Dolan immediately traveled back in time, appearing just outside the city where the Quorum would meet.
He stopped in at the MacRonald’s near the highway and went inside, flicking through his phone in idle curiosity. A feeling of deja-vu washed over him as he read articles he’d perused before the exact same ones catching his eye. Time shifts were like that, especially if they took place during his lifetime.
Dolan waited until the meeting was set to start, then drove to the hotel. His cell phone rang, but he ignored it. They should know he was arriving by now. He got out of the car by the curb near the motel, pointed at the hotel.
“Mass Accelerate.” Dolan said, then sat back and waited for the rats to escape the sinking ship.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Bernice waited at the front desk for the final guest to check in. He was running late. Bernice wanted to go home, hand off the overnight shift, but she was determined to see the man. It was just what a professional does.
She thought she saw a car pull up to their curb and frowned. That was parking for firefighter! Bernice had a mind to go out there and give the man standing there a tongue lashing! She walked to the door to yell at him when he pointed at the building. She heard him say something.
A wave of exhaustion struck her as she opened the door. She sagged against it, her shout dying in her throat as a croak. Bernice recovered, but the tiredness that now pervaded her body hadn’t gone away, in fact it was growing stronger.
When she turned sixty, she had grown afraid of growing much older. She was frail and weak already, her skin thin and wrinkled and her beautiful black hair had grown white. Bernice now had to hold onto something to walk, as though the weight of time hung over her.
Was she having a stroke or heart attack? Bernice wanted to cry. She could barely move around. Maybe she could have Albert call an ambulance.
“Albert?” Bernice called.
No answer.
She slowly hobbled to the back room door. Albert must have been so preoccupied. He was hard of hearing, so maybe he just hadn’t heard her. The door was ajar. She pushed it open.
And wailed in horror.
A putrid smell of rot pervaded the room. Albert, or what was left of him, sagged in his chair. He was dead, skin a pale green and eyes glazed and sunk. The eyes sunk further, then seemed to disappear into his skull. As Bernice watched, his jaw slowly sagged down to his chest before the elastic skin snapped and sent it tumbling into his loose crotch, which squelched on impact. He festered, dripping black fluids onto the floor, his body slowly sagging and shrinking into his darkening clothes.
Bernice ran to get help, or rather, tried to run. She made it to the front door before she tripped on the runner and fell. There was a crack in her hips and she moaned. It had broken. The throbbing pain was all she could think of-that and the smell of her dead husband moldering away in his chair.
And then her chest hurt and she lost consciousness, never to regain it again.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“Well, where is he?” Ashley asked, crossing her arms.
“I contacted him.” RK shrugged. “Whether he takes up the offer or not is entirely up to him.”
“Can’t you foresee his answer?” Trent asked.
“That’s a split. Yes or no. And for Dolan, it’s a 50-50 tossup.” RK explained. “He can rewind time, so he can check if the option is optimal for him.”
“Being able to undo decisions I’ve made sounds great.” Soo-Jyeong muttered.
“That’s dangerous.” Aidan said. “We are who we are because of our past. You’d risk never having a Book in the first place, which is a temporal paradox.”
“Right.” Soo-Jyeong rolled his eyes.
RK looked around, keeping an eye on everyone. It was his job. He watched, Ashley was the muscle. They didn’t trust everyone. That was what they’d all agreed to. Ashley’s greatest power was Dispel Magic and RK could see the future. Together, they kept everyone in line.
Everything looked normal.
Sophia and Juanita were deep in a discussion with Mary-Anne about cosmetics. Sam was asleep with a cowboy hat over his eyes, snoring quietly. Mary-Anne was very upset that Sophia had bought something from Epee-Louder. Ted and Benny were talking about Ted’s run for congress. Benny was asking him what he could do. Apparently, as a Congressman…not much.
He called Dolan’s number.
It rang and rang and then went to voicemail. RK wasn’t sure if that meant Dolan was almost here and still driving or if he had decided not to join them. He really hoped he decided to join them. The alternative….he hadn’t told Dolan the alternative. Dolan would be removed permanently and someone they all agreed on would get his Book. They couldn’t risk a vengeful Dolan, so they would have to reality shift him into something or someone who didn’t remember anything.
RK was walking to the door when he was hit by a wave of exhaustion.
He staggered, grabbing and gripping the knob of the door to keep himself on his feet. RK could feel something being sucked away from him, some vital energizing force. The hand on the knob slowly grew larger, hairier, older. He realized instantly what was happening.
Dolan!
He must have cast a spell….but since they all weren’t simply aging to death without noticing anything was wrong, someone must have heard him. That was his mistake. RK glanced around the table seeing people growing older. By the way wrinkles were forming, he guessed it was at a rate of one year every 3 seconds. Human life expectancy was 75 years of age, he was 26 6 seconds ago….that left him with about two and a half minutes to save them all.
“Ashley, go outside, fight Dolan.” RK shouted.
Ashley was already moving she paused, hand on the knob of the door. “Time?”
“Two minutes.”
Ashley nodded and ran down the hall.
“Why didn’t she dispel it?”
“It’s a Mass spell. Not targeting us, the area. If she does dispel it, Dolan re-activates it and none of us will hear it.”
“So make him think he’s got us unawares, then. Smart.”
“I don’t have two minutes, do I?” Mary-Anne asked, looking tired.
“No.” RK replied. “If we get the Book, we’ll Rewind and save you.”
“Benny, if we all die, it’ll be up to you.” RK said.
Benny didn’t answer, staring off into the distance. His chest was not rising or falling. RK blinked, suddenly growing aware of a putrid smell that was filling the room. Mary-Anne looked over at Benny and gagged, covering her mouth.
“He-he’s dead!” Mary-Anne vomited.
“The disease!” Soo-Jyeong lamented. “He only had a year left!”
Benny’s body began to rot, liquefying and desiccating. His body slumped into the chair as he quickly putrefied. Everyone backed out of the way and made their way out of the room. RK saw looks of sheer horror and disgust on their faces and he heard a low moan waver in the air.
Only after he gagged and the sound stopped did RK realize it was he who was moaning. They filed out into the hall. Mary-Anne was holding her back. RK was beginning to think they’d be making another exodus when she kicked it. Where was Ashley? Why hadn’t Dolan been killed yet?
“Ashley…” Ted said, his hair falling out as he spoke. “He got her.”
“I think so too.” Sam nodded, his own hair graying. “I can…turn us all into robots. Could save us.”
“It saves us.” RK nodded. “Doesn’t stop him. And now he has Arcane, presumably.”
“So what, we just sit here and die?”
“No.” RK drew a breath. “I can start a new timeline.”
“Oh, RK, is it that bad?” Mary-Anne groaned, leaning against the wall.
“We all knew Time was going to be hard to deal with. Not as bad as Myth if we ever had to deal with a new User, but bad.
“Can’t I just teleport us away?” Aidan said, gut swelling as he grew older.
“No, the spell targeted the entire area, you’d just teleport us to our inevitable deaths in a minute.” RK said.
“All of us could attack him.” Soo-Jyeong said.
“He’s waiting out there.” RK replied. “My way is the only way.”
“How about this: RK does his spell, I teleport us all to the Book user, we attack at once. If we win, we save RK.”
“Save RK?”
“He’s using Prophecy, right?” Aidan asked, looking at RK
RK nodded.
“It will kill him.” Aidan explained to everyone.
“Thirty seconds.” RK checked his watch, then opened his Book. “Prophecy.”
RK’s aging face went slack, eyes going white. He tumbled to the ground and lay silently. A few seconds later, a familiar putrid smell filled the corridor. Aidan held up his Book.
“Mass Teleport.” He croaked.
The remaining members of the Quorum teleported outside. The confrontation, as it were, was short and the outcome quick.
Dolan killed them all.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-
Dolan smiled to himself as he erased the Quorum from existence.
He’d been afraid they’d find a loophole or he wouldn’t be able to stop them in time, but they did the obvious and attempted to teleport in and kill him. Dolan had, of course, predicted this, and Mass Stasis’d them. After taking their Books, he let them loose one by one and killed them individually.
That done, he walked into the hotel to pick up the last Books. Dolan whistled happily. All too easy, too smooth. Soon he would be a God. He stepped over the skeletal remains of Bernice and waved a hand over his nose, avoiding the black stain of her dried fluids on the carpet.
Down the hall, he found Mary-Anne’s remains next to RK’s. He took their Books and continued to the conference room. Benny was the last one, then he would have all the Books. He walked to the door and felt a sudden ripple wash through the air. Dolan paused. What had that just been? Had Benny survived?
He opened the door-and was immediately met with a barrage of spells from all 8 Book owners. Dolan shut the door and reversed time. Again, that strange ripple. This time, he cast Mass Accelerate on the room and Ashley barreled down the corridor, firing her gun.
Time reversed.
What the hell had they done? He opened the door again and saw RK in the back, grinning. PROPHECY! That little fucker!
Dolan reversed time again, placing himself back at MacRonald’s. What the hell was he supposed to do about Prophecy? The spell would let RK know about Dolan the moment he first touched the Book. It also cost so much energy it would kill the caster.
RK on his own wasn’t a big deal-nothing he did could harm Dolan, really Dolan’s spells made RK’s spells unreliable as he could reverse time and make different decisions. What Dolan needed was to remove the others before they became a threat to him. No! Just make sure that they weren’t interested in working together.
Dolan chuckled to himself. They’d told him all about themselves. Except for three. RK, Juanita, and Trent. Those three he wouldn’t be able to track down so easily. But if the rest were, say, hostile to them…or just naturally evil…no more quorum.
So he started going back in time. All the way back.
Dolan made sure Sophia got sold to a gang, into sex slavery. He had Sam get humiliated-repeatedly-by women, and then sodomized by one of camera, his humiliation viewed by the whole school. Then he isolated Ashley, removing her only best friend and lover in the world from reality. Soo-Jyeong was too easy to manipulate into resurrecting his dead squad members. Mary-Anne was invited to an anarchic-naturalist group, known for their acts of Eco-terrorism. Ted lost, repeatedly, until he was finally goaded into Mind controlling the political opposition, corrupting him.
Some of them required nothing. Benny was doomed without help…eventually. The little girl he replaced would kill herself and the Book would end up in his hands anyways. Aidan was never a real problem. Dolan would deal with him later.
Each successive travel had aged him ten years. By the time he was done, he was fifty years old. But it wasn’t enough. He was now simply evenly matched against the rest of the Book owners. Dolan needed more. So he hunted down Aidan and killed him, taking his Book now that he was isolated.
With Space and Time combined, Dolan then began his real project: The Casino.
That was where he started traveling to other Timelines. It was easy enough to pretend to be, say, the Book of Body, frame them for some atrocious deed he’d done. The years continued piling on. Then one day he finally found Todd’s Dolan. And the plan fully came together.
And that was the last the orb showed to Troy.