The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 17
Time Freeze
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Though I was physically frozen, I continued to think. Shouldn’t I have been frozen mentally as well?
“Hermes?”
“I am here,” he replied. He sounded almost as surprised as I was to find himself able to think with time frozen.
“Why can we still think?”
“Since this situation is unprecedented, I can only speculate. We know that the Philosopher’s Stone quickly heals any injuries you suffer. It also eats away at any spells that have a detrimental effect on you until it breaks them. It has evidently conquered the power of Chronos within you. I’m also shielded from it because I’m inside you.”
“But why can’t I move?”
“Perhaps because the stone, at least when acting on its own, can only affect magic cast directly on you. The time freeze has no power within you, but it remains in force outside you. You can’t move because your surroundings are frozen.”
That raised some terrifying possibilities.
“There’s still air in my lungs.”
“The Philosopher’s Stone keeps renewing your oxygen supply.”
“So I don’t die right away. But if I’m trapped here, I can’t stop Cronus and his buddies from taking over this plane.”
“As I’ve said, the amount of power needed to sustain a local freeze is considerable. Cronus may be able to channel Chronos’s ability, but from what I can sense, Chronos didn’t endow the former titan king with enough power to maintain this condition for very long. You should be able to reduce the length of the effect by pushing against it with your own magic.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how to manipulate the power of the stone into fighting a time freeze. I achieved about as much as I would have if I had tried to move a boulder with a toothpick. Hermes called upon his own magic, setting up a constant flow of power aimed at disrupting the freeze. But he failed to get the time freeze to thaw even slightly.
“I’m sorry,” said Hermes. “I lack the knowledge necessary to convert my magic into a force that can influence the flow of time.”
“We need to get Chronos himself to help,” I said.
Hermes chuckled. “You’ve seen how elder powers operate. The older they are, the less likely they are to interact in ways that we can understand. It took Eriopis months to reach Tartarus. Who knows how long Cronus has been working at reaching Chronos? He could have been at it for centuries.”
“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t have been able to reach him while those adamantine shackles bound him, right? That means he would have had to wait until Eriopis got Tartarus into a more interactive mode.”
Hermes considered that idea for a moment. “True. The chains of Tartarus are enchanted to prevent someone bound with them from using any kind of magic. Even so, Tartarus might have loosened those shackles years ago, shortly after Eriopis first got through to him. It could still have taken Cronus far longer than we have to reach out to Chronos.”
“He didn’t know where to look,” I replied. “Some of the elder powers, like Time and Love, are everywhere, but direct communication is only possible in certain places, like the Cave of Night. Am I correct?
“Yes, that is true,” said Hermes. “Particular locations act like communication channels. So do later gods that draw their power from one of their elders. But until Cronus, no later god succeeded in tapping into Chronos’s power, and there is no one location where Chronos manifests. He and Ananke, like two giant serpents, encircle the entire plane in a location we cannot reach.”
“But surely here, where Chronos’s power has manifested, he can be reached.”
Hermes paused so long that if I couldn’t feel him within me, I would have feared that he had faded away completely.
“We may as well try to communicate with him,” said Hermes.
Hermes was much closer to Chronos than I was, so he took point. But we knew we would have to work together to maximize our chance of reaching the most ancient being on this plane.
With one mental voice, we implored Chronos to hear us. We couldn’t have reached out to the edge of the plane even if we had wanted to, so instead we reached just outside me, to the bubble of frozen time in which we were trapped.
Ironically, I lost track of time. I had no idea how long we had been trying to draw Chronos’s attention. But at last, we heard two simple words, each syllable vibrating like an echo from a time uncountable eons earlier.
“Who calls?”
“Hermes, son of Zeus, son of Cronus, son of Uranus, husband and son of Gaia, one of your many descendants,” replied the herald of the gods. “Guaritori, the bearer of the Philosopher’s Stone, calls as well.”
It was a good thing I didn’t have to trace my ancestry back to the dawn of creation the way Hermes did. Even if I’d known my full genealogy, it would have taken hours to recite it—hours we didn’t have.
“Why do you call?” The words came more slowly than before, like trickles of water slowly melting from ice when the temperature is barely above freezing.
“You lent your power to Cronus, who plans to use it to overthrow the Olympian order and plunge this plane into utter confusion. We need you to withdraw that power and free us.”
“Nothing lasts forever,” replied Chronos, his words filled with the crackling with falling leaves and with the silence of seeds bringing forth new plants.
“But surely, a second reign by Cronus is not what Ananke has decreed,” said Hermes.
“Cronus was intended to embody my power and inaugurate a golden age when this plane was still young,” said Chronos, his words falling like snowflakes and sparkling like sunbeams. The multitude of impressions he was creating in my mind might drive me mad or at least fragment my consciousness if I had to continue this conversation too much longer.
“That is not his intent now,” said Hermes.
“No, it is not,” said Chronos. This time, he sounded simultaneously like a baby’s first cry and an old man’s last gasp.
“It has been prophesized that only a son of Zeus may succeed him,” said Hermes.
“I do not make or confirm prophecies,” said Chronos, his voice reminding me of sand falling through an hourglass. “They exist through the will of Ananke.”
I could feel Hermes’s frustration bubbling within me like boiling water.
“What is the will of Ananke in this instance?”
“That you would have to ask her,” replied Chronos in a voice reminiscent of sunrise and sunset.
I was no prophet, but I’d seen that response coming. I was also beginning to have a new appreciation for the phrase, “getting nowhere fast.”
“You must undo our imprisonment,” said Hermes, cutting me with the sharpness of his thoughts.
“I must do only that which I must do—and no more,” replied Chronos. His words didn’t remind me of the passing of time in any way. They just sounded…smug. Could that really be how he was feeling?
“Yet you imprisoned us in the first place. Did you have to do that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I felt Hermes’s rage burning within me, though his words remained calm and emotionally detached.
“Because it had to happen.” Chronos’s volume dropped until he was whispering at the end. I felt his presence withdrawing from us.
Like it or not, the conversation was over.
“This makes no sense!” said Hermes, doing the mental equivalent of a frustrated shout.
“Why is he acting like that?” I asked.
“He has no emotions in the way that we understand the term. As long as time continues to flow forward, he is satisfied.”
“Then why help Cronus?”
“That might be the one useful hint in the whole conversation,” said Hermes. “Chronos refused to prophesize, but he did say that this freezing of time had to happen. That suggests that Cronus had to win that battle and escape. But why that is true, only Ananke knows for sure. Well, and God, of course, but He doesn’t seem inclined to drop us any hints.”
“But there are others who do prophesize, right?”
“The gift passes down somewhat like the scepter, except that more than one of us can have the prophetic gift. From Ananke, it passed to Eros, then to Nyx, and after that, to a number of others, the most well-known being Apollo. But none of them are here, and even if they were, we wouldn’t be able to communicate with them.”
“Eros,” I said as an idea began to pull itself together in my mind. “He’s more responsive than most elder powers.”
“But he’s all the way over in the Cave of Night. We could only reach Chronos because his magic is literally touching your skin,” said Hermes.
“But isn’t Eros also in our hearts?” I asked, knowing even as I raised the question that I was grasping at straws.
“No one but his younger namesake and Aphrodite have ever been able to reach him directly outside the cave in the eons since he first entered it. But I suppose we may as well try. The growing imbalance on this plane has already made the impossible possible. Who knows what might be possible now?”
I could tell he wasn’t really enthusiastic about my idea, but we had to try something.
“Focus on the people you love,” I said. For me, that was easy. Hardly an hour passed without my thinking about Francesca at least once. She was dead, but I’d never forget her.
I wasn’t sure whom Hermes was thinking about, but because he was inside me, I could feel the love in his heart.
For a long time, we meditated on those we held most dear while trying to reach out to Eros.
“I’ve been expecting you,” said a voice that could only have belonged to Love. It was warm and reassuring, though I could feel the distance between us, gloomy as an impassable chasm.
“Why didn’t you come out of the cave to talk to us when we visited Nyx?” asked Hermes, still irritated from our dialog with Chronos.
“Because it was not yet time. Having knowledge too early can be as destructive as having it too late."
“Because Chronos had to be allowed to escape?” I asked.
“Indeed—but Zeus would never have let that happen if he had known it was coming. Right now, all of you walk on a razor’s edge. You cut yourself by moving at all, but also by standing still if you rest long enough upon the edge of the blade.”
“Can you speak more plainly?” asked Hermes.
“I will try,” replied Eros. The longer I remained in direct contact with him, the more vivid my memory of Francesca became. I felt as if she were holding my hand.
“The pathway to a good outcome is narrow and treacherous. The triple prophecy of Nyx remains true, however. Paradoxes must be resolved. Iskios must become part of the Olympian family. Guaritori must die.”
“But if Cronus has his way, we will soon all be imprisoned and unable to accomplish anything,” said Hermes. I could feel him trembling inside of me.
“Cronus is dangerous,” replied Eros. “But he cannot immediately achieve his objective. The rule of Olympus flows as time does—always forward, never back. I could not retake the scepter even if I wished to do so. Nor could any other previous ruler. In addition, Zeus has reshaped the nature of this plane so that only a son of his can take the scepter after him.”
“Then Cronus can never succeed,” said Hermes. “Unless he is content with destroying that which he cannot rule.”
“That is one possibility,” said Eros slowly. “But he will not do that immediately. He wants revenge, yes, but he also wants to rule. That means he will spend time trying to find and hold the scepter.”
“But he can never achieve his goal?” I asked. I wanted to make sure we weren’t missing some ambiguity that would end up being the death of us.
“There is one way whereby he might rule, but I risk causing other problems if I tell you too exactly. I can say only that what he needs to be done to rule has been done before. The Moirae have done it. Aphrodite has done it. Zagreus has done it.”
“That knowledge does us no good if we can’t get out of here,” I said.
“The key lies within you,” replied Eros. I felt the warmth of his presence fading and knew that we would get no further help from him.
“What does he mean by the part about what Cronus needs to do to rule?” I asked.
“We have to solve the part about the key being within you before we can accomplish anything else,” said Hermes, the frustration still clear in his words.
“I think I understand that part,” I said. “But I need the first part to be sure.”
“Reincarnation,” said Hermes. “In the three cases Eros cited, the deities in question were reborn to advance Zeus’s agenda. The Moirae—the three Fates, as modern people tend to call them—were originally daughters of Nyx and Erebus. But they were reborn as daughters of Zeus and Themis to confirm Zeus’s rule, even though they still function independently. Aphrodite was originally born of the blood of Uranus as it fell into Pontus, making her a power much senior to Zeus and his immediate family. To become a member of his council, she agreed to be reborn as a daughter of Zeus and Dione—though if Zeus expected that he could control the power of love that way, he was very much mistaken. Zagreus was originally a son of Zeus and Persephone. Zeus fathered him to be eventual heir to the scepter. Killed and devoured by some uncaptured Titans, Zagreus couldn’t truly die, but nor could he recover his original body. Athena rescued his heart, however, and Zeus infused its essence into the womb of Semele, who became pregnant with Dionysus.
“The birth of Zagreus—and eventually, Dionysus—was all an elaborate plan to avoid the prophecy that a son of Zeus would eventually overthrow him. Zeus intended a peaceful transfer of power instead, but even thousands of years later, he has not been able to bring himself to pass the scepter to Dionysus. Nor is it clear that all of his other sons would accept such a succession. Everyone knows the story, but Zeus has never explicitly named Dionysus as heir.”
“So Zeus arranged for gods to reincarnate—but the arrangement never worked out in the way in which he intended?” I asked.
“That’s a fair assessment,” said Hermes. “May Cronus’s attempt meet with even more dramatic failure! But for all I know, a new son of Zeus may even now be in someone’s womb. If Cronus figures out what he needs to do, he will hunt down the prospective mother, wherever she may be, and attempt to plant his own soul within her unborn child. That makes knowing the second part of the puzzle all the more important. What did Eros mean when he said the key was within you?”
“There are two possibilities,” I said. “You and the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“We’ve already established that I can’t get us out of here.”
“Exactly. So it must be the stone. But how? I’ve already tried unleashing the power of the stone against the time freeze and gotten nowhere.”
“Perhaps because you were thinking in terms of elemental transformations. The stone can change any physical substance into any other. You have also discovered that it will change some types of magic into other types. But time doesn’t act as physical substances do nor as most types of magic do.
“Of course, besides elemental transformations, the stone can also heal and remove hostile magic—but it didn’t initially break the time freeze. It just freed your mind from it.”
“Thank you for an explanation of all the ways the stone can’t help,” I said.
“Ah, but what is left when you rule all those out?”
The answer was as obvious as a white dove flying across a black background.
“The stone is also a gift of the holy spirit, the light of nature. I never tried to use that part of its power against the time freeze.”
Without waiting for Hermes to respond, I drew as much power from the stone as I could at one time and then projected it outward as the lumen naturae. It collided with the power of Chronos, and, like a heat source speeding up molecular motion, it gradually broke the grip of the time freeze. I could almost hear a cracking noise as the magic released me, allowing me to move normally again.
The spell remained intact on all the others, but now that I knew what to do, I could chisel away at it until the rest of it shattered, releasing everyone else.
Too late, I realized that one Titan had been left behind to keep watch. He was standing outside my line of sight, and I’d been unable to move my head. Once I could, I immediately spotted the giant hovering over me, but I didn’t respond fast enough to act before he did.
Iapetus, whose name meant “the piercer,” had gotten a spear from somewhere. Presumably, it came from Tartarus, as it seemed to have been fashioned from shadow. He stabbed downward in my direction with more than enough force to impale me. I managed to dodge, but I stumbled and fell right after.
“Lumen naturae!” yelled Hermes, even as he tried to generate enough wind to throw Iapetus off balance. Like other elemental attacks, it seemed less effective in Tartarus, and the Titan kept coming.
I managed a good enough burst of the stone’s light to dispel the spear, but Iapetus switched to his fists. One blow might crush me. However, punching the ground wasn’t the most natural fighting maneuver, and his clumsiness with it gave me time to get up and run. I got around behind my frozen comrades, but Iapetus started shrinking to fit through the narrow space between them and the wall. Even at my size, he would still be my physical superior.
Hermes attempted to put the Titan to sleep. Iapetus staggered for a moment but managed to remain awake. The messenger of the gods managed to get a portal open, but Iapetus slashed through it with his own magic, causing it to collapse before I could enter.
Iapetus hurled a cloud of dark magic at me that felt somewhat like that of Hades.
“He is the Titan of mortality!” yelled Hermes. “Beware of his magic!”
I didn’t need to be told that twice. Fortunately, the stone’s ability to heal me kept pace with the Titan’s life-destroying magic. However, the power of the stone was finite, and it had already been exerting itself to protect my body from the constant strain the presence of Hermes put on it. If Iapetus kept up his barrage long enough, I was done for.
Hermes helped by raising a magic shield that deflected some of the titan’s magic. But from what I could tell, Iapetus might be less skillful with magic than Hermes, but he was also stronger. In a situation like this, brute force was likely to win. Hermes’s shielding became more porous by the second.
I felt Tartarus pressing down on me again as the shadows above me seemed to become solid and heavy. I tried another burst of holy light, but I was drawing on the stone too hard for other uses, and the light did only minimal damage to the surrounding shadows.
As I struggled, Hermes, who had probably not been so hard-pressed since the ancient wars between the gods and the giants, tried a more varied range of attacks derived from his role as giver of the alphabet, whose letters had magical meanings as well as phonetic ones.
He used my fingers to draw the letter alpha in the air, and from it exploded blinding moonbeams. Iapetus staggered back a little, and Hermes drew beta, from which hurtled spears as if they had been flung by Athena. They might not have been as strong as the real thing, but Iapetus took several wounds and started dripping blood on the stone beneath him.
But if Hermes hoped to disrupt Iapetus’s death magic, so far, he had failed. If anything, the Titan amplified the effect, and I fell backward as my life force ebbed. I wasn’t going to be able to take too much more of this.
Hermes was likely to be hindered by my failing body as much as I was. But undeterred, he kept up the battle. With a shaky hand, he drew gamma, and from it exploded love magic worthy of Aphrodite herself. He wasn’t trying to make Iapetus fall in love with me but to confuse the Titan’s aggressive drives, making him less eager to attack. Still, the death magic incessantly pounded on Hermes’s protections and leaked onto me, drop by drop. Hades himself could not have launched a more powerful attack.
Hermes sought to draw delta, but my hands were shaking too much, and the magic refused to attach itself to the malformed letter. Realizing he now lacked the precision for that strategy, Hermes threw all the magic he had in him into shielding my body. I felt a little stronger, but I knew he couldn’t keep up this level of shielding for long.
I tried to do what I should have done in the first place and turn the light of the stone against the time freeze that still gripped all of my allies. But with the stone’s energy pulled in so many directions, what light I could conjure was pale, and it only started the process.
Iapetus, with another shadow spear, managed to crack through Hermes’s protective spell and force the point down toward my chest.
I was too tired and in too cramped a position to dodge effectively, and I didn’t have enough light to dispel the spear as it followed its inevitable path toward my heart.
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