The Queen, Carolyn and Lockspur stopped after moving off 500 yards. The sound of clawed feet skittering over bare stone fell silent. Carolyn turned on her steed, realizing the silence could draw her grandfather. She squinted into the darkness, unable to sense him in the distance. Nothing was there, man or monster. He had vanished into an unknown future.
In the winding darkness ahead of the trio, the path forked off in two directions. One leading up and out, the other leading towards certain danger. As Lockspur and Carolyn stared at each other, dreading what came next, the queen stared into the dark choices, mocking her.
The oversized raptor darted towards the exit, and the queen let out a never-ending scream that bored into Lockspur's mind like a hammer drill. The animal screeched in pain, threw its head to the side, trying to bite her leg and yank her off. She kicked it in the head. It stumbled, almost going down.
Lockspur clinched his eyes, covered his ears, but the sound intensified. His nose bled, and he fell sideways. Carolyn rushed forward, grabbed his arm and yelled, "Stop it!"
The Queen reeled toward her, mouth snapping closed, and the eerie silence returned. Lockspur slumped in Carolyn's grasp, and she pushed him upright. He swayed in a slow circle, peering around as if he didn't know where he was. Carolyn held him, blood pouring from his nose, ears and eyes.
"Do something," Carolyn said.
The Queen rode to his side, held up her right hand and slit her palm with a transforming talon on the opposite hand. A gout of blood filled her palm. She wiped the blood across Lockspur's face, filling his mouth. The blue blood sank into his skin and he sat bolt upright as if overcome by a freezing seizure. His eyes rolled twice before returning to the center as if nothing had happened.
He looked at the queen, realizing she had moved to his side in the blink of an eye. "Do I even want to know?"
"I gave you my blood."
"You too?" he said. "Is that another power you got from her?"
She regarded him for a long while, reading his mind and contemplating if he could believe her story. "Lilith Hemmingford gave me two things. The ability to travel through time and space and your so-called humanity. Everything else comes from my people."
"Your people," Carolyn said.
"My blood possesses regenerative properties. It allows me to share blood with anyone."
"Not impossible. Blood is specific to each species."
"And that would be true, if my people had blood," the queen admitted. "The fluid in our bodies is nanotechnology. Living machines that transform as needed."
"Nothing like that exists."
"Not in your time."
"In any time."
"If that pickles your noodle, I should tell you my people communicate through surface level thoughts. Not quite telepathy, but close."
"You are telepaths," Carolyn said.
"On a basic telepathy. We send and receive thoughts, but we can't enter each other's minds." The queen turned to Carolyn with a grave expression. "It was your joining with me that taught me how to control my gift."
"I did this to you?"
"In a way. You see, I passed the gift you gave me to Lilith, and she imparted the gift of telepathy to you. And round and round we go. And where our telepathy began, no one knows."
"Impossible."
She gestured at herself, but said nothing more. She didn't need to. The truth of her words was becoming self-evident.
The transforming raptor had its orders and stopping before it reached the surface was not part of its master's plan. It reared, almost knocked Lockspur off his ride, and stomped its front feet in anger. Carolyn tried to connect with its thoughts. But a protective block cloaked her efforts.
The queen reached out, stroked the back of its head. "Calm, brother. We are no longer their slaves. We are free to choose our paths."
An ethereal light flickered to life somewhere behind the queen's eyes. She gestured at their rides. "Your escorts will trouble you no longer. They are loyal to me now."
"Now," Carolyn repeated.
The queen returned to her options. unknown outcomes twitched in the corners of her squinted eyes. The memories of the impending battle had yet to blossom in her mind's eye. There was no guarantee of outcome. Life and death swam in the murky tunnels leading into the moon's core.
"Patience, brother," the queen said, projecting a single thought into its mind. The time for bloodshed is close at hand.
Carolyn's eyebrow rose in surprise. She heard the thought and gestured for Lockspur to look at the queen. In the last 15 minutes, her long reptilian wings had morphed into a billowing black cape and an ebony mane of shining onyx hair. The floor length hair flowed over the raptor's haunches like a waterfall. Her thick rear legs had become willowy and long. If standing upright, she would tower over them. An 8 feet tall apex predator. Her three-toed velociraptor feet had morphed into bony stilettos, making her legs look shapely.
Lockspur's mind lingered on the queen's form longer than he intended, and the queen turned to him with a knowing grin that made him flush and look away. Her once small front legs had morphed into long human upper arms with clawed mitts, trying to be human hands. Her legs wrapped around the massive raptor's waist, holding on with a steely ease. If Binky the raptor was terrifying, this dark goddess was the living embodiment of desire and raw power.
Lockspur turned to Carolyn, leaned towards her, keeping his voice low. "And now she has hair and a leather cape. What's next? A group of roadies to carry her on a pedestal?"
"We are the roadies," she replied, gesturing at the queen's raptor. "And he's the pedestal."
The Queen's cape flew into the air, spread out to form thick, leathery bat wings and flapped twice. The wind blast forced Lockspur back on his steed. He slid towards the creature's backside, before righting himself, casting a pinched face scowl. As the wings settled, she trained her glowing blue eyes on Carolyn. "Smug, little bastard, let us go because thinks he can use us to achieve his master's plan."
Lockspur did a double take. "Master's plan. I thought he was the master."
The Queen regarded Lockspur for a moment. "We all have masters."
"You too?"
She nodded.
The queen's features were almost human. She was stunning. Her once slimy grayish skin tone had transformed into an alabaster that fed on light. She was an ethereal ghost sitting atop a midnight steed.
"He couldn't hold us and go after the obelisk." Carolyn said. "That suggests you're more powerful, and he wants you out of the way."
Somewhere behind them, the tunnel collapsed and a sound wave raged through the tunnel. The dank air stank of mold and drew Lockspur's full attention. He spurred his ride up to Carolyn's side.
"Well, that settles it. We are not going back the way we came."
An odd déjà vu froze the queen's face and all four of her comrades studied her spinning mind. A moment later, an ancient and deadly creature awoke somewhere deep in her mind. And with it came a plan billions of years in the making.
"This moon is destabilizing," the queen said, coming out of her palsy, leading them towards danger. "The light is coming down. We must reach the vent before it is too late."
Carolyn and Lockspur looked at each other, an unspoken sense of realization passing between them. They would follow her lead. And that's when Lockspur wondered when Binky the raptor had become the leader.
As the winding tunnel narrowed, the queen's voice drifted back through the darkness. "I became the leader when your people choose to create me." She urged her ride forward, drawing them towards the inevitable as the footsteps of their changing rides echoed through the tunnel.
As the fading echoes raced away in both directions, a chill vibrated through Lockspur's nerves. His heart thudded in a constricting chest, and he grumbled beneath his breath, feeling eyes in the dark. They were moving away, but not fast enough for his preference.
"There is no one there," the queen said, voice drifting back. "They will not come until we reach our destination."
"So… they are coming."
"Was there ever any doubt?" she asked, and then spurred her ride, gesturing for them to catch up. They followed her lead.
As they caught up, Carolyn tried not to project the idea the queen was becoming unpredictable, powerful, and… and even a threat. But as the ideas entered her mind, it was too late. The queen was smiling, not caring what her new comrades believed.
The lead raptor stopped, turned around, and the queen rode back, sitting tall and looking every bit the queen she was becoming. "In the bowels of this moon is a dark obelisk. It is an ancient construct. A manmade nexus point designed to link the time streams. It allows time walkers to move between the streams without the harmful effects of temporal displacement. Removing the device dooms us to the wither."
Carolyn watched her, trying to separate her beliefs from the truths she saw with her own eyes. The queen was transforming, becoming something both human and inhuman.
The queen smiled, oversized arm crossing a great distance and squeezed her shoulder with an unexpected gentleness. "She sent you here to make herself immortal. She wants to persist. To ignore the wither. When you and Carlos imparted your gifts to me, I passed them to her. I am what I am because she made it so." She turned to Lockspur. "I used you. That much is true, but that makes you no less culpable in my creation."
Lockspur glared at her through eyes filled with anger and suspicion. He told himself he was only here because she sent him. It was a lie, but it quelled his growing guilt. She fixed him with a Lilith Hemmingford look that made him want to lash out like a petulant child. And still, he refused to look away. She held up an inhuman hand.
"Suit yourself. But it falls to us to either destroy the obelisk, seize it or kill me before my transformation completes. If we fail, the paradox of fathers and sons will come to pass. If we succeed, we can reset the master timeline. And your grandfather may reach the champion before it's too late."
"What's the paradox of fathers and sons?"
"My father- Serafina's father- banished the greatest evil ever known to a dimension outside ours. He has languished there for a billion-billion years. But he was not without influence. The paradox is the series of events that allowed him to escape his eternal prison."
"My grandfather," Carolyn said, looking back into the tunnel they exited and felt her grandfather's eyes on her. For a split second, she considered grabbing Lockspur and fleeing the dark tunnels in favor of light. She realized her grandfather was no one to doubt. The warning he gave, implied or otherwise, was obvious. Get out or die. And the only guarantee of getting out alive was to take the right tunnel. "He created the paradox."
The queen nodded. "He did. But not by choice. My father deceived him. In his defense, he was a young man with a troubled past." A sound escaped the queen like hyenas feeding on fresh kill. Its predatory indifference drenched Carolyn like a bucket of ice water. "Like the two of you, my father used your grandfather's abilities for his own selfish purposes."
"And here we go, blaming destructive behaviors on the parent."
The Queen and Carolyn ignored him. "When did you find the time to figure all this out?"
"When you made me an immortal. When helped create the paradox that lets me relive this nightmare over and over."
"I made you?" Lockspur said.
She smiled at him.
Lockspur let out an explosive exhale, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples. "Are you trying to scramble my fucking brain?"
"Lilith bated me. She changed me from killer to contact. Transformed me from the inside out. She altered my DNA by combining hers with mine. Then she found me again, entered my mind, and programmed me to find you. To stand over you, waiting for Carolyn to find me. Lilith placed a block in my mind, calculating how Carolyn would react when she found me standing over you. She created a new species. A new Lilith. A more powerful Lilith. And now, the more I change, the more I realize the truth of what she did. Of what I did. The dark master used me to free himself. I am no more a queen than either of you. I am an eternal pawn, trying to win a game that began before I was born."
"You said Lilith did this."
"I am Lilith, but we all have our masters. My sin is that my arrogance blinded me to that truth. And if the queen is reborn, she will continue to make that mistake. We must end it now." The Queen's sadness contorted her human features.
"How do we end it?," Carolyn asked.
"At this very moment, there are forces racing towards the center of this planet." She gestured for Lockspur to rejoin them. "Some are drawn to power. Some seek to protect it. Regardless of their intentions, we must use the obelisk to send this planet and all its inhabitants into oblivion. To a place where he can not use us to do harm."
"And how do you plan to do that?"
"Isn't it obvious? I am the first Lilith. I created the device that allowed my descendants to traverse the time streams. And I placed it here."
"You did?"
"I did a lot in the past."
"If it's here, and you were born… recreated here days ago, how did you put it here in the past?"
"Because my future is your past. My future is everyone's past."
Lockspur scowled, struggling not to blurt a retort that could enrage her. But his mind had already betrayed him with a single word. Bullshit.
"If you remember our earlier conversation, you told me to stop fucking with time." She waved her hand in the air in front of his face, cutting him off before he could argue. Lockspur hated when Lilith did that. "Well, this happened when I failed to heed that warning."
Lockspur's mouth fell open. "You are Lilith."
"No. Lilith is me."
"What did she… you do?"
"I tried to intercede in the time streams for the better of all our kinds. Or that's what I told myself. In truth, it was my arrogance that made me dangerous. Each time I tried to alter the streams, he and his dark master were two steps ahead. Every time I tried, they became stronger, and we became weaker." She turned away, shame radiating off her in palpable waves. "In desperation, I engineered a way to reposition myself in an earlier timeline."
"The paradox," Lockspur said. "I hypothesized it would give me an advantage. But there were unexpected effects."
Lockspur fists balled, his legs squeezed the raptor like a vise, and it snarled in anger. He pulled his sidearm out of its holster, jammed the barrel behind the beginnings of an ear, drove his heel into the raptor's side and said, "Threaten me again and you'll never reach the other side of your transformation." The creature let out a deep growl, and Lockspur pulled the hammer back. He looked at the queen and said, "Ask your queen. Am I bluffing?"
"Do not hurt him," the queen said. "Kindness is not in his nature."
"And giving a fuck isn't in mine," he replied, looking at her with an expression that was one part expletive and one part slap in the face. "Are you ever going to learn not to fuck with everything? Some day you're going to fuck things up so bad we can't fix them anymore."
"Are you fucking shitting me!" Carolyn blared at them both and her ride shifted in fright. "This kind of shit has happened before?"
The Queen shrugged.
What Lockspur and Carolyn did not realize was that they were speaking with a fragmented mind. The coalescing minds of Lilith Hemmingford, a raptor queen and a woman they had yet to meet, were struggling to gain dominance over each other. One focused on a mission, one focused on fighting a war, and the last was a scorned wife peering out from eternal prison.
Carolyn stared into the tunnel, expecting the coming chaos to rampage out of the darkness and devour them all. And perhaps she deserved such a fate. She had come here with a mission and completed it flawlessly. A mindless puppet with a power that was given to her for the use of others. "We've ruined everything."
"It was no coincidence he let us go," Lockspur said, watching the queen ride away towards their goal. Lockspur raised his voice, hoping the queen would turn around and come back. She didn't. "He could have just killed us." A noise came from behind them, and Lockspur reeled around to who was following them. No one was there.
"Placing myself in the time stream ahead of him prevents him from killing me." The Queen's voice reverberated off the rock walls as if they were in a huge cathedral.
"He can't kill you?"
"Not without ending his life."
The queen shot Carolyn a sideways glance that Lockspur neither understood nor liked. He ought to be accustomed to Lilith hiding her intentions from him. She did it all the time. But he never distrusted her. He knew she had their backs. And he had hers. But this new Lilith, she was different. He wasn't sure if he could, or would, trust her. And he didn't need to read minds to know her loyalties lay with her people, not humanity's.
Carolyn spurred her raptor onward, keeping up with the queen. She whispered something in the Queen's ear. Which seemed like more of an insult to him than a necessity. After all, they were telepaths. Why whisper at all?
They're hiding shit, he thought. And scowled at the slip up when they both turned to him. As his ride snickered, he waved them off, not wanting to hear any excuses.
He jabbed the heels of his combat boots into his raptor's soft sides and it reared up, dumping him on his backside. It let out a warning growl and he scrambled on. It leapt forward in two enormous bounds, skidded to a stop, and pitched him over its head. He landed with a thud, wishing he had not got back on and muttering a wheezing expletive.
"Try to be careful, Carlos. My brethren are still prone to fits of sporadic aggression. We wouldn't want him to flip you off and gobble you up."
"In case we're all killed before I get the chance, I'd like to tell you, this transformation did not improve the old you. You're still a pain in the ass."
"That's why you love me."
Lockspur did not find her change of tone humorous. He'd had enough of M6-117. "Leaving out the fact you're not telling me shit about what's going on here," he said with a scowl. "It's clear you're keeping me in the dark."
His ride let out another inhuman snicker that set his nerves on fire.
"Just tell me what's going on."
"Perhaps you should learn to read minds?" The queen said.
"Sure," Lockspur said, and let out a sarcastic laugh that contained a sour ring of vicious expletives. "Because reading minds has done so much to improve your lives."
The queen and Carolyn shrugged and threw up a tell him whatever you want gesture. "The deeper we go into the core, the further we go into the past." She held up a morphing hand, cutting off his tirade of incoming questions. "Before you ask. The obelisk is not only a nexus, it is an anchor in time. A point at the beginning of time. That is why it looks new. Because in the bowels of this moon, every day is the first day."
Lockspur's eyes closed to slits, and a sarcastic laugh escaped his mouth. "Please tell me that's a joke?"
Her right eyebrow went up, drawing the corner of her mouth into a smile. "Have I ever given you the impression I have a sense of humor?"
Lockspur shook his head and gestured at the queen. "With every word that comes out of your mouth, you sound more and more like her."
"Under different circumstances, I would take that as a compliment."
"You act like Lilith. She speaks in riddles. And you know how much I love that shit."
"I am aware."
"If any of this bullshit is true, why didn't you fix it the first time you lived through it?"
"For the record. This is the first time I am living through this timeline. Hence the underlying problem. I am as unaware of what comes next as you."
"How is that possible? Paradox, remember? Round and round. You said you had Lilith's memories. And she made me a promise. You made me a promise."
"You trusted me. I violated that trust. And for that, I am sorry." The Queen looked at the ground. He said nothing. She sensed the anger. She didn't need telepathy. It rolled off him in waves. "Lilith did not lie. Not exactly. She simply did not realize these changes would reset the timeline. I am new; so our the outcomes As for the promise made, I cannot resurrect your family. No one possesses that power. But I can return you to a time before they died."
"If I go back, I can save them?"
"Perhaps. But the outcome of changing the timeline could destroy us all."
"You don't know that!" he screamed in her face.
She gestured around. "All this results from one selfish choice to alter one life. Mine. Can you imagine what could happen if you alter 4? And what of the lives they will impact by living? The millions of lives we touch and never realize it. Your choice will begin like a ripple in a pond and end in a surname that scours the galaxy clean."
"You bitch," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes.
She said nothing. What more was there to say? She did what she had done, and this was one of the infinite outcomes staining her soul.
"I thought I knew you," Carolyn whispered.
"I am not her. And it would be unwise of you to think I am. She is selfish, vain, cunning, and ruthless. And she put those traits in a creature engineered to kill humans. I think if we fail, the outcome for humanity will not end well."
"You said you were becoming her."
"I said she was becoming me. There is a distinction. We are each unique creatures, separated by the unfathomable lengths of time and light years, yet we each share the same mind. The same memories. My counterparts and I are at different points on an eternal path. A never-ending loop of shared experiences. Each altering the paths of untold generations. And now, in one desperate act, we may have ruined everything."
"You created the Paradox."
"With your help."
"Help, my ass. You tricked us."
"Lie to yourself if you must. But I offered you exactly what you wanted, and you ran salivating at the offer. And would have joined me no matter what the cost. I weaponized your pain and suffering, and your need to be the perfect little granddaughter."
"Ask yourselves. If I am to become Lilith, how could she exist if I came first?"
"Because you're not Lilith." Lockspur replied. "You're a copy. She implanted memories that make you believe you're her."
"And I would agree if her implant had not contained fragmented memories of my future. How could she possess a future timeline if not from me? I created those memories, not did not. Does that not suggest I am the original?"
"It suggests you're a narcissist. The entire galaxy can't be about you."
"And yet, here I stand. Very much at the center of it all," the Queen replied. "It is quite a conundrum, wouldn't you say? And that is not the half of the web the three of us have woven on this day of days."
"Fine," he said, casting her a dark challenge. "Then who came first?" "Her or you?"
"Neither," the Queen said. "We were both preceded by another version. An ancient avatar. A creature from a third universe. A creature of pure evil. She was the first Lilith. The daughter of God."
"It wasn't good enough that you wanted us to call you a queen? But now you are the daughter of God."
She said nothing. But he was certain the echoing footsteps were laughing at him. "I'm not calling you goddess. And for the record, there are no other Universes.".
"You humans, with your pitiful telescopes, have yet to see beyond the ends of your own noses and still you sight nearsighted science fiction as fact. You see stars and planets and black holes and an ever-expanding cosmos and still don't understand what you are looking at."
"Then why don't you teach us?" Lockspur blurted. "What are we looking at?"
"Teach yourselves? The answers are there."
Lockspur frowned.
The Queen held up a fist, and her pedestal came to a halt. Even in the green glow of his glasses, he could see something in the darkness had spooked the queen. And her apprehension amplified his. The queen turned to them and said, "What is happening here is beyond Lilith Hemingford's plan. We are in grave danger."
"Let's say I'm warming to the idea you're telling the truth." Lockspur said, leaning back on his raptor. "But If there is a paradox, why can't you see what's coming?"
"The problem isn't that I have no memories of future events. I have too many memories. The paths ahead are infinite and ever changing. And one wrong step could lead to disaster."
Lockspur sat forward on his raptor. "Aren't you just full of great news?"
The Queen spurred her raptor forward as they followed beside her, hanging on her every word. "This is not the first time Lilith has altered me. On the day of my creation, she placed markers in my DNA, allowing for future modifications. She did so with no one realizing. Never forget, no matter what I look like, I am not human. I am a raptor cloaked in human skin. And now, so is Lilith."
"In her rush to give herself the powers of a god, she failed to consider that making herself a God would make me one as well."
"You're no god."
"Agreed. A god would show mercy. I am not so inclined."
She rode deeper into the narrowing tunnel, ducking her head and picking up speed as the darkness swallowed them whole. They followed close behind, rides mirroring her lead. Lockspur's stomach flopped. Acid flooded his mouth and forced the lump in his throat down. The tunnel opened into a large chamber. Several openings ringed the moist space. The queen slowed, peering around at her choices, and stopped in front of a tunnel that twisted upwards like a corkscrew. And for a moment, he entertained the idea they were returning to the surface.
A ravenous screech reverberated through the chamber, followed by the sound of deep breathing. Lockspur looked at the queen and she shook her head. He could not pull his eyes off the breathing tunnel that signaled they were no longer alone. Eyes in the dark had come.
The Queen ignored the intruder, urging her ride up and out. Lockspur breathed a sigh of relief. "We are no one's prisoners. Not anymore. We are free to think for ourselves; to go where we please. Pray you no longer here when the queen emerges. She is a heartless tyrant with little use for those unlike her."
"You're a..."
"Monster," she said, finishing his sentence. "True. But only because Lilith added her mind to ours. You were the only monsters in this galaxy. And now, we're just like you."
Lockspur followed Carolyn into the ascending tunnel, thankful to be rid of breathing. But after a few moments, he realized the breathing was still at their heels. He sped up, almost ramming into Carolyn's ride.
The queen's voice filtered back, "I ruled over an entire universe, eliminating all who failed to submit to my subjugation. I relished the hunt. The fight. The blood-letting. Theirs and mine. I made no apologies for loving it all. I am the monster they always wanted."
"You killed for pleasure?"
"I consumed my enemies for power." She shrugged. "We never overcame our more primal urges to feed. Those who would not submit became cattle. And those who did became slaves. And that is why they cast us out of this universe. We submit to no one."
"That's horrific."
"You would not have liked me, Carlos."
"How long have you known this was going to happen?" Lockspur demanded, and the queen's eyebrow rose. If he didn't want to run away before, he did now. This moon is cursed. And so is anyone who dared come here.
Her memories were coalescing, revealing the path ahead. More troubling was when her transformation was complete, she would only have two uses for them. Food or slaves. They were in a race to seize the obelisk and banish the queen before she killed them all.
"Your Lilith Hemingford- the one who sent you here- ceased to exist the moment you altered my mind and body," the Queen replied. "
As they ascended through the snaking steep tunnels, the Queen regarded Lockspur with an empathetic glance. She saw the betrayed grimace spread across his face. It made her sad. "Under normal circumstances, I am certain Lady Hemmingford would have never done such a thing. Unless… She saw no other way forward."
"Lilith didn't do this. You did."
"Ours is a great responsibility and failure is not an option." The Queen reached out with an enormous, long black arm and squeezed his shoulder with a gentleness far greater than he thought possible. "For the hurt you are feeling. I am certain she is sorry. I am."
"Next time don't do it."
"There may not be a next time."
"Do you have any good news?"
"I'm a realest."
"There's nothing real about this."
During the ride into the claustrophobic tunnel, she gestured around at the dank surroundings and continued, "These are not normal circumstances. If the opposition had found you in such a diminished capacity, they could have tortured sensitive information out of you. And that scenario would have affected this mission. And that is why I believe she erased your memory. It was for your safety."
"Bullshit!" he shouted. "It was for your safety. It was about protecting you. If they had found me, they could have still killed me."
"And they would have," she admitted. "But with Lilith's blood in your system, you would not have remained dead for long."
Carolyn had remained silent for most of the last 10 minutes, but now she spoke. "That sounds bad."
"Indeed. The truth often comes with a sour taste," the Queen said, picking up the pace.
"Sour, my ass. This tastes like shit."
Lockspur watched her turn to the side, as if catching the sound of something in the distance. She turned to Lockspur. "How many crystals did you transport beneath your skin?"
He didn't hesitate. "One."
The Queen sighed in relief.
"But," he added. "It fractured during the trip."
"Two," she said, shaking her head. "It didn't fracture. The auto-doc placed a second shard in your arm during transport."
"How do you know?"
"Because it is what I would have done."
The Queen raced away at breakneck speed and the trio came to a massive dome shaped chamber. It stretched outward half a mile in diameter and rose a quarter mile above their heads. Daylight drilled through a large central hole in its roof, illuminating the center of the chamber. In the middle of the blazing circle, a 50 foot wide hole sank into the moon's core. Gail Force winds raged upward, escaping through the opening in the roof.
"What in God's name are we running from?" Lockspur demanded, out of breath and panting as he and Carolyn skidded to a tooth jarring stop beside the queen.
"They are coming," she said, striding towards the swirling maelstrom of dirt at the center of the giant ring of light. She stepped inside the protective circle, gesturing over her shoulder at a river of raptors pouring into the chamber behind them. "If I were you, I'd move before it's too late."
They kicked their rides hard, bounded into the light, and Lockspur tumbled off his raptor. He landed hard on his backside in a cloud of dust. A whoop sound escaping his mouth. His ride looked down at him and snickered. Lockspur flashed him an uncomplimentary hand gesture. He pulled himself to his feet and backed deeper into the ring of light as hundreds, maybe thousands, of raptors circled in the shadows. They hissed and screamed.
"Do not worry," the Queen said, walking over to him. "They will not enter the circle. We are safe here for the time being."
Carolyn looked from her to the circling teeth outside and said, "We may be safe in here, but we can't get out either, and we can't stay here forever."
At the point where they had pierced the edge of the light, a shrouded figure stepped out of the writhing pack and into the light. Carolyn's grandfather addressed the queen. "I gave you a choice. I wish you had made a better one. What comes next is your fault, not mine."
The Queen nodded, as if following a code of nobles. "Purifier. Long has your master sought to seize control of the time stream. And long have you failed."
"Lady Serafina." He offered a low bow. "I had hoped to make your acquaintance someday. Pity, it had to be on such a day of days. I wish you had not come."
"And yet I sense you realized I would."
"A lady's purgative."
"I have heard of your habit of offering polite warnings. I never imagined I would receive one myself. You are a kind and gifted servant of your master. Too kind, indeed."
"Grandfather, what are you doing?"
He turned to Carolyn with a sad expression. He prayed she wouldn't be there. "While I cannot bring harm to you by my hand, granddaughter. I cannot hold myself responsible for your self-destructive acts." He gestured to the opening in the roof. "My lady. If one wants to live another day, all one needs to do is look to the heavens. The Good Lord knows there will always be salvation in the light." Then he stepped into the darkness outside the circle and vanished behind a writhing wall of gnashing teeth and jagged talons.
"He counted on you leading us here." Carolyn raged at Queen Serafina. "Knowing he could force us out through the roof opening."
"I had hoped he would allow us to get this far. His mistake." Queen Serafina said.
"Why?"
"Because his arrogance will be his undoing. He seeks to trick us into believing he has caught us like bugs in a jar. But he misses the real reason we came."
Carolyn looked over and saw Lockspur grinning at the Queen. "What's with the grin?"
"Like I said, she's just like Lilith. Lilith always has a plan to get in and a plan to get back out again." He turned to the Queen. "So, what is the plan, boss? I mean, your majesty."
The Queen walked over to the edge of the hole, scooped up a handful of dirt and tossed it into the wind. The blast of air tore it apart and shot it up and away. Nothing could survive that blast of air.
She turned to her companions. "Everything in my world runs in cycles. And like the coming of the eclipses, there are other events that follow patterns."
"What events?" Carolyn asked.
The queen thrust her arm out over the hole, and nothing happened. The air had stopped.
"Of course she knew that would happen." Lockspur shook his head as if she'd just played him again.
She gestured into the descending darkness and said, "At the bottom of this hole lies a beautiful world. But that fragile world depends on the surface to replenish its warmth and air-supply."
"Man-made thermodynamics," Lockspur said to himself with a sudden look of astonishment. "If there's no molten core, there's no heat. No heat, no world below. Hence, the core needs to be warmed."
"Correct," the queen replied. "There is a cycle that draws warm dry air down through the myriad of tunnels my people create, warming the core, and this ancient lava tube is the exhaust pipe that allows cool moist air up from far below."
"That doesn't explain the sudden reverse in wind flow, or why we needed to get here?"
The Queen gestured to the hole. "Every 22 years, two eclipses take place. One in darkness, the second,11 years later, in light." The queen picked up another handful of dirt and tossed it at the hole. It flew out over the edge, became a loose cloud, and the reversed airflow drew it downward. "If you travel by foot, it takes months to reach the core. If you use this vent, it takes hours. This is how Carolyn and I shall get in. "
"And what about my team? Where does that leave them?"
"They are already in the core."
Lockspur clinched his eyes and messaged his temple. "You just said it takes months to make the journey on foot."
"I also said that the closer you go towards the core, the further you go back in time. For us, it has been hours, for them it has been months."
"Have I ever told you time travel sucks?"
"Many times," Queen Serafina said, rolling her eyes.
Carolyn's ride walked to the edge of the hole and peered in. Then it looked at the queen. The queen nodded.
"So, what are options? Up and out or down and back in time?"
Lockspur turned to the queen. "Now tell her about all the things that are probably going to kill us."
"Kill us?" Carolyn repeated.
"We have three hours to reach the bottom of this lava tube and exit into the chamber before the airflow restarts and we're torn to shreds." She gestured between herself and Carolyn. "We should be fine. But you may not be so lucky."
"And it just keeps getting better." Lockspur said and then laughed. "Who's going first?"
The Queen gestured to Carolyn's raptor. It walked over and stood beside her. "We will." She gestured to the hole in the roof. "You will go retrieve your ship and meet us down below."
"A, I'm not a pilot; and b, the ship won't fit."
"A, perhaps this may be a good time to learn; and b, as for the hole, I do not believe its size will be an issue for much longer." Before he could inquire what she meant, the queen urged her transforming steed over the edge and was gone in a blur. Carolyn shrugged. Her ride leapt out, threw open its giant wings and nose-dived out of sight.