Time isn’t solid in the Spiral.
That is what they learn.
When they land choking and sobbing in the heart of Bartleby, as the Spiral Key for Azteca turns to ash in their grip. As they drag themselves in a dead sprint to the center of the Myth classroom, stuttering and coughing and coated in glittering glass dust from Xiabalba. Cyrus Drake ushers them to Ambrose’s office before the students he’d been lecturing can look too close.
He does not ask if they are okay.
Ambrose says there was nothing they could do.
Nothing they could have done.
The wizard wants to scream that there is—there was—there could be—
Perhaps the Headmaster can see the way their whole body begins to coil like an overwound spring.
“Do not linger too deeply on this,” He says, voice still altogether too soft, too gentle. “For some places, Azteca will live on many centuries or even millennia yet—”
“—But not here, not for them, not for me.” The wizard spits, looking down at their hands still smudged with the remains of the key. And then they remember. They left a mark there. At the base of the statue that would vault them to Xiabalba. Just in case things went… badly.
They think Cyrus figures it out just as they finish the sigil of transport.
But the wizard is already gone.
Opening their eyes to smoke and the whistle-crash of meteorites as they hit the ground.
Somewhere distant, they hear screaming.
No, no no no it was supposed to be better—Maybe, maybe if—
Panicked, they draw the same marking sigil at the base of the statue and then teleport home.
The sounds of Grizzleheim’s familiar woods envelope them as their watchtower hall comes into view. But they don’t pay it any mind. They grab for the spiral door and after fumbling through their keys, pull out the one for Mooshu, if Emperor Yoshihito had taken the throne just before the fall of Celestia then maybe—maybe it was soon enough—
They do not linger in the brightly lit market of Mooshu’s imperial city.
The flash of their own spellwork surrounds them as they return to the mark in Azteca.
And there is still screaming.
There are still head and fist sized chunks of glass raining from the sky—
There is a workaround.
There must be a workaround.
Zafaria is no better, they are a handful of decades after Mooshu in time.
Dragonspyre—
…Would that work?
Would going back in time within a place itself work? Would it hold between worlds?
This time they run through the Zocalo to the spiral door, not bothering to go home, just marking the same sigil in the damp ground of the Quetzal Grove before—
Damnit.
Before returning to Bartleby’s core. Before running dead sprint out once more, this time towards the edge of the void left by the death school. Looking desperately for—
“Malorn!”
Malorn Ashthorn jumps a mile at the ragged shout of his name, and the smaller students around him scatter like startled fish. “Hey— I was—oh, oh gods what happened to you?”
“No time—” The wizard is breathless and their throat is still burning from the smoke, “—The Dragonspyre key, now.”
He seems to know better than to protest. The wizard can’t blame him. They don’t know what they look like right now, but they know by the time they were headed for Xiabalba everyone on Azteca was watching them as if they might explode at the softest touch.
Malorn pulls a chain with the key on it from around his neck, and barely has time to offer it up before the wizard snatches it away and takes back off. “Hey- hey wait!” He starts to follow but they do not have time or thought to look back. “What happened?”
The soft tones of their ever present companion invade as they reach the spiral door again.
As you turn the spiral key of Dragonspyre into the door, deep down, you know it will not work.
Shut up. Shut up.
If Raven wants to weave her impressive lies about fate—let her.
The wizard has called off fate before.
They will do it again.
The heat of the Basilica overwhelms them as they stumble out into the dim light of ruined Dragonspyre.
“Stop this madness.” Cyrus Drake is standing before them with the same words he offered to his own brother, moments before the wizard was forced to strike him down. And their barely-viable plan shatters before it can even begin. “You know better.”
“I don’t want to know better.” The wizard shoots back, and for a moment they can feel their spell deck burn in the pocket of their robes. Like their own body is ready for a fight they have not yet decided to initiate. “Get out of my way.”
Is this what it’s like?
Is this how he felt?
“Or what,” Cyrus questions, eyebrows raised. “Tell me—did you think like this when you first saw Dragonspyre of old? Did you grieve the trees at the academy who were felled? The hundreds of lives lost under the titan?”
“Stop it!” The wizard shouts “Stop trying to rationalize it— I can fix this, I can save them, I am supposed to—
“You are supposed to be my student, my responsibility, and a child.”
This is where the laughter starts.
It shakes the wizard to their knees where it turns into sobbing.
When was the last time they truly felt a child?
So what if they’re barely still a teenager.
No longer ten and facing off ghosts.
No longer fourteen and facing Malistaire.
Nineteen and facing Malistaire as a shade had felt even worse.
“I have to see it.” They choke out, looking back up to find their Professor still there. “If I don’t— I have to try.”
Cyrus seems to consider this for a moment, before nodding once and offering them a hand. As he pulls the wizard to their feet, he speaks at last. “Then I shall accompany you, if this is truly something you must do.” The formality reminds them of the moments after Malistaire’s death. When they had both stood shellshocked in Ambrose’s office.
If this is how it has to be.
It’s better than not knowing at all.
~*~
It’s not better, in fact, the momentary silence of teleporting to the Quetzel Grove is almost worse for the bare trace of false hope.
The wizard steps far enough out to make eye contact with Pacal.
Until a metiorite comes down between them.
And they are forced to bend, this once, to the will of Raven, and her fate.
