Topic: Returns

The Flash

Date: 2009-01-28 23:01 EST
Part One: Superluminal

Light has some curious properties. One of these, perhaps the most difficult to wrap common sense around, is that it moves at the same speed - over one hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second - relative to anything in the universe. That means that you can't buy time running away from a beam of light; if it's strong enough not to disperse and is fired at you with a clear line of sight from a hundred eighty-six thousand miles away, you've got a second to get out of the way, whether you're standing still or running away from it at nine tenths the speed of light. Yeah, I don't quite get it, either.

The upshot of that is that, when a device designed to send out a lethal pulse of light goes off a few yards away, you've got a couple nanoseconds to get out of the way, at best. Unless you can get far enough away for the light to dissipate in the same amount of time. Adding to the fun, you wouldn't be able to see it going off until it was too late.

From what I'd been able to gather about the pulse generator, the light-speed energy it sent out dispersed to harmlessness within a half dozen microseconds - so it's not just a very bright flash until you're a mile away. Close than that, its effect ranged from rending matter at a molecular level to a knee-rattling shock wave. Human would probably need to be somewhere between a quarter mile and half a mile away before he'd be likely to survive it. Farther, to get away without some serious hurting.

All that, or a basic sense of it, went through my mind as I ran on, holding the pulse generator in my arms. First order of business was to get somewhere unpopulated. That meant I had to get out of the city, and as fast as I was going the easiest way to do that was to take the river. Water splashed up, seeming to arc behind me in slow motion as I took flight across the surface. I didn't know how long I had before the thing overloaded, and I sure wasn't going to assume I had more than a few seconds.

By the time I got to open water, the generator was shaking in my hands. When I'm moving that fast everything else seems to slow to a crawl, so I knew that the fact that it didn't feel like it was gently shifting back and forth was a bad sign. After a couple miles of passing nothing but water and fish, I flipped the thing over my shoulder. As it went, I saw the little metal disks covering the pulse lenses glowing with the energy that was pounding against them. It was blowing, and I was too damn close. The pulse generator was designed to send its blast in all directions, so there was no way for me to dodge it. I needed distance.

I don't know how fast I was going at that point. At a guess, looking back, I'd say I was reaching speeds where special relativity's time dilation would be noticeable - in other words, damned fast. As I somehow managed to gain purchase on the gentle waves under my feet, to push for more speed, I knew that however fast I was going wasn't fast enough. I might get far enough to be safe from molecular disintegration, but if that pulse so much as made me stumble, I'd be dunked. I can swim well enough, but I was at a point where I knew I'd want to pass out the moment I stopped running. Davy Jones' locker for me, if that happened.

I pushed harder than I ever have. Surface tension meant that the water under my feet at that speed may as well have been solid ground. The friction of the air against my pumping arms and legs started to tear at the Spectra weave of my costume, despite the aura that protects my skin. The static sparks that were forming grew in size and intensity. I was bathed in the light of a hundred miniature lightning bolts when I suddenly realized that, even if I wanted to, I couldn't slow down. Everything changed colors, both from the blue shift and from the lenses on my mask shattering from the strain. I think I was screaming, but I couldn't hear anything over the roar of the wind as it ripped the ear pieces away.

Then everything went white.

The Flash

Date: 2009-01-29 16:46 EST
Part Two: Deaths

I should probably have been more bothered than I was by the fact that I couldn't feel anything. There was no sensation at all, beyond the all-encompassing whiteness, and when I tried to move I discovered that I didn't have a body to move.

Then the visions started.

I saw one scene after another. Each one ended with death - starting with a toddler with light reddish hair. As the scenes went on, punctuated with the white nothingness, I began to recognize the boy in them as myself, much younger. In every incident, he - I - died. I tried to stop it, to call out a warning, to do something, but all I could do was watch. Some of the scenes I remembered, but most I didn't, and obviously none of them turned out as I was seeing them - after all, I survived them, and none of those selves I was watching survived whatever scene was being presented to me. I've heard that when you are dying, your life flashes through your mind. This wasn't my life, though - it was my death, in all the ways it could have happened. It was... disturbing, to put it very mildly.

He was seventeen. I know exactly how old I was, because that was one night I'd never forget. I'd come across a wild animal, and tried to run. I was only human, though, and the wolf that was chasing me was something else entirely. I watched as it brought me down, and saw that it was not satisfied with that small bit of flesh that accounts for the scar on my back. The wolf stalked away from the mangled corpse as the white came back.

The next one that I could place was in a motel room. I didn't recognize the room itself, but I knew when it must have happened. Shortly after the Wolf had attacked Anna. I was sitting on the edge of the dirty motel bed, and brought up my revolver, placed the barrel in my mouth, and pulled the trigger. I would have looked away if I had eyes to turn elsewhere. I remembered that depression and desperation.

After the white faded again, I saw myself running down the alley that had brought me to Rhy'Din. There were gunshots coming from above - Donald, Anna's brother, hunting me. One bullet caught a brick in the wall next to me, and the next tore into my leg. The air seemed to shimmer, not much further down the alley. The next shot killed me.

There was a series of them in Rhy'Din - there were many opportunities for death there. I saw silver bullets, and spells, and simple brute strength kill me. I saw myself stranded in a desert. I saw myself beaten and bloody on the floor of the mad German's lab. I saw Daniel Dean blast me from a roof, and I landed broken. I saw the men in black who had taken Freddie overwhelm me. I saw the thing K'lorkanto had bargained with - the horrid, multi-limbed creature - draining me somehow before turning its deadly attention to the former mage. If my mind had not already been breaking from the visions, that thing would have done it.

Then I saw myself running over the water with the pulse generator in my arms. I threw it, and saw the energy it released engulf me after I'd taken only a few steps, tearing me apart atom by atom in a wash of white. It seemed to last longer than it had between the other visions. Thinking it was over, that I'd seen how I'd finally died, my mind started trying to pull itself together. But more visions came.

I was sinking into water by a city of Earth, under the weight of someone I was carrying. I was incinerated by a fire elemental outside the Dragon. I saw K'lorkanto's creature again, on an island, rending me limb from limb. I saw more and more deaths, hundreds of them.

The last vision was of an old man, lying in a bed. There was a woman standing next to him - if it was any woman I'd yet met, I didn't recognize her through the years that had been added to her face. When the scene faded away, there were no more visions. I began to forget everything I'd seen, more swiftly than a dream fades in the light of day. I may as well have never seen them.

Only the white light remained.

The Flash

Date: 2009-01-29 16:47 EST
Part Three: Force

The first thing I noticed, after the light gave way to the darkness behind my eyelids, was something that wasn't there. I've pushed myself hard before. Not that hard, not that long, but enough to know that I should have been in intense pain. I felt...nothing. Or, almost nothing - I was clothed, and lying on something soft. My muscles weren't screaming in agony like I was sure they should be, however; there was not even weariness. After the confusion, I had but one thought, while I still held my eyes closed. I must be dead.

But that didn't seem right, either. I didn't know exactly what laid in store for me, but I had reason to believe it would not be pleasant. Where I was, where I found myself lain, was comfortable. I opened my eyes to a bright blue sky, sunlight pouring down on me. I reached a hand out, and when I turned my head I confirmed what the touch told me - I was in a field of soft green grass. When I looked to the sky again, my gaze chanced upon the sun. I was shocked yet again, when I found that looking directly at it did not hurt my eyes. When I looked down at myself, I saw a white tunic and pants, cotton by the feel. I rose to bare feet, and took another look at my surroundings.

The field stretched for some distance, and I saw in all directions a forest of spring green trees. Somewhere in the distance I could hear running water, a river or stream. The sky was pure blue, with no clouds anywhere that I could see. And then I saw them. There were people near the tree line, a half dozen men and women in clothing similar to mine. When I started their way, a man with short white hair turned from the group and smiled to me. "Welcome to the Force."

I blinked at him, and I must have been wearing my confusion all over my face because a blond man looked to the one with white hair and sighed. "Crandall, let him get used to the place before getting into all of that." The white-haired man, Crandall, glanced at him with a smile then turned back to me.

"You must have some questions."

...

I did, and he answered most of them. He liked being vague and offered a lot of maybes, but I gathered a rough picture of what had happened. Everyone there had been possessed of inhuman speed, and each of them had gone faster than Einstein's physics gave anything the right to go. They wound up here, though there was some argument as to where, exactly, that was. Some of them thought it was Heaven, or some version of it. I kept my mouth shut about exactly why I doubted I'd ended up there, and only when I thought of that did I realize what else was missing, aside from the pain of exertion.

The Wolf was gone.

Crandall saw my surprise, and fell silent as I cast about for some sign of its presence, the instincts that I'd been living with for so long that my awareness of their absence left me feeling naked and exposed. There was nothing, and I slowly came to the realization that the sense of smell I gained from it was gone, too. Everything about it was absent. I was human.

No. Not human - no more than anyone else there was really human. I could move at incredible speeds... But I couldn't. When I ran, I didn't feel the surge of energy I normally did, and the world didn't seem to slow down. I was just running. As any human can. I jogged back to Crandall, who had been watching me with a faint smile. "My speed..."

"It's gone." He nodded. "None of us have it any more. Or perhaps this entire world has it. Either way, we're not speedsters here. We're just people."

He explained to me his theory about the place we had found ourselves. He believed that we were in some sort of pocket dimension, as he called it, where the speed came from. We had all, he was sure, somehow tapped into this place. When we went too fast, it simply called us home.

When I asked him if there was a way back out, back to the worlds we had come from, the blond man came up to us and shook his head slightly. "A few have left, but I don't know how. No one here does." He looked up into the sky wistfully; I suppose he was thinking of his own home. "Best get used to the place. You're stuck here."

...

So I explored, and to my bafflement I learned that we weren't on any normal world (that much should have been evident by then, but I think my confusion excused my being a bit slow, so to speak). When I ventured into the woods, I found more people who had no more answers than Crandall and the blond man did. I continued on... and found myself stepping back into the field. Any direction was the same - the forest didn't extend very far, and somehow always brought me back to where I'd started. I was starting to wonder if Hell was an eternity spent on a tiny green world. A good distance away from any of the groups, I screamed out my frustrations.

When I finished, I heard a light cough behind me. Crandall was standing there, smiling sadly. He gestured over to the blond man, was was lying on his back and peering up at the sky. "My friend doesn't know what some of us have learned." It was too much, too enigmatic. I was about to snap at him, berate him for speaking in more riddles, when he placed his hand on my shoulder. Something about it seemed strange, quieted me. And then he pushed, and I was falling backwards.

And everything went white. Again.

Grem

Date: 2009-01-30 16:05 EST
Part Four: Elsewhen

This is more like it, I thought, as I felt searing pain thread through me from head to toe. Somewhere back of my mind, behind the mother of all migraines, I could feel the Wolf whimper, and somehow managed to dimly wonder where it had been while I was in that other world. Then, before I even had a chance to see where I was, I passed out on the hard ground beneath me.

When I woke up, to dim light showing red through my eyelids, the pain had faded some but enough was there to remind me that I was, indeed, still alive. I took a deep breath, and what I smelled snapped my eyes open before I'd even thought about it. Garbage, oil, asphalt, and pollution, most of that last the scent of car exhaust. I was in a city, and it sure as hell wasn't Rhy'Din. It was dawn, and I was in an alley, between two buildings that were thrice the height of the Dragon. There was garbage all over; when I sat up I heard a startled gasp and saw a homeless man back away from me, staring. When I moved to rub my face, I realized that I couldn't blame him - I was still wearing what was left of my mask. The lenses were gone completely, and there were jagged holes where the earpieces had been, but otherwise it had survived. At some point while I was asleep, I must have pulled it away from my mouth, because it was bunched up against the bridge of my nose. I pulled it off, and ran my fingers through the mess that was my hair while he ran off.

My gloves were little more than ribbons of Spectra, so I tore them off and threw them, with my mask, into an open garbage can. I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew exactly where I was, and I wouldn't need them there. When I stepped out of the alley, I cast a look around for anyone else who might be scandalized by my outfit, and took a look at the license plate of a nearby car, nodding to myself. I was in New York City. In fact, I knew the neighborhood I was in, and thought of somewhere I would be able to get something to help me blend in a little, if the place still existed. I could get away with my costume's shirt, but I needed to do something about my pants.

The Donor's Chest is a thrift store, their stock coming from donations as the name implied. Years ago, they stopped leaving open bins for the night-time donations, but I have long arms and the locked bin was full. It took a few tries, reaching in, but I found a pair of jeans that would fit me well enough - there were large holes torn in both knees, a flaw I was willing to accept since they smelled almost clean. I pulled a gold coin out of one of my hidden pockets and flicked it through the wide donation slot. It was worth much more than the jeans would be sold for, in weight alone - to say nothing of the mystery it would present if a numismatist got his hands on it. Then I pulled on my new pants over my tights, and set out to wander. I had to consider what I would do next.

I was lost in thought when I became aware that the Wolf was growling in the back of my brain, trying to get my attention. I noticed the smell of another person just about the moment I heard a click of metal snapping into place against metal. There was a muttered demand for money, and I glanced over my shoulder. It seemed almost quaint. The man trying to rob me was holding nothing more fantastic than a switchblade knife. It was an easy matter to relieve him of it; I'd pocketed it before he realized that he wasn't holding it any more. As if that wasn't enough, I was grinning at him. Couldn't blame the guy for wanting to turn tail and run. Or for falling on his arse when I ran up to stand in his path again.

I considered doing that a few more times, then letting him run off, but decided that I should take him to the police. I wasn't sure where the nearest precinct was, so it took me quite a few seconds to find it. I carried him in and sat him, dazed, on a chair before turning to explain what had happened to the desk sergeant. He started flipping through forms, but I didn't feel like sticking around. I don't doubt that the mugger was back on the street within the hour, if he didn't already have a record or a warrant, but maybe I'd scared some sense into him.

Fighting crime on Earth would be easier than it was in Rhy'Din - there was no magic to worry about, and no one had weapons with payloads that moved at light speed. And it felt good to do something like that on Earth, where I'd come from. But then I realized that I wasn't thinking of Earth as home. That was Rhy'Din, now.

I wasn't really paying much attention to where I was. Randomly wandering, I found myself following the East River. Something rattled around in my mind, something I'd forgotten, but I chalked it up to the fact that I was still getting used to the being back in New York, and I stopped to look up at the Brooklyn Bridge. Then I blinked, and squinted up at the span.

There was someone standing at the edge. Before I could even consider how quickly I could make it up there, they stepped out onto open space. And fell.

I stopped thinking. Sure, somewhere in my subconscious, I must have decided how fast I'd need to run, but that didn't enter into any thoughts I noticed. I just ran for the river, then onto it. It feels something like running on the tarp over an unused pool. When I was carrying the pulse generator, I'd pushed myself to run faster than I ever had while crossing water, but I couldn't do that now, not nearly. This was something that took perfect timing, on the first try. No second chances, and trying to change speed or direction would quite likely dunk me, which would slow me down too much. Whether my timing was that good or I was just lucky, I don't know.

I raised my arms up high to catch her, swinging her down as low as I could without dropping her or tumbling into the drink - without doing that, there was a chance that my catching her would do as much damage as hitting the water would have. I lifted her back up to a more comfortable position while my feet slapped across the water, skidded to a stop once on dry land. Until then, I was too busy to look at the woman I'd caught.

"Lenny?!" That got my attention, and I almost dropped her. For a while, years ago and before I ever heard of Rhy'Din, I'd gone by Lenny - Gremlin being too damn weird a name for me to tell people. When I looked down to see how she'd known that name, it made perfect sense.

Well, not exactly. It made sense that she knew my name. It didn't make sense that I was holding her in my arms, that she was looking up at me with a shocked expression on her face. I could only imagine how shocked I looked. It was impossible. My mother had sent me a letter years ago, answering one of my own sent on one of the rare occasions I'd gotten back to Earth, telling me that Anna had committed suicide a couple years after the Wolf had mauled her. I'd visited her grave. I felt like the breath had been knocked out of me, along with all my strength.

Then, I did drop her.

Grem

Date: 2009-01-31 18:40 EST
Part Five: Conversation

"Ow!"

"Sh?t. Sorry." I held out my hand and helped her to her feet. She rubbed her backside and stared at me. "...um. Anna. Hello." And then she slapped me.

I couldn't say I didn't deserve it. Now that I was looking at her, I could see jagged scars on her neck, scars that I was sure were the result of that night I'd forgotten the full moon. I doubt that, had she drawn a silver knife and lunged for my throat, I'd have had the fortitude to resist. I deserved much worse than being slapped. When I didn't react, beyond blinking at her, she did it again. It mustn't have been very fulfilling when I just stood there and took it, because she didn't go for three.

"My God, Anna. I..." What in Hell could I say?

The last time that I'd seen Anna, outside of my dreams, was when an apparition accosted me in Rhy'Din. In fact, I'd seen the Wolf, in flesh, at the same time. It was not a pleasant encounter - the apparition had developed all the wounds that I'd inflicted on the real Anna, and then some, before my eyes. The only reason I hadn't been reduced to a puddle of self-pity and guilt was that that wolf, the one on the street as opposed to the one in my mind, had driven her off in time for me to remember that whatever that was couldn't really be Anna. I remembered all of that as I stammered for something to say.

"Is this real?" It came out as a whisper, which was infinitely louder than I'd intended to say it. "Are you really...?"

She stared at me, expressions warring across her face. "What the hell are you talking about, Lenny?" Then, confusion won out, and she turned to look back over the river, to the bridge. She looked at me, at the bridge, and back to me. "...how?" Evidently, once she'd managed to get over my presence, she was able to devote her attention to what had just happened.

I explained to her how I'd developed super-human speed, and how I'd evidently managed to travel back in time when I'd had to push myself past light speed. I noticed her gaze move to my chest a few times, and remembered that I was still wearing what was left of my costume. She was looking at the lightning bolt.

"You're a superhero?" Surprise gave way to anger remarkably quickly. Not that I could blame her for it, all considered. "You... you left me to die, and now you're a goddamn superhero?!" To say the accusation stung would be drastically understating it. It wasn't entirely true - I'd waited until it I had reason to believe she'd survive - but the truth wasn't much better. I must have looked almost as miserable as I felt, because her expression softened a bit.

"I... I wouldn't say that. I try to help people. Don't know if I do all that much good." I sighed. I'd played conversations like this over and over in my head, but none of what I'd come up with sounded right. And even if it did, I couldn't just recite lines at her. "And I know I can't atone for what I did to you. I lied to you, Anna. I hurt you...badly...and then I lied about it. And I took off before I really had to face what I'd done. I don't know which was... Anna, I'm so sorry about... Hell, about all of it." I moved to a wall, to have something to put my back against. I didn't want to collapse. "I'm sorry," I whispered, and since I couldn't bring myself to look at her just then, I stared at the ground while I rubbed the back of my neck in discomfort. At least the Wolf had the good grace, for once, to be utterly silent.

I don't think she'd expected that. Of course, she didn't expect any of what had happened after she stepped off the bridge. I imagine she blinked, furrowed her brow - can't be sure, since I was studying a rock by my feet. "Lenny... What do you mean, you hurt me? And lied about it? You...left. After that dog..." She trailed off, and something about the tone of her voice made me look up at her. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open. I'd thought her brother would have told her. Maybe he had, but she'd refused to believe it. Who would?

I swallowed thickly, and pressed my lips together for a moment. I don't know why, but I wanted to be looking her in the eyes when I told her. I suppose I just wanted to make sure that she believed me. "Anna, I'm a werewolf."

She kept staring at me for a while. It felt like hours, but it was probably only a second or two - my sense of time is a little off even under the best of circumstances, since I gained my speed, so I can't be sure. "Donald said... Lenny, are you telling me he was right?" The look on my face must have given her the answer, because she didn't wait for me to answer. "God, I thought he lost it. He never liked you and..." She trailed off. "How did he know?"

I shook my head. "I don't know." After spending a moment looking over our surroundings, I pushed away from the wall. "Anna, let's go somewhere for coffee or something. I'll... I'll explain everything."

So we found a diner, after I went to find a place to pawn the coins I'd brought from Rhy'Din, and we got caught up. I told her what had happened to me after I left, from Donald's pursuit to my life in Rhy'Din, thought I did gloss over some details; and she told me about what had happened to her since I'd gone - that didn't take as long, because I'd lived over nine years since I'd seen her, while she'd lived just two. We'd been there for hours, and while I still felt low from being reminded of what I'd done, we managed to be a little less awkward about it. My occasional smiles drew questioning looks from her until I got to the part where I'd learned about her death; I think she understood, then. Finally, we sat in near silence, trying to remember if we had, either of us, missed anything important.

She stared down at her tea for a while, before looking up at me. "This place you've been living..."

I nodded as I signaled the weary waitress for more coffee. "Rhy'Din."

She pursed her lips and nodded. "Rhy'Din. I want to see it."

I tried to talk her out of it, because Rhy'Din isn't exactly the safest place to be. I should have known it was an argument I wasn't going to win. Anna might not have been suicidal at that moment, but I had no reason to believe she wouldn't get depressed again. Maybe something so new would bolster her spirits.

Grem

Date: 2009-02-01 01:35 EST
Part Six: Rhy'Din

"What are you looking for?"

We were in the alley I'd been running through when I first stumbled into Rhy'Din. Anna stood near one wall, smoking a cigarette, as I walked down the alley and back for the third time. "Damned if I know. Whatever made me go there was somewhere in this alley." I paused, felt my brows come closer together. I kept forgetting that I'd gone back in time, that my past self was somewhere in western Canada about now. "Or, um, it will be. I'm not pretendin' to really understand the Nexus, so I don't know what hint of that might be here. Or if there's anything."

She walked toward me, frowning as she peered down at the area I'd estimated to be where the root had been. There was skepticism in her gaze when she turned it on me. "Lenny, are you sure about this... this Rhy'Din?"

I snorted and nodded, and tried to retrace my steps yet again from the foggy years-old memory of my flight. "Darlin', you've seen enough to know by now that just 'cause something's crazy don't mean it's not real." I knelt down to touch my fingers to a crack in the asphalt that, if I remembered right, was a few feet farther down the alley than the root had been.

"True." Anna grew quiet as she watched me. I tried to shake off the sensation of her eyes on my back, but that wasn't going to happen. I'd had a few days to get used to the idea of her being alive, but that wasn't long enough. "But... If there was something here for long, wouldn't people have noticed?"

The crack was nothing. Just old paving. I nodded to her as I stood up. "Yeah, probably. Don't have any other ideas, though. Way I came here might not work, and I don't know if you'd survive it. Other times I came, I hitched a ride with someone there, and don't have a way of callin' them up for a lift. Couple people came an went a lot, but..." I shrugged. I never had much interest in regular visits to Earth, so I hadn't asked how to get back. I regretted that then, but there was nothing to do about it now.

"Okay, what if we just wait for it to show up, then? You know when it'll be here, so we can go through then." That was an idea I'd considered, but I didn't like it.

"Maybe. I don't know how long it was open, though, and I don't know what'll happen if I go through it, um, with myself." Time travel was starting to give me a headache. It only got worse when I wondered what would happen if our going through would prevent the rift from opening when that other me needed to go through it.

It was about then that I caught a scent that was damn foreign to that part of the city. It was just there for a moment, but I was sure I hadn't imagined it. Grass and earth, trees and animals. Anna must have seen that I'd noticed something, because her next comment, whatever it was going to be, died on her lips. Tracking a scent can be tricky if the wind isn't on your side, and it gets harder when the scent isn't being made by something that adhered to the laws of physics. I crouched lower to the ground and began walking in a widening spiral, until I picked it up again.

It took a while, and the smell came and went for no apparent reason, but I wound up looking at a brick that appeared just a bit newer than its fellows. There was a chunk of mortar missing, and the smell, when it came, wafted from there. I felt Anna draw close to my back as I wedged a finger into the hole and moved it experimentally. More mortar cracked, and the brick loosened. I kept it up until the brick came loose, and about a dozen little glass spheres rolled out of the resulting hole, along with the smells of nature.

It took us a few minutes to gather up all of the spheres. Some had rolled among the refuse of the alley, and we weren't sure how many there were, so weren't sure when we were done looking. While I was looking at one of the marbles, which seemed to be filled with shifting green and brown mist, Anna found a piece of parchment folded inside the hole left by the brick as well, covered in a spidery script. "Lenny, do you know what this says? I've never seen anything like it."

I took the parchment and cast a look over it. "Looks kind of like elven. Maybe drow. I can't read it, though." Near the bottom was what appeared to be a diagram of someone throwing a sphere on the ground. Next to that was a circle with wavy arrows pointing into it. "It's a good sign, though. I think these things are the key."

Anna was looking at the marbles now. "Okay. So...what do we do with them?" It was a good question, and I flashed back on last time I held a magical stone in my hand.

"Break one. Lets get all of them but one back in there, with this." I folded the parchment and slid it back into its hiding place, we gathered up the marbles and stowed them away, then Anna gingerly slid the brick back into place. "Don't know how running past this got me to Rhy'Din before," I muttered as I straightened and rubbed the back of my neck. I was looking down at the marble we'd kept out, resting in my palm.

"Lenny, are you sure about this?" Anna sounded nervous. I couldn't blame her; I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I cracked open that little ball, either. It seemed like our best bet, though.

"No." Having failed to reassure her, I wound back and hurled the marble at the ground a few yards away. There was no flash of light, and barely even the sound of breaking glass. We could clearly see the vapors rising out of the powder that remained of the sphere, for a few moments, then it rose and dispersed enough that I could only see a faint discoloration in the air because I was looking for it. I took her hand, both as a reassurance and to remind myself that she was real, and together we stepped forward into the mist before a breeze came along that would scatter it.

...

I don't know how that magic worked, but we stepped out into the woods I'd first arrived in, and after checking the city I deduced that we'd gotten there about six months before the incident with the pulse generator. I took her to a small town, some distance away from Rhy'Din, which was mostly populated with ordinary humans, and much less dangerous than the city itself, and lived in an inn until she got settled. I remembered that I hadn't been to the Dragon since the last full moon before I broke the light barrier, so I made sure she was ready to deal with her new world without me constantly checking up on her, made sure she knew how to reach me, and moved back there.

It was a queer sensation, when I paused on a rooftop one night and saw the flash of light from the pulse generator out at sea.