The Viluverse - Chapter Seven

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Time seemed to stand still as Jensen walked with Antonia. He’d thought about her often in his journeys across the Viluverse, but now that he was with her, something had changed. She’d changed. Maybe they both had.

They’d met years ago while Jensen was surveying a remote planetoid beyond Danner’s Mount. She’d been part of a raiding party, who’d somehow come across his ship and decided it would be a convenient piece of target practice.

He’d enjoyed dueling with them, his ship more than a match for their ragtag band, capable of energy weapon blasts that rendered most of their defenses useless, which made him incredibly dangerous in the eyes of many who wandered out here.

He’d never forgotten the looks they’d exchanged when they saw each other, passing by like literal ships in the night; her ship painted with a powerful warrior woman on the front, as he smirked. She seemed surprised but still grinned.

It was an auspicious first meeting as chemistry sparked immediately, and the two never forgot each other. Affairs have a habit of flowering up like storms, and theirs was no different, leading from battleground to battleground as spats with Mendo’s war parties become more frequent, a constant thorn in their side.

He was now a stranger to her though somehow, the notion of Melgu had become more than a passing nightmare as its intrusions had become more frequent. He was doomed, he felt, to push away all ideas of intimacy until it could be dealt with however that may happen.

He never forgot the night he’d conjured it, exploring his darkened room as dreams of restless spirits filled his vision, and he sensed something was off. A little dream token handed to him by Meridian had somehow taken his fancy. A gift; it was a seemingly innocuous cube with glowing lights on the inside.

Meridian had warned him not to mess with it, at least not too much, but Jensen had this uncomfortable, if irresistible habit of doing things he should not be doing, especially when someone else told him not to do it.

He'd have to journey to Holos one night to ascertain the meaning of that perhaps, but the cube drew him in regardless, and he found himself messing with his casually, observing random light patterns that seemed to respond to his touch.

It reminded him of a puzzle of some kind, and he began playing with it, letting his mind wander. That's when it happened. He wasn’t sure what he did, but it soon began pulsating more rapidly, and before he knew it, a vast sphere of light started emerging to encompass the entire room.

Inside this sphere, he saw replays of past events, and memories, all glowing in the white light which blazed with otherworldly glory. He saw a young boy, himself, playing with a toy spaceship before suddenly he heard low, gutteral growling, and the room seemed to darken as a gnarly, human-like figure began creeping into view.

It was hideous, at least that was the feeling of it; a wild thing with no Earthly business being here. It crept along on all fours, elongated limbs at arched angles, as wild hair dangled around its head. It kept changing shape until it stared at him with red eyes which blazed like red suns in the depths of space.

Its eyes shone like beads from its black shape until he heard a twisted, evil cackle followed by a roar that pierced right through him as it charged toward him. He somehow managed to get the cube to stop whatever this nightmare was by slamming it with his hand, and all returned to normal again.

He could only hear a thin, whispering voice echoing in his mind. “I shall return…” it said, almost mockingly, before a thin sliver of laughter like wind on a winter’s night blew through his head.

He shuddered at the memory as he returned to reality, now watching Antonia as she motioned two guards aside from a large, round, white door ahead of them which rolled to the right to reveal a huge spherical chamber with a black chasm that lay ahead.

Antonia looked at him, her expression of seriousness not having changed since they left the shaft. “Follow me,” she said commandingly as she walked up the smooth white spherical wall behind them and to the left.

Upward they climbed until they stood halfway up from where they had been previously, now staring at a long, half-circular tunnel, its bottom-half directly ahead of them like an underground tunnel, with multi-colored revolving snapshots of movement which seemed to stretch away to infinity.

“Welcome to the time tunnel,” she said, almost with showmanship clout, as Jensen stared ahead of him. “This will be a portal for the time heist; see anything interesting?” Jensen stared, impressed at this feat of dream engineering which one of the dream architects must have had a hand in.

“Your contact?” He asked as she smirked. “You could say that, helps to have friends in high places as they say.” He smiled. “Sure does, I only see a revolving mass of movie scenes though. What should I be looking for?”

She winked and pointed ahead. “Watch to the right.” He looked carefully and saw something glinting every so often, like a piece of gold.

“Huh,” he said, now nothing it. “Is this our target?” She nodded. “Yep, our marker, we have to time our descent just right, however, if we miss it even by an inch, we risk going further back and breaking the conditions of our contract.”

“Which are?”

She looked deadly serious. “Our dream architect decided to design this with only one condition in mind: Should we reach beyond our intended target for any one mission; that is to say only one mission at a time is allowed, we foresake our right to further control and end up going further back in time, from which point in time we can no longer return to the present.”

“Wow…” Jensen pondered this. “So…if we don’t hit the mark, we could end up say 5 years back or something, right?”

She looked grave. “Correct. We then have to avoid our present selves in those time periods. It could get quite messy.”

He considered this as she followed his gaze back at the tunnel.

“So…how are we supposed to reach our mark?”

She grinned.