April 17th, 1602

“There we go,” Flick announced firmly while looking at the large basketball-sized crystal that had been erected on top of a golden stand in the middle of the most elaborate spellform she had ever seen outside of the one that had spread the possession protection magic across the entire rebellion. The whole thing had been set up on the bridge of what had once been the Reaper tower before it was transformed into the Roundabout school. “I think it’s all set. Are you guys ready? How about everyone outside?” She gave the spell one last look to check for any problems. Not that she expected to see any, considering Ehn was the one who put most of it together. And what he hadn’t done personally, Percy had taken care of.

Speaking of whom, Percy reflexively looked it over as well, before shaking her head. Her voice was bright, the cheer she was feeling at the idea of what was about to finally happen readily apparent. “Nope, no problems at all, Flick! I think the spell is set up correctly. It matches the image Mister Ehn left behind for us to double-check, and it’s receiving power from the crystal he provided. It all appears to be working just fine. And the others are all braced in their homes and classrooms, just waiting for the countdown!”

Laein was perched on top of a chair nearby, staring intently that way as she cackled. “Yeeeeeesssss, fear our presence in the present, mortals! Our arrival shall be your doom! Prepare your lamentations, your pleadings, your empty offerings of your pathetic souls! Your fall shall echo through the eons, generations of your descendents wailing for the pain and loss that shall be reaped this day--not this day specifically but the day in the future we’re going to in just a minute, that is, the day you’re actually living in now--CRY AND QUIVER!”

Coughing, Flick gave the chair a little nudge with her foot. “I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have any problems. Might be hard to ask Ehn for tech support from all the way over in another universe. I wouldn’t even know how to start with that.”

Percy gave a short nod. “Yes, whatever he was forced to depart this universe to attend to must have been very important. Particularly for him to leave this method of returning to our own time. He… did not seem to believe he would be able to return to this time period with any degree of specificity. Did he happen to tell you why that would be?”

Flick, for her part, shrugged. “You know what it's like getting answers out of him sometimes. The only thing I really understood was that he had to spend a bunch of power to switch universes in a hurry, and that doing it that way, without a lot of extra care he couldn’t take the time to use, would create some sort of residue or something that makes it impossible for him to come back to this time period. Something about creating an effect similar to when two of the same being are in the same general area. The only way for him to punch through to the other universe quick enough meant leaving that residue behind. So it was either wait around here for a few decades for that to wear off so he can come back and get us, or use his Time Travel For Dummies spell that he set up for us to get back ourselves. And we’re sure it’s right?”

“It’s right here!” Laein held up the book Ehn had left with the spell details within. “And it all looks just fine! Come on, we've been over it again and again and again and again! It's time to stop dawdling and start going! I want to get back to a time when we don't have to worry about changing the future. I'm tired of holding back my true power just so these peons can continue their boring, inconsequential lives. It's time to go home and show the universe its true lord and master!” She paused, then looked to Flick before offering a slightly abashed toothy smile. “Its true lords and masters.”

“Thanks, it’s just nice to be included,” Flick replied dryly. “But you’re right, sorry, we need to get on with it. Everyone’s waiting, apparently.” She took a breath before letting it out slowly. “Okay, Percy, let’s light this candle. Time for the Roundabout to get back to the future!”

“But it’s never been in the future,” Laein pointed out with a frown. “It hasn’t switched times at all.”

Percy raised her hand. “I know this one, it is a movie reference! Another one we should make certain you watch as soon as possible.”

“We’ll add it to the list,” Flick agreed before gesturing for the Revenant to go ahead. “And hey, that’s another reason to want to get back to the time we belong in. So let’s do it.”

With that, Percy stepped forward, setting her hand against the crystal before beginning to chant words in a language neither of the others understood. It immediately glowed brightly with power, that glow spreading through the elaborate spellforms.

Shivering as she felt the energy rising through the room, enough to make her hair start to stand up, Flick held her breath. She wanted to say something, wanted to try to help in some way. But she couldn’t. This was up to Percy now. The spell was right, the crystal had all the power it needed. Ehn gave them the recipe and now it was done. The only thing speaking up would do was interrupt Percy at a critical moment, which could be devastating. They didn’t have another crystal to use if this went wrong. Even Laein was keeping quiet, though she fairly quivered with excitement, eyes darting around as she watched the spell gradually begin to go into effect. Just a little bit more…

And then Flick heard it, a cry from outside the room. The ‘bridge’ of the tower was actually the main living area on the third floor of the new Haunted Mansion in the center of the schoolyard, and the cries were coming from the front courtyard.

Giving Percy a quick look urging her to keep going, Flick moved to the window to look that way. She saw a handful of their Necromancy students, all shouting toward the bonewall that surrounded the Roundabout. But what were they--oh. Oh no. One of their youngest members, Flower, was out there, beyond the wall. Flower was a Ragneg, a humanoid rock race. In Flower’s case, that meant they were a three-and-a-half foot tall gray rock person with drawings of brightly colored flowers scrawled all over their body. The drawings were put there by Flower themself and by their friends, with a wide range of artistic ability. Their love of the colorful plants had been what led to the nickname, since their given Ragneg name was almost impossible for most people to pronounce.

Flick had no idea how Flower had ended up on the wrong side of the wall, but it didn’t matter right then. Percy couldn’t stop the spell, she didn’t even know what was going on, and it was nearing the end.

“Keep going!” Flick called over her shoulder. She just had to teleport down there, grab Flower, and teleport back across the barrier. Easy peasy.

And there was no way in hell she would leave Flower behind. They were entirely too sweet and cheerful, and they didn’t know how to take care of themself. As a barely partially-trained Necromancer and an obvious Alter---no. No, they weren’t being left behind!

Instantly, Flick sent herself that way. Quick, quick, she just had to be quick. She didn’t even have to touch the Ragneg, which saved another second. As soon as she appeared next to the colorful rock figure, Flick was already focusing on the second jump. That time, she took the young one with her, right across the…

Grass. They landed in grass, stumbling a bit from the slightly-longer fall with the metal ground not there. It was gone. The metal ground was gone. The buildings that should have been there were gone. The towers, the park, the farm, all of it, everything was gone.

The Roundabout left without them. And in this case, it was never coming back. The spell they’d been given was specifically about going to that exact point in time, not returning or going anywhere else. Anywhen else. The Roundabout was gone. Percy and Laein and… and everyone else were back in the present.

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For a moment, the only thing Flick could do was stand there and stare. Heavy stones lay in her stomach. Her throat was dry, a thick knot cording itself up within it. No. No, no, no. How could this--how could they… no, please, not this. No, no, not now! This was a dream, a bad dream, it had to be. This didn’t happen! They weren’t just--

“M… Miss Flickob…?” Flower’s voice quivered uncertainly as they used the name they had settled on after a bit of confusion about whether their teacher was named Flick or Jacob. “Where is everybody?”

Swallowing, Flick looked down at the rock figure. Flower was essentially the equivalent of a human seven-year-old, as far as maturity went. They didn’t understand what had just happened, or the ramifications. Hell, she was pretty sure she didn’t understand them yet. She didn’t have time to. Ehn had made it very clear that the time travel spell they used would throw up a massive power spike, attracting Boschers from all over the place. Whatever else happened, they could deal with it later. She would find another way home, another way to get herself and Flower to the present. Right now, as Locke was repeatedly shouting in her mind, they had to get the hell out of here.

“Don’t worry, Flower,” she assured the young figure, “we’ll find them later.” With that, she focused on a small cabin near a mountain range about five hundred miles south that she remembered finding while exploring some time earlier. And yet, even as they appeared there, she jumped them again, to a forest several hundred miles west from that, then all the way to the beach in what would one day be California, north to the future Washington, then back south and east to an area somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

Granted, it was unlikely that anyone would be able to follow even the first trail. The massive energy spike the time traveling Roundabout had put out should have masked any other signatures in that area, making it impossible to track them. But she wanted to be absolutely certain. Enough things had gone wrong today--no, don’t think about it, Flick--that she didn’t want to add being actively chased by Boschers to the list.

Keep it together. She just had to keep it together. Not for her own sake, for Flower’s. The poor kid would fall apart if they thought they were responsible for trapping Flick and themself here in the past. That was just--no, she wouldn’t put that on them. She could have a breakdown later, when she was alone. Right now--right now she had to keep it together. It helped that she had a literal voice in her head reminding her of that. Breathe. Breathe and keep her voice even.

“It’s okay,” she promised the young Ragneg, reaching out to take their hand. Somehow, by a miracle, she managed to keep the fear and uncertainty out of her voice. “I bet you’re hungry, huh? Let’s go find something to eat.

“Then we’ll figure out how to make sure our friends can find us when they come back.”

******

Five Years Later, June 4th, 1607

She shouldn’t have said that. She never should have implied that their friends could come back for them. Sure, she’d been hopeful that there might be some way of pulling it off, despite the issues, but… but she shouldn’t have said when. That just made it harder when, after days and days turning into weeks, months, and years, no one did. Not only harder on Flower, but on Flick herself. They were alone here, in this time period. Ehn was gone, off on his own thing and probably expecting to meet them back in the present, and so was the Roundabout, with everyone else they knew. Even almost all of her ghosts had been there, forcing Flick to use the intervening years to gather more. The most she could do was visit Gaia now and then as Jacob. even then, she didn’t want to do that too much, for fear of what she might change.

For the most part, it was just her and Flower. Well, them and all the other members of the Flique, but as far as physical bodies went, the two of them were on their own. Stranded in the very early sixteen hundreds, afraid to change the timeline, Flick had done the only thing she could under those circumstances. She took Flower with her back to that secluded cabin and tried to lay low. She trained the Ragneg now and then in their own budding Necromancy, while also teaching them normal things. And she trained herself. She gathered more ghosts from towns across the country, recruiting them into her service while doing her best not to stand out or attract attention from the wrong people. Quiet. They had to be quiet. Ehn wasn’t around to help out with a cheat sheet of what they could safely interfere with anymore. She did still have the gemstone, which had already been carefully broken apart and fashioned into a monocle as well as a set of glasses, but all that told her was whether someone could safely be killed or not. It didn’t say whether a situation was okay to interfere in.

So, for these past five years, she and Flower had remained as isolated as possible. She felt bad for doing that to the poor kid. They deserved to be around others their age. That was what the Roundabout should have been for them. But… yeah, it was complicated. She tried her best to be there for them, to be everything they needed, a teacher, a friend, a companion, even some sort of parent, terrifying as that was. And yet, just having someone else there with her, someone to take care of, had helped. She had Flower to focus on. It distracted her from dwelling too much on the ever-present fear that she might actually have to live through all these years.

On this particular summer morning, Flick was cooking breakfast at the small wood burning stove while listening to Flower running around the clearing out front talking to their bird friends as they chirped in nearby trees. They were telling the birds every detail about the fishing trip the two of them had gone on the day before.

It was… peaceful like this. Oh, Flick really wanted to get home to her friends and family, no doubt about that. Still, there was something almost nice about spending these past few years with absolutely no desperate fights, no terror, nothing but teaching her surrogate rock-child and training herself. With the help of the rest of the Flique and the malleable nature of the Archive allowing what amounted to virtual reality, her combat skills weren’t allowed to atrophy either. She kept up her skills under the intense tutelage of some of the older and more experienced Flique members, including several full-on winner-take-all brawls throughout the Archive. Between that and her physical training in the real world, Flick was keeping herself in shape.

Granted, the idea of letting that lapse just on the off chance that it would prompt Avalon to find a way to reach clear back through time to throttle her and thus give them a way home was somewhat tempting. But probably not worth it in the long run.

Flick

Standing there at the stove, carefully removing the eggs she had just scrambled from the heat, Flick almost didn’t hear the voice at first. Then it came back, just loud enough for her to pick it up.

Flick

Stopping short, she blinked a couple times, before starting with an uncertain, Wordsmith? That was the member of the Flique who had been active most recently. Is that you?

Oh, oh, Flick! The response most definitely was not Wordsmith, or any other member of that collective. It’s you, you’re really--we finally found you!

In that moment, the identity of the voice in her head finally dawned on Flick, making her stagger backward while speaking out loud. “Tabbris?” Years, it had been years since she heard her sister’s voice, even in her own mind. And yet, here it was.

Flick! There was joy in that voice, and Flick felt her sister’s presence. It wasn’t the same as Tabbris being in her mind fully, possessing her or through partial recall. The connection was incredibly faint. Listen, I’m not really there, and we can’t do this for very long! But we found a way to bring you home, to this time! We have to do it quick, and there’s only enough power for a single trip, but we can get you here!

Flick felt a rush of cheer, before the sudden lump in her throat choked it out. “A single trip. You mean one person.” She turned, walking to the window of the cabin to look out at Flower, who was playing with a toy wooden boat that one of the Flique had carved for her.

Uh huh, the answer came, we had to fight a whole bunch of people for it! But we got it, we got the link, so we can bring you back.

“Tabs,” Flick started quietly, in a voice that threatened to choke itself off with each word, “tell everyone I love them, and we can all keep trying to find a way for me to get back the short way. But if this thing you’ve got is only good for one person, then I’m not the one you need to use it on.

“I stayed here for one person, and I’m not leaving them behind now.”

*******

Flick stood on the porch of the cabin, staring at the footprints of a rock person in the dirt.

It was done. There hadn’t been time to argue, no time to really explain all her feelings or make all the promises she wanted to make. They would keep trying to find another way, and so would she. Time travel was complicated, made harder by a multitude of other factors including the ‘residue’ Ehn’s departure had left in this general time period and on Flick herself just from her being nearby at that point. Reasons on top of reasons for why this was complicated to begin with and even more so in her specific circumstances.

But really, what it came down to was that she was stuck here. They had one chance to bring someone back to the present, and in the end, it wasn’t even a choice. It was automatic. Flower went back to their friends. That was where they belonged.

And Flick… well, if she was being honest with herself, she knew how this was going to go. She’d had her chance. Now she had to get back to her family the long way around. At least she wasn’t alone. Not really. She had several hundred brothers and sisters inside her head, just waiting to talk whenever she was ready. But not now.

Right now, she just wanted to stand here, staring at those footprints and holding a small wooden toy boat.