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Chapter 92: The Keyhole of Time
🕑 Added 2024-05-10 10:00:05 +0000 UTC[A picture of a man shooting fire from his hands, with the flames forming a whispy dragon.]
S is for sorcerers, magicians by blood, they've been shunned and feared since after the Flood. From dragons, or gods, or fairies or mysteries, sorcerers of all origins have long storied histories.
-Sally Rider’s ABCs of Magic
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“You can’t go to a play dressed like that!” Zale said, chastising all three of them as they walked across campus toward the city. “They won’t let you in!”
“Bah, we’ll sneak in,” Rakin said, unconcerned. “It’s a Monday night. I’m surprised there’s even a play tonight. The seats will be empty.”
Zale almost protested but then smiled.
“That could be a good training exercise.”
After Zale had told them of her canceled plans, Kole had suggested they all go instead. Rakin and groaned and grumbled, but Kole noted that he hadn’t actually protested. Even the grouchy dwarf wanted to make his cousin feel better.
“It can’t be that much harder than sneaking past an owl to get at the scalequines,” Kole observed.
“You did what?” Amara asked confused.
They quickly updated her on that old news.
“You’re right,” Zale said. “We did kind of already do this. How about instead, we make it a contest?”
To Kole’s surprise, the idea of a contest captured Amara’s attention.
“I need to go get my tools!”
They set the rules up quickly. The first person to get seated would win, and they’d used Amara’s signal devices to report when someone had won. They couldn’t settle on a prize, but no one seemed to care much, all getting rather into the idea.
Kole, for his part, thought he had a massive advantage, but no one called him out on it.
Do they know something I don’t? He wondered
“Alright,” Zale said after it was all sorted. “No one can enter the theater’s property until 8. Good luck.”
And they all separated, going to prepare in their own ways.
***
Almost an hour later, Kole stood across the street from the theater dressed in his fancy storm caller outfit with his Fade ability active and drawing on a small stream of his Will. He was pretty sure could easily sneak in while invisible, but the ease at which his friends had accepted the challenge against him gave him second thoughts. After all, they knew what he could do better than anyone but himself.
When a bell rang in the distance, signaling it was 8 o’clock, Kole walked across the street, dispelling his Fade ability to better navigate around others. He’d long known that sometimes being unseen was an impediment to moving quickly, as no one walked out of the way for you.
He walked toward the entrance. There was a large staircase with four booths at the foot, each booth had a ticket vendor. The theater wasn’t busy, but of the few that were entering, many walked past these without stopping, so now Invisible, Kole did the same.
At the top of the stairs, he waited patiently for a door to open and then slid in quickly before it closed.
Floor. He cursed internally as he saw the other side of the door.
Opposite the entryway was another series of booths, each next to a turnstile that was locked unless opened by the operator. All but one were closed, with shudders coming down from the ceiling to seal them of completely.
I could probably crawl under it. He considered, but with only a single entryway, the trickle of people was regular enough that he’d risk getting stepped on and revealed.
“Gorin Ambleford,” a high pitched halfling said to the man at the booth, drawing Kole’s attention. “I ordered my ticket ahead.”
“I’m sorry sir,” the attendant said, “Those are at will call on the outside of the building.”
“Oh fiddle!” the halfing cursed jokingly. “See you in a bit!”
That could work, Kole thought, getting an idea.
He ran out the door, not caring that others would see it open seemingly of its own accord, and turned visible as he rounded the corner at the base of the stairs. He’d seen the will call booth while he’d waited outside, and moved right for it.
“Name please sir?” the bored attendant asked.
“Harold,” Kole said confidently.
“Harold what?” the attendant asked, even as she flicked through a box of tabbed cards with letters written on them.
“Harold…” Kole began and then trailed off
Flood, what in the fauell is his last name?
“Harold Harold?” the attendant asked, smiling. “Sorry Harold Harold, but there was only one set of tickets on hold for a Harold, and they’ve already been picked up.”
A little embarrassed, Kole left and decided to try his luck with crawling.
He moved back to the top of the stairs and waited, looking out the window for a lull in traffic. It took five minutes of waiting for an opening Kole felt he’d be able to run through. During that time, he heard an ear-piercing shriek somewhere else in the building, drawing the attention of the idle staff beyond the turnstile.
Amara he guessed as he moved to crawl under the rotating bars.
Thankfully, the sound in the distance drowned out any Kole made shuffling along the ground, and as soon as he was through the sound ended abruptly.
“Sorry about that noise sir, go right ahead. You better hurry, it’s about to start.” Kole heard from above.
He rolled to the side to get out of the way just in time to avoid being trampled by the man who’d approached without Kole hearing. The man had a brisk pace and ran down the hall to get his seat.
Kole got to his feet, and walked down the hall, only dropping his invisibility when he was out of sight of the booth.
After that, it was a simple matter of finding a deserted section with open seats. He pulled out his signal device, ready to signal that he was done, only to find that Zale had already signaled her victory. Zale couldn’t actually activate the runes on her device, but Amara had thought of a way around that.
Amara had taken Zale’s device and imbued it with her own Will, signaling to the others that Zale had won. Then, she had Zale try to power it. As Amara had expected, Zale’s attempt disrupted the active signal, and it winked out. So, when Kole looked and saw that none of the signals were lit, he knew Zale had won.
Despite the loss, he was glad that she was the one to beat him. The whole ordeal had been for her benefit after all.
Kole walked out onto the mezzanine, quickly found Zale’s in the empty, and made his way to the open seat beside her. The mezzanine was completely empty, all the ticket holders had taken the much better seats in the near-deserted show.
“Congratulations,” Kole said as he flopped into his seat. “How’d you do it?”
“Years of infiltration training and the ability to walk through walls,” Zale said, smiling.
“I see why Runt is jealous,” Kole said.
“She’d kill for either of our powers,” Zale said, and Kole wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.
“I’d give them to her if it meant I could be a regular wizard,” Kole said wistfully.
“Don’t be like that. You’re doing amazing! You can cast Thunderwave as well as many times as anyone else could, and you haven’t even started to refine it yet.”
“You’re right,” Kole answered after a moment’s consideration.
He’d spent his whole life frustrated at the limitations placed on him by his primal “abilities” but now that some of those had been circumvented, he had the potential to leap past his peers.
About a minute late, Rakin joined them and this time Kole couldn’t tell if the dwarf was feigning his grouchyness or not. Amara arrived, eventually, but the play was well into the first act when she slipped into the back, scooping Gus off the ground and onto her shoulder as she ran to them.
“I need to hide!” she hissed at them.
She ran towards them, and then dove to the ground, hoping the seats would hide her. A moment later, an usher came in, alert and looking around.
“Excuse—“ the usher began, but Rakin cut him off.
“Quiet! We’re watching the play!” he shouted.
“My apologies!” the usher said quickly, before retreating.
As soon as the door closed, they all broke out into laughter
***
“I don’t get it,” Rakin said as they walked out of their seats.
“What don’t you get?” Zale asked.
“Kindness and empathy?” Kole said, jumping in with suggestions.
“I’ll show ye kindness and empathy,” Rakin grumbled.
“That’s a terrible threat,” Zale said.
“Bah! That’s not the point. I don’t get the damn play. Why didn’t they just… I don’t know, lock the queen up somewhere once they saw the vision of her dying in her rooms.”
“I don’t think the queen would have much liked being locked up,” Zale said. “This is a historical retelling too. By all accounts, the king loved his wife. It seems he did that the best way he could.”
“Why didn’t he explain the situation to her then?” Rakin asked.
“Imagine he didn’t want to worry her,” Kole said, “And besides, once the vision was seen, there was no way around it—so long as it was a true vision of the future.”
“Why not?” Rakin asked. “What’s the point of seeing the future if ye can’t change it?”
“You can’t ‘change’ time,” Kole explained. “There used to be a debate on the topic but in the last hundred years it’s all mostly died down as the theory of the Immutable Timeline has become more and more accepted as fact.”
“What in Torc’s name is that?” Rakin barked as they entered the foyer of the theater.
Despite the low attendance, the foyer was crowded as everyone left at once. Rakin’s yell drew looks, and Kole thought he saw a familiar face, but when he did a double take it was gone.
Harold? Kole thought, but dismissed it, thinking the other boy was just on his mind too much of late and he was just mistaken.
“Every moment that ever happened or will happen occurred and will occur only once. There is no changing history.”
Rakin didn’t say anything until they got outside, and then he pointed to a tree growing in a small garden.
“That can’t be right. Yer saying that if I went back in time and cut down that tree over there, I’d come back and it wouldn’t be cut down.”
“What I’m saying is, that if you went back in time and cut down that tree, and then came back to this moment, we would still see that tree as we see it right now.”
“How?” Rakin pressed.
“Any number of ways,” Kole said, counting on his fingers. “Maybe that tree dies every morning and regrows to what we see now. Or, it’s an illusion, and the tree we are looking at can’t be cut down, so you’d only go back in time and fail to cut it. Or, a druid comes by after you cut it down and heals it. Or, you go back in time, get run over by a horse, and die before you can complete the task. Any number of things could happen to prevent you from doing what you are trying to do.
“But, all we know for certain is that we see a tree from this vantage point. We don’t know for certain that there really is a tree there. You could have, for instance, gone back in time, cut the tree down, and replaced it with an illusionary tree that could vanish this very moment.”
“So I can cut the tree down?” Rakin asked, trying to follow.
“Nothing says you can’t cut down the tree,” Kole said. “Only that no matter what you do, we would still have seen what appeared to be a tree from our vantage point up to the moment you went back in time.”
“Bah! Time travel is stupid,” Rakin said, giving up on the matter.
“That’s what uncle always says,” Zale said idly.
“Maybe he’s not so bad then,” Rakin conceded.
