I had seen and done a little bit of time traveling over these past couple years, so of course the idea of seeing dinosaurs had passed through my mind before. I refused to believe that there was anyone in the world who wouldn't think about that when time travel was on the table. But that was all it ever was, a fleeting thought. I never really believed that I would actually see dinosaurs in real life. Not real dinosaurs on Earth in the time period where they ruled. Which, the fact that I even had to quantify it that much said a lot about my life, really. As if more even needed to be said at this point.
And yet, there I stood on the edge of that cliff. The wide open field stretching out below was full of actual, giant, long-necked dinosaurs. I thought they were brachiosauruses, but they may have been one of the other similar types. Either way, seeing them like that stunned me into silence. We were far above them, but they were so gigantic that I was pretty sure they could have lifted their heads up to stare us in the eyes. Truly majestic creatures in every respect, they had to be pushing almost fifty feet in length from nose to the tip of their tails, and with those long necks, they could reach up about forty feet or so in height. Seeing (and hearing, considering the thunderous rumble they made while walking) a herd of those things passing by was, in a word, intimidating. And I had seen a lot of very intimidating things so far. For a moment, I just had to stop and stare in silence, forgetting everything. I forgot why we were here, I forgot about Ehn, about the cataclysmic problems the entire universe faced if we didn’t shut down those rifts, about all of it. I forgot it all, just for a moment, and stared at a sight that almost no human would ever get to see in person.
It wasn’t just the brachiosauruses. There were a few stegosauruses down there too, staying well away from their much-larger companions, closer to the trees along the far side of the valley, where I could see a glimpse of a blue stream through the thick green foliage. The stegosauruses were staying near the water. Even those trees themselves were larger than I was used to seeing outside of alien worlds or Eden’s Garden. They towered over the landscape, tall and thick and so very, very green. Old branches would fall out of those trees now and then as the giant beasts lumbered past, and I saw one fall near enough to a stegosaurus for it to reach out and start munching on leaves it wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise.
Whether because they understood that this was something I needed to take a moment to see and that I would get to their questions soon enough, or because they too were momentarily caught up with the sight before us, Jazz and Theia were both quiet for a few seconds after that first demand for answers. The three of us just stood there and watched the dinosaurs living millions of years from our present wandering through the field like it was a normal day for them. Because of course it was. They had no idea how much things would eventually change on this planet, none at all. Millions of years in the future, the world would be unrecognizable. Would it be just as unrecognizable to us that far into our future? Certainly. But what sort of unrecognizable? Would life still exist? Would humans have evolved into something more? Would we live side by side with other species, the Bystander Effect completely forgotten? Would a different animal that was completely inconsequential in our present end up being the dominant species?
Those thoughts were quiet whispers in the back of my mind, all-but silent next to what I was actually seeing. Standing on the edge of that cliff, watching the awe-inspiring, unbelievable sight just strolling through that open field and lounging by those trees, I felt a truly incredible sense of wonder. Unsurprisingly, I also heard a very particular and appropriate theme song start to play softly in the back of my mind before gradually growing more distinct and clear.
No, wait, that wasn't in my head. I was really hearing that song. Or rather, I was hearing a hummed version. A hummed, very slightly offkey version coming from behind me.
“It is Douglas’s favorite movie,” Theia announced proudly as Jazz and I both turned to look at her. “Apologies for being offkey, it was an attempt to avoid lawsuits. We may be millions of years in the past, and possess powers and magic to topple entire Earth governments, but I have been told the Walter Disney lawyers are remarkably persistent.” She gave a wide, slightly crooked smile before waving cheerfully. “Hello, Flick! It looks as though you have been very busy.”
That gave me a chance to really look at the two of them, now that I was… well getting past my surprise at seeing them at all. Jazz was wearing a simple purple tank top and dark jeans with sneakers. But Theia? Well, she looked as eclectic as ever, though she wasn’t as pale as she had been when I first saw her emerge from Pace. Her normally brown hair, nestled under Doug’s New York Rangers hockey cap, fell in thick waves with completely random and haphazard streaks of color through it. Blue, red, green, and yellow. It was like she had been testing different hair colors simply by changing randomly-placed half inch-wide strips at a time and just left it like that. She wore a bright pink silk button-up shirt with short sleeves, a purple and white arm warmer on the left side and a red and blue arm warmer on the right, an orange tie with a yellow smiley face pin, yellow pants with the rainbow belt I’d seen before, and her orange sneakers with the assortment of white lightning bolts painted over them. Her outfit was, in a couple words, busy and loud.
Taking all that in, and thinking about just how absurd it would be to run around in prehistoric dinosaur times while wearing that, I couldn’t help but give a tiny snicker before catching myself. Then it was honestly kind of hard to keep the tears back. “I missed you too, Theia. Both of you.” My gaze snapped back and forth between them. “I know you guys have like a million questions. I’ve got like a--uhh, a lot to talk about.” My eyes shifted over to stare at those dinosaurs once more, as I swallowed hard. Boy was that an understatement. How was I ever going to tell them everything I needed to? Where was I even supposed to start with this whole thing? And how could I get through it when there was the distraction of actual fucking dinosaurs down there?
My answer, namely that I wasn’t going to get through it just yet, came a second later as Jazz abruptly snapped a hand out to grab my arm, staring past me while squeezing firmly. “Uh, Flick, I really wanna hear that story. Like, all of it. Especially the part about how we ended up here and what the hell we’re supposed to be doing. But is it just me, or is that a spaceship down there?”
Confused, I turned to stare. She was right. At the edge of the valley those brachiosauruses were striding through, far from where that herd of stegosauruses were lounging, a reddish-silver spaceship was parked. It looked just like an old flying saucer, maybe a hundred feet in diameter and twenty feet tall, standing on three landing struts along with a long silver ramp extending off a human-sized hatch that was open. And as we watched, a figure appeared in that doorway. From this distance, I couldn’t make out any details, just that they had four arms and wore what looked a bit like a safari-type outfit. I was pretty sure they had some sort of firearm over their shoulder too. Either way, as they descended the ramp, the figure was joined by several more like them.
Before thinking about anything else, I grabbed the other two and dropped down to lay flat on the ground. My mind was racing, as I stared that way and tried to think about what they might have to do with what I was supposed to be doing here. Were they looking for the rift? Were they connected to it? Were they the ones who were empowered by the thing or… or…
“Flick,” Jazz hissed under her breath as though afraid those figures might be able to overhear (with the assortment of powers, technology, and magic out there, they just might), “are those people down there the reason we’re here? Where’s that Ehn guy? And uh, is there a reason you couldn’t phone ahead and let us get our shit together before we came?” She was clearly trying to keep things light, teasing me a bit. But she also definitely wanted actual answers.
My head shook slightly, but I didn't respond until I managed to produce one of the many privacy spell coins I always kept on me. Once that was active, I spoke normally. “I'm not sure. We have to find a rift around here somewhere. The rift leads to the Fomorian homeworld.” There, that was sort of like ripping the Band-Aid off, and I heard both girls give sharp gasps. “Yeah, exactly. It's a really long story, but the gist is that a bunch of those rifts opened up in random places and times. There's duplicates of me in all those times, along with people I know, like you guys. We have to find the rift and send me through it. If we don't get every version of me through every one of those rifts, the Fomorians are going to become a lot stronger than they already are.”
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Jazz sounded like she knew full well that she would regret asking, but did so anyway. “How exactly are they going to get even stronger?”
Before answering, I summoned up a swarm of invisible ghosts, sending them out to scout those people and their ship. At the moment, they were simply standing at the base of that ship, seemingly chatting with one another. From the looks of things, they were cracking jokes and teasing one another. They definitely didn't look like they thought anything serious was going on. So maybe they wouldn't be on guard enough to notice my ghosts getting closer.
I wanted to know what exactly we were dealing with. It probably shouldn't have surprised me that aliens had been here during these times, but it did. Even Grandfather didn't exist at this point. I did vaguely know something about beings we called Primals, like the ones whose weapons had empowered Oberon as the King of Canada. But these guys didn't look like all-powerful demigods. They just look like ordinary Alters out for a Safari hunt or whatever. It was weird.
Weird is one word for this whole situation, Story agreed in my head. But now imagine how those two feel. Especially after what you just told them.
She had a point, so I grimaced and continued. Not that learning the full story (or at least that part of it) was exactly going to make them feel better. “Ehn fucked up. He went into the main rift. We were trying to get a living Fomorian from the time before they turned into monsters. But when he went in the rift, it… reacted to his dragon power and basically exploded. It exploded all across the timeline, making all those extra rifts. He's dead, and now his power is zooming up through the timeline toward the Fomorians. If we don't close the rift by sending me through all of them, it'll reach their homeworld and boost all of them with his Dragon power. Yeah, it's that bad.”
The other two were silent for a few seconds, clearly digesting that. Theia was the first to find her voice, speaking simply. “We certainly cannot allow that to happen, but I don't think those people know anything about it. They seem to be here for fun, not on a dangerous mission, or looking for power.”
My head bobbed a little. “Yeah, I think you're right. But that doesn't mean they couldn’t become a bigger problem. Or that they aren't looking for something that could be.” With that, I explained the part about how the rifts would be empowering something or someone in each area, something that would try to stop us from reaching them.
By that point, all six of the alien figures in the distance had formed up and started to walk away from their ship. My ghosts were close enough for me to look through them and get a better idea of what we were dealing with. These Alters were each about seven feet tall, mostly lanky, with bluish green skin and those four arms. From the way they were stretching, the arms as well as their legs bent equally forwards and backwards. And I was right about the Safari outfits. They weren't exactly the same as modern Earth versions, but it was clearly the same sort of idea. They were also chatting to one another in a language I couldn't understand, unsurprisingly.
Wait, Story piped up, I can understand that. It's a strange dialect, but I can definitely pick out enough words to translate. It sounds like they’re employees of some sort of collector. They're here on this unknown world to bring him plants and animals none of his customers have ever seen before.
Well, that was definitely something. Watching those six figures while one of them pulled out some sort of camera-like scanning device to take the measurements and other details from the brachiosauruses, I explained that much to the others.
Jazz gave me a confused luck, shaking her head. “How do you know all that? Wait, did you send ghosts down there? Do they speak that language? How old are your ghosts?”
Coughing despite myself, I replied, “That's part of that really long story. I don't think we can get into it right now. if those guys down there find the rift before we do and go through it, or do anything with it, it could be really bad. We have to get there first.”
Of course, that was when Story spoke up again. She had been listening through the ghosts to those guys talking. Uh oh. I'm pretty sure they just detected something. The guy with the scanner is really excited and keeps talking about an energy surge.
Sure enough, that particular four-armed Alter was waving his hands around, pointing at a scanning device in one of them as he babbled excitedly at the others. The one who seemed to be in charge asked a question, and that one used one hand to point off through the trees past the lounging stegosauruses. I didn't need Story to translate to know that he was telling them where they needed to go to find that energy surge. And I was willing to guess that if the surge wasn't the rift itself, it was something connected to that.
Exhaling slowly, I told the others what was happening, and what I was pretty sure it meant. Already, those six were starting to walk the way the one had indicated. Again, I didn't need translation to know they were talking about getting a big payday. Some things never changed, no matter how far forward or backward you went in time, or how far you traveled. And yes, part of me was annoyed that we didn’t even get a full five minutes to enjoy the fact that we were looking at actual living dinosaurs before something like this presented itself. We needed to--hell what could we even do to these guys that wouldn’t completely change the timeline? Did it matter? Was this too far back to be important in the grand scheme of things, or was one of them supposed to grow up to do something vitally important? What if we had to kill those guys to stop them from going through the rift and somehow that made an entire other species in the future not exist? Would the stone Ehn had given me work to help with that, or was this too far back for that to do anything? He had been expecting me to stay within the timespan of normal human history, not go back this far. Something told me even that thing couldn’t say how important these guys might or might not be.
Fortunately, we didn’t necessarily have to confront them. All we had to do was get to the rift first, get past whatever or whoever was there, and close it. And I had a much faster way of moving around than those guys seemed to be able to walk.
Which, of course, was the thought I had just before the guys in question abruptly pivoted and started to run back toward the ship they had just left. They were moving like their butts were on fire, the one in charge blurting what were clearly commands.
Something in the sky! Story informed me quickly, making me look that way. Their scanners picked up something coming down quickly, something--
Then I saw it. We all did. Another spaceship, this one about two hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and shaped like a fork with the trio of ‘tines’ forming the engines at the back. It was grayish in color, with a slightly raised portion at the top of the ‘handle’ where the bridge clearly was. Before any of us could do anything, the flying ship opened fire on the one on the ground. That one, however, returned fire instantly, forcing the incoming one to veer off. A little ball-shaped cannon appeared on the side, sending a wave of laser blasts down at the running group. Most of them dove out of the way, but several of the rapid shots cut through one of the guys, killing him immediately. I sensed his death, felt it, tasted it even from here.
“Uhh uhh, Flick?” Jazz blurted, eyes snapping back and forth between the two ships. “What the fuck is happening?! What’re we supposed to do? Whose side are we on?!”
My head shook, while I watched the attacking ship curve up and around as it oriented for another attack run, all while the surviving guys on the ground began to run for their own ship again. “We don’t get involved. This is between them, and it happened millions of years before any of us were born. We don’t have a bone in this fight.”
Honestly, I should’ve known better. No sooner had I said that, than a lucky shot from the grounded ship cut through one of the three engines on the other one. With a terrifyingly loud screaming sound, it plummeted through the air and crashed through the trees in the far distance. But it didn’t just crash. It crashed right in the area the other Alter guy had been indicating.
“Flick,” Jazz started, “was that--”
“Yeah,” I confirmed with a grimace. “Looks like they just fell practically on top of the rift. If we don’t get out there right now, they’ll find it.
“And that could change the future forever.”