The TWILIGHT OF THE GODS -- Chap. 12

A Story of Mantra and Black September

By Aladdin and Christopher Leeson

Posted 11-07-24
Revised 11-07-24

.

THE TIME GEM

We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 
Now left alone in the darkness among the ruins, I wasn't sure how well my conversation with the rebels had gone. With nothing else on my day planner, I sent a telepathic jingle to Gabriel.

What do the rebels want? The little man spoke into my mind.

"Mostly, they want Warstrike dead."

We can offer them anything except homicide since their world will not
exist when the debt comes due.

"Gabriel!" I declared. "That's cold-blooded! Remember, I have family here. Sort of."

At that, he went silent.

"Gabe, are you there?" I asked.

His returning voice said, "I was looking for an apparatus I have. It operates like Warstrike's precognition but is more efficient."

“What precognition do you want to have?" I asked. “Where Amber Hunt is going to touchdown?"

The Time Gem is the bait in the trap we must set. It’s what Amber Hunt is coming here to find.

"I was supposing you had some sort of trap idea already worked out."

Everything will unfold in its proper time, he replied.

"Aren't you the one who's always reminding me how little time we have left?" I asked.

Gabriel gave a sudden shout: I see it! It's hidden inside the castle!

"It's an armory, not a castle," I corrected him. "But earlier you said you couldn't find the Infinity Stone because it was shielding itself from you."

True, but it's possible it no longer wants to hide. Or else, it's exhausted after protecting this world for years and now has had to divert its last energies toward that effort.

"Yeah, I suppose. But who has the thing? Not Necromantra, I hope."

Jamie Tark has it!

"Jamie? How had a pint-sized little girl snagged a piece of a dead god?"

By its permission, I suppose. Hurry. We need Jamie's help to contact the gem. We lack the means to force an entity of such power to do anything against its will.

"I don't like hearing that you plan to involve Jamie in something so dangerous."

"With the world about to be destroyed, the child can hardly be placed in any more danger than she is in presently," he advised.

“I get that. But what about Warstrike?" I asked. "If he finds out his daughter is controlling one of the most powerful entities in the universe, he'll want to grab it himself to turn it into a weapon against the rebels."

"And then there's Necromantra! I don't think there is much going on in this city that she's not going to know about. She's likely to do something crazy if she gets her hands on that much power," I said.

Necromantra is a problem, but you will undoubtedly find the best way to deal with her.

"Another dirty job for me? Why don't you use your VIGOPS to come up with an idea?"

It has mechanistic logic, but it doesn’t have your resourcefulness. You consistently outperform the best technological substitutes.

"Honesty! Your tech must be a million years ahead of ours, but you don't seem to have made much progress in all that time!" When he didn't answer, I asked, "Okay, where is Jamie now?"

The little girl is in her room.

"And where is her room?" I asked.

He gave me a mental snapshot of the armory's interior layout. After that, I no longer sensed Gabriel's presence in my mind, meaning our conversation was over. I leaped into the air and ghosted myself. Time being of the essence, I flew through the mounded junk and rubbish that choked the city streets and came through a wall just behind Jamie. She was sitting at a small table playing with dolls.

I solidified behind the child and said, "Hi, Jamie!"

She looked over her shoulder and gasped. "Mantra!"

"I didn't mean to startle you."

"Evie said you're going to take us all home with you!" she said excitedly.

"I'll take you away as soon as I can, but I learned something that makes me afraid for you especially."

Jamie wrinkled her brow. "What, Aunt Jenny?"

"I've found that there's a big secret you're keeping. Some secrets are too big for a child to keep all by herselve. Can you tell me what it is?"

"I don't know any secrets," she said nervously.

"Well, a while ago, when I used my Mantra vision, I saw you holding a pretty gem. But instead of being happy, you looked sad and worried. Why is that, sweetheart?"

"I – I –" she stammered.

"Is it a bad gem? Does it make you have nightmares?"

"No – I don't have bad dreams." She said, looking guilty. "I had to fib to Daddy."

I stepped beside her and took her hand. "Isn't it naughty to keep secrets from people who love you? I asked."

"The gem told me I couldn't tell anybody or bad things were gonna happen," said the tot.

"What sort of bad things, honey?"

"The gem said it had all sorts of powers like angels do, and if Daddy got the gem, he might hurt people using it."

She was probably right about that. But it was hard for me to believe that an Infinity Stone could care about people getting hurt. "Why would your daddy want to hurt people?"

"Because he has to. He's the king."

"Is he a king who does bad things?"

"I don't know. But he's fighting with people, and when people fight, they hurt each other, won't they?"

"They usually will," I agreed. "But does the gem really speak to you? I've never met a talking gem. Will it speak to me?"

"I don't know. Maybe it will if it likes you."

"When you talk to it, what does it say?"

"It told me the Flaming Woman will soon come and to take it away, and that if she does, everyone is gonna to die. So I hid the Gem to keep the Flaming Woman from finding it."

"Will you tell me where you hid it?” I asked.

Jamie glanced away, unable to look me in the eye. I gathered her into my arms and whispered, "Jamie, I think the gem is saying these things because it's afraid. Maybe if I talk to it, I can help it to stop being afraid."

She drew away and went to her toy box. From it, she withdrew a smooth, glowing vermilion stone. It looked pretty much like the Mind Gem I had seen before, except for its color. Finally seeing it made this whole incredible situation seem totally real. I knew it contained world-destroying power.

The trouble was, I wasn't sure that even Gabriel could be trusted to control it. Maybe he wasn't the good-natured person he seemed to be. After all, I still didn't know him very well.

Jamie stepped up, carrying the Time Gem cupped in her hands. "You can have it, Auntie," she whispered.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"It makes me scared. I think a grownup should take care of it."

Wow! She was offering me a treasure that she hadn't offered to her own father. I must have a face that children trust!

She placed the gem upon my hand. Its warmth penetrated my gloves. A month before, I had been close to another Infinity Stone, the Mind Gem but I had never touched it. As warm as this stone was, I felt chilled to be in contact with such an unbelievably powerful artifact."

"Can you speak to me?" I asked the gem warily.

I can communicate with you, stated a whisper inside my mind.

"What have you been telling Jamie?" I asked.

Only the truth.

"What is truth?"

Truth is an accurate description of a quantitative reality.

"Cute answer! Why are you here?"

I escaped the Infinity Array and chose to occupy this timeline and this planet to hide from my brothers.

"Why do you need to hide from your family?"

They regard me as a traitor. I cooperated with the Reality Gem to help the Black Knight break the Infinity Array. The other four gems now crave revenge.

"How can they hurt you?"

They have power enough to render me inert, which is what I saw happening to the Ego Gem when I looked forward in time.

"Why did you turn against the array?"

I see the future in time. If the Ego Gem ended the Multiverse, even the Infinity Array will cease to exist. The Reality Gem and I prefer continued existence to oblivion.

"If you've already helped the Black Knight, are you saying that while you've been hiding in this world, hardly a second has passed back on zero time on the Main Bough?

That is so. The Crisis is great. With the assistance of the Reality Gem and myself, the Black Knight broke the array, but not before the Nemesis Array released a wave of energy upon the Main Branch. If a second wave follows it, the Main Branch will be utterly destroyed.

That was why I had to capture Amber Hunt and take her back to zero time to fight Nemesis. She would have only a pyrrhic victory unless we could find a way to make her attack more effective. Doing that would prevent a second wave from forming.

I had to ask myself, was this a battle we could actually win?

I was facing a conundrum beyond the understanding of a Dark Age barbarian like myself. I wondered whether even Gabriel understood the mind-boggling situation.

If he turned out to be as clueless as I was, the Multiverse would be in deep trouble.

Again I addressed the stone. "Time Gem, is it possible for you to go back in time and prevent any particle of the Nemesis Energy from escaping?"

I cannot do so. If I return to a nanosecond of zero time that I have already occupied, it will create a paradox that will destroy all Creation, just as Nemesis's plan would have!

"Why should that be?" I asked. "Not too long ago I met a version of myself from a different timeline! Being together didn't hurt either one of us!"

That version of Mantra was a clone of your original. The danger I am speaking of arises from meeting another original of myself. The different situations are incomparably different.

It was no use trying to understand the Multiverse as the Infinity Stone saw it. This was a problem I had to turn to Gabriel's big brain as soon as possible.

I hear you, Mantra, the Timekeeper said, speaking to me by mind-to-mind communication.

"I'm glad of that. What are we supposed to do?"

The data is being analyzed. But an Infinity Stone can't be properly analyzed remotely. Please bring it to the Time Sphere.

"What if our little vermilion friend doesn't want to go?" I asked.

Persuade it.

“How?”

Begin by asking it nicely. Sometimes politeness will yield excellent results.

"Auntie!" Jamie shouted from behind me. "Your clothes suddenly changed. How come?"

"They're magical clothes," I said. "They're always changing. Isn't it fun?"

"I guess so," she said bemusedly.

Suddenly I heard a grating voice echoing between the cement walls of Jamie's room: "So, there you are, bitch!"

My force shield flashed on to protect both Jamie and myself.

I was always horribly conflicted about Necromantra. She was physically my daughter. What killed me was knowing that I would have loved this woman like a parent would if her fetus hadn't been possessed by a psychotic murderer in the womb.

Not wishing to start a fight with Jamie present, I tried to forestall by using a threat: "Don't test me. I killed you once, I'll do it again."

"What? When did you kill me?" she asked.

"I killed an exact duplicate of you in another timeline. I felt bad about it, but having seen you again, I can't remember why."

"Ahhh, poor Mommy. All those bad feelings will go away once you're dead yourself," Necromantra said scornfully.

"It's good to see you're still the same little ball of sunshine you always were."

"What's that in your hand?" the witch asked.

"Take a guess."

"I'm good at guessing. Its energy patterns are almost the same as those that emanated from the Power Gem that Lord Pumpkin used to attack me on the Godwheel. Wherever that gem comes from, it is endowed with power like I've always dreamed of having. Hand it over!"

"Why should I?" I asked.

"If you surrender it without a fight, I'll let my little sister Jamie live. Do we have a deal?"

My lunatic daughter didn't realize time was running out for her and little Jamie. "I would love to negotiate," I said, "but after our past experiences together, I have trouble believing that you'd keep your word?"

The tattooed woman smiled. "How you talk! We're all family, and family are special."

"If only that were true, Marinna," I said. "If it were, I'd ask kyou about your larger goals. Why are you staying in this wreck of a city? It can't be pleasant for you."

"Will you stop jabbering? I've stated my terms and you're still stalling," she pronounced in a cold, hard voice.

"Here are my terms," I answered back. "Get out of my way, go to your room, and keep on playing at being a princess. If you do, I'll let you live. You seem to overlook that I'm in control of the gem, and can easily unleash its power against you. If Lord Pumpkin roughed you up with the Power Gem, you'll be even worse off once I get through with you."

I was pouring on the tough talk, but I didn't have the foggiest idea how to use the gem or even what it could do.

Necromantia made a sweep of her arms and flaming destruction came at me.

Wow! That really stung, and it made Jamie to faint away in my arms. My shield had saved our lives, but I didn’t think my defenses could stand up against many blasts like that!"

Mantra! Gabriel suddenly spoke into my mind. Think! The Time Gem controls time. Ask it to do something involving time! Think outside the box!

I said the first thing to come into my mind. "Time Gem, protect Jamie and me by sending this obnoxious bimbo to a place full of hungry dinosaurs!"

A vermilion vortex opened within the small room and swirled around us, forming a funnel made of arcs of crackling light. The funnel narrowed around Necromantra and swallowed her whole. Almost as quickly, it vanished, taking the witch with it.

I laid Jamie on her bed and checked her over. I suddenly heard her murmur, "Where did the queen go?"

I glanced at the weighty Stone in my hand. "Gem, where did you send Necromantra?"

In your terminology, she now exists in this same location seventy-five million years ago. Is her banishment a satisfactory reply to your request?

"Yeah, you made an inspired choice. Thanks much."

"Is the queen gonna come back, Auntie?" Jamie asked plaintively.

Would she? I doubted it. Necromantra couldn't time travel and couldn't possibly survive for seventy-five million years. Anyway, if I understood Gabriel correctly, when the Nemesis Energy struck this world, it would mean the destruction of the solar system in the past, present, and future, dooming every person who ever existed.

"No, I don't think she can come back. She'll never make you afraid again."

With a happy laugh, Jamie hugged me.

It was all good that I'd defeated Necromantra but it was an almost meaningless victory. Her threat had added up to no more than an annoyance. The intractable problems we faced still lay ahead.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 13