Chapter Seventeen

“Where do I file a complaint? Who do I have to talk to? I gotta speak to timeline management or something because someone’s head needs to roll!”

Gideon was pacing back and forth on the other side of the coffee table. We were at Callan’s house in Bastillen, and I was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in Callan’s arms, my back against his chest, my damp curls falling around my face. I was clean and dressed in some of Callan’s clothes: knee-length cotton shorts and one of his graphic tees. He couldn’t help with the underwear situation, so I was going commando. I was glad to be out of my armor, which was folded up under the coffee table, but I felt raw, exposed, vulnerable, and rattled.

After I’d been taken, Toji and Gideon had contacted Callan, who told them how to get to Bastillen. They’d managed to avoid the time warps with Ashe’s help.

“We didn’t end up in the right timeline, is this like a multiverse kind of deal? Can we try another world? Because this one is raggedy and very dusty, and far too fucking dangerous. How do we get to the timeline where my best friend doesn’t keep disappearing!”

How indeed.

Ashe lay in front of the sofa with her head on my lap. She kept nudging me as though to confirm I was still there. I stroked her head, trying to give her comfort, but I could feel that she was as rattled as I was. This was the second time in a short period that I had disappeared on her.

“Oh my God, I was so terrified.” I felt a pang of heartache as I looked at how shaken Gideon was. He kept moving as though it would physically hurt to stand still. The last time I’d seen him, he couldn’t stop trembling, and there was a tremble to his body now. Remembering what had happened to him before Xythen whisked me away, I felt even worse. A terrifying thing had happened to him and then I’d been dragged away before his eyes.

“We’ve been losing our minds! I almost tore my hair out and do you know how pissed I would have been at you for making me tear my hair out?” Gi’s braids had been undone. He dragged his hands through his afro, which didn’t look as groomed as he usually kept it.

“Toji asked Naranthe if they could send Apprentice Warriors into Drisdari to look for you, but they said they couldn’t risk it, that even for them entering Drisdari was perilous, because there was no guarantee of making it out. But fucking hell, what were we supposed to do? Ashe kept trying to run off to the forest and I don’t even know how we kept her here…”

The time I’d been gone had been equivalent to two days, which shocked me because it had felt like I’d been in the forest maybe an hour or so. Now I knew that time moved differently there, just like in time pockets.

Callan’s arms tightened. He had been very quiet even though he hadn’t let me move from the circle of his arms once I’d come out of the shower. The look on his face when I’d arrived at the house would stay with me forever. Callan was broiling with emotions; I could sense it.

I tried to shift so I could look at him, but he kept me in place, his head resting against mine. His body was warm, his heart thumping rhythmically against my back. I never wanted to leave his arms, but it pained me that he couldn’t seem to talk to me yet.

But I didn’t need words to understand how he felt. It was clear his emotions were as fraught as Gideon’s.

“Two days!” “Gideon raved. “You disappeared for two days and—”

“Gi…” Toji said. He sat in the armchair adjacent to the sofa.

Gideon stopped pacing and whipped his head to him.

“Toji, darling, I love you, but if the next words out of your mouth are ‘calm down,’ I will explode.”

Toji smiled wanly. “Since you’re up, would you mind getting me a glass of water, please?”

Gideon’s features softened. “Yes, of course, iced with lemon?”

“Would be perfect,” Toji replied. Gideon nodded and headed to the kitchen. Toji looked at me, settling back against the cushions.

“Best I can do to try and get him to calm down a bit.”

“There’s a lot going on. Calm isn’t easy for any of us to achieve.”

Callan turned his head into my neck, taking a slow inhale and releasing it. His arms remained tight across my body and one of my hands gripped his forearm.

I had told them everything that happened in the forest. They now understood that Xythen’s abduction hadn’t been malevolent, but not having known that at the time, all they could do was worry and assume I’d been taken to be killed. Which, technically, I had been, once the Discordant Dark got hold of me.

I had caught the boys up on my conversation with Naranthe and what it had revealed about my Divine magic, the Discordant Dark, and the fragment of its power that had compelled Xythen to kill me.

When I’d told them how I’d come face to face with the Discordant Dark, it had been hard to speak on how it’d felt standing in its presence, how much pain I’d been in when it had tried to squeeze the life out of me because I posed a threat to its desire to destroy the world so humanity could start over. As for how I got out, I had no real clarity except to assume that Xythen had helped me somehow.

The boys were aghast about everything regarding the Celestial and the Discordant. The entities of creation and destruction. I had no desire for the Discordant Dark to break free and wipe us out; the thought filled me with intense dread, but I couldn’t help but wonder why the Celestial Divine had chosen to lock it away simply for fulfilling its purpose, for being the balance to the Celestial.

It was interesting to realize I had learned more from the Discordant Dark than I had from Naranthe, and I couldn’t help but think that Naranthe had intentionally not told me more than they had.

But all that mattered was making sure the Discordant Dark remained bound. If things were unbalanced, then so be it. It could continue to be that way to make sure this world and everyone in it weren’t wiped out on a whim.

I sighed, which triggered a cough, and I grimaced at the pain that flared in my throat. I was sore from everything I’d been through, and my voice was strained because of the vines that had wrapped around my neck. I’d been able to use several things from Kinari’s supplies in my waist pouch to bring me some ease though.

The boys had also been shocked that I’d lost the sword. I felt its absence more keenly than I thought I could feel being parted from a weapon.

Did I need the Divine sword to be an effective warrior? Of course not.

All things considered, I’d only had the sword for a couple months, even though it felt like much longer. Plus, I now understood that I had Divine magic within me, though I didn’t know how I might be able to wield it the way I did the sword.

But I wanted the sword back. It was mine. It had helped save the world.

And it was a weapon the Discordant Dark feared.

Gideon returned with Toji’s water, and his hand shook as he handed it to him. Ugh, what did I have to do to protect my friends? It was why I had chosen to come back, so I had to believe we could deal with these problems and not be crushed by them.

Gideon speared me with a look.

“You’re gonna give me more gray hairs than I need at this age, woman.”

“I thought you liked the grays, said it looked distinguished.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Aging grays and grays because your best friend keeps disappearing are not the same.”

My face sobered. “You’re right. I’ll work on the disappearing act, okay?”

“Hmph.”

Speaking of disappearing acts. “Has Gideon vanished again?”

“Thankfully, no.” Toji’s expression was laced with anxiety as he looked at Gideon. “I still cannot wrap my head around what happened. Not only that he disappeared, but that he said he saw…” He turned that anxious expression to me. “He said he ended up at a place where he saw you kill Kana. But that…that’s an impossible scenario.”

“Is it?” I said softly. Before Xythen had taken me into the forest I would have said it was. I had no reason to strike down Kana. But now I understood that the Discordant Dark had the ability to take others under its control, and I had been touched by its magic and brought directly into its presence.

“Gideon, how exactly did you see me kill Kana?” I hated to ask, but if I had clarity on what happened, maybe it could help me avoid it.

Gideon frowned. “There was a lot of noise and magic around and things were very chaotic, but I know what I saw.” He took a breath and let it out. “Kana was standing before you, screaming something but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She was holding her haladie. Both of you were surrounded by Divine magic. And then all of it struck Kana and she collapsed. I saw a lot of blood. But when I tried to move, I disappeared from that place and ended up somewhere in Triumph. It happened a couple more times before I got to the place where you found me. But I only saw that situation once. The other times I think I was moving from one place in the city to another.”

“Shit. I don’t know what would put me and Kana in that scenario but…”

But the Discordant Dark could make it happen. I bit my lip, struggling with the terrible thing Gideon had seen me do.

“I don’t feel any different, but what if the Discordant Dark tainted me? What if it’s only a matter of time before its compulsion takes hold? What if that’s the reason I end up striking out at Kana?” And what if I ended up hurting Ashe, Callan, Gi, and Toji? That was too horrendous a thought to voice, but it hung in the air among us.

The Discordant Dark wanted to destroy me. Having me destroy the ones I loved would definitely start my downfall.

Everyone was silent. Gideon’s mouth fell open as he looked between Toji and me. Toji’s brow furrowed.

“Okay, but we don’t even know that I saw something that’s really gonna happen,” Gideon finally said. “And for that matter, we don’t even understand how I disappeared. Callan said he would look through Linella’s journals for any info since she knew a lot about all types of magic and abilities, but—”

“I may have found something.” I jumped a little at the sound of Callan’s voice because he had been quiet for so long.

He shifted, so I moved from his arms so he could reach for one of Linella’s journals, which had been sitting on the coffee table. Her journals had been among the items Gideon and Toji had brought up to Bastillen for him. This one had a green cloth cover.

“I remember overhearing my mother talking about a rare ability to time-walk,” Callan said. “That’s what came to mind when Gideon described what happened, so I started combing through her journals to see if she wrote about it.”

“Did you find anything?” Toji made room on the armchair and Gideon dropped onto it, leaning against Toji, who put his arm around him.

“Yes.” Callan opened the journal and carefully turned a few pages.

My eyes glanced over Linella’s extremely neat print. She wrote in straight or slanted lines all over the unlined pages, but it was all legible, even the pages that were clustered with notes and drawings. He stopped somewhere in the middle.

“Time-walking involves Temporal magic but isn’t a Temporal ability,” he said. “In fact, it can’t be done to anyone with Talent magic. Only non-magic users. It gives you the ability to fluidly move through time without needing the conditions Temporals usually need to time travel. It came about as an experiment, and as we know with magical experiments, it’s dangerous and the risk for it to go wrong is high, which is why there’s never really been any successful time-walkers documented as far as I know. Mom wrote about time-walkers who survived the experiment, but time-walked and were never seen again.”

That brought a startled gasp from Gideon. Toji’s face remained pensive. I felt like a stone was sitting in my stomach at the idea that Gideon could time-walk and never return.

“If it’s a risky experiment, how did it work on Gideon?” Toji asked.

“I think…I honestly think it was a fluke.” Callan shook his head, looking bewildered. “It has to do with the circumstances of his death and resurrection. Time-walkers are created by first having their lives ended within a time pocket, then being revived within it as well. The death and resurrection occurring outside of linear time is what opens up the possibility to walk through it.”

I frowned. “That’s exactly what happened to Gideon. He died within a time pocket, and even though he was brought back in my living room, it was inside the time pocket you’d created to anchor the portal that helped us get out of the community.”

Callan nodded. “We weren’t trying to make Gideon a time-walker, but the conditions of his revival were right for it. And get this, being without your soul is key. Mom wrote that the soul serves as an anchor to our physical selves. Without it, you’re open to more possibilities with magic. And susceptible to more dangers, as we saw with Kinari.” He still sounded stunned, as though he couldn’t believe he had executed a complex magical experiment without even knowing it.

I was stunned too. But still plenty worried.

“The ability is magical of course, and it works on Gideon because his resurrection involved imbuing his body with Temporal magic as I stitched Kinari’s years to him. So Gideon now exists as…” Callan paused, seeming to consider what to say next. “A magical creation, I guess is one way to put it?”

“I’m just a man who died and was brought back to life by magic within a time pocket and without my soul, what do you mean that makes me magical?” Gideon’s sarcasm was laced with weariness. His shoulders heaved as he sighed and further collapsed against Toji.

“Okay, so we unintentionally turned Gideon into a time-walker,” I said. “How does he control it? How do we make sure he comes back?”

“And does that mean what he saw with Kana and Penn is real?” came Toji’s worried voice. “Did he time-walk to a future moment where he really saw Penn…”

Silence fell over us again. Ashe whined softly, sensing my emotions. I continued to give her rubs that were as much to comfort her as they were to comfort me. A terrifying feeling gripped me. Callan shifted closer so the line of his body pressed against mine.

Was that scenario going to come true? I would never kill Kana of my own volition, so did that mean I was going to fall sway to the Discordant Dark?

“Does it have to be true?” Gideon asked. “The future moments time-walkers go to. Are they set in stone or are they just a suggestion of what could happen?”

Callan shook his head. “I’m not sure. Mom’s writings about it indicate there’s no way to know for sure because of how few successful time-walkers there were. But in terms of making sure Gideon comes back, he’s going to need to keep an anchor on him at all times.”

“Anchors are used with Temporals too.” I had stepped through Callan’s portal holding Mixuné’s card box to make sure I went directly to her.

Callan nodded. “Right. If Gideon keeps something on him that belongs to Toji, it should help him time-walk back to him. We’re lucky he made it back the first time.”

Toji immediately took off his watch and slipped it onto Gideon’s wrist. They both looked a little relieved afterward.

“I’m going to talk to Eruci and some of the other Temporals here to see if they have any insight about time-walking,” Callan said. “We would need to know how to help Gideon control it, to make sure he doesn’t move through time arbitrarily. Time traveling is done purposefully, you know exactly where you’re going so you don’t end up in midair with the edge of a cliff three feet behind you, or in front of a gun that’s about to go off.”

Gideon looked stricken and Toji sucked in a breath. “Yes, let us quickly, and with much haste, find out how to keep me from time-walking in front of a gun or into the path of a lion, or midair with no parachute.”

“Chelara was a pretty strong Temporal, maybe she might know something,” I said. “Though I am worried that none of the people from the caves have made it here yet.” I had thought they would have, but after the dust settled after I returned, I’d found out that none of them were here yet and again felt guilty that I hadn’t left them Portalorbs.

Had they already been Erased?

“I’ll head back to the caves tomorrow to see if they’re still there,” I said.

Callan nodded. “We’ll figure out this time-walking ability. And…” He hesitated, glancing at me. “We’ll make sure the future moment Gideon saw doesn’t happen.”

“I won’t hurt your sister,” I said to Toji. “And if it happens because the Discordant Dark takes me over like it did Xythen…”

“We’ll figure it out.” There was a fierce look on Callan’s face as he said that. All I could do was nod back. After facing the Discordant Dark in the forest, I didn’t feel confident that I could overcome its compulsion.

“There’s something else I found out in Mom’s journal that relates to Gideon,” Callan said.

“What now?” Gideon said witheringly.

“It has to do with where Gideon’s soul might be,” he said. “And if we can get it back into him, it could make the time-walking ability go away.”

Gideon sat up straight and looked at Callan expectantly. “Do go on.”

Toji looked hopeful.

“We have her notes on the Necromajin ritual to thank, believe it or not. Listen…” He started to read. “Those who would practice the dark magics must first gamble with their souls. It must be removed for the inherent chaos of mixed magics to pour corruption into the vacant space. However, the soul must be kept with the Necromajin, should they emerge from the ritual successfully. Should the soul ascend to the Afterlife, the dark magic will not stabilize and will result in a heinous deterioration of the human body. My own eyes have thrice beheld such.”

“Goodness…” I was glad I didn’t have a weak stomach or the images my mind was trying to conjure would have me running for the bathroom.

“Yeah. Truly nasty stuff. Mom never aligned with them to help someone become a Necromajin, but she tracked down Temporals who did. That must be when she saw the failed rituals.”

“What else does she write?” I was eager to understand how this helped us locate Gideon’s soul.

Callan continued reading. “A Temporal is key to this ritual not only because of their ability to reverse death, but because they are able to prevent the soul from ascending by use of a time pocket to create a barrier. The Necromajin’s soul is their dark magic’s first meal and is a crucial step to ensuring they do not crumble to ash.”

“Yuck, they become a Necromajin, then their dark magic eats their soul?” Gideon said. “I’m speechless.” He paused. “Also, this dying and being revived in a time pocket is awfully similar to what happened to me.”

Callan’s lips twitched. “Like I said, soul removal is key for many magic abilities, but the process to create a Necromajin is a lot more involved, so don’t worry, time-walking is the only thing you have to contend with.”

“Yippee,” Gideon said tiredly.

Callan continued reading. “The time pocket presents a liminal space that cannot be crossed. It has been observed and charted several times that the human soul, whether from the body of a Talented or non-Talented person, will remain present in the living realm if kept in the confines of a time pocket. As for why the time pocket presents an obstacle to ascension, one can surmise it is because of the very nature of the thing itself, which, when created, exists outside of time…”

“Oh my God.” My hand shot out to grip Callan’s forearm. I’d heard enough. “Gideon died in the Temporal community, inside a time pocket. Does this mean…does it mean…”

Callan was nodding as he gave a hopeful smile. “Yes. I think this means that Gideon’s soul is inside the time pocket, having been unable to breach it and cross to the Afterlife.”