The Prophet sits her down on a wooden stool and disappears into a back room. Her friend hobbles around the house, picking up mugs and clothes. The place is warm. But disorganized. Dusty. The Captain's itching to clean it, but the two owners don't seem bothered by the mess.

There's a fireplace, and a fridge, probably hooked up to a generator somewhere. The place is clearly not a city. No corpses littering the streets. No streets to be littered. Any food here must have been transported a long distance.

The Prophet's friend ("The name's Daon Gold, but everyone calls me Gold.") sets two steaming cups of a rich brown liquid on the table. Is that coffee or hot chocolate?

"Careful, it's hot," he says when she reaches for one. It's beautifully warm is what it is. She unbuckles her helmet, and the smell hits her. It smells like... great. It smells great.

"What is it?" she asks.

"What, the drink?" That's an expression of surprise. "That's hot cocoa."

She nods.

The Prophet reappears with her tablet in hand, a small spherical projector in the other. On second glance. That's the Google Proball V, latest model of its line before it went out of production (due to the end of the world). And this place is neither an office nor a modern smart house.

She sets it down on the table and it lights up, projecting a flat, solid white square into the air. It flickers into a blueprint. She takes a cup with two hands.

"That is the castle of the second pillar," she starts, eyes flicking over to watch her two intent listeners, before turning back to the projection.

The plan is simple.

  1. TRANSPORTATION

"We're going to have to bypass anything that might be guarding the place. If they installed any traps, it'll be here (the entrance), here (the back entrance), and here (the second entryway)."

"Then we go from above," the Captain said. "Take my ship."

Reinforced against most magic, electronic sabotage, it's the obvious choice of transport.

The Captain buckles into her seats. The Prophet looks around, amazed, before following suit. "Man. How old were you when you learned to fly this thing?"

The Captain flicks on the power and watch the Hippocampus rumble to life. Truth is, she still doesn't know what some of the buttons do, and she's too scared to experiment after the first time she tried. (Steam. Error messages. Not like there was supposed to be a manual for this thing, right? She sticks to what she knows. It's enough.)

Systems checked. Time to fly.

  2. RECON

"Send a drone before you move in," the Friend said.

"If they're expecting us, then there's not much we can do in terms of planning."

They're landing before they know it.

"That was short," the Prophet says, echoing the Captain's own sentiments. Almost annoyingly short. She loves flight, but the ship is speedy, made for intergalactic travel.

The Prophet flies out a few of her drones. They're plastic spiders with propellers, three little eight-legged scouts in the air.

They return quickly. The Prophet exhales. "There's nobody here," she says, but exchanges a look with the Captain that isn't entirely gleeful.

It feels too easy. The two of them hop out of the ship and make their way into the hall.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  3. ARMAMENT

As they make their way down the hall, the Captain finds herself feeling for the alert chip in the back pocket of her suit.

The Prophet handed her a disc, a thin, black, plastic thing the size of a large coin. "That's an alert chip, linked back to our home here and my tablet. Something goes wrong, all you need to do is snap it."

She turned it over. It wasn't like anything she'd seen before, but it was sleek and well made. "How's it work?"

"No idea. Some alien tech we managed to snag."

"You know how to use a gun?" The Prophet's friend set his gaze on her again.

The Captain knew what that was. Recalled manuals, instructional videos. Recited everything she could remember.

"Huh," the Prophet said.

"And you don't point it at anything you don't want to shoot," he told her. "Finger off the trigger until you're aiming to kill. Take one with you, Sera."

"You really think they're still going to be there?"

"Haven't seen a ship fly out, yeah? They're dead or still fuck - uh, around there."

The urgency that happens when the Captain sits still for too long was growing steadily, so she said, "We're going to be late."

She finally managed to take a sip of her drink. The flavor flooded her mouth. Her jaw ached with the intensity of it. It was better than she ever imagined. She took another sip. Then another, and it was warm enough to drink until suddenly there was none left. Setting the cup back down on the table, she picked up her helmet and marveled at the warmth sitting inside of her. "Let's go."

With each step increases the thrum of something that doesn't quite register as unusual. And the Prophet. The Prophet is positively excited—she's shaking a little, speeding up the closer the two of them get. The Captain keeps up.

The hall is quiet and echoes of boots on a stone floor.

The library: dark. Lots of shelves. Empty; a shame.

Down the stairs. On the last step, the Captain can almost feel the pillar, but not as much as the Prophet, who has abandoned all care to run to the glowing pillar in the center of the basement. The glow is a bright blue or green and the Captain is suddenly reminded of the decay, of the way objects started to bleed into one another.

"Prophet," she calls. She keeps her eyes away from the pillar.

"Here it is, Captain." The Prophet reaches out, stops herself short. "The pillar. The pillar of change, of metamorphosis..."

The Captain grabs the Prophet's arm. "What now?" she tries to inject more force into her voice, which is as papery as it's always been.

She looks down at her with eyes large, full of something the Captain can't comprehend, and does the unexpected but very pre-apocalyptic gesture of placing her hands on the Captain's cheeks and smiling. "Okay, captain. I understand now. We're going to turn back time, right?"

Something fills the Captain's heart. Is enthusiasm contagious? "Tell me what to do."

"Go inside," she tells her.

Inside?

The Captain drags her gaze to the center of this large room, to the wide, glowing shaft in the center. This is what an active pillar looks like. Hard to imagine there's a living being inside it, thinking away. Her eyes adjust. She can begin to make out the outline of the pillar, small grooves in the smooth exterior. They snake around and above and below, an intricate engraving throughout its entire length.

She swallows and turns to the Prophet, but her eyes are closed now, her hands only millimeters away from the pillar.

Exercising extreme vigilance, the Captain goes to touch it. Her fingers slip through the pillar like it's water. Cool to the touch, but not unpleasantly so. Pleasant is a good word for it. It's pleasing.

She licks her lips.

The Prophet is wise. That was what her father professed, and if she couldn't trust him or her own research, who would she trust?

She steps inside.

Then she is the pillar. No, you aren't. This vessel is occupied. The cool airiness of the pillar turns hard and claustrophobic (what a pre-apocalyptic word) and she can't breathe. Can't move. The sensation lasts a moment too long, like the moment you realize an impossible event is not a dream.

The instant she can move again, she stumbles out of the pillar. She manages to catch herself on her knees. Never want to do that again.

"Hey, are you okay?" It's the Prophet, she thinks, but she can't see straight and the... the woman's voice sounds off. Like it's split or frayed. A hand comes into view and the Captain takes it.

Then she faints.

But she doesn't. There's a sharp pain on the back of her head and she feels herself fall to the ground, but her senses shutter then she's standing.

She feels around her head. There's no bruise or blood. Looks up at the Prophet, breathing hard. She's still holding onto her hand.

"What happened?" the Prophet asks.

Isn't she supposed to know? All the Captain can do is shake her head. "Let's go back," she whispers.

"Did it work?"

It's difficult to move, somehow, like her limbs are twice its weight, but a bit of concentration has her fingers wiggling again. She takes a slow step forward. "I don't know."

"The connection's still there," the Prophet murmurs. "Maybe if I..."

She gazes over at the pillar. For a frightening moment, the Captain thinks she might touch it, but she turns around. "You gotta communicate with me, captain. Did anything change?"

"Yes." The cold light of the second pillar washes the floor in waves. Her tongue works slowly. "Yes." She doesn't know what.