Tempo Flux's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Tempo Flux stayed low on the packed dirt while the two figures came down the ridge. Luminara Starwhisper moved first. Aldric Moonwhisper followed, one hand at his belt. Tempo Flux did not have the wing speed to outrun them with a cracked rib. They pressed a palm to the satchel. Eight relics inside. The whistle. Seven others. All useless until they clicked together in the right order, and Tempo Flux did not know the order. Force one wrong and the piece would break. Break one and the artifact would never sing. Luminara stopped a wing's length away. She did not draw. Aldric did not either, but his fingers stayed near a rune stitched into his sleeve. "You took a myth," Luminara said. "We felt the door close behind you." Tempo Flux sat up slowly and set the small time engine on the dirt between them, lid open, gears still shivering. A show of hands, sort of. "I took a whistle," they said. "The myth was already going." Aldric crouched. He looked at the engine, then at the satchel. "Eight," he said. "You have eight." It was not a question. Tempo Flux said nothing. Aldric touched the edge of the satchel with two fingers and the flap fell open on its own. The relics lay in a row, dull, waiting. Tempo Flux had tried to fit them three times on the trip back. Each time the pieces had shivered and refused. Each time a fresh crack had started along the bone whistle's rim. "You will shatter them," Luminara said. She said it like a fact she had already watched happen. "The order is not guessable. It is remembered." She reached into her sleeve and drew out a pinch of star-dust. She let it fall across the relics. The dust settled into thin lines between them, drawing a shape Tempo Flux had never seen. A sequence. Numbers, almost. A map from one piece to the next. The chrono fish drifted down and hovered over the dust pattern. Its fins flickered forward and back through the seconds, reading. Tempo Flux held their breath. The fish stopped at the third relic in the line, circled, then moved to the fifth. It was checking her work. It found nothing to change. "Why show me," Tempo Flux said. Aldric answered. "Because the gods will notice soon. When they do, they will come for the myths that are left. We would rather your artifact exist than the shelf be empty." He closed the satchel. "But you owe us a hearing at the council office. Before you assemble. Not after." Tempo Flux nodded once. The rib ground when they stood. They had the order now, drawn in star-dust on the dirt. They also had a debt, and a summons, and two witnesses who knew exactly what they carried.