Dreamy moments occupied the months of waiting for restoration. The girls were growing so fast, crawling and then walking. Cory became an old bird and his jokes made me tired.

Silverbell became known to the women of my home, making friends and showing us her fae grace. Flowers never wilted, fruit never spoiled, bread never molded and cobwebs never formed. Our shoes always smelled nice, the floorboards never creaked, the toilets were always clean and the babies laughed more than they cried. All of this was Silverbell's busy work, making herself welcome and known as our fairy.

I was called upon by Agent Saint three times in those days. Her team was tracking a serial killer. I looked at the photos of occult symbols our serial killer had drawn in the blood of the victims. I wasn't sure of the killer's gender but Agent Saint said:

"It is most likely a man. All our victims are female." She said without commitment.

"I am not so sure." I stared at the symbols.

Another case she offered me involved a witness. It was a similar case that had involved a therapist who had used hypnotism on a number of patients. As their slit throats bubbled they spoke the words of the lacuna. After six victims he was caught and I was asked to explain the pages dictated by the dying. I read the words of the lacuna as I held them in my hand. They should not exist and I was reading them. Before I crossed from my own reality into Hell, the pages ended for there were only six pages of the book in my hands.

"This last case involves an unusual weapon. We know there must be a killer because of the connection between all the victims. Nobody is suspected, just these deaths by an unusual vegetable toxin." Agent Saint showed me some pictures of dead bodies.

"It's like there is a plant that grows, kills them, dies, withers into dust, leaves no trace. That's what the killer has made it look like." Agent Pyresh toyed with the case.

"Unless there is no killer." Agent Gilbery told me what I was thinking. "Just the plant."

So I was occupied with a few cases that went unsolved. My home life had gotten interesting. Dr. Leidenfrost and Isidore were a couple. Isidore persisted in sleeping alone most nights, but I always slept beside Dr. Leidenfrost. So nothing was wasted and I had only to wait for a better year.

That is when the moons swung round the sky and the clouds swept away to show me strange stars. It was the moment when time was intersected. This was when my prisoner could be freed. By freeing it, the creature would die, would no longer have consciousness. All that remained of it was a disembodied consciousness. It barely existed in our dimension. I could touch its mind as it had a physical presence in our world, but its mind was elsewhere.

"You have a promise to keep." Crocodile lips hid reptilian teeth. Its ancient eyes bore into my soul. "Any further back into time and I shall meet the last of the Great Bloodline. It is my wish to not do that."

"I understand." I told it.

"How could you possibly understand? You have not existed as I have. Your tests and challenges were mild and I was called upon to complete monumental tasks." It claimed.

"Say nothing more to me. You lie too often for me to listen to you." I responded.

"Soon I will only be the memory of one mortal man. I was like a god for millions of years. And I must be remembered as a weakling liar? Perhaps I should let you meet the last of the Great Bloodline. Your adherence to truth would quake." The monstrous thing promised.

"I will meet them anyway. Is that not the test and challenge you have called me to?" I took the object from the garage sale with me out into the night. My chair wheeled me along as I heard the creature in my thoughts.

"Follow the path, it will lead you along the proper angles that will free you from the bondage of time." It instructed me.

I just kept wheeling along, wondering if perhaps this is what madness felt like. Was I quite insane? If I could walk again tomorrow then I wasn't. The wheels spun as I rounded corners and went through alleys. I had no idea where I was going or if it even really mattered.

"My Lord, where are we going?" Cory wondered.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Just spinning my wheels, it seems." I huffed.

"All spinning things are wheels." The creature remarked. "And all wheels defy time; alter its presence."

"I'm just gonna get to exactly eighty-eight miles per hour." I chuckled. I was definitely crazy, it seemed.

"My Lord, where are we?" Cory cawed. I stopped and looked around at the pitch black gloom.

"I don't know." I realized. I felt a pang of fear. So I had somehow traversed from my own time to another, as the creature had predicted.

There it stood in a brown robe with golden trim and a red sash. Its hood hid its features. Only the dragon smile protruded from the hood and the tips of its claws from the sleeves.

"Welcome. Call me Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo. These are my final moments. We must make haste to the Hall Of God. It is nearly time already." Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo spoke in a strange voice, speaking in its own language. I knew its words and was able to speak back to it with some difficulty, in its own language:

"So this is real. I am not crazy. Good to know." I said.

"We are all in danger. You intruders and I would be captured, forced to reproduce with the last of the Great Bloodline. They cannot mate with mummies, I am flesh and blood and they would inject their offspring into me. They might try that with you or they might eat you alive." Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo looked slowly around in the dimly glowing ruins we were in.

"Let's go then." Cory suggested.

"No time to waste." I agreed with my bird. I suddenly wished I had a gun, or something, to defend myself with.

As though Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo knew I was wishing for a weapon it stated: "We could never be safe from them. Our only hope is to get through these dark passages before we are discovered."

"Doesn't make sense." Cory complained as we went. He spoke in the language of the Nameless Ones also. We could both recall it for some reason.

"That we traveled through time yet now we have to hurry?" I was having a hard time getting over the rough ground. Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo got behind me and gripped my chair with its reptile hands and pushed.

"That we teleported here and still have a ways to go." Cory cawed.

"We arrived as close to the Hall Of God as we could. There are magical seals surrounding it. We came at a time that was a moment unused by history. Only those weak moments can be permeated by time travelers." Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo explained pedantically.

"I was just saying." Cory made an engine noise that was one of his laughs.

"Flesh!" I heard the cry of a serpent-like creature as it writhed out of the dark at us. It was naked except the kohl around its eyes and a gaudy necklace of gold and jewels. It held a club made from bone with a sharp piece of ceramic lashed to it.

"Blood!" Another cried out and was slithering like a snake but upright like a man. It had two arms and huge glowing pink and yellow eyes. This one threw its spear at us and it went over one of my shoulders and stuck into the pillar beside me.

"Eye sockets!" Yet a third one of the serpent men came from nowhere and brandished a sharp shard of metal with a handle of leather. This one was hit in its face by a brick thrown by Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo.

"We aren't food!" Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo raised another brick to throw at the one with the club. The creatures retreated.

Terror gripped my heart and I stared wildly around into the gloom for more of them. I saw their eyes in the distance appearing and watching. There were so many of them that we didn't stand a chance.

Through the darkness we went. The massive snakes were all around us, closing in. Each had at least one crude weapon. Spears and rocks and knives came hurtling from the darkness and nearly hit us. Then a spear got into the wheels of my chair and wrecked it. I spilled hard onto their paved floor and Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo toppled over my chair. Cory took to the air and beat his wings.

"Leave us alone!" My bird called to the snakes with passion.

"Mates!" One of them hissed.

"Bones, crunchy bones!" Another exclaimed.

"Not your food and we aren't here for sex!" Cory cawed at them.

I crawled into the Hall Of God, followed by my comrades. I was badly bruised up from my fall. Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo said:

"We are safe now. They won't enter here."

"You sound doubtful." Cory landed on my head.

"It won't last long. They will decide to come in after us." Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo predicted. I was helped up and I got myself over the stone slab before us.

I looked around at the Hall Of God. A massive statue of a monstrous dragon-like creature had the stone slab beneath it. The torches were strange purple rods that emitted a glow all around us. There was stone knife meant to be held by inhuman hands. I propped myself up and looked over to see that Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo had lain itself on the table with its scaly chest bared. It used one claw and cut an 'X' shape across part of its torso.

"As soon as I am dead the magic that binds you to this place will release you. You are not completely here and you will be expelled back to where you belong." Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo devised. "Now stab me as deeply as you can and cause my death in this exact place and moment. Hurry!"

I plunged the blade into the creature's heart, where the mark was. It exhaled a kind of reptilian shriek and then the light in its eyes went out. Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo was no more. I could not hold the knife as my hand disintegrated. As it clattered to the floor the serpent creatures came bursting into the Hall Of God demanding cannibalism and mating in loud primal screams.

I was standing with Cory on my shoulder and from my hand was falling the relic. It shattered on the pavement and became as so much glitter and glass dust sparkling in the lights from the street. Then I walked home on weak and wobbly legs. My bullet that was in my spine was somehow gone and I was able to walk, barely. Somehow Fher Fhero Ohr Fheo had done this: repaired me, as it had promised.

"Not all of its words were lies, My Lord." Cory sounded amused at my efforts to walk. I was leaning on everything and placing one foot ahead of the other.

"None of its words were lies." I decided. "It just knew a different and more horrible truth."