Gabriel was watching with Teresa, his guard dog, as he had taken to thinking of her. They lay on another hill near the Macedonian camp as Apollyon and his fellow captains celebrated around a fire below. The men drank and sang and cheered their leader. As Gabriel watched, it reminded him in small ways of the nights around the campfire with his teammates. Only he could never imagine his friends celebrating at the deaths of so many. Thousands and thousands of people dead so Alexander’s empire could keep growing. After weeks of witnessing horrible battles, Gabriel did not laugh when Sema referred to him as Alexander the Terrible. He could not fathom why such a talented and charismatic man devoted himself to expanding his power at any cost. Apparently, Apollyon understood.
As the men celebrated, a fight started. Gabriel wasn’t certain who had started the fight, he had been daydreaming a bit, but Cyril, the man who would become Apollyon, was at the center of it with another man, another captain. The two lunged at each other, grappling and punching, the other man trying to wrestle Apollyon to the ground. Gabriel felt something then. A prickling sensation that filled his mind and reverberated against his time-sense. Little needles poking into his pincushion-brain. He knew that sensation. Someone nearby was warping the fabric of space-time to travel to this moment. Not just one someone. It was like a series of tiny lacerations made and sealed in moments. Dozens of them. So many that Gabriel lost count.
He felt more than saw Ohin and Akikane joining him and Teresa on the crest of the hill.
“You felt it?” Ohin asked, lifting a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“How could I not?” Gabriel said.
“Felt what?” Teresa asked and then gasping to indicate that she realized what, added, “Apollyon is fighting with another soldier.”
“I see, I see,” Akikane said as he looked through another set of binoculars at the fight in the campsite below. “It is as you suspected, Ohin.”
“Yes,” Ohin said.
While they watched, Cyril, the man who would become Apollyon, was thrown to the ground and knocked insensible as the other man swung a rock into his head. As Cyril fell to the ground unconscious, Gabriel felt something else, something that made his time-sense swirl and his gut wrench.
The fabric of space-time twisted upon itself again and again. He had felt something similar when he had created the branch of alternate realty he used to save Ling back in Venice. This was oddly far less intense, like listening to sounds that had been muffled by cotton in his ears. As though the layers upon layers of alternate reality being ripped away from the Primary Continuum were a dream and not something happening right in that moment. Gabriel knew it was the masking effect of Apollyon’s magic that made it so hard to discern what was happening to the fabric of the Continuum.
Gabriel could feel some of the branches of time ceasing to exist even as others burst into existence. He dropped the binoculars and looked around the campsite, straining to see any evidence of Apollyon. He could find none. Apollyon was as well hidden as Gabriel and his teammates. He was probably closer to the action, closer to where the soldiers still fought among themselves, and where Cyril lay unconscious. Gabriel looked through the binoculars again. The man who had struck down Cyril was now fighting with another man.
The twisting of reality that Gabriel sensed abruptly stopped. The moment of bifurcations had passed. He felt the prickling sensation again, only once this time, and then there was only the camp of Alexander’s men below, his captains fighting around the unconscious form of Cyril.
Gabriel put the binoculars down. Teresa stared at him. “What just happened?” she asked.
“We have found the moment and place where Apollyon is copying himself,” Ohin said.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “Ohin thought it would be at a moment that Apollyon wanted to change. A moment he had thought about for years and wanted to make different.”
“Like losing a fight to a man he considered to be beneath him,” Gabriel said, replaying in his mind the scene had just witnessed.
“Exactly,” Ohin said. “I’m sure in almost all of the alternate realities created, Cyril arises to defeat the man he was fighting.”
“How many time-jumps did you sense at the end?’ Akikane asked.
“Just one,” Gabriel said. “I assume it’s one of the Apollyons leaving after using magic to hide where the branches are being made.” Gabriel had tried to probe that magic, but could find no clear trace of it even as he felt for it. It was like trying to catch the wind in your hand.
“Probably you are right,” Ohin said. “We wait.”
“For what?” Teresa asked.
“In case there is a second Apollyon around here waiting for someone to find what he’s been doing,” Gabriel said.
So they waited. For an hour. Just when Ohin looked like he was going to give the go ahead to move, Gabriel felt the familiar tickling of his time-sense that indicated another time-jump being made.
“Wise we waited,” Ohin said.
“Another one?” Teresa asked. She clearly didn’t like not being able to sense what was happening the way Gabriel and the older men could.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “All clear now. We hope. I will go.” Gabriel felt the prickling of his time-sense again, and Akikane was suddenly gone.
“Where did he go?” Gabriel asked.
“We need half of a relic to link us to that moment in space-time when the branches were made,” Ohin said, gesturing back to the camp of Alexander’s men.
Gabriel picked up the binoculars and scanned the campsite until he found what he was looking for, the form of an unconscious Cyril still lying on the ground, apparently asleep. He had been pulled closer to the fire by one of his men, but left to slumber. Akikane knelt down next to him. No one stopped him or even noticed him. He must have felt it safe to use magic to conceal himself. A quick flash of metal in the firelight and Akikane held a lock of Cyril’s hair in his hand. A moment later, Akikane knelt beside Gabriel.
“What is that for?” Gabriel asked, pointing to the lock of hair that Akikane was placing in a pocket of his clothes.
“Dis-phased non-local quantum entanglement,” Teresa said with a grin.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “To link us to the moment we need and the person in particular.”
“We should get back to the others,” Ohin said, beginning to slide down the backside of the hill toward the rest of the team. Gabriel and Teresa followed Ohin down the hill, Akikane bringing up the rear. When they reached the others, Sema was the first to see the looks on their faces.
“Have you found it?” Sema asked, standing to greet them.
“Yes,” Ohin said. “Strike the camp as fast as you can. We leave in five minutes.”
“My prayers are answered,” Marcus said as he began stuffing his belongings into his backpack. “No more long nights on hard ground. My aching back thanks you.”
“My ears thank you,” Rajan said as he began to pack up the tent. “No more listening to Marcus complaining about his back.”
“And no more listening to you complain about the food,” Teresa said as she snuffed out the fire with a wave of her hand.
“Hurry, everyone,” Ohin said as he grabbed his own backpack and checked it. Gabriel helped Rajan with the tents and then made sure he had everything in his own backpack. Within minutes, the campsite was packed with no trace of them having been there beyond a small fire. Rajan then used his Earth Magic to make the ashes of the fire disappear into the soil, erasing the last sign of their presence.
“Eyes on the ground,” Ohin said and everyone paused and took a moment to scan the surrounding area for anything they might have accidentally left behind. It would be inexcusable to leave something behind like a lighter or a pair of binoculars that might result in an alternate reality being created when they were found. “Are we good to go?” Ohin asked. Everyone voiced their affirmation. “Good. Gather close. Akikane will take us to someplace far away near the moment we need.”
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said, holding up a small animal bone he had taken from his robes. “Off we go.” As Gabriel stepped closer to Sema and Teresa, the blackness he knew so well began to surround them followed by the whiteness that faded to reveal a rocky plateau and a wide, incredibly tall canyon rising around them. Gabriel instinctively shielded his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun directly above in the sky. He knew this place. Not from being there, but from pictures.
“The Grand Canyon,” he said aloud as he focused on the amulet at his neck and resumed the appearance of wearing his normal cotton tunic and pants. The others did the same.
“Just so, just so,” Akikane said. “Same moment, other side of the world.”
“We want to be far enough away from the moment of the branching so that Apollyon will have less chance of knowing we are here at all,” Ohin said. He stepped toward the river that flowed along the canyon floor, as it had for millennia. “Spread out. Defensive positions. We don’t know what to expect, but we should expect something.” The team moved to take defensive positions in a circle around Akikane, each facing outward. Ohin took a place by the river so that he could see far down each end of the canyon. Gabriel started walking toward the defensive circle, but Akikane placed a hand on his shoulder.
“No, no,” Akikane said. “You are with me. You have the blade. The Sword of Unmaking. We will need that.”
“Right,” Gabriel said, turning back toward Akikane. Gabriel unsheathed the sword over his shoulder, handing it to Akikane, blade parallel to the ground and aimed back behind himself, the handle pointing forward, as he had been taught. Akikane took the blade in one hand as he pulled the locket of Apollyon’s hair from the pocket of his kimono.
“Ready, ready,” Akikane said. “The moment is almost here. Almost. Almost.” Gabriel reached out with his time-sense to the locket of hair and found he could feel the moment of the branching drawing nearer, as though he were back in the Macedonian campsite with Apollyon and the other soldier. If he focused his mind just right, he could almost see what was happening on the other side of the world in the middle of the ancient Persian Empire right at that moment. And it was close. So close. So very close. And then he felt it.
The twist in the fabric of space-time, curling and coiling, and then he felt a wall of magical power radiating from Akikane, more intense than Gabriel had imagined possible. He had never felt power like that so close. Gabriel realized that Akikane must have mastered the art of cultivating magical energy within himself because it was like being next to a furnace whose energy was being magnified and amplified by the Grace imprints of the Sword of Unmaking.
Gabriel extended his time-sense to slow the moment and perceived, through the locket of hair, a portal of potentiality, a slender thread trailing off from the Primary Continuum. It was similar to what he had felt back in Venice when Akikane had severed the branch of time Gabriel created to save Ling. However, this was more like a tangle of threads wildly woven and knotted around each other. More a portal of portals, each leading to a different, but similar place. Gabriel could feel Akikane wielding the power within himself and the sword into a fine razor-thin blast of energy, slicing through the multiple tendrils of possibility, closing the portals with a single cut. A cut that not only severed, but also cauterized, sealing that moment and place from any further branching. Gabriel was stunned by the intensity of the power needed to seal a tear in the fabric of space-time like Akikane had just done, making that moment unchangeable.
Then there was only silence and the sound of the river swiftly rushing through the canyon floor. The branches of time had been severed from the Primary Continuum. They did not exist anymore. In all likelihood, the people in them no longer existed, either. Gabriel hoped that they did. Somehow. In some frame of possibility. It seemed unfair that billions of people in these alternate worlds should have to cease to exist in order to save the Primary Continuum from Apollyon. There was no way to know for certain. So, Gabriel decided to hope.
“Done, done,” Akikane said, visibly relaxing and taking a deep breath. The severing had required a great deal of magical energy, and Gabriel was certain that Akikane was even now immersing himself in the meditative practice that would allow him to restore it more quickly.
“Good,” Marcus said. “I think a pint of ale is in order.”
Gabriel began to laugh with the others, but stopped when he felt it. Just like before, only not at all cloaked by magic: the sensation of multiple time-jumps being made nearly simultaneously. And quick on the heels of that sensation, a feeling he knew all too well, a jabbing at his time-sense that instantly made him think of Kumaradevi’s arena and the Dark Mages.
“Run!” he shouted in unison with Ohin. “A space-time shield!”
As he looked up around the canyon, he saw them. Too many to count in one glance, but at least twelve men. All the same. All Apollyon.
“Flee! Flee!” Akikane said as he thrust the Sword of Unmaking into Gabriel’s hands. Gabriel had agreed earlier, weeks ago, that if Apollyon found them, he would run. He would not try to stay and fight. Gabriel had agreed only because he knew that Apollyon would have little interest in fighting the others if it meant missing a chance to catch him. But he could not flee as Akikane had instructed. The space-time seal Apollyon held on the canyon prevented him from jumping away through either time or space.
Fireballs streaked through the air even as the walls of the canyon rumbled and threatened to crash down. Gabriel saw Teresa running toward him, casting fireballs and blinding blue arcs of lightning and whirling vortexes of white-hot energy at two of the Apollyons on the canyon above. They raised their hands and the flames and electric arcs rebounded toward Teresa. Gabriel had no time to think, but did not really need to. He raised the sword and the balls of flame and lightning flew harmlessly into the river. He could not jump out of the negative space-time field the circle of Apollyons held in place, he could tell it was too strong to break through easily, but he could jump within it.
He jumped to Teresa’s side even as the first man called Apollyon raised his hand. Gabriel grabbed Teresa and jumped through space again, appearing behind a large rock outcropping.