Alma 157 The Maze of Time

Shards of disconnected space and unbound time were scattered in a haphazard fashion everywhere Reed could see, such that it was hard to maneuver himself around them. Had Reed not been following Lu'um's path, he would have gotten lost a long time ago. 

Not only metaphorically, but also in a literal interpretation of the phrase. In the best-case scenario, he would have ended in a stray period of history, completely lost and without a way back to the present aside from... waiting. And this was only if he was extremely lucky, to the point that it defied comprehension. A one-in-million fluke of fate. 

In the worst-case scenario, he would have ended up a collection of missing body parts, divided over an unknown amount of spatiotemporal shards. His left arm thrust into some random city five hundred years into the past, his right leg tossed out into the open sea two thousand years ago, and so forth until he was completely dispersed across time. 

It was a bone-chilling knowing that was how every Chosen who had dared enter the anomaly had died. They had been torn asunder in a gruesome way, such that they would never be seen again. For those poor fools, there would be nothing left of them to bury. 

Reed and Lu'um traversed through a multitude of 'stable' spatiotemporal shards that were not at risk of collapsing or possibly shifting to another temporal vector -- another period of time. Entering an unstable spatiotemporal shard would be akin to suicide as they were prone to shifting, collapsing, and reopening at any possible moment. There was no telling what terrible consequences laid within entering of them...

Not that Reed had accepted Lu'um's assessment of the shards. He thought of them all as death traps in the making. 'Stable' or 'unstable,' it made no difference in his eyes. Whereas an 'unstable' shard was prone to collapsing in less than a second's notice, a 'stable' shard would only endure a bit longer. 

A couple of minutes at most, if they were lucky; A minute at best for the average stable shard. 

At first, they had avoided the spatiotemporal shards altogether, but the deeper they descended the more prevalent they became until it had become almost impossible to descend without crossing into them. 

They had entered a fractured domain of time and space so bizarre and unpredictable, neither of them had proper words to describe it. It was an unmanageable, ever-shifting, insane labyrinth of broken history. 

An unknowable maze of melding histories, events, and eras that had no connection to one another. 

When Reed and Lu'um hurtled into the stable shard in front of them, a bright flash of light blinded them. Colors and shapes swirled around them for a moment and then stabilized. They had ended up in the middle of a raging battlefield set aflame with unnatural, azure-violet fires. 

Reed and Lu'um hurriedly inspected their surroundings in search of the exit shard that should have been around them. Time was disconnected from its natural sequential order, but that did not mean that it was completely bereft of unity. 

One only had to think of a film reel to understand this phenomenon. Though the film reel was out of order, it was not cut any particular place. The entire film reel was still entirely in one piece... for now. 

Mulia's history was akin to film reel that had been irresponsibly spliced in an unpredictable order. Some events that happened near the beginning now existed near the end, and other events that occurred at the end were now in the middle of the history. 

There was no telling when and where each spatiotemporal shard was going to take them.

"....Do you see it?! I can't find it! Where's that fucking shard?!" 

"I don't know! Just keep looking and use your mind's eye to check for any abnormalities!" 

They were running out of time. Even stable shards were sturdier, they would eventually close. Neither Reed and Lu'um were interested in being stranded in some past era, so it was of utmost concern for them that they find the shard as soon as possible.

A large shadow blocked out the bloody, crimson sun above them, which prompted their attention.

Two enormous warships had flown over their heads as they crossed each other's paths. The military crests, ship colors, even their designs were different from one another. One was sleeker and narrower in design, bearing the crest of a golden tree, while the other was more robust -- stockier and heavier plated. 

It bore the crest of a crescent moon that was all too familiar to Reed. After all, he had worn that crest on his left breast for an entire year when he first arrived in Mulia. 

The two metal titans suddenly began their duel in the sky as they spat superheated globules of Anima and molten shells at one another. Chaotic explosions lit up the sky above them as the warships struck each other with furious blows. 

Below them, thousands of contenders, conquerors, and artillery littered the battlefield as they painted the earth crimson for kilometers without end. Be it flame or blood, it did not matter -- they both served their purpose as they stained the battlefield until it looked like a depiction of hell itself. 

Reed felt his blood freeze as he observed the madness around him, but pushed it all aside. He and Lu'um could not afford to become distracted. That was the mindset he had until...

An ominous chill ran up his spine. He looked up and saw that an enormous Anima cannon had taken him and Lu'um into its sights. Superheated Anima swirled inside the barrel of the cannon and then shot out towards them, intending on vaporizing them in a single blow. 

Oh SHIT!! 

Lu'um instinctively reacted when she saw the superheated glob of azure-violet Anima and thrust out her left hand. She ferociously snatched the glob out of the air and then cocked her left arm as far back as she could and raised one of her knees up. Her stance was firm as could be in preparation for what was to come. 

And then, without any notice, she put all her force into her left arm and threw the glob of Anima back at the warship. Reed didn't even see it leave her hands when she threw it. The only thing he saw a flash of pure, white light not even a second afterward. 

The glob had struck the Human warship with the fury of a thousand suns and torn an enormous, gaping hole straight through the titanium leviathan. A horrifying metallic screech stung Reed's ears as the warship broke apart at the point of damage and split into two flaming pieces, hurtling towards the ground. 

In fact, it had been such a devastating strike that even the Avunian ship had sustained damage from the blow. Its formerly pristine hull had now been blackened beyond recognition into molten slag. 

To be honest, it looked a bit better than the human warship, if only because it was not the one who had been broken into two. In light of the damage it had taken, the Avunian warship hurriedly shot away from the battlefield as it sputtered along dangerously.

When the Avunian warship departed from its initial position, Reed shouted, "Look, it's right there! Let's go!" 

The exit shard had been where the Avunian warship had been the entire time. He put the entire situation together in an instant. The reason they had not been able to locate the exit shard had been because of the warship, Reed correctly reasoned.

Lu'um grabbed Reed and shot toward the shard as fast as she could manage. They hurtled into the exit shard and disappeared, not a moment too soon all things considered. A few seconds later, the shard collapsed into itself. 

"It was that goddamned Anima drive! The damn thing was why we never found the shard the moment we arrived! It makes perfect sense; A warship's Anima drive can create a considerable amount of interference. ...Fuck, that was a close one!"

Reed cursed himself for not having thought of that in the very beginning. That particular venture had been far too close for comfort. He felt his heart pounding wildly in his chest, as if to remind him that he wasn't the same person as before. The fear of death had taken hold him for a moment back there. 

He might've been able to deflect that attack before, but it was a completely different story now. Reed would have died had Lu'um not intervened on their behalf. 

They had returned back to the fissure's temporal maze in a completely different area than where they had previously entered. In through a myriad of places and events and out the other end back into the temporal maze.

This was the frustrating hell that Reed and Lu'um had been dealing with for an unknown amount of time. They simply waded through the disordered river of time, letting the fates decide their path as it was hopeless trying to derive a pattern or any semblance of meaning from the order of history. 

And it had worked for the most part, even to Lu'um's surprise. They had already made it through the bulk of the maze. Even now, they could see the deepest part of the fissure from their position. It would not be long before they reached their destination... fate willing, of course.

Chapter end