This one did not.
Arz fell a few feet, landing heavily on solid ground. His first instinct was to curl up, still cradling his hand. It burned like he had held it in a fire for an hour. He whimpered and sucked in air, fighting the pain of landing from a hard fall and from being attacked by his own experiment.
After a minute, Arz used his good hand to push himself up. He didn’t even bother looking at his right hand. Seeing the seared flesh wouldn’t help him focus. He needed to assess, and quickly.
“What,” Arz said breathlessly.
A whole city covered the horizon. It was less than a mile away, standing taller than even the fortress in which he lived. But the buildings were all made of metal and glass. The city was grander than anything Arz had ever laid his eyes on, but there was one specific thing that stood out.
What looked like a bubble encased the entire city, and that bubble had a shimmering gray-purple edge that looked like it was violently torn.
Arz scrambled to his feet, looking up at the massive skyscrapers. There was never a building so tall on Earth.
The land around him was covered in rocky mounds with thin, twisted trees that looked petrified. There was no green or wildlife visible. No flowers or color.
“Oh, Sal,” Arz whispered. “Where did I end up?”
The nearest metal skyscraper crumbled, shattering into millions of pieces that rained down on the lesser buildings around it, before those too crumbled to dust. Arz stood motionless, watching the whole catastrophe right before his eyes. A cloud of dust rushed out from the collapse, but it was contained to the shimmering bubble.
Within moments, framing for a new structure appeared, rising higher and higher until the whole skyscraper was being built again right before his eyes.
Arz carefully approached. The hard surface he had landed on was a paved road made from something that seemed far more durable than the cobblestones used in Bralincote. If he took a sample, perhaps he could find a way to help some people back home. Arz crouched on the road and ran his fingers along the pavement. It was rough, almost rocky. Too solid to break a piece off.
He had the recipe. He could always return once he healed his hand.
By the time Arz looked back at the city, the massive skyscraper stood tall again, nearly completed. The last pieces were fitted into place right before his eyes. Smaller buildings rose around it until the city was thriving again.
It took Arz a while to approach the edge of the bubble, and by the time he could reach out to touch it, the skyscraper collapsed again. It was looping in a cycle from its birth to its death.
What would happen if he touched it?
Arz hovered his hand nearby, keeping it within inches of touching the shimmering bubble. It didn’t feel like anything. It didn’t sound like anything. Everything trapped inside was just that . . . trapped.
He couldn’t risk it. Not at the moment, at least.
There was a whole realm, or planet or something, to explore. Getting caught in a time loop would only delay him. And who else would feed Sal?
Arz followed the paved road away from the looping city. It cut through the rocky mounds, following a distinct, yet unclear path through the land. The massive city stayed on Arz’s side the whole time, and it wasn’t long before another city was visible in the distance. It too was trapped in a time bubble, looping from creation to destruction. The rest of the planet seemed stable, but still lifeless. What did the time bubbles do to the rest of the life? Was it as easy as things trapped inside stayed inside forever?
Something pounded on the pavement nearby. It wasn’t strong enough to shake the ground beneath Arz’s feet, but it was loud enough to clearly reach his ears. He froze, waiting as the buildings nearby collapsed and formed again.
It was rhythmic, as if something was walking. The road curved around a mound, hiding whatever moved beyond. As Arz stopped and listened, he realized it wasn’t that loud. Everything else was just so quiet. Not a single sound escaped the bubbled cities. Even his breathing felt loud compared to the world around him.
Arz stayed on the edge of the road, near the bubble, as the sound grew closer.
He ran through ideas in his head.
- It is a monster. That was common enough in his travels.
- It is a natural event, which could be harmless in the grand picture, especially compared to the massive looping bubbles nearby.
- Arz had no idea. That was the worst option. How often did he not have an idea? Ideas were his thing.
A metal man appeared around the corner. His head was an oval with four glowing blue eyes. He had four arms, each wrapped around what looked like an advanced musket. It glowed with a gentle green, but Arz knew what a weapon looked like.
The man’s two legs cracked the ground as it stationed itself and pointed the glowing musket right at Arz.
The words that came from it were jumbled, clearly a language Arz had yet to hear.
“I’m harmless,” he shouted, throwing his hands into the air.
The metal man said something else before his musket glowed brighter.
“Fuck,” Arz shouted, ducking just as a beam passed over his head. He scrambled along the pavement, rubbing his injured hand on the rough floor as he ran. The beams continued passing over his head, blasting against the shimmering bubble. They fizzled out as they struck. Arz continued running. He didn’t need to find out what it would do to his flesh.
He managed to duck behind a rocky mound right as another beam passed by. It burned through the mound, leaving a gouge in the stone with molten edges.
“Fuck,” Arz muttered again as he dropped to the ground. Another beam exploded above him, tossing stones out in a blast.
“I’m a friendly,” Arz yelled. The metal man said something in return, but Arz still failed to understand it.
He half crawled, half ran along the ground, ignoring the exploding pain in his right hand as he pushed against the rough pavement.
The metal man continued talking, seemingly saying the same thing each time. Arz didn’t understand any of it. More beams blasted overhead, leaving a trail of green light behind them.
The metal footsteps came to a halt as Arz continued crawling on the ground. He stopped and slowly looked up until he stared right into the metal man’s glowing blue eyes. They were like discs without pupils. It was impossible to tell if the metal man was actually looking at Arz or not, but the glowing tip of the gun was pointed right at his chest.
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Arz turned and fell onto his bottom. Dust puffed out from under him on the hard ground as the metal man repeated the same thing again.
The metal man’s four arms were skeletal, little more than metal rods with thin strands like veins coiling around each arm. One arm had a tear in the coil, causing the veins to move away from the metal rod. The end of that hand had a finger that twitched, tapping the side of the gun.
There seemed to be no sign that this thing was organic. No organs, no fluids. Nothing that would point Arz in the direction of a living creature. Yet, it still talked and probably threatened him. Its torso was similar to the bone structure of a human’s, but the abdomen was a mess of coiled strands splitting off from a larger spine-like structure. It reminded Arz of the roots of a tree.
Before Arz had a chance to observe more of the man, the damaged hand clenched the gun. It unexpectedly fired, shooting a beam right past Arz. Even the metal man seemed surprised for a stunned moment.
Arz reached into his belt and grabbed an orange sparkstone. It tingled in his palm. The metal man aimed the gun again, letting its injured hand hang to the side.
A list of possibilities ran through Arz’s mind in a split second.
- The sparkstone would disrupt the weapon’s functions
- The sparkstone could injure the creature, if not kill it outright. A human would be severely maimed from a sparkstone.
- It would harmlessly bounce off and Arz would die.
Some possibilities were better than others, but a true scientist considered all possibilities all of the time.
Arz threw the sparkstone the best he could. Throwing was never his best action, he leaned more toward grinding with a mortar and pestle.
The orange stone struck the metal man right in the chest and exploded into a cloud of sparks. Arz didn’t wait to see if it had worked or not. He turned and ran over the mounds. The same unfamiliar words were repeated behind him, but he couldn’t be bothered to try to decipher them anymore. All the times he had heard it previously hadn’t gotten him anywhere.
After a few mounds, Arz was beginning to expect the whole landscape looked the exact same. A dry, rocky appearance. Something gray. He was embarrassed to have the thought. Something gray. Not “what makes it gray?” No, he couldn’t be bothered. It was gray and boring, and not a place he wanted to die.
He skidded to a stop atop the last mound, almost sliding over the edge. Land dropped off before him into a blue-black crystallized glass. The entire canyon and the land beyond was made of the same material. What little light there was reflected off the uneven crystal-like ground far below.
“Shit,” Arz muttered, dropping to the ground. He had managed to put some distance between himself and the metal man, who continued repeating his phrase.
There was no good place to hide, and climbing down seemed impossible.
It was time to escape.
Arz confidently stood up and withdrew a sparkstone and a purple vial. “So long,” Arz said with a smirk. He smashed the sparkstone onto the ground and poured the vial on top of it.
A sound much like a small dog growling escaped as a tiny tear opened before Arz. Before he knew it, the tear vanished and the rest of the potion fell through the sparks and sizzled on the stone.
“Oh.”
The metal man repeated his phrase again.
“What are you saying? I don’t understand you!”
The metal man kept the gun aimed at Arz, but didn’t fire as it walked closer, up and down the mounds. It stopped only a few feet away, still repeating its same line.
Arz threw another sparkstone at it and followed it up with one of his return potions. A small tear began to form right above the metal man’s shoulder. It ripped into the coiled veins, which instantly vanished through the tiny portal. Unfortunately, the portal still failed to form all the way. The upper right arm of the metal man crumpled to the ground as the portal fizzled out again.
Climbing down the sheer face wasn’t an option, and running alongside a dangerous cliff seemed like a bad idea. One simple misstep could end with Arz tumbling down the side.
His only other option was a straight sprint at the metal man while it was disoriented.
He moved before he even realized he had made a decision. A couple steps carried him close enough to shove the metal man over. It tumbled back, landing heavily on the stone mound. Arz kept running without looking back. He swerved back and forth a few times just to be safe, but no green beams fired at him again.
Gray landscape swept by as he kept running until he reached the road that curved around the time-trapped city. Buildings were still forming and collapsing right before his eyes. There was finally a free moment to think, to breathe.
“Metal people,” Arz muttered, leaning against the trunk of a dry, twisted tree. “Metal people and a weapon that shoots light. And my portals aren’t working. I need to check the mixture.”
Arz pulled out his last purple vial and swirled it before his eyes. Nothing was visibly wrong, and testing a fully homogeneous mixture would be difficult. But he had to try something more if he wanted to get home.
Metallic voices reached his ears. Arz stuffed the vial in his jacket pocket and swept his eyes around. Shining metal heads with four eyes appeared over a hill just across the road.
“I wish I understood them.” Arz started running. He didn’t need to wait to see if they all held weapons or not. It was easy enough to assume they did.
He made it about a dozen steps before the first green beams struck the pavement nearby. Each impact left a folded chunk of molten rock.
“Oh shit.” Arz ducked just as another beam passed overhead. He sucked in air and focused on running forward. There was no chance he could dodge a single attack. Everything had been entirely luck. And Arz knew his luck wouldn’t last forever. It never did.
The road stuck close to the time bubble that enclosed the entire city, and as Arz ran farther down, he could see more and more cities in the distance. There were no clouds or mountains to obscure his view.
The metal people moved slowly. They pursued without rushing. Maybe they couldn’t run, or they just didn’t see a need. It wasn’t as if Arz was the biggest threat they’d encountered. He could easily assume they had fought far deadlier foes with weapons like that.
Arz stopped after only another minute as he approached a chasm in the road. It looked like the land had shifted, pulling the two halves apart. He was careful in his approach to look over the ledge. It was a far drop. Possibly safer than the glass canyon, but not by much. Arz wasn’t an experienced climber. Or adventurer of any kind, really.
He just needed to check his recipe so he could get home. That was all he needed, all he wanted to do. Even while running, he was thinking through possibilities in what might be out of balance within the purple vial. One small measurement mix up could cause the tear to only partially open. And a tear that small would be dangerous because it wouldn’t pull everything through. Just like the metal man who had lost an arm from the tiny portal.
The metallic voices repeated the same phrase that Arz still failed to recognize. Perhaps there was a language acquisition potion of some kind. He rolled his eyes at his own thought. That was too much, and not the right time to worry about it.
The metal people weren’t visible. He could only hear their voices and footsteps. They were a few bends back on the road.
Where could he hide?
Arz looked up as the tallest building in the close bubble collapsed to nothing. The metal people were never very close to the edge of the city. Perhaps he could hide nearby.
He sprinted back the way he came, passing right in front of the five metal people. The injured one wasn’t terribly far behind, walking in the same direction and repeating the same phrase as the others.
“Don’t shoot,” Arz shouted, waving at them. All of them tried to aim their weapons and fired. Green beams shot in every direction as some guns were pointed too high, others too low, and one went all over as a metal person lost balance from the sudden movement and collapsed.
Arz covered his head, as if his arm would protect from a beam of light, until he reached the edge of the time bubble. It was terrifying to be so close. He pivoted and followed the bubble down a slight hill. The buildings forming to his right were stout, warehouse-like buildings. It seemed to be the edge of whatever that city had once been.
The ground leveled out for a brief time before turning into a plain of rolling mounds. One mound, taller than the rest, had a huge twisted tree on top. Its roots grew over the stone-like ground and disappeared into the time bubble.
The mound was partially hollow, with a shallow cave somewhat under the mound and partially under the tree. It was like a tiny cave with only one entrance because the bubble formed the other wall. Arz pushed through the stiff roots and sat with his knees up in the darkness.
Little bits of light made it through the roots, but it was difficult to see anything clearly. It wasn’t long before the metal people walked past. They still repeated their phrase, but they kept walking. Arz didn’t dare move until their footsteps had long since faded away.