Chapter 34

34.

         “They were here . . . and they are coming back,” Tritan pronounced, eliciting a quizzical look from Prescotte. The Slashtir returned the other man’s gaze with his usual strange calm. “Did I not say that correctly?”
         “No, no, I heard you right . . .” Prescotte replied, adjusting the sword strapped to his back, as he had been doing self consciously for the past hour or so. The two of them were standing in the shadow of the ruined house, its form appearing even more battered and crumbling in the daylight. “I was just wondering how you knew that.”
         “Call it . . . intuition?” Tritan said, bending over and gently touching the head of a body that lay sprawled face down in the wet morning grass. It seemed partially embedded in the ground, as if trampled. Perhaps it was trying to bury itself. “Is that the right word . . . for something that you know without knowing why you know it . . .” the Slashtir continued to stroll around the house, Prescotte following close behind, his eyes skimming the other perimeter of the areas, senses attuned to any attack. He hoped Baress would finish soon, he wanted to give the man some privacy but they were utterly exposed out here. If Tritan was right, things could get ugly fairly soon.
         The giant man ran his fingers along a jagged hole in what remained of the wall of the house. “This has . . . burst outward here . . . look, friend Prescotte.”
         Prescotte came forward and looked at what his companion was indicating. “Yeah, that it has,” he noted, frowning. “Looks pretty fresh, too . . .” he ran his hand along the edge, rubbing them together and feeling a grainy dust coating his fingers. “But that proves nothing, anyone could have done that . . . or no one at all.”
         “But they came here . . . looking for us . . .” Tritan said, sounding utterly convinced of his own theory. Unable to prove or disprove him, Prescotte said nothing. They weren’t staying here anyway. This place was creepy enough now without the looming threat of a battle. “They were here and they left . . . I . . . felt it,” the tangles of the language were thwarting the Slashtir, “and so I came back to warn you . . . the two of us . . .” Tritan was normally far more eloquent than this, whatever he was trying to convey had to be a concept offering little in the way of translation.
         “And that’s when you found that the kid was gone,” Prescotte concluded. Lightly he banged his fist into the house, halfway expecting the wall to simply fall apart at his touch. “Lord only knows where he ran off to . . . as if we don’t have enough problems . . .” frowning again as he stared at a series of scars burned into the wood, he continued, “Though I’m sort of glad, honestly . . . hopefully he went and found somewhere safe to hide . . . I don’t even really want his father along . . . things are going to get dangerous soon and I know we can handle ourselves but it’s going to be hell trying to worry about other people as well.” His eyes regarded his friend, betraying only a hint of worry. “We’re running without any kind of plan now, Tritan, and I don’t like that. All this madness and we’re no closer to figuring out where Kara is or the Commander or even who took him. We need to get more proactive.” There was more than a little excitement in his voice as he spoke. Standing around was only going to get them killed. If he was going to be potentially running for his life, Prescotte wanted to have some idea of what to run towards.
         Coming to a sudden decision, he tapped the Slashtir on the arm and began to stalk away, saying, “Come on, let’s go see if Baress is finished. If he’s not, we have to help him and then get the hell out of here. If you’re right, I don’t want to hang around here any longer than we have to.”
         “And where shall we go from here?” came Tritan’s voice from behind him. “Back into the forest?”
         “Not if we can avoid it . . . there we’re just running around aimlessly,” he said, frowning. “No, I still think finding that Valreck guy the kid and his dad mentioned is the way to go. And I have a suspicion he’s in the village proper . . .” shrugging, he added, “If not, maybe we can find something else to help us. But we have to keep moving or when they do find us we’re going to be caught off guard. So let’s see if we can get Baress to . . .”
         The two of them rounded the corner. “. . . hustle,” Prescotte finished, trailing off.
         The hole was nearly dug and the prone body of his wife lay nearby. But Baress himself only was sprawled near it, one arm dangling into the hole itself.
         “Damn,” Prescotte swore, breaking off into a run. In seconds he had reached the man, and was turning him over to check for breathing. There was a small line of dried blood running from one nostril and his eyes were closed, but his breathing was even, if shallow. He appeared to be asleep again. “This is getting annoying,” Prescotte muttered, as a shadow that could only be Tritan fell over him. Looking around, he realized how utterly quiet it was now. It had probably always been that way but he was just noticing it now. He realized that Tritan was standing there waiting for him to give some sort of direction. Not for the first time he wished the Slashtir had some conception of combat tactics. Half the time he feared he was leading all of them to their doom. He needed someone else to check him and make sure his ideas weren’t totally mad. But then, he’d been lacking that nearly his entire life. If it was going to kill him, it would have happened a long time ago.
         “Here,” Prescotte said, making a decision, handing the man over to Tritan. “You carry him, we’ve got to get out of here and into the village. If we can’t hide, maybe we can find help. They may not be so willing to kill us in public.”
         “As mindbenders,” Tritan suggested blithely, “they probably would have little trouble creating an illusion that would allow them to do just that.”
         “You just keep thinking those happy thoughts, Tritan,” Prescotte murmured, shaking his head. The stillness in the air wasn’t so much a quiet as a freezing, a winter lake just about to crack.
         In Tritan’s arms Baress suddenly stirred, opening his eyes and peering at both Tritan and Prescotte in a manner not so different from a fish looking at the world.
         “Oh good he’s back,” Prescotte said, sighing with relief, “you can put him down now, Tritan, I think we’ll be-“
         Baress abruptly broke into a grin that looked completely out of place on his face. “I’d say you should surrender and suffer only a quick painless death,” the man said with ribald cheer, “but to be honest that probably won’t happen either way. We’ll be seeing you in a minute.”
         Then the man’s eyes closed and he went limp in Tritan’s arms again.
         Man and alien exchanged glances. From not so far away came the muffled sound of imploding air.
         “Dammit,” Prescotte spat, and drew his sword.

* * * * *

         “So they all died,” Valreck said, pressing his face into his hands and looking up at the silent man standing in the doorway. “I think I always suspected as much, I think that is why I was so desperate to leave . . .” Resting his elbow on the chair, he cupped his chin in his hand. He emitted a rattling sigh, although his face was dispassionately expressionless. “Sometimes . . . in my dreams . . . to those of us with . . . with our abilities you can see a Universe full of tiny lights, all flickering with different degrees of brightness . . . and one night . . . soon after we got here, maybe a month, maybe less . . . I had a dream that . . .” his eyes gazed somewhere distant, trying to find the light he could no longer see, “. . . that they all went out. And now I know they have.”
         His attention briefly flickered to the man in the doorway. “What’s that? Perhaps he was lying? Yes, I thought of that as well . . . he had every reason to lie, to demoralize us in an attempt to free himself.” He leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. “But I do not think he was . . . or else, why wait until I asked, surely if he thought it would aid his escape, he would have mentioned it long before . . .” he shook his head slowly, “no, he was telling the truth, as best he knew. Mandras put us on the path to our own deaths . . . I knew that. I always did. He was wrong . . . destiny leads one nowhere but forward, there is no grand plan waiting for all of us, no culmination or climax. That’s not how the Universe works, if I could have only told Mandras, tried to explain . . .” he shook his head again, his shoulders slumping in resignation, “it wouldn’t have mattered. He had his beliefs and he pursued them and maybe that was destiny to end the way he did, the way all of them did. It’s a strange thing, destiny . . . I cannot define it, but I know it is there. I feel it, tugging at me and bringing me to these places, to these times and these actions. I have always had a choice, but the results are already destined, I fear.”
         Valreck stood up, pacing around the chair, moving toward the back of the room, toward the door leading to his bedroom, toward some tables containing what few personal items he owned. His steps were unsure, as if the imprints on the floor showing him where to put his feet kept moving. This dance will take us places our bones can’t follow.
         “So . . . their destiny was to die and ours . . . to live?” he mused, gently handing a abstractly shaped piece of glass, a trinket he had found one day while wandering around the camp, its glimmering form half buried in the sand. The natural forces that must have created and forged it never failed to amaze him, even if he had no conception of how it had actually occurred. The Universe could create things of infinite beauty and yet never divulge any of its secrets. “Granted the right to live . . . only to die here? Does that make sense?” He tilted the glass, causing it to refract the light, forming grotesque rainbows on the walls. “I begin to wonder what sense even exists anymore in this world, in this life . . . for all our debates and posturing over the validity of destiny versus free will, I truly wonder whether the Universe would be any different no matter which dominated.” Placing the object down, he sighed and glanced at the man, who had not moved. “Maybe sense does not exist in the life at all, but waits for us in the next one. I suppose you could say something about that, if you were so inclined. But as the cause of your transition into the next life, I would not imagine you being eager to dispense any hints.” A withered smile stretched briefly across his face. “No, I imagine your response would be to say that I would find out when I get there, which I increasingly suspect will be sooner rather than later.” The grim humor of the statement barely escaped the arc of his shadow. Any impression it made on the silent man was at best negligible.
         “Soon,” Valreck whispered, doing his best not to look the man directly in the eyes. “Soon,” he said, more firmly, and then suddenly stalked across the room, past the chair, over to the window. “But not yet,” he nearly hissed, staring sideways at the man as if daring him to prove it wrong. “Not nearly yet . . .” he said in a stronger voice, “for there are things in this life that would still be done and tasks that I must accomplish before this day is out.” Pivoting and pointing at the man in the doorway, he barked with sudden vigor, “And not all your hatred and your loathing and your attempts at delay will keep me from it one moment further! And you can rant and rail and condemn but in the end I am alive and you are not and there is nothing you can do to me that is of the slightest consequence . . .” his breathing increased sharply as he tried to stare the man down, rasping, “It is imperative you understand that. I am truly sorry that you have been so suddenly rendered useless, all your efforts automatically futile . . . but it is the ways things are now and you must accept that. I implore you . . . please, do not do this.”
         Valreck held the man’s gaze for a minute, wordlessly extending his plea. There was no answer, of course. It was not clear there ever would be.
         Slowly, Valreck drew in a deep breath, his body seemingly expanding from the effort. “Perhaps,” he said in a quieter voice, “if I explained you would understand better . . . you would be able to . . . to move on.” Blinking, he said with abrupt fervor, “I do not believe in ghosts, I’ll have you know . . . and you are not one.” Grimacing as if from an old pain, he moved back to the chair in the center of the room, easing himself into it with the movements of a man whose every muscle had been scraped raw. “But I will explain anyway. It may do some good. It may not.”
         Inhaling hollowly through clenched teeth, he pressed his hands together, staring at them for a long time before finally letting his gaze rise to the man standing before him.
         “Tell me,” he said in a deadened voice, “have you ever found yourself fascinated by what occurs in dreams?”

* * * * *

         Somehow, Prescotte thought archly, I just know this is going to hurt.
         They were back in the forest now, having fled into it when it had appeared that a battle was imminent. Prescotte didn’t see himself as a coward but he had seen mindbenders fight before and to face more than one out in the open struck him as pure suicide. And since he had come here to rescue people, him getting killed would just be setting a bad example for everyone else. The initial eerie ambiance of the environment had now faded as he became more accustomed to his surroundings. It had only been in his head, of course. This was nothing more than a regular collection of plants and trees and maybe some animals. Certainly nothing overly creepy and not worth getting excited about. Here, he could better use the surroundings to his advantage, or at the very least to hide until they moved on.
         With Tritan carrying the still unconscious Baress they had moved swiftly through the forest, attempting to keep the noise to a minimum, a dicey proposition at best since Tritan tended to snap off branches and crush undergrowth with even the smallest movements. It didn’t matter, he had taken that into account. A plan was beginning to form in his mind as they sought safe ground. The mindbenders weren’t all powerful and not all of them had the same abilities. They were merely people with a few extra weapons at their disposal. And as Prescotte had always learned, if you didn’t know how to use the weapons at hand, it didn’t matter what you had.
         “Wait,” he whispered to Tritan, holding up a hand to force the Slashtir to stop. The alien merely stared at him, unquestioningly obeying. Tritan trusted him, Prescotte knew, not sure if he really deserved that trust. But he had been a soldier most of his life and he had stayed alive while a lot of other good people he had known hadn’t. Some of it was pure luck but luck only got you so far. He knew what he was doing and he wasn’t about to die here. That much he was sure of.
         But that didn’t mean the path to staying alive was going to be anything but painful. Unlike Brown, he didn’t heal quite as quickly. And if he died, he didn’t heal at all. That made him a little more deliberate in his actions. Not much more, but a little.
         “Okay, I want you to stay here with Baress,” Prescotte ordered, indicating the unmoving man, who had not stirred during the entire journey. “I have a feeling the mindbenders aren’t going to attack you, because they’ve never seen you before and they don’t know what you can do.” He wished he could better conceal the Slashtir but the red and blue mottling of his skin and his nearly armored appearance did not blend in well with the greens and browns of the forest. But the mindbenders might be so startled to see him that they might forget to bother attacking. Perhaps they might even give up entirely. Perhaps. But he doubted it.
         “And if they do?” Tritan asked, his deep voice seemingly to cause the leaves to vibrate. Prescotte wondered how far that sound carried. “What shall I do then?”
         “Hit them,” Prescotte said simply. “Punch, kick, throw a tree at them, whatever works.” Patting the Slashtir on the arm, he added, “That’s the great thing about fighting, Tritan, you’re really only limited by your imagination. Remember that.”
         “And what will you be doing?”
         “If all goes well, I’ll be succeeding in trying to kill them,” Prescotte said without a hint of sarcasm. “At the very least I want to either send them looking in a different direction or fleeing entirely. I’m not sure how open to reason they are, but I’m not exactly going to stand around and wait for them to make the first move.” The edges of his lips twitched grimly. “We saw what they were capable of back at the house, I’d really like to avoid a repeat.”
         “You will come back then?” Tritan asked, his tone deceptively innocent, the deep blue eyes boring directly into Prescotte, daring him to say anything other than the truth. Prescotte was surprised at the strength in that gaze, almost as if the alien was demanding that Prescotte return, and that any other result was sheer lunacy at best, and outright betrayal at worst.
         Not blinking or flinching from the sight, Prescotte only replied evenly, “Yeah. I’ll be back. Wait here for me.”
         Hefting the sword in his hand to test the weight, he clasped it in both hands and looked one last time at the Slashtir. With his strange appearance and man cradled in his arms, he looked like a monster from out of those weird moving picture things that Brown used to make him watch. Last he recalled, the monster was always seeking a bride.
         Glancing away sharply and biting down a sudden urge to giggle, he smoothed his composure and without a backward glance disappeared deeper into the forest.
         He had barely walked for ten minutes when they found him.

* * * * *

         “If one believes in destiny, that all events in some form or another are preordained somehow, then a logical assumption is that some force, as natural to the Universe as gravity and equally undetectable, is guiding the actions of every being and body that exists, has existed, or will exist.
         “It is also logical then, to believe that while it cannot be detected, like gravity, it can be proven and observed. And while gravity is a physical force, affecting the way that we move through the physical world, destiny affects the way that we move through the abstract world, how we move through life itself.
         “So then the question becomes, what then is our link with the abstract world? Where might the effects of destiny be most manifested?
         “And the logical answer, of course, is dreams.”

* * * * *

         When Prescotte heard his dead wife’s voice calling him, he knew this fight was going to be somewhat less than clean.
         Stay out of my head, he warned no one in particular, cautiously backing up deeper into a thicket of bushes, trying to keep the rustling to a minimum. His wife walked past a second later, calling his name as if they were both trapped in a game of hide and seek gone terribly wrong.
         When she reached a position directly across from his hiding spot, she stopped and placed her hands on her hips, staring at him directly. Prescotte felt a cold sensation filter into his chest. You bastards, he growled silently, finding it suddenly very difficult to breathe. Staring at her made it hard to remember where he was. She looked just as she always had, with the same delicately coarse features that had caught his eye in the first place, the almond shape of her eyes, graceful cheekbones and almost heart shaped face. It looked too real. He knew it wasn’t. She was dead. He knew that for sure. There was no debate here.
         “You’re not going to lose me that easily, Pres,” his wife said to him, a hint of a smile on her face. Lord, they even got the voice right. “Wedding oaths aren’t something even you can hide from.” The playful tone tugged at him, how many times had that tone teased him in the dark, where her voice was the only thing he could sense. Her voice and her touch.
         “I’m not hiding,” he said clearly, stepping from the bushes, shaking off some stray branches and leaves. His sword was drawn but held with the point toward the ground. “Certainly not from you,” he said to his dead wife. This is pointless, they obviously know where I am. I can’t waste time here. “And anyway, our marriage oaths don’t apply anymore . . . they ended when you died.”
         “Come on, you can’t give me the blunt treatment and hope it will go away,” his wife insisted, dodging the issue at hand. Just like her, Prescotte mused with a stab of memory. Taking a step closer, she said, “Something’s been bothering you for the last few weeks . . . every time you come back from a patrol you talk less and less.” Biting her lip, she crossed her arms and glanced at him sideways. “And I don’t want to say anything, but Pres, I can’t keep quiet anymore . . . we’re going to fall apart if you don’t help me here. You have to give me something to work with.” Scant inches from him, the likeness was as pure as one assembled from memory. She looked real, as solid as he was, all the features intact, even the faint woodland smell of her hair slipped into his mind like a knife. His chest felt tight again and it was an effort to keep from forgetting where he was.
         Her hand reached out to touch him on the arm, the skin as sunbrowned and smooth as ever. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, you know that, Pres, but we’re not so far gone that we can’t bring it back . . . come on, just-“
         ”You never loved me,” Prescotte suddenly snarled, knowing he was falling into their trap, trying to pretend he didn’t care, trying to pretend that they weren’t manipulating him with these memories and images like he was a child’s toy, a series of switches to be flipped for the desired result. With a stiff motion, he shoved her backwards a few steps, the brief touch igniting even more memories, sending them ricocheting around the battered walls of his mind, leaving barren craters wherever they landed, filling his heads with fragmented moments of times that had already gone past. Prescotte had never been one to reflect on times long gone. Now he had no choice.
         “How can you say that-“ his wife said, with wide eyes, the same damn eyes that used to look at him in false disbelief every time they argued, the same eyes that was still staring at him the night they-
         Lord. Don’t do this. Bastards. All of you. Bastards.
         “Because you never did,” he yelled at her, stalking toward her, even as her back was forced against a tree, her lips moving without sound. He had never said these things to her. He wasn’t saying them now. “Every single word you ever said to me was a lie,” he spat out, hearing the blood whistle in his ears, his head pounding with the effort of trying to keep the memories restrained. “From the moment we met you knew that and you pursued it and when the time came you tried to . . .” he broke off, grinding his teeth together and stepping back, still unwilling to spit the details into her face. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t here. It was all in his head. Make it go away, he pleaded to the air.
         “What did I try to do?” came her voice through a blurred lens, innocently questioning, her body lightly braced against the tree. “What are you talking about, Pres, what did I try to do?”
         “You . . . you tried to . . . kill me, damn you,” Prescotte hissed.
         “Why would I try to do that, Prescotte,” she asked, accenting the first syllable in his name in a way that no one else ever did. It was her accent that forced the pronunciation. It should have tipped him off, right then, so long ago. Her heart was not his. It never had been. “I loved-“
         ”Don’t say it,” Prescotte warned, pointing at her with the point of the sword. She eyed it lazily, which he expected her to do. In some ways, she had been better with weapons than he was. All except the one time it had counted. “I swear . . . don’t say it. You didn’t mean it then and you don’t mean it now and . . .” he trailed off, unable to speak further. This was insane. He knew it was fake. He knew he was being played for a fool. They could be sneaking up to him to slit his throat. But he couldn’t let it go. Even dead, you’re still screwing with me, he thought icily, trying to shake her image, unable to deny its reality.
         “Is that what you think of me . . .” his wife asked, a flare of anger coloring her voice. “Even after all I did for you, you still have the nerve to say . . .”
         “You were just following orders,” Prescotte sneered, “and being the good little spy and doing whatever it took to get what information you needed. And yeah, I was fooled, okay I admit it, I was, right up to the end . . .” he remembered sorting through her things, hours after it was over, her blood still covering his shirt like an extra shroud and seeing the notes she had taken, his movements and words and actions all described in neat little sentences in her clipped, efficient handwriting. “But I know now, I know . . . so don’t try to tell me otherwise, or . . .”
         “It didn’t happen that way at all,” she said softly, her eyes strangely sad.
         “Don’t say that,” he rasped. “I was there. You were there. You used me, used me and studied me and reported about me and when it looked like the king was going to appoint me to a command position, your people decided I was better off dead.”
         “. . . not how it happened,” came her voice again and Prescotte realized she had been talking the entire time. He waited for her to say that he had never listened. But it would be untrue. He always had. She just listened closer. “They would have killed me . . . don’t you understand,” and the naked pleading in his voice was almost more than he could stand, “if I hadn’t tried they would have killed me, Prescotte I didn’t want to, but they made me and . . .” her voice became quieter, distant and twisted, as if already receding. He couldn’t look directly at her. It hurt too much. “And I couldn’t kill you . . . but I had to try . . . didn’t you ever wonder why it was so easy, I was always better than you with a dagger,” the old humor in her voice was tearing him apart. This was too close. It was too true.
         “No, that’s not . . . I caught you off guard . . .” he whispered. “You weren’t expecting me to . . .”
         “I knew you would have to kill me, Prescotte,” his dead wife said plainly. “I’m sorry but it was the only way. I couldn’t kill you. I loved you too much. I’m sorry . . .”
         Her words ended in a choked gurgle and Prescotte spun to see a small flower of blood erupt on her chest, bleeding right through the fabric of her shirt, quickly forming a shape not unlike a face. Prescotte took a step back, watching his memories unfold before his eyes. This was how it had been. Just like this. Dammit! As he watched, his dead wife’s expression became at first confused, then sorrowful and finally utterly slack. Her lips moved silently, forming nothing coherent. It might have just been reflex. Distantly he felt the soft brush of her breath against the side of his neck as she exhaled for the last time. He had felt the warmth of her body seep out of her little by little. Prescotte remembered that. She had tried to kill him. She had been a spy. That was true. It had always been true. Always. It had to be.
         . . . loved you . . .
         Prescotte I . . .
         . . . had to kill . . .
         . . . loved but . . .
         I had to . . .
         . . . had to . . .
         I loved . . .
         . . . you . . .
         “Dammit!” he shouted, violently swinging his sword at the figure he knew only to be a false image, torn from his memories. It was already gone by the time his sword bit firmly into the wood of the tree, sending a shower of splinters into the air. With a snarl he yanked it out of the tree, abruptly spinning away, his breathing ferociously fast, his face blank but haggard. Something unreadable passed through his eyes as he closed them tightly and rubbed his face, standing there for a long time massaging the bridge of his nose, trying to bring back reality and return himself to the present. The wind shivered. Nothing else moved.
         “All in your head,” Prescotte murmured, opening his eyes slowly and looking around, exhaling carefully. He was okay. He was still here. He knew reality from fantasy. The mindbenders were just playing with him, trying to catch him off guard. But he knew what was real now. Everything was going to be okay.
         It was at that point when he realized his sword was missing.
         Prescotte only had a moment to consider his empty hand when an invisible force caught him in the small of the back, sending him tumbling to the ground, already feeling the bruise forming under the skin. It’s where all the worst damage usually was. What the hell? was all he had time to think as he attempted to roll with the blow, a rapid buzzing in his ears and a sense the air around him was constantly shifting, invisible dust peppering his brain, dazzling him and preventing Prescotte from focusing properly. A sharp pain in the ribs caused him to roll to the side and just as he managed to clamber to his feet another blunt strike across the face tore his vision into pieces and released a trickle of blood to run down his cheek, a cool contrast to the suddenly warm environment.
         “I see . . .” Prescotte gasped, trying to perceive the forest through the haze of glimmering lights and fractured perspectives it had abruptly become. “I see how we’re going to do this . . .” he continued, grinning manically. Nearby he felt the air shift again, quickening and pooling and ducked, throwing his arms up just in time to feel another transparent fist glance off his hastily erected defense. Reflexively he kicked out, his leg nearly hyperextending as he struck nothing, feeling another punch catch his shoulder, spinning him around even as the air was split with a burst of screeching feedback. Gritting his teeth, Prescotte tried to block out the cacophony, struggling to his feet and staggering backwards, until his back touched the unyielding pressure of a tree. There he paused for a moment, breathing shallowly, wiping some blood from his eyes. Okay, Sir Tactics, let’s try to approach this logically-
         A small shower of broken bark alerted him first. Prescotte dove to the side as a heavy branch fell from the tree and struck the ground with a low thud, the vibrations reaching Prescotte even from what he felt was a safe distance away. There was a small whistling nearby and Prescotte threw himself flat on the ground, kicking backwards even as he did so, still hitting nothing, feeling tiny twigs scrape at his face and clothes as they streaked past, burying themselves deep into a nearby trunk.
         Now if I were invisible . . . and small pockets of the dirt exploded before his eyes, sending flecks of dirt into his face and causing him to leap to his feet. Some instinct enabled him to block another invisible fist with crossed arms. Desperately he flailed at the space where the fist had been, his weak punch still finding only empty air. I would probably stay safely away from the battle if I could avoid it . . .
         Another fist caught him in the stomach, but his ribs stayed unbroken and he only staggered backwards, spinning around and winding up in the center of the clearing, breathing heavily but still standing. In fact, he thought, I’d probably do my best to do distance strikes so I wouldn’t have to be involved at all.
         A flicker in the air twitched near his head but Prescotte didn’t move. This wasn’t the attack. It would come in a second. He wished he had some mystical insight that told him so, but it was just experience and intuition. He was fighting a soldier. And when using guns or swords or giant invisible fists, the methods were always the same. Confusion and insertion. Slip inside the defense and strike. That’s all there was to it. Keeping his arms close to his body, he pivoted slowly, his eyes scanning the surrounding forest. And really, if I was trying to throw someone off, the best place to be . . .
         When the next strike came, he let it slam into him, turning only slightly to muffle the impact somewhat, although the force still threatened to force his breath entirely out of his body. He tasted blood, realized he had bit his lip, tossed the fact aside as soon as he identified it.
         Then, letting himself fall with the punch, he suddenly regained his feet and launched himself in that direction.
         . . . would be the complete opposite of where you would suspect.
         Momentarily he caught a glimpse of a blurred shape in nonexistent colors painted on the air. Strained, he aimed for the spot where he thought he saw it last. A second later his arms wrapped around something solid and with a wrenching lurch tried to wrestle it to the ground. Whatever it was struggled with him, but Prescotte felt the cool rustle of cloth against his arms and the unmistakable stench of human sweat. What definitely felt like human hands clutched at him, seeking his throat. Nope, now it’s my turn to stop fighting fair, Prescotte thought with some dark glee just as he dealt a hard a punch as he could manage directly into what he assumed was the man’s groin.
         The shape grunted harshly as the punch connected, doubling over instantly, making a soft noise not unlike the sound of a hissing kettle escaping. Partially he flickered into view, but not enough that Prescotte could get a clear idea of what he looked like. Not that it mattered. Lesson one, Prescotte thought grimly, this is how you press an advantage.
         Grabbing the man by what felt like the front of his shirt, he lifted him bodily off the ground and slammed him into the nearest tree, pressing one forearm into his throat and a knee into his groin. The man grunted again but made no other sound. Prescotte figured he had to be conscious still or the invisibility would have worn off. Even now looking at him directly gave Prescotte something of a headache. Oh well. Something else he’d have to take out on this fellow.
         “I hope you enjoyed the romp in my head necessary to put on that little show back there,” Prescotte said tightly, “but I’m afraid that if you don’t start becoming real useful to me in the next few seconds . . . I’m simply going to kill you.”
         Eerily, only the man’s lips flashed into view. His teeth were stained with blood. A smile twitched, but he said nothing.
         Why not? a voice mocked in his head, a frozen lake spreading right under his forehead. I don’t doubt it. After all, she was easy enough.
         “Wrong answer,” Prescotte warned, dismissing the sensation and using his other hand to send a quick punch right into the man’s face. The connection was solid and immensely satisfying. He heard a brief crack and felt something dislodge under his fist. He looked down to see a tooth appear in midair, tumbling and landing with a bounce in a pile of leaves. The man groaned but still remained silent. “The correct answer would be the location of my friends, followed by a promise to surrender.” He pressed his arm deeper into the man’s throat, feeling the cartilage start to give under the pressure. The man made a gagging noise but Prescotte didn’t let up. “And to be honest I’m really on a deadline here, so my usual patience is in short supply at the moment . . .” the man gurgled something inarticulate but he wasn’t ready to talk just yet. “So if you’re disinclined to talk at all, just tell me now and we’ll get this over with.”
         The man took a deep, rattling breath, so that his throat vibrated against Prescotte’s arm. The air blinked again and only the man’s eyes appeared, disembodied and staring, a gaze without hatred or bitterness or even simple amusement. There was only cold determination.
         But wouldn’t you rather, whispered the arctic voice in his mind, have your sword back first?
         Prescotte ducked.

* * * * *

         “Dreams are the world as seen through unfettered eyes, a world where the laws as we know them do not exist . . . a world that all of us enter every night for a protracted period of time and leave just as easily, without fully understanding what we have seen. In dreams there is no past or future or even present, it is all occurring in the same transient moment and each moment is separate from the others.
         “It has been thought that all dreams are random events, merely the mind allowed to run free without outside stimuli or sensation . . . but even the most fantastic of images has to have a grain of truth to it. And if the mind does run free, it can run in any direction.
         “The movements of destiny are manifested in dreams, I believe. With no concessions made to past or present, time is meaningless in a dream. And since the events to come are already determined, dreams can allow us a glimpse into that time to come and give us an idea of what will happen.
         “Why does every dream not tell the future, you ask? Quite simply because not all minds are attuned to perceiving it properly. Imagine a window obscured by rainy weather, the images you will see through it, if anything, will be grainy and imprecise.
         “So the goal was to find the right mind that could dream with clear eyes and thus allow myself access as well. I had no idea how many of those minds existed, if any.
         “It was to my great surprise then, that I found not one such mind on this world, but two.”

* * * * *

         Tritan had put the human on the ground a while ago, shortly after the resonant thump of Prescotte’s footsteps had faded. Tritan knew his friend would be back eventually, victorious or not. There was something about Prescotte, the same quality Tritan thought he saw in both Tristian and Commander Brown, the determination to convert any defeat into a setback, to ready the push forward even when the battle was driving them backwards. The concept that victory was not so much a goal as an eventuality, even if they did not consciously realize it. In his own way, Prescotte was as much a Time Patrol soldier as Brown was. For while Brown stayed alive because he could not die, Prescotte remained because he wouldn’t perish.
         Meanwhile, the other human’s face was still, his breathing even, his pulse steady. Dreaming, Prescotte would have called it. Tritan wasn’t so sure. Dreaming it might be, but it was induced, almost conditioned, looking at the man, Tritan recalled the great organic computers that filled the academic halls he used to wander and work in. Their constant hum was reassuring in a way and their absence in the several years he had been away from home was a hole in his routine that he never realized he would miss. The human reminded him of those processors now, a man not so much dreaming as accessing. And if Tritan had the right viewer, he might be able to see what was happening in the man’s head and in turn, see much more than the memories and dreams of a simple man.
         Tritan shifted his weight, his large form crouched on his haunches easily, the leaves scraping uselessly at his chitinous hide, neither harming nor helping him. Prescotte had been right, he was entirely too conspicuous out here, this place was all wrong for him, with the sky always covered and this strange color all around, the hue people called green and this endless ground called a planet. Out here the things that should end did not and much that he had once taken as infinite terminated far too soon. It was a strange dimension with its isolated rocks floating in the void, its scattered and varied peoples clashing or ignoring each other entirely. Having been on familiar ground at least in Legoflas, even if that ground was long abandoned, being out in these places stretched his ability to infer and judge and comprehend to a taxing limit. It was beautiful in its own way, this fractal tree of knowledge, but Tritan found himself somewhat saddened that he would never understand all of it, and experience even less. It was not fair and it was life and there was nothing he could do about it.
         The mindbenders had probably already discovered Prescotte. Whether they had or not, Tritan knew they would be coming for him soon. In this flat atmosphere, his thought patterns stood out, a different rhythm forged in a different pitch entirely, easily identified but how it warped all the other patterns, working against their cadences and threatening to drag them into a new amalgam, a foreign element whose presence could neither be ignored nor dismissed.
         Yes, they would find him. But Prescotte was correct, Tritan doubted they would attack him. These men were raised on myths, force-fed legends and told that everything was true and then made to doubt if anything was at all. Tritan was more than merely an alien, he was the Alien, and what he represented was a piece of themselves they could not tear away without damaging themselves horribly. They might taunt him, toy with him, even perhaps harm him, but Tritan was sure they would not kill him. And if they did overcome their own revulsion and try, Tritan would simply have to find a way to stop them. How, he was not sure, but Tritan assumed some method existed to any such attempts. He would figure it out when the time came.
         At his feet, the man stirred slightly. For a second his shape seemed to waver and become replaced by something else, a man outgrowing testing his contours and finding them too misshapen for his liking. The image passed as swiftly as it came and Tritan wondered if it had simply been a trick of the light beating down on him mercilessly from the star squatting overhead. Another difference he had not become accustomed to.
         It was then the man opened his eyes. What Tritan saw there was not the man and in some ways, were not even eyes.
         “My, you’re not so big now,” the man said in wonderment, his words oddly distorted, as if his throat were the wrong size. Tritan merely stared at him as Baress slid into a crouching position, rubbing his shins in an effort to restore circulation to them. “Not so big,” the man said again, “but still very strange.” The light touch of a grin danced across his face. Even with his limited experience with humans, Tritan thought that expression looked familiar. Something was not right here. The air had a contrary pulse, a counter-hum that hung like tangled wires, emitting a radiation that corrupted without care.
         Looking at Tritan in a cockeyed manner, Baress asked, “So what do they call your kind? Unless people haven’t bothered to name you anything because they’re too busy screaming and running in the opposite direction.”
         “My people,” Tritan said calmly, “are known as the Slashtir.” The name, said in a language that wasn’t his, sounded entirely foreign. It was just sound, conveying nothing except whatever meaning others assigned to it. Someone once had chosen that collection of sounds to stand for his race and now he was trapped into using it, boxed in by the ceaselessly spinning web of language. But it was as good a collection of sounds as any other. Even if he used the true name for his people, it would have no more meaning to this man than any other sound.
         “Slashtir,” Baress replied, his face seemingly unusually flexible, possessed of a sudden strange looseness as he rolled the jagged syllables of the name over his tongue. Suddenly his eyes widened as he stared at Tritan with new recognition. “Slashers,” he hissed, and now there was a new tension in his body. “You are a long way from home, by all accounts.”
         “I am a long way from many places,” the Slashtir replied, wondering where this was all leading to. There was a latent violence in his man, a coiled rope that any point could become a blunted object and from there, perhaps, a sword. Or more appropriately, a dagger. “Home is just one of them.”
         “Indeed,” Baress said, sliding to the side, away from the tree, keeping his eyes on Tritan the entire time. Tritan did not know why he was referring to this man as Baress when it was no longer the man. But he did not know who it was, the identity eluded him, a man broken into cube fragments and then rearranged. The outlines remain the same but the details change. It was an old trick, but there is a reason that tricks survive to become old. “And how is the Uplifted City these days? Still planning to come back and invade?”
         He speaks of Legoflas. He speaks of legends and myths as if they were fact. And perhaps at some point they were. Tritan sensed it might not be a good idea to correct the man’s beliefs. In fact there might be a way to twist them into a thing that would send him away.
         “It has been said,” Tritan told him in a careful voice, “that the loosening of destiny’s shackles would give us the sign we needed to reenter this place.” Looking up as if the signs hovered in the air far above him, he continued, “This is occurring as we speak. Truly, it is only a matter of time.” Tritan hoped his words were suitably portentous but without the proper context he wondered if he just sounded silly.
         Baress gave no sign that he felt he was in imminent danger, but nor did he make any other moves either. Tritan tried to remember if the man carried anything that might be used as a weapon. Tritan wondered what he might use as a weapon, when the time inevitably came.
         “Time,” Baress said, not without some sense of resignation. “That’s what everyone says these days. It’s all a matter of time. Everything.” His soil stained fingers traced sharp lines in the dirt. “You are a race of warriors, if I recall, yes? Lives devoted to conflict and battle? Seeking always the thrill of combat and bloodlust?” His voice sounded almost bored as he spoke.
         “That is what drives us,” Tritan replied, hoping he sounded both matter of fact and menacing. “There was no finer warriors in all of existence.” Pointing a finger at Baress, Tritan said, “The fact that you still know of us speaks to our skill and prowess, that even so far removed from the lives of you and your kind, the memory still persists.” Lowering his hand and letting it rest on the dirt, Tritan finished with, “Rest assured, the memories will be added to soon.”
         “Warriors, then, all of you, eh?” Baress noted calmly, looking Tritan up and down. “Fearsome fighters, every last one . . . with you as the point scout I imagine, clearing the way for everyone else.”
         “Yes,” Tritan replied without hesitation. “A task given only to the most highly feared and skilled of our kind.” The lie felt strangely natural, although he wished he could back up the boast. Perhaps Prescotte was influencing him after all. How interesting.
         “So it seems,” Baress said casually, slowly rising to his feet.
         “It is,” Tritan agreed cordially. “Yet you do not seem afraid, human.”
         “That so?” Baress shot back, brushing some stray leaves off his clothes. “Well, to tell the truth, things like pain and suffering and sometimes even fear . . .”
         He trailed off, and then stared directly at Tritan, a wild glee in his eyes, “Frankly, it’s like it’s happening to someone else entirely . . .”
         And with the grin still in place he launched himself at Tritan.

* * * * *

         Prescotte felt more than saw the tree shudder violently as his sword embedded itself deep within the trunk. Rolling to the side, he leapt into a standing position, balancing on the balls of his feet and waiting for some sign of another attack. Nothing came. His sword still protruded from the tree, vibrating slightly from the impact. There was no sign of his assailant. Damn, invisible again, he thought grimly, taking a step forward and yanking the blade out of the trunk. He swung it experimentally a few times around the area near the tree, distantly hoping he might get lucky and cut the bastard. That didn’t happen, of course. Still, it felt good to have a weapon again although he didn’t know for how long that would be. Or how much use it would actually be. This fight was turning into a mess. How the hell was he supposed to beat someone who could turn invisible, hit him from a distance and screw with his head? He was tempted to run back to Tritan and Baress and enlist their help but he knew it would be suicide. He had enough trouble keeping himself alive, trying to keep track of everyone else would just mean they would all be dead. There had to be another way.
         But what if there wasn’t? The mindbenders had no doubt lasted for a while here because of their abilities. What chance did he have alone against them? Brown had been captured and he had more experience at this stuff than Prescotte did. And Kara, hell, the kid was supposed to be the most powerful one ever and they had taken her just as easily. And nobody had seen Tristian or Ranos for a long time now. These were the people who listed saving the Universe in the “hobbies” section of their biography. He was supposed to top that? Against someone he couldn’t find or make stand still long enough to hit?
         Around him, the forest was silent again. It looked so normal but Prescotte knew how deceptive it could be. An attack could come from anywhere, at any moment. So where was he to go? Everything in this damn forest looked the same. Prescotte took a few steps in one direction but immediately stopped and began to head in another direction entirely before changing his mind one more time. It was no use. He had nothing to go on. How long had he been out here anyway? Tritan had probably left without him already. Prescotte couldn’t blame him, what reason did the alien really need to stick around. It wasn’t his fight. These weren’t his people. Tritan probably could sympathize more with the mindbenders, neither of them belonged here. Hell, the damn alien was probably a mindbender himself, the way things were going.
         The whole time he was standing there, he felt a peculiar buzzing on the base of his neck, almost a tingling. Instantly, he spun around, his sword slicing into the air, making quicksilver lines against the featureless green and brown environment. It cut nothing. There was no one around. Just him. Just Prescotte. Alone. That was all. Nobody else. But there had to be others. The mindbender wasn’t going to just leave him alone. He had to be out there. Waiting. Circling the area, looking for the right moment to show itself. His mind a barbed weapon pointed right at Prescotte, hovering invisibly just out of his reach, ready to strike the moment he turned his back. Prescotte spun around again, keeping his sword close to his body.
         Then it occurred to him that the mindbender had made his sword move before. What if he made Prescotte stab himself? He imagined his arm suddenly jerking towards his chest without warning, impaling itself right into his heart, the cold, slithery sensation of the metal digging into his body, piercing him, the flush of warmth as all his blood exited cheering through the wound-
         With a muffled shout Prescotte flung his sword onto the dirt. It bounced and rolled a bit before coming to a rest, looking perfectly innocuous all the while. Prescotte stared at it as if the weapon had already become possessed, listening to the rapid beating of his heart. This was silly, he concluded a moment later. Completely silly. The sword could just as easily attack him from there. The best place for it would be sheathed. Nobody would be getting at it from there. Satisfied with that outcome, Prescotte picked up the sword and placed the sword in the sheathe strapped to his back. There. Now he was all right.
         But the forest still held its pensive calm. Prescotte’s eyes darted around the area, trying to find a reason to break the silence. But it was impossible to speak. That would give him away. But that was silly. They already knew where he was. Even now they were probably coming for him. All of them. One by one. Coming to attack him and kill him. He wasn’t worth capturing, after all. He was just some guy, a glorified foot soldier trying to play in the big leagues. A year ago, he had never heard of mindbenders or Legoflas or any of this madness. And now he was in the middle of it. And he was out of his depth. Of course he was. It’s why he was getting his ass beat. And it was going to get beat again. That’s why he couldn’t stay here. He had to get out. To go somewhere. Somewhere that wasn’t here. Because he was a sitting target, just asking to get hurt again. And every time he moved the bruises reminded him of how much he didn’t want to get hurt again.
         A brief rustling of leaves made him jump, reaching for his sword. But no, that’s what they wanted him to do. Draw his sword and then they could stab him with his own weapon. No one would ever know. They’d find him out here with his own damn sword in his chest and people would just think he couldn’t handle it, that he killed himself because he knew he could never measure up and pull his own weight. But he could, he really could. They’d just never know. Because he was going to stand here and get killed. Another rustling behind him caused him to spin around, his breath rattling in his throat. His feet felt rooted to the spot but he had to move. He had to. He couldn’t stay. Or else they’d never know.
         “Never know what, Prescotte?” said a voice with a grin, with a mild cough, with all the threat in the world behind it.
         Prescotte gasped, remembered to breathe as an afterthought, and proceeded to run for his life.

* * * * *

         In a sudden motion, Valreck stood up from his chair, pointing at the man in the door. “You’ll never understand,” he accused, “because you do not see the world as I do, as others who share my abilities do . . . you will never experience the layered textures of cascading thought or the endlessly twisted pathways of the mind or the simple joy in merely thinking something and if you possess the skill, having the world align itself in accordance with your thought.”
         Sighing, he let his hand drop. “But that does not make you a lesser man or somehow worthy of abuse. It does not give us the right to be at each other’s throats. We perceive the world in different ways, who knows, perhaps you have access to senses that my abilities have closed off to me . . .” Valreck shrugged, clearly not believing this but admitting it for the sake of argument. “Regardless,” he continued, “it means that you have to at least accept the relevance of my studies, even if you will never be able to fully appreciate their importance. It is simple fact.”
         Beginning to pace in a circle around his chair, he abruptly stopped and glanced askew at the man. “Let me try to explain it to you in terms of application and perhaps then it will make sense . . .” pressing his hands together, he paused to compose his thoughts. “In light of our arrival here, I proposed a sort of early warning system to alert us of possible dangers. Nobody believed it was possible . . . the only one who ever saw the merits of such a thing was a friend of mine and he . . . he is gone now.” The sadness in his words was blunted, buried somewhere deep. Still keeping his eyes fixed on the same near point, Valreck said, “But I felt the right subjects with the proper stimulus could have their dreams directed to focus on the events I thought were worth study . . . and if done properly could tell us of upcoming events that might potentially have had an impact on us and our existence here. It was what warned me of their coming, although it hinted not at all at these later events. Or perhaps it did, and I did not interpret it properly.” He sniffed. “That was the problem with these minds, they could accept the images of events being filtered into their dreams but they had no capacity for understanding. Everything was cloaked in metaphor, all seen through their limited perspectives. Sometimes attempting to wring meaning out of their dreams as a task in itself.”
         He stepped past the chair to move closer to the man, who remained just outside the doorway, unable to enter unless invited in, perhaps. “But that is just a hint of what the technique might eventually offer. Tacticians could use it to remain vigilant over their worlds and create new lines of defense. Researchers might be able to see what changes the far future will bring and where evolution might eventually take us.” His voice remained vibrantly flat as he spoke, although his eyes were lit with a gleaming fire, lost in the glow of his own conceptions. “Isolated worlds could use it to remain abreast of news and developments on other planets, in other places, no matter how far flung. In dreams there is no distance and time is not something you can gauge by miles.” His hand clenched into a fist and a desperate longing crept into the edges of his face. “Yet time is all I need to perfect it . . . and I do not think it is a luxury I will long have.” Standing closer to the man, he said, “You and your kind were no help to me, and there is no one who cares enough to try and further what I have learned here.” A pained expression slid onto his face and he leaned against the door, looking suddenly very old. “Single minded and small minded, all of them. I expected better. The reason I gathered them was because I thought I saw the kind of drive that would lend itself to a grand experiment, an aspect of themselves I did not want to see lost in the crumbling maelstrom that was Mandras’ futile plan.” He blinked, staring into the golden sunlight with cold eyes. “Yet they come here and all they wish for are their old lives.” There was no bitterness in his voice and barely even pity. “What they seek to hang onto is what they once had, not realizing that it is forever locked away behind them and what they manifest now is only pale imitation.” An strange emotion flickered across his glassy eyes. “I left behind much when I joined Mandras’ and even more when I came here and . . . I do not lie when I say that I sometimes desire those things . . .” his fingers gripped the doorframe tightly, more a secure hold than anything else. “But they are gone,” he said quietly, “and all my wishing will not bring them back. I know that, how is it they do not?”
         With a wordless curse, Valreck pounded a sharp fist into the doorframe. The man watched him without comment, betraying nothing, not even a disinterested dispassion. “Time,” Valreck hissed, whirling on the man, as if expecting him to contest the sentiment. “All seem to have it but me. Mandras wished for and nearly achieved mastery of time, the Time Patrol move within it freely, and all I can do is struggle against it, trying not to let the storm pull me in.” Shaking his head, leaning back against the door as if suddenly weak, he abruptly turned and stalked out into the sunlight, wincing as the bright glare washed over him. The man stood in the doorway, his face wreathed in shadows, his eyes and hands the only visible portions of his body.
         “All I had was the boy,” Valreck said to the man, his voice carrying effortlessly over the empty houses, through the quiet streets. Volume was not an issue here. This conversation would not be heard. Not even by the speaker. “His dreams pointed toward the future, toward times to come . . . his father had the ability, the potential but . . .” Valreck brought his fists up, his face briefly creasing in frustration, “all he could see was the past. Every dream he had was of times that had already occurred. And what good did that do me? A knowledge of past events does not aid me at all . . . and yet he was perfectly attuned, perhaps even better than the boy . . .” Pivoting sharply on his heel, Valreck ran a hand over his head, aware that he was sweating, aware that the temperature felt all wrong. The man in the doorway had not moved. “But he was useless to me . . . useless . . . I did the best I could, though,” he said, his speech speeding up, words tumbling over each other in an attempt to get out before the whole enterprise went to pieces. “It’s just with two I could have done so much more, I could have-“
         Valreck stopped. Hands still clenched into fists, he stared at the man in the doorway, as if seeing him again for the first time.
         “What did you say?” Valreck said softly. He took a few steps closer to the man. “What was that? You said . . .”
         He halted again, creating a small cloud of translucent dirt at his feet. It drifted and faded before Valreck spoke again.
         “Looking in the wrong direction?” Valreck asked, squinting through the bright air at the silent man. “Why do you say that?”

* * * * *

         Baress slammed into Tritan at waist level, the impact not harming the Slashtir but sending the Slashtir stumbling backwards. Instinctively his hands swept out to try and grab the man but his grasp only met empty air, clutching the space just above where Baress was. A second later, he had other concerns.
         Feeling his balance slipping away, Tritan strained to remain upright. But gravity tugged at him, claiming dominance just as the world tilted and the ground and the sky suddenly became parallel. Tritan felt himself falling and threw his arms out in an attempt to slow his descent. It too was futile. All he caught were all too yielding branches, many of which snapped right in his hand, joining the bushes that cracked and crumbled beneath his weight as he sunk into them, the tips of the plants scratching at his vision, hands clawing for his eyes, trying to darken the world.
         Baress joined the struggle a second later, scrambling up Tritan’s length, fingers pressed together like daggers and stabbing at his face, seeking to blind. Tritan lifted his arms to ward the man off but everything was so slow and trapped in a cradle of branches he was impeded in every action. He had no instincts to draw on, no training to speak of, only a vested interest in survival. And even that might not have been enough. A glancing blow off his eye sent gnarled fingers of pain across his face, cracking the window of the world and causing him to turn his face aside, feeling more hands stabbing at his throat. Somewhere he sensed that Baress was laughing, as if conquering a previously unbeatable foe. I have deceived you, human, Tritan thought, his hands slashing the air uselessly, unable to draw a bead on the quickly dodging Baress, his rough, calloused hands seeking points of damage, soft spots in the tough armor of his skin, a million blunted needles of pain striking him from all over. My people are warriors, but I . . . am not. If you seek vindication of your fighting prowess, you will not find it here. Tritan’s feet pressed futilely against the soft soil in an attempt to gain purchase but all he did was slide further into the stinging bush, the branches bending and groaning under the increased pressure, while Baress scored another strike off his eye. Tritan felt a curiously cold sensation on the side of his face and realized that he was bleeding. I must do something, or I will die. And if I die, then I am of no good to Prescotte, or anyone.
         The simplicity of the problem was no comfort to Tritan, who found himself unable to even focus on the man. The blood now running down his face blurred the world even further and Tritan felt several more chilled spots all over his body, all combining to form a sort of numbed pain, gates allowing all his energy to leak out, in the end leaving him with nothing. His arms flailed for any sort of stability or object that might aid him. Tritan wasn’t sure what he would do with something once he had grasped it. Over him, the man was breathing strangely and his attacks had slowed down. His slight shadow was an eclipse on Tritan’s vision.
         “Not so hard,” the man panted, crouching on Tritan’s stomach, one foot resting on the ground. One of Tritan’s hands dug into the soil and came to rest around something heavy and solid. “Not so hard at all . . .” he was digging into his pockets now in a feverish fashion. “I’m sure we can find something to . . . ah!”
         Something glittered in Baress’ hands.
         What did Prescotte say? Tritan thought.
         Baress darted forward, the needle leading the way.
         At the same time Tritan sat up suddenly, lifting the arm clutching the branch and bringing it around. Find the biggest thing around and hit the nearest person with it. It connected with a dull thud, the gleaming object spinning away from Baress’ hands as the man flew in the opposite direction, clutching his head and rolling on the ground, seemingly unable to stop the motion.
         Tritan got to his feet immediately after, the world swaying as he attempted to regain his equilibrium. Across from him Baress was struggling into a crouch, shaking his head violently. He looked at Tritan with a caution gaze. Blood was running down the side of his face and a dark spot was already beginning to form there. Somehow it made his face look misshapen.
         “Quite the swing you have there,” Baress said, his speech strangely loose. His eyes weren’t quite focused. His grin was lopsided. “Want to try for two?”
         A grim realization struck Tritan then. He could hurt Baress without truly hurting him. In the end, only the body would suffer. It left him at a loss for what to do. I will not harm needlessly, he thought, but I refuse to perish either.
         Meanwhile Baress was flexing the fingers on his right hand over and over, as if massaging the air. “So there’s really two options when fighting someone your size . . .” his words were coming fast again, ejected as soon as they were fully formed, and his eyes were clever and quick, very much out of place on Baress’ craggy and worn face. “One way is to stay inside your reach but we’ve already seen how well that works.”
         Do I charge him? Tritan wondered, wishing again that Prescotte was here. This fight would have been over already. The branch was still clutched firmly in his hand, but he was unsure whether to strike again.
         “And the other way . . .” and his hand stiffened as the air seemed to flicker and pulse inside the curve of his palm. Quickly he brought the hand close to his body. He licked his lips and smiled again, his face covered in thin rivers of sweat.
         “Well,” he finished cheerfully, “the other way is just the opposite.”
         I should do something, Tritan thought, just as something flashed in Baress’ hand with a screeching whine, the air sizzled and something too fast to see and without mass punched through the distance to pierce the Slashtir with a crawling, searing pain.

* * * * *

         At any time they could catch him. It just made Prescotte run faster. Trees and assorted foliage flashed by in verdant blurs, running together into one long comet of green, while his feet pounded the ground in a panicked rhythm and his breath hammered in his ears, trying to keep up with the out of control thudding of his heart. He didn’t know where he was running to. The direction didn’t matter. It was all about getting away. Raving fear screamed in his veins, pushing him forward, pushing him faster. He didn’t dare look behind because they might be there, just over his shoulder, and he couldn’t ignore it either, because he might never see it coming then.
         I don’t want them to kill me. I don’t want to die quickly or slowly. I don’t want to die at all. His desperate thoughts flooded his brain like sewage, seeping into every available crack. Any second now they’re going to get me. I don’t have much time left. I don’t have any time at all. Running is just prolonging it, I might as well just-
         A step missed in his rhythm threw the entire enterprise out of joint. His foot caught on a rough patch of dirt, or perhaps a barely exposed tree root, or maybe nothing at all. Prescotte stumbled, staggered forward a few more steps before crashing heavily to the ground, grunting in pain as his bruised ribs endured more abuse. All of a sudden the forest was uncomfortably and impossibly warm. He tried to get up and found that there was no strength in his limbs. His entire body was shaking, a core of weakness spreading endlessly outward. Every nerve was telling him to get up and run, to flee before he was caught and subjected to terrors he couldn’t even imagine. He swore he could feel the breath of their presence right on the back of his neck, the quick soft brush of a knife before it stabbed down. It was right there. Prescotte knew. It was just a second away. Newly panicked, he tried to crawl forward, to put more distance between himself and his pursuers, only succeeding in flopping forward clumsily, his mouth tasting dirt, his stomach churning unstoppably, culminating in the sensation of his body turning itself inside out, as his stomach heaved and Prescotte vomited all over the forest floor, the raw acrid stench bringing tears to his eyes and leaving him on his hands and knees and utterly drained.
         “Damn . . . damn it,” he swore, wiping his mouth quickly with the back of one hand, his voice hoarse as he coughed, his ribcage aching with the effort. What’s wrong with me? Every instinct was telling him to run. Prescotte couldn’t understand. There was no one around. Yet he could feel them everywhere.
         They are coming. Every second brings them closer to you.
         He tensed and then flinched, seeing an attack heading right for him. It wasn’t there. He was completely alone. He knew that. It was incredibly difficult to breathe, with his chest refusing to expand. He had to get on his feet. Staying here would get him killed, imminent danger or not. His body trembled with the idea of more effort. Nothing could slow down his heart. The world swam in and out, colors blurring together like pastel sand in a storm.
         The only option is to run. Look. They are right behind you.
         “Ah,” he whispered, grabbing his arms around a nearby tree and using it to pull himself to his knees. The air was seemingly composed of gelatin, exerting constant pressure on him and every breath served only to constrict his chest further. The world was breaking down into cubic building blocks, dissolving into its base components in a way that his mind just couldn’t process. The spectre of imminent terror hovered all around him, soaking into his brain, driving him to his feet, to a desire to run further, to run until he outraced what was chasing him, no matter how long it took.
         Only a matter of time. Then you die. Unless you leave. You must leave.
         This is nuts, Prescotte thought weakly, getting up on one leg and slipping again, wrapping his arms around the tree harder and succeeding only in scraping his forearms as he slid back down again. He coughed, tasting more vomit, mixed with the salt of involuntary stinging tears. They’re doing this to me, I know they are, his brain tried to rationalize, even as his body tried to rebel. He couldn’t escape the sense that something terrible was about to happen, the aura of impending doom was embedded in the atmosphere. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find his way around it. The sensation blocked him at every turn.
         If you stop for even a moment, they’ll be on you.
         “Dammit,” he gasped, forcing himself to his feet with a wrenching grunt. The effort sent his heartbeat wildly out of control and the world flickered and briefly threatened to fade out of existence. Prescotte forced himself to take deep, even breaths, desperately trying to quell a rising sense of panic, yet another in what felt now to be an endless series, all falling on him in waves without pause.
         “Is . . . is this how you bastards want to win this,” Prescotte panted, each word rammed through a clenched jaw, every syllable a victory that meant absolutely nothing. He didn’t know if they could even hear him. But they had to be. They were all around, and growing closer every second. Stop that! he screamed in his head. “By . . . ah . . . by scaring me to death?” his legs nearly buckled and only his tight grip on the tree kept him remotely upright. “Is that the . . . best you can do?” he tried to rail against the silent air, but nothing answered him. This would be a lot more formidable if they weren’t succeeding in their goals so nicely, Prescotte thought dryly. “Because I swear, whatever the hell you’re trying it’s . . . not going . . . to . . .”
         Something dropped on his head.
         Prescotte yelled, covering his head and stumbling backwards, spinning around in a circle, trying to duck and run and go nowhere at all at the same time. Eventually he just settled for falling, landing on his back on the forest floor, getting a good view of the medium sized acorn that had recently plopped onto his head. The knowledge didn’t alleviate his racing heart rate any.
         Lord help me, I can’t function like this, Prescotte thought morosely, feeling the bile rising in his throat again. It was coming. He was coming. There wouldn’t be any escape this time. The air quickened in time with his manic pulse as Prescotte stared into the depths of the tree above him, into its knotted and intricate branches, too paralyzed by his fear to move. I have to move, I have to get out of here, but on my own terms, not shoved along but some weird terror influence. His thoughts raced as he tried to fight off an attack he couldn’t touch or sense. Any second he’ll be here, any moment now he’ll attack. I’ve got to . . . hello?
         Something in the grey shadows of the tree’s branches caught his eye.
         Now what the hell is that?
         And perhaps now Prescotte was being driven to delusions by the attack of fright, but what he saw above him dangling from a tree branch was a human foot. Attached to a leg. Attached to what presumably was the rest of the body.
         Oh my. Even under the crushing weight of his fear, Prescotte ventured a small smile. This, I think, is where things start to get interesting, eh?

* * * * *

         “What are you trying to tell me?” Valreck asked, eyes narrowing. He tried to inject a dangerous tone to his voice but all attempts wilted in the face of his implacable witness. “All my energies are being focused in the wrong direction?” He paused and gazed at the man, waiting for him to retract his statement. He was not surprised when that did not occur. “Nonsense,” he snapped. His eyes flickered away before abruptly refocusing on the man. “The future? Is that what you mean by direction? That I should not be looking into the future?” Valreck snorted derisively. “Out of all the applications, that is perhaps the most vital of them all. Who would not benefit from a glimpse into the future? To be forewarned of upcoming events and given ample time to prepare, while the rest of existence can only experience such events as they happen . . . knowledge is the most powerful weapon and to possess knowledge before it even comes into existence . . .” Valreck shot the man a pitying look. “I do not think you fully understand the implications inherent in . . .”
         Then suddenly he stopped and his eyes widened. “Of course,” he said in a quiet voice. Across from him, the man finally stepped forward, still maintaining his distance. Valreck stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. Then his gaze went downward, then sideways, anything to avoid making eye contact. In a slow, hesitant voice, Valreck said, “If destiny indeed holds sway over events as we know them . . . then . . .” and he found the words difficult to say, “then it’s quite possible, that . . . that . . .”
         He took a step back and looked again at the man, who had moved another few steps closer. “Then it’s already factored in,” he whispered, his voice seeming to echo like a trapped man. “I should have known, I should have . . .” he said quickly, massaging his forehead suddenly as if overtaken by a stinging headache. He seemed to unable to take his eyes off the man now. “There is no such thing as impartiality, the mere act of observing irrevocably changes the frame of reference.” His speech was feverishly fast, seeking magic words that might send the man away. “And then it’s quite possible that . . . that by spying the coming of the Time Patrol that we, that I have . . .”
         Valreck drew himself up, stared the man squarely in the face. Neither man flinched, although neither needed to.
         “That I have been the cause of all this,” Valreck said clearly, softly. “For good or ill.” He looked away again. “Is this true?” he asked no one at all.
         Then, to the man, “Is this true?” He took a step forward until he was only a foot from the man, his face volatile, compressed by crushed rage. “Is it?”
         And finally, “Answer me!” as he looked directly into the eyes of the silent man.
         And as the reverberations of his sudden roar faded among the empty houses, Valreck finally saw in the man what he had blind to the entire time.
         “By all the gods,” said a voice that might have come from him. Or perhaps not. It made little difference, in the end.
         Face suddenly pale, Valreck took a step back.
         It was not far enough.

* * * * *

         Air was seeping into a breach in his body, infesting the interior of his tissues with a foreign taste it had never thought to sample. For some reason he could not move his arm. It simply refused to respond to all entreaties from his nerves. He found this to be a very strange thing. Something liquid and cold was running down the side of his body and for some reason he believed it was coming from the hole. There was a mouth opened in his body and he knew because it was warm. When he was a small one he was warned not to venture too far into the air islands of the Free Zones or risk being gobbled up by the Maws that lurked there. It was only much later that he realized they were only stories. It took him so long to realize how much of the Universe exists as only stories. That always fascinated him, that we were surrounded by all this wonder and mystery and yet we had to go out and make up more tales about things that never existed and will never happen. That’s when he knew. That’s when he realized he had to study the nature of stories and trace the source of myth and then perhaps to all myths. If there was a source. It was to be his life’s work, laboring in the shadows of the prismed shelves and in the quiet clutter of a million tattered fragments of stories that meant something to someone, at one point and somehow meant nothing at all and was replaced by other fictions, all of which would eventually fade. It was the source and the process and the results that he had to know, needed to know.
         Tritan was not thinking about that now. He was wondering why his legs were not working properly and why he was sinking into the ground. He could not figure out why everything was so far away suddenly or how the branch he had been holding had become heavier than the densest metal and would not remain in his hand. Everything wrong with the world radiated from a spot of steaming cold in his shoulder. Tritan could put his hand there and feel bone and muscle, could flex his arm and feel it pulse and throb, expelling fluid in time to the pulse of his life. Tritan did not touch it. He did not need to. He knew it was there. He knew the cause. But he could not do anything about it.
         He has shot me.
         The thought did not belong to anyone. Tritan recognized it as his own, perhaps filed away for use now. For situations like this, where thinking did not follow the old, stable paths.
         I have been shot.
         Acceptance did not deaden the pain. Nor did it increase it.
         I have been shot.
         From far away the little man seemed much bigger. He was grinning now, this little man, and his palm was smoking. No, not his palm, his hand. No, not his hand. Something else. The small man was not little. It was all illusion. Tritan knew that, but he had forgotten how to see through it. Suddenly, it did not seem so important.
         “I’m going to shoot you again, you know,” the small man said, his voice gleefully matter of fact. “After the events of the past few days, I don’t take anything for granted . . . for all I know you could be healing as we speak or even preparing some secret weapon. I don’t discount anything, these days. After all, I don’t really know anything about you, to be honest.”
         The air screamed again. Someone injected him with a star and his leg buckled and it was all he could do to remain upright.
         “But you do bleed,” the man said, with a quiet laugh. “That I do know.”
         Swaying against the tiny explosions of bright pain in his periphery, Tritan’s balance shifted and he started to fall forward. Instinctively he thrust out his arm to support himself but it was the arm that did not want to move anymore and it collapsed uselessly under his weight. Of course. He should have guessed that would happen. Of course.
         Footsteps crunched on dried leaves nearby. Laughter settled around him like broken glass. A tension in the air kept rising and it was centered directly on his head. Tritan wondered what death was like. How much was myth and how much was fantasy.
         “We’ll try here first,” a voice said from above. “And if that doesn’t work then I guess we’ll just have to get-“
         His speech halted, crumbled apart. A sound not unlike an escaping hiss emerged from the man and Tritan thought he heard someone whisper, “No, no,” before something heavy dropped to the ground near him.
         There was no sound for some time. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a crumpled form lying not too far away, a shape that looked once again familiar. He wondered what had happened.
         But when Tritan raised his head to look closer, all the cold in the world rushed to the base of his brain and all of a sudden he couldn’t see anything at all.

* * * * *

         The trail Prescotte left was pitifully easy for Tolin to follow. The man wasn’t even bothering to cover his tracks, just barging through the bushes and trees without a care for what he left behind. The broken branches and crushed undergrowth might as well have been giant blinking arrows as far as Tolin was concerned. Not that he really needed it. The pulse of the man’s mind was strong, although it was harder to get a fix on him as he moved further away. Tolin had never really been able to affect minds over a distance like some of the others could do, especially Valreck or Rathas. He didn’t quite have the reach for it. But he made up for it in other areas.
         Still, trudging through the dense thicket of trees, Tolin reflected that he should have driven the man into a river or something, it would have been easier to clean up afterwards. Inflicting a overwhelming sense of dread on him did no good if all he could do was run and run and run. Eventually he would tire himself out, which was what Tolin was counting on, but Prescotte struck Tolin as a fairly healthy man in good shape. He wasn’t going to run five steps and collapse. He could go for a while. But that was okay. So could Tolin.
         Not that he had any desire to chase this man through the forest. Tolin very much looked forward to clearing away the next tangle of brush and finding the man lying there, all knotted up in terror. Then Tolin could kill him and get back home, which was where he wanted to be. It wasn’t good to be away from home so much, he didn’t like leaving Jula alone for very long. Women worried, they fretted, it was the way of things. He wanted to keep it to a minimum, but no matter what he did, she was going to worry. Sometimes he thought she was programmed that way. In a way it was endearing. He wished he was with her now, instead of out here, in this silly chase that should have been over long before, running like children in this dull forest, with its monotonous color and unrepentant atmosphere and unchanging environment. They would treat each other like toys here, swinging each other against hard surfaces until one broke and then the other would do his best to ensure that his opponent could not be reassembled again. Some days Tolin thought he remembered the first person he had killed. But the face kept changing. Some days it was like every one was his first.
         Mentally, Tolin swept his thoughts ahead, making sure that Prescotte was where he should be. He hadn’t moved in a while it seemed. Perhaps exhaustion had finally taken hold. Or he’d given up. Either situation was an ideal scenario for Tolin. He wanted to make this quick. Hopefully Rathas had taken care of the alien and the older man and they could make a clean sweep of it and be done. Home by dinner. That’s what he had promised to Jula. At least he thought he had. If he hadn’t, then he would have to make a note of it for next time. It was a good promise. He would have to use it sometime.
         As he strode forward, each step bringing him closer, Tolin reflected on his glimpse into his quarry’s mind. Such an interesting man, this Prescotte. His memories were a rapid series of conflicting images, the mundane juxtaposed with the fantastic. Many of the sideways corners of his head were filled with images of brutal violence, of swords and screams, spilled blood and shattered bone. As a soldier, Tolin could relate to those memories best of all. After that it became strange, almost grotesque. Most featured a man comprised almost entirely of violence. Others showed a burning city on the water, its claustrophobic slaughter and fevered alleys looming over his more recent memories. The luster of recent events somehow went beyond the extraordinary, including a desert that looked surprisingly familiar. Tolin didn’t know what it meant. Maybe nothing at all. Prescotte was nothing special, not a Time Patrol soldier or other legend, just a man. He was here now. They would fight soon, the two of them, and Prescotte would lose.
         The presence of his life was very strong as Tolin stepped into the clearing. Strong but not clear. Almost as if it were dispersed. Interesting. He stepped out into the near center of the clearing, wondering if he should cloak himself again. He decided against it. Let Prescotte make the first move. It might draw him out. Tolin debated what was the most efficient way of killing him. Stopping his heart would be the easiest, if he could get close enough. It felt like cheating, especially against another soldier, but Tolin had not lived as long as he had by playing fair. One had to use the tools at hand. To cripple yourself so that the other side had a better chance was just foolish. Foolish, or worse, suicidal. Tolin very much wanted to live.
         “Where are you, Prescotte?” he whispered, feeling vaguely frustrated. It was confusing, he was generally more patient than this. Too much was going on now, with the Time Patrol and all this interlocking plots suddenly coming to a head. Nothing would be the same after this, Tolin suspected, even as he tried to stop the world and keep it just the way he remembered. He tried to remember the last quiet moment he had with his wife. It was hard. Things blended together, were smoothed away and eventually left you entirely. Tolin always thought it was weird that even with his abilities, his memory was no better than average. It’s the little things that strike you when you least expect it. “Why don’t you come out and get this over with?” The stink of the man’s memories, diarrhea of the mind, almost coated the clearing. He had lingered here for a while at least. He was behind Tolin now.
         “Since you asked so nicely . . .” Prescotte said as Tolin spun around. The man’s face was grim and worn, Tolin’s mental tinkering had clearly taken its toll. But his sword was held with a steady hand, the blade resting quite comfortably against the throat of a man that Tolin knew.
         Rathas. The small man was utterly limp in the crook of Prescotte’s arm, his eyes open but seeing absolutely nothing. He was barely even breathing. Tolin knew what he was doing and wondered where the other man actually was. He wondered if Rathas knew what was going on with his actual body while he was out galavanting in borrowed clothes.
         “I really hate to do things like this,” Prescotte was saying, his words indicating the exact opposite, “but I’m tired of playing games now.” Adjusting the man in his arm, Prescotte smiled tightly and tilted the sword so that the blade caught a shaft of light streaking down through gaps in the trees. The sudden illumination danced over Tolin’s face, threatening to blind him. He didn’t blink. He refused to. It was all a state of mind.
         “You’re going to have two choices here, the way I see it,” Prescotte said evenly. Tolin couldn’t take his eyes off the edge of the blade, pressing very slightly on Rathas’ throat. His comrade appeared so helpless, like a numb animal, unable to comprehend running or any other kind of defense. “You can either decide to become very cooperative and answer my questions on where my friends are . . . or you can get the hell out of here and stay away until this is finished.”
         Tolin stared at Prescotte for a moment before inclining his head politely. “I . . . see.” Gesturing toward Prescotte, and mildly impressed that the man didn’t twitch at the motion, he added, “I take it you’ll kill him otherwise.”
         Prescotte smiled again. “You know the drill. Good. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain everything.” Shrugging, he let the sword trace a line on Rathas’ throat. “But you pretty much have the gist of it. I know he’s one of yours, you people all have the same beady eyes.”
         Tolin said nothing.
         Sighing, Prescotte said, “Look, this isn’t a hard question. You have two choices, talk or flee. If it’s all the same to you, I don’t care which one you choose, but my arm is starting to get tired and . . . well, that can’t good.”
         Tolin continued to stare at Prescotte, debating which way he could kill the man. There were almost too many ways, a shelf of methods, some coated in dust, unused for some time, begging to be reactivated. A simple stab right into the center of his brain would render him useless and perhaps dead, although a twitch might cause him to kill Rathas, which he was clearly ready to do. Tolin had already seen the man from the inside, he knew what he was capable of. Killing Rathas would not be a difficult task for him. No doubt at the first sign of trouble he would kill the man rather than let him Rathas hold him back. Trying to separate the two would not be easy. Tolin wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Valreck had sent him and Rathas out here to stop these people, but did he really care if they rescued their friends or not? He had advocated laying low, it was Valreck who had pushed them into this escalating conflict. Him and the rest of them. And Rathas the worst of all. His taunts, all delivered with that maddening gallop of a voice. His taunts and his deeds, all shaped for mockery. And now he wished to be saved? Now he wanted Tolin to kill so he could live? Forget it. He had enough. Let them, for all he cared. Let them play their silly games and if they decided to accost him and his wife, well, then he would deal with it. But he was done with all this endless fighting, Valreck had promised him that things would be different when they came here and yet at the first sign of danger they all turned to him because it was what he supposedly did best. But just because you did something well didn’t mean you wanted to do it forever.
         “Hey, buddy,” Prescotte called out, “I don’t mean to rush you but-“
         ”Save it,” Tolin snapped. Turning sideways, he looked at both Prescotte and Rathas with thinly veiled disgust. He noticed that Rathas’ eyes were closed now, although he had no idea if that meant anything. Perhaps he had finally died. Good. Tolin had thought about saving Rathas, but after what the bastard had did to him earlier, he really didn’t deserve to be rescued. It really wasn’t worth the effort. And maybe that was petty, but Tolin was in a position where he could afford it. If Rathas was so smart and clever, let him pull it off himself. “Kill him, for all I care. It really doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Do whatever you want with him.”
         And with that he turned and strode away, leaving a stunned Prescotte in his wake. It was even easier than he thought.
         Tolin had only walked a few feet when he heard a whispered “Bastard” right behind his ear. The sound made him jump and he spun around to see Prescotte still standing where he had left him. But that hadn’t been Prescotte’s voice.
         Rathas’ eyes were open now and clearly staring. At him. At Tolin. His lips moved and Tolin heard Rathas swear harshly in phrases that were needles to his eardrums. Time was moving in slow motion now. Prescotte was just realizing what was going on, that his prisoner was recovering. The sword began to twitch even as Rathas straightened up. Tolin began to run forward, seeing his chance now. Maybe he could kill both of them while he was at it. But at least Prescotte. He could always apologize later. Tell him it was part of some plan. Rathas would never be able to tell for certain. But right now he had the man right where he wanted him.
         Tolin had barely increased his pace when suddenly the air folded around Rathas and he vanished, leaving Prescotte holding his sword against empty air. Even better, Tolin thought. Now, while the man was startled and off balance, he could take him and end this now. He could be home within the hour and enjoy some time with his wife while it was still daylight.
         Near him the air rippled and folded and before Tolin knew what was happening, hands grabbed him harshly and threw him to the ground, using his momentum to send him tumbling into the dirt, his mouth filling with leaves and soil, broken undergrowth stinging his eyes, blinding him. He rolled on the ground, trying to get away as more debris flew into his eyes and his throat, choking him, obscuring the world. Tolin thrashed around, feeling his clothes tear on the rough surface of the forest floor, trying to conjure a field to expand outward, to protect himself from whatever kept striking him.
         When it finally stopped he didn’t believe it. Gasping for breath he raised himself to his hands and knees, trying to blink away the dirt in his eyes. What the hell had just happened? Angry, he used one hand to clean off his face, finally restoring his vision.
         The first thing he saw was Prescotte, standing in front of him, far too close.
         The second thing he saw was Prescotte’s sword, the tarnished edge hovering inches from his face.
         His thoughts strangely clouded and unfocused, he looked up at Prescotte, trying to find some salvation in the man’s face, not really expecting any. He wasn’t disappointed.
         With an all too casual smile on his lips, Prescotte said, “This probably won’t make you feel any better, but I didn’t plan that either.” Shrugging, he added, “But that’s why it’s called adaptation. You should have learned it. Oh well. Goodbye now.”
         The sword came down.

* * * * *

         Valreck’s breathing was faster now, his eyes were bone white in the strangely bright sunlight. He couldn’t see the man now. But he was there. Valreck could sense him without seeing. He had never gone anywhere. Perhaps he hadn’t been there the whole time, but now he was present and there was nothing to make him go away.
         But he didn’t run. There would have been no point. Their reach involved something that didn’t require distance. Isn’t that what the stories had always said. Bodies brushed by the gods. An instrument of finest vengeance, called by the psychic howl of a million sundered voices, to silence the one fatal whisper that had punctured them all. That was the purpose. That’s why they came. Against a night without stars the words vibrated in his marrow.
         “It seems . . .” Valreck said, swallowing as it became suddenly difficult to speak, “it seems that I have been expending all my efforts in the wrong areas, toward the wrong ends . . .” he took another step forward, his boot catching on a soft patch of ground, sending him stumbling backwards. The man followed step for step, without hurrying. He wasn’t real. No stories were real.
         “And for all my delusions about viewing the future,” Valreck continued, grunting as his ankle gave out and sent him falling onto his knees, “it appears the whole time my focus should have been the past and its festering mysteries.” The man was all he could see now. What did he look like? Somehow he had gotten much bigger. They could change shape, it was said. And their imaginations were quite expansive. Perhaps he would get a show. Valreck didn’t want to see anymore. He had witnessed more than enough. The macabre puppet shows in his mind would haunt him for long enough.
         His chest hurt suddenly. This couldn’t be happening. It was. The event was pure, unrestrained by the debris of recent stresses. To be part of it should have been honor in itself. Valreck didn’t think so. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
         “I had only the best intentions,” he said again, not sure what he meant. He wished it was sincere. He was sure it was. “I had hoped to protect my existence, to form a life that I could look proudly upon and know what I had shaped it with my own mind, my own ideals, without compromise and with the hope that it might outlast my memory and outrun the past I have been unable to explore.” I have failed you, my friend. I am truly sorry.
         Still looking at the man, he closed his eyes, not wanting to see what came next. What always happened.
         “But some things you cannot outrun, for they will always outflank you in the end,” Valreck said softly, his voice a jagged rasp. In a resigned tone, he said, “I had always thought myself to be the center, the gravity that held events together, the catalyst and in some ways perhaps . . .” he licked dry and cracked lips, feeling the spiky clamor of the words piercing his throat, “perhaps the host, if you would.”
         There was a alien hiss and a band of shimmering crimson light fell across his face, throwing the rest of his features into bloody shadow.
         Valreck saw none of this.
         “And I see, now, that this was not the case. It was not me. Not in the way I thought. It never was.”

* * * * *

         The sky was opaque and suitably endless. The first time he had flown the sky had been this color, this sickly grey. A terrible day, they had said, as he stood there on the edge, trying to gauge the winds, sense their pockets, catch their drafts. On a grey day, the sky was unpredictable. Anything could happen. So they said. So they told him, standing far away, not trying to stop him. He hadn’t been the only one to go that day but this was the way he remembered it. Do not go, he was told. It will pass and you can go when it is safe.
         But he did not want to be safe. Security beckoned in the cushioned halls of his studies. Out here, on that day, the world was saturated in danger. It was not what he wanted, but it what he had to experience. He had known the day was coming, and it was why he was here. It had chosen him, as much as he had chosen it.
         Do not go, someone said, a voice dear to him, in a tone that conjured memories of bare fingertips and cloaked souls, in a darkness that was incited and perpetuated, as much a flame as any fire. It did not matter. The action had already been taken. The choice was not entirely his.
         The way he remembered it, there had been no hesitation. That was a lie. It had a taken a long time to reach that first step. And then nothing.
         And then nothing.
         All he saw was the sky, shot through with red and grey.
         Did he fall?
         A blank sky.
         Did he fly?
         A sky filled with the shaft of a voice, of a cry, of a plea.
         Of a question.
         Tritan
         Tritan
         “Tritan?” a voice, dear to him in a way he didn’t understand, called to him.
         Tritan opened his eyes, seeing only the tangled patches of ground he had landed on. He sensed Prescotte’s heavy presence nearby, standing over him, one too warm hand on his shoulder, near the breach, partially blocking the influx of air. It did not hurt so much now, but that was only illusion. His nerves were rerouting it perhaps, to allow him to function. But numbness was not the same as healing. He had never been injured before, this whole experience was new to him. He shifted his massive frame, feeling the a twinge as plants glued to his leg by his sticky blood pulled free despairingly, as if not wishing to break this new contact.
         “What the hell happened to you?” Prescotte asked, concern clearly evident on his face. In his other hand he held his sword. The blade seemed dark, but that might have been the light. It was all so strange here. Things did not look as they should. “Lord, are you all right?”
         “I believe I will be . . . fine,” Tritan replied, changing position so that he was upright again, favoring his good leg, noting that it was the opposite arm that was injured. He could move neither well. What limited effectiveness he had once possessed was now much diminished. “Given time I should be able to move properly and I do not think anything is permanently damaged.”
         “Good, good,” Prescotte said quickly, helping the Slashtir to a half sitting position. Tritan did not with some humor that if he had fallen, there was not much Prescotte could have done.
         “Did you succeed, friend Prescotte?” Tritan asked.
         “Succeed?” Prescotte murmured, face curled in thought. He appeared to awaken from a faraway dream. “Not as much as I would have liked. Got a good hit on one, but the bastard teleported away before I got any further.” In a softer voice, he added, “I’m really getting tired of that ability. Sometimes I think everyone can do it but me.”
         He then moved over to the slumped Baress, who appeared asleep as he had been before. As Prescotte turned the man over to get a look at him, Tritan noted the dark crusted mass on the side of his face. Prescotte ran thick fingers over it, wiping some away and revealing an ugly lump under his skin. Baress did not respond to these ministrations, although he was clearly alive. His arms were limp, his hands curled into fists at his sides.
         After a moment Prescotte turned and looked directly into the Slashtir’s eyes, one of which looked clouded and dark, not unlike a bruised fruit. “Tritan,” he asked, quite seriously, “what happened?”
         The Slashtir regarded the human. “I tried to fight, friend Prescotte. The results were . . . mixed.”
         Prescotte released a small laugh, bowing his head with the splash of emotion. “I’ll say,” he noted quietly, a chuckle in his voice. “But, no, really,” he added, becoming serious again, “what happened to you, to both of you?”
         “I was injured,” the Slashtir admitted, resisting the urge to shrug. A necessary human gesture, but it might cause more injury to himself. “Is that not what happens in a fight?”
         “Depends,” Prescotte responded dryly. “How did the other guy make out?”
         “I’m afraid that Baress was the . . . other guy,” Tritan told him. “Without warning he attacked me. I did my best to defend, but I did not wish to harm him. I believe he was not himself.”
         “That doesn’t surprise me,” Prescotte said grimly, without elaborating. “The thing that bugs me, though,” he muttered, crossing back over to Tritan, his fingers probing the area around Tritan’s shoulder wound, “is how you got this here.” His touch was gentle but the pressure sent signal flares of stalled pain to his brain, where it was intercepted and delayed. It would hurt later. He was sure of it. Tritan said nothing. “This sure as hell isn’t a sword wound . . . I’ve only been with the Time Patrol for a little while, but it looks like . . .”
         Behind them Baress suddenly groaned. Prescotte turned and Tritan looked past him to see the other man shaking his head and attempting to sit up.
         “Whoa, hey, don’t move too fast,” Prescotte said, sliding over to aid Baress, who still did not look all that well.
         In response, the man groaned again, put a hand up to rub his no doubt aching head. In the middle of that motion, he stopped, looking at his hand curiously.
         Prescotte halted his approach, suddenly rocking back on the balls of his feet cautiously. Tritan noted the sword was still in his hand, poised. There was definitely blood on it.
         Slowly, Baress opened his fist.
         Something was resting on his palm. A small device. It looked entirely out of place in his calloused palm. It didn’t belong there. It didn’t belong to this world. Tritan knew immediately what it was and what had caused his wounds.
         Wonderingly, Baress looked at it and then back at Prescotte again.
         His lips curling in distaste, he said in a gnarled voice, “What the hell is this?”
         Then he fell back and fainted away.

* * * * *

         Waiting, bracing, Valreck wondered if it would hurt. Some stories said it did not. Others promised eternal torture. He was not exactly sure which one he preferred. Pain reminded one of existence, however undeserved it was. But he did not desire it. It was not a decision he felt qualified to make.
         “Valreck, Valreck!” a voice shouted at him, growing closer with each syllable, as usual pronounced entirely wrong.
         How long he floated in self imposed darkness he had no idea. He did not open his eyes until hands on his shoulders shook him, giving him no other option.
         “Valreck!” the youthful voice cried again and Valreck opened his eyes. At his side was the boy, for some reason appearing absolutely frantic. Valreck was not sure why. Other than the two of them, there was no one around.
         Not realizing he was again aware of his surroundings, or not caring, the boy went to shake him once more. Shrugging him off, Valreck rose to his feet, casting away the fetid remains of recent events with a barely repressed shudder. Did it happen? He suspected it did. Then why was he still here? Perhaps he wasn’t, truly. Or he was, for reasons he would not understand. It did not matter, in the end. There was too much still to do to dwell on such things.
         “What is it, Jaymes?” he said, perhaps more harshly than he intended. The boy did not seem to notice either way.
         “You have to help me . . . I . . .” he was almost unable to talk, so stricken was he by his distress. Valreck wondered what the cause was. “I think they’re . . . ah, I think they’re . . . they’re trying to . . . going to kill me, Valreck.” His hands clutched at Valreck’s robes, leaving small amorphous patches of sweat, transferred from one man to the other. The gifts we leave are not always wanted or desired. “You have to help me . . . you have to . . . I don’t want to die . . .” The naked plea in his voice was as honest as anything in this world. Valreck did not doubt his sincerity, although perhaps the boy was trying to too hard to avoid his fate, when he should be seeking to destroy the thing that would bring that apparent fate about. Too many people went to too much trouble for too little purpose. A shove in one direction might have had the same result if it had been a tap in another. Really, it was all a matter of making sure you were focusing in the right direction.
         “Will you help me, Valreck,” the boy begged, releasing Valreck and stepping back, his eyes wide, “you’ve done a lot for me, I know, but please . . . just . . . please . . .”
         The right direction.
         Of course.
         “You were right to come to me. I believe I can help you,” Valreck told him, glancing away at the last second so as not to see the boy’s gratitude. It would not be there later, he was sure. Instead he looked at the ground, at what he thought was a smooth slash carved into the soil, one that may have been simply a trick of the light. He did his best to ignore it.
         And with a slim smile, he added as he guided the boy away, “In fact, I believe I know a way where we can easily help each other out . . .”