“The most reliable records of Alti tend to come from parts of Egypt and China. Mention of similar civilizations appear in references from the Vikings as well. Many of them are related to war.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

There were times that Bek wondered, in the bleak silence of the empty night, what it would be like to be oblivious to magic. Even to be ignorant of so much of it, like Silver was…to be unaware of the hidden circuits that sent light through the channels of Illian's walls, the subtle inlay of darker wood that formed lines and arcs in the hard floors beneath their feet, spells breathed into the house itself. To blithely ignore iron bands tucked onto a low stool at the other end of the room, cuffed in what looked suspiciously like mountain ash; it was one of the few woods impervious to magic, and, cut correctly, one of the few that could contain a magic user.

He would never know.

Silver still grasped at the plausible. She wanted him to explain the presence of the castle, in perfect condition, on an island that should have been somewhere at the bottom of the sea alongside Atlantis. She wanted him to have all the answers, as he had probably seemed to when he sat in front of her at the MASO, flipping through page after page of new hire documents and assessments. All of that was in the past. He was not sure how long it would take her to realize it. Long enough, certainly, that they had time to eat in silence. Silver studiously avoided anyone’s eyes while picking the bones from an oily slab of mackerel. Not once did she take her free hand from the wolf’s silvery back, despite Seijelar crooning and crowding the two of them. Skourett was the more reserved of the two dragons.

Just as Bek had expected, it was Illian who broke the silence to say, “You were quiet today. I expected more questions.”

Bek looked up, meeting his gaze for a moment. Between them, a new silence stretched. Illian was a patient man. “You have timekeepers in Alti?” Bek asked, seeming to surprise him.

“We do,” Illian agreed, “it makes the merchants’ work easier, or so they claim.”

“The year, Illian, what is it?”

Illian regarded him for a moment. “Paoni 1076,” he observed.

“The Coptic calendar,” Bek muttered, running through the calculations in his head. That was a difference of just over three hundred years from their modern calendars. “1360,” he finally said, leaning back as the full implications of what he had just heard sunk in. He could feel Silver’s eyes on him. He wondered if she understood. “We don’t know this place, Illian, because we’re not from your time. Not even close.”

“Are you saying,” Silver interjected, “that we somehow slipped back in time 700 years? The twelfth century, Bek?”

He nodded slowly. Illian was watching the two of them speculatively, a piece of dry, crusted bread in one hand.

“No human has ever been born with the power to affect time on that scale,” Illian stated.

Most likely, what he said was the truth. Bek had never seen evidence of any human or beast who could reliably manipulate time for more than a matter of minutes, despite decades of research into teleporters and clairvoyants. He had, however, heard of artifacts, relics that caused people to move through time. They were extraordinarily rare, dangerous, and unreliable. None documented had ever spirited someone farther than one hundred-thirty-two years back in time. From Illian’s expression, the other man was thinking something similar.

There were only two items Bek knew of in their possession that could have helped him and Silver travel through time; the Dawn Stone, and Zeharial’s necklace. Bek was not willing to reveal either of them, though Illian’s earlier comment to Silver suggested he had seen the necklace, and possibly that he knew what it was.

Of course, there was one other possibility.

“Neither of us has that power,” Bek agreed, “But your Grand Castle of Altiannia might…in our time, it’s known as the Castle of Divides, the place where we were right before waking up here. If the two are one and the same, it tests some of our more recent theories of magic convergence. Well, recent for us,” Bek explained slowly, “Now we just have to prove it to you.”

“We have to get back,” Silver cut in suddenly, “everything we’ve done up to now is meaningless if none of it even exists yet.” Despite her words, Silver seemed surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

“If I may,” Illian said, “I can see your concern, Silver, but I still find it hard to believe the two of you come from seven hundred years in the future. At the very least, we would find it hard to understand one another. Languages change drastically over the centuries. We have spell books in the libraries here from hundreds of years ago that no one can even begin to read.”

“There’s a clear-cut reason for that. Altian is a dead language in our time,” Bek informed Illian carefully, with a glance in Silver’s direction, “it has not changed. Not in a long, long time.”

Silver was the one exception to his rule, the strange enigma that had him questioning everything he believed about Alti. It was a dead language, but she understood it, and indeed, she spoke it differently than him, and differently than Illian. He was certain Illian must have noticed, but the man simply let his dark eyes trail to Silver speculatively.

“A dead language…” Illian trailed off, inviting him to elaborate.

“In our time, Alti is gone,” Bek finished for him.

“Explain.”

“Only if you’ll help us find a way back,” Silver interjected.

“Done,” Illian promised nonchalantly, and with good reason. Nothing would force him to abide by his word, and Bek doubted Illian believed either of them.

“Swear to help us return to our time, whether you believe us or not,” Bek suggested. “We already said we would help you when you offered to enlist us. You promised to help us, now swear as the Altians would. On your life. I’ll do the same.”

Illian eyed him grimly, resting his chin on his hands as the silence stretched between them.

“You and Silver as well. Swear that you will do what I ask for the good of this land.”

“Done,” Bek said.

“Aren’t there kind of a lot of people who say you shouldn’t change the past? I think that’s what we’ll be doing if we help you, Illian,” Silver pointed out calmly. Neither of them said anything, and after a moment, Silver sighed. “Me as well,” she agreed. Bek knew she had no idea what she was promising.

“Then I swear to help you however I am able,” Illian stated heavily. Silver stared between them as the wolf raised its head, clearly speaking to her.

“What? Don’t we have to do something?” she asked.

“There are multiple spell circuits in this room, Silver,” Bek informed her without taking his eyes off Illian, “one of them is an oath circle. Illian has probably sworn quite a few people into such agreements in this very place.” Illian said nothing. “Now we have to help him. Oath circles are weak spells, but the backlash is deadly. You might survive, but you’ll certainly be maimed. They’re rare, in our modern times, but here...”

“They are still rare, boy,” Illian growled, “rare and frowned upon. I only use them if I have to. Now, tell me what you would claim became of our land in your modern day.”

“To us, Alti is a legend. A real but ancient land steeped in myth and mystery. Whatever evidence of its true nature remains is scattered. The MASO, however, persists, a modern incarnation of stewardship and justice.” Bek averted his gaze to the dark window over Illian’s shoulder, feeling the eyes of Silver and the wolf and both dragons on the side of his head. As they listened, he began, slowly and deliberately, to share what he knew.

“I’m going to start at the beginning, with everything I know. For you, Illian, I’m sure it will all sound familiar. Silver has not heard much of the history of Alti.”

“Start where you wish,” Illian said. Bek nodded slowly.

“Several thousand years ago,” his words rang in the small room as he drifted into tales of an eighth, far smaller continent – a continent by virtue only that it was larger than any island in their present day – that went by the name of Atlantis. It had possessed marked connections with the mainland, yet it had also been a place of myths and magics, of scholarship unequaled, and of strange beasts whose likeness was known nowhere else in the world. That was not to say, Bek clarified distractedly, that there were no beasts with strange abilities or uncanny intelligence in the rest of the world, but simply that the very most powerful had settled upon Atlantian soil. No one knew why, just as no one knew what had caused the people of Atlantis to be so singularly skilled in the use of magic.

Of course, no tale of Alti or Atlantis could be complete without mention of the Zara; strange, phantom beasts that straddled the line between living demon and soulless flesh. There were people who believed the Zara had first appeared in Atlantis during ancient wars. Their power, unstable and unexplainable even by modern standards, might have affected those with whom they had close contact - people or animals, even plants. Since Atlantis had been isolated from the rest of the world earlier in its history, such a unique proximity would have been inevitable. So saying, Atlantis might actually have been the birthplace of all magic.

“Mythical beasts,” Bek stated calmly, “and humans that can use magic – priests, witches, wizards, seers, take your pick – in our modern day, we believe they may all find their origins in Atlantis. However, the mythical beasts were spread around the world by the time Atlantis reached its heyday. At least, that is what we have seen in tales that remain from other cultures at the time. By then, the peace ushered in by the Keliarn Agreement had begun.”

“Go on,” Illian said softly. Silver did not need to say anything. She was giving Bek more of her attention than she had since the moment they met.

Bek continued, perhaps with a touch more enthusiasm than before.

At some point, the Atlantian world had been shaken by catastrophe. The continent of Atlantis had been destroyed in a massive storm, and vanished from non-magical history after years of silence. The world had mourned magic, and over time, had come to fear it. New technologies were born, and with them, new legends. Magic began to fade. People hunted the mythical beasts as demons, and soon, they hunted each other.

“Magic became, in essence, a twin-tailed beast that consumed humanity,” Bek stated flatly, “It was a guiding light, dispelling the darkness, curing the sick, protecting the people, even filling the long hours of winter with entertainment. But it was an impenetrable power, something that people couldn’t really understand. No one failed to realize that if magic could cure the sick, it could make them ill, and if it could dispel the darkness, it could draw darkness closer. The world changed. Oracles earned their weight in gold, while witches were burnt at the stake. Aware of the shifting political landscape, magic-wielders learned how to live quietly. That is what the popular histories of our modern times would have us believe, Illian, but there is more to the story.”

Bek took a moment of silence, gathering his thoughts. When he began again, he was finally ready to talk about Alti.

“Most of what I know comes from Europe. You know of it?”

“I know of it, yes. We have little contact with the Europeans here.”

“As I expected. Most of the documents I’ve seen are from Europe. Only a few from Egypt and China exist, and they contain much more convincing details about the two islands known as the Sister Isles, Atlantis and Alti, in the time period that came after the cataclysm that nearly destroyed Atlantis. These other documents tell us that disaster foisted a new age on Atlantis – the great island fractured, and was forced to exist as a shattered kingdom. Years of turmoil broke its sway over the imaginations of foreign powers. Warring clans split the remains of Atlantis, among which merely two survived the centuries – a tyrant who named himself the king of Atlantis, revitalizing its centers of scholarship, commerce, and war, and a much smaller kingdom nestled in the mountains of the island that had come to be called Alti.”

Bek felt Silver’s stare, absolutely unmoving.

“The history of Alti was bloody. There were wars every few years, assassination attempts on the Altian royalty by Atlantis, an untamed wilderness ruled by the dragons, and civil conflict after civil conflict. It isn’t really surprising that around the middle of the twelfth century, there was some sort of falling out in the Altian court, an upset by a foreign power that resulted in the rise of a rebel organization intent on overthrowing the king.” Bek was now staring directly into Illian’s dark brown eyes. “The beasts and humans of Alti waged a war that could have no victor. The Agreement that had long ago promised a persistent peace among man and beast was broken; dragons were slain, forests burned, cities razed. There are ledgers that suggest the Atlantian ports will close this very year, and that the Altian ports will follow shortly thereafter. The outside world will be forever cut off from the Sister Isles. And in seven hundred years…” Bek tapped a finger against the table.

“In seven hundred years, most modern scholars will consider the outlandish tales about Alti and Atlantis to be a web of stories woven around real lands destroyed by real events. The truth might lie with a thief who theoretically stole the collective works of the crazed Atlantian king Sendelphon himself, but even that is merely conjecture.”

Bek took a deep breath, glancing at Silver as he continued.

“At some point, the beasts went into hiding and disappeared. The new Atlantis is said to have sunk into the ocean just as the old did. The beasts call it the Great Divide. The end of magic. The end of dragons. The end of Alti. This land is never mentioned again, anywhere, as if it were expunged from the histories of the rest of the world.”

There was a brief pause, an opportunity for him to catch his breath while Silver whispered something to Elorian. The wolf growled softly.

“Is that all you know?” Illian finally asked. Bek half-smiled.

“That’s all that I know, yes, but there’s a lot I don’t know for sure. I think, to be honest, that someone has spent centuries trying to hide the fact that Alti wasn’t destroyed. At the time of the Divide, the MASO was founded in a place the Atlantians had called the wild continent: North America. It has branches elsewhere, many of them semi-autonomous, faded into the background of mysticism and politics in various countries, but strangely enough, the single branch in America where I was raised was indisputedly the first. There is no mention of why the MASO is there, but the reason seems clear as day to me – your castle, the Grand Castle of Altiannia, rests in the heavily-forested mountains of Washington, abandoned.”

“You say our castle is there?” Illian grunted in surprise, “Then surely the MASO followed to keep watch over it.” An interesting theory. Bek considered it, expression unchanging, as Illian added, “Do they know that the castle is of Altian design, in your time?”

Bek nodded slightly again, “A handful of people know that, and little else. There’s a great deal that was lost over the ages.”

“I imagine so. What you said about the plague intrigues me.”

“I’m sure,” Bek said, watching him. “There’s a great deal of conflicting information, since the bubonic plague struck the mainland in a similar time period. But…we know this plague was caused by magic. The Atlantians were supposedly researching something that leaked a great deal of power into the atmosphere. Atmospheric magic is a known pollutant, a danger particularly to people with lowered defenses against it. At the time, they probably had no idea what they were doing until it was too late.”

“And the condition of the castle, in your day?”

“Irreparably scarred by dragonfire,” Bek informed him.

“Imaginative, this story of yours, but outlandish. Your prediction that we will close our ports to the outside world sounds as if it will not be provable for some time—”

“Then take my name,” Bek said sharply, “because I already know yours. Illian Trent. Your selor, Illian – I recognized it immediately. I work with the MASO in our modern day, but surely you already figured that out. And in your era, there is only one MASO, am I right? There’s no way you could not know me, a Trent like yourself. Only one family in Alti ever took that name, and to leave the MASO was to leave the name as well.”

“Bek Trent,” Illian said, still eyeing him. “There’s nothing you know that any foreigner or spy could not. No texts are to leave our shores, a policy handed down from our forebears in Atlantis. We guard our knowledge and technology jealously, our magic more so. These reasons alone could reasonably explain your lack of detailed knowledge about current events here. Why should I believe you are who you claim to be?”

Bek leaned forward, momentarily at a loss. Their story was improbable, without a doubt. Illian was sworn to help them, but that did not mean he had to believe them. If he did, though…that would give them a great deal of sway over future negotiations.

And then Bek realized something, so suddenly it seemed laughable he had never thought of it before.

“Because I know about the Juran,” Bek said, and as soon as he saw the look in Illian’s eyes, he knew he had found the one thing the man might believe. “The rebellion mounted against the king in secret, which will one day inspire a movement in a distant land, by people who have no idea if their forebears succeeded or failed, but will know, irrefutably, it began with the daughter of the king—”

“Stop,” Illian commanded. “I’ve heard enough to believe you. What you just said…never say it to anyone again. In our time, those words will get you killed as surely as your dragons.”

“Then what now?” Bek asked, holding his gaze, “Alti’s time has run out. Should we sit back and watch everything go to ruins? There’s no one in this world who can change what’s happening.”

“My duty is to protect the people of Alti, even if it means changing the future,” Illian countered. “Moreover, even if Atlantis sank into the ocean, I am inclined to believe, as you said, that Alti was not destroyed.” The man averted his gaze a moment, as if thinking of someone in particular. “I believe it is very likely the Altians chose to disappear, and that the castle you see is some remnant of that decision. The MASO branch you spoke of, on this wild continent, is the one from which you came?”

Bek nodded stiffly.

“And a Trent such as yourself leads it still, and in fact, has always led it.” He stared at Bek pointedly. “Your so-called agency must watch over Altiannia from beyond its figurative grave. You say the founders left you no guidance as to what they were trying to do, but if you carry our lineage, I find that unlikely. Someone knows. Someone knew. Somewhere it is decreed that the MASO is beholden to Alti, and that whatever other purpose it may find for itself in your world, protector of all of this,” he spread his arms wide, “is its first and foremost purpose. Someone determined that the castle must not be abandoned, and so it has not been.”

There was a pause, a tangible silence that filled the small space. Illian gestured eventually at Bek’s half-eaten food before fixing his dark eyes on Silver instead.

“And what of you, then? You work with him?”

“Yeah,” Silver agreed.

“But you have no connection to the MASO other than that? No connection to Alti.”

“Nope,” Silver replied.

Bek forced himself to eat slowly as Illian questioned Silver, in part to stop himself from interrupting. What would she say, he wondered? So many times he had heard her story, read through her file, even agonized over her strange circumstances. Yet he still hoped she would say something he had not heard before. Maybe something that would begin to shed light on her connection to the Zara.

“I only worked there for a short time, though,” Silver had continued, fiddling with one of the unusual wooden spoons they had been given.

“Oh?”

“There’s conflict in our time as well.” She explained a bit of the conflict between beasts and humans in their own age, including the fact that the Zara had stolen the dragon eggs from the MASO. There was, however, no mention of the Dawn. Bek had come to expect as much from her. There was nothing condemning in her tale, nothing particularly interesting, either, though she did describe her first meeting with the Zara. Whenever she spoke of the shadow beast, Illian appeared pensive.

“So, you speak to the beasts?” he observed, “That’s also something I wouldn’t share lightly.”

“Why?” she asked.

Illian regarded her for a moment, seeming to weigh something. When he continued, it was with the sense that he had picked over a great many things he could have said to settle on something the two of them could digest in that instant.

“Prejudice,” he said, “Fear. Be wary of revealing your abilities to anyone. And tell no one what you told me about being time travelers. Not everyone would take the news well.”

Cryptic warning delivered, his gaze shifted to the wolf, and then the dragons.

“I wonder if the events unfolding in your present-day mirror those on this island, and when you found yourselves within the castle, which had a clear connection to this time and place, something brought you here. There are ancient blood magics that could have drawn you both through time, guided by a connection to your own kin.”

“The dragons said we were ferried here,” Silver observed.

Illian was silent for a moment, clearly thinking, before he said, “There still must have been some connection.”

Bek did not so much as twitch an eyebrow. “For me, maybe, but for Silver? What connection could she possibly have to this time?”

The man turned his dark eyes on Silver. “We may yet find out. Maybe, in the future, people’s sense of magic is not so acute, but there’s something about Silver’s magic that has piqued my interest from the moment I found you two.”

Bek’s bronze eyes narrowed.

“Discord. A strange and very faint…discord.” Illian closed his eyes for a moment, and Bek knew he was sensing Silver’s power as best he could from across the table. What he was doing was tricky, but centuries before, there had been no technological means of measuring magic. It was quite possible that people like Illian would have been much more skilled at it than anyone from their present era. “You say you met with the MASO’s investigation not long after moving cities. Was that only your second home?”

“Third, actually,” Silver said with a grimace, “our first house…” she trailed off, green eyes suddenly narrowing.

Bek took another slow bite, watching her out the corner of his eye. There had been no record of Silver before her eighth birthday. At eight years old…

“It burned down,” she finally said, as if just realizing what she was saying. He turned his head slowly to stare her. Clearly it had never occurred to her before that the Zara might have been the cause of the first fire as well. Her family had run. It would explain why they had sought protection, why someone had hidden them away. How many times had the story repeated itself already by the time she was old enough to remember?

“There were no pictures left after the fire, and I only remember little things. A lake…” she continued. Her hazel green eyes had fixated on a point between them on the table, as if she could somehow steady herself by it, and thereby make sense of the chaos in her life. At her side, the crimson hatchling chirped and nuzzled into the crook of her elbow. A strange look came to settle across Silver’s features, one that Bek knew well – one that said everything she had ever believed was a lie.

“We all have our secrets,” Illian said, seeming to read into her expression as well, “your parents, I’m sure, did their best to protect you. I’m sorry for asking something that clearly touches on a fresh wound.”

“It’s fine. We said we’d help you already. So, what’s next?” Silver said with a forced smile, apparently not happy that she had become the topic of discussion. She looked like a child when she thought of the Zara, Bek thought. Petulant. Discomfited. There was an angry rigidity in the way she sat, and the spoon between her fingers rocked jerkily as she rolled it against the edge of her wooden plate.

“It will take time to find you a way back to your own century. As promised, I’ll do whatever I can. However…time magic is finicky, and what happened to you nearly unheard of. The sooner you accept that you may have to live out the rest of your lives here, the more whole-heartedly you can fight for Alti’s survival alongside me.”