“Jacob!” The delighted voice of a kid who was about eight years old or so filled the hallway of the small schoolhouse just as I stepped through the doorway. It was immediately echoed by a dozen similar cries. The next thing I knew, all of those kids, varying in age from about seven up to ten or so, came barreling around their scattered desks so they could throw themselves at me in a group hug.
Naturally, I was in disguise again. The Jacob identity was an easy one to use, and it meant I wouldn’t leave behind a bunch of stories about a blonde girl called Felicity wherever and whenever I went. That… could have caused some issues.
“Oof!” Of course I played up the effect, staggering backward under the force of the kids crashing into me. They laughed as I let myself fall to my knees, making sounds of distress from under the impromptu dogpile. “Ohhh no, I’ve fallen, forsooth what enemy hath come upon me this night? For I hath walked such a virtuous path, only to stagger and be brought low by mine foes!” I’d discovered pretty quickly that these particular kids really liked it when I played up the ridiculously ancient Shakespearean-type language. It made them laugh almost as much as when I used modern slang. Though I wasn’t sure how much of any of that was them finding the actual words funny, and how much was some odd effect of the translation spell I was using. The kids were all speaking Spanish, so Percy had produced an enchantment I could wear to automatically translate so they would hear whatever I said in Spanish, and I would hear them in English. But I was pretty sure it did some funny things to my words in the process. And when I used those old Shakespeare words (well, old to me, they were probably actually quite new to these people), the translation spell seemed to go wonky enough to really amuse the kids.
They were definitely laughing now, finally giving me room to breathe at a word from the ringleader, a ten-year-old girl with dark blonde hair named Susan. They moved back, giving me space even as they blurted questions at me almost as quickly as December could. How long was I going to be in town, when did I make it, where had I been, did I have any adventures, how many treats did I bring, did I meet any fun people, any bad people, any mysterious people, and so on.
Sitting there on the floor, my mouth opened to try picking out one of the questions to respond to, when another voice spoke up instead. “Let’s give our friend Jacob a chance to collect himself, shall we? And I don’t believe I heard anyone greeting him properly.”
The kids all chorused real greetings, all some variation of, “Hello, Jacob!” They also moved a bit so I could see the person who had spoken up. Theresa Annetson, an older woman with graying hair who tended to look severe at first but was actually very much a child at heart. She was just as interested in my stories as her students were, but better at disguising that fact. I’d originally met her a couple months earlier.
Yeah, a couple months earlier. Which itself had been about two weeks after I’d gone through that whole thing in the Reaper tower and found myself… changed. Those first two weeks had been spent searching and cataloging everything we could find in that tower. Not that we were done by that point, of course. But that was when I’d needed a break badly enough to come here, to the town known as Los Pasos Primeros, Spanish for First Steps. That was what the people in charge had named their first major colony here in what would one day be known as Desoto. It was also where Gaia had come when she decided to make this territory her home. I’d visited her a few times over these past couple months, ever since I’d used the Reaper ship’s computer to track her most likely locations. I hadn’t wanted to use the golden egg she gave me unless I really needed to. That felt more like an emergency sort of thing. It took a couple tries, but between my instant transportation power and the ship’s ability to show me images from very far away, that didn’t exactly take long. So, I’d come to visit. Maybe it was stupid, but I’d really needed to see another familiar face. I was homesick. Now I’d been in the past for almost five months total, and the only message I’d gotten from Ehn for all of that was an envelope that had simply appeared in my pocket after that first week of searching the tower. The first thing in the envelope was a very useful magical blue gemstone that was definitely going to come in handy soon enough. The other thing was a letter, signed by the Dragon-Heretic himself, that had given a date, a time, and a latitude and longitude. Apparently that was where and when I was supposed to meet him.
The date was today, which was why I had come to visit Gaia and her new friends again. I wasn’t sure when I would get another chance. Once I arrived in town, I’d found out Gaia herself was in a private meeting. But the school was open, so here I was.
“Thanks, Theresa.” Picking myself up once more, I held up both hands like claws. “I knew I was walking into a school, but I didn’t know it was a school of piranha!” That last came as I made a faux-swipe with my finger claws while clacking my teeth together in a hard snap as though I was trying to bite them. The kids all squealed and stumbled backward, laughing as they played up their own reactions.
From there, Theresa insisted I go to the front of the room and start answering questions from any kid who actually held their hand up properly. They all wanted to know where I’d been and what I’d been doing in the two weeks since I’d seen them last. But I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be that interested in hearing about all the time I spent physically training, studying, practicing with my Necromancy, and cataloging everything I could find in my giant tower that could fly into space.
Well, okay, it wasn’t exactly a tower anymore after all the adjustments I’d done, but still. Semantics.
In any case, these guys might be interested in some of that. But between what would bore them and what I couldn’t talk about, it was better to focus on other things.
Specifically, those ‘other things’ involved telling them about how a friend and I had been creeping through a dense forest, tracking a monster the size of this very school building with three muscular scorpion tails and six legs. Of course they were all hanging on every word, especially once I started describing the way my friend and I split up to encircle the creature’s pit-like lair. Theresa seemed to enjoy the story too. She’d always liked the way I could make up tall tales to entertain her students.
But then, I wasn’t actually making this up. At least, not exactly. Percy and I had been busy over these past couple months.
I had been regaling the kids with my story for about fifteen minutes or so when Gaia stepped into the schoolhouse and stood at the back of the room. But my audience was so enraptured, they didn’t seem to notice. Knowing how awful I would’ve felt if I was them and the storyteller just took off in the middle, I acknowledged Gaia with a slight nod before continuing through the tale. I played it up a little bit for them, of course. And I didn’t talk about special powers or anything. As far as they were concerned, my friend and I fought that giant monster with blades and guns.
Finally, once the beast was slain and the kids were cheering, I said my goodbyes, hugged each of them as well as Theresa, and made my way out alongside Gaia.
“They love your visits, you know,” she pointed out with a soft smile.
Yeah, considering I had that looming meeting with Ehn coming up, that didn’t exactly make me feel as good as it should have. A flash of guilt went through me. Would I ever see those kids again? I knew we weren’t going back to the present yet, but for all I knew, he would take me somewhere else in time. Hell, we still have to have the entire conversation about everything that happened to me, and I had no idea how that would go.
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The point was, there was a lot to be nervous about. But I had to keep it under control. It wasn’t Gaia’s problem, especially not right now. And I definitely couldn’t let her come along to meet the man in question. I had no idea what that would do to the timeline considering I wasn’t exactly certain whether they’d canonically met before, but I really had my doubts.
Pushing all that out of my mind, I asked Gaia how her meeting had gone, so she went into a whole thing about being part of the new council running the city. She was going on about defense and food deliveries, job assignments for new arrivals, all that stuff. I could tell she was really into it, so much so that she hadn’t even really seemed to notice my brief distraction a minute earlier. It made me smile a bit, before I felt another sharp pain. Yes, she loved this place now, and she would love it in a couple hundred years when she was forced to destroy it. God damn those Fomorians.
Cursing myself for being unable to warn her at all about any of that, I let Gaia tell me all about her new job, and about the people she was working with. Some she appreciated the company of more than others, but she had to work with all of them and compromise. Which made me think this was almost a sort of practice for when she would need to work with the Crossroads Committee. Though in this case, she could have forced the issue if she really wanted to.
Anyway, it hadn’t taken long for her to become an important member of the community, which was pretty unsurprising, to say the least. Gaia was a powerful force of personality. Even if they didn’t know she could do literal magic, that much was probably clear to everyone in this place.
I also talked to her about the small Alter population. There weren’t many of them here, and most could pass for human with minor disguises. They were already set up in a way to go underground and disappear (either permanently or temporarily) if other Heretics showed up, though that wouldn’t be a problem for a while, hopefully. Crossroads was still new enough at this point that they didn’t have a lot of people to spare to wander through random colonies on the new continent doing spot checks. Actually, I was pretty sure they were expecting Gaia to deal with any undesirables she ran into, which was convenient.
Eventually, we ran out of other things to talk about. The two of us had left the walled city behind on our walk, making our way out to a river where we could see a few fishermen hard at work in the distance. Both of us waved before I took a deep breath and told her that I was going to have to leave for a while. I made it clear that I didn’t know when I would be back, and that it was possible I would be going through time again. Gaia, for her part, didn’t seem surprised. She did make me promise to seek her out the next time I had a chance, no matter when it was. Unless, she added, I went further back. She promised me that as far as she knew, we had never met previously in her timeline. Unless I had appeared under a different guise, which, she mused, was possible. But the point was, she wanted me to seek her out at any point in the future, if I could, just to check in and let her know I was okay.
I promised to do just that, and the two of us embraced. It felt really good in that moment, considering how much I was missing everyone back home, and how much I had missed Gaia herself all year.
I wanted to stick around even longer and delay the inevitable, but I couldn’t. Saying my goodbyes, I turned to walk away. After a few steps, I focused on the image of this time’s version of Laramie Falls. And yes, I still hadn’t quite gotten over the part I’d played in the creation of the town I’d grown up in (or would grow up in?) hundreds of years from now.
I hadn’t totally abandoned this place over the past couple months, of course. My teleportation power meant it wasn’t hard to jump back and forth. I kept coming to visit and help out wherever and however I could. This time, however, as I shifted back into my own default form and took a walk through the town to interact with everyone, I made it clear that I might be gone for… for a long while, if I ever made it back. I was going to feel pretty silly if all of this amounted to nothing and Ehn simply wanted a quick check in before sending me back on my way, but just in case, I needed to give these people a heads up. Something made me doubt he would let me call a quick timeout and come say my goodbyes in the moment. He didn’t really seem like that sort of patient person. Oh, sure, he was one kind of patient. But not that kind. He was patient when it came to enacting his plans, not when other people needed him to wait. When he decided it was time to go, it would be time to go.
So, I took some time to talk to everyone there and tell them how much I appreciated everything they had done and how welcoming they had been. They, in turn, insisted on having a big lunch to celebrate. They managed to pull it together very quickly too, which was impressive. It was an enormous feast full of some of the most delicious food I’d ever eaten. The whole town really went all-out, which sent another pang of guilt through me about the idea of possibly disappearing for what could, to these people, be the rest of their lives. Or at least a very long time.
They kept insisting this was about paying me back for saving them from Maestro. It didn’t matter how much I told them they didn’t need to. They wouldn’t just forget it. Which, considering what they had been through thanks to that monster, was probably understandable. But it still made me feel anxious and uncertain. If Ehn hadn’t been there, I would’ve died horribly, and Maestro would have taken his revenge on them as well. So really, it was Ehn they should be grateful to. I didn’t really do that much besides get his attention and… well, break his spell. Which wouldn’t have saved these people.
After going through that meal with them and promising to visit whenever I could, I said my goodbyes to everyone in town, before making my way out. There were still a few hours before I was supposed to meet Ehn, but I had more to do. For one thing, I had to make sure everything was in order at what had been the tower. I didn’t know if we were going to be able to bring it and Laein along with us. Hell, I had no idea how the man was going to react to any of that, and how much would be a surprise to him.
Bastet had moved on soon after showing us how to make our way through the tower and control it. Like Gaia, she had also given me away to contact her in the future if I needed to. But for the most part, Laein, Percy, and I had been on our own. Well, with Eurso, Cerberus, Jaq, and Gus. Not to mention my sharks, who really enjoyed playing around in the lakes we’d found inside the place.
And, of course, I would never really be alone. Not anymore. That thought came as I walked away from Laramie Falls and made my way up a small hill before sitting down in the shade of a tall tree. Resting my back against it, I closed my eyes and took a moment to control my breathing. In, out, in, out. I let my focus drift, shifting myself into a meditative trance. It only took a minute or so.
The cast of cool air carrying water droplets crossed my face, while the ground seemed to lurch under me as I opened my eyes. I was standing on the deck of an old sailing ship. A handful of generic-looking sailors bustled around, doing… uh, sailing stuff while a loud, familiar voice called out orders.
Turning that way, I saw–well, myself. Though a somewhat more openly muscular version. She almost seemed taller too. Seriously, her biceps were almost mind-boggling. Maybe it was weird to say about myself, but it was like she was chiseled out of marble or something. She wore loose-fitting brown pants with a black cloth belt, sandals, a sleeveless dark red shirt, and a black bandana around the top of her head to keep her already-shorter hair back.
This was Fathom, another version of me. I hadn’t teleported, not exactly. Instead, I was inside my own equivalent of a Reaper Archive. This was my world. Though it wasn’t exactly the size of a world. It was more like a massive lake surrounding an island that had a moderately-sized town scattered across it.
Yeah, I totally had no idea where my subconscious could have gotten the idea of having something like that be my own private Archive. This was where the other versions of me lived. The other members of what we had begun to call the Flique, the Flick Clique. Which was silly, but still. I had a feeling Shiori would approve.
“Ahoy!” After calling that out, Fathom laughed, hopping all the way from the bridge of the sailing ship over to land smoothly next to me. It was like a forty foot hop. Standing right in front of me, I was even more impressed, and intimidated, by how fit she was. Was my body even actually capable of looking like that? She had muscles on muscles.
Lifting me clear off the deck with a hug, Fathom grinned. “Here for a quick visit, or–wait.” She stopped short, suddenly turning. “My scope!” One of her crew (they were essentially mindless NPCs) tossed the spyglass to her, and she turned to hold it up to her eye. But she wasn’t looking out over the ocean. She was looking straight up into the sky. Or rather, back into the real world.
“Go back,” she blurted. “You have to get back out there!”
“What? Why–what’s going–”
“Laramie Falls,” she informed me sharply, “there’s an army attacking it.
“Someone’s trying to kill everyone there.”