Heretical Edge

A/N - Previously at this rift, Columbus, Koren, and Felicity found themselves near a World War 1 battle before being picked up by a group of pixies piloting an airship that looked like an ordinary period-appropriate fighter plane. The pixies flew them away from the battlefield and eventually landed so the group could meet none other than Marian, who introduced herself as Jacob's apprentice and also a descendant of Arthur Pendragon's brother, Chadwick.

It wasn't enough for Columbus, Koren, and me to find ourselves in the middle of a World War One battle. It wasn't even enough for the three of us to be flown over that World War One battle in a biplane, or for that biplane to actually be some sort of fancy magical airship crewed by a bunch of pixies who had been waiting there to pick up Jacob, my secret male Necromancer alternate identity. And no, it still wasn't enough for those pixies to use that airship of theirs to take us to meet some stranger in a cloak who called herself Marian, apprentice to Jacob Donn (where had that last name come from?) who was apparently very aware of all the time travel.

Nope, none of that was enough even when put together, apparently. Because this Marian had still had one more little surprise to spring on us, one more way to make the three of us choke so hard we almost died. She wasn't just some Necromancer apprentice named Marian, not just one of my Roundabout students (I was guessing that's what she was, at least). She was also, as it turned out, a descendent of Chadwick and thus a direct line to King Arthur. A direct bloodline.

After a few long seconds of just standing still as we stared at the girl when she threw that out there, it was Columbus who found his voice first. "Hang on, I thought the Seosten were like, hardcore about making absolutely sure that every possible blood relative to Arthur was fully accounted for and nowhere near any situation that could possibly make the big guy wake up. You know, just in case any of them happened to be the Merlin Key." He said that part carefully, clearly not wanting to give away that we already knew full well the Key was Aylen, just in case.

"Yeah, too bad they don't know they're wasting their time there," Marian casually put in. "They could've just been watching Aylen instead." She giggled when our gazes snapped right back to her. "Oh man, I'm sorry, that's just too fun. Look, I uhh, there's a lot to talk about. But we've sorta gotta go meet some people and we shouldn't be late for that, so we should talk on the way. I'll get into all of it, I promise. I'll explain what I can until we get to the--aaand right about now you're wondering just how obvious of a trap this has to be." After interrupting herself with that, the girl gave a visible wince, hands waving dismissively. "Sorry, it's like I said, the whole time travel thing makes this weird. I keep forgetting you don't know me. You don't know about… us yet."

"Us?" That was Koren, sounding exasperated over all this. "What do you mean, 'us?' Don't tell me you've got even more wham lines to drop into the conversation, cuz to be totally honest I'm already starting to think you remind me of that one over there." Her chin jerked to indicate me.

Marian, for her part, blinked once, twice, then laughed. She literally doubled over, clutching her stomach while utterly losing it to the point that I was pretty sure she nearly collapsed entirely.

There's something about that chick, Mountebank, the current Flique member riding shotgun ever since we showed up in this time period, put in from the back of my head, sounding as cheerful and completely unperturbed as ever. I think I like her. We all do, actually. I guess she's just got one of those faces. Or maybe it's her voice. Or maybe… I dunno, but it's definitely something.

Maybe it's a power she has to make people trust her, I pointed out, though even as I said it I was already mostly dismissing the possibility. It didn't seem right. Mountebank had a point, there was something about this girl that made her seem so familiar, like I'd known her for years even though we had absolutely never met before now. Unless it had to do with all the rifts. What if I had met her at one of those other time periods and now some of that trust was bleeding through? Weirder things had definitely happened, as evidenced by my entire life. Just, all of it.

The lead pixie guy hovered over next to my face, offering a confused shrug when I glanced at him while Marian kept right on giggling like that. "Don't look at me, our job was to bring Jacob here. We have no idea why our employer seems to have lost her mind. What did you do to her?"

"Dude," I shot back, "if I could totally disable anyone just by making them fall over laughing like that, I'd have a hell of a lot better targets for that sort of gift than some girl I just met, I promise."

"What the--" Columbus suddenly blurted out with a quick glance from me, to Marian, then back again. "That's it. You just-- you both just-- did you hear that?" He was addressing Koren, voice getting louder and more excited with every word. "Tell me you heard the way they both said it."

She was nodding slowly. "Now that you mention it, yeah, they did say it the same way. Huh."

"Who said what, what?" I was so confused, and honestly still a bit exhausted from pulling all those thousands of soldier ghosts with me as we'd gone over the battlefield. That was something else I was going to have to deal with at some point. For now, I was just letting them rest. It wasn't like I didn't have enough going on as it was. But later, when I had a minute, I would make sure they all had a chance to decide if they wanted to be released or stay with me.

"Promise," Columbus put in, interrupting my drifting thoughts. "It's the way you both said that word, promise. The sort-of sarcastic, emphatic way you said it. Puh-raw-muss." He drew out the pronunciation deliberately. When you said you'd have better targets than her for a laughing power, and when she said she'd get into the whole explanation about what's going on, you both said 'promise' the same distinctive way. Either she's heard you say it like that a lot and it rubbed off, or… or…" He frowned, looking at Marian. "Or what? It's or what, isn't it? It's always 'or what,' never the simple, obvious explanation. So what exactly is the 'or what' explanation in this case?"

Marian had recovered by that point and straightened up. She offered a quick grin, using a couple fingers to beckon for us to follow. "Come on, I'll explain on the way, like I said." Even as she said that, the girl was stepping over to hand what looked like a clear bag of gems to the lead pixie guy. "Thanks for bringing them over, here's the payment as promised. Everything you guys asked for. Plus a little extra for prompt delivery." That came with a faint, mostly humorless wink. "And there'll be more if you stick around a bit longer. I feel like we might end up needing you. Think you could fly ahead and let the others know we're on our way? Just tell them these guys made it here."

The pixie looked back to the others to see what they thought, while a couple of them carted off the bag of gems. After a silent consultation, he gave a thumbs up. "You pay well, thief. So yes, we'll stick around for now. My crew will run maintenance on the Felicity while I play messenger." With that, he saluted before taking off. The little guy became a blur of motion that quickly vanished as he flew out of sight.

"Okay, seriously, can we get an explanation for that too?" Koren quickly asked. "I mean come on, the biplane pixie airship is called the Felicity? There's no way that's a coincidence, right?"

"What can I say? They asked for a suggestion about what to name the ship, I thought you'd get a kick out of it.," Marian replied before turning to start walking away. "As for the rest, I puh-raw-muss to tell you all everything you want to know, but we really need to get moving."

So, we walked away from the plane. Only at that point did I actually take a moment to look around. We weren't near the battlefield anymore, at least. Which meant we didn't have the constant screams, gunshots, explosions, or the overwhelming sense of death. If we'd still been anywhere within fifty miles of that, I wouldn't have been able to focus on anything else. Now we were in some sort of lush green field dotted with purple and yellow flowers. There was a set of low, rolling hills to the left, and a cliffside overlooking the ocean on the right. Marian seemed to be leading us at a bit of an angle, toward one of those hills in the far distance. The sun had started to set, and I was pretty sure I could see some sort of torch or campfire light over there.

But soon enough, I definitely wasn't thinking about lights or anything else that we might be walking toward anymore. Because Marian finally took that chance to start explaining things, and hoooo boy what an explanation it was. She wasn't just Marian, Jacob's apprentice who happened to also be the descendant of Chadwick, brother of Arthur. Oh no, that wasn't enough at all. She was also Maid Marian, as in Robin Hood. Or the Robin System as we knew them now. She was that Maid Marian. Which was actually a part of the whole explanation that Koren and Columbus didn't seem all that surprised by. Not that I had time to even ask them about that.

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But if the two of them weren't sufficiently surprised about 'Maid Marian yes that one is Jacob's apprentice,' the next part more than made up for it. Because she was also me. Well, a piece of me. The girl had a piece of me, a part of me, one of the Flique inside her, merged with her. A thing she proved by letting us see that Flique member, the one we called Skywalker, partially emerged in ghost-like form to tell us in person that she'd chosen this. Which… yeah, it was a lot.

Apparently Marian had had something wrong with her brain or something, some big problem that no one could fix. In an act of what was probably utter desperation, I'd offered to give her one of the Flique, Skywalker, to help. It worked, and now this Marian chick had all my memories from my childhood up through being at Crossroads. She remembered everything up through the moment I'd gone into the past with Ehn. Apparently it was like having two different sets of memories at once. She was still Marian, the one she'd always been, but she could also, at any point, recall memories of living my life. Somehow, I instinctively wanted to apologize for that.

Oh, and I also wanted something else, but at least this instinct was less likely to make a therapist decide they needed to charge me extra. "Right, I've just gotta know something," I finally managed after letting that bombshell settle a bit. Digging in my pocket, I came out with that stone Ehn had given me, the one that checked to see if people were important to the timeline. "If you're both part of me and descended from Chadwick, you've gotta be pretty much the--oww!"

Yup, when I held the thing up and peered at the girl through it, the light coming off her was so bright it almost blinded me. I staggered back, wincing. "Right, yeah, definitely big for the timeline, got it. That was dumb." I wasn't sure what I'd expected by that point, but seriously, apparently this girl was a bigger deal, as far as my Ehn stone was concerned, than anyone else I'd looked at with it. I was still blinking away spots. Good thing my eyes could heal on their own.

"So, Flick, were you gonna tell the rest of us what that was all about?" Koren asked, squinting intently at the blue gem in my hand. "You got some sort of scanning spell on that thing or what?"

My mouth opened, but before any words could come, I was interrupted by a loud whistle. It was that pixie guy, flying down to rejoin us. "Is that a genuine Heh stone you're holding right there?"

"Is it a what stone?" I asked blankly, holding my hand out with the gem resting in my palm.

"Heh," the pixie answered.

"Heh heh?" I repeated questioningly, head shaking. "Are you asking if the stone makes people laugh?"

The pixie captain's eyes rolled as he insisted, "No, no, no, I'm asking if it's a Heh stone. Not hehe or haha or hee hee, Heh. Is that a stone of Heh? Because it sure as hells looks like one."

My face twisted in confusion. "Huh?"

"Yes, they use that name as well," the captain confirmed brightly. "So it is one of those."

I started to repeat the same line of unhelpful questioning again before catching myself. After a brief thought and consultation with Mountebank, I carefully asked, "Okay, so when you spell that, are you using--"

"Oh for Gods sakes," Koren blurted, unable to take the back and forth anymore. "He means Heh, the Egyptian god of eternity. Heh, Huh, and also sometimes Hah. Heh, the Egyptian personification of infinity or eternity. And for all we know, also maybe a real person who posed as your goddamn paperboy or piano teacher or something. Quite frankly, it wouldn't surprise me at this point to find out that the Egyptian God of Infinity was your fucking poolboy!" she got all that out before visibly blushing as her shoulders hunched self-consciously. "Sorry, I just-- sorry."

"It's okay, it can be a lot," I assured the other girl quickly. "Trust me, I know. It's just too much sometimes. Or kind of all the time. But seriously, there's a god named Heh, Huh, and also Hah?"

Mountebank piped up. Story says yes, there is. And also that she would've said something before, but that whole thing was just too fun to interrupt. She's absolutely not sorry about it.

After telling him to inform Story that I would absolutely get her back for that later, I shook it off and looked at the pixie captain again. "So uh, you were asking if this is a Heh Stone, Captain, err…"

"No, not Err," he corrected, "that guy's only our navigator." He puffed himself up proudly, 'standing' (well, hovering) at attention in midair while announcing, "I am Captain Namytwiep."

"Namytwiep?" I echoed. "Huh, that almost sounds like--" I stopped myself at the last second. No way should I actually say the name Namythiet, the other pixie I knew. There was too big of a chance that it might change the timeline if this pixie knew I was aware of another one with a similar name. What if Namy was a family name and Thiet or Twiep were personal names? What if this was Namythiet's father or uncle or something? No, if I said something now and changed her future, it would--yeah, it wouldn't be good. So I swallowed back those words and forced myself to go back to my original question. "Uh, I mean, you think this is a Heh stone? I got it from um, a really powerful guy. He said I could look through it to see if people are important to the timeline. I mean, important in a 'they absolutely cannot die or it'll change things' sort of way."

"That would be a Heh stone," Namytwiep confirmed. "Extremely rare, as you probably know. And incredibly useful for a time traveler." After saying that, he gave me a curious look for a second before simply adding, "Ahem, my crew and I can spruce the thing up for you if you'd like."

"Spruce it up?" I exchanged a glance with the other two. "What do you mean, like, polish it?"

"Oh we can do that as well, certainly," he agreed. "But no, I mean we can make it easier for you to look at things with it so you don't have to hold it like that all the time. We could make it into a looking glass, or a pair of bifocals, or--"

"A monocle," Columbus abruptly cut in, giving me a significant look. "They should turn it into a monocle."

With both him and Koren nodding together, I shrugged. "Uh, sure, I guess, if you think that's a good idea." I really, really hesitated to hand it over. But those two seemed insistent that it was the right move, and Marian seemed to trust him, so… I went ahead and held the thing out. "How long will it take?"

"Not long at all, you have my word!" He saluted again, before whistling. Immediately, a couple more pixies appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Something told me Captain Namytwiep was never as alone as he seemed to be. Especially considering those two newcomers didn't even need to be told what was expected of them. They just flew down and carefully took the gem from me before flying off with it. Yeah, he definitely always had secret reinforcements nearby listening and watching. Which was absolutely fair, given how small the pixies were. Their captain could get in trouble pretty easily.

Once those other pixies had flown off together with the stone, Marian chimed in. "Well, now that you know who I am-- who we are, I guess it's about time for you guys to meet the others so you can find out what's going on."

"The others?" Koren immediately asked. "Don't tell me there's even more Sort-Of Flicks around here. Is this a Flick convention?"

Before I could remark on how terrifying that sounded even to me, Marian shook her head. "Not exactly a Flick convention, or even a Flique one. As for being a convention in general… uh, hold that thought for a minute." With that, she kept leading us toward the base of that one hill. I could hear the occasional sounds of gunfire and explosions in the far distance, away from where we were going. More signs of Bystanders going through one of if not the single worst war in human history. The front was only miles away from here, close enough for us to hear people killing one another now and then, reminding us that even if we did everything right and stopped any supernatural or alien threat, humans were more than capable of committing plenty of atrocities on one another without any help.

It was a thought that I shoved out of my head, an act that was made easier once we crested a small hill and found ourselves standing over what looked like the aftermath of one of those very same battles, an expanse of land stretched out before us that was just filled with broken, dead, mutilated bodies. Except in this case, the bodies were mostly not human. They were Alters. Dozens and dozens of Alter bodies strewn across the field leading toward an assortment of tents surrounding the entrance to a cave.

"Uhhh did we miss the party?" Columbus managed after we had stood there for a minute, taking in that sight.

Grimacing, Marian quietly murmured a name I didn't expect to hear. "Invidia." Then she explained what that bitch had been up to for all this time. And boy was the explanation a doozy. Not that there was a single part of this entire situation that wasn't, but still. This was beyond all that. This was an Invidia who was still possessing the ghost of Charmeine, and had somehow absorbed some version of me from one of the earlier rifts. So now she had all of my powers, everything I'd had from the moment these rifts started. And as if that wasn't enough, apparently the Invidia-possessed Charmeine ghost had also, as of a couple decades earlier, possessed Joseph Bell. Yeah, the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and actual leader of the Crossroads Bow Street Runners, was possessed by Charmeine-Invidia. Was he still possessed in the present--err future from now-- my normal time? Had he been possessed throughout my time at Crossroads?

"Err, so wait, are you saying these guys were working for Invidia and you fought them off?" Columbus quickly asked, cutting through my rapidly spiraling thoughts.

Marian choked a little. "Me? I mean, I'm good, but I'm not that good. I had plenty of help. And there they are now."

Indeed, a group of people had emerged from that tent area, picking their way through the bodies as they approached. And in this case, no introductions were necessary. I recognized all of them.

"Hey, guys," Shiori called out, flanked by Avalon, Sands, Sarah, Miranda, Asenath, Jazz, Theia, Tristan, Vanessa, Sean, Roxa, Aylen, and Tabbris.

"Nice of you to drop in."