CHAPTER 9

The Invisible Circle

V

Yeah, because, see, Mom read me this book about volcanos one time. They’re these really big mountains that get filled up with melted rocks from underground—it’s called lava and it’s like pudding made of fire, because it’s all gloopy, you know? And when a mountain gets super full of lava it goes BLEHHH and barfs tons of lava everywhere! Isn’t that cool!

Hot, I would’ve thunk, Iddo thought.

Wilburn laughed. It was hot. Gnarly hot. But somehow the heat wasn’t bothering him. He just felt really, really hot, and it was fine. You can tell it’s gonna erupt soon, he thought, because, see how the plants are all dead? But they’re still green? That’s because the water wasn’t boiling before recently, I think. I think because this mountain must be filling up with lava really fast. I bet it’s getting really, really full… Wilburn’s grin faltered. Oh. Are we gonna die…?

The very question that keeps me up at night, my boy, metaphorically speaking. Technically speaking, I’m asleep right now, and so are you. We are Astral Projecting. Advanced dreaming, you could say. It’s not the lava that you should be afraid of here, if you should be afraid of anything. Only magic can hurt you on the Astral Plane… magic… in its infinite guises. The Astral Plane is more perilous than either of us can possibly imagine—but as for lava, there’s no reason we couldn’t go swimming in it.

You’re kidding… This was the best news Wilburn had ever heard. He began to pray fervently for the volcano to erupt now—immediately. What if they missed it? What if the mountain didn’t blow up till tomorrow? He didn’t know if he could stand the disappointment.

“How queer,” Alfajean said from right behind them, and several feet above.

Wilburn and Iddo jumped.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that my map shows us at the bottom of the Orfidic Ocean too…” A couple of Alfajean’s faces were gazing at their wizidex in puzzlement, while other faces gazed out over the jungle in bemusement.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“What can you tell us about the temple’s enchantment?” Iddo asked.

“Nothing, I’m afraid. It’s all EONS.”

Iddo sighed heavily. That’s short for Explain Only Necessary Sh—Stuff… he thought to Wilburn. Then to Alfajean he said, “All this ambient magic must be disrupting scrynet service. Without a connection, our dexes can’t access the universal coordinate system, thus MagiMaps can’t pinpoint our location in spacetime.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Yes, I’m sure you’re right, Master Bungflower.”

“Indeed. The funny thing is, MagiMaps also incorporates a geocoordinate system that uses the earth’s magnetic field. The geo system doesn’t depend on scrynet service, so it shouldn’t be affected. It can’t give us our dimensional coordinates, but in theory…” Iddo cast a speculative glance at Alfajean, “these lat-long readings should be accurate.”

The angel’s expressions became studiously blank.

“The possibilities,” Iddo continued, “are—A: this temple harbors a magnetic anomaly powerful enough to interfere with WizTech Industries’ proprietary magnetometric spells—B: the earth’s magnetic poles have shifted—C: we’ve telefracted to a different planet with uncannily earth-like conditions, or…” Iddo scrutinized Alfajean out of the corner of his eye, but the angel was giving nothing away for free this time. “D,” Iddo said, “none of the above, MagiMaps is correct about our latitude and longitude, and the North Orfidic Ocean simply… doesn’t exist… currently…”

The golden skin around the angel’s golden eyes tightened for just a second.

Bingo, Iddo thought to Wilburn, while outwardly pretending he hadn’t noticed. Just as I suspected. We’ve gone back in time. See what I mean about the present moment? Here we are, who knows how many thousands of years before our births, and yet it’s still right now, as it always is.

Neato! Wilburn thought. But hang on… what if we’ve gone into the future?

Excellent question. I believe we can be fairly confident that this is the past with respect to planetary chronology, because geological evidence suggests that sea levels rose steadily for tens of thousands of years prior to our modern age—and that trend only seems to be speeding up, which means the geological time required for the North Orfidic Ocean to not only disappear but be replaced by a mature jungle such as the one we see before us would have to be millions of years… and that’s at least one order of magnitude bigger of a time-gap than the PROVED normally operates across. Whereas, if we’ve gone back in time as I surmise, the present moment may only be a couple dozen-thousand years before our modern age. Of course, there’s always the possibility that somewhere along the timeline a rogue god decides to violate the Neutral Earth Covenant and overhaul the entire biosphere… Difficult to account for kind of thing.

“What? No more wheedling questions for me?” Alfajean sounded the tiniest bit smug. “Have you accepted the necessity of operational secrecy at long last, Master Bungflower?”

“Something like that,” Iddo said, cheerfully. “You’re a tough nut, Lieutenant Angel. We should play cards sometime.”

“I would enjoy that, Master Bungflower.”

Not half as much as I would, Iddo thought.