Travellers - Sarashen

Travellers

Episode 8

Sarashen

"Any change?" Jade asked. Marius shook his head, so she returned to tinkering with the scanner. She wasn't sulking, truly she wasn't, but she hated being left behind like this. Scooping up a small bolt, she tossed it towards the clocktower. It hit an invisible barrier, and bounced back. Jade glared at Marius. Stupid mage. Don't follow didn't mean don't follow, it meant follow later to provide surprise back-up. Everyone knew that.

"What about now?"

"In the ten seconds since you last asked," Marius replied, "I can confirm that absolutely nothing has happened." Somewhere in the depths of the scanner, a spring released, sending half the machine's insides tumbling out onto the cobblestones. Jade poked at them with her shoe, making a mental note of the problem, along with ideas on how to fix it. As soon as she returned home, she was going to construct a magic detector. All this invisible forces and waiting around was getting on her nerves. She'd ask Sol about it, or maybe Misha, another student who claimed her parents were mages. Jade had laughed at the time, but now...

"Now?"she asked. Marius sighed.

"You do realise," he said, ever so patiently, "that constant asking isn't going to make thing happen any faster... Wait." There was movement at the top of the tower, and then a decrease in magical tension that even Jade could feel. Sunlight flashed off something silver, and then the movement stopped. The tower groaned and creaked.

"Get them down here," Marius said, to a group of people who, by their dress and general attitude, Jade guessed were the city guard. They had appeared out of nowhere, probably by magic. "The tower isn't going to hold together much longer," the mage finished. Leaping to her feet, Jade hurried to join them, only to find the invisible barrier now surrounded her, rather than the tower. She watched, fuming, as the guards entered the tower.



The longest few minutes of Jade's life later, people started reappearing. First the guards, carrying the unconscious body of the Hand's wielder. Then Sol, stalking four-legged between the guards, who stayed well back. Lastly, Laike left the tower, carrying the Hand's focus carefully with both hands. Jade blinked. Laike? Before she could properly process her surprise, there was a loud rumble, and the clocktower collapsed in a cloud of must and rot. The barrier around her vanished, and she joined the general rush to safety. When the debris finally subsided, Jade discovered that she hadn't been driven delusional by boredom. Laike really was standing right there, next to her.

"Wha... how...you?" Jade knew for certain the only way into the clocktower was the one she and Marius had been staring at for the past hour or so. Laike shrugged.

"You were changing time anyway, so I figured I may as well be in on the rescue," she said. There was an edge to her voice that Jade decided to ignore, for now. Apparantly satisfied with her explanation, Laike strode over to where Marius stood, and handed him the stone.

"Be a bit more carefull with it now, yes?" she said. "Maybe next time, call for help from the neighbors before invoking ancient pacts with timeless, multidimensional beings." She singled out one of the guards. "You. You can drive us back to the rift. We need to get going before anything else happens."



The journey back was uneventful, mostly because Jade was in shock from Laike's strange behaviour, and Sol wasn't feeling particularly sociable. Well, he might have been. It was hard to tell, given he was out of sight more often than not. The turtle-ship, not to mention the guard, had flatly refused to function whenever the silverling came near, so he was running along beside.

When they reached the gully, Jade breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of all her nice detectors and sensors set up on the other side of the rift. Soon, they would be back home, and everything would make sense again. Then Sol loped down into the gully. There was just time to see the set-up short out in a shower of sparks, before the rift began cycling through ages. Jade gave a little whimper.

"Not going through there," Sol said, eyeing the rift with great suspicion and dislike.

"That's fine. It's all fine," Jade said, giggling. Both Sol and Laike turned to stare at her. "It doesn't matter," she continued. "Who cares about the rift? All we have to do, is wake up." She grinned, and just managed to keep herself from laughing hysterically. "Wake up, and we're back home, and everything makes sense, and there isn't magic, and crazy rifts, and..." Laike sighed. It was a strange sigh, that managed to combine 'let the grown-ups handle this now,' with 'how did I get myself into this,' and just a bit of 'you're all completely mad'. She took Jade's hand in her own, and Sol's wrist with her other, after a meaningful glare made him smooth down the spikes. Then she stepped through the rioting rift, dragging them both behind her.



Jade had been on some rough flights. The trips she'd made before she learned about proper stabilisation, those had been nasty. The time she'd tried to land Old Rusty in a time she knew it was already parked, just to see what happened, had made her ill for days. Jade was currently praying to all the gods she didn't believe existed that she could relive any of those flights, rather than the one she was on now. Somewhere, in the atoms she usually considered her brain, she realised that it was over, and they had arrived. There was a noise, it hurt her head, that slowly resolved into someone talking, be back later... things to do... There was another noise, a vomity sort of noise, and that hurt her head, too. A flare of blinding light entered her consciousness, and she realised her eyes were working again, then her nose made its presence known. Wishing desperatly that her brain would stop hurting, she fumbled through the contents of her backpack, finally pulling out a bag of honey flavoured cough drops, and a bottle of sugar water. Half an hour later, her headache mostly gone, along with the cough drops and sugar water, Jade realised that she shouldn't be alone. Gingerly, she pushed herself up to her feet, and went looking for Sol.



Sol was at the top of the building they had landed in, hands resting on the low wall that ran around the edge of the roof. It was an odd pose, making him look as if he couldn't decide whether he wanted to be four-footed, or two. He looked around when Jade joined him.

"We're not on Saon," he said. Jade glanced up at the apple green sky, filled with warlike ships and gliders, and then down at the smoking city on the plains below.

"This is Kintar," she said. "But it must be the future. I've never heard of... What is it?" With the exception of his twitching nose, Sol had gone perfectly still. As he sniffed at the air, his expression became more and more puzzled, then he dropped to all fours, and headed towards the stairs.

"Wait just a moment," Jade said, and he paused. "On two legs, please," she continued. "I'm not going to be one of those girls who go off on quests with their wolf companions. They have the most ridiculous adventures."

"Not a wolf," said Sol, voice dripping contempt, but he stood up.



Following Sol's nose, they made their way down through the building, past where they had landed, to a large room with one wall missing. In the gap stood a shortish woman with cropped brown hair, gazing out at the surrounding destruction.

"Laike?" said Jade, now thoroughly confused.

"That's not Laike," Sol said, growling softly. "She smells different. Wrong." Laike, or whoever she was, heard them. As she came closer, Jade could see that she did look remarkably like Laike, just older. Also, in addition to cutting her hair short, other-Laike had put in a bright pink streak.

"Jade! Sol! It's so good to see you again," Laike said, a wide smile appearing on her face.

"When is this?" Jade asked. She wasn't really in the mood for small talk. Laike grimaced.

"This is the Ollaris future," she said. "Not nice. What are you two doing here? Wait, let me work it out. Given your age, and Sol all spiky, I'm guessing... not long after the Trawney thing?"

"We came here straight from Sarashen," Jade said.

"Sarashen, Sarashen... Aaaah, Sarashen." Laike looked slightly guilty. "So this is where you ended up. Sorry about that. Although, first time, same star system, not bad, if I do say so myself." She smiled to herself, ignoring Sol's constant stare, until something else occured to her. "Sarashen. I'm going to be in a really bad mood when we meet back up. Just deal with it. I'll get over it soon enough. Now, better move you on. This isn't a good place to be, especially not with him like that."

"Do you have a ship here," Jade asked, not entirely sure what Laike had been going on about.

"Ship?" Laike laughed. "What do I need a ship for? Oh. Right. You haven't had the big reveal yet." She struck her forehead with her palm. "Sarashen, Laike. Sarashen. Ah well, can't be helped, got to get you back to Saon." She grabbed their hands, completely ignoring Sol's snarl.

"No, wait, stop!" Jade yelped, dreading another flight like the previous. An obvious train of delay presented itself. "Laike, what exactly are you?"

"All in good time," Laike said, tightening her grip. "For now, let's just say I'm an anthropomorphic personification." Jade stared at her blankly, and even Sol stopped growling for a moment. Laike rolled her eyes. "Never mind, wrong universe. Now, get to the ships, get back to your own time, and remember, don't be seen." It wasn't until Laike let go of their hands and vanished, that Jade realised they had actually travelled. Now, instead of the ruins of a building on a besieged Kintar, they stood in a clean, white corridor. A corridor that Jade knew very well, in fact. She grinned, and looked for the time and date displays that were found all over the time school.

"Brilliant," she said. "I never did get to read it."

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Next episode: Next Thursday (31/5), regarding what Jade didn't get to read.



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