Chronosphere Read online

  “Seize the magician! And the assistant, too! They are behind this!”

  Everyone turned to face them, but no one moved. Many of the wedding guests were trying to figure out who this ‘magician’ was. As he quickly scanned the crowd, he caught a glimpse of Sabina, who stared at him in horror. The poor woman thought she’d slept with an assassin.

  Anton grabbed Ana by the wrist and took a step back toward the exit. The princess raised a useless hand toward them. The castle guards released Hectus and shoved guests aside as they moved toward Anton. Petra, though still in shock, leaned forward and whispered to him.

  “Library. Run. Trust me.”

  They ran. Anton and Ana narrowly avoided the grasps of several members of the castle guard and made for the exit as fast as they could. When they burst through the door, they found themselves in an empty hallway. It didn’t remain that way for long.

  Two members of the Draconian guard burst from the main doorway and pursued them with swords drawn. Only steps behind, members of the castle guard clad followed.

  Anton and Ana turned the nearest corner and found themselves in another empty hallway. They heard the guards’ clamoring footsteps and rattling iron behind them.

  “Anton,” Ana said in a voice so calm that he found it disturbing. “I have not been to the library. Can you lead us there?”

  He did his best to remember the layout of the castle. The gardens were on the ground floor, the library on the second. They needed to find a stairwell. Briefly, he wondered if he should even heed the princess’ advice. They might be better off going straight for the castle’s main entrance. But no doubt, there would be more guards there. No part of him wanted to have to kill any humans. He felt for the weapons in his vest. Both were still there. He wouldn’t use the laser pistol unless absolutely necessary, but the dagger’s presence was reassuring.

  He pictured himself and Ana rushing through the city, dodging civilians and guards and making a desperate dash for the outer lands. But the guards would have horses. Their best bet seemed to be to heed the princess’ advice.

  Good God, I should have thought this through better.

  They found the stairwell. Anton burst through it and was met with the sight of a lone Draconian guard. Apparently, they’d planned better than he had. The guard was a tall, broad man with a sword that made Anton’s dagger feel like a needle in his pocket.

  “Halt right there, traitor!”

  The Draconian stood in the center of the staircase, exactly where they needed to go. Behind them, the metallic footsteps drew closer.

  “Fuck,” Anton said, frozen for a moment.

  Then it hit him. Nobody would see him use a laser pistol in a stairwell. All they would see was a dead lizard with green blood and brain matter surrounding him.

  Red light flashed through the stairwell and the Draconian’s head and ebony helmet sizzled in a pile of molten, green gore. The clatter of his armor against the stone steps echoed through the chamber. Anton and Ana stepped over the twitching corpse and continued upward. As they rounded the corner, they heard the footsteps of their pursuers enter the stairwell and then stop abruptly. They were going to have to cover up the corpse or risk being found out. No doubt their pursuers would do their best to block the inhuman body from being seen by the human castle guards. They would have to use these few precious seconds to their advantage.

  On the second floor, they heard shouts and echoing footsteps, but nobody greeted them at the other side of the door. That would soon change. They were getting louder.

  Anton realized that he still had his satchel. He reached in and pulled out a small firework. Though the ones he’d arranged for the wedding were merely sparklers, he was suddenly glad he’d saved some of the extra gunpowder to fashion a small explosive. Though it wouldn’t do damage, he’d thought the king might enjoy it.

  Voices echoed round the nearest corner, from the direction of the library. Anton pulled the small explosive out from the satchel and looked around for somewhere to hide. Beyond a lit oil-lamp, he spotted a door and opened it. It was a small storage closet filled with kitchen supplies. He took Ana by the wrist and led her inside. Then he lit the explosive with the oil lamp and threw it as far as he could before disappearing into the closet after her. The footsteps jolted as a loud bang rang out through the hallway.

  “This way!” someone ordered. “It’s one of the magician’s tricks!”

  The guards ran off toward the source of the sound.

  “Ana, bioscanner.”

  The hologram appeared above Ana’s hand. They watched as three dots moved down the hall and turned another corner. The way to the library was clear.

  “Let’s go.”

  They opened the door, and, after peering up and down the hall, ran to the library door. They flung it open and ran inside, shutting it carefully behind them.

  The room was empty. The peacefulness of the space was ironic. It smelled of old leather, lamplight casting shadows on the bookcases.

  “What now?” Anton asked.

  “I do not know, Anton.”

  “Let me see the bioscanner again.”

  Ana produced the hologram again.

  “All floors, please.”

  The hologram expanded upward, revealing frantic movements on every level of the castle. Luckily, most seemed far away. The castle guard seemed to suspect the main exit. Anton wasn’t sure there was another. This only served to make him feel trapped, a rat cornering himself in a cage. He tried to let the princess’ confidence reassure him. Then Anton let Ana’s words flood his mind.

  It could have been a trick. Are you sure it is not your attraction altering your perception?

  Anton felt like a damn fool. He wondered if he’d just let a brainwashed pretty face lead him right into a trap. But Petra had seemed so unaffected…

  “Anton, Petra appears to be approaching, but her movements do not correspond to any known corridors.”

  “Enhance the system to infer surroundings.”

  She did so, and the hologram expanded to show the structure of the entire castle. It was harder to see where many of the dots were, but it did show something uncanny- the lone yellow dot moving toward them appeared to be inside a wall.

  “What the…”

  A bookcase against a wall heaved. Anton jumped, staring at it.

  The bookcase shook again. Then three evenly spaced knocks sounded through it. He looked at Ana.

  “I believe Petra is behind that bookcase,” she said. “Perhaps we should move it.”

  Anton grabbed the bookcase and began pushing it to the side. Though heavy, his desperation gave him strength. After moving it several feet, he spotted an opening in the wall behind it. A pair of beautiful blue eyes reflected the lamplight.

  “Get in here,” Petra said.

  “Princess,” Anton started, “How on…”

  “No time, come on.”

  They followed her into the tunnel in the wall and crawled through the darkness behind her.

  “How did you get away from the guards?” Anton asked her. “You’d think they’d be watching you closely.”

  “They think I’m in my room,” she said. “They don’t know about the passageways. What the hell happened at the ceremony?”

  “Things didn’t quite go according to plan,” Anton said.

  “No kidding, you tried to blame Hectus? He’s a coward. He’d never do something like that.”

  “It was our best idea.”

  Petra led them to a ladder that dropped them to the bottom floor.

  “Awfully impulsive for an assassin,” she said.

  “Caution isn’t my strong suit. Petra, I’m sorry,” Anton said. “I should have trusted you.”

  “You can explain later,” she said, “we don’t have much time.”

  She led them through another tunnel.

  “Go through here,” she said. “It’ll lead you outside the city walls. Find somewhere safe. I have to go back. They’ll come for me soon.”


  “Petra…”

  “Save it, this isn’t over.”

  Anton nodded.

  “We’re going to get this right,” he said. “Mark my words, that scum is going to die.”

  She nodded, then turned away. Ana and Anton crawled on into the tunnel.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The glow of Ana’s bioscanner led them through the tunnels, which eventually deposited them into a ditch. When they rolled out into the night, Anton noticed that the valve separating them from the tunnel latched closed behind him. Whoever designed the secret passageways no doubt wanted to keep out intruders.

  Luckily, the ditch was set against a back area of Jagari where no entrances led into the inner-city. They brushed themselves off and began the long journey toward what remained of the chronosphere. The outer city was quiet and peaceful after dark. Small fires burned inside cottages in the distance, grasses waved in the nighttime breeze, but all else was still. Perhaps news of their escape had not reached the outer city yet.

  “Well,” Anton said after a few minutes of silence. “That was a shit show, wasn’t it?”

  “A ‘shit show’, Anton?”

  “A... bad situation.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes, indeed. That was not a successful mission. But you were correct in choosing to trust Princess Petra. I believe this is what you might call a silver lining?”

  “I guess, but now she’s married to that monster. How the hell did Eliza catch that damned bolt? Nobody is that fast. I’ve never even seen a Draconian move that quickly.”

  “I do not know,” she said. “Perhaps some Draconians have abilities beyond our understanding.”

  “Did you really think that plan was going to work?” he asked her. “You said it had a high probability of succeeding.”

  “According to my diagnostic checks, yes,” Ana said. “But even I have my limitations. I could not have predicted Eliza’s impressive dexterity or knowledge of the bolt’s placement.”

  “They must have seen me set it up,” he said. “That’s the only way they could have immediately known Hectus wasn’t at fault, but that seems impossible. You were with me when I rigged the trap. We used a bioscanner and a tech scanner. There was nothing nearby.”

  Ana shrugged. It looked very natural.

  ***

  It took longer to find the chronosphere than it would have in the daytime, but eventually they settled into it. So many of its parts were missing that it was in no way functional. Those bits were still scattered about the gardens.

  “It would greatly benefit us to be able to communicate with Princess Petra again,” Ana said. “She is the only one who would willingly give us access to the inner city and castle.”

  “Telepathy isn’t my strong suit,” Anton said.

  He regretted the sarcasm. Ana was right. Things had been so stressful during the escape that he didn’t have the forethought to make a new plan. Without her to let them back through the tunnels, they would be stuck trying to get back in through the main city gates with guards on high alert. If only he could get the chronosphere working. All they needed was to go backward by a few hours to prevent this whole mess from happening. He rifled through the satchel and looked at what little remained: a folded piece of parchment, a pen, and a bottle of ink caught his attention. There was still plenty left after Ana’s forgery.

  “Ana,” he said. “I think I have an idea.”

  His mind wandered back to his romantic night with Sabina in the gardens.

  Sometimes the castle gets hectic and stressful. The farm is a safe haven for me.

  If there were ever a time that the castle was hectic and stressful, this was it.

  He wrote out a message, disguising it with a simple code of dashes and dots.

  Petra,

  Meet us where the river meets the forest. Bring whatever bits of my equipment you can manage. Bring your swords.

  -Anton

  ***

  Anton awoke the next morning to sunlight streaming through the trees and onto his face. He was in the chronosphere, but the missing panels they had removed from the walls diminished its shelter. Slowly, he peeked out and surveyed the scene.

  Ana sat peacefully staring at the sun through the trees. Letting her charge, he reached in and grabbed some of the food and water rations he was now very glad he’d brought. He munched on nuts and raisins and guzzled water.

  “Let’s go Ana,” he said. “With any luck, Sabina is already there.”

  They trudged through the forest, following the same route they had on their first day in the past. Ana’s bioscanner showed that Sabina’s shack was indeed occupied, but not just by her. There were three bodies present. Her sons were home.

  “We’ll have to tread lightly,” Anton said. “She does think I’m a failed assassin, after all.”

  When they reached the edge of the forest, they saw two forms out working the land. Sabina was nowhere to be seen. The boys could have been twins if not for one being slightly taller than the other. They shared the same red mop-top and freckles, the same brown tunics. They seemed to be purging poisoned plants. One of them pushed a wheelbarrow while the other piled the vegetation onto it.

  Anton and Ana approached them together.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Anton said. “Is your mother home?”

  The boys turned. They first looked at Anton in surprise, eyeing his dirty clothing and matted hair. Their expressions carried a mild fear until they saw Ana. Then their eyes widened and they seemed to forget all about Anton.

  “Who are you?” The taller one cried, pointing at Ana.

  “I am Ana,” she responded, clearly trying to interpret their fascination.

  Anton stifled a laugh at their adolescent infatuation. He couldn’t blame them. Even with her hair and dress in disarray, she might have been the sexiest woman they’d ever seen. In fact, he thought, looking at Ana, she might look better than ever. Her dress had ripped during their midnight search through the forest, and most of her creamy thighs were visible. The scuffed leather on her corset pushed her breasts up high, revealing her cleavage almost all the way to the lower curves of her breasts.

  “Boys,” Anton said. “Your mother?”

  “She is not my mother,” the shorter boy said, unable to take his eyes off Ana.

  “Right, but where is your mother?”

  “Lucas! Aaron! Get inside this instant.” Sabina yelled from the front porch.

  “But moooooooom…”

  “NOW!”

  Begrudgingly, the boys obeyed. At the last moment before going inside, the older boy turned to Ana again.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” Ana asked honestly.

  “Uhh…” He took another moment to stare. “I don’t know.”

  “Lucas, inside!”

  Sabina pulled a knife from a sheath on her hip and held it up toward them.

  “You two stay the hell away from me and my boys.”

  Anton put his hands up and Ana did the same.

  “Look, we aren’t here to hurt anyone, we just need your help.”

  “My help?” she screamed. “My help? You tried to murder Lord Matteo. The entire city is looking for you. Why would I help you?”

  “Because you trust me.” Anton said it with as much confidence as he could muster.

  “I trusted you,” she said. “Not anymore. I had no idea you were an assassin. You said you were a god damned magician!”

  “House Dracos is evil,” he said. “They need to be stopped. You know it’s true.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true. They’re strange and creepy, but that doesn’t make them evil.”

  “Look, I’m not going to argue with you about that. All I need you to do is deliver a letter to the princess for me. Just hand it to her, and your hands are clean.”

  Sabina lowered the knife, but it was clear that she was still hesitant.

  “Security is tight now, for obvious reasons,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll
be able to get away with it. And if they find the letter in my possession, then I’m guilty of treason.”

  “It’s coded,” he said.

  He pulled the encrypted letter from his pocket and handed it to Sabina, who unfurled it.

  “No one could read this. It’s not even words.”

  “It is words,” Anton insisted, “just written in a different…language. I know it, and the princess knows it.”

  Sabina squinted skeptically. “Then what does it say?”

  He considered lying, but under Sabina’s current suspicions, he thought better of it. Despite her defensiveness, he could tell that she was afraid of the Draconians as well.

  “It asks for her help,” he said.

  “She would never help you,” she shot back.

  “Yes, she would. How do you think we escaped?”

  A long silence as Sabina stared at the parchment.

  “So... She was in on this?” she said finally.

  Anton started to answer when she cut him off.

  “No, you know what? I don’t even want to know. I don’t want to be any more involved than this. But fine, I will give her this note. But that’s all. Then I’m washing my hands of this, and of you.”

  She looked him up and down.

  “I suppose I owe you this much,” she softened. “We had quite a night together.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” he said, meaning it.

  She sighed, gazing forlornly at the castle.

  “I’ll have to go back in a few hours.” She clearly was not looking forward to it. “Those people, House Dracos. If they’re so evil, what do they want?”

  “Control is the short answer,” he replied. “They’re predators, but not the honest kind who just want to kill you and eat your flesh. These are a different breed altogether. They don’t just want to live. They want to dominate.”

  “Well,” she said, pocketing the letter. “I suppose you’d better stop them, then.”

  ***

  The Draconians lost no time taking control of the castle under what could only be called martial law. The two factions - Jagari Guard and Dracos Guard - displayed the illusion of working in tandem, but it was clear that without guidance from King Gareth, the members of the Jagari Guard were forced to follow the new, aggressive rulers. Matteo and Matthias proved to be cunning leaders. Though Petra recognized that her father was not all that intelligent, she was shocked to see how easily they lured his confidence. Petra watched as they pretended to defer to him.