Thug did not enjoy walking around the Mansion at night, particularly when a loud bang startled him from his sleep.
A shiver rippled across his wings as he flew downstairs. Odd shadows filled his vision; shadows that frightened him. What looked like a bookshelf during daylight now appeared like a giant creature with many mouths, threatening to devour him. At this exact moment, he would have given anything to be back under his blanket, safe and sound. But his boss wouldn’t like that. Oh no; she wouldn’t like that at all. And it was his job – as her faithful assistant for life - to investigate the source of the loud bang.
He paused, waiting. The entire Mansion itself seemed to have frozen in place too, mimicking him. Perhaps it was simply an artefact falling with the wind, Thug wondered. His boss owed many ancient sculptures and fragile objects. Yes, he made up his mind. That was it. Now he could just return to his bed …
He was turning to leave when a shadow caught his eye. He wished he hadn’t seen it.
It was a person, standing still and eerily at the entrance. Thug couldn’t tell whether it was facing him or not.
“Wh-who’s that?”
The shadow did not reply.
Thug swallowed a large knot in his throat. Keep it together, he told himself. This is your job.
He neared the strange silhouette. Now, standing a few paces away, he could see that it was facing the other way. Slim hands gripped the railing. It peered over the balcony, at a point in the distance. A breeze flew by, raising up her coat and her long, plaited hair …
Suddenly, the figure seemed all too familiar.
“Mam?”
Polkadot turned her head to look at him. “Did you hear the bang, Thug?”
He landed on the railing and nodded. “What was it?”
She raised her hand, pointing. “Look.”
Thug followed her gaze. The Mansion was a treehouse hoisted above the ocean by three scrawny sticks. Thug long since stopped questioning all the mysteries that came with it; like how this frail structure survived tsunamis, or how the ship in the roof could sail itself, or how the Music room was filled with instruments that played itself, or how the Mansion repaired itself so that even if Thug shattered a glass artefact to pieces it would be standing it in its original place the next second. He stopped questioning these things about the Mansion centuries ago – since he was hired as Polkadot’s assistant – but the Island of Doors never, ever, ceased to complicate matters.
The Island of Doors (that was not its name in actuality, but rather a sort of nickname that Thug kept for it) was an island nearby the mansion. It was home to millions of trees of all types, all closely packed together. Funnily, as Thug discovered on his first trip there, the island housed nothing else. There were no animals. No birds. No insects. Only trees. And they were the strangest of trees, too. Each tree had a spinning blue portal on its trunk, a portal that led to another world somewhere in the multiverse. Millions and millions of trees, with millions and millions of doors, connecting millions and millions of worlds within two paces of each other. Often, Thug thought of all the things that could go wrong. He did not like to think about it.
Now, however, the possibilities ran through his head like wildfire as he saw the catastrophe burning through the night sky. A single beam of blue light struck up from the island powerfully, aiming so high that Thug could not see where it ended. He knew one thing; it was not a good sign.
“Wh-what is –”
“It’s an SOS signal from a world about to be destroyed,” his boss explained calmly.
Thug panicked. His heart raced faster than his wings. “D-destroyed?”
Polkadot stared at the blue beam, indifferent. “Yes. We must go.”
“Go?” The very thought of going anywhere near a dying world rocked him to his core.
She did not reply. She merely touched his arm – his fur rose at her touch – and then they were gone.
They re-appeared the next moment on the Island. It was not silent here, at all.
In fact, it was absolute chaos.
Thug shielded his eyes from the blinding blue light, attempting to take control of his wings as the wind tossed him about. He gripped his boss’s coat for dear life. She neared the unstable portal, strolling serenely as if crossing a road. Thug shut his eyes. Blue light swallowed them.
It was several moments later when he heard his boss whisper, “You can open your eyes now, Thug.”
He wished he hadn’t. For the sight he saw was worse than anything he had ever witnessed.
The sky was red. Here and there, black clouds littered the scene, veiling a full moon the color of blood. Black smoke filled the air. They had landed next to a dead tree covered in ashes. Towering over them was a black castle, where numerous fires caught alight as Thug watched with his own eyes. People ran around, panicked, frightened, a melee of confusion and terror. There were centaurs engaged in combat with wolves, and mermaid corpses lying on the ground. A war was taking place around them, and Thug could do nothing but watch. All sounds were muffled, as if there was a thick glass wall between this world and Thug.
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Polkadot strolled, navigating her way around a mangled corpse. Thug still clung closely to her coat.
“What – what’s happening here?” Thug asked.
“A war,” Polkadot answered. “One that has been going on for years.”
A spear flew through the air, zipping past Thug’s ear. His ducked, hardening his grip on his boss’s coat. He gazed at the horizon – which was nothing more than a black line of smoke in the distance – and suddenly realized which world they were in. “Comikaycrest? This – this is The Dark Woods? But how?”
Polkadot said in a somber voice: “It’s the final era, Thug. The Era of Evil.”
Thug knew there were four eras of time that repeated infinitely. The first, where everything is created and evolving from a single microcosm to the vast multiverse. Life is fresh, new, pure and innocent. The second era, there are some bad changes. The third era, there are evil changes. And in the fourth era … evil reigns.
Thug did not like to think about that, either.
So he asked, “Why are we here?”
She did not reply, not yet. But when she stopped at a large hall in the castle, where the roof had collapsed and the remains were aflame, revealing the horrific sky above, Thug knew.
They were here to watch a battle.
There was a young girl who Thug immediately recognized. She was battered and injured, but she fought resiliently. She fought, commanding waves of water around her masked enemies, drowning them, or tossing them across the walls. There seemed to be an endless number of these masked ninja’s, wearing black and red cloths over their bodies, the only thing visible were their eyes. And their swords – Thug was glad for the glass wall. Their swords were crafted in a special place meant for torture: Emeraldholden metal.
“Watch,” Polkadot whispered.
Thug watched as the girl ran and fought, dodging swords, killing ninjas. She was powerful with her water manipulation, but Thug only grew more impressed when she created duplicates of herself. Two, three, four identical copies all fighting at her command. She had grown more powerful than the last time Thug saw her. She was a Queen, indeed. A warrior. One by one, she took down her attackers.
She picked up a rogue sword and used it to fight a new ninja. Thug could not believe his eyes as he watched her stab the man through his heart. The ninja stared at her with unblinking eyes before falling to his knees. He fell with a thud by Thug’s feet.
Thug turned to his boss with plead in his eyes. “Please. Do something, mam. This – this is horrible …”
“I must not interfere with time,” she replied.
Thug gazed at the girl again, wishing he could do anything to help her. She was beaten and bruised and, no doubt, exhausted. She looked nothing like Thug remembered her to be.
Suddenly, there was a scream. The girl turned her head and looked directly at Thug. Her piercing gaze chilled him. He froze.
“She doesn’t see you,” said Polkadot. “She’s watching him.”
Thug realized that the girl was indeed looking through him at a battle occurring behind. A single ninja was engaged with three others. Thug watched, as Polkadot narrated the scene before them.
“And with a swerve of his sword he sliced the head of one, jerked the blade into the other, and ruthlessly stabbed the remaining,” Polkadot said. “The next second all three of them dropped dead to the ground.”
They did. The victorious ninja turned his head and fixed his eyes on the girl. He removed his mask.
Thug stumbled backwards in surprise. He recognized the boy. “What?” He couldn’t do anything more than stare in astonishment at the person he knew to be a peaceful sorcery student – who casted spells to morph shells into butterflies – was now a ruthless killer in this ninja army.
The girl and the boy stared at each other for seconds. Even in the horrible war around them, they smiled at the sight of each other.
Thug was beginning to think that perhaps this war would take a turn. Polkadot laid a hand on his shoulder, bringing him closer to her as she said: “Then suddenly, so fast her expression changed from a smile to shock and then to pain that he barely had time to blink. He knew his expression must be changing too, as his brain processed what he was seeing.”
The boy’s scream reached Thug’s ear as a muffle, but he didn’t need to hear him to feel his pain.
“JUNE!”
For the girl had fallen to her knees, a sharp golden disc struck her spine.
The boy ran toward her, catching her in his arms, as three others came running. Thug recognized the young girl with the afro and her sharp, intelligent eyes. He also recognized the other two boys: a skinny pale boy with long hair, and a buffy tan boy who manipulated fire. They all carried weapons – arrows, axes, swords – but when they saw the disc protruding from their friend’s back, they seemed to have lost all hope.
The girl with the afro fell to her knees and started yelling commands. Thug heard something like “Remove the disc!” and “You’re not going to die!” and then fire enclosed around them –
The rest disappeared in a swirl of blue as Polkadot pulled him through the portal. They returned to the Island, staring at the spinning blue portal in front of them.
Thug stared at his boss incredulously. “We can’t just leave her like that! We can’t leave any of them like that!”
“There is nothing I can do,” Polkadot replied with a glass stare. The blue light of the portal reflected on her face.
“There is! You can turn back time! You can save all of them!”
“I can turn back time, but I cannot change what happens. I must not interfere with time.”
Thug stared at the portal, helplessness weighing down his muscles like an anchor weighing down a ship. “But – how –”
“I can turn back time,” Polkadot said, raising her palm at the portal, “but only to watch. We cannot interfere with Nature’s mechanism.” She paused, staring at Thug as if waiting for him to respond. Thug did not feel like responding; he was upset. His boss was as ruthless as those ninjas.
Finally, Polkadot decided she didn’t need his agreement. She closed her eyes and the portal stopped spinning. The blue swirling lines froze for a few seconds of silence that felt denser than metal. Thug could hear his own beating heart.
Then, Polkadot turned her palm anticlockwise – and the swirling blue lines followed. She was reversing time within that world. Thug heard millions of sounds and voices – it could have been from yesterday, or last month, or decades ago, he would never know. He heard people yell and cry and laugh. He heard a dragon growl and a gremlin sneeze a horse neigh and a water monster say “Master”. He heard a familiar voice say, “she’s a vampire”, while another said: “welcome to the school beneath!”. An excited boy exclaimed: “To winning the Fire Demon!” – to which someone else replied: “To winning that hell of a ride! – He’s my brother. – You are wrong. You do know me … I just have one request. Don’t forget me. – They think I’m weird. – How about a tour? – I would love that – Save our souls – Smell the blood! – Don’t worry. I would never hurt my students. – Hector Hector – it’s a demonic game – Herpole? – I am the final clue – The secret of a tree lies in its roots – Seastrider – Don’t you know it’s rude to stare? – search your dorms – vanished – looking for something? –
“– JUNE!”
It stopped as quick as it began. Polkadot dropped her palm, gazing at the portal with new interest. The blue lines swirled clockwise. Even Thug could sense a different air about this portal now. There was no longer the stench of death and misery attached to it. He could hear birds chirping and water flowing. Involuntarily, Thug reached for his pouch where he kept his quill and paper. He knew what he had to do.
Still, he hesitated.
Polkadot tilted her head. “Do not fear. I am here with you.”
Thug nodded.
Silently, Polkadot retrieved a shiny object from her pocket. A sharp golden disc.
“Thug?”
“Mam?”
“Start writing.”
Reluctantly, Thug pressed quill to paper.