There was something undignified about sitting outside the headmaster’s office as a full fledged wizard. It reminded Turpenwile of his academy days. He was far from a bad student, but he had a knack for getting into things he shouldn’t have. It was his natural curiosity, that’s how Headmaster Sulpheneer put it. But Sulpheneer was a renowned softy, who could've had the entire Aethowix vault stolen and would’ve just thrown up his hands with a ‘boys will be boys’. His replacement, Headmaster Thresher, pined for the days when school punishment was both cruel and unusual.
By all accounts, Headmaster Hickory was the best headmaster they had in years. Neither soppy like Supheneer nor frothing like Thresher. Firm but fair, encouraged the students while setting hard boundaries. But that almost made it worse. He was the kind of fatherly figure that you never wanted to disappoint. He was only a few years older than Turpenwile himself but he could make him feel like he broke his grandfather’s prized ship model.
“He’s ready for you,” came the voice of Hickory’s secretary. He stood up and prepared to get chewed out. When he entered, Hickory was facing away from him, dramatically looking out the window. He knew that stance well.
“Why has the well-studied headmaster called upon me on this very auspicious evening?” he asked.
Hickory started to turn. “First, you can cut that whole ‘wise sage’ schtick. Second, you can take a seat.” Turpenwile did so. There was a time to be rebellious, and it was not this late at night.
Hickory rubbed his temples. “So when were you going to let me in on your Nightwarren investigation?”
Turperwile shrugged. “I assumed you already knew. And it looks like I was right.”
Hickory leveled a stare at him. “I would've liked to have been told personally.” He shook his head. “Whatever. How many Nightwarrens has the accountant found?”
Turpenwile checked up on Orbital just before he came. “Nineteen, not counting his own family.”
“Do you remember when you first heard the name?” the headmaster asked?
“Less than a month ago, when I met Thistle Nightwarren, though the name did ring a bell.”
Hickory seemed to be displeased with that answer for some reason. “Do you know who founded Aethowix Academy?”
Tuperwile scoffed, Of course he did, he saw it on the pamphlets when he was a teenager, saw the statues when he was a student, read the histories. Everyone knew the school was founded by Hezabeth Nightwarren. But that felt wrong. His face fell. He was sure he saw her portrait everyday, it was a concrete historical fact, so why did it feel like a lie?
All he could muster for an answer was “Yes, I do…but…”
“Exactly!” the headmaster whipped towards him. “It feels wrong doesn’t it? None of us heard the name Nightwarren a few weeks ago, but oh wait, actually we had as our whole school was founded by one!” The headmaster reached for a draw and rummaged around for something. “This was found in our collection,” he tossed a small rock on his desk. Turpenwile inspected it. It appeared to be a humanoid figure, but cartoonishly simplified.
“Looks like a man. How old is it?”
“Two-point-nine million years by our estimates. And it’s not just any man, it’s a gingerbread man.”
Turpenwile was beginning to put the pieces together, but he wished he hadn’t. “So…how long has this…fossilized cookie been in our collection?”
Hickory just stared at the rock. “We have records of it going back centuries.” The name ‘Nightwarren’ suddenly showing up as if it had always been there, the anachronistic bakery, it all pointed to one thing.
Neither of them needed to say it, but Turpenwile did. He had to put it out there, had to make the problem real. “Someone is changing time.”
They were silent, the gravity of their situation sinking in. Though more accurately, it was the weight of time sinking in.
“The Paradoxicon?” Turpenwile questioned.
By all reasonable logic, if someone changed history, you’d never know, as the change would have always been. But wizards were naturally prone to unreasonable logic, which some called paranoia. If something changed history, they wanted to be the first to know, or not know, so they built a device.
The Paradoxicon, a two story machine kept locked away deep within the school’s vaults. It could track changes made to history, except for the fact that it didn’t exist. It had never existed, it was pure theory. Except that it did exist and Turpenwile had seen it with his own eyes.
That was the thing about changing history, anyone who wanted to change it would invariably try to cover their tracks, thereby traveling back in time and preventing it from ever being created. But then someone else would want to know who was messing with time, and travel back to make sure the device was built, which in turn caused the original meddlers to try again. And this the meta-chronological cycle looped to infinity. The Paradoxicon dipped in and out of history on a whim.
The Paradoxicon actually didn’t do anything, it was just a hunk of cleverly constructed dials, cogs, and wire that just spun and hummed for no reason. They mostly used it to store extra desks. But wizards needed everyone to believe it worked so that anyone messing with time would mess with it. It was clever, if it actually existed.
“I’ve searched the school a dozen times as an undergrad and a dozen more as a teacher. Never found a thing,” Hickory stated.
Turpenwile tensed at that. The Paradoxicon could be easily built, so it was worrying if it never was.
“But I had the school searched again last week, and we found it,” said the headmaster.
Turpenwile’s muscles relaxed. “Well at least one time traveler is on our side!”
“Perhaps…” said Hickory. “Or perhaps they’ve caught onto our little trick. When I opened it, I found a dead cat inside!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“A cat?”
“A living cat!” Yufizard blinked. He knew he said something else but… the changes were getting worse. “Either our security is lax enough for a cat to get in, or some time traveler is playing some sick joke!”
They sat in silence for a while. Each trying to keep track of the changes in time, but moments and memories slipped away. Turpenwile broke the silence.
“Which one do you think is doing it?” he asked, perhaps a little too casually. They both knew that only two powers were strong enough to manipulate time to this degree. Most wizards who tried to alter time always forgot that they were subject to it. No sooner would they change time then they lost all reason for changing time in the first place. It was a causal loop that ensnared anyone who tried. But the Gods, both Old and New, existed out of spacetime.
“The New Gods, if I had to bet,” sighed Hickory. “Changing things for the worse is something they would do.”
“Could be the Old Gods, maybe they’re trying to make it so the New Gods never existed?” Turpenwile suggested.
“Well, barring another change, they still exist for now. Or existed back then? Or…you know what I mean. Could be both too,” said Hickory, his head falling to his hands. “We are the smartest people on the planet, and even we’re having trouble following this! How could we even hope to survive this?”
“We don’t even know what they’re trying to do, isn’t it a little presumptuous to assume they want to wipe us out?”
Hickory looked up at him. “Have you ever known a god to leave well enough alone? Even the most powerful of us could get swatted away like a bug. The only hope I have is that we’re too insignificant to exterminate.”
Turpenwile didn’t know what to say. What could he say? It was like trying to find a reason in a tsunami or earthquake. Yes you could figure out the how, but never the why. “Well they haven’t killed us so far,” he finally said.
Hickory glared at him. “Oh joyous day! The incomprehensible and all powerful entities from beyond time and space have allowed us to live, so far.”
So that’s where Mace got her smart mouth. Turpenwile shrugged. “What do you want? If they haven’t killed us already, then there’s something they have planned for us.”
“Oh great! Enslaved to their whims!” Hickory threw up his arms. “Maybe they’ll teach us to do tricks for treats. Look at the cute little human, he’s clever enough to do calculus like a baby god! Do you think he knows how to shake hands?!” He stood up suddenly, scattering papers across the floor. Apparently Mace’s tendency for dramatic freak outs was genetic as well, Turpenwile thought.
“Maybe we should just all roll and play dead!” Hickory shouted to no one in particular. Turpenwile sighed and bent over to pick up the papers. One caught his eye. It read ‘Cornsilk’s Flavor of the Month’.
“Hickory, how long have you had this letter?”
The headmaster turned. “What lett- oh, that letter? Over a year now?” He sounded both sure and unsure at the same time. Another change in time?
“Do you remember getting it?”
Hickory shook his head. “Yes,” he said. Definitely another change.
Turpenwile opened it. “It’s dated to a little over a month ago,” he read. Hickory strode over to him to look over his shoulder, or to look over his head in Turpenwile’s case. “Muudrach’s Muffins?” he read aloud.
“It’s a muffin recipe?” asked Hickory. “What kind of wizard sends recipes through time? Did Cornsilk even dabble in time? Would we even know if he did?”
“It’s certainly possible…” Turpenwile trailed off. Every thread he pulled at just tangled the web further. “Muudrach…that could be name?”
“If it’s a name, it will be found,” without hesitation. Hickory placed his hand on a metal striation on his office wall. “Ms. Cane, I need you to put out a notice to all faculty and staff, I need anything that mentions the word Muudrach. Everything needs to be searched, the library, the archives, the vaults, even personal libraries. That’s ‘m-u-u-d-r-a-c-h’. And you know what, put out a search for muffins too. What? No I’m not hungry it’s an emer- where would you even get muffins this late? Really- well I guess if you’re already going out-. Yeah- yeah- yeah a couple dozen, we’ll be at this for a while. Alright- thanks.” Hickory took his hand off the wall and walked back to Turpenwile. “You should see if that Nightwarren kid could search the tax office, I’ll send word to the other schools, it’s not much but at least it’s something.” Turpenwile nodded, still focusing on the recipe.
Hours passed. Dozens of professors in non magic robes and pajamas passed in and out of the office. Some with promising leads, but nothing substantial yet. The pair had already gone through more than a dozen muffins just trying to keep up their energy. Many thought that the biggest change in a wizard's life was graduation, or hitting level 15, but it was actually the shift from night owl to morning bird. You knew you had made it as a wizard when you became old enough to think 8:30 was late enough. They had drafted a small army of teacher’s assistants to run coffees, and still they fought off exhaustion.
Turpenwile had barely taken his eyes off the recipe. He read it forwards, backwards, upside down, in a mirror, even with some lemon juice. If it was a coded message, it was uncrackable even by wizard standards. He felt his eyes drooping as he read ‘cup of sugar’ for the 32nd time in an hour.
Hickory was looking worse for wear too. It was astonishing how much he reminded Turpenwile of Mace, especially at their lowest. Maybe that’s why he and his niece were always butting heads. The headmaster’s head was barely supported by his hand as he read through 6th century trade records. Both of them nearly collapsed from exhaustion, but then it happened.
“I’ve found something!” a young assistant called. He waved something above his head. “A direct reference to Muudrach!”
All fatigue slid off as the pair leapt from their chairs.
“Let us see!” asked Hickory.
“Where was it found?” asked Turpenwile.
A small crowd of sleep deprived professors, students, and one very confused cleaning lady gathered round the hapless assistant.
“In the kid’s section!” the assistant tried to say over the clamor of questions. This caught Turpenwile’s ear, but he wasn’t sure if Hickory heard it.
Hickory snatched it, nearly tearing it apart. It looked remarkably old. Its brightly colored cover was muted and its pages were yellowed, half of which weren’t attached to the spine.
“Goodnight, Little Gods?” he read.
“Muudrach is on page nine, paragraph er- one,” said the assistant. The book only had ten pages, and it was more than charitable calling them ‘paragraphs’. But some habits die hard.
“Goodnight stars, goodnight cat. Goodnight Muudrach, goodnight wombat,” the headmaster read aloud.
A dozen eyes watched him in silence. Until a “Is that it?”
Hickory flipped back and forth. “It says it was written by J. Memoran, has anyone heard of that name?”
A chorus of murmurs, then a “Oh! My kids love her books!” from Ms. Cane. All eyes turned to her. Ms. Cane wasn’t magically gifted, but had a knack for filing. She shrunk away as a senior faculty focused on her.
“Please, any information you have,” Hickory said calmly.
She mumbled “Well, my kids and I really like her books. We even got Dragons in the Dandelions signed by her once.”
“Signed? As in she’s currently living?” Hickory turned to face the assistant. “How long have we had this book in the library?”
“It was apparently donated over a century ago.”
“Someone, see if you can get into contact with J. Memoran, and unless she’s older than our parents, then we have another anachronistic artifact!”
As a couple professors jumped to the task, Turpenwile spotted a glint on the back. “Hang on, it’s got a sticker,” he pointed out. Hickory flipped the book over.
“If found, please return to Little Learners School, Cobpleton, Nursing County.”