Dante

  “No sacrifice is too great, so long as someone else is making it.”

  --Circle Proverb

  I freeze.

  Not in the deer-in-the-headlights sense, or even the cornered-wolf-deciding-which-way-to-pounce.

  But more like everything-literally-freezes-at-once-for-no-logical-reason sense of the word.

  I look to my right and left, even though my body cannot move. And then I notice I’m no longer entirely in my body, but floating maybe a foot higher. And I’m slightly transparent.

  I think. Even my so-called Enhanced brain is struggling to process all of this.

  The world is frozen in crystalline time.

  And I am moving through it in spirit.

  Not far, but I’m still moving. And that’s all I’ve got. Wish I had something else to work with, someone I could ask questions, but for now I’m stuck as a floating spectator in the snapshot of a fight.

  The dragon’s flesh seems to be immobilized also, yet somehow slowly swirling beneath its scales. I wouldn’t notice, the change is so slow, but other than my own spirit body, there’s literally nothing else moving, so it really stands out. I shift in my immaterial form and begin to take a mental step forward.

  “I wouldn’t,” a woman’s voice says behind me, as sophisticated as an art museum and as clear as a bell.

  I’m not alone in this frozen space. I turn.

  The… woman is not what I expected.

  Floating in midair I see a figure in white and gold, but more… human than the other automatons in gilded ivory shells. But clearly not quite a natural woman, at least as I understand them.

  Eyes shine at me like golden lamps from a face in shadow. Or, perhaps, a face of shadow. Her skin is partly shaped into curves like an abstract sculpture of a woman, and partly has muscles and joints of some black material moving as smoothly as ferrofluid or natural tissues. Golden filigree – mostly of light – embellishes her form. She looks like a more advanced – more human – version of the white and golden automaton soldiers fighting the Circle earlier.

  But of course, I have no idea who they are, either, so these first impressions tell me precisely nothing.

  “And you are?” Not my most gracious opening line, I know, but I have a dragon about to kill my friend and eat me, and I’m still stuck in glacial time.

  “Precept Aurelia of the Eternal Spire,” she announces humbly, in a way that says there is no way to put it humbly. “Of the Clockwork Kingdom,” Aurelia adds more slowly, in case I’ve missed the implications of what I’ve been told.

  I shrug my imaginary shoulders. “And what’s your part in this?” I ask. There are a hundred other questions I could ask, but I’m on a clock. Assuming I don’t have all eternity. Frozen tableau or not, everything could explode into action around me at any moment. At which point, I’d like to be free. And have a plan.

  We’ll skip the idle chit-chat and get right into it.

  Aurelia tilts her head at me, curious. “Did your masters in the Tower tell you nothing of us?”

  “To the best of my memory, no.” Tower?

  I swear she sighs at that. “And to think we’re one of the main justifications they use for their…” Aurelia shakes her artificial head. “Your forebears delved too greedily and too deep. Both metaphorically and,” she waves her hands around us, “literally.”

  “Meaning?” I ask, glancing meaningfully from her to the dragon. If I die the moment this frozen fraction of a second ends, it would be nice to get a few straight answers before it happens. Or better riddles, anyway.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I’m holding out hope.

  A faster ripple sweeps through the dragon’s strange flesh and its eyes flick towards the mecha before it goes still again.

  I’m not holding out much hope, though.

  “You are in a place that is not a place, but which opens to all times and places bound to it,” Aurelia says. “And we are here – we are all here – because anyone who masters this nexus will be able to invade whichever worlds they wish and seal away the others.”

  “So you’re planning an invasion?” I ask. Seems pertinent to what we do next. Assuming my body ever moves again.

  Her laugh is musical, like the literal ringing of bells. “I’m here to prevent an invasion. A multitude of them. And to hold the door open for my people to retreat, as well. A path taken only in uttermost need.”

  The world flickers, my fists clench, and the dragon whirls through air towards the mecha, like a living corkscrew. Energy blazes around the mecha’s left fist. And then everything is still, once more, and I am back watching this tableau in spirit.

  “So this place is a pathway back to Earth, then?” I ask without missing a beat. “Not Earth itself?” Yes, normally this would be crazy talk, but I remember the disorientation before I hit the bottom of the tower, and the point in midair beyond which everything above looked washed out.

  Plus, there’s the whole environment around me. So I’m suspending disbelief and rolling with what’s in front of me. For now.

  Aurelia snorts with a sound between static and distant chimes. “This was once the dream corridor of the Shadow Counselors of the Tower, for the millennia they toyed with all our civilizations. First in ignorance, then in idealism, then in experimentation. Then finally as conquerors.”

  “Conquerors?” I ask.

  She tilts her elegant head at me. “The Tower was ever-shifting, ever fractious, ever at the mercy of whichever personalities came to dominate their councils. They made for poor masters. Especially for all those centuries they could not touch our lands directly.” She waves at the almost ghostly city before us – full of her people, yet somehow much like a copy of the Waycross I just left.

  The city is slowly fading further. Behind the disappearing streets and buildings and skyline, I swear there are gears and chains like an enormous clock, as well as hints of more exotic tech welded to all this machinery. Somehow superadvanced and steampunk and surreal, all at once.

  Something in her story sparks a thought. “Can they touch your world now?”

  “Beyond their games in dreams and the Astrum?” Aurelia nods absently. “Their pet falcon finally found a way, before she flew free from their aerie. A way to reach all our homes. To unite us, they told her. To protect everyone.”

  I remember something Andrea mentioned in passing. “‘Kestrel’s wormhole.’”

  As I speak, the Dragon seems to writhe in an eyeblink, and is now closer to Arden’s mecha, yet staring at me.

  Aurelia sighs in agreement. “The first traversable wormhole to cross universes, much less all the universes we knew of. Though ‘traversable’ was being generous, at first.” She stretches out a hand to her ghostly city. “Still, we spent a thousand years working with the tools we had. What matter if her passage began as a tool for nothing more than signals, then streams of energy, and finally plasma?” Her golden gaze turns to meet my own. “We found our ways to work our will. As did the Tower. And so many others.”

  “So this place could be used to reach Earth?” I ask, still trying to wrap my head around the consequences. The city has faded, beyond the street around the Library, but the endless clockwork machinery fills the surface and the sky as if it had always been there.

  “Not as mortal flesh, no. Only the island around the library itself is true, solid matter. But if you know ways to travel in other forms,” Aurelia gestures at the dragon, “Kestrel’s Path begins on Earth and can be controlled there. Step across, seize control, and then you can widen the way for any who follow. Traders, academics, refugees… armies.” She spreads her delicate-seeming hands. “Not just your world, but any reached by the wormhole are in peril. Gain control, and we can all be subdued or subverted one-by-one at an invader’s leisure.”

  “So that’s the vanguard of an invasion,” I say, pointing one astral hand at the Dragon. Whose eyes now take me in as well as Hammersmith’s mecha. And whose jaws, frozen time or not, seem to be slowly widening. Less than fifty yards separate it from Arden’s superweapon. Less than half the distance from when I first spotted it. Plasma rages silently and slowly in the mecha’s left hand.

  “Or someone or something tasked with protecting their own world. Leave the passage in the hands of an unknown master and they can seal off your entrance to the wormhole completely until they’re ready for you. No one can risk that.” She shrugs. “So here we all are. Trying to hold or seize the last step before reaching Earth.”

  “‘All’?” I ask. “How many is all?”

  “As many as there are worlds capable of reaching this place,” Aurelia replies. “Or able to touch it in any way whatsoever. And if we had that knowledge…” She shrugs dismissively. “But we do not.”

  “And I’m frozen now because…?”

  Another musical snort. “You are not frozen at all. Your mind has accelerated and your spirit has slipped your body, giving you a fraction of a moment to commune with me before your final battle.” Her glowing eyes stare into me. “This is quite a feat for someone who knows not what he does. Tell me, what training have you had, strange messenger? And by what name may I call you?”

  “I…” My voice falters. I know I shouldn’t be sharing too much with this woman without knowing more about the situation, for all that she seems to be open with me. But the real problem is when she asks about my training, I’m suddenly not sure I know. Not all of it, anyway.

  She is watching me. And so, I swear, is the dragon.

  “I was on the Island,” I say. “I was there for years, and then I was not. And as far as the training I had,” I shake my head. “I’m not sure I really know. Not all of it, anyway.”

  “I see,” Aurelia nods. “Your device was useful against those attacking from your world,” she adds, gesturing at Foresight’s smartwatch. “For which we are grateful. But my ability to assist in this fugue state is rapidly fading. Especially given you know not how you came here or how to sustain it.”

  I shake my spiritual head, and clench my imaginary fists. “I don’t.”

  Aurelia nods again. “I have activated the Nexus’s defenses, but that one is already here.

  “Ready yourself for battle.

  “The Dragon comes.”

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