I was alone. Honestly, at that moment, I didn’t think I had ever felt more alone. I was in a time hundreds of years before I was even supposed to exist, the man who had brought me back here was nowhere to be found, and the only allies I had with me were stuck out in the streets trying to stop a bunch of brainwashed civilians from attacking me so I could actually save their lives. Not to mention the lives of basically everyone on Earth, not only now but throughout the next several hundred years.

Yes, I had been sent forward through time and left on my own before, knowing I had to get back before Fossor killed everyone I knew. But somehow, this felt even worse. I’d been told enough about what the Fomorians did to worlds they invaded to know that them making it to Earth right now, hundreds of years before they were supposed to, would be the end of basically everything I knew. Nothing I had ever known would even exist. Everything would change. Hell, I was pretty sure it would mean the end of the Seosten too, if they were that reliant on our Heretic bodies to fight the Fomorians.

This was it. If those monsters managed to break the timeline and change history by showing up early, it would be the end of everything. Worse, no one else was here, no one could help me with this right now. The rest of my ghost army were still stopping the villagers from interfering, Persephone and Cerberus were dealing with the evil priest guy, and Ehn… who the hell knew where Ehn was? Not here, that was all that mattered right now. I had to deal with this, whatever it was, alone.

And where was I? Crouched in a dirt tunnel directly underneath that altar. I had my staff out ahead of me, another activated night vision spell ensuring I wasn’t stuck in the pitch-black darkness. The tunnel wasn’t exactly huge, to say the least. I had to crouch to fit into it, and it was still pressing up close against my sides. There was no room to stretch out. So it was a very good thing that I wasn’t claustrophobic. Oh, and there was some weird, steady thumping sound, like someone slowly and methodically drumming or something. But not quite that. It was too quiet to really make out details.

Right, no time to sit around and lament about how alone I was or how much pressure I was under. From what I’d heard on that tape, if I didn’t hurry this along, I would suddenly be under a hell of a lot more pressure when those Fomorians showed up. I could do this. I could handle it. They weren’t here yet. I didn’t have to fight them. I just had to find the chamber at the end of this tunnel and disrupt the spell that was supposed to summon them. So, I started moving quickly, crouch-running through the tunnel with my staff held out in front of me just in case something showed itself.

Who was responsible for this? The recording from that Jaquelin woman just said ‘he.’ It definitely wasn’t the priest outside. She’d said that guy was one of ‘his’ minions. So it couldn’t be him. Which… yeah, I had a very bad thought about who the person responsible for this whole situation was. Grandfather–the good Fomorian Grandfather, that was, had talked about his evil half. The same evil half that had been responsible for what happened to Elisabet. An evil version of Grandfather right here on Earth. It had to be him, right? He had to be the one who was trying to summon his people to this planet. And if he was anything like Grandfather himself–err, in capabilities, then… then I couldn’t stop him. If he was here, if I was about to come out of this tunnel and run into him, he would kill me. There was no way I could actually beat him. I didn’t fancy my chances against an ordinary Fomorian, let alone one that seemed to scare Grandfather. The second I emerged from this tunnel and he was there, I was dead. Or worse, he would just… experiment on me. Either way, I didn’t stand a chance.

But no, I couldn’t let myself dwell on that. The lady on the tape wouldn’t send me here if there was absolutely no chance. She thought I could find that chamber and break the spell. She hadn’t said anything about fighting a super-Fomorian, and I had to pray that she would’ve mentioned that if it was a thing. Maybe he wasn’t here, maybe… maybe a lot of things. All that mattered was that I had to get there and break the spell, now.

There was nothing in the tunnel as I rushed through it, though it continued to get narrower until I had to crawl through. Seriously, how did that priest guy come through here? He was bigger than I was. Unless he wormed his way like a–never mind, I didn’t want to know that badly. That was an image I really didn’t need.

I could hear things off in the distance, unless I was just imagining them. It sounded like a lot of fighting and gunfire. I really hoped Percy and Cerberus were okay dealing with whatever that priest was. And I hoped that the ghosts would be able to subdue the people outside without hurting them too much.

I had to push those thoughts out of my mind and focus. If I didn’t deal with what I was about to run into, none of what was going on outside mattered. Nothing would matter. On the way, I did what I could to prep more spells on my clothes for a potential fight. Sure, if I ran into the super-Fomorian (or any Fomorian really) I was in unbelievably deep shit, but that didn’t mean I was going to go down without a fight.

I smelled and heard the end of the tunnel before I saw it. There was a very sharp stench of cinnamon mixed with rotten eggs. Which was bad enough on its own, but when I started smelling what I swore was old microwaved fish added into that, I had to use the fresh air spell to keep going. But that didn’t help with the sound. I’d been hearing it ever since I dropped into the tunnel, but only faintly. Now it was much clearer, a steady drumming or pounding or something. Familiar, even if I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Finally, I could see where the tunnel opened up. Bracing myself, I activated a spell on my body that would give me a shield, then threw a small stone that way before focusing on my power to see through it. There was no way I was going to show myself before knowing what was in there. In my other hand, I held a toothpick. If my tossed rock alerted someone in there and they started to investigate the tunnel, I would possess the toothpick and seemingly disappear.

Looking through the rock I had tossed, I saw the inside of the chamber. It was about twenty feet wide and ten feet high, roughly circular with rounded walls. On the far end from where the tunnel opened, there was a wooden table with a bunch of glowing gems of varying sizes and colors laid out on it in what appeared to be a specific pattern. I couldn’t see all of them from where my own rock had fallen. But I could see the bones in the walls and floor. There were hundreds–maybe thousands of the bones, all inlaid partway into the dirt and rock to make a spellform. And… and there were veins. Yeah, like actual veins running between the bones in their own unique pattern. How did I know they were veins? Because they were clear, and I could see the blood being pumped through them. They were pumping it from an actual giant heart in the ceiling. Yeah, a real flesh and blood heart. The fucking thing was a good ten feet wide and hung partway down into the chamber itself, beating steadily. That was the source of the drumming I had heard. No wonder it had seemed familiar and alien at the same time. There was a fucking giant flesh and blood heart in that chamber pumping blood through veins that were arranged in a spell pattern running in between thousands of bones that were also arranged in a spell–

Okay, you know what? I officially disliked Fomorians. Yeah, I was going to go out on a limb and say I definitely wasn’t a fan.

But on the plus side, it didn’t look like anyone was in there. Still, I made my way forward cautiously and watched for any trap spells. There was nothing there, as far as I could tell. Maybe they expected the monster priest and brainwashed villagers to be enough of a deterrent, or he just hadn’t had enough time to set anything up.

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Or maybe there was a trap spell but it was just hidden too well for me to find it, and with my next shuffled movement forward, I would be disintegrated.

Eesh, for some reason I was feeling extra morbid and pessimistic all of a sudden. Maybe it was the whole Fomorian thing, or the giant heart I was about to step into the same chamber as. Or maybe it was the fact that I had come back here with a man who very well could be one of the most powerful beings in the universe, and the goddamn son of a bitch was nowhere to be fucking seen!

Sighing to myself, I took a deep breath of that fresh air from the spell, ignored all my senses screaming at me about how dangerous this was, and moved into the chamber. I was careful not to step on any of the bones, and looked up warily at the heart beating above me. If it noticed me (hey, with Fomorian shit you never knew), there was no sign. It just kept beating the same as before, though even louder now that I was directly under the fucking thing.

Okay, I had to do this quickly, before anything… uh, bad happened. Still, I couldn’t be sloppy about it. My instinct was to start stabbing that heart and not stop until every last trace of it was completely gone, no matter how disgusting it ended up being. But there was too high of a chance that that would make something even worse happen. I could set off some other sort of trap. I had to at least know what this spell was doing before I started poking at it.

But first, I had to know what was going on outside. If things were… if things were bad, I was just going to say fuck it, stab the heart, and run. Damn the consequences. Thankfully, I didn’t have to guess how things were. Instead, I stretched out with my Necromancy, focusing on Francis, the European settler ghost guy. He accepted my request, allowing me to see through his eyes. Which gave me a pretty good view of the battlefield. He and the rest of the ghosts had dragged the villagers, one and all, to one end of town and were holding them against the ground so they couldn’t interfere in the battle going on between the priest, Cerberus, and Persephone. Which, from the look of things, had already destroyed half the buildings in town. There was just rubble where those houses had been, as all three of them went tearing through anything in their path. Cerberus and Percy looked–well, not perfect. But they were okay. Unfortunately, so was that priest. He was taking everything they could dish out, and sending it right back at them. And anything that was strong enough that Percy and Cerberus couldn’t easily tear through him in the past several minutes since I’d come down here…

He was too dangerous. And if even the guard that had been left here was too much for us to deal with, then if the monster behind this appeared… I had to break this spell. It was the only way. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, we couldn’t risk him actually showing up here.

Assuming this was Maestro, the only person who might stand a chance against him was Ehn. So I also checked in on Seth and the other ghosts I’d sent out to find him. But, naturally, they still hadn’t had any luck with that. Which made me consider calling them back to help at the town. But… but no. As bad as things were here, we needed to find Ehn. If worse came to worst and Maestro did show up, Ehn was our only chance of survival.

Yeah, if we got through this without dying horribly, I was going to have a few words for that guy. Some of which would involve demanding he give me a way to communicate with him so I could tell the fucker that the end of the fucking world was about to happen!

Which left me in the chamber, staring up at the giant beating heart while taking out that audio recorder once more. Hitting the button on it, I listened as Jaquelin began to describe first what I had already worked out, that simply attacking the heart was a bad idea, given the protection spells on it, and across the rest of the chamber.

Then it got worse, as she continued to hurriedly tell me just what this place was for. It was a revelation that made me stagger, my eyes widening in shock as I stared up at the pounding heart. The gist of it was that this was definitely a summoning spell, a massive one. And it wasn’t just here. There were several hundred of these same chambers spread all over the planet, all of them with their own heart-bones-veins set-up. They all worked together to summon the Fomorians. But not just their army or anything. No, it wasn’t summoning the Fomorian fleet, it was summoning the Fomorian home. It was like a moon or a planet or something, Jaquelin wasn’t sure. Either way, this spell wasn’t just calling some of the Fomorians, it was literally meant to transport the Fomorian home right here into our solar system, and keep it here, permanently. That was–oh. Fuck me. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let any of this happen!

There were also protection spells, a lot of them. But Jaquelin made it clear that I couldn’t worry about most. I had to work quickly and deal with just the most important, dangerous ones. As soon as that fight started outside, the priest had set off an alert and now the spell was active. It was running through the start-up mode or whatever, which, according to my little audio recording, meant we were down to only about ten minutes before it would go off.

Why wasn’t Maestro here? He should have shown up to take care of–Flick, shut up, stop questioning it! Whatever was keeping him away, whatever was stopping him from showing up to tear me apart, I just had to pray it would continue to keep him busy for long enough. If it didn’t, if he appeared before I was done, if–

Forcing those thoughts out of my head with a muttered curse, I quickly set about disabling the worst of the protection spells, following the instructions that Jaquelin kept carefully reading off at the perfect speed for me to follow. Which meant drawing up my own counterspells on a dozen different stones and setting them around the chamber in their own very specific configuration. The whole time, I could hear the clock ticking in the back of my head, right in time with the giant beating heart. I was whimpering, trying not to panic and screw something up while racing from spot to spot, carefully arranging my own enchanted stones. If I did this right, I could interrupt the protection spell. If I did it wrong and then tried to do anything to the heart… well, bad things would happen. I couldn’t fuck up now. No matter how terrifying this was, no matter how anxious I felt, no matter what I could hear going on outside, I had to focus. I was only going to get one shot at this.

Finally, after several minutes that felt like hours, I had it all set up. I had to check in on the others periodically, only to find that nothing had changed. Persephone and Cerberus were still keeping the priest busy. If they hadn’t been here, I would’ve had to deal with him myself, and something told me that wouldn’t have gone well. I would’ve been stuck outside after he triggered the spell and then…

Oh. Oh shit, that was part of the spell. Part of the protection. The reason my mind kept wandering to terrible possibilities and I kept getting distracted that way, no matter how many times I told myself to focus, was part of the protection on this thing! I had already beaten part of it. It was supposed to leave me wallowing in despair. But even getting a taste of the protection spell kept making my mind wander.

Gritting my teeth and clenching my hands tightly as I fought the effects of the spell, which seemed even stronger now that I knew about it, I gave my own counterspell a quick once over. I had to make sure I hadn’t fucked something up thanks to the magic distraction. There, a little adjustment I had to make to one of the stones. And another one on the far side of the chamber.

Finally, it was done. Jaquelin’s voice fell silent as I activated the counterspell, touching each of my carefully arranged stones one at a time while speaking the incantation.

Finally, I felt the wave of forced distraction wash off of me. I could focus again, and none too soon. The heart was beating faster, a continuous thud thud thud thud. The priest could hear it too. He kept trying to escape from Percy and Cerberus and make his way back in here, probably to stop me. But they kept dragging him down, stopping him for the moment at least.

Gripping my staff, I looked up at the heart and snarled to myself before rearing back. Before I could stab upward, a voice spoke up behind me. “Now what do you think you’re doing, exactly?”

Stopping short, I found myself looking over my shoulder. Those glowing gemstones had floated off the table and arranged themselves in the shape of a long, angular face. It was a familiar face, even when it was made out of floating stones. It was the face of a Fomorian.

“Don’t,” that harsh voice ordered, the sheer power of it washing over me. It filled my body with indescribable terror. The staff fell from my shaking fingers, clattering loudly and uselessly along the ground at my feet. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think, as that floating head stared me down.

“Good,” Maestro intoned in a low voice that tore every ounce of hope from my soul and turned it to ash. “Now, let’s have a little discussion about who you are.

“And when exactly you have come from, time traveler.”