The full moon cleared the horizon, the sun was down. Magic swirled, time cycled, and Detect Time got a bit loopy as bits of other times started connecting to this one.
Down in the basement of the Thisbean Inn, a swirling, ghostly Portal spun to life in midair, beckoning those who couldn’t get free of the temporal field of the Inn, because they didn’t have possession of Time-Energized Black Star Sapphires.
I pulled up the top of the Temporal Beacon, revealing the next Cone nested within it, golden in hue. I pulled it out, set it in the middle of the floor, and pulsed Detect Time into it.
Immediately the golden Cone quietly phased out, undetectable but setting up a lock at these temporal coordinates I could latch onto across time and space if needed.
I replaced the top of the Temporal Beacon, and prepping myself with a Survival spell that would allow me to survive any instantly lethal environment conditions on the other side, I stepped into the thing.
All around was whiteness, and an empty space moving forward, a looped representation of the physical reality of the basement repeating itself as I moved back through time.
Probably. I’d know when I got there.
I had to walk about thirty paces or so, when the view in front of me lightened. Without hesitation, I stepped out.
---
I emerged into the basement, of course… the uncleaned basement, with dirt and crap all over the floor, faintly torn up by a lot of feet and claws, if you knew what to look for.
Two gray-green trolls turned around to look at me in surprise.
They were over ten feet tall, but slouched over, sitting there ripping apart what looked like a few orcs for entertainment and eats. I had to wonder how they could be hungry with the ever-replacing food, but trolls weren’t smart, and likely the orcs had come out of the Portal while the trolls were figuring out how to get out of here, and things had happened.
The skinny greenish brutes with rubbery skin, sharp-toothed maws, and overlong arms lunged at me, their claws spreading as wide as my chest, grinning and clearly expecting elf on the menu.
My Rose flashed up, Thorns leveled and let fly, streaming screaming flames as they did so, and wiped the smiles from under their banana-length noses completely.
The impacts blew them over and into ash, never reaching me before their upper bodies were charcoal and their lower bodies were burning crisply on the floor, the vivus on them also setting the orcs alight.
I glanced at Detect Time.
Sixty-two moons earlier than the one I had left through. Before I was born.
I scanned my Detect Evil up through the floor of the place, and found six hot pings above.
No time to clean like the present.
---
The last of the goblins was down with a cracked skull, Telekinesis from Funf deposited them in the latrines to be wiped away come the dawn, and I headed back downstairs.
The remaining crude weapons of the orcs were left where they lay, probably to be thrown away by some other party in the future, as they hadn’t been there when I first came here.
I pulled off the top of the Temporal Beacon, and just like before, another golden Cone was nestled inside.
Technically the same Cone, at a different point in time.
I set it in the middle of the floor, and it vanished. It would endure until it hit its temporal twin, then wink out of existence at that point, but in the meantime afford me a link to a point in time about five years before my ‘present’, a few years before I was born.
There wasn’t any way I could abuse that, no, no.
I took a last look around, and entered the Portal again.
-------
I exited the Portal, and paused as a group of three male humans and a hyn tensed up, orienting on me with blades out, all of them injured by what looked like a fight with six dead gnolls now laying in various parts around the place.
“Good evening. It looks like you gentlemen have been busy.”
They all looked rather startled I was talking to them instead of attacking. I waited by the edge of the Portal while they processed things, looking past them to the dead.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Vivic Darts that looked like spinning black skulls trailing white flames flicked out in three salvos. One of the men was a mage, gasping as he made to dodge the shots, but they only saw them hit the dead gnolls and the corpses erupt into ghostly white flames with ecstatic screams. In a few breaths, the carcasses were all starting to Burn away in mistfire as I coolly turned to regard the lot of them.
“Four of you,” I began before they could speak and take control of the situation. “Already injured. One wizard, two warriors, one hyn. You have a very big problem.
“I am the Lady Edge, and I think you can be of use to me. I intend to exit this Inn at the only reasonable point, where it was still newly-built and being used. Introduce yourselves.”
All of them flushed, because I was in my young adult form, which was starting to fill out and was smoking hot in a dark and deadly goth way, ruby eyes in black and very white skin only somehow bringing my black and red flowering attire to life.
“I’m, I’m Darryl Hornswain of Wahrsherz, my lady,” the fellow with unwashed brown stubble, a longsword, and plate armor admitted, his Wahrsherzan accent explaining his rapid acceding to his social superior. White Aura. “This never-do-well with the rapier is Guyven of Federyn City, a rake and layabout, mind yourself around him.”
I just turned on the man indicated and very slowly lifted a dark eyebrow at his Gray Aura. The rakishly handsome blond fellow in hose and doublet and gleaming rapier had his smile falter, fail, and then he took a careful step back as he bowed. He’d been sliced along the leg.
“Hanvol of Absoglor!” the mage there introduced himself hastily, dressed in working leather pants, boots, long tunic and vest, complete with spell component bags all about and pockets to put stuff in, his staff in hand. He looked like he’d been cut in the side, too. Orange Aura. “Adept of the Third Circle!” he stated proudly.
A Seven, then. I inclined my head just fractionally to a fellow practitioner who was not a newcomer to the arcane arts, and set my eyes on the last of them.
The cheerful three-foot fellow with the mop of brown curls and a shortsword held like a longsword grinned cheerfully, for all that the cut to his shoulder was making him wince. “Oswald Brandybuck, my lady, adventurer extraordinaire, at your service!” he said, earning a scowling look from the dandy who probably should have been saying those things. A Yellow Aura.
“Well met, and I see you’ve had some excitement.” Cool, ghostly white light rose from the Black Star Sapphire atop Dread, drawing their eyes, which instantly lit up with avarice. “Oh, you want the jewel atop my Staff. Well, feel free to grasp it. And when the corpse of the fool who does is kicking and screaming on the ground as their body rots around them and their soul is dragged down to Hell, perhaps the rest of you won’t desire it so much.”
Their greed winked out uncertainly, especially when I set Dread upright in front of them and coolly stepped away, leaving him gleaming and ready for their attention.
The rake in particular was licking his lips, looking from me to the Staff standing alone there, and a gods-be-damned fist-sized fortune standing there, ready for the plucking.
“Guyven…” the knightly warrior warned him coolly.
“Let him. It will be instructional for the rest of you.”
My supreme lack of concern was more than enough to keep the others back, especially as I walked up to the wizard Hanvol. “You are injured. Would you care to be Healed, or go about it the long and boring way of a week of bed rest?”
The man flushed as I held up my hand, ghostly light on my fingers. Licking his lips, he asked reluctantly, “You’re a cleric?”
“I am a Theurge.” I put my hand against his side, and Healing Reserve pulsed as black vines ran down my arm, onto his skin, and stitched up the wound in his side, ending the quite visible ‘scar’ with a visible red rose. Still, his complexion improved instantly, as 16 points of Health damage fixed up with a touch was a significant boost. “Warrior of the Horn?” I asked, lifting my hand. His pauldron was dented and he was favoring his weapon arm because of it.
He promptly knelt to receive the Healing, like any proper well-trained warrior would. Invoking a Mending spell to repair his pauldron was simple and did not take much energy, either.
The hyn was quick to kneel and accept the Healing too, and after a moment of rather intense inner conflict, I could visibly see the rogue make the decision that he could steal the jewel later and accept the Healing now, there would always be opportunities, and surely I couldn’t mean what I had said.
Their injuries rapidly receded under my hand, and I reclaimed my Staff calmly. “Weapons up, now.” Startled, the weapons they’d been ready to sheathe were raised once more. “There are more things to do battle with above. We will remove them before we leave this place.”
Light hissed and sparked along all their weapons, astonishing all of them. “Follow me,” I said, as the Mass Extended Striking percolated on their weapons.
Feeling much more confident with having a Healer with them, the four adventurers were happy to follow me up the stairs and out of there, and into battle with the goblins and the wolves they’d brought into the Inn above.
------
“You mean, you can leave?” Darryl asked urgently, looking at the door that had defied all of their attempts to depart. Hanvol had even urgently tested out the fact they couldn’t leave through the open doorway, which I calmly shut after he had tried.
I considered him calmly. “I could. That would be lethally unwise, warrior. Do you know where you are, or rather, more precisely, when you are?” I inquired of them.
The mage was the one who answered first. “I knew it!! I was right, we are traveling through time!” he exclaimed, the faces of his fellows showing they’d heard it, but were only now believing it.
“More precisely, you are traveling backwards in time,” I confirmed for them. “It was 990 in common years when I entered the Inn. The year is now 974.”
All four of the men looked askance, trying to process that. “It was, it was 985 when we went in here!” the aspirant knight Darryl, nicknamed Horn by the rest of them, gasped.
“Wait, does that mean I could go and meet myself as a wee one?!” Buck the hyn exclaimed in delight.
“That is the lethally unwise matter of things. Would not Master Guyven agree?” I turned an eye on him, as he blinked at me. “Surely you noticed the gold you had pilfered from the till is no longer with you, and the till is exactly as full now as it was eleven years in the future…”
His face grew long, because it was a fair bit of change. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything…” he hedged carefully.
“You brought a coin from the future back to here, where it already exists, and it disappeared.” I slowly turned my eye on the door. “Outside that door, you still exist, Master Guy. What do you suppose would happen to you?”
He swallowed slowly. “I… would cease to exist?” he asked faintly.
“I believe you would be washed away in the streams of time like writings in the sand on a beach. We would sit inside here and watch you simply fade away, as the Time allotted to you is already being spent by your younger self.”