In which Gethin�s trail is found

Chapter 14 of The Time-Teller

Chapter 14
In which Gethin’s trail is found

 

Megan followed Pyralis through the vast gates of the city. The city was huge and looked very like a European cathedral. Megan was amazed by the many statues and images carved into the marble buildings, which towered over her, reaching into the clouds. Most of the doors were wooden and arched with many engravings that gave them a sophisticated air.

 

“Hurry up,” Pyralis spoke ahead of her. “You can admire this city another time.” Megan followed Pyralis waving hair as he hurried down the street past the many people in various outfits buying and selling and chatting. The diversity in the city was such that, if Megan had kept her earth clothing, she would not have looked even slightly out of place.

 

“Here,” he said, walking into an abandoned-looking building.

 

“Where are we?” Megan asked.

 

“We are where he was,” Pyralis said. He walked swiftly through many halls and doorways, some which were almost invisible, until he came upon a spiral stairway that seemed to wind down into eternity. The air was dark and somewhat damp, which made Megan shiver almost as much as looking down to the black bottom of the staircase.

 

“Are we walking down that?” Megan asked.

 

“No,” Pyralis said. “We’re jumping.” Megan raised her eyebrow at Pyralis’ attempt at sarcasm. She had never heard of anyone as bad at sarcasm as he was. Pyralis began to descend slowly down the stairs, feeling every step with his staff. Every once in a while they would come upon a place where the stairs had been damaged. Pyralis carefully felt with his staff where it would be safe to step. Megan followed his footsteps carefully. She knew that Pyralis’ staff would be a better judge of the security of the steps than her own eyesight.

 

The dream from the previous night haunted Megan. She tried desperately to think of something that she could love, but nothing came to mind, only the lost pictures of her family. Her possessions, her loved ones and everything that had made up her existence had disappeared into a void of hatred for the one called Gethin and equal hatred to the man in front of her who had perhaps prevented her from saving her family.

 

“Love,” Megan whispered to herself.

 

“What?” Pyralis asked.

 

“Pyralis, what can I love?”
Pyralis tilted his head to the side, and his greasy black hair moved awkwardly following his gesture.

 

“What do you mean?” he drawled. “Why do you ask?”

 

“I had a strange dream last night,” Megan couldn’t believe she was asking the man for whom she held such great hatred what she could possibly love or even like. “And, it made me wonder what I can love now that I have lost everything.”

 

“I am the last person who would know the answer to that question, child,” Pyralis’ drawl sounded distant and sad. “I am in the same situation as you.”

 

“You are?” Megan asked confused. She realized that she had never wondered about Pyralis’ life before her arrival in it. “What… what… Can you tell me what happened?” Pyralis turned to her for a short while before continuing his descent of the stairway.

 

“Well,” he began. “Perhaps it is better if we know each other, for who knows how much longer we will be journeying with one another. Let me begin at the beginning.

 

When I was a baby, I was abandoned in the Silvian Swamp. Luckily, my screams woke a very kind oak, named Ayla, who comforted me and stopped my cries. I believe you met her on the first day of your journey. Trees have a very unique way of communicating with wizards and can call them from thousands of miles away. You see, Ayla had known a wizard named Tempus, you met him as well of course. He came and saved me from the swamp. Then, he raised me as an apprentice and almost as a son.

 

When, I was eight years old, Tempus came back from one of his usual journeys with a young boy, named Lucifer. Lucifer’s family had been killed in a rebellion and Tempus had seen magic in him, so he brought Lucifer back to become a second apprentice. Lucifer and I became very close friends. We did everything together, from gathering ingredients for Tempus to playing games. Then, something terrible happened, and Lucifer and I were forced to leave Tempus. On our journey, we met a young lady, named Helia. Helia had been despised for certain talents, which the people of this world can not understand. She followed us on our journey even though Lucifer, like most people, hated her for her talent…”

 

“What was her talent?” Megan asked, carefully stepping over a badly cracked step.

 

“She followed us for several months,” Pyralis continued as though Megan had not spoken. “Eventually, Helia and I fell in love. Years later, Helia and I were married, but five years into our marriage, Lucifer came. He was not the same man that I had known. He had been changed into something different, something crazy with the power that comes with magic. He had even changed his name. He burned my home with magical flames, destroying everything I held dear. In an attempt to save what I loved, I lost my eyesight. Without my eyes, I was helpless. I did not yet understand the ways of the blind. Helia was killed that day.” Pyralis sighed, moving slowly across the steps with his staff.

 

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Megan asked.

 

“I have held this secret for a long time. No one knows save you, Tempus… and Gethin.”

 

“Gethin is Lucifer.” Megan stated.

 

“Yes,” Pyralis said. “My best friend took everything from me, and he took everything from you as well. This we have in common. This makes us the same, young Megan. This is what compels me most to aid you on your journey.” Megan was silent. She did not understand everything Pyralis had said, but her curiosity was not enough to force her mouth to form a question. She did not know anything she could say to this man, who had been hurt by the same person as she. Yet, Megan wondered. Why had Tempus told her to seek revenge and not Pyralis when, perhaps, Pyralis had lost more than she had.

 

Megan looked down. The bottom of the staircase was still invisible to the naked eye, and the steps seemed to last forever.

 

“Are you all right, little Megan?” Pyralis drawled. “I would have thought you would have been able to guess from the way I speak of Gethin that I had been hurt by him.”

 

“I… I didn’t really think about it,” Megan said truthfully.

 

“You are selfish,” Pyralis said. “You know that.”

 

“What?” Megan said haughtily. “I lost everything. How could I be selfish?”

 

“Many people have lost everything. You are not alone. You act as though the whole world should be sorry for your loss. It is true that what you lost is to be pitied, but you still have time to make up for those losses. You have time to grow up, make new friends, and find love. What about the people who do not have that opportunity? What about the people who lose everything when they are no longer in the prime of life? You have a precious gift Megan, time. You have time to heal. I also have time, but my magic will never be the same as it once was because a part of myself was cut out when helia and… I can not ever perform at my maximum strength again.”

 

“Don’t be so morbid!” Megan said. “If you have time, then use it. You are as selfish as I am.”

 

“Correct,” Pyralis stated shortly. “I am selfish. However, I am not quite so selfish as you are. At least, I have not let my mind become obsessed with revenge and hatred, without letting anything kind into it.”

 

“What?” Megan said. “I saved your life twice! Isn’t that kind?”

 

“I can say the same thing,” Pyralis said. “Watch that step!” It was too late. Megan felt her foot break the already half-ruined step. As her body hit the steps painfully, she crashed through. She saw the next set of steps move closer as she fell down with uncontrollable speed. She tried to break the fall with her hands, but she cracked several fingers, and her face hit the steps painfully before the force of her falling onto the steps destroyed them, and she found herself falling once more. She managed somehow to avoid the steps beneath and fell through the empty center of the spiral staircase into the vast nothingness below. She heard her own screams echoing off the walls as she fell swiftly down into the abyss below.

 

“Help!” she screamed, but she could not hear her words through the roaring of the wind in her ears.

 

“Megan?” Megan heard a soft woman’s voice move swiftly through her brain.

 

“Hello!” Megan still couldn’t hear herself.

 

“Megan, find us. Remember to find us,” Megan tried to think clearly. “Remember what I taught you. Let the memories come back, young one, from a time long ago.” Megan didn’t understand what happened next. How could she? She was, after all, only a child. She knew that it must have been a deep magic, far beyond her control. Even Pyralis could not have fully understood the magic that saved young Megan’s life, but there was no doubt that it was Megan’s magic. Megan felt the wind and caught it. Then, she began to transform, but instead of turning into something outside of her body as she had when she healed the many-headed monster earlier, her entire body shifted into something different. She felt her arms and legs warp and distort themselves painfully as she swooped to land gently and safely on the ground.

 

“What am I?” she whispered to herself as her arms slowly regained their form. Megan sat there, too tired to move. She waited for one hour before Pyralis finally finished his descent of the long stairway.

 

“I heard your breathing,” Pyralis said as he moved slowly toward her. “You fell too swiftly for my magic to catch you. Are you injured?”

 

“No,” Megan said in a small, exhausted voice. “I don’t understand what happened, so I’ll save you the trouble of asking.” She smiled in the dim light at the blind man before her. Pyralis helped her stand.

 

“What now?” Megan asked. She had looked around, but saw no way out of the narrow bottom of the stairway. It appeared to simply be a dead end, but Megan knew that Pyralis must know of some means to leave without walking all the way back up the stairs.

 

“We go further,” Pyralis said. “There is a passage somewhere along this wall. I will find it.” Pyralis began tapping the walls in different places. After several uneventful minutes, a tap from Pyralis’ staff made the wall open itself up like a door. Megan and Pyralis walked through the narrow doorway into a small room. The room was dark, but Megan could barely make out a desk with various objects on it and a long tunnel leading into darkness. Pyralis waved his staff through the air in a quick whooshing motion. The crystal on his staff lit up, creating a makeshift lamp.

 

Many strange objects were on the small wooden desk. There was clear, glass cup filled with grainy blue powder. There were many small bottles with labels written in some sort of runes. There was also a small bowl full of a substance that gave off a slight yellow-green glow.

 

“What is this stuff.

 

“Magus calet,” Pyralis said slowly. “These are most of the ingredients to create the light that would show Gethin his magical wounds, but he is missing the key ingredient here.”

 

“What’s that?” Megan asked curiously.

 

“Ground dragon tooth,” Pyralis said worriedly. “There aren’t many places to find that. Obviously Gethin believed that the potion might work slightly without this ingredient. However, I know and he knows now that he was mistaken. Come, Megan.” Pyralis gathered the ingredients from the table and placed them into the bag. “There. We cannot let him heal his magical injuries. He would become practically impossible to find.” With this having been done, Pyralis motioned Megan to follow him into the tunnel. They had not been walking through the tunnel more than twenty minutes when they emerged into a forest.

 

“Why didn’t we just go in that way?” Megan asked.

 

“Look.” Megan looked back at the now non-existent tunnel. “That tunnel is one way and one way only. There is no looking back, Megan.”

 

“Huh,” Megan sighed. She glanced around her moonlit surroundings. The forest was dark and quiet. Pyralis led Megan into a small clearing.

 

“You will keep the first watch,” Pyralis spoke to Megan. “You will wake me when the moon is directly overhead. Do you understand?”

 

“Of course,” Megan said. “I’ve kept watch with you before, haven’t I?” Megan sat quietly on a stump and waited, staring out into the darkness. She wondered quietly to herself whether her mother was somewhere, watching her, protecting her. Then, there was a loud crash, and Megan stood up swiftly, her blue eyes piercing the darkness for some sign of where the noise had come from. She could make out nothing.