Every year, or at least, every year Duffy had remembered Jensen Ambrose travelled to a specific cave to spend his daughter’s birthday alone with said daughter. The memory of the little box and the ribbon was strong enough in the bard’s mind to guide him on instinct across oceans and fens to that exact same cave, in the hopes of finding the immortal there. He could only guess what had happened in the last three centuries to drive the man underground, but he fathomed a few ideas all the same.
Guilt was usually the primary cause of such things…but what had Jensen to be guilty about?
“A lot of things…” he mumbled, strolling across the buoyant and dense grass and reed bed of the field that surrounded the cavern. It still smelt of sweet oats and rolled peppermint cakes, which Duffy had helped Jensen make one year for a birthday picnic. He had of course been forbidden from eating any, but the memory gave him hope that his instincts were right.
Whoever wanted Duffy to see the future, if that had been their intention all along would have to ensure no ties with the past could be accessed. Duffy’s limited understanding of magic, of time itself told him that to uncover the truth in this mystery, and he would have to find someone just distant enough from his own life that had survived all these long years to give him some answers. He was nervous at the possibility this scenario implied, and all the many outcomes it could lead to.
The mobile communication device was bad enough for him to deal with, but the rise of industry in Radasanth and the changed landscape of Corone was an altogether different reality. The smog clogged the atmosphere, and the woodlands he had travelled long ago in search of Lysander and the strange raven spirit Brandybuck were cut back and plundered of all their worth. Privet fences and farmlands had given way to vast agricultural meccas to mass consumption; a thousand cows for a thousand hungry mouths lined up in close quarters in vast temples of carnivorous greed.
Radasanth Park had changed just as much as the countryside surrounding the city. It was a provincial dream in Duffy’s own time, a network of winding pathways spiralling through rhododendron mazes and rows of statues depicting heroes long dead and long buried. He passed the very same stone depictions slowly, until he came across a new section that was almost a mile long running up the western edge congruent to the docklands that ebbed to and flow with ships from distant lands. Heavy plumes of smoke rose above the horizon, reminding Duffy of his place in the strange world, even though the reliquary of legendary people humbled him into a strange, dream like state.
When he turned a corner and came to the newest row of statues, he paused to catch his breath. On the left hand side of the long rectangle of gravel in the corner of Radasanth Park that had once been a languishing slum – demolished in the interim period between past and future Duffy, there was an entire courtyard dedicated to an organisation woefully familiar to the bard.
The five statues on the left hand side as he entered were all male, and the five on the right, all female. In order of left to right, they were clearly and immutably Zerith, Letho, Artemis, Dan, Sei, and then Emma, Anita, Kyla, Lillith and Erissa. Duffy could not help but pause to catch his breath. In the midday sun, the appearance of people he knew to still be alive was startling. He had committed murder and theft in the name of the Ravenheart family…he had heard of the miner Artemis’s legacy through Lillith’s encounter with him long ago in the Citadel, and could not help but smile at the sight of the monster Dan’s statue, and the greatest Hero of all standing side by side.
“What have you done…” he tried to compute why a section of the park was dedicated to the Ixian Knights, when at every turn on his journey through the city he was reminded of their ultimate failure. Though resplendent and joyous in his day, something had happened in the meantime to tumble the might of the mystics into a shadow of their former glory. “Why now and why here? Heaven forbid, why bother bringing me here at all?” He could only shrug.
He walked on through the autumnal foliage which cast golden glow over the gravel path as it sloped up the large hill in the north western corner of the park. Every year, Jensen came here for a picnic with his adopted daughter, and he hoped that tradition had not changed. Though the immortal, his blood brother had withdrawn from the Ixian Knights and from the company of the Tantalum troupe he could not have left his daughter’s life – though Stephanie, through her mortal providence would be long dead, Azza was a strange and spritely creature who had powers benign but a future long and invincible to the turning of time.
With a heavy breath, he crested the hill and set his eyes on the large rocky outcrop that former the outer shell of the cave network which dropped into the earth beneath the park, and gave way to a vast catacomb of spectral tunnels and vast, crystalline chambers where many a lover embraced their calling in secrecy, darkness and beauty. At the mouth of the cave, Duffy could see several such couples embracing, ready to take the plunge into the long future of a happy or not so happy relationship. He continued to advance, despite his tired limbs and his sweating spine – which oozed salty liquor and stuck his shirt firmly to his back.
He could not make out Jensen, which gave him a stomach churning sickness.
If he was wrong, and Jensen was not here, then he was ultimately alone, fantastically forgotten, and in grave danger. For someone to so simply an easily eradicate a Thayne from the world had greater implications than the bard’s true death. If the Thayne of Scara Brae’s soul were destroyed, removed from the last three hundred years as future and past self-died in the moment of Duffy’s true death…then what horrors and what new futures could be written in his absence?
Azza’s maroon eyes flashed in Duffy’s mind, and he sighed as he sat on one of the many benches which edged the large circle of gravel that rested before the opening to the cave. With a heavy draw of breath, which was cool and pleasant and tinged with coal smog, Duffy kept his eyes fixed on the path that crested the rise of the hill in hopes of seeing his brother appear like a gorilla from the mist. Jensen Ambrose, though a rival and family member, was his only answer to the eternal conundrum…why was he here…why was Radasanth so electrifying, why were people wearing glowing spectacles that appeared to carry pictures of other worlds in their lens?
The bard shuddered, and for the first time in a life of many centuries, he felt mortal.
He felt very, very afraid…
"For once in your life Jensen...come on fucking time!"
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