The Times Are A-Changing | Rebekah Bourg

General Summary

Tess materialized in the Paper Tavern and dashed a tear from her eye. Visiting her family had made it even harder to leave them again. Stolidly, she tucked those memories away, to be thought about some quieter time, apart from the group. As she did so, she noticed that some of her memories had changed regarding General Blaze, the Rayskel Kays, and the sea voyage. There had been a fight. She looked at Shanna and was not surprised to see her using a metal leg, but she was certain that it should have surprised her. Glancing around, she noticed the vague image of a girl appear in the mist, and she felt herself poised on the edge of fate’s shears.
  Edging toward Tala, Tess asked her niece who she though the girl was. 
“Probably Phoenix,” came the gruff reply. “I have a feeling that we could really change her for the better if we wanted to, but it’s foolish to toy with time. We’ve lived. Our choices have made us who we are. Why would we change our past? Let’s go home.”
Teju perked up at the mention of Phoenix. Closing her eyes, she focused on Phoenix and attempted to picture what she may have looked like as a young girl, then shapeshifted into that image. 
“Tess, do I look like the girl in the mist?” she asked. 
But the image was too vague.
Tess recommended that the group aid the girl and Colonel Blaster agreed, as long as they also saved Vincent. With that, they all dove into the mist and materialized in a meadow. Laughing children clustered around the girl who sat with book and notepad, begging her to play with them, but she reluctantly refused, explaining that she needed to study. As they resumed their game of hide and seek, Teju assumed a child’s form and joined in, quickly confirming that the girl was indeed young Phoenix. 
Meanwhile, Tess asked Tala how they could distract the girl so she could touch the notepad and absorb some of its memories. Raising an eyebrow, Tala responded dryly that Tess might consider turning invisible so she can touch it whenever she wanted. Tess stared blankly at the fourth wall, then said, “Yes, that might work.” She proceeded to do just that, and learned of the book’s creation, sensed long hours of study, and an exam which would soon occur.
“Help me!” The muffled cry came from a boy who had fallen into an old well. Phoenix looked toward the sound, then back to her book, frowning.
“This is the turning point in her life,” Tess said. “I bet originally she didn’t help him.” 
She created a ladder to aid Phoenix in the rescue. Shanna mimicked the boy’s voice and employed all her persuasive powers to petition Phoenix to help. Groaning, the girl relented and slid the ladder into the well. Seeing that the boy was battered from the fall, Phoenix put her arm around him. 
“Come on, Baylan. Let’s get you home.” Using an aneen created by Tess, the two children hurried to the boy’s home. Shanna took Phoenix’s books and followed, she and Tala quickly reading through both text book and notepad. They were disturbed but not surprised by the harsh utilitarian ideas and Machiavellian tone of the girl’s writing. 
“Let’s just fix this,” Shanna said, jotting down notes on the virtues of freedom, honesty, and a more balanced system of government.
As Phoenix left her friend’s house, Tess accosted her in Blind Bertha disguise and handed her a parcel of energy drinks, glow globes, and other study supplies. 
“I know you have a test today and that helping your friend probably took more time than you could spare, but we’re all pulling for you, miss. And if you need it, I might be able to arrange a trip back so you can have a few extra muffins.” 
Blaster let out a hoot of laughter at having distorted her speech to keep time travel a secret. Phoenix looked at him, then back to Bertha, but the woman was gone and Tess thought it was probably for the best. Grimly, Phoenix faced her father and explained why she hadn’t completed her essay. Despite the best attempts of Shanna, disguised as Baylan’s father, to convince him to allow an extra day as a reward for helping her friend, the old duke coldly informed his daughter that for her failure, she would remain in the duchy rather that being sent to study at the capital.
As the Paper Tavern materialized around them, the group acclimated themselves to their new memories. Shanna had left home and been taken in by a gentle, altruistic Lady Phoenix. Her fiancé, a young naval lieutenant, had traveled to the Rayskel Kays and returned with a Helm which he gifted to her and with which Shanna founded the Order of the White Flame to bring peace to the peoples of the Ninth World. Brute was the Order’s Sergeant at Arms. Teju and Omalade had voyaged to Ghan to form an alliance, which was happily solidified by the marriage of Omalade and King Laird. Colonel Blaster had also traveled with them and now resided on a cabbage farm, occasionally helping the royal engineers in testing various machines, especially catapults. Saiylar had served several months in prison for poisoning the royal court, but Lady Phoenix obtained a pardon for her and now allowed her to train with the best apothecary in her duchy. Tala and Tess had also spent some time in prison for breaking and entering, but upon their release had gained employment as researchers on loan from Balarad. In their off hours, they spent considerable time with their new friend, Teju, and her new friend, Humphrey, and together had many grand and sometimes sketchy adventures. Humphrey then uploaded himself to the datasphere. Alatsar was employed as a beast tamer by Dorian, and Dorian reigned peacefully over his duchy and had recently begun paying court to Lady Phoenix. Everything was nice.
“You have avoided much trouble by making that voyage through mist,” Charon stated, then turned to Shanna and asked, “Why do you insist on using a metal leg when you can easily create one of flesh?” Shanna pondered the question, then replied, “I lost my leg in a fight. I don’t want to forget that, or any of my choices by which I have created who I am.” 
Kronos smiled at her explanation, then informed the group that the Tavern was sort of a gateway into the datasphere and, though they had entered by accident, they now had the opportunity to completely merge with the datasphere, thereby gaining access to unlimited knowledge and power. They would be able to create avatars by which they could interact with the world, entering at any point in space or time. Or, if they chose to remain mortal, they could remain in any timeline they chose, memories intact.
Colonel Blaster was already pulling the mist from Kronos’s hand. “Let’s save Vincent!” he cheered.
Saiylar and Shanna accompanied him and found themselves amid the scouting party that younger Blaster had refused to join. He now found his friend and the other soldiers as they hastily prepared to withstand a dread destroyer. Saiylar created an incandescent avatar of herself, hovering above the party, relieving fears and raising hope. A barrage of missiles came toward the camp, and Blaster created a clear solid dome which absorbed several blasts. Shanna swept several more missiles away with a strong gust of wind. Remembering his past encounter with a destroyer, Blaster altered the ground to not channel electricity, then charged at the destroyer. Saiylar streaked across the sky and afflicted the mechanical monster with terror and dread, which perplexed it but did not halt its advance. It stumbled when she turned its legs into carrots, and shot out a wild spray of lightning, striking Saiylar. Irritated, Saiylar turned the destroyer’s power cell into a cabbage, in honor of Blaster, and the monster was vanquished. The soldiers jubilantly surveyed the destroyer, which again has mechanical legs, and Shanna convinced Vincent that, though the power cell might look like a cabbage, it is, in fact, a power cell. He resigned later that day, and the group now remembered that Blaster had talked with Don, not Vincent.
They traveled to the Tavern and, after traveling back to visit her mother, Shanna returned again to the Tavern and uploaded herself into the datasphere, intent on fostering peace in all times and timelines as the deity of the White Flame. Tess also traveled to visit her family again, and the rest of the group agreed to help Kronos learn what existed in a void space that he could not see. They materialized in a small mountain village and discovered that the void was inhabited by a tall multi-dimensional pith, and when they saw it, the team suddenly remembered that they must obtain a mozck, whatever that was. Shanna’s avatar self materialized, unable to see or sense the pith but eager to help, and the team flew to a mountain hundreds of miles away where they knew that a creature was causing destruction. At the foot of the mountain was a tumbled mass of boulders and cyphers, and Colonel Blaster snatched up a cypher, intending to sort them by smell, but when he touched it, the cypher disintegrated into a cloud of nanites which reshaped itself into a mozck, which looked like a mechanical starfish. It willed the group to hand over all their cyphers, but each person resisted the attack. The mozck swarmed them, trying to take the cyphers by force, and Tala opened a wormhole, transporting most of the swarm to the pith, but the nanites that remained infected another cypher and replenished their numbers. Blaster attempted to make the mozck lazy and Saiylar made it dumb, but aggression never required intellect, and the mozck attacked again. Teju altered the mozck to be the size of a pea and the group whisked it back to the village where the pith sensed its presence and teleported it into the void.
A second pith arrived and cosmic, inter-dimensional battle ensued, often damaging or destroying the village. Saiylar tried to inspire the citizens to fight the piths, but knowing of the creatures’ existence only terrified the defenseless folk. Tala used a wormhole to teleport the piths to the moon, but they teleported themselves back. Shanna and Humphrey created a time bubble around the void to contain the damage and, unable to project an avatar into the void without the pith teleporting it to space, they attempted to shrink the bubble, thereby crushing the void. After Saiylar attempted to stuff them in her stasis pod, the piths teleported the group to the other end of the world. Teju remained there to recuperate from the harm she had sustained when carrying the mozck, but the others traveled through the center of the earth and arrived in the village just in time to see the first pith launch a swarm of nanites at its attacker. Within seconds, there were two mozcks and one pith, which vanish, and the void space collapses.
The group returned to the Tavern where Saiylar merged with the datasphere. 
“I’m honestly disappointed that I didn’t get to resuscitate anyone,” she said. 
Tess hugged Shanna’s avatar and told her, “I’ll always remember when you were human.” 
They all bade farewell, and returned to their chosen timelines.

Report Date

18 Sep 2021