157 The Maze of Time (1/2)

Deep in the bowels of the earth, two shining figures hurtled down into the dark below like comets on a hellish trajectory toward death. There was little room for error within the fractured domain of spacetime within the tremendous fissure.

Shards of disconnected space and unbound time were scattered in a haphazard fashion everywhere Reed could see, such that it was hard to maneuver himself around them. Had Reed not been following Lu'um's path, he would have gotten lost a long time ago.

Not only metaphorically, but also in a literal interpretation of the phrase. In the best-case scenario, he would have ended in a stray period of history, completely lost and without a way back to the present aside from... waiting. And this was only if he was extremely lucky, to the point that it defied comprehension. A one-in-a-million fluke of fate.

In the worst-case scenario, he would have ended up a collection of missing body parts, divided over an unknown amount of spatiotemporal shards. His left arm thrust into some random city five hundred years into the past, his right leg tossed out into the open sea two thousand years ago, and so forth until he was completely dispersed across time.

It was a bone-chilling knowing that was how every Chosen who had dared enter the anomaly had died. They had been torn asunder in a gruesome way, such that they would never be seen again. For those poor fools, there would be nothing left of them to bury.

Reed and Lu'um traversed through a multitude of 'stable' spatiotemporal shards that were not at risk of collapsing or possibly shifting to another temporal vector -- another period of time. Entering an unstable spatiotemporal shard would be akin to suicide as they were prone to shifting, collapsing, and reopening at any possible moment. There was no telling what terrible consequences laid within entering of them...

Not that Reed had accepted Lu'um's assessment of the shards. He thought of them all as death traps in the making. 'Stable' or 'unstable,' it made no difference in his eyes. Whereas an 'unstable' shard was prone to collapsing in less than a second's notice, a 'stable' shard would only endure a bit longer.

A couple of minutes at most, if they were lucky; A minute at best for the average stable shard.

At first, they had avoided the spatiotemporal shards altogether, but the deeper they descended the more prevalent they became until it had become almost impossible to descend without crossing into them.

They had entered a fractured domain of time and space so bizarre and unpredictable, neither of them had proper words to describe it. It was an unmanageable, ever-shifting, insane labyrinth of broken history.

An unknowable maze of melding histories, events, and eras that had no connection to one another.

Reed and Lu'um hurriedly inspected their surroundings in search of the exit shard that should have been around them. Time was disconnected from its natural sequential order, but that did not mean that it was completely bereft of unity.

One only had to think of a film reel to understand this phenomenon. Though the film reel was out of order, it was not cut any particular place. The entire film reel was still entirely in one piece... for now.

Mulia's history was akin to film reel that had been irresponsibly spliced in an unpredictable order. Some events that happened near the beginning now existed near the end, and other events that occurred at the end were now in the middle of the history.

There was no telling when and where each spatiotemporal shard was going to take them.

”....Do you see it?! I can't find it! Where's that fucking shard?!”

”I don't know! Just keep looking and use your mind's eye to check for any abnormalities!”

They were running out of time. Even stable shards were sturdier, they would eventually close. Neither Reed and Lu'um were interested in being stranded in some past era, so it was of utmost concern for them that they find the shard as soon as possible.

A large shadow blocked out the bloody, crimson sun above them, which prompted their attention.

Two enormous warships had flown over their heads as they crossed each other's paths. The military crests, ship colors, even their designs were different from one another. One was sleeker and narrower in design, bearing the crest of a golden tree, while the other was more robust -- stockier and heavier plated.