“Let’s start with what we know so far. Tell me about the last time we attempted the spell. What happened?”
“Pretty much everything like last night, except we never sensed the ring, or heard it. Last night the map also took us much further. I swore we’d found the ring. I felt the pulse of it. Heard it calling. None of those things happened before.”
“So we were very close. Like maybe we did find it but missed something?”
“Yeah, but clearly the thing we missed is the thing we still need.”
“Let’s just think out loud. If I don’t need more skill, and I don’t need my dragon, what else could I need?”
She thought for a moment then gave up, shaking her head. “I really hate to say this, but I don’t know. This is a complex issue because we’re dealing with an artifact that thinks like a person.”
Something came to me. “So then let’s think like a person. A person who’s terrified of getting in the wrong hands, and they’re hiding, but also leaving clues for us to find.”
The tension in her face eased. “Okay. And we know the dark forces arevery dark, so a powerfulpersonwould make sure they stayed hidden well. But not so they couldn’teverbe found.”
“Exactly. I believe we sensed it because we were on the right track, but we weren’t looking in the right place. Or we couldn’t see it.” I thought back and tried to remember the way the map looked but I couldn’t think of anything else that stood out to me.
“The map stopped blank in the air within a sea of temporal realms. I recognized some of the names. The problem is there are countless. The ring could have been on any or none of the ones we saw.”
“But we were close by or we wouldn’t have felt the ring’s presence. Don’t the temporal realms shift?”
“They do but they just move between past, present and future. You’d still be able to find them though if you knew where you were going.”
Something sparked in my mind. An idea. From what she said.
Moving betweenpast and present and future. But what about the other variant of time? The unchosen outcome.Possibility.
I’d only made a connection with the time continuum by anchoring in the past and future. But what if the ring wasn’t in a realm that drifted between those variants?
I stood and placed a finger on my lips.
“What is it?” Arielle asked.
“Are there realms of possibility, from the unchosen outcomes?”
Her spine went straight and her eyes widened. “Yes, there are. But…they’re exceedingly hard to find.”
“If we’re thinking of the ring as a person in trouble, I believe the ring would go there. To a place like that. Incredibly hard to find, but not impossible. It would not make it easy for the dark forces to find it, even if it is already hidden.”
“Oh, Gods. I think…” She stood too. “I think you’re right. And that might explain why we felt it but we couldn’t see it. Possibility realms drift in the in-between.”
Gods, we were getting somewhere. “This is good. This feels right. But now for the hard part. How do I see it?”
“Maybe you need to see through the threads of time, like you tried last night. But it’s harder with possibility realms. Possibility threads are unstable. You don’t know where they branched or what shaped them. It would be the same with an entire realm. You’d need something to anchor you while you search… and something to guide the path. Like a compass.”
If we’re right that would explain why the map couldn’t lock on to the location. “What could I use for a compass? Maybe that’s the missing thing.”
Magdalena hadn’t taught us that yet. I left that poor lady bamboozled. She hadn’t expected to do so much with me, and she worried I was going to burn out. We had today off to recuperate.
“You would need something that could move between different states of time,” Arielle continued. “Or the magic from an object or…” Her words slowed. “Gods, a creature.”
Creature. Damn it. “Like my familiar? My dragon.”
She bit the inside of her lip and nodded. “Time dragons, can do that and their magic can be used to weave through thecontinuum of past, present, future and possibility.” She drew in a shallow breath. “If the ring is hiding in a possibility realm… a time-dragon would definitely reach it.”
“I don’t have the dragon,” I muttered.
Silence fell between us.
