Maxwell stepped back from the controls and let out a sigh. “We’re set on our course,” he said. “But it looks like it’s going to take a while.”
“That’s okay!” Tock said, smiling at him. “It’s a Daylight Bastion, and one that’s still manned by a Paladin and Sub-Paladins, so it should be safe.” She checked the display, a fuzzy analog screen that showed abstractions — lines and dots, squiggles and blips — that only she and Maxwell could read. “Everything looks okay from here.”
“Right,” Maxwell said, sighing again. He managed a small smile, but that smile vanished when Tock reached up and poked him in the cheek. “W-what’s that for?”
“You’re a worrywart, Maxwell,” Tock said, frowning at him. “Come on, we’ve done so well so far! Even though we’ve faced danger, we’ve made it through.”
“It’s not so much that I’m worried,” Maxwell said, stepping out of Tock’s reach and adjusting his glasses. “It’s more that… well, I’m not so sure my constitution —”
“Again with the ‘constitution’ line,” Tock said, smirking slightly, raising an eyebrow. “You’re the one who’s been the most active between the two of us. I never knew you could run so fast!”
“Ah, well, I…” Maxwell stammered, embarrassed. He adjusted his bowtie, then barely managed to suppress another sigh. “Some of this takes me back to my younger days.”
“With Selphine and Gerick, right?” Tock asked, her deep blue eyes glittering with curiosity. She loved asking and learning about Maxwell’s past adventures. “So you used to run all over the place back then, huh?”
“More like I had to just to keep up with them.” Maxwell smiled, then. Despite all the anxiety those two had caused him, their adventures had truly been fun.
Tock laughed softly. “I knew you were enjoying this.”
The pair slipped into silence, occasionally checking the controls and displays. And it was a comforting silence, Maxwell realized. Not because he didn’t like Tock talking, but the exact opposite.
He’d come to value his partnership with this girl from the Edge of Time. After spending so long alone, this girl had burst into his life without even the slightest hint of warning, and changed everything.
The last visitors he’d had were Fae and the Star sisters, and that…
Well, that didn’t go very well at all. I blundered spectacularly.
Still, I managed to get them what they needed. I can take some solace in that.
All this time alone… I was never much of a social sort, but suddenly having visitors made me realize just how much solitude has affected me.
But Tock… well. Things have gone quite well with her, haven’t they? She’s a girl of mystery, there’s no doubt about that. But she brightens up the place. I hadn’t realized how gloomy I’d become.
Could I… do I dare… think of her as… a friend?
“Friend.” The last people — and two of the only people — he’d ascribed that word to were Selphine Miora and Gerick Irsotz. And how long had it been since he’d seen them? How long had it been since they’d gone their separate ways? Amicably, to be sure, but even so…
This way we have, though. Where we can talk, where we’re comfortable with each other, and where silence is comfortable, too…
That’s akin to friendship, isn’t it?
Maxwell pulled out his sketchbook and drew. It was a way to clear his head, and a way to get a new perspective on the situation.
He drew Tock, as she tinkered at the console. She glanced at him once, and a smile spread across her face as she looked away.
She said nothing, but that simple look and smile said volumes.
I never thought I was much good with children. Perhaps I just wasn’t good with people in general.
That… is very likely, the more I think about it.
Some things don’t change.
It speaks volumes that a completely unannounced, unheralded visitor — an intruder, some might say, and not without reason — has been someone I’ve found quite welcome here.
Yes. Perhaps I can… well. Let’s not be presumptuous.
One day, maybe, we can call each other friends.
I hope so.
“I’m starting to think you know these controls better than I do,” Maxwell said, finishing his sketch and putting his drawing implements away. “And yet you remember nothing of why that might be true?”
“You’re better with them than me,” Tock said. “Less confident, but that goes for you as a person overall. I don’t mean that as an insult!” She waved her hands apologetically. She was a tremendously expressive individual. “It’s just an observation. You’ve studied them, but you’d never used them until we started traveling together. Me… I think I have used these before. No, I don’t have any memories, but… it’s a feeling. Like… this is something I’ve done long before I met you.”
Maxwell considered that, watching Tock tinker and experiment. He’d heard about the Edge of Time, read what few accounts there were of it, studied every meager scrap of information that had made its way into books, journals, memoirs, or songs from the tiny number of Time Mages who had made the trip and returned. He knew, faintly, of the “assistants” that worked at the Edge of Time, boys and girls like Tock who helped Time Mages that washed up on the Farthest Shore.
None of them were born at the Edge of Time. At the Edge of Time, there was no birth, nor death. Time stood still for the residents, even as it flowed on around them. All of them had come from somewhere else, had once had different names, different lives.
And none of them remembered. Not their names, nor where they’d come from. And, normally, if any of the assistants left, they relinquished their new names and all memory of the Edge of Time.
But Tock hadn’t done that. She kept her name, kept all her memories of being an assistant. Technically, she still was an assistant at the Edge of Time, simply assigned to this mission.
But while she didn’t necessarily remember, those “feelings” she spoke of…
Memories aren’t like videos or books. They aren’t stories that are perfectly recorded and can be perfectly replayed in one’s mind. It’s not at all uncommon for someone to tell even the most impactful story of their own past, and get some of the details wrong, without ever realizing it.
Memories take all sorts of forms. And while we forget, that’s not an erasure of memory. It’s simply a… reshuffling of memory. Reorganizing. We cannot keep every single detail in our conscious minds. So we have the subconscious, and we have the unconscious. And memories can flow between the three.
Sometimes a memory is just a smell, a nostalgic aroma that we can’t place to a point in our lives, but that wakes emotion within us.
And sometimes… it’s a feeling. Doing something that you don’t consciously remember doing, and yet… you can feel that you have.
“Up to some deep thoughts over there, huh?” Tock asked, casting a sidelong glance at Maxwell.
“I was just thinking over Professor Hawthorn’s theory of the three-tiered mind and the nature of memory,” Maxwell said. “You feel as if you’ve done this before, yes?”
“Right,” Tock said with a nod, her clock-embedded hat bobbing on her head.
“Then that is a memory,” Maxwell said. “One that you can’t fully place, likely as a result of whatever happened to your memory when you arrived at the Edge of Time as an assistant.”
“Memories work like that, huh?” Tock asked in a thoughtful tone. She ran her hands slowly, gently, over the console, not actually working the controls, but just feeling them. “It’s… nostalgic, being here. It’s not just the feel of the controls, it’s the whole study. You’ve made it your own, of course, and you said we haven’t met before, so that must be true. But there are things that… haven’t changed.” She stepped past Maxwell and out into the study’s main area, where she plopped down in front of the fireplace with a dreamy smile. “The sound of the fire, of this fire. There’s no other fire like it. Its rhythm, its pace… and yet I know it. And!” She leapt to her feet and trotted over to a bookshelf, where she ran her hand down the left side, feeling over a notch in the side of the shelf that Maxwell knew quite well. It had been there when he’d first arrived to take the post as Master of the Basin of Antiquity, and as it didn’t jeopardize the stability of the shelf, he’d elected to leave it as it was. “This notch, right here,” Tock continued. “It’s like… I knew it was there, before I even felt for it. And when I do feel it…” She shook her head. “When I do feel it, it’s like… I can hear laughter, like an echo from the past.” She pulled her hand away slowly, then dropped her gaze. “It’s… all so… very strange. Isn’t it? My memories… weren’t they erased when I went to the Edge of Time?”
“Memories cannot be erased,” Maxwell said. “But they can be buried. They can be veiled, obscured, mixed up, and confused. It’s likely that your memories, and those of your fellow assistants, are simply buried in the unconscious. These impressions, these things you know without knowing how… I believe they may be echoes of those memories working their way up from the unconscious to the subconscious.”
Tock let out a soft chuckle. “You’re so smart.”
“It’s Professor Hawthorn’s theory,” Maxwell said, adjusting his spectacles. “I simply read and studied it.”
“And you’re the only person I know who could have told me this,” Tock said, turning to face him, a smile on her face. “I haven’t met Professor Hawthorn. I probably never will, since he’s not on our list. And you keep selling yourself short.” She pointed at him. “You, Maxwell, are brilliant. It’s nice — refreshing, even — to see someone so humble. But you take it just the tiniest bit too far. Go ahead and be humble, but don’t put yourself down as much as you do.”
Maxwell ducked his gaze, adjusting his bowtie, but Tock was onto him. She knew his mannerisms, and strolled right up underneath him — it helped that she was significantly shorter than him — and gazed right up at him with a wide smile. “Trying to hide from praise?” she asked.
“I… am not accustomed to it given so freely,” Maxwell said, chuckling.
“Which means you’re not accustomed to me yet!” Tock said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get there. I hope.” She headed back into the console chamber. “Oh!” came her excited call from there. “Looks like we’re arriving sooner than expected! Come on and take us in for a landing!”
You know quite well how to do it yourself.
But Maxwell didn’t say so. They normally took turns at the controls, but when it came to landing the study, after only a few trips, Tock had declared, “Landings are your specialty!” and left landing the study to him from then on.
Even so, it wasn’t as if Maxwell piloted the study into a landing alone. While he took the primary controls — the pirate-ship-style steering wheel and vector level beside it — Tock was the assistant, dealing with various knobs, dials, levers, and such while monitoring displays and gauges. They talked back and forth, perfectly in sync, bringing in the study to a smooth land—
Whump!
“What the heck?” Tock asked, nearly falling as the study rocked with some kind of impact. “There’s nothing on the display! What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Maxwell said, steadying himself just as a second impact rocked the study.
That second one, though… it was followed by Maxwell and Tock sharing a look.
They’d felt that kind of impact before.
They brought the study into as smooth a landing as they could manage, and then both raced for the door. Tock was there first, flinging it open…
Darkness.
Darkness greeted them. They’d landed at Shimmerveil Pike, a Daylight Bastion that had never faced any danger in its long existence, and whose Paladin monitored its Light Catcher with a regularity that should be the envy of all Paladins.
And yet…
“No,” Tock murmured, hollow horror in her voice. “Not here. Not… not again.”
They’d both seen Locations devoured by Darkness in their journeys across the universe. And every time…
Every time, it was as horrifying as the last. Quiet — so quiet. And yet that only made it more haunting, more heartbreaking, more chilling.
This time, though, there wasn’t quiet. The Darkness wasn’t the slow, quiet encroachment, the unstoppable but strangely calm flood, that they’d seen every time before.
The Darkness here, devouring Shimmerveil Pike, was vicious and raucous. Monstrous howls and roars sounded. Sub-Paladins and administrators shouted and called out, some in defiance, some in panic. Lights flashed and flared, explosions rocked the entire Location. They were fighting against not a steady flood, but a vicious, destructive horde of Darkness-born monsters. Together, they’d formed a defensive line, and before them rose a crystalline, shimmering wall of light. The monsters railed against it, but did not breach it — yet.
Cracks were forming. It was only a matter of time.
The defenders weren’t trying to claim victory and save their Bastion, though. It was too late for that. Their objective was to buy as much time as possible.
They were working on an evacuation.
“Orderly lines, please!” arose a clear, comforting voice with a slightly tinny, mechanical tone to it. “The Linear Lift is still open, so please proceed that way. Follow Jaina, she knows the way best.”
“Twelve!” arose a frantic cry. “The Crystal Pool has been taken!”
“So quickly,” said the mechanical voice, thoughtful and calm. “Thank you, Jacen. Please, proceed with the others to the Linear Lift. That is our best escape route now.”
“Come on,” Maxwell said, stepping out from the study, Tock just behind him.
Shimmerveil Pike was being devoured by Darkness. But there was still hope, for the Pike’s Paladin still stood, still led the way for the Sub-Paladins and administrators who were his charge.
Twelve, a clockwork automaton only two and-a-half feet tall, with a pleasant porcelain smile and appealing rounded design, was the last of his inventor’s “living dolls.” And in the midst of catastrophe, of a glimpse of the apocalypse, he remained calm and steady.
“Twelve!” called out Maxwell, and he and Tock hurried to the Paladin’s side.
“Hello,” Twelve said with an amicable smile, looking the pair up and down. “Who might you be?”
“We’re here to help,” Tock said. “How many people are left?”
“There are two dozen of us,” Twelve said, “and myself. The evacuation is under control. You should follow the others and proceed to the Linear Lift —”
“Twelve!” came a young woman’s voice from the front of the line. “The Linear Lift, it’s —”
“Taken!” came a panicked cry from the middle of the line. “It’s all over!”
“It isn’t!” Tock shouted, standing as tall as she could, a fierce gleam in her eyes. “Twenty-three of you, right? We can all get out of here together! Just follow us!”
“Follow you? Who even are you?” asked a skeptical man near the back of the line, closest to them.
“They’re here to help,” Twelve said. “Please, remain calm.” He turned to Maxwell and Tock. “It seems we are in your hands. Where can we go?”
Maxwell nodded and started towards the door to the study. “Through here,” he said. “It’ll be a bit cramped, but we’ll all fit.”
“That door…” murmured someone in the group.
“No time for gawking!” Tock said. “Hurry, hurry! Please, we can still get everyone out!”
“Everyone,” Twelve said, reverent awe in his voice — and a sense of relief. He looked at those few who were holding the line against the monsters. Their wall of gleaming light was full of cracks and fractures, and would soon shatter to pieces. He raised a porcelain hand and snapped his fingers. The wall blazed with light, and the cracks repaired themselves. “Valiant defenders, please, join us. We will all escape together.”
“Hurry!” Tock urged.
“In an orderly fashion,” Twelve amended when the twenty-four remaining residents of Shimmerveil Pike started a mad scramble after Tock and Maxwell. They immediately organized themselves at their Paladin’s instruction, and hurried in an orderly fashion to and through the door.
“I am in your debt,” Twelve said, bowing low to Maxwell and Tock once everyone else was inside the study. Then the trio stepped in, and Maxwell shut the door while Tock, the smaller pilot and thus more capable of slipping through the crowded space, rushed to the console to initiate takeoff.
By the time Maxwell joined her, he had only to flip a switch and handle a single lever, monitoring the gauge it connected to. Tock had things well in hand, and they took off swiftly. A series of harsh, rocking impacts elicited gasps and cries from the study’s main room, but after a tense several moments…
They were free. The Darkness was left behind, and they flew smoothly onward.
“To the Library of Solitude, I think,” Maxwell said. “We probably shouldn’t take everyone to Alexandra’s.”
“We should at least explain the situation to Twelve,” Tock said.
“I would appreciate that,” said Twelve, entering the console room. “And I believe introductions are in order. I am Twelve, Paladin of Shimmerveil Pike. And you are…?”
Maxwell and Tock, despite their latest — and likely not last — brush with the apocalypse, smiled. Twelve was just as they’d been told, ever orderly, polite, and reassuring. And after introductions went around, the pair explained the situation — as much as they could without risking prying ears learning too much.
Twelve took it all in stride. When they were finished, he nodded once, smiled, and said, “I agree with your appraisal of the situation. We should go to the Library of Solitude first, and drop off my wonderful Sub-Paladins and administrators. They will be safe there. And I have a personal visit to make while there. Don’t worry, I will keep it brief.”
“A personal visit?” Tock asked.
“Yes,” Twelve said with a smile. “I made a valuable discovery — one that the Paladins of Revue Palace need to know about as soon as possible.”