1.05 – Preparation

The Grey Museum was considered by many in the historian community to be a joke and an insult. “He treats fiction as though it were fact,” most of Felix’s colleagues had said of him. “Have you seen his King Arthur exhibit?”

Felix Grey shrugged this off rather easily. And while he never outright denied their claims, he did manage to pacify them by explaining that, “My museum is dedicated to history as it might have been.”

Carda’s parents snickered at this; they knew that every exhibit in the Grey Museum was one-hundred percent genuine. As it turned out, many legends were based more in fact than most “real” historians would ever admit.

It was here that Carda began his search for Arthur Heartlight.

The museum was tucked in a small building downtown. It had windows only in the front, but lots of lights inside, and stretched back for a surprising distance. The exhibits were arranged so that the oldest ones were at the back and the newest were near the door, so as one walked through the museum, one had the sensation of moving backwards in time. Felix’s office was at the back, which suited him.

Carda was relieved to find that the door to Felix’s office was open. “Oh, good,” he remarked to Sera, “my parents’ meeting is over.” He had dreaded the possibility of running into David and Abigail here, not wanting them to infer that he was giving into their obsessive pushiness.

“Ah, Carda, come in!” Felix beamed as Carda peeked his head around the door frame. “And Sera, it’s so good to see you! Come in, come in!”

Felix Grey was approximately four and a half feet tall, but his personality more than made up for his short stature. “I just finished up a meeting with your parents ten minutes ago, Carda. I must say, I’m surprised to see you here. You haven’t come to beg for your scholarship, have you?”

“Scholarship? Huh?” Carda blinked.

“Oh, good!” Felix answered. “Your mother harped on me for nearly an hour that your grades were low, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. But I firmly explained to her that my Foundation Scholarship that I gave to you is for you to use as you choose, and your overall GPA is quite within the guidelines set by the scholarship board. Naturally, she wasn’t happy about it, so she spent another hour arguing. That woman can certainly talk up a storm. Now what I had originally called them about was—”

“Felix,” Carda interrupted, clearing his throat.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Of course you don’t want to hear about all that. You obviously came for some other reason. How can I help you?”

“I need to get in touch with Arthur Heartlight.”

Felix paused before answering. “I’m sorry, the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Don’t play me like that, Felix. I know that my parents know him, and the only possible way they could know him is through working with you.”

“Carda, even if I knew where he was, I couldn’t possibly—”

“They have Xironi, Felix.”

Felix paled at that. “His granddaughter?”

Carda nodded.

Felix mulled this new information over for a moment. Finally, he stood from his desk. “It seems you’ve learned a lot since we last met, Carda. If you’ve pieced together this much information, continuing the charade will accomplish nothing. Follow me.”

Carda and Sera silently followed Felix to the nearest elevator. Once the doors had slid shut, Felix pulled out a key and opened a panel below the controls. He held down the large red button inside for three seconds, then released it. The elevator began to descend rapidly—so rapidly that Carda felt nearly weightless for several seconds.

“How deep does this elevator GO?” Sera wondered aloud.

“Arthur’s house isn’t the only one in town with a spatial enchantment or two built in. If we had windows you would likely be able to see subspace… assuming there were anything to see, of course.”

The mention of subspace gave Carda a twinge of regret. It was possible that, if they were indeed traveling through subspace, they were speeding past Michelle at this very instant. As much as the thought made Carda want to rip the doors open and dive out in search of his sister, he knew that it was too dangerous. He didn’t know enough about realspace, much less subspace, to be rescuing anyone. His current errand was a necessary first step to that ultimate goal.

Eventually the elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors opened to reveal what looked like the entrance to a heavy-duty nuclear shelter.

“I know Arthur has a reason to be paranoid, Felix, but don’t you think all this security is a bit TOO much?” Carda inquired.

“Without Arthur, we’re all in big trouble,” Felix replied cryptically as he stepped to a panel beside the door. “Arthur, it’s Felix. I have two guests who need to speak with you. Urgently.”

A red light blinked on next to a lens; Carda guessed that Arthur was observing them via camera to ensure that Felix hadn’t been coerced into bringing them here. The red light winked out and several clacking sounds, accompanied by a drawn-out hiss, echoed through the chamber as the door slowly swung open.

Stepping inside the shelter, Carda observed that while Arthur may be a fugitive, he was by no means living like one. The shelter was furnished almost like a mansion. Quality furniture was arranged with ease of traffic in mind, and the walls were decorated with prints of famous paintings, some of which Carda surmised must have come from different worlds.

From around a corner stepped a middle-aged gentleman. He sported a full head of well-trimmed gray hair and a bushy mustache to match. His clean, comfortable attire—a polo shirt and casual slacks—reminded Carda more of someone who worked in a home office, self-employed, than a fugitive from a group of space mages.

For that matter, Carda had to admit he had been expecting more of a Gandalf figure, not this man standing before him.

“James Carda. I should have known,” Arthur said as he gave Carda a visual appraisal on the spot. “Felix, I told you not to reveal my whereabouts to anyone, especially this boy. He’s not ready for the trials-“

“Felix brought me here because I asked him to,” Carda interrupted. When Arthur’s attention had fully returned to Carda, he continued. “And although I don’t know what trials you’re referring to, I don’t have a choice.”

Arthur detected something in Carda’s voice that even Carda hadn’t really noticed until now.

“There’s something you’re not telling me. Out with it.”

“Well, sir… They have her.”

Arthur’s face blanched to an even paler shade than Felix’s had. “I hope I’m misreading what you’re trying to tell me, son.”

“I’m afraid not. Rayn found the house… and he took Xironi. It was late last night.”

“Did she—? No, of course she didn’t. She willingly sacrificed herself so that Rayn wouldn’t kill you, didn’t she?”

Carda nodded. “Look, I really don’t know everything that’s going on, or why I seem to be important to so many people. All I’m sure of is that, even though I barely know your granddaughter, I owe it to her to at least try to rescue her. But I can’t even control these powers I have, and without Xironi, you’re the only one who can teach me.”

From there he explained everything that had happened the previous day, starting with the unintentional teleport to the roof of Everett Hall, his subsequent meeting with Xironi, and all that followed, finishing up with Xironi’s abduction.

By this point Arthur had slowly drifted into a chair to process the shocking news. “I knew she had been… But to think she would…” His eyes refocused and he stood up straight again. “Right. I know how Octavius works. He’ll hold Xironi’s farce of a trial in two days. Mostly to make me sweat a little; he knows that my granddaughter is my primary weakness. But he won’t see this, not at all!” With a determined grin, Arthur rubbed his hands together. “All right then, you two, let’s get started!”

Sera stared at him. “Uh… You mean me, too?”

Arthur winked. “Of course, my dear Angelus friend. Who else is going to keep young Carda alive through the next day and a half?”

Carda gulped. “You’re… kidding, right?”

“Son, if I had two years to train you, then yes, I would be kidding. I have less than two days. Consider that.”

Carda began to wish he had just stayed home yesterday.

Arthur’s training facility was immense. Apparently the elder strider had discovered a way to place condensed-space pockets inside condensed-space pockets, because Carda hadn’t imagined it was possible for one building (or whatever the shelter/facility WAS) to be this big.

The room was full of all kinds of platforms, walls, and other assorted structures placed seemingly at random. Sera later remarked that the sight had resembled an M.C. Escher drawing mistakenly shredded and then reassembled all wrong.

“Now, at the epicenter of this room is a clock,” Arthur said. “When you enter the room, it will start running. Your task is to reach that clock and touch it. Once you do, your training will be complete.”

Carda stared at the maze quizzically. “What’s keeping me from just teleporting there and snagging the clock?”

“Only about 500 or so spatial enchantments designed to keep you out,” Arthur replied. “I’ll be monitoring your progress, and if you get yourself hurt in there I’m sending in your friend to patch you up. Won’t do to have an injured rescue party trying to sneak into the Academy, now will it?”

“That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,” Carda muttered before stepping into the room. The door slammed shut behind him.

After realizing that standing there wasn’t going to accomplish anything, Carda took a survey of his surroundings. He needed a better vantage point from which to form a plan of action. He spotted a platform some distance above his head that looked like a good spot from which to view most of the room. He visualized himself standing atop the platform, then mentally reached forward towards his goal. He “grabbed” hold of the space he wanted to stand in and “pulled” it back to where he was.

Once the two fields of space overlapped, he “let go” of the space he was standing in and allowed the elastic nature of spatial energy to pull him to his goal.

With the exception of reaching his hand toward the platform above him, he hadn’t performed any of those actions physically, but they were the only analogue he could come up with in his mind. It really felt like he was manipulating and molding space with his hands.

And so Carda’s very first intentional teleport ever landed him on a platform nearly fifty feet off the ground. It took a second to regain his footing; the teleport had left him somewhat disoriented. Only slightly less disorienting was the realization that this fifty-foot-high platform was a lot smaller than it had appeared from below. There was barely enough room to sit down cross-legged without falling off.

From here he could see the clock: strangely, it was an antique floor model, like a grandfather clock. Definitely not what Carda had been expecting. He reached forward to teleport straight to the timepiece, but he felt rebuffed. Sure enough, a spatial enchantment rested not ten feet away, ready to repel him in a random direction if he attempted to pass through it physically or spatially. Carda didn’t know how he knew this, and it never occurred to him to ask…

Several trial jumps later, Carda found himself no closer to his goal than when he had started. Frustrated, he plopped down in a seated position on another small platform, thinking hard. Perhaps if he mentally stretched himself to poke and prod the surrounding area he could find a better way to progress.

Arthur, watching Carda’s attempts at progress via a series of hidden cameras, noticed the young man’s frustration. “Well, at least he’s thinking it through… but why is he only using his left hand?”

“Well, he’s ambidextrous, but primarily left-handed…” Sera suggested helpfully.

“He’s never going to get anywhere using just one hand,” Arthur sighed. He pressed an intercom button. “Carda, you’re not going to get anywhere if you only use your left hand. Try using your right!”

Carda shook his head, but stood and raised his right hand toward the center of the room. A purple flash filled Arthur’s viewscreen—

It started with the pain. As Carda attempted to channel spatial energy through his right hand, he was suddenly wracked with a seizing agony that felt as though it would tear his body in half straight down the spine.

The shock sent Carda reeling off the edge of his platform. Flailing about, he managed to catch the platform with his left hand, bringing him to a jerking halt and nearly dislocating his arm at the shoulder.

A miserable moment passed in which Carda debated the wisdom of dropping to the floor—risking further injury—and starting from scratch. One thought of Xironi erased any such notion from his mind, and with a sudden burst of spatial energy aimed from beneath his feet, he propelled himself over the edge of the platform again.

After a few minutes’ rest, Carda reflected on what had just happened. Arthur had suggested using his right hand to bend space the way he did with his left. He’d tried, and been seriously hurt—nearly died, he thought—in the process.

“Nuts to THAT,” Carda muttered, noticing a slight echo of his own voice. Strange; that echo hadn’t been there before. Ah well, probably another test, maybe to see if he could concentrate with external distractions.

As if the internal distractions weren’t bad enough. Why had Xironi suddenly become so important to him?

“No time to think about that,” he reminded himself. “Gotta get moving.”

Several hours later, Carda had lost track of time completely, though his grasp of spatial concepts continued to broaden. He was quickly learning that not every boundary was an obstacle; in fact, he soon discovered that combining a particular kind of spatial manipulation with the enchantments in the room could actually propel him further toward his goal. Eventually Carda could sense not only the individual enchantments, but also how they worked together in concert.

And then, finally, he could see it: the one trick he needed to reach his goal. Carda smirked. By now he was tired, sore, and drenched in sweat, but he would leave this room, if not as a master, then at least as an adept.

Carda teleported himself to the door through which he had entered the room. He turned to look at the clock in the center of the room, then turned completely away from it. Then he took one step backward.

As it turned out, the enchantments in the room had been designed to thwart any attempts to proceed FORWARD to reach the clock. But facing AWAY from the clock and stepping BACKWARD would cause a chain reaction that would pull the trainee directly to the goal.

It was brilliant, Carda thought, and yet almost sadistic in its execution. A master strider would piece together the trick in an instant, but one with little to no knowledge of how spatial magic operated would spend hours, perhaps even days, trying to achieve an impossible task.

Carda turned and faced the clock. Strange. He could have sworn he’d been in here much, much longer than the clock would indicate. Oh well, Carda shrugged as he touched the clock with his right hand.

An electric jolt ran through his arm and sparked across the clock’s surface. A chime echoed through the training room: the signal that the goal had been reached.

Carda turned and was about to head for the exit when a faint creak caught his attention. Turning back, he spotted a somewhat reptilian snout poking out from the cabinet of the grandfather clock.

Curiosity got the better of Carda. He leaned forward.

The snout suddenly pushed forward and a pair of golden eyes came into view.

“AAH!” Carda yelped, recoiling.

“AAH!” the golden-eyed thing squeaked at the same time, ducking back into the clock.

Once he managed to regain his footing and not topple off the platform, Carda decided to move in cautiously for a closer look. Upon opening the clock door, he was met with a very curious sight.

The clock interior could have passed for the den of a miniature dragon. Metal bits and bobs of all kinds filled the interior—some precious, some not so much, but all of it shiny and glittering. Most of it had been piled into one corner, and it was atop this pile that Carda spotted the creature.

It certainly LOOKED like a dragon… were dragons’ wings and spines made of clockwork. A faintly ticking clock was mounted in the center of the creature’s chest, and almost seemed to be operating in place of a heart. The little dragon was shivering in fright, causing its tiny chimes to tinkle.

“Hey, little guy, you okay? Sorry, you kinda startled me.”

Great, Carda, now you’re talking to something that very well might bite your nose off if you get too close to it. Brilliant.

The dragon opened its big golden eyes again and looked up at Carda. It seemed to be sizing him up. Carda wondered if it was thinking about how it would possibly eat something twenty times its own size.

Without warning the little dragon pounced. It grabbed onto Carda’s arm and scampered up to his shoulder, where it sat and proceeded to nuzzle the side of Carda’s face.

Well. Certainly unexpected.

Come to think of it, that could be said for the events of the entire past two days. Carda wondered if his life would ever return to “normal” again.