Chapter 25

25.

         When his vision went black and he felt the familiar wrenching sensation in his gut, Tristian knew he was being teleported. Involuntarily, of course, but it felt just as unpleasant whether he wanted to be transported or not. He had no idea where they were planning on taking him, but he knew that when the teleport finished he would have barely a second to gain control of the situation before they had a chance to do something else. The fact that they hadn’t rendered him unconscious before taking him was a bit confusing. Perhaps they had underestimated him. Because the mere act of moving him from one place to another didn’t make him any less dangerous. And if they didn’t know that, they would in a moment.
         His thoughts swirled around as nothingness pulsed and shifted on all sides of his immaterial body. An instant later, or perhaps more, Tristian felt his body solidifying, ice seeping out of cracks between the rocks, as he became more aware of his limbs and his position and what he could do.
         The sword was still in his hand, and its red slash was the first sight to greet his vision. They should have taken it away first. Instinctively he let momentum finish the motion he had started before being teleported, the blade slicing apart the molecules of the air.
         That was his first impression.
         The second was of the wind roaring in his ears.
         Spots blinked and danced in his vision, a patchwork mosaic resolving with agonizing slowness. All he could see was the blade. The blade and the sky. Wisps of clouds scrawled across the sky spoke a language he couldn’t decipher. It took him a moment to realize that the blade hadn’t struck anything. Where the hell did she go? he thought, beginning to pivot into a stance that would allow him to react from whatever direction an attack was coming.
         This lead to his third impression.
         He moved nowhere.
         His feet pushed against empty air.
         In that second Tristian’s vision cleared completely and he realized that the reason he could only see sky was that it was the only thing to see. Venturing a glance downwards, all he could see was the nearly unbroken canopy of the forest, a green mat that he knew looked far softer than it really was.
         It occurred to him in the midst of the flurry of impressions and emotions now coursing through him that he was still in mid-air, he hadn’t fallen at all. A brisk wind sent invisible particles into his eyes, forcing him to blink sharply and turn away. His brain kept trying to tell him that he was falling, and his stomach had the constant twisted feel that someone had when they were floating in orbit. It was making him dizzy and all his efforts couldn’t convince his body otherwise.
         Taking a deep breath to quell his rising panic and doing his best not to think about the distance to the ground, he started to think of a way out of the situation. None presented themselves immediately, to his dismay. Briefly the mad thought occurred to him that he really was falling and that all his floating was just an illusion. But he didn’t think the mindbenders would be capable of pulling off that sort of illusion, not with him.
         We don’t need to , a voice whispered in his head.
         That’s when he saw her.
         It was the woman mindbender from before. She was sitting crosslegged in the air some distance away, her clothes gently rustling in the wind. Tristian was close enough to read her expression, and he didn’t like what he saw.
         Why hasn’t she dropped me? he thought, hoping she couldn’t read that in his head. No need to give her any ideas. He went to shout at her, to threaten, to convince, to do something other than float here helplessly and wait for her to figure out what to do with him. She could have killed him before, perhaps, teleported him into the ocean or into space, there must be a reason for this display.
         Well , the voice said, I’d hate for you to never know how it happened.
         Her lips pulled upwards into a cold, knife-edged smile. Tristian’s word died in his throat just as he felt whatever fragile strings binding him to the air suddenly dissipate and let go. He thought he heard someone call his name.
         Laughter rang like warped bells in his mind.
         Tristian fell.

* * * * *

         Face flushed, heart hammering so fast that it might attain flight if it had wings, Kara leaned heavily against a tree, closing her eyes and trying not to pant too loud, although every breath sounded like a thunderclap in the somber forest. She couldn’t calm her breathing, no matter how hard she tried. If I can regenerate , she thought tiredly, why the heck am I getting so exhausted? She didn’t even know how long she had been running, the distorted pattern of shadows and light made it difficult to figure out what time of day it was and her sense of passing time was so warped that days might have gone by without her noticing.
         Pushing a strand of hair pasted to her forehead by sweat out of her face, Kara crouched down cautiously near the tree and did her best to bring her pulse out of the triple digits. Her stomach had stopped rumbling a long time ago and there was now only a constant empty howling for food, the low moan a sick animal might make. Her legs and arms felt weak, and if she held her hand out in front of her face she could see it trembling slightly and uncontrollable. If I die of starvation and exhaustion, will I still recover? she wondered, not for the first time wishing that people actually bothered to explain things to her, instead of merely assuming that she already knew or deciding it wasn’t worth telling her. Moments like now, a little extra knowledge might be helpful.
         Tentatively, she reached out with her mind, trying to see if the other mindbender was still around. She hadn’t felt him in several hours, although she had been bracing herself for the type of probing, stabbing attacks she knew he was capable of. Kara still had to suppress a shudder when recalling the fight, only pure luck and her faster recovery had managed to get her out of there safely. Relatively speaking. It certainly hadn’t been her superior battle prowess, which had consisted of letting herself be used a punching bag and wishing she had a very large gun. Parts of her ribs and face still ached, even though the bruises had healed a while ago. Perhaps they were a form of ghost-pain, the body’s way of reminding her of the humiliation she had gone through. Kara desperately wanted to be angry and ready to dispense vengeance at the first opportunity, but the best she could come up with was a firm desire to avoid any fights with the man in the future. Does that make me a coward? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter, really, for Kara had a feeling that she would be forced into a fight, one way or another. I don’t want to kill anyone, but if he doesn’t give up, I may have to. What am I supposed to do?
         This place was mad. She was starting to come to that conclusion and each hour was only supporting the evidence. Nothing made any sense. Why did the mindbenders attack them? How did they know she knew Ranos? Why did the one chasing her kill his wife? And what had he tried to ask her before? What happened to them? his voice bellowed hoarsely in her mind. Didn’t they know? Didn’t Mandras send them here, to protect whatever it was he had hidden on this planet? And yet, what were they going to do, fight the entire Time Patrol? Or were they just stalling for time so they could escape? Kara didn’t know. It struck her that nobody seemed to have any kind of plan about what to do and everyone involved was just making things up as they went along. Her uncle used to tell her that’s how things normally happened and they just assigned logic to it after the fact. She had assumed he was kidding. Now she was starting to wonder.
         Her mind crept carefully over the invisible landscape, searching for any sign of nearby mindbenders, doing her best to stay as intangible as possible and avoid detection. Ranos always said that the best way to avoid being discovered was to not let on that you were looking. Kara was gambling that they wouldn’t expect her to be looking for them. She concentrated, flexing a muscle that wasn’t there, letting her mind follow the bumps and bends and turns of the pitted surface, waiting for the sort of elusive tingle that would indicate she had found a potential problem. But so what if she found them? Discovering their locations was little better than a parlor trick and did absolutely nothing for her. It was running in place when she needed to be heading toward a goal. But avoiding them couldn’t be her final goal. It couldn’t only take her so far and in the end the threat would still remain. If there was one thing her father had tried to tell her, it was that things rarely went away, and those things didn’t care whether you wanted to face them or not. Dodging conflict was in itself a fight and when the running stopped, the battlefield would have to be chosen. And it was up to Kara whether she would stand on the ground where she wanted to, or let them chose it for her. Either way, it would happen.
         I could kill them all , Kara thought, shivering a little, her mind slipping over the area like a gentle tide, the waves brushing, touching, and then retreating before inching forward again. They can’t really hurt me. I’m supposed to be one of the most powerful mindbenders alive. If I wanted to, if I really tried, I could burn them all out. I saw how Ranos did it to Mandras. I could do it.
         Folding into herself, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders and hugged them tightly. I could destroy them all.
         Kara tensed as she brushed up against the edge of what could only be described as a mindfield. And yet it was no obstacle. Not for her. Even from here she could see the paths through, lit in neon colors, the road paved right to the center for her, and hidden at the heart was the switch that could shut it all down. I could. A heartbeat thundered in her ears, falling in time with her own. A taste of minted air ran through the canals of her mind, tinged with the flavor of height. Dimension had little meaning here, up and down were terms that belonged to a different existence. Kara could find them. But she didn’t need to. All she needed to do was light a fire and sit back and watch the flames take hold. Watch the wreckage throw tortured shadows against a backdrop without an echo and descend endlessly into a night without depth. I could. There is heat in all that we do. But the fire will devour itself until there is nothing left and even the embers will crumble at the barest touch. I could.
         But could she?
         She crouched around the edges, her thoughts forming a moat, her eyes the flickering of a thousand shadows, viewing the spectacle from afar, ready to break the siege before it had truly begun. It was so small. Everything was so small. The barest pass of a candle could snuff it out in an instant. It could. I could.
         But I don’t want to.
         “Do you hear me?” Kara whispered, staring up into the sunlight drenched canopy, with its meaningless shapes and jagged holes. She let go of herself, let go of gravity, and with one hand touching the tree, she began to float toward the roof of the forest. This is nuts. We’re all going to kill each other for no reason.
         A mindbender had appeared in the air, probably recently. There was apparently a way to tell if someone had teleported near you, but Kara wasn’t sure what to look for yet. All she knew that no one had been there before and now there was someone. Teleportation was the likely suspect. For a moment she had thought it was the man from earlier, but the texture was all wrong, the scent of old velvet and grainy winds. Kara could see the flickers and quiverings as the mindbender did something but the strands wove by too fast and there was no time to discern them properly. Maybe I could capture her , she mused, navigating a loose cluster of branches, marveling how not being in a panic made her much less clumsy. Or give her a warning. So they leave me alone. So they’re more willing to talk. Because this is stupid. The war is over. There’s no need to keep fighting.
         A steady pulse was no doubt the effect of the levitation, but Kara could sense another constant effect, not exactly centered on the mindbender. What are they doing up there? The sunlight threatened to blind her as she came near the top, burning javelins scraping at her skin, leaves and twigs pawing at her face, biting at her eyes, poking their way into her mouth. All that was above her was sky, scratches of blue and white. The mindbender was nearby, but not directly above her. Some distance away, perhaps. Maybe there were others? Kara cautiously expanded the field, ice cream melting across a table, flowing around whatever object it encountered. She tried to imagine whiskers, although the symbolism always made her nose itch for some reason.
         Like a needle stroking a balloon, she found someone else.
         The sun was distressingly warm on her face. Raising her arms above her head she pushed aside the last few branches separating her from the sky. A broader arc of the sky settled into view. She thought she could see two figures in the distance, hovering above the trees. Neither were moving. It was hard to make out features, but she could tell one was a man and the other a woman. The woman appeared to be the mindbender. How many? The other mind seemed to writhe at the barest touch. Now who are you? she asked no one in particular, investigating a layer further. It’s not a mindbender, so there’s nothing to-
         A sudden taste of copper entered her mouth.
         Her head and shoulders poked above the trees. The figures resolved with startling focus. A growling lunged at her brain, even as she rapidly drew back, recognizing the guardian as well as the home he defended.
         Kara’s eyes widened, barely even noticing the blood running freely from her nose. No. It can’t be. It’s not-
         “No, what are you . . . Dad, no,” she gasped, trying to figure out at what point she had fallen asleep and become infected with nightmares. “What are you, what is she doing-“
         But Kara could see. The spider’s hammock, supporting him, she could see all the individual strands, netting him in a loose cage, an entrapment even the bloody toothpick of the sword couldn’t cut through. Instead it plucked at the infinite strings of the air, creating an orchestral cacophony whose sideways vibrations she could feel in her teeth. She could see, as her father floated there, his expression veiled, but every fiber of every tendrils holding him aloft radiantly clear. She could see, the jagged, fault-line smile of the woman as she hovered there.
         And she could see when all the strings were removed, and gravity allowed to retake what rightfully belonged to it.
         “Dad!” she screamed, not caring who heard, her voice landing on the trees and absorbed instantly, barely making a dent in the air, cushioning nothing and rescuing no one.
         Swiftly, her father dropped out of sight, a discarded rag-doll. He never made a sound. The trees accepted him without comment.
         “No, no, oh God, Dad, no, oh God . . .” Kara breathed, as her heart clenched in her chest, and the world threatened to swell and shrink to a useless pinprick, as her brain went light and tried to take her away. That didn’t just happen. That didn’t just-
         Branches swatted at her face as she plummeted, before she even consciously realized what she was doing. Her boots sank an inch into the soft ground as she landed heavily, her knees bending and doing their best to disperse the impact. The world blurred and refracted as sharp tears came to her eyes, a wetness she angrily wiped away. There was no time for that. No time for anything. Precious seconds tried to outweigh physics, but it would be no use. She knew that. She denied it. Her rejection meant nothing.
         It couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen.
         But I saw him fall.
         I saw him fall.
         Oh God. Oh my God.
         “You’ll be all right,” Kara told herself, wondering who she really meant. “I’m coming. I’m coming.” Her insides felt shredded, her throat tight, her limbs weak. The forest surrounded her with questions and mockery, revealing nothing. We have him, the trees said with their gnarled bark and twisted roots. We have him and we’re not giving him back.
         Without another word, Kara ran.

* * * * *

         He woke up in a box without walls, immersed in a febrile darkness, on a floor defined only by oblivion.
         “The hardest cage to escape from is the one that does not exist,” a voice oozed from the non-air. “The best you can do is define it yourself. And then you’ll never be free.”
         Opening his eyes only to be greeted with a sight not remarkably different from when his eyes were shut, Ranos picked himself off from what he believed was a floor and tried to find something to address. He didn’t believe he was anywhere physical, because his surroundings weren’t so much darkness as absence.
         “I’ve always found that to be the common misconception about cages,” he said, keeping his voice even. There was just enough for his senses to work with so he didn’t start hallucinating things. Even so, vague shapes were beginning to dance in front of his eyes and the void of a room seemed to tilt strangely at odd moments, like he was being rolled down a hill. “You cannot imprison someone without in some way giving them the keys to enact their escape. That is the intrinsic flaw of cages, the weakness of entrance.” Rotating in a small circle, he allowed himself an arrogant smile. “But I’m sure you know all this already. The instructors drilled as much into our heads before the first year was over.”
         “Is that all you were able to deduce?” the voice mocked, splattering the space behind him like imploding fireworks. He resisted the urge to spin around. Besides, it wasn’t like the view was any different. “That was no great guess. More should be expected from the lauded Ranos.”
         “Perhaps,” Ranos replied dryly, testing the area and trying to find something in the way of boundaries or a framework. His initial probe showed neither. Curious. “But even brilliance has to start somewhere,” he added offhandedly, pushing the diameter wider, wondering how far he could go before he was detected. In a space like this, with few other distractions, any action of his would be immediately apparent, if not expected or anticipated. “No,” he said, “it may not be the greatest of inferences, but it tells me some things that may be important.” He bent down, brushing his fingertips against the floor, making a show of examining it while letting his mind roam freely, spreading out in a fan-shaped pattern in all directions. “The problem with instructors is what makes them so useful . . . you see, their regimented, single minded approach makes them marvelously effective at teaching the naive student control and how to hone his skills.” Contact with the floor caused his hand to tingle as if chilled and the ground itself felt less than solid, like he was standing on the surface of a frigid lake. “But what it gains in efficiency, it lacks in diversity. The instructor often feels his approach is the best and is not able to impart upon the student the desire to seek out different methods, or even make the student aware that such alternate methods are even possible. Instead, we were informed to merely go with what works, as they say. I can’t imagine it’s changed.” Mentally, he brushed against the theoretical limits of the construct, some hypothetical distance away. Ah, so that’s how they did it.
         “Oh, I’m sure it hasn’t,” the voice said reasonably.
         Ranos was barely paying attention, immersed in the task of escape. Now that he can run intangible hands along imaginary walls, it was fairly simple to see the design of the construct. The walls were merely farther apart than usual, to give the illusion that the place had infinite surface area. But not everyone could push out as far as he could.
         “And so what you have is,” he continued, keeping his voice casual, “are a number of students turned out every few years who are skilled and efficient in the use of their abilities . . .” he narrowed his mind to a fine point, carefully picking at the cracks in the wall, like trying to manipulate a pair of tweezers from a mile away while facing the other direction, going only by the tiny scraping sound they made. “And while they can make for formidable opponents . . .” he could identify the linchpin now, the strut holding the whole affair together, “it is different when you have experienced the same instruction they have.” A black on black fragment was all that held it in place. Ranos steadied himself and mentally prepared for a fast teleport. “For although it may present a difficult challenge, in the end . . .”
         Now.
         He stabbed out and felt all structure break apart.
         “. . . there’s a distinct lack of surprise,” he said, rising to his feet with a flourish. All around him, the distant walls came tumbling down. He answered the crystalline air with a triumphant smile.
         A keening growl caused his smile to slowly fade. Quickly, he refocused and discovered that beyond the walls had been a further set of walls. A set of walls, and something else. Box within a box, he thought, pivoting just enough to understand that he was surrounded. Dark misshapen forms with glittering eyes clustered in from all sides. None looked human. None even looked animal.
         “I’m certainly glad you’re not surprised,” the voice told him, seeming to resonate from inside his chest. The air seemed to chip and crack, falling apart in jagged flakes. “It makes the irony that much more entertaining.” A laugh with the consistency of stagnant water hammered through his veins. Something with vestigial limbs brushed against it, with a cry like a baby’s. There was no time to erect a shield. It wouldn’t stop them. They weren’t real. But they could harm him, in ways that didn’t require hurt.
         Eyes shone like dying stars against a backdrop too far to touch but threatened to smother him anyway. In a circle, they forced him into a center he couldn’t sustain, pressed against him from all angles. Hands like sandpaper clutched at his face. He had to get out. But to get out he had to go in. And he was already in. And there was no way out.
         “You see, Ranos, I wouldn’t give your instructors too much credit. You had it all wrong.”
         Hands without fingers were dragging him into a pool without weight. He tried to claw his way back but there was no surface to grab hold of. It had never been there.
         “It’s not about diversity or flexibility. It never was. They tried to teach you how to be brutish and nasty and how to make the world do what you wanted and make you think that having certain abilities would automatically make it so.”
         There was something in his eye. There was nothing in his eye. He couldn’t breath suddenly. Where did the air go? Where did this weight come from?
         “But it’s not true. All of it was rubbish. Nastiness, the kind that makes the world react, you can’t learn. You’re born with it, and it doesn’t matter what you can do. You have it, no matter what.”
         Bubbles emerged from his mouth, each holding a trapped scream. Nobody was touching him. These beasts will not pass.
         “But combine it with our kind of ability, Ranos,” the voice cackled, “and the results are pure magic.”
         There was the sound of measured footsteps nearby.
         Then a sniff.
         “Take him,” was all the voice said.
         Footsteps retreated.
         Those that hadn’t, fell on Ranos.
         He promised himself he wouldn’t scream.
         It was a lie.

* * * * *

         He needed seconds to react. There weren’t seconds available. The air whistled around Tristian as he dove for the ground, the blue and white and green all bleeding together, the trees reaching out to grab him, promising a soft cushion. But it was all facade. The branches wouldn’t hold him, and the ground would only break him. That was the only true promise.
         A matrix of leaves reached out, swallowed him. A swarm of mottled shadows slapped him repeatedly in the face. If there was any time, it was now. His free arm was moving before he realized it, snapping out and wrapped his hand around the nearest branch. Leaves and twigs slashed and bit at his face, branches battered his body, the air was filled with crackings and poppings as his weight proved too much for his fragile cradle. His shoulder protested painfully as he wrenched his entire arm, the shock radiating like points on a compass, gritting his teeth as he tried to hold onto the tree long enough to halt his descent. His other arm swung wildly, the sword still ignited, cutting a narrow swath of branches, sending them tumbling acrobatically to the ground, with far more grace than he would. His world was a carnival of brown and green, divided only by an angry band of red.
         Momentum made any further decision useless. His grip loosened, or the branch snapped, or both happened at once and the ultimate cause was unclear. The result was the same. His plummet was renewed, and he went hit the nearest branch, turned over and tumbled limply to the next one, his body twisting as he strove for a sort of purchase, grunting in pain as he was battered from all sides, his ribs and back and chest all prime candidates for bruises. He caught a glimpse of the ground and was dismayed to see that he had too much to go. Too much time to gather speed. Too much time to give in to gravity. The fall might not kill him, but it could certainly cripple him and he would only be condemning himself to a slow death in the center of the forest, pinned and paralyzed, his only aid the kind that would more likely devour him instead of assisting him.
         The next time he saw the ground, segments of a accelerated section of endless time, it was much closer and he was moving no slower. The sword bit into the trunk of the tree itself, drawing a crooked dark line, but the cut was too clean and there was no friction to slow him down. This isn’t helping me at all , he thought, letting the sword go, briefly seeing it tumble to the forest floor ahead of him, taking out several more branches on the way down. With both hands free he tried to wrap his hands around the trunk but he slammed stomach first into a branch, knocking the breath from his body. He slid off, hands and feet scrambling for any kind of hold, succeeding only in cutting his hands and arms up, the blood making the going even more slick. The forest floor beckoned with the same deceptively soft promise as before. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t allow himself to believe it. Dizzily, he realized there was only a few branches left. He hit another, bouncing off before he even had a chance to react to where he was. He was just flailing, his progress measured only in the swiftly closing gap between him and the ground. And that was no progress at all.
         Another branch flashed before him. His arms lashed out almost of their own volition. Thought wasn’t allowed here. He bit back a scream as his hands wrapped tightly around the sharp bark, a slicing pain lancing through his palms, matching the blunt ache that resonated in his shoulders and his back. His legs kicked at nothing, reminding him of his brief journey into the sky. It took him a second to realize that he wasn’t moving anymore. Gently he swayed, hanging some distance from the ground, letting a cool wind wipe away the sweat on his face and dry the blood that he felt coated in. Glancing down, he could see the red slash of the sword resting on the forest floor, an angry wound cut into the undergrowth.
         A quiet fire was building in his arms, one that would raze his grip soon enough. He didn’t give it the chance. Taking a deep breath, he let go with one hand first, then the other, flexing his knees in the second before gravity reclaimed him again.
         The fall wasn’t as far as he had feared. Smoothly, as if practiced, he hit the ground and rolled with the impact, bending forward and falling to the side, trying to bleed off his excess kinetic energy even as his entire body reminded him that his survival had not been without cost. He tried not to let the pain distract him from his quest to avoid slamming into a tree, which while not fatal would certainly be embarrassing.
         Eventually he tumbled to a halt, springing carefully into a crouch. Balancing on the balls of his feet, he checked to ensure that he was still in one piece. Nothing appeared to be broken, by some miracle. His clothes were torn in several places, covered in dirt and leaves, and a myriad of scratches and dried blood marked nearly all of his exposed skin. As he uncurled from the stance to regain his feet, a broad wash of pain encased his lower back and ribs, forcing him to stop and wince. His shoulders ached with a pulsing sort of pain, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Swinging them experimentally and grimacing as he found his range of motion vastly reduced, he wondered how he hadn’t torn them out of their sockets. Wryly, he also made a mental note to check later to see if his involuntary stretching exercise had added any inches to his forearms.
         “Well, no gymnastics for me anytime soon,” Tristian muttered, striding over to where the sword gleamed calmly on the forest floor. His body felt stiff and uncomfortable, like it didn’t trust him anymore. That can’t be good. Picking up the sword, he shook off some leaves that had fallen on it and switched it off, returning the object to his belt. Speed was going to be the issue now. He hoped that Ranos had managed to escape in all the confusion, but there was nothing he could do at the moment if the man hadn’t. Tristian assumed he was in the forest near the village, the weather felt similar and the sun hadn’t moved noticeably further in the sky. So he was nearby, which was a tad mystifying. Why teleport him so close, and so low? The fall had hurt him, but not mortally so, the worst it had done was slowed him down. Perhaps he had hit the teleporter’s range? It didn’t make sense. Tristian didn’t like not knowing all the facts, too much of what was going on felt like improvising and so far all they had done was fumble their way through it, not gaining any ground, losing it more often than not. Kara was still missing, Joe was still missing, and now he had been separated from and had lost contact with Ranos. On the positive side, they had tentatively identified two of the mindbenders, but that gave them no clue how many there were exactly, or what their plan was. Revenge? Chaos? It seemed like too much trouble. But maybe it wasn’t. The goal now was to find out why.
         A faint rustling from behind made him spin around, his muscles doing their screaming best to rein him in. Automatically his hand dropped to the sword and he wondered if it had been a good idea to sheathe it. He was okay but in no condition for another protracted fight.
         He halted the motion when he saw who it was.
         “Ranos . . .” he said, stepping toward the other man, who was braced against a nearby tree, his long, thin hands wrapped around the trunk like a strong wind might blow him away. His expression was wan and all the blood had drained from his face. Otherwise, physically he looked fine, but something in his eyes made Tristian halt in mid-step.
         “Wait . . .” the other man said, his voice a distorted croak, the only remaining message from a man trapped down the darkest well. “It . . . wait . . .” he said brokenly. “I’m not . . .”
         “When did you get here?” Tristian asked slowly, maintaining his distance. “I didn’t hear you teleport . . .”
         “I . . . there is something . . . please don’t . . .” he swallowed tightly, resting his head lightly against the tree. Beads of sweat ringed his head like a translucent crown.
         “Ranos, what’s-“
         He blinked with agonizing slowness. “Help me,” he whispered, in a tattered wreck of a tone. “Help me.”
         And then someone opened up a star in Tristian’s head.

* * * * *

         “You don’t understand , there’s something, he’s got something in his head , and it’s, damn, it’s nasty, I’ve never seen anything like it, you go in there I swear, woman, you’re dead, that’s it. I can’t put it any plainer. It’s a time bomb laced with poison.”
         “But he has no other abilities? Like ours, say?”
         “He doesn’t need to. I told you. He’s got that . . . that trap. In his head. That’s all he needs. Go ahead. Go in there. See what he does to you. If you survive, you can tell me all about it. If you’re still coherent.”
         “Oh, did you think I was going in there myself? Is that what you thought? See now, that’s the difference between you and me, dear child. You barge right into the problem, while I . . . I’ve learned to delegate.”

* * * * *

         Kara was running faster than she ever had when the lip of a hurricane reached out and gently slapped her in the face.
         It was like plugging herself into a radio station playing only shredded feedback. Her head was instantly filled with sharp fragments, ricocheting off the corners of her mind, gashing everything they came into contact with, the shards spreading through the tears, infiltrating more of her mind, clogging up the causeways, spilling into every available opening.
         All at once, her muscles seized and her head clenched like a mangled fist. Too startled to even scream, Kara clutched at her head, her fingers entangled in her hair, momentum carrying her forward a few more stumbling steps before she slid to the ground, falling to her knees near a tree, her mouth opening in a silent howl.
         “Ah . . . what is . . . oh God . . . what’s . . .” it was the sound of birds being run slowly through a meat grinder, static as a hail of icicles, swarming over her mind like a cloud of insects, making it impossible to form a steady thought. “What’s . . . easy, easy . . .” she gasped, closing her eyes tightly and resting her shoulder against the trees, shifting her legs out from under her body. Don’t panic, concentrate. Slowly, she tried to isolate the effect, corral all the wayward fragments and box them up in her head. Taking sustained deep breaths, Kara quieted her heart and did her best to minimize the shaking in her limbs.
         It became clear a second later that the attack wasn’t directed at her, but at someone nearby. What she was receiving was only the spillover, which she found more than a little unnerving. She didn’t know many people with that level of power, especially when wielded so effortlessly. And the rhythm of the snarling feedback had a familiar cadence to it. One she knew very well.
         She opened her eyes quickly, just as another swirl of screeching strafed her mind, causing her to sway uneasily. Kara managed to scramble to her feet anyway, using the tree for support.
         “What are you doing?” she asked quietly, shaking her head violently, trying to eject the chaos from her brain. This is only the tailend, the edge. What the heck is going on? “Ranos, what are you doing?”
         Kara squinted into the distance, hoping they were much closer than they seemed, and then, her shoulders hunched as if staggering into a strong wind, she charged forward, her path a crooked line, and the only sound the frantic noise of leaves crunching underfoot.

* * * * *

         growling snarling growling it dances around the cave I can watch every single movement only because it’s letting me when it wants to it will move and I will not be able to see it or stop it I know this will happen and its circling now just waiting waiting
         “Can you feel that? I’m getting a headache from over here and I’m not even tapped in. What the hell is it?”
         there’s no door my fingersnails make bloody tracks on the blank stone wall they’ve erased my escape and it’s giggling gurgling behind me a hiccuping howl and it has my blood in its voice all my attacks and all my weapons are useless because it will not give up
         “It’s new. And old. Someone put it there, to protect him. From people like us. Us and things worse than us.”
         “Who could have done that? And why don’t the rest of the Time Patrol have it?”
         “Oh, I don’t think he’s Time Patrol. He’s something else entirely, I’m afraid.”
         to scream to echo off the walls and the floors and the ceiling it doesn’t matter it feeds on our pain and our delight and I can hit it and I can hurt it but I can’t kill it because there are some things that I cannot do and it will take me to pieces and it will eat my organs and spill my blood and scatter my brains I can hear it now screaming laughing everything I do is just
         “But is he human? Can he be killed?”
         “Ah, dear, you always cut to the chase, don’t you? Of course he can be killed. Quite easily, in fact. I’m doing it right now.”
         the weight of its anger is a smothering pressure and its claws are raking my body and leaving me all over the floor I can smell the heated stink of its breath and I’m screaming at it and it’s moving it’s moving so fast that there’s nothing to see it’s just nothing but I can hurt it I know I can I can make sure that I’m not worth it you want me you have to come and get me
         “You’re killing something, all right. Like my hearing. Isn’t there a way to dampen his screaming? It’s not making my headache any better, I can tell you that.”
         “You don’t have to stay, you know. I’m sure you have other concerns. How is your wife? Is she all right?”
         “Yeah, she’s fine. This stuff, it scares her, but she’s used to it by now. After all these years, you really have no choice but to get used to it, right?”
         “Mm, if you say so. I’ve never really thought of it that way.”
         it could open a door and escape but it chooses not to it will stay here and fight me and bring this whole damn structure down on our heads and kill us both in the name of protection it will destroy everything don’t you see you stupid guardian don’t you see that it’s not worth protecting anymore
         “Hm . . . this guy here, are you sure he’s going to survive this, I mean look at him, he doesn’t look that well and . . . geez, is that a seizure he’s having, what the hell is it doing to him?”
         crack my head like an eggshell but there are things that I can do to open the way you bastard you don’t understand what you’re doing how can something so damn cunning and its still screaming me in languages not meant for ears and it’s taking me apart piece by piece and I can’t feel my legs and my arms and it won’t stop the damn motion blur why don’t you stop
         “Survive? Why, I hope not. That would defeat the purpose entirely, wouldn’t it now?”
         across the face and across the stomach and to wound it requires a knife to a heart that isn’t there what does it take you monster what the hell does it take to make you realize
         “Damn. You are cold.”
         so much blood and so much pain you don’t understand you don’t see that if the two of us if we are going to fight and bleed and hurt then we are going to die here together you monster this is not a fight we are going to walk away from I will not
         “Hm. What is the point of having a reputation if you aren’t going to live by it? People have expectations, you know.”

* * * * *

         With a grating snarl Ranos rushed forward, wrapping his hands around Tristian’s throat even as he assaulted Tristian’s mind, battering at his defenses. Almost instantly Tristian felt an answer stirring in the center of his brain, all jagged rage and angular pain, reaching out to drive spiked fists deep into the heart of Ranos’ attack.
         “What the hell, Ranos, what are you-“ he gasped as the other man used his superior height as leverage to force Tristian to the ground, his back arching painfully as the world broke apart and dissolved into shapes that didn’t have names because they couldn’t possibly exist. His body didn’t want to respond. Fingers were digging into the skin of his neck, forcing his air down smaller and smaller tunnels, blanketing his vision in red and black spots, dark wings racing across his brain, even as he felt diamond claws skitter howling over Ranos’ brain, carving narrow trenches in their wake.
         He tried to throw the other man off him, but his attempt was awkward and he only managed to send the two of them tumbling to the ground, still locked together. Everything was moving in different direction, his perspective split by a scalpel a dozen times. His heart couldn’t decide on a rhythm. Physical bruises were forming on his mind, craters imploding over the surface. It’s slash and burn. Salvage nothing. Leave the landscape barren. He could hear the cries, the torches at the gate. Ranos’ face was frozen into a paroxysm of blind rage, teeth grinding together, eyes bulging from his head, an inarticulate noise escaping from his lips as he tried to drive his knee into Tristian’s stomach, a motion the other man was barely able to block. All of a sudden Tristian was forgetting how to breathe. His head felt light and numbness tingled down both his arms, tiny armies wearing studded boots. Distantly, he wondered if this was what a stroke felt like. His heart was thudding like his chest was a cage and it was an animal roaring to be free. Sweat was soaking his clothing, and all his efforts couldn’t disengage Ranos. Barely, he managed to loosen the man’s grip on his throat but nearly broke Ranos’ arm in the process. The welcome rush of air was hardly noticed in all his systemic confusion.
         His arm lashed out in a blur, punching Ranos in the face. Blood immediately began to pour from his nose. The man shouted something in a language Tristian didn’t know and lunged at him again, his fingernails scratching at Tristian’s face. It was all he could do to keep the other man away, his body fighting for every dodge and every motion coming at a cost he was too tired to tally.
         “This is . . . Ranos, you have to . . .” it was impossible to catch his breath. I don’t want to do this. Not to him. His head was a television tuned to backwards channels, snatches of old songs running hand in hand with calculus equations, both sets eloping to a dark mattress of stars, all spinning in circular flavor to the sound of the Universe grinding to a sudden halt. “Ranos . . .” as he kicked the man in the stomach, trying to keep him back, so he didn’t have to hurt him again. But you can’t outrace the mind, Tristian. Sometimes a reach doesn’t need hands. “You’ve got to . . . you’re going to . . .”
         His hand reached for the sword, although his eyes never left Ranos. A whip made of bone cracked against the contours of his skull, reshaping it. In the center of his mind lay a tight coil, poised to strike. The strain of its tension was bending his vision. Ranos, dear God, don’t force my hand.
         “. . . kill us both,” Tristian gasped, facing his friend. “Don’t you see? If you don’t stop . . .” and he wasn’t even sure he was facing the right direction anymore, “we’re both going to die.” There was a grating whine in his head, as if in affirmation. I thought you knew, Ranos. I can’t control it. It’s not for me to stop.
         Ranos paused, his eyes narrowed and his head bowed, his tall frame falling into an easy crouch. Blood was running freely down his face and his breathing was erratic, his chest heaving with the effort. He seemed the wrong size for his clothes, a stranger in his own body. His lips formed a word that wasn’t there.
         Body and mind, he leapt forward to attack again.

* * * * *

         Jaws and teeth and blood and bone and death and death and
         Kara yelled and grabbed her head again. As she got closer it only got worse. Someone was teleporting mortar rounds directly between her ears. It’s Ranos. Ranos and my father. Even without hearing the buzzsaw grinding of her father’s nebulous defenses, she would know. Who else could it be? They’re killing each other. They’re going to kill each other. In the distance she could hear their struggles faintly, muffled grunts and wordless snarls, each blow skittering like wanton electricity across her jumbled nerves, the echoes of cavemen, a message sent across millennia. Nothing changes. Just the tactics. Time has taught us nothing. She was unable to tear her eyes away from the veiled spectacle, one hand clutching her opposite shoulder, as if trying to hold herself back, the other hand held trembling close to her side.
         She couldn’t go any closer. The feedback from here was making her dizzy and if she tried to fight her way any further she could fall apart completely. But she just couldn’t stand here and let it all happen. There had to be something she could do.
         The battle thundered in booming arcs on wavelengths her hearing refused to focus on, its repercussions absorbed by her throbbing brain. There were too many distractions here. She had to concentrate. Focus. Focus. Closing her eyes, she let her body relax, putting her hands to her forehead. I look like I’m playing hide and seek, she thought archly, letting the thought fall out of her head as quickly as it came through. The problem here was sight. Sight and sound. She had to cut away the inessential.
         A snarling scream caused her to wince, the aftereffects of its passage causing the air to quiver. Ignore it. It’s not important. The forest fell out of focus, then back in again, the picture trembling, the combatants condensing from a vapor that refused to hold them. There. There was her father, a tilted monolith, surrounded by a darker shadow that was constantly shifting, fading and falling and fighting and it was too bright. She couldn’t look at the darkness. It hurt to stare.
         A thousand penetrating jaws surrounded her father, all with the stink and the signature of Ranos, ferociously trying to combine and engulf her father completely. Teeth cut the invisible fabric of the forest, leaving the pieces scattered on the ground like so much discarded debris. A gleaming invisible silvery rope connected them all and the shadow around her father was biting and clawing at the connections, at the jaws, at the man they came from, moving so swiftly that it might as well be transparent. Somehow, it was easier to get closer this way, the buffeting from the fight wasn’t as severe. The closeness emboldened her, the new angle gave her an idea. I have to keep them apart, she realized, nearly biting through her lip as a howling pulse from the battle staggered her back a step, nearly forcing her to one knee. Kara stood her ground and tentatively tried to insert herself into the space between the two, her hand trembling harder as she was battered by the edges of the maelstrom, barely keeping her focus as the voices of the world screamed at her to stop, as the air itself tried to strangle her and send her away. The proximity alone threatened to suck what little courage remained in Kara. For all her strength, either man could easily tear her to pieces, while the synthesis of the two might just burn her out completely.
         But she stayed. She remained. In the center, the opponents threatened to overtake the entire sky. Her view was everything, skyscrapers reaching for the heavens like jagged teeth, standing in the middle of crowded street and staring straight up, while attempting to walk. All it took was confidence. Poise and a sense of place. There was nothing to uproot her mind. She was firmly situated. Kara hoped if she said that enough she would actually believe it. It occurred to her that she had to do something now before either of them noticed her and decided to change their targets. Ranos is easier, came the mad thought, against all logic. But she couldn’t fight whatever inhabited her father’s head. It was designed that way. With lightning speed she cut through the air, finding the joint that connected Ranos to the battle. A smoke scented wind jostled her violently, rattling her teeth. Gritting her teeth, she lunged at the joint, grabbing it firmly, mentally shoving the man back at the same time, hesitating only a moment before cutting the joint completely, the backlash kicking her right in the stomach.
         It was only in the last second that Kara realized that it was all wrong. As the pieces went spinning away, she felt the breeze from a blade sharper than the air and shivered as a coldness entered her chest. Her mouth opened in a spasm of pain but she made no sound.
         Oh no it’s not-

* * * * *

         He’s sitting in a chair across from you when he finally decides to tell you the story. His stance is relaxed, one foot resting comfortably on the other knee. The opulence of your surroundings is irrelevant. That’s not why you’re here.
         “What do I mean? Let me explain. There’s a test we all had to take, right before the end. They wake you up in the middle of the night and take you alone to a single flight of stairs that goes down a thousand levels to an empty room and make you stand in the center of this circle. The room is featureless, the walls blank without any seams, and there is only one door, the one you came in from. It’s wide open. Standing across from you are six people, all dressed in black and hooded so you can’t see their faces with their minds shielded so you can’t even guess at their identities, even if they even have any.”
         He pauses for a moment and cups his chin in his hand, as if considering an important aspect that he had never occurred to him before. Then, without telling you what is on his mind, he continues.
         “They never explain the test. But you figure it out very quickly. It starts as soon as you walk in.
         “It’s a cage, you see. They fashion a cage around you. There’s nothing to see but it tugs at you, right when they start. Like a thousand strings tied to every possible square inch of your body. A series of intricate knots, all beautifully designed, one right over the other over the other. If you look just right the air is quite dense with them, it gives you something to look at if nothing else. It takes hours and hours to get through them all, really. Just working through them one at a time, slowly, because when you do it wrong the pain is incredible and it just gets worse the deeper you get. So you have plenty of incentive to take your time.
         “The hooded men never say a word. They might not even be real men. That was the rumor for a while. There are six of them so it was thought that they might be . . . well, you know . . .” he waves a hand dismissively. “I don’t want to say their name here. Too many ears. But you know. If you’ve been at all paying attention, you’d know.”
         He shifts his position in the chair. “But I doubt it, honestly.” He makes a face at you. “Anyway, it’s not important. What is important is what happens when you work through almost all the knots. You get to the last one and in my case it only took me a second to realize where it was. Because I knew there was one still left but I couldn’t see it. I just knew it felt different. More constraining, perhaps. But I couldn’t see it. Very strange.
         “So I found one of the few remaining strands, and pulled at it, you know, just to see.” He mimes the motion with a closed fist. “And that’s when I felt it. Right in my chest. In my heart.
         “That’s where the last knot was, you see. It’s your heart.”

* * * * *

         If people were talking it was impossible to hear. Tristian dashed backwards, trying to keep Ranos at bay, trying to keep the man from touching him again. But the mind needs no distance. He felt like there was an entire crowd of spectators eyeing his every motion, delighting in every instance of their pain.
         The static in his mind was growing louder, seeping into his vision, snow covering the windows. Wiping it away did no good. If you wanted to make it go, you had to eliminate the source. The cause. Ranos danced forward another step, his mind battering Tristian from all sides, even as he felt his own response, a sharply directed anger, a counter that left gaping holes in Ranos’ defense, wounds that the other man seemed to care nothing about. But they bled. Tristian could see the damage, gashes crumbling at the edges.
         “Ranos . . .” but his words were choked and strangled, dead in his throat before they even had a chance to fly. On one knee he blearily regarded his partner, with his hand still at his belt, his mind staggering under the assault. It was a struggle to get anything accomplished, involuntary actions were no longer the case, he had to keep reminding himself to breath. His bowels were threatening to relax every other second. It was too much to concentrate on. He swore his heart kept skipping beats, the shock traveling up his back and into the base of his brain. The omnipresent growling was a car shifting gears with nowhere to go. It had to end. It couldn’t end.
         The distance between them wasn’t so great now. Tristian warily watched the other man, wishing his feet weren’t rooted firmly to the ground, wishing breathing wasn’t so difficult, wishing he still had room left in his brain for conscious thought. But everything was occupied and the only room left unlocked was instinct. And even that was failing.
         We can’t do this, Ranos. We can’t, came a thought that might have been Tristian’s, the phrase falling apart into colored streamers as Ranos closed the gap, racing forward suddenly, never making a sound, even as his lips pulled back into a rictus grin, his face smeared with blood, skin torn and lacerated.
         Tristian tensed, unable to move.
         Then, without warning, the storm in his brain fell apart, retreated.
         A presence with a familiar scent darted past. He didn’t notice. There was no time.
         Ranos flew past Tristian as the other man dove to the side, spinning around deftly to land in an elongated crouch, his upper body twisted, his hand on the sword, the sword in his hand.
         “Don’t . . .” a person said who might not have been him.
         Ranos staggered sideways, then stumbled forward a step.
         An opening must be taken. This is no time to debate control. We can’t, came the mournful sneer, as Tristian’s arm shot out, the blade already extended, allowing Ranos to run right into the sword, both men clearly watching as it passed cleanly through his chest.

* * * * *

         “And so that was the real test. Because the knot wasn’t centered on your heart, it was your heart. Somehow they tied it into you, I still haven’t figured out how, and made it self-sustaining, so it didn’t need them to maintain it. They could all leave the room and you would still be there, your hand on the string, debating whether they really were crazy enough to do to you what you think they just did to you.”
         He pauses and regards you for a long moment, then rubs his face with a tired hand without comment and continues.
         “So you have two choices, really. In the end. To either stay in the cage and admit defeat and prove their point, or unravel the knot . . . and stop your heart. What they did for the students who had more than one heart, I don’t know, but again, not important.
         “But those were your choices. Failure or death. Your last test. And no one to tell you which choice is the right one.”

* * * * *

         “Dad! Ranos! Where are-“ Kara yelled as she ran into the clearing, not caring who she alerted. Her heart was thudding madly in her chest as she skipped to a halt, her hollow breathing the only real sound, chasing her words right at their heels, both noises abnormally loud in this pristine silence. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Kara looked around, pivoting in a half circle.
         There was no one.
         No one at all.
         Branches were broken and the ground was trampled violently and it was clear that some kind of fight had gone on here. But, of the people involved, there was no sign.
         “Dad?” she asked again, trying to pretend her voice wasn’t shaking. She took a few more steps into the clearing. “Ranos?” No. This can’t be happening. I saved them. Now they’re supposed to rescue me. “Anyone? Is anyone there?”
         She stopped at the nearest tree, a glistening wetness catching her eye. It covered most of one side of the trunk in an irregular splatter. Gingerly she put out a hand to touch it, the tips of her fingers coming away a dull red. Blood. “Dad?” she called out again, wiping her hands together, her heart beginning to race again. “Where are you?”
         There was a moist cough from behind.
         “Who-“ she warned, spinning around. But it was only a man, lying face down at the other end of the clearing. He was balding and stocky, dressed in plain, but torn clothing. As Kara ran over to him, he started to raise himself to his side, his movements weak and faltering.
         He fell onto his back just as Kara reached him, his hands grasping at empty air. She heard him make a whimpering noise, and whisper a name that she didn’t catch. He shuddered, tears running down his face, blood running from his mouth. There was a neat hole in the center of his chest, about two inches in diameter. Blood was soaked around the area in a sunburst pattern. He clutched at her arm with one hand, his fingers already cold, but Kara wasn’t even sure if he saw her there. Looking into his eyes, there was only the shimmering glimmer of inevitability, of spent tears and broken realizations.
         A second later, he coughed again, or maybe he spoke, and his hand slowly released her arm, dropping onto the forest floor. His eyes widened, peered into nothing, saw eternity. There was a brief rattle from somewhere deep in his chest, and then even that was gone.
         Kara rocked back on her heels, holding her arms at the elbows. It was suddenly terrible cold in the clearing, for some reason. I’m so sorry. I don’t know you, she thought numbly, unable to take her eyes off the terrible wound in his chest. I have no idea who you are.
         But I think my father just killed you.
         Staring at empty space just past the man, Kara murmured, “Dad, where are you? Where did you go?”
         But her father didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
         For Tristian was gone.

* * * * *

         “Ah . . . look at that. That’s it, then. He’s dead.”

* * * * *

         Looking at you, his smile is without humor or malice.
         “So what did I do? Why, I stopped my heart, undid the knot and walked out of the room, of course.” He paused for a moment before breaking into a laugh that is knife edged in its message. Face innocent, he spreads his hands, bemused. “What? Is it my fault they didn’t tell me I was supposed to fail? Is it?”

* * * * *

         “Dead? Oh dear boy, don’t be silly. Can’t you see, he’s not fooling anyone.”