I did my best.”
Grounding the butt of her spear, Kari practically collapsed against it, barely remaining on her feet. She wheezed loudly and her eyelids kept drooping almost closed as though she was fighting for consciousness.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll last,” she breathed, voice harsh and strained as though she’d spent the last hour screaming at the top of her voice. “That fireball used up a lot of my strength.”
“Don’t give up, foxy lady,” Gabriel said.
“Foxy lady,” Kari blinked at him. “You mean me?”
Gabriel nodded as he reloaded his shotgun with the last of his shells.
“I think I’ll take that as a compliment,” Kari said as she forced herself back upright.
Minutes seemed to pass like hours as Gabriel fired the last of his shells. Tossing the shotgun aside he drew his knife and held it at ready in his right hand.
There was a bright flash of light and Sam abruptly stepped out of thin air next to Gabriel. Blood poured from her nose and she shook her head with a hand to her temples, swaying a bit before righting herself.
“That hurts a lot more the second time around,” she mumbled.
“You’re back,” Gabriel cried.
Sam shot him a glare, pulled back her arm, and decked him. The blow was
unexpected, and she was a lot stronger than she looked.
“That’s for making me come back instead of helping you to the end,” she said
fiercely, wiping blood from her nose. “Just so you know I’m angry with you, since you seem completely incapable of noticing it for yourself!”
Looking around, Sam seemed to realize that everything was the same as she’d left it. Scratching behind one of her ears, she adjusted her cleavage a bit with her other hand.
“It’s all still the same,” she said.
Massaging his jaw, Gabriel wondered if it was cracked. Sam had seemed eager
enough to go back to the future when he’d sent her. Why was she so angry now!
Nothing that went on in that crazy little head of hers ever seemed to make any sense.
“Are you sure this plan of yours is going to work,” Mister Mittens asked from his perch on Sam’s shoulders. “Nothing seems to have changed at all.”
“Allie,” Gabriel asked with concern.
Plunging her spear through the belly of an approaching mutant, Allie shrugged.
“Honey, we’re home,” Michael and Jonathan said as they carved their way
through to join their sister. “Did you miss us?”
The two of them were covered from head to toe with blood so thickly that their skin appeared to have taken on the color permanently.
“By the way,” Jonathan said. “I don’t see how we can hold out for much longer.”
“Just FYI and all,” Michael added, nodding to the dwindling number of imperial soldiers on the field. Those that had been considered too wounded to fight had joined in.
“We never really stood a chance,” Kari nodded grimly. “We lost the second that the shield went down.”
Jonathan fished something out of his shirt and held up a crystal identical to the one around Gabriel’s neck, smeared with blood. “We can escape. We did as much as we could. There’s no shame in running.”
“I agree,” Michael said, pulling out a crystal of his own.
Kari looked from one to the other before pulling out a third crystal. “There
doesn’t seem to be much choice. I’m sorry you two, but we’re going to have to part ways here.”
Gabriel looked down at his own crystal. With that he could escape too, but could he take Sam with him? The Northern Sage had told him he could travel through time and space just like the Doctor did, but did that mean he could take a companion too? He didn’t want to test it with Sam’s life in the balance.
A quick look at the battlefield showed him how hopeless things were. Without
Kari to help him hold back the tide he wasn’t going to last very long. Escape seemed like the only real option. But he would hate himself for the rest of his days if anything happened to Sam because he didn’t know the limitations of his new toy. Better to die by her side fighting, than to wish he had for the rest of his life.
Something happened, though for the life of him, Gabriel couldn’t say what it was.
He couldn’t see or hear anything different, but he could feel it. He focused on the feeling, trying to figure out what had changed.
He was not the only one to notice. Kari and her brothers began looking around with wondering expressions, and then the mutants and remaining soldiers slowly began to stop and look around.
“What’s happening,” Sam asked, backing away, fright plain on her face. “What is that?”
“The paradox,” Gabriel asked.
The crystal around his neck, and the crystals around the necks of Kari and the twins, began to blaze like the sun, seeming to hum inaudibly.
The ground shook violently, and the sky seemed to explode with movement. It
was like watching day turn to night and back again on time lapse. Cries of fear began to circulate through the courtyard as humans and mutants alike began to panic. The mutants seemed intent on running away back over the wall, and they started killing each other in an effort to be the first.
“Gabriel,” Sam shrieked, holding out her arms to him.
Looking back at her, Gabriel could hardly believe his eyes. Her arms seemed to flicker between solid and ghostly transparent.
“What’s happening to me,” she shrieked. Her voice sounded far away.
Looking around quickly, Gabriel saw that both armies in the courtyard, and even the courtyard itself, were beginning to fade in and out of existence like Sam was. Not only that, but the tower behind him as well. When the tower and courtyard faded, he could see a vast, untamed jungle in their place, but then the Spires of Infinity faded back into view and it was lost.
“The new timeline is overwriting the old,” Allie explained. “It appears that the odds of those created by events after the activation of the Spires ceasing to exist were higher than I expected.”
“Ceasing to exist,” Sam shrieked, looking down at her body as the flickers of her fading away became more frequent. She shot a pleading look to Gabriel. “Help me!”
Gabriel didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what he could do. He was horrified at what was happening. Something he had done was causing the woman he loved to be erased from existence. He would be the only one that remembered that she’d ever lived at all.
“No,” Gabriel cried as he threw himself toward her.
The air suddenly seemed solid. It was like trying to press his way through
invisible jelly. Fighting against whatever was holding them apart, Gabriel forced himself forward. He was not going to lose her. He was not going to let her die. If he did one good thing in his life, it was going to be to save her.
Fighting and growling through gritted teeth, Gabriel forced his way through the invisible bonds that seemed to be holding him back, step by step. Sam’s flickering became even more frequent. She seemed almost not to be there at all. He had to hurry.
He had to reach her!
At last Gabriel was in arm’s reach. He stretched out to grasp her hand, but just as he did, she faded away completely.
Shock flooded through him as he looked at his hand. She was gone. He’d been
too slow. He hadn’t been able to save her. She’d been completely erased from existence.
She was there one second, and gone the next. How could she just be gone! She had to be somewhere. She couldn’t have been completely erased, could she? It seemed impossible that someone as real, and full of life and personality as Sam could simply be gone!