Chapter Fourteen

Ashe sprinting down and scenting the wide streets of the magic district caused quite a stir, but I blocked out the yelps, shouts, and all the cell phone cameras aimed our way as Ashe tried to pick up a fresh scent that would lead us to Gideon. I looked everywhere for a sign of him as I battled the confusion that had gripped me.

How could Gideon just vanish into thin air?

There was no way it could be Erasure, right? Gideon had not been part of the community that had moved through time. His existence wasn’t an aberration.

We’d covered several blocks when Ashe made a sound and I felt her body tense. She sniffed the opening of an alley, then looked down it.

“Gideon was here recently?” She whuffed in response, then ran down the alley and made an impressive leap up the wall at the end to the roof of a building. She leaped back down to the ground, to the surprise of quite a few people dining al fresco, and took a moment to sniff around again before she sprinted off.

I allowed a spear of hope to go through me. Fresher scents meant Gideon had a trail we could follow. I kept all my questions and confusion buried as much as possible as Ashe picked up the pace. She was soon in a full-out run, so I bent forward, making myself as small as I could to lessen the drag as she sprinted down the street and through the winding roads of the magic district.

Eventually she started slowing down, and I hoped that meant we were closing in on his location and not that she’d lost his scent. At the slower run I was able to get better visuals of our surroundings. It was a derelict neighborhood that was a stark contrast to the area we’d come from. Had Gideon somehow ended up here?

Late afternoon had slipped fully into night, and the moonlight illuminated craters in the ground that Ashe had to avoid, downed trees that looked like they’d lain there for months, and buildings that were crumbling even as the lights from the windows indicated they weren’t abandoned. The wind that blew past us brought the foul stench of uncollected garbage.

Ashe slowed even more as she headed down a dead-end street. A dilapidated brick wall was up ahead, overgrown with creeping plants. Ashe stopped at the last building on the left and looked pointedly at the boarded-up door. I slid off her back and looked around. The building was three stories high, and the windows and door were boarded up. It looked like it had once been a small apartment building but barely looked habitable enough for a nest of rats.

All the buildings on this block were in similar condition. As I swept my gaze around, I noticed people lurking about. They noticed me too; I could feel their eyes on me, but no one approached. They might have taken their chances with jumping me if I’d been alone, but Ashe was an obstacle few people tried to take on. Which was very smart of them.

“In there?” Ashe whuffed, so we approached the door, which I soon realized wasn’t boarded up so much as there were slabs of boards slanted across the doorway. I moved them aside to reveal an opening. The air currents that drifted through brought the scent of a space that hadn’t had a proper cleaning in years but had seen many a body pass through.

I unsheathed the Gladius before I eased inside, Ashe following.

We met no one as we walked down a narrow hallway, across a floor that was covered in cheap linoleum tiles, most of which were curled up or dislodged. Cracks covered the walls and some very determined plant life had made its way in. I stepped aside and let Ashe take the lead, since we were following her nose.

The hallway led to a medium-sized room that gave me pause because the hardwood floor looked like a sneeze would cause it to collapse. We treaded lightly, but as I looked through the floorboards, I caught glimpses of light and movement. Ashe took us to one of the doors in the wall and opening it revealed a small closet. There was a square door set in the floor and nothing else.

“Where the hell are we and how did Gideon end up here?” I trusted Ashe’s tracking, but this was a strange place to suddenly find myself looking for my best friend. He had blipped out of his shop only to end up here?

“Down we go.” I sheathed the sword so I could open the door. A ladder of questionable sturdiness led down into dim light. I crouched there for a moment, waiting to see if anyone would appear, but no one did. The dirt-packed ground below wasn’t that far so I jumped down and moved aside so Ashe could join me.

We were in a narrow passageway that smelled of damp and mold. Firi Stones flickered in rusty lanterns haphazardly affixed to the walls. We moved away from the ladder and walked a short distance until the passageway opened up into a larger space.

A much larger space.

I paused and took it in. It only took a few moments to realize we were in some kind of underground market. And if it was this far underground in this kind of neighborhood, it was probably very different from the magic district.

People were everywhere; the murmur of low conversation hummed through my ears. The place was full of tents and tables that looked as though they were standing on borrowed time. The vendors were tightly packed, and their tables were cluttered with boxes and bins full of…who even knew what?

Ashe made a restless noise. She wanted to keep tracking.

That meant Gideon was definitely here.

“Can you Morph smaller? We need to find Gideon quickly but this doesn’t strike me as a place we wanna turn heads.” They’d turn no matter what, seeing as I was dressed in armor and had a magic sword. I left the Gladius sheathed so the glowing blade would stay hidden and fished out a pair of iron knuckles I’d recently Shaped from one of my inner pockets. A subtle but effective weapon should I need one.

Ashe Morphed into a dog that looked similar to the form she’d taken on in the Before Times, but smaller. She then started parsing scents. Luckily, her tracking didn’t lose any potency when she Morphed.

While I waited for her to regain Gideon’s scent, the frown I’d already had deepened as I continued to take this place in. There were several tables, mainly the larger ones, that were clustered with creatures in cages. I heard and saw squawking Humitsu, birds that had skin like stone and claws like daggers. One of them was responsible for the scars through my eyebrow.

My eyes widened when they landed on a Spironji, a creature that looked like a hairless gerbil with a ridge of orange horns down its back and bucked teeth that reminded me of that Pokémon, Rattata. There were a few of them, in individual cages, and they were snapping at anyone who came close. Spironji were flesh eaters, and they did not care whose flesh it was. They, as well as Humitsu, needed extensive Tamer training, and even then they were not the kind of creature that was domesticated because even with Taming they were aggressive and dangerous.

I shook my head. This was clearly an illegal magic market, and I was sure Jarron would want to know about it. But I was here to find Gideon, not make busts and knock heads together.

Ashe finally regained his scent and ran forward. I followed, and we headed down one of the tent and table lined aisles, navigating past people of varying scruples.

“Legendary items for sale, straight from Drisdari Forest…” That caught my attention and my head whipped to the left, catching the eye of a wiry man with wispy hair who was wrapped in a tattered robe that kept slipping off his shoulder. “Fancy an adventure of your own? I’ve got maps that will lead you to amazing treasure…”

I scanned his table. It was laid out with items like rusty keys, rocks, crystals, bizarre-looking feathers, as well as weathered paper rolled up like a scroll and bound by a wax seal.

Jarron had accused Queen Rubiyana of selling bogus maps into Drisdari Forest, causing people to try their luck and then run out of that luck when they couldn’t find a way out.

Guess there was truth to those accusations.

This wasn’t directly my problem, but given my own connection to issues in Drisdari, coming face to face with someone selling maps into it gave me a bad feeling. The least I could do was meet with Jarron and put this seedy underground on the Council’s radar.

Ashe yipped, turning my attention back to her. She started running faster, and when I looked ahead, relief almost had me stumbling as I caught sight of Gideon. His head was whipping from side to side as he made dodgy moves around people. Ashe ran up to him and brushed against his leg, which caused him to yelp and jump. When he recognized her, he scooped her up and held her to his chest, his head bobbing around again in search of me.

We locked eyes and Gideon’s relief was a mirror of mine. I reached him and pulled him into a tight hug. He was shaking. Ashe was making comforting sounds and rubbing her head against his chest.

“Oh God, you’re okay.” I pulled back and held him by the shoulders. Gideon looked spooked. His eyes were wide behind his glasses and his mouth fell open as he looked at me.

“P…Penn. It’s…you.” He was breathing too fast. “Am I here? I mean did I come back to… Am I here… I…”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Skating my gaze around made me realize we were garnering too much attention. There was a muscular woman leaning against a nearby wall watching us a little too closely. When our eyes met, hers narrowed, and a few people standing with her shifted as they took us in.

“Let’s get out of here.” I fished out my cell phone but had no service. As soon as we got outside I’d let Toji know I’d found him.

“Out…yes out…but Penn.” I was trying to steer him down the aisle, but he resisted.

“Gi, you’re okay now, whatever happened, you’re okay now. Let’s get outside and get some fresh air.”

I got him to start walking, but he was taking stumbling steps and kept looking around, a bewildered look on his face.

“I… I saw you…”

I turned to him.

“I don’t know what happened, but I saw you… You…”

I frowned. “Saw me when? Before now?”

His head moved up and down rapidly. We made it back to the hallway and rickety ladder, and though Gideon seemed very unstable on his feet, I got him up it. Ashe Morphed back to her Circoux form and kept close to Gideon as I led us out.

“Oh my God…” Once we’d taken several steps outside, Gideon collapsed. I crouched next to him, placing my hands on his shoulders. His head was bent, his hands flat against the ground, his body still shaking.

Holy shit, what had happened to him?

Ashe kept guard since we were in an area with a lot of shifty eyes.

“Hey, Gi, talk to me,” I said gently. “What happened? All we saw was that you…well you disappeared from the shop. Ashe couldn’t pick up your scent for a while but eventually she followed a trail that led us here.”

Gideon took in a shaky breath, making a wheezing sound when he released it. He raised his head and I saw fear and confusion in his expression.

“I… I don’t know what happened exactly,” he began. “One minute I’m in the shop, next minute I’m somewhere else. I kept…” His face scrunched as he frowned. “I kept finding myself in different places around the city, the last one being here.” He slowly moved his head to look around. “I’ve never been here before, but I ended up down in that… that place and I couldn’t figure out how to get out.” He took another deep breath.

“But the very first place I ended up was…was very different.” His frown deepened. “I didn’t recognize it, it looked like a town, maybe? But…” He shook his head. “Penn, I don’t know what the fuck happened that took me from my shop to here, but I think maybe I…” He released a delirious laugh. “Maybe I moved through time somehow? Oh God, that can’t be it, I’m not a Temporal, I…”

He hung his head and laughed again. Ashe whined and dropped her head to rub it against his shoulder. I felt like something insidious was squirming inside my belly.

“It could have to do with being resurrected without your soul,” I said. “But Gideon, what were you saying about seeing me?”

He raised his head. “Wherever I first ended up, I saw you, Penn.” He looked anxious. “There was some kind of battle going on, everything was loud and chaotic, but I saw you. You were hurt. I think you were hurt real bad. And I saw Kana, and…”

My eyes widened. “Me, Kana, and a battle?” That wasn’t something that had ever happened.

Had Gideon stepped into some kind of future moment?

I had so many fucking questions.

Gideon straightened up a little more, raising a trembling hand to push his glasses up.

“There was a lot of magic. It felt like Divine magic. It got intensely bright, and I don’t quite understand what was happening, but what I saw, Penn, what I saw…”

A bead of sweat trailed down my spine. The look on Gideon’s face made me brace like he was about to tell me the worst thing he could possibly tell me.

“What did you see?” I whispered.

One of Gideon’s hands reached out to wrap around my forearm, squeezing hard. His face looked so anguished.

“Penn…I saw you kill Kana.”