands started shaking. How will Ina and Gura look in a future without the order? What will they do? Where will they be? The same questions could be asked for Calli and Kiara too. So many possibilities!
With all of the wiring done and the internal mechanisms installed, Amelia closed up the time machine. It was a lot neater than what she'd put together back in the future, but she was sure it was the same. It would work. It was time for the finishing touches.
"Hey, Gura! Help me install the seats," she said. What had once been half a gnarly couch was now a proper modular cabin. The seating could be whatever she wanted it to be. Right now, she really wanted upholstered chairs that could recline.
Gura pranced around the crowded tables, two chairs as big as she was balanced on her shoulders. She set them down and Amelia affixed them to the chassis.
"Next is the engine," she said, and Gura leapt into action. She weaved through the workshop's clutter and returned lugging the massive power supply overhead. She set it down on the back of the chassis and held it in place while Amelia attached it.
They were almost there. "One last thing," Amelia said. She dug into her pocket and produced what appeared to be a pocket watch. It was actually just a bobble that looked like a clock, but Amelia thought it fit the theme of the machine. There was a threaded hole at the bottom of the phony timepiece that matched the threading at the end of the main control lever. She screwed the bobble on and stepped back to take in what she had created.
There hadn't been time to appreciate what she'd done back then. The thing had barely been finished before she was on her way. It was nice being able to just look at it.
"So . . . are we gonna test this baby out, or are we just gonna ogle it?" Gura said, running her finger along a polished edge.
Amelia blinked. "We?"
"Yeah, we! You're gonna let me come along, right?" Gura's eyes sparkled.
It was a dangerous idea. What if Gura seeing the future changed how she acted in the present? The timeline might be altered in unpredictable ways.
Then again, Amelia had traveled back specifically to alter the timeline, so what could a little more temporal meddling hurt? "Sure," she said, "hop in!"
Gura scrambled into a seat and Amelia followed right behind. Immediately she was stricken by how comfortable she was. Her first journey through time had been a frantic flight, but this time she could treat the machine with a proper, gentle touch.
One by one she flicked switches and pressed buttons. No wasted space. The machine started to hum and the main panel glowed with a soft light. The engine kicked on and the machine really started to purr. The sound of Gura's tail rapidly slapping the floor matched the beating of Amelia's heart.
She licked her lips and rested her palm on the decorative bobble on top of the main control lever. This was it. She'd done it once before, but in truth she couldn't really recall what it had been like. This time, she intended to etch the sensation into her brain forever.
"Ready, Gura?"
"You know it, Watson!"
The aim was reversed, but the spirit was the same. Every last piece of this machine was built for one purpose and one purpose only.
To travel forward in time!
Amelia pulled the lever. The machine's purr became a low but loud buzz. The lights in the workshop flickered as if the engine was pulling power from all around. Both of them were completely still, anticipating the sensation of slipping through the fabric of reality and across time.
And then . . .!
Nothing.
The buzzing calmed down to a purr, and then to a hum. The lights stopped flickering as the main panel dimmed.
Amelia furrowed her brow. What went wrong? A mistake in the construction? No, the schematics were clearer in her mind than her own face, and she followed them to the letter. A missed variable, then? It was possible, especially if there was some nuanced difference between traveling forward and backward in time. Something like that would have come up in her initial calculations, though.
She turned to Gura and the disappointment in her eyes was heartbreaking. "Sorry," she said, "we'll have to try again later."
+ Break +
Calliope Mori, death's own apprentice, strolled through the city of Holiv with a bag of groceries in her hand. It was an odd feeling. She wasn't the type to only travel in the dead of night or to slip between the cracks of society or anything like that, but she never really mingled like this. It was so casual.
Her life was about responsibility. She had a job to do and there was never a shortage of work. So, leisurely going from shop to shop on her way home, no souls to reap and no one to ferry to the afterlife, felt alien. And if that wasn't strange enough, somebody smiled and waved to her as they passed.
She didn't know the person, but she could guess they were a former member of the order. Crossing paths with the liberated cultists was a common occurrence these days, but Calli still wasn't used to it.
She wasn't used to being recognized, period. Even if she didn't hide in the shadows constantly, she was still an agent of death. Hers was not an identity that those in the world of the living were meant to know.
That said, she didn't entirely hate it.
Maybe–and this was just a hypothetical–she could follow Kiara's example and do some volunteer work. Calli wasn't the most inspiring speaker, so joining the therapy groups wouldn't be ideal, but there had to be more physical ways to offer her support. She looked down at the groceries in her hand.
A lot of the cultists were responding well to deprogramming, but there were still plenty of people who couldn't quite adjust. She'd seen it plenty of times; a cult disbanded and its members fell apart, wasting away in isolation. They needed someone to drag them out of the hole left by the cult.
Could Calli do that? It was hard to imagine. She was usually the one throwing cultists into that hole. And really, how comforting could it be having death itself make a wellness check?
It was a silly idea . . .
Calli pulled out her phone and started composing a message. She wasn't an expert in charity, but Kiara was. It didn't happen often, but death's apprentice needed some advice. She had to be careful, though. She had an image to maintain.
The first draft made her sound too eager. Even without sending the message, she could imagine the look on Kiara's face: eyes glistening with proud tears and a smile so sweet as to give her a toothache. Forget her image, if Kiara looked at her like that her pride would disintegrate on the spot. Nonchalance . . . that was the vibe she was aiming for.
Calli erased the message and started again. She barely typed two words before she realized she wasn't on the sidewalk anymore. She'd wandered into an alley somehow. She turned to return to the main road, but all she saw the other way was more alley.
Slowly, she put her phone away. She wasn't sure how or when, but she had stumbled into a dangerous situation. Until she could get her bearings, any sudden moves could lead to her end.
Taking a deep breath she carefully studied her surroundings. The ground was the same concrete found everywhere else in the city. The walls, too, were brick. Common enough in Holiv. Except, they stretched off into the distance. In either direction it was featureless brick wall as far as the eye could see. So she looked up.
Blue sky. Whatever this alley's deal was, she wasn't interested. The brick and mortar lost what little color they had as she slipped into limbo space and jumped. Without friction from the air she sailed straight up. But the sky didn't get any closer. In fact, it got further away.
The walls of the alley raced upwards ahead of her. Even as she reached the apex of her jump they kept growing taller. By the time she landed, the walls had grown so tall as to block out the sky completely.
A chill swam through Calli's body. She started to run opposite the direction she was facing when she first stopped. She couldn't be sure that was the way out, but it was as good an assumption as any.
The brick walls on either side of her became a blur, but that only highlighted the lack of windows and doors. Eventually, she came to a corner. Progress at last! She didn't slow down, opting to kick off the wall to propel herself around the corner as close to top speed as possible.
Her hope for salvation was dashed right away as she found herself in another blank, endless alleyway. She doubled back, but the corner she'd just turned had disappeared.
The alley might have stretched on forever, but Calli felt like she was trapped in a very tiny box. She took off, not bothering to keep track of her heading. As if to reflect her unease, the walls of the alley started to close in. The path became narrower and narrower, and the parts of the walls that had grown skyward were curling in on themselves, threatening her from above as well.
A corner materialized up ahead as her shoulders scraped the walls. She cried out, pushing herself hard to reach the turn before she was crushed. But she never came any closer to it. As if to mock her struggle, the alley stretched, keeping her from ever reaching her goal.
Her head scraped the brick ceiling that had formed. Her hips scraped the walls. She couldn't move normally anymore, so she sidled through the ever shrinking space. Tighter and tighter.
Her life was not finite in the traditional sense. She would return to the world even if she was killed.
But the walls closing in on her filled her with a dread she'd never experienced before. Her physical form wasn't the only thing at risk here. Her very existence was being smothered.
As her cheek pressed against cold brick, she screamed.
She stumbled out onto the main street, nearly rolling end over end, gasping for breath. It took her a moment to process that she wasn't being crushed. Panic gave way to rage as she shot up and turned, scythe in hand. Somebody was going to answer for what she'd just gone through.
But when she set eyes on the alley, it was just that. An alley. There were doors to businesses. A window, too. And dumpsters and litter and fire escapes. She could see where the alley let out on the other side of the block.
It was just a normal alley.
No, it was more than that. The alley might have been normal, but what she'd just experienced was definitely not. It was an attack. She didn't know where it came from or who did it, but somebody was gunning for her.
She was death, and as such her list of potential enemies was billions of miles long, but who could pull off a stunt like that?
She knew the answer without having to consider.
The heraldic order of the ancient ones was dead.
But its corpse was festering.
+ Break +
Gura held her head in her hands, her mood worsening by the moment.
"I think we need to consider the possibility that this isn't the order," Amelia said.
Calli threw up her hands. "How could it not be?!" she said. "It can't be a coincidence. There's no way."
"It doesn't fit their M.O. The order was all about summoning extra dimensional monsters. Sure, their bases had those mazes, but they never had any sort of supernatural qualities." Amelia crossed her arms. "I'm not saying that it's impossible, I'm just saying it doesn't seem like them."
Calli shook her head, but Ina spoke up in support of Amelia. "I think she's right, Calli. Warping space like that isn't something the order ever did. Until I met all of you, I didn't even know such things were possible."
"No offense, Ina, but just because you aren't aware doesn't mean they couldn't have done it."
"That's fair," Ina said, keeping her voice even. "There's no telling how the order's rituals affected the world. Their aim might have been broader than we thought." Out of everyone, Gura would have thought she would be the most upset by this, but she wasn't. Despite looking a little shaken, she maintained her composure. The pride she felt in her friend kept her mood from spiraling down into the abyss. "Consider this, though: The power I extract from the tome was the core of the order's plans. Based on my experience, I'd say they accomplished what they did by creating a bridge between our world and the void where the ancient ones reside. Did you encounter the void in that alley?"
Calli considered for a moment, then sighed. "No, I guess I didn't." Relief washed through the apartment.
Kiara clapped her hands. "Okay! I think that's enough worrying for one day. Why don't we investigate tomorrow?"
"Is waiting a good idea?" Gura asked. There was still so much uncertainty, even if the order wasn't back from the dead.
"No one else has been attacked," Amelia said. Her confidence was comforting. "We aren't even sure that what happened to Calli was an attack at all. Getting a good night's rest, or as close to one as we can get given the circumstances, is our best move."
The others seemed to agree, so Gura nodded along with them. She wasn't quite satisfied, though.
She retreated to her room, but sleep was the furthest thing from her mind. The thought of being hunted by angry ghosts was a familiar discomfort, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with. She paced, restless, and her room started to feel cramped.
Absently, she grabbed her trident, climbed out onto the fire escape, and up to the roof of the building. It was a broad, mostly flat surface with nothing overhead but sky. The sun was setting, casting the city in an orange that faded to purple. The fresh air calmed her restless bones, so she sat and watched the clouds drift by.
She rested the trident across her lap, rolling it back and forth across her thighs. It was an ancient thing–and so was she, technically–but it wasn't anything special besides. It was the weapon of her people, and most Atlanteans had some basic training with the three-pronged polearm. Gura was no exception.
She wrapped her fingers around the slightly too thick haft and stood. Her father had insisted that she'd grow into it when she was older, like her mother, who was tall for an Atlantean. Unfortunately, she'd taken after him and hadn't grown much since her teenage years.
It had been so, so long since she'd let those memories take shape in her mind. She spread her feet, lowered her hips, and held the trident in the traditional starting position. Her father's voice, gruff and loud, echoed in her ears. She followed his instructions, clumsily running through a simple routine.
She was very young when he first put a trident in her hands. He decorated their home with trophies he'd won with his skills, and hoped that her own awards would join them someday. She learned all the basic forms. She practiced every day. She endured his expectations. All of it with a smile on her face.
Gura shifted her feet and adjusted her grip on the trident. The next routine was a bit more complex from what she could remember. It involved spinning the weapon, but her hands simply weren't large enough to do it properly, so it slipped from her grasp. The sound of the prongs bouncing off of the concrete roof beckoned forth another memory.
Her father laughed and gave her a firm clap on the shoulder. He told her that he struggled with that one too, stocky as he was. He smiled, as broad as his shoulders, and encouraged her to try again.
As he instructed she picked up the trident and tried again. She got it on the second try.
A kernel of warmth bloomed in her chest as she imagined her father's praise. All this time she'd been afraid of remembering these things. She ran from that happiness because . . .
Gura stopped in the middle of the third routine and inspected the trident in her hands. She hadn't heard the voice since they defeated the order. It was an evil presence, she knew, but losing it was a little lonely. Besides the trident itself, it was the only thing she had left of her old life. In a sense, she trusted it to keep her memories even as it tainted them.
With the voice gone, would she start to forget? About Atlantis? About her parents? Without the constant reminder of that long past tragedy, would their faces start to blur and fade?
She sat down on the cold apartment roof and wrapped her tail around herself, clutching the trident close.
So much uncertainty.
As much about the past as the future.
+ Break +
Kiara soared over a great, endless forest. A majestic mountain range stretched up towards the sun in the distance. It was so far away that it was almost beyond her sight, but still visible enough to be grand.
The sky was a world unto itself, populated by the wind that gave Kiara the lift she needed to glide. The atmosphere shifted, taking on a charge that ran through her feathers. There was a storm on the horizon.
A wall of jet black clouds rose high. It almost sparkled as lightning danced through its billowing column. The wind carried the sound of falling rain.
Kiara watched the storm deplete itself and disappear.
Freedom. More than she had ever felt. Her body might have been small, but in this sky she was unlimited. The never ending expanse of blue hues was hers and hers alone, and the world down below existed for her viewing pleasure. Speaking of which . . .
She dove towards the emerald sea, laughing as she shot between the tips of the trees. She spun, dancing between trunks and branches at an exhilarating, heart-stopping pace. She drew up and landed on a branch that gave her a perfect view of the magical world below.
The movement along the forest floor was stunning! Woodland creatures of every shape and size went about their business, completely unaware of her presence. Even when they looked up, they seemed to look through her. She felt a tinge of loneliness, but she was content observing from afar.
There was so much life. It gave off an energy that Kiara absorbed into herself. Her heart thundered with an inexplicable passion as she took to the winds once again. What she wouldn't give to stay in this wondrous place. Alas, she knew it couldn't last, but she was determined to see all that she could.
She flapped her wings harder and harder, climbing back over the treetops and into the clouds and further still. She climbed as high as the sky would allow. Then she stopped, holding her wings out to either side, stalling in the thinning air. In the brief moment before she started tumbling back towards the earth, she spun to take it all in.
But all she saw was the green of the treetops right below her. She was sure she'd risen above the clouds. Did she imagine it?
No . . . that was wrong.
The trees had grown. They had caught up to her, rising as high as she had. They'd chased her.
The majesty of the forest became a dread that made Kiara feel heavy. She turned back to the sky, beating the air frantically. But the trees wouldn't let her go. They rose up past her, soaring higher than she could ever hope to.
The air became too thin to fly through. Too thin to breathe. Kiara started to fall down through the towering trunks of the forest. More treetops shot past her, growing ever taller, the forest growing more and more dense. Eventually, the trunks surrounded her, growing so close together as to fuse into a solid wooden tube littered with gangly branches. And still they grew closer.
The tube shrank as she fell through it. Tighter and tighter, until the branches were so dense she could not avoid them. She clipped a branch and started tumbling. Down and down. It was endless. The forest floor was no more. Only darkness remained, waiting for her like an open maw.
Kiara's blood ran cold. That darkness . . . it gave her the same chill as the void that tried to steal her flame.
She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that would end the nightmare. But the trees didn't disappear, and neither did the darkness. She continued to fall deeper into that void. Deeper into despair.
She couldn't breathe, couldn't flap her wings. She could do nothing but helplessly fall into the darkness.
But then a faint light appeared before her. It was small and dim, barely noticeable even against the pitch black void, but it was undeniably there. It spoke to her, a voice like clinking crystals, but she could not understand what it was saying. Still, those incomprehensible words bolstered her resolve. It fanned the flames within her soul.
Kiara righted herself, but she had no intention of flying up and away. Instead, she took aim and dove towards the heart of the cold void at the center of this once welcoming paradise. Whatever it was, she would not turn away. She would face it head on. And if that wasn't enough, she'd call out to her friends for help.
She would never give up. Not ever.
The wooden tube fell away as she cut into the darkness. Any and all traces of the idyllic world vanished as the void surrounded her. She flapped her wings, slowing her dive so that she could observe the emptiness.
It was indeed similar to what she experienced in the order's inner sanctum, but this time the darkness wasn't trying to steal her flame.
Suddenly, and without a cause that Kiara could discern, her attention was drawn to a specific point within the void. Even among the endless darkness, that point stood out as being particularly black. Anticipation bubbled up within her, causing her lungs to seize and her feathers to stand on end.
A single, thundering pulse–like that of a heartbeat–filled the empty void. It hit her, vibrating every fiber of being.
Her flame flickered.
+ Shift +
Kiara shot up in bed, drenched in sweat. Her hands shook and breaths came as ragged gasps. The fear, the existential dread, felt so real. What a nightmare!
Calli's story probably wormed its way into her dreams, but even so she couldn't shake that feeling. The pulse still echoed within her. It was like her whole body was being torn apart, atom by atom.
Groaning, she checked the time. The sun was about to rise. She needed to tell the others about what she'd just experienced, but her body refused to move. She fell back into her pillow, suddenly feeling entirely spent, as if she'd actually been flying around for hours.
Her eyes shut despite her attempts to keep them open, and she drifted off back to sleep.
The details of her nightmare were all but gone by the time she woke again.