I repeated everything to him again, but this time explained how our conversation continued from there. Occasionally he would look at me in disbelief but after thinking about it realized what was happening. It was a testament to his intelligence that he could take my insane ramblings and form them into logical sequence of events. Between my migraine and the overlapping memories I had lost touch with reality.

“So you’re manipulating time.” For some reason father had placed his coinpurse on the desk. He removed a golden sovereign and inspected it. “What you’re telling me is so convoluted that I believe you. I can’t imagine you would make this up or someone would set you up to this. You...saw the Magistrate come, you activated your magic, and then you went back approximately an hour into the past. You came here, used your magic when I asked you to, and went back another ten minutes or so.”

The migraine had faded slightly. I was unsure how to respond. Separate memories competed in my head. Parts of my mind insisted that the past had occurred in completely different ways. Even worse, another part of my brain insisted that it was remembering the future. All I could do was focus on what was happening each moment. Only the present was real.

Father placed the sovereign on his desk and tapped it with his fingernail as he thought. He nodded as if he had come to a decision and removed his golden rings. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to give you some things to take with you.”

“To take with me?”

“Yes. I can’t give you anything that makes it obvious you are part of this family. Nobody can know who you are. Your mother is in the city. If the Increate is kind they won’t find her. I’m going to tell everyone in the manor what is coming. Hopefully they will not hunt down the servants and make them suffer for my sins. You have maybe half an hour to run. If this power is real, it may be what you need to survive. You must be very careful as well. If someone helps you and is caught, they will burn.”

“Why are you acting like you aren’t coming with me?” The migraine continued to fade. The world started to make more sense. Like specters my feelings of loss and abandonment drifted back. Who would I have to rely on?

“I can’t. Maybe if I had a couple days notice.” Father placed the sovereign and his rings into the coinpurse and rose to his feet. He walked over to the saber and grabbed it before continuing over to me. “So what you have to do is become powerful. If you are somehow going back in time, I want you to become strong enough to give me those couple of days. I’ve put a lot of blood and tears into building up our family legacy. You’re still just a boy, but I’m asking you to help me.”

He handed me the coinpurse and kept the sword for himself.“Take this. You know Volario Faske? He’s my friend, you’ve met him before. He has the tailor’s shop in the Market District. Go there and tell him to get you out of the city. Go to one of the other Great Cities. Odena is closest and Archon Vasely rules fairly. I’ve given you a very unconventional education and I know you’re a smart boy, you’ll do fine.”

“What am I supposed to do?” The wool pouch was heavy with coin. A man like my father mostly dealt with gold. Though it was nothing to him, it was enough to live a simple life for a few decades. But that was not my path in life.

He selected a couple books from his library including the leather-bound tome he had touched before.“You need to learn more. Don’t join the Academia. Find the philosophers and impress them without letting them know the truth. Don’t flaunt this money. Get a travel bag. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I have failed you and your mother like this. Now please, go. ”

“I don’t want you to die.” By now I had begun to feel like myself again. I knew we were saying our goodbyes. This would be one of the last memories of my old life. A childhood severed away, and over what?

“Get far away and don’t look back. The Magistrate are thorough. Once they get close enough it’s impossible to slip through their grasp.” Father held the scabbard in front of his face and unsheathed a few inches of the saber’s blade. Even after decades he had kept the blade polished and well-honed. “Strength on your journey, journey strong.”

I hugged him for as long as he allowed.

***

I wandered through the city, down familiar streets filled with unfamiliar faces.

No matter how far I walked my thoughts kept returning back to my home. I remembered looking back at my father, seeing the sadness in his eyes as he held his sword. After a while I thought I could smell smoke in the air but it may have been my mind playing tricks on me.

I considered my future in a futile attempt to ignore everything happening. Others had provided for my every need as I grew up. Servants washed my clothes and prepared my food. Tutors instructed me how to think. Now father had stitched together a plan for my survival, trying to provide for me even in the shadow of death. He had held my hand for so long that I was determined to pull him back to his feet.

My mother was somewhere in the city. I wanted to look for her but how could I? I had no idea where she was. Velassa was a Great City, not to mention the Magistrate would be looking for her. And most of all, this way I would never know her true fate. There would always be the chance that she was still alive. I promised that one day when I became strong enough I would look for her.

I had used magic. What that fully entailed remained a mystery to me. Most powers were linked to the material plane though some were more ethereal than others. Archon Nony wielded the spark of purgatory. Vasely held dominion over sound. The Huntress walked from shadow to shadow. The idea of being able to return to the past seemed far more mystical in comparison.

After a few miles I entered Market Street. Vendors presented their wares, a hectic mix of jewelry and weapons and clothing and anything else they felt would attract customers. The smell of grilled meat offered a welcome distraction from my thoughts. I weaved my way through the crowd, keeping my eyes open for a particular sign. Eventually I spotted a wooden board swinging in the breeze, engraved with a pair of crossed needles above the word FASKE. Unlike most of the proprietors of Market Street, he had no need to advertise his services outside of displaying his name.

A bell tinkled overhead as I entered the shop. A man sitting on a stool glanced up with a frown. He was hardly taller than a child but there was no mistaking his age. Sunlight gleamed off his bald head and a heavy white mustachio drooped past his chin. He wore simple cotton clothing in defiance of the luxurious outfits arranged around the store. Beside him was a wooden mannequin in a half-finished dress covered with a gaudy assortment of lace and sequins.

“Please schedule an appointment in advance, boy. I’m very busy.” Volario Faske studied his fingernails as if to emphasize his point. His guard, a brute of a man sitting on a chair that threatened to collapse under his weight, didn’t even bother to glance up from his book.

“I don’t care how busy you are.” The words slipped out before I could stop myself. "This is important."

Volario snapped his fingers without bothering to look back at me.

The guard sighed and closed his book. The chair creaked as his massive bulk slowly rose rise. “Have some respect for your elders, boy. You are in the presence of Volario Faske, whose legend eclipses the Civilized Lands. It is said that even the Archons seek out his talents.”

Volario started worrying at a dress sleeve, unraveling an errant thread. “Yes, some have certainly said such a thing.”

When I had come here with my father a few years ago he had warned me about the eccentric clothier. The more ancient he became the more liberties he took in dealing with people. Half of his fame came from the notoriety of offending a host of people. Father found him amusing; their conversation had mostly consisted of insults and thinly-veiled threats that somehow concluded with an invitation for him to eat dinner with us.

I bit my tongue and forced myself to speak calmly. “I need your help to get out of the city.”

This caught the little old man’s attention. He raised his hand and the guard stopped shuffling towards me. “I remember you. An upstart squirt who could barely let go of his mom’s hand long enough to pick up a fork. You have your father’s eyes. How is Jansen, that smug prick?”

The look on my face must have told him enough.

“Ah, so it’s like that.” Volario hopped to his feet with the vigor of a man half his age. “I knew that fairy-footed bastard would slip up one day. I don’t want to know what he did or what’s happening. There’s a lot of trouble out there waiting to be found. People like me and him were born with more balls than brains so we go hunting for it.”

“How did you meet him?”

The dwarf sauntered over to me and gave me a thorough look from head to toe. "Oh, we weren't much older than you. You can imagine how dashing I was back then. Jansen and I were acolytes of the philosophers. It was a lot of getting in touch with nature and stuffy discussions but we had some good times."

"I never knew he's a philosopher." It seemed like a strange thing to never mention. Nothing to be ashamed about.

"Technically not. The entire process takes damned near a decade. Your father never had much patience. Went to war in the Frontier." He jerked a thumb at the massive guard. "That's where he and Dondarrio became fast friends. Never had much in common before that."

"You were an acolyte as well?" I said to the guard.

He shut his book again and closed his eyes as if the conversation pained him. "No. Not much for fancy words. I've always been a soldier. So was your father. Much more than some silver-tongued philosopher."

The mention of soldiers sparked a thrill of panic in my gut. "Do many people know you're friends? Father...upset the Archon. They sent Magisters to our home. And soldiers. He told me they might come for anyone who helps me."

I expected Volario to throw me out. Instead his eyes became even more lively. He snapped at his brother and with a heavy sigh the guard lumbered to his feet and headed towards a back room.

Volario slapped his thigh. "Jansen really fucked it up this time. We haven't talked much recently but in the end he knows the best man to patch this up. Let's find you some clothes."

The dwarf sped around his shop, gathering simple yet well-crafted clothing that wouldn't draw attention. Two outfits and an elegant fur jacket.

"My clientele tends to run toward women," he said, holding up a pair of trousers against my waist. "But these should do nicely. Ignore the frills. Supposed to be another mild winter but preparation always wins out."

The giant returned with a cloth-covered object balanced between his arms. When he deposited it on the floor, groaning as he bent over, it landed with a heavy clatter. Volario skipped over and pulled back the cloth, revealing a sword shaped like a giant cleaver and a pair of wicked stilettos. He flourished the knives with glee, the tip of his tongue clamped between his teeth.

"It's been a while," he said.

The giant---Dondarrio Faske---grasped his weapon and held it aloft. Joints popped but he held it as if it weighed nothing. Slightly more intimidating than his lesser half.

I considered asking if they had any spare iron laying around but I had never held a real weapon in my life. Better to know my place for now. And I had something more effective---a power lingering at the back of my mind. The ability to return to the past. An unreliable ability and I had no idea what its limitations were, but I suspected being able to flee would serve me well.

"How long ago did the Magisters arrive at your home?" said Volario.

I had walked several miles to get here, at a pace just short of frantic, trying not to draw too much attention. Forty five minutes to get here, perhaps? That meant that I had departed before the Magisters arrived, though I had no intention of explaining the finer details.

"Twenty minutes ago, maybe?"

Thankfully they asked no more questions. Volario patted me on the hip and told me to follow him as he surged towards the door. Before he could escape, Dondarrio rest a hand on his back, large enough to eclipse the dwarf's shoulders.

"Stay," he said. "I will get the boy to Odena."

"Oh? You don't think I can fight anymore?"

Dondarrio grunted. "You never could. Dangerous out there."

I thought the dwarf would press the issue but he relented with a good-natured shrug. He twirled my way, clasped his hands together, and bowed. "Strength on your journey. Journey strong."

Unsure what to do, I returned the bow before falling in behind Dondarrio. He moved at a serene pace but his long legs ate up the distance. I stayed off to the side, head tilted away from the crowd, wondering if my attempts to look inconspicuous only drew more attention. The lumbering man with a giant cleaver proppedagainst his shoulder certainly didn't help.

"Dondarrio, is it?" I said. "Thank you."

"Just Faske," said the giant.

We passed by a couple guardsmen who were leaning against a building. Their eyes tracked the giant, completely ignoring me. After we past they laughed amongst themselves, whispering.

My heart thundered in my chest. No way they recognized me. No one besides the Magisters would know I escaped. A description of me would be passed around but it was still too early for every random guardsman to be on alert.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"Caravans," said Faske. "Many leave this time of day. Some bound to head towards Odena. You act too suspicious. Breathe. In. And out."

His advice was surprisingly useful. I focused on the air flowing through my lungs, allowing myself to be swallowed up in the giant's shadow. After fifteen minutes of pretending my heart wasn't on the verge of failure we arrived at the caravans.

Shouting. Men bustling about, hauling crates and cursing. Sweat and tar and other random, contradictory scents. Spices and herbs and metal. Faske lumbered through it all, carving a path through the chaos with his bulk.

Then, a different type of shout. A Magister stood in the center of a group of distraught men. They knew better than to contradict a divine official but from the looks on their faces they were seething.

The Magister was a middle-aged gentleman with refined features. An orb of white flame whirled around his head like some orbiting crown. He shouted again, his voice slicing through the clamor. "I repeat, all caravans must be thoroughly searched before departure."

Faske stopped, pressing a hand against my chest---as if I had any intention of approaching the Magister. "We find another way."

Before we turned back, I noticed something disturbing. The white orb stopped revolving around the Magister's head. After a moment he looked straight at me.

He pointed.

"Run," said Faske.

A spark ignited at the tip of the Magister's finger. The distressed looks on the faces of the men around him transformed into horror. They scurried away as the immediate area brightened, the midday light turned blinding.

Faske shoved me and I finally took the hint, scrambling towards safety.

A faint buzz, then screams. A blast of heat washed against my back. Concern for the giant made me look back. A perfect line had carved through the flagstones where we were standing, at least two dozen paces long. In its path lay several men, screaming or staring at missing limbs, bloodlessly cauterized. Two halves of a crate fell in opposite directions, revealing bags of smoldering herbs.

The sight etched itself in my memory.

Fortunately, none of the fallen men were Faske.

The giant charged towards the Magister, hollering some wordless battlecry. I wondered for a moment if time had become distorted but no, he was simply that fast, eating up the distance between him and the Magister in seconds, heedless of the panicked crowd surging against him.

For a moment I thought he was going to chop the bastard in half.

Then another beam of light erupted from the Magister's finger. It lasted only for a second, lancing forward, through the giant, before winking out of existence. Faske's momentum brought him forward a few steps before he collapsed, neatly bisected in half.

No...

The power in the back of my mind activated. Back ten minutes.

***

"We can't take the caravans," was the first thing I said to Faske. "They're being watched."

"You know this now? Not ten seconds ago?"

The giant shook his head but agreed to take another route. We headed toward the Western Gate, where Faske said he knew a smuggler who would be willing to take me to Odena.

The only problem was a matter of money. I thought the passage should not have cost more than a few silvers, but Faske removed two golden sols.

"To keep him silent," said the giant.

The smuggler turned out to be a completely normal looking fellow. The kind of face that would blend in with any crowd.

Faske, the man of few words, shoved the gold into his hands, jerked a finger at the two of us, and muttered, "Odena. Fast."

We were in the back of his wagon in three minutes. The crates smelled moldy and I did not relish spending a week back here, but as far as options went, it won out over being burned alive. I would not mind the giant's company either. The man had elevated himself several leagues in my eyes by willing to die for a random kid, charging a Magister. Even if I had reversed time, when I closed my eyes I sometimes saw his bisected figure collapsing to the flagstones.

The week, at least, was peaceful.

In the morning I would stretch and work through the calisthenic routines I had always neglected in the past. I fancied I could feel myself becoming stronger. It felt like a sort of meditation, allowing me to purge my thoughts for a short while.

When I was finished I would join the others to break my fast, a simple meal of bread and salted halibut. The smuggler and Faske would talk---mostly the smuggler, making recommendations or small talk while the giant grunted. I ate in silence, memorizing what they said and the ways they said it.

From my past knowledge and the smuggler's chatter I formed a rough idea of Odena, the Great City of music and the arts. It was the throbbing pulse of the Civilized Lands, its streets clogged with bards and firedancers and every other manner of performer, a place where people let their muse drink and revel until the early hours of the morning. It was a triumph of mankind, a tribute to the old days when our ancestors sang stories around a campfire to forget the darkness around them.

Out of the Great Cities, it was the only one that did not fully isolate itself from the outside world. One of the other travelers claimed that in his youth he had witnessed the Phoenix Prince of the Narahven Desert enter the city. Supposedly every hundred years the perennial lord from the East would make a pilgrimage to Odena to meet with Archon Vasely.

After my meal I would return to the wagon. Faske would lay there and read his romance novels, rarely bothering to acknowledge my existence. I welcomed the silence. Occasionally I would pull the book father had given me from my bag and flip through the pages. Most of it was nonsense to me. It was full of inscrutable passages such as:

The kings from the core sea speak the truth when they lie. Their realm of fire and air came before ours of earth and water; they float and watch us drown. We see the Aspect of the Increate as a thousand entrances to a temple and they see it as a temple with a thousand holes.

Father had written little notes on the margins of the pages. Next to this paragraph he had inked ‘all is one’ in a tight, cramped script that took me half an hour to decipher. I thought of the way Everett would ramble about such esoteric nonsense and realized this was the language of philosophers. Father thought I would benefit from studying under them, though I found it difficult to imagine what my future held.

When I became too frustrated to continue reading the book I experimented with my magic. Hesitantly I opened my mind to that power. At first it seemed chaotic and mysterious but over time I could identify the edges of it. I found that if I thought about a specific memory within the past hour I could go back to that moment. If I did this more than twice in a day a migraine would begin to set in. After three attempts I had to lay in a dark corner in the fetal position for half the day.

Over the course of the week I felt my understanding slowly begin to blossom. I trained my body and mind, attempting one more second, one more repetition. It was the slow and steady progress of a man exploring his limits. Faske rarely spoke to me but over time our proximity forged a bond between us. Sometimes he would watch me go through my daily routine, and after a while he starting offering small tips to improve my form as I exercised.

It was a tranquil journey. Once we stopped at a roadside inn at my insistence. My power would make things safe enough and Velassa could not spare enough guards to patrol every inn on Avanche. I took the opportunity to bathe and eat something besides salted fish. Mostly I kept my chin down and avoided eye contact with others, but the inn had a small library that drew my attention. I browsed through the books until I found one on introductory philosophy.

It seemed like a flight of fancy. What if the Magisters tracked us down and discovered, on the route to Odena, I bought a book on philosophy? But I couldn't live the rest of my life too paranoid to interact with other people.

Father had cautioned that I would have to intrigue the philosophers of Odena in order to become their student. I paid a silver denari for the book and a set of writing utensils. The book offered a broad overview of topics I had already studied such as ethics, logic, and language. Feeling foolish, I scrawled notes in the margins like my father had. My insights seemed hollow and ridiculous as I attempted to mimic the writer’s vague musings. Most promising were mental exercises purported to expand the mind and cultivate willpower. I integrated these into my daily routine, hoping they would help with controlling my magic.

Despite these distractions I had more spare time than I wanted. Often I would think about my parents and the day when my life changed forever. I would watch the landscape drift past, feeling lost and uncertain. I was barely a young man and the future seemed insurmountable. The first step would be to join the ranks of Odena’s philosophers, and that was only the beginning. Even worse, I had no concrete destination besides the desire to become powerful.

Before I knew it Odena appeared on the horizon. Like all Great Cities it was encircled by a perfect stone wall raised from the earth by Archon Aramadat. Splotches of color marred the walls; as we approached I realized these were decorative murals depicting all manner of fantastic scenes. Winged men hovered over a battlefield, nagas emerged from water with their tridents held aloft, an unfathomably large golem loomed over a village.

The peaks and spires of a castle poked above the wall. This was Archon Vasely’s residence and despite its elegance seemed very reserved in comparison to the Panopticon of Velassa. Nony’s fortress was like a pillar stretching to the heavens, a constant reminder of his presence. After living in its shadow my whole life I had never imagined an Archon would deign to live in a simple palace.

For the first time since the Magistrate destroyed my home I felt hopeful. As our caravan approached the gates I heard music drifting through the air. I had overhead some of the other travelers mention this before. It was a soothing melody, almost like a lullaby. It was a manifestation of Vasely’s power, a sort of aura that radiated out for miles around him whenever he meditated. After a few minutes I barely noticed unless I focused on it.

The guards waved us into the city without a second glance. An eclectic crowd bustled through the streets. Strange and colorful figures mingled with the familiar commonfolk. I saw a shirtless man with a lute strapped to his back, his body wreathed in geometric tattoos. A woman in a yellow robe twirled through the streets, her face turned toward the sky, occasionally bumping into folk who all but ignored her presence.

After a few minutes the caravan came to a stop.

“Welcome to Odena, boy.” Faske pocketed his book and rose to his feet. “Damned sinful place that it is.”