Atop the blood-soaked slope, a figure moved, meandering slowly between the topmost bodies. He was tall, wore a long coat and a floppy hat that cast the top half of his face in shade. The collar had been turned up and the coat itself had clearly seen plenty of wear and tear, but it had been lovingly repaired a number of times, as had the hat.

As he stepped gingerly over the dismembered and blackened head of what might have been a Mendean, his hands remained firmly locked behind his back, head down, as if lost in deep contemplation. He seemed oblivious to the latest iteration of the foursome at first, but after Aralli had spoken at length, his head cocked in her direction and he ceased walking.

Still some distance off from the group, the figure had to raise his voice in order to be heard. His voice was low, but carried well enough. “I would advise you to proceed with caution, but you clearly do not require my advice. You can see your failed counterparts well-enough to discern the terrible threat you have faced, and will face” said the man in a voice that was almost without accent. He spoke in Adelunan.

He bowed, deep and low, arms sweeping in an exaggerated flourish, before the dishevelled figured snapped upright in an elastic motion. His hands now hung loosely by his sides, stained with blood. A smile visible from within the shadows.

“I thank you, I thank you all. For your deaths have freed me from certainty, from destiny and from time itself. I am no longer beholden by prophesy, nor by destiny. I am at last, free. Free to make my own decisions, to wander hither and thither. Soon the clock will be finished and I will make my home here.”

He pointed at Mendean. “I will…I have seen you at the end of the world. Do you remember?”

Mendean stared up the slope to peer at the man, afraid to step any closer, for fear of what had already happened to his contemporaries. The blood evident on the man's hands also unnerved the young god. Was this man responsible for all these deaths, or was there another reason for the stains?


Aralli had spoken of echoes, but as he observed the many corpses, they seemed more real than echoes to him. But then, he was not as familiar with the nature of time as the elf. She had once been intimate with its vagaries and vicissitudes. Mendean had not had that pleasure. He wanted to move on, but he feared for his life.


Considering the stranger's words, questions formed in his mind like flying ants emerging from the ground on a still summer's day. It was all he could do to form whole sentences as his mind reeled with the implications of what was being said. That there were many iterations of himself in other timelines; he had known that for some time. His recent merging with an alternate version of himself had made that abundantly clear. The other Mendean had known about this for even longer than the one of this world. The knowledge they shared had been a revelation.


But that there were so many versions of him out there? It had always been a notion at the back of his mind, but to be confronted with the truth of it was another matter entirely. His entire world-view was being challenged by this seemingly simple encounter.


And then the man mentioned the end of the world and Mendean knew that it was true. During the crisis he had found himself stuck in the future, where terrifyingly powerful entities known as 'shining ones' fought their battles overhead with little interest in the collateral damage of their immortal conflicts. He had seen the man atop the rise. The man had warned him of impending danger and even guided him to safety, after a fashion. But when Mendean had looked for the stranger, he had vanished.


And now here he was, in the present day, hands dripping in gore. Mendean felt a frisson of familarity. He turned to Luthene and the soldier for encouragement, then called out a question.


“Who are you?”

Seeing herself dead so many times over was jarring to say the least. For a long time, Luthene didn’t say anything, first because there were no words, and then because she didn’t have any sort of solution. The elf suggested that they were dead ends, time’s failed attempts to solve a problem. But in what world? Were those bodies reflected of different possible futures in their present world? Or did they come from some parallel world, where somehow time had also broken, and these same four people ended up in this same place? Luthene found that idea a bit hard to swallow; there were hundreds of bodies in front of her, how could there be so many other worlds were the exact same circumstances lines up so precisely, and all gone wrong? Yet the subtle variations seemed to give credence to that line of thinking. The colour and breed of the horse changed, the man’s hair, their clothing, small changes that didn’t quite match their present.

“Perhaps we’re not supposed to all be together. These two,” Luthene added, nodding at the man and the elf, “are not even from this world, so of course finding a path for you both that merges with that of myself and the boy is going to be difficult.” Luthene glared at the elf when she used that name, but did not comment on it. “Go backwards, yes, but we should also make our way to the clock from different directions. And none of us should choose this direction,” she concluded, gesturing at the bodies in their current path.

The arrival of a living man moving past the dead towards them was unexpected and unnerving. It was hard to see his face due to the shadow cast by his hat, and Luthene wondered, with trepidation, how he had gotten blood on his hands.

Then the eerie stranger was gone.

Then the boy asked her a question.

“I am called Alyson,” she replied. It was truthful, up to a point, and she feared that the boy was looking for another answer, one she could not give. “I’m a mercenary, and I was hired to help see some scholars and their things safely here from Adeluna, a job I took on because I wanted to see the clock for myself. I am from this world, born in a small town within the Kingdom.” She paused. “Why do you ask?”