(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 50

It was nearly noon. The gate ahead was a different one from the one near the beggars' tent, a move of necesity as that part of the city had started to fill with people asking uncomfortable questions. Kehu had, quite understandably, predicted that any gate near the mansion would be on alert. It had been quite a walk to get to the next gate, but it meant slipping out with fewer questions asked. Kehu had even done something, perhaps a spell, to make the tattoos fade and look no different from regular skin. Somehow, for the first time, it made it at least seem like Kehu was a man. A slim, even gangly man, with few of the muscular features one might see elsewhere in this time, but a man nonetheless. Maybe. There was no point in risking to actually ask.
The others had stayed behind. The strange armor from the mansion had fetched a good few coppers from a shady middleman that prefered to deal only with Timnas, and the old man even proudly showed the one silver coin that the deal had apparently garnered.
"Copper is for trading goods," Kehu had explained on the way to the other gate. "Silver is for trading favors with powerful people." As with matters of gender, it seemed not worth the possible fallout to ask if there were coins for others things. Wooden tokens for beggars, copper for common goods, silver for special favors. There was a strange poetry to this odd economy, but knowing more would not pave much of the way ahead, it seemed.
Copper bought two horses at the gate, too. Even if they looked a bit old and worn, just mounting a steed outside the massive gate made the surrounding forest look smaller and less daunting.
"Why do you know so little about the world?" Kehu asked once there was nothing but forest around, no tent town by the wall there to overhear unusual questions, and perhaps unusual answers.
"I come from a different place."
"And your name, Marie? That comes from this place, as well"
"It does."
"Is it common there?"
"It is. That's why I chose it."
Kehu fell silent, the sounds of animals in the forest and the slow hooves of the horses now the only sound around.
"You chose your name?"
"I did."
This was not good. There had been very little time for sleep, and things were slippingout that should not. But the burning hum of atoms starting to stray and yearn back to a different time was becoming worse. Soon, whether asked to or not, atom after atom would start to defect. The results of that were never good.
"Why?"
There were too many questions that would follow. This line of conversation was a bad thing.
"People like me never get names. But people had to call me something."
"People like you?"
Kehu was right to ask, but this was a talk that could only end badly.
"We work for a group that helps others. I got lost on a mission and found myself in the forest."
The leaves rustled. It was hard not to flinch at sounds, the thoughts of people still hunting the thieves of last night.
"A guild, I assume?"
A nod was enough to answer his question. Or hers, if the guess had been wrong.
"Does this guild deal in lost magics?"
The way the question placed magic alongside time travel, even unwittingly so, was enough to cause the mind to wander. Still in its pocket, the small toylike thing, the anti-magical trinket from the horseman, was sending a strange and sore sensation through every bone and muscle near it. It was made with magic in mind, or so it seemed. It was easy to imagine not one person using it knew anything about time travel.
"In a way, yes."
Kehu clearly waited for that short answer to be elaborated upon. It felt mean to disappoint, even if it was the easiest way to make the topic seem inappropriate to poke at more.
"How much of it?"
And there it was. The question had been hanging in the air ever since first talking about the trinket back in the city. The powers of it had to come from somewhere. A random horseman carrying something that was apparently this valuable was too much of a coincidence. Even if he had found it, the fact that he had been allowed to keep it was too curious. Others would have taken it. They were attacking people using magical spears and who knew what else, for #*@!'s sake! Either the strongest would have such defensive items, or they all did. The signs pointed to all.
"Perhaps a lot."
Kehu kept looking but there was something in those eyes, something trying to weigh the situation.
"Perhaps a mine."
Finally, Kehu's eyes turned away. They were wide, accompanying the slightly open mouth nicely. But they were turned away.
The forest was getting dense. Memories began returning in flashes of the forest growing dark as the tall, thick trees crowded out the light of a low sun, but this was not the case at the moment. The dense trees and growth cast long and imposing shadows, but they were not an artificial night. Not yet.
"Were you in such a mine for a long time?" asked Kehu, eyes and mouth now back to normal. "Is that why you... why you do what you do? Why you are what you are?"
"In a way."
That answer was a copout, saying neither yes nor no. It was still very hard to talk to Kehu about important matters. This was, after all, only hours after having been more or less forced by the same person to commit a crime, one that could have ended far worse than it did. Being upfront and honest was not the kind of friendship that had developed in that short time, especially about things as troubling as time travel.
The rest of the trip was dominated by casual  chat. Kehu had been abandoned as a child and grown up with an old mage, who survived by scams through petty magic. A life of crime had come naturally after that. The stories of the others, as retold by Kehu, were much the same, although with thieving, conning and brute force supplanting the magic.
The wall came into view some time into the afternoon. It was getting harder and harder to hide the infrequent stabs of pain that came from the anchor, the energy holding atoms in this time, beginning to slip. It was still a necesity, however.
"You escaped this?" asked Kehu, letting a hint of being impressed slip through.
"Yeah. Different gate, but yes, this wall."
Kehu took it all in. The massive gate looked rotten, but anyone with half a mind would know it was only a surface rot. The mass of the wooden door was still strong, proven by it still standing, if nothing else. The metal fittings along the edge of each huge door had plants growing on them and innumerable scratches, but there were no signs of rust to be seen.
"Last time, there was a small crack near a hinge. Maybe we..."
It was unclear of Kehu even listened, walking up to the small door inserted in the large one. Guards at the other wall had hovered closely by a similar small door, but there were no guards here. Still, the other small door had been thick, its true size visible when looking at it open. It seemed likely this one would be the same. And yet, Kehu placed a hand softly on it. At first, it seemed that Kehu's weight was causing the door to groan, but it soon became clear that something else was at play. Clunks rumbled through the wood, even sending complaining sounds through the great gate itself. And with a push, Kehu opened the small door.
"That was... Did you just pick the lock right now?"
Kehu smiled. "And nudged the bolt out of its place. Many of the magically inclined hide away in empty walls, I have been told. Now, it makes a kind of sense to me!"
It was hard not to imagine The Skillwalker and Donlarn and all the rest having gotten in that way. What was hard to imagine, however, was that they were hiding inside the same wall. This was a far more eastern gate, and they were too far away to even see the remaining towers of the ruins they had made their home in.
"How big are these walls, anyway?"
Kehu looked over from trying to help the horst through the door meant for humans. The horse was being uncooperative about the whole ordeal.
"Legends say every one of the one hundred rulers granted the right to form a wall was told to let their people run from one spot and in every direction from the rise of the sun till the last sunlight faded in the evening. As far as they got, the wall of that ruler could be."
Hearing that, the distance took on a different meaning. It now looked like a challenge, a dare to see who could cross from wall to center from dawn to dusk, and then from center to another part of the wall on the next day.
"Of course," Kehu chirped proudly as the horse finally squeezed through, "many likely cheated."
Like the other place along the same wall those few days ago, this place had levels of wall, too. Long terasses, like the stands in a colosseum, ran along the wall, stairs leading from one to the next. Climbing to the top, after having been on horseback for hours, took its toll on the legs, but once Kehu and the horses were no more than small blobs of color at the foot of the wall, the lay of the land inside the wall suddenly unfolded before one's very eyes! Ruin towns not far inward, empty and dilapidated like the one that housed the Skillwalker and Donlarn, dotted the landscape. Up close, the town had looked like a center of a small, rural community. But from above like this, they looked like nothing more than dispersed barracks, little camps for housing, feeding and perhaps entertaining workers and guards. What was harder to see was what the workers were housed for. All that could be seen was a dusty and dark cluster of badly damaged structures in the middle of them. It was far away, too far to make out any details. It could very well be that center of the walls that Kehu had mentioned.
"I think we need to ride that way, directly away from the wall!"
Shouting at Kehu was futile. The sound barely carried, and something in the few words of his that could be heard back suggested that his supernatural means of translation carried even worse at that distance. The climb down was mych gentler than the climb up, luckily.
"I think I saw the center."
Kehu said nothing back, but clearly expected more elaboration. The horses were a bit unruly, showing signs of being nervous, and had been bound to the branches of a large bush. It bothered Kehu, too, and it showed.
"There is something odd about this place, Marie," said Kehu, looking around as if to find the thing that was wrong by sight alone.
"We are inside a wall the size of a large city, and there is nothing in here but ghost towns. Yes, there is something odd about the place, I have no doubts about that."
The slight sarcasm was clearly lost on Kehu, who looked like a confused child trying to understand a parent's prank. Of course, since the tattoos were no longer hidden, that broke the similarity to a child a bit.
"Yes, Kehu, there is something odd in here. I know. And it worries me, too."
The horse protested a bit at being untied. It never panicked, never tried to pull away, but the constant heavy breathing and uneasy feet made it feel like it could do either of those things, at any time and without warning. Both horses acted this way, and Kehu clearly had the same worries. But mounting them and having them ride off towards the darkened center, or whatever it was, did not spook them. They were uneasy, but they still obeyed.
After some time on the horses, it was clear that whatever the dark spot was, it was not the center, or at least, not the exact center. The gate had not been truly east, not judging by the sun and the shadows near noon. And yet, going to the dark spot on the horizon felt very close to chasing the sun, going a constant west. It was closer, too. It had to be. A wall this long, an area this large, would take too long to reach the center of. And yet, with the sun still on a slow climb down the sky, the earth beneath the hooves of the horses began to grow darker and darker. Black powder, like a fine ash, covered the ground and had long ago choked all but the most resilient plants. Deformed and dying bushes stood here and there, but there was no grass on the near barren ground. Animals, it seemed, also stayed away. The sound of birds disappeared long before even entering the area, and by the time the black dust was all around, not even insects could be heard.
"Marie, are you okay?"
There was a strange scent in the air, a kind of rot that had nothing to do with meat. It was hard not to feel some revulsion at the smell.
"Marie, I asked if you were okay? You are bleeding."
Moreso than the smell, it was strange how Kehu's words were loud and clear, and yet felt like they disappeared into theunnatural silence.
"Sorry, yeah, I'm okay, I just... Wait, bleeding?!"
Kehu pointed, and indeed, blood was trickling through some cuts in the forearm of the jumpsuit, thin stream of blood making its way down to the hand and from there dripping to the ground. Halting the horse to take a look, no wound seemed to be there. Little cuts, tiny gashes, seemed to bleed each a tiny bit, the nearly imperceivable streams uniting into one.
"I don't know if basic healing works on you," Kehu sighed, "but if you wish, I could try"
A nod made Kehu put one hand on the slowly bleeding arm. A few mumbles, a few signs in the air, and a warmth started to touch the arm. But it healed nothing. It just slowly became hot. And with a hiss, Kehu pulled the hand away, staring bitterly at the sightly less bleeding arm.
"Sorry, it's not something I can, you know, control. Is your hand okay?"
Kehu nodded, but the eyes had more to say. They kept jumping back between the hand and the bleeding arms, a vague disbelief to their gaze.
"This was not entirely you," Kehu said, sounding very pensive and unnerved. It seemed like there was more to say, but instead, Kehus eyes looked down. Down at the blackened ground. By the hooves of the horses and scattered by faint winds, the fine ashes were suddenly ful of embers, glowing like tiny coals on the bare ground. It filled in most densely along what seemed to be a dried up riverbed, as if it had gathered in the river or by wind after it dried up. It ran towards the wall, but it seemed to be the other direction that had once been down river.
"Where does it go?" asked Kehu, clearly thinking that having been inside the wall before meant knowing all about the geography in there.
"I have no idea. But wherever it goes, you'll find the thick of this black dust there."
It was obvious to anyone that Kehu tried to hide a swell of interest. For Kehu, this was just a different kind of heist. And there was no use at this point in trying to explain the far more complex truth.
Even on the horse, moving just slightly farther aong the riverbed was torture. From its black blanket on the ground, the dust radiated strange energies, and they could be felt as they tampered with anything not of this time. Or anyone.
"You have to stop," Kehu sighed. All but hanging from the horse, it was hard to argue. It felt like being massively drunk, like every bit of the body shutting down. And it was only going to get worse.
"No, we have to... get..."
Gravity seemed to shift. Gliding off the horse felt nothing like falling, it felt like slipping off a soft chair and onto the floor. Except the floor was farther below, and had little rocks in it.
It took a few seconds before the smell of burned flesh started to fill the air. Then, the pain! Like burning coals, the dust reached through the ragged clothes and the jumpsuit. Kehu came running almost immediately, likely pushed on by the eventual screaming! In the haze of pain and blurry colors, Kehu's gestures were hard to discern, and the cryptic words no longer translated. They were just noise.
"Kehu, no, not h..."
There was black static in the air, sparks of darkness filling it for asplit second. Then, the air itself seemed to explode!
When everything calmed down, the burning pain was gone. No searing of the skin, no fire in the lungs. Every breath felt fresh.
The black dust was gone. Not gone entirely, but blewn away. Around where the horses had stood, even the loose dirt of the riverbed was torn up and out, leaving only compacted earth and stones to heavy to be swept up in...
Kehu!
Getting up revealed that the pain was numb, not gone. Legs burning, skin like old paper, walking over to Kehu was a struggle. Kehu, meanwhile, was sprawled out on the ground, flat on the back, body feeling like it was on fire!
"Kehu, wake up!"
There was no reaction.
The horses had run, but not far. The blast had sooked them, but just outside the black dust, they had stopped to graze. Just tying one of them to the other to ride both was enough to make every finger feel like it would snap off like dry driftwood, but in the end, the animals walked back to the blewn spot. Kehu, weighing next to nothing, was easy to get over the back of the horse. Mounting it while holding on to the unconscious body was a greater challenge.

"Where are we?"
There was a rough quality to Kehu's voice when waking, like that of an unrepenting chainsmoker or heavy drinker.
"The river."
Kehu was laid out in the grass and not all that easy to see, but a head did suddenly stick up.
"The river was dry," Kehu responded, sounding very disoriented.
"No, just the part we were at. I hid from raiders not far from here. The ones that had the anti-magical trinkets."
The river was deeper here. Not much broader, but broad enough to bathe in. The blood washed away quickly, and only a few minor wounds refused to provide the water with more. The worst were the burns, blackened and charred skin, painful to the touch, like a very bad sunburn. They were everywhere, on limbs and body and, perhaps most painful of all, across the face.
"What did you do, anyway? How did you cause that blast?"
Rather than immediately answering, Kehu staggered and stood up, carefully.
"An illusion. A powerful one."
Water in the river flowed slowly, washing the red and black away. It was also very clear, and Kehu was getting close enough to make modesty an issue. And still, whether Kehu was man or woman was impossible to truly tell. There was no sense in a time traveler with qualms about his or her body, the job simply had to many unforeseen possibilities. But local culture could be anything, from calm indifference to hysterical modesty!
"Wait, how could an illusion..."
Kehu chuckled, looking slightly proud while looking around, still swaying slightly.
"I figured any powerful magic would have a reaction. All it needed to do was blow outward."
"You okay? You seem..."
"I am fine," Kehu answered quickly, but followed with a deep cough. "Where are you? I can't see you anywhere."
"In the river, washing off the dust."
It was a bet, hoping that either Kehu would do nothing to look or that looking would do nothing to Kehu. Walking over and painfully kneeling down, Kehu showed it to be the latter.
"What do we do?" Kehu asked, sounding more than worried, sticking a hand carefully into the river, wetting it to wash the other and then gently run both hands wet over a face that looked to be in a bit of pain. The tattoos had only dull, simple colors to them, no glow or shine, and there were tiny black dots like freckles all over the skin.
"I'll be done here soon. You can wash off that dust, and we can..."
Kehu said nothing, but stood up and walked away slowly.
"Was it something I said?"
With a strange, distant look in the eyes, Kehu shifted from politely looking at just the river water and looking off into the distance.
"When magic was all but lost after being forbidden, some of our ancestors struggled to find new ways of hiding it," Kehu said, fingers nervously twiddling. "Some hid power in stone, in markings like the ones you have already seen. Others found ways to hide magic in and on the body."
With some hesitation, Kehu pulled up a sleeve, showing the full extent of the tattoos on that arm. Near the wrist, they were elegant lines, weaving an everchanging pattern. But as they came closer to the shoulder, they became grotesque, with jarring streaks and jagged, twisting lines that looked like flesh torn up, except in all the wrong colors.
"I carry this. It is not something I like to display."
It was weird to hear a powerful sorrow in Kehu's voice, the daring mage having seemed so in charge for the better part of the journey. It felt more like an admission of guilt than a personal anecdote.
"You got all those tattoos so you could practice magic? That's impressive dedication, I have to say!"
It was meant as a compliment, perhaps a bit as a quip. But nothing in Kehu's face changed. The sorrow was still there.
"They are not mine. They were put on me as a child. They were meant to fuel someone else's spells. I just learned to harness some of their power."
Kehu's voice was close to breaking, but it was getting harder to judge if it was pain or anger.
"My... job... demands a lot of me."
Kehu fel silent and listened. It seemed that it made the painful memories disappear for a moment.
"I travel. A lot. I guess you would say I travel by magic. I dont have the same kind of dramatic tattoos, but..."
Stepping out of the river and into the early evening sun so low in the sky felt odd, like moving from one cold into another, equal cold. But as Kehu's eyes nervously ran across all the burns and scars that had accumulated over time, it felt worth it. There was no worry about body, no shyness or shame. Just two people admitting that they had the marks to show what they had been through.
"What do we do?" asked Kehu, now sounding more alive and awake. Not cheerful, still worried and apprehensive, but with a renewed sense of hope in both tone and body language.
The river made a soft, bubbling sound as it ran through the landscape. It narrowed into a stream not far away, by a cluster of thick bushes that looked almost like tiny trees.
"What exactly is your kind of magic, Kehu?"
"Mostly the mind, trickery. And a few defensive tricks, for when that other trickery, well, fails."
It was hard not to smile a bit when seeing the sly expression on Kehu's face.
"Can you do anything to bock the flow of a river? Just briefly?"
Kehu looked down the river, now also spotting the narrowing not that far away, but saying nothing. "I followed the dry riverbed to this spot. The horsemen I ran into last time I was here have diverted it, I guess to water their horses and for their own needs."
"You want to make it overflow?"
A nod was all the answer needed. Kehu was looking at the river, realising that yes, it was at its highest at the moment. The rocks had been eroded over time to show how high the waters rose on their own, but there was still room for more. And with a determined breath, Kehu walked in long, brazen strides to the narrow length.
"What can we do? Is there a spell for this?"
Kehu, surprisingly, pulled up the sleeves again, this time looking intensely at each tattoo, at every ine and symbol.
"I only ever dabbled with the ones that came naturally to me..."
Taking a deep and uneven breath, Kehu then let the sleeves fall again, and instead loosened the strings that held the entire robe closed. Right before it fully loosened, fingers grabbed the collar, holding it closed in a balled fist, knuckles growing slowly white.
"How much of this black dust is inside that place?"
"A lot. More than you can imagine. And far, far more potent than what we saw already."
As the fingers released the collar of the robe, the fabric slowly fell. Tattoos covered every bit of skin, the lines from the face gathering into twisted images and abstract symbols that would likely take a lifetime to study. It was impossible to even see the color of her skin. But Kehu was, in body, a woman.
Still with the robe mostly around here, Kehu knelt, the fabric draping over her back as she reached her arms into the running waters. It briefly became dark as it washed the black dust from her skin, but quickly returned to its normal clear.
"We only need it to rise for one swift wave. That should wash away enough to let the normal river rip the rest of their dam away."
Kehu nodded, saying nothing. She was starting to shiver from the water as it rushed quicker and thus colder through the narrow strait in its course. As she began to mumble, tattoos on her chest and throat flarred up, colors glowing in an unruly, chaotic pattern. But then, slowly, the water began to build up, the surface before her arms rising and the one after them falling. A spray of random droplets continued to spill through, but whatever spell she was tapping into, it worked.
"That's enough. That should..."
With a gasp, she apparently took the remark as a command, and as the spell ended, was pulled into the sudden torrent of water! At the last second, she reached out a hand. Pulling her up was a struggle against the rush of built up water, but drenched and her robe a mess, she slumped down in the grass. Laughing.
"I never knew... I had those tricks up my sleeve," she gasped, wiping water from her face as she fought with the robe to get properly dressed.
"Technically, not up your sleeves."
She coughed, but laughed again at that remark, shaking her head and causing drops of water to fly everywhere.

The riverbed was no longer dry. The burst of water in the river had indeed taken the top off of the earthen dam made by those who wanted it redirected, and the dam was washing away, but it had not all happened in one swooping flood. The water running through the land of black dust was perhaps deep enough to soak an ankle or two. But it was enough. The dust was washing away with it.
"Where does the dust go?" asked Kehu. She was still shivering a bit, trying to dry entirely before the cool night air set in. "I mean, I can see the direction, but what is down there The river must come from the mountains outside the wall, flowing through some opening or simply soaking the grounds and going through the soil. But where does this riverbed... end?"
There was no way to fully answer that question. But there was an answer to suspect.
"It flows inside. Inside a kind of place I hope I will recognize."
Kehu made a snorting sound, a faint laugh.
"You talk like the mystics. Or the charlatans. Your pick, really."
It was clearly meant well, but she clearly had a point. The black dust had been there, as expected. The horsemen likely harvested it to fund themselves. But beyond that, the details were fuzzy. This was not the modern world, not a world of machines and clockwork organizations. Anything could be waiting at the end of the riverbed.
It ended up being a cave.
"I assume you want to go in?" whispered Kehu. It was just for conversation, she clearly had her eyes set on a bounty of the anti-magical black dust, and it was enough for her to risk as much as she already had, and now likely more!
The inside of the cave was, at first, uncomfortably narrow. The walls were jagged and dirty, and the feeling of time becoming unstuck started to return. But the dust had fallen to the ground over time, and the water that now ran into the cave had washed almost all of that away. What was left were traces, just evidence of what had been there.
And then, without warning, the narrow cave became a cavern! Wide walls, the ceiling high above, and a drop in the floor that could have killed an unwary visitor. Stalagtites in the ceiling dropped droplets of water unto smaller stalagmites on the floor, the moisture gathering to join the river stream as it flowed effortlessly through. Now and then, a droplet even caught either my or Kehu's torch, causing it to sizzle threateningly. They never went out, however.
"This looks nothing like a mine," Kehu remarked, not as if it was a complaint, but as if there were bigger questions about the place going through her mind.
"No, you're right, it doesn't. It looks like..." There was something off about the cavern, something that called forth recent memories.
"Like what?" Kehu wondered out loud.
"Like a tunnel system."
It did. Everything looked like the perfect system of tunnels and caverns for someone to hide away in. That was the memory it called forth. The caverns beneath the pirate fortress.
"Someone made this? I have problems belie..."
Kehu stopped, her eyes suddenly wide as she looked around the place.
"What? What problems?"
Instead of answering, Kehu walked over to the cavern wall. It rose very abruptly, not in the smooth curve one might expect from natural cave formations. Her fingers ran over the slippery stone, water from the damp air washing delicately between her fingers and down her palm before continuing to the floor.
"This is old magic," she said,sounding as if she was speaking mostly to herself, even though she spoke out loud and clear. "Magic from before it was outlawed. From before the walls."
"Magic was once used freely?"
It was a stupid question, but that only became clear a second too late. Nt stupid because the answer was apparent, but stupid because the answer would be apparent to anyone who had lived a full life in this world, in this age. It was a signal flare, a symbol of ignorance, to ask it.
"You are from a very distant land, arent you?"
There was really nothing to do but nod in agreement.
"It was centuries ago. The original people was already centuries old and had learned to harness the powers needed for magic. But as they grew more powerful, they also grew more ambitious. In the end, they wanted what all ambitious people want, they wanted what others had. And magic became a tool for war like none other. When the war died out along with nearly all beasts and men, the surviving rulers and generals gathered to agree on each building a wall to rule behind in isolation, not one ever charging beyond it, or all the rest would punish him."
Staring at the walls, it was a lot to take in. Old magics, different from the ones here and now. Even the distant past had a past. Everything was the middle of a story.
"So great mages fought a great war, and other people decided to never let that happen again, huh? Sounds strangely familiar."
"Lies!!"
The voice boomed from deep inside the cavern, and it was followed by a heavy footstep. That, and a frightful scraping.
"Lies, all of it!" the voice cried out, angry. More heavy footsteps pounded the cavern floor, causing a tremor to flow from deep within it. "Cruel lies, to make the despicable look righteous!"
"That sounds familiar, too."
It was only a whispered remark, but Kehu immediately sent an angry glare, while more footsteps brought the source of the sound ever closer. Finally, large feet in very old armor stepped into the limited light of the torches. Legs followed, then the full form of a hunched body in caped armor. The metal was nearly nothing but rust, and the fabric of the cape was in rotten tatters, but it was very recognizably a knightly outfit. A knightly outfit for a knight twice the height of a normal person!
"Who are you? State your names, trespassers!"
"I... I am Kehu of Tatalung," Kehu stuttered, clearly on the brink of a heart attack. "And this is Marie."
The larg knight turned, but the extravagant movement and the exaggerated stare seemed somehow wrong. The face was hidden inside a rusting helmet, a clearly once elaborate piece of work, with metal decorations now also rusting away on it. But there was something about that stare...
"Which Marie? Which Marie are you?"
"Marie of... Nakskov."
"Never heard of it," the large knight huffed. And at that moment, what was wrong became clear, the knight turning his head to focus as he heard the voice speaking. It was not clear if Kehu had noticed, but there was no doubt about it. The knight was blind.
"Who are you?" asked Kehu, sounding honestly a bit defiant. The knight clearly thought the same, slamming a foot down into the cave floor for emphasis!
"Hathark the Faithful," the voice thundered from within the helmet. "I watch until the true heirs of the land return!"
"True heirs?"
The knight disliked having that turn of words questioned, and another heavy foot was stimped down, causing tremors. The cave would withstand it, he was not big enough to do that kind of damage. But remaining footed through the tremors was hard, and a single misstep on the slippery cavern floor was an easy way to get rushed off with the river stream that was growing stronger, no doubt as the dam outside eroded further.
"The true heirs will return, the imposters will flee, and the land will flurish once more!" he thundered, sending echoes of his powerful voice through the caverns. Sharing a glance with Kehu, it became clear that she was having some doubts, as well.
"Hathark," she said in a sift, almost meager voice, "how long have you been here? How long have you watched?"
"Hathark the Faithful," the large knight demanded.
"Sorry. Hathark the Faithful, how long have you..."
"Since the last heir left," he interrupted. Kehu suddenly fell very silent.
"Kehu, what's going on here?"
Kehu was pale, eyes still as wide as ever, but her hands looking as if they trembled slightly.
"I... I don't understand all he says, but I think he has been here since the old times."
"For centuries?"
There was no time for Kehu to answer, because at that moment, Hathark decided to, quite literally, cut the chitchat short! A battleaxe, its head the size of a small human, cut through the air and split the rock where the river stream flowed!
"Your chatter is a heresy!" he yelled, beginning to sway in a threatening, but seemingly uncontrolled way. "The true heirs are returning! They will..."
"Hathark!"
The look in Kehu's eyes was beyond terror at seeing the knight being called out! She looked over, looking as if she was saying good bye. The interruption had been foolish, no doubt about that. But the knight seemed ready to tell to many stories, likely the same again and again.
"Why do you dare call on me, faithless?" the huge knight growled. It seemed like a threat, but there was a tired streak to the voice.
"Hathark, who are the true heirs? Who put you here to guard... Wait, what are you guarding?!"
In a brief and uncharacteristic fit of confusion, the knight let his head sway back and forth, like someone listening for sounds. It seemed unlikely that there were any sounds to listen for, though. At least, any sounds not entirely in his head.
"I guard the land. It must regrow. The great beasts, they lay waste to it. The fields must regrow for them to thrive again..."
"But why do you watch the land from inside a cave?" Kehu chimed in. The slight confusion seemed to be growing into a panic inside the knight, his gigantic axe swinging and scraping the stone on every side of him, one at a time.
"The land is dead. Dark magics have snuffed out the light. The dark clouds must lift before..."
For a few breathless seconds, the knight stood still, only the head moving a bit erratically. It seemed like he was calming down, accepting that something had to be wrong. They were lovely seconds.
The anguished cry of fury echoed through the cavern like a hihgpitched explosion! Axe in hand, tightly gripped, Hathark swung with all his might, cutting several stalagtites down as the weapon spited its rust and overall condition and sliced clear through this fragile stone. He was slow, though, and telegraphed every moving muscle seconds ahead of the strike. Getting out of the way was no great challenge.
"Hathark," Kehu yelled again, trying to shout over the sound of stalagtites crushing beneath the giant knight's feet as he regained balance, "who are the heirs? Where did they go?"
It made sense for Kehu to ask, but for anyone with the right experiences, the answer was becoming increasingly obvious. The black dust, while washed away from where the stream touched the floor, was still visible along walls and on protruding rocks. The heirs, or at least some of them, hard never gone anywhere.
"Hathark the Faithful..."
Both the knight and Kehu fell silent, looking over. It took some effort to speak calmly, but as the knight became more unhinged, the cavern looked ready to have stalagtites fall to the floor, on principle alone!
"Yes..."
The huge knight seemed, for a moment, to calm down. There was a sorrow somewhere inside his voice, a tired pain. But he was trained to never show, and he was trained well.
"Hathark the Faithful, we are not the true heirs..."
His shoulders rose, tense, aggressive, but he was not raising his weapon.
"We are not the true heirs, but we do not want to steal your lands."
The mighty armor's shoulders kept rising and falling, even though there was no breath to be heard. It was becoming frightfully clear that blind was not all the knight was. But at the moment, at the very least, he was not attacking.
"Hathark... Hathark the Faithful... please think back. Try to remember."
The giant knight said nothing, standing still as if on pause, only the shoulders rising and falling, still tense.
"Where did the true heirs go?"
Kehu was about to interrupt, pointing back to the cave opening. But even though she only seemed to ready a whisper, all it took was the wave of a hand to stop her from saying anything.
"They..."
The knight turned, blind eyes thinking that they were looking down the tunnels.
"They went down to the throne. To pray. The gods took them to a hiding place, and they will return when the land is... ready. When the land is ready for them to return."
It hurt to hear the memories deep from within the knight try to make him realize the truth. That the true heirs had left him there. But it was not the right time to do right by him.
"Hathark the Faithful, stay here, continue your guard, and we will go find the true heirs. If we do, we will tell them you still guard their lands."
The knight stood still, only turning his head, blind eyes still trying to look around.
"You," he finally said, leaning in while Kehu stood by the wall, watching on in growing terror. "You smell like them."
There was no smell, nothing but the pungent odor of the cavern, damp and clingy in the nose. What he smelled was not what anyone else did.
"Like... the true heirs?"
"You smell like you do not belong," he said, sounding very much like he was thinking hard about something. "Are you Marie of Nakskov Or are you Marie of the Wenway?"
That word made the entire cavern feel cold all of a sudden! Kehu, not understanding the reaction, simply stared. Controlling the bitterness and speaking in a kind tone was suddenly very much a challenge.
"No. No, I most certainly am not with the Wenway."
"Lies!!" roared the knight, swinging the giant axe over his head and immediately striking large stalagtites that came crashing down! "Lies! You defile us! You defile the heirs!"
The floor of the cavern sounded wetter than before, running through the open space that Hathark almost managed to occupy entirely by himself. Kehu was quick to follow, and the tunnel that Hathark had so briefly gazed down was clear to see. It took nimble moves, but very soon the sounds of smashed stalagtites fell into the background, though the knight's roar lasted longer than that.
The tunnel was drenched. The rising water had obviously found it to be the best place to continue downward, because although the water was barely running, the floor quickly went from simply wet to being filled ankle high with filthy water. The feeling of being pushed out of the time was returning, however. The water was not just dirty, it had black dust in it. The dust was no longer being washed away. It was pooling.
"What are we running to?" shouted Kehu, falling behind and running out of breath.
"With luck, a fortune for you."
Kehu seemed to like that reply.
The tunnel soon ended. Water filled a large, round room, the ceiling of which had in places been untouched by time enough to show its original stonework. The place had been built, or at least, a cavern had been used for building something into it. That something, likely what Hathark had called the throne, was likely what stood in the room's center. On a podium, raised in levels to form a round flight of stairs up to it, were five big, fingerlike things, sticking up as if the Devil from beneath had reahed up through the stone and into this world.
"What is that?" asked Kehu, not surprisingly. Her eyes were on the device on the podium, but only at first. Then, they slowly moved around the room. "Is all that... the black dust?"
Tunnels could be seen lead in several directions, pathways to the surface. Perhaps each had its own guardian, like Hathark. Perhaps guardians had long left, either all or just some. Perhaps they had been slain, by intruders or by time.
"Yes. That is the black dust."
There was none of the dust on the throne. It made sense. The blast would have pushed it outward, and there would likely have been no one using it at the time.
"But where are the heirs he talked about" she continued.
"Look closer at the dust, Kehu."
There was a gasp, then the sound of Kehu throwing up. Looking back had no purpose, the machine was all that was important right now. But she was right to throw up, nobody could blame her for that. Maybe she had spotted the charred and mummified remains of an arm or a leg, maybe a skull, cleaned white by age, stuck out somewhere.
"Marie, what did the dust do to those... Are those your people? Is that why you..."
"After a fashion. Not friends, but they travel like me." The words felt weird to say. "They traveled like me."
The machine still looked intact, after all this time. This was one question that was flung around The Embassy on those nights when everybody was overworked and tired, but too hyped up to truly rest. Questions like how the flow of time affected the time machines themselves, if it preserved them, if the ravishes of time were kept away. It was idle philosophy, nothing that the engineers trying to understand and improve the machines could use for much. But here, the literally ancient machine standing in the center of the empty room, it suddenly became all too real.
"Why did they die?" she asked, her voice now far enough behind and below that the echo began to be more easily heard.
"They ran to this. To the throne. It would get them out, let them flee. But they were too late."
"Flee? But what killed them?" asked Kehu again, her voice beginning to sound frayed and nervous. Turning around, it was a strange sight to behold. The powerful, magical creature that had held back a river, was suddenly standing in a pool of water, arms around herself like a frightened child. It almost hurt to see the shift in her.
"Kehu, I'm not from a distant land. Or at least, not that distant."
She looked up from her gaze at the black dust. Her eyes were, much like the cavern, slowly filling with water.
"Im from a different time."
She took it well. Or at least, she showed no sign of taking it poorly. She barely moved, to be honest.
"This, on the podium, is a time machine. I want to use it to see the past that you and, especially, Hathark talked about."
She nodded. It was a slight, delicate movement, but she was holding herself together. Judging by her tight embrace of herself, it could perhaps be said literally, too.
"If it works, there will be a lot of noise and strange lights, and I will seem to change in the blink of an eye, as I go into the past and return within the space between two seconds. Do you understand?"
She nodded, this time more frantically, more forcefully.
"The black dust is all that's left of time travelers that were slain in a battle across time. Shortly after I return, I will probably leave this time, and I will also leave a little of the dust behind. But not much, because most of me will, hopefully, go back to my own time. These heirs, the time travelers, were not so lucky. A blast through the time machine killed them. A blast caused by enemies who are now in some other time."
"You... you will go there, come back, and then you will leave? You will leave me here? Alone?"
She didn't so much seem afraid of the prospect as saddened by it. That, more than anything, was a surprise.
"You can make your way out on your own. Take as much of the dust with you as you can. The horsemen are clearly mining it from one of the other tunnels, I doubt they will ever find you here. I assume Hathark made them look elsewhere for their riches. But take what you can carry, and never come back. Don't get greedy, do you understand?"
She nodded, even more frantically than before.
"I will come back. Maybe it will take a long time for me, but for you, it will be next to nothing."
That reassurance actually brought a slight smile to her face.
"I will look for you in town."
She said it first. There was no need to repeat it back to her. She knew.
There were no more words. The splashes of Kehu's feet in the slowly rising water could be heard as she went to gather black dust where it was dry, but that was just background noise. What really mattered was the machine.
It was a different design. No screens, no cables. It had a large stone, looking like the top of a massive stone ball chopped off and put with the bulginf side towards whoever stood beside the machine. Touching it made it instantly spring to life, and it was as if symbols and pure knowledge leaped from it into the core of the brain, through skull and blood! Time was not numbers, but a concept. Places formed out of a fog, only to disappear again as others took their place. The machine was damaged, the blast all that time ago having scrambled many destinations catalogued in it. But the core of it still worked. And it had a handful of functioning destinations, nearly all of them in the past of this place.
Picking one made the fingers open.