I was, in a word, confused. Though that was only right if you bolded, italicized, and put several underlines on that single word. There may have been some circling involved as well. Floating there in the water, all I could do for a moment was stare that way while opening and shutting my mouth. The spell I had used to breathe down here created a bubble of constantly refreshing air around my head, so I could properly gape in shock at the sight of those Fomorians bustling around in that submarine.

  The others were just as bewildered as me, staring that way in silence. That included Locke, silent inside our head as we all struggled to comprehend exactly what we were looking at. It didn't make any sense. Seriously, this wasn't real. It couldn't be. We were something like a hundred and fifty million years in the past, on Earth. Yet there were Fomorians down there. Yes, they were quite clearly not the Fomorians we knew. They were using normal technology, after all, rather than all the biotech stuff. Plus their bodies were slightly different. From here, it looked like they weren’t as tall. I supposed the future Fomorians enhanced their height for a combat advantage or something. Either way, despite being visibly smaller, there was no doubt about it. The people in that submarine, the people who had been controlling all those robot dinosaurs the whole time, were the pre-Cronus Fomorians. As impossible as that was.

  None of the underwater robot dinosaurs were paying any attention to us, though we weren’t exactly hidden or anything. They just stayed near that crack in the ground, like they were stopping anyone from getting near it. That was their entire purpose. They didn’t bother us because we weren’t going that way. Which was a good thing, because none of us were in any condition right at that moment to be able to defend ourselves. We would’ve just been caught completely flatfooted. And could we really be blamed for that? I mean really, the Fomorians?

  It was Theia who found her voice first, sounding a bit strained. “That’s not what I expected.”

  The urge to laugh hysterically at her words was so strong, I barely clamped down on it. Now really wasn’t the time to lose it, no matter how tempting it was. We had to keep it together and focus on… on dealing with this. We had to figure out how to get past those robots and into the crack so we could find the rift. That was the most important part. Even if there was a big piece of me that wanted to grab every Fomorian down there, shake them violently, and shout, ‘What!? What!? What!?’ at them. Incredibly tempting as that might’ve been, it probably wouldn’t actually accomplish much.

  Jazz was already nodding to Theia’s words. “Tell me about it. Uh, Flick, did I miss something or was there nothing about prehistoric Fomorians running around Earth in that info dump of yours?”

  My head shook. “There wasn’t, because this is the first time I’ve seen or heard anything like this. None of this makes any sense, at all. From what Ehn told me, the Fomorians were spacefaring when Cronus found them, but it didn’t sound like they had been spacefaring for literally a hundred million years. And why would they be here on Earth? I don’t… I don’t understand any of this.” I could hear my own voice turning a little high-pitched by the end, as my confusion grew. Describing why this was all so wrong and weird wasn’t making me feel any less baffled by it.

  That’s cuz it’s absurd, Locke put in, finally managing to recover enough to find her voice. Are we absolutely sure this isn’t some weird magical hallucination, making us all see something ridiculous while we’re actually just floating around helpless and shit? Maybe the real people behind those robots already picked us up and now we’re unconscious on a dissection table.

  Grimacing inwardly, I replied, Let’s hope not, I’m really not in the mood to be dissected today.

  Well, whatever we do, we better get to it, Locke noted. Story says judging by those energy waves we can see coming out of that crack in the ground, the amount of power that rift is giving off must be astronomical. It seems like it’s too much power, like something’s about to blow up down there. So uh, hurry.

  “Maybe we should ask them,” Theia interrupted my private, silent communication with the other me as she mused thoughtfully, watching the Fomorians moving from console to console as they continued to do… whatever they were doing. Probably using more of those robots to search through the interior of that crack in the lakebed. “You never know, they might be willing to explain why they’re here. I bet they time traveled back into this time from just before Cronus showed up on their planet, and now they’re trying to find a way back. Or maybe they time traveled right after he showed up, as it was the only way to escape from him. They could be the last survivors.”

  “They kinda sicced their robot dinosaurs on us,” I pointed out a bit weakly, still trying to come to terms with the absurd fact that this was a real thing we were actually talking about. “So even if they’re not the Cronus-infected Fomorians we all know and pee our pants at the sight of, I don’t think they’re actually friendly. But maybe we could negotiate with them somehow if we could just get them to talk to us for a minute instead of attacking us with more robots. Actually, hang on, I’ve got an idea.”

  My idea, probably unsurprisingly by this point, was to use a ghost. Or rather, four ghosts. Focusing on that area of the sub I could see where the Fomorians were still going about their business, I summoned my Boscher ghosts, Chas, Emily, Jason, and Kaleigh. I figured if worse came to worst, having active ghosts who had some decent powers to work with might be good.

  With Kaleigh’s permission, I took over her ghost form entirely in order to speak and see through her. Just like that, I was inside that submarine bridge alongside the other three ghosts, while the Fomorians… well, they reacted to our sudden arrival. Without so much as a how do we do, we had an assortment of what looked like laser melee weaponry (as in lightsabers) pointed our way as those guys all pivoted and started shouting things. Yeah, that was fair, under the circumstances. Unfortunately, the things they were shouting were in their own language. Right, I needed to use a translation spell.

  Or not. Chas actually raised his hand, using some of the power I’d given him to activate some power he actually had that translated things by itself. No spell required. And just like that, I could understand the things these Fomorians were shouting. Which amounted to demanding to know how these people bypassed their security, who they were, what they were doing on the vessel, and orders to surrender immediately. So yeah, nothing unexpected there, really. I hadn’t exactly thought they would be shouting out requests for autographs, or asking for good hair styling tips.

  The power Chas had used would apparently translate for these guys too, so I simply spoke through Kaleigh. “We’re not your enemies! We aren’t with the people who shot you down. They are not our allies. Please, we just want to talk for a minute. We don’t need to fight. Just listen. Peace between us, please.”

  There was a not-small part of me that expected the Fomorians to ignore that. Actually, I felt more than a little weird even trying to negotiate with them. Yes, these weren’t the Fomorians we were accustomed to, but still. It felt weird. Having my ghosts right in front of them, seeing them from up close like this, I couldn’t help but feel a shiver run through me. God, how were we supposed to treat these people calmly and diplomatically when they looked so much like those fucking monsters?

  Fortunately, either I was better at keeping my reaction to the pre-Cronus Fomorians secret than I thought, or they were bad at reading body language and facial expression through a puppeted ghost. Which was also fair. Either way, the one who seemed to be in charge ordered the others to keep their weapons pointed at us, but not to attack. He focused on Kaleigh, seeming to stare right into me through her eyes. “You may say you are not allied with the Wrethkins, but why should we believe such a claim? You could be more of their pets, like so many others. They do enjoy capturing slaves and turning them into minions. And those minions are not above lying.”

  “They might even believe it,” one of the other Fomorians pointed out. “It wouldn’t be the first time Wreth’s people brainwashed some slaves into thinking they were free while they did his bidding.”

  There was an awful lot I wanted to say to that, but I forced myself to focus on what was actually important. Speaking through Kaleigh again, I replied, “I can’t say how we know, but we have definitely not been brainwashed by this Wreth person, whoever he is, or by anyone else. We were here on this planet by ourselves, searching for the same energy that you’ve detected, the one you’re looking for down in that cave under the lake. And we need to warn you about it. You might not understand exactly what you’re detecting, but you have to be careful. It’s actually a--”

  “The energy is a rift, a rip in time and space,” the Fomorian in charge interrupted. “We know that quite well. Our people have been searching the universe for it for longer than I have been alive.”

  Okay, it was the day for me being surprised, apparently. I felt Kaleigh’s own confusion, before pushing on. “Uh, well then. I guess you do know what--wait, you’ve been searching the universe for it?” That raised so many more questions, and we hadn’t exactly been lacking those to begin with. I seemed to have been left gaping in confusion every two seconds since I got to this time period.

  Before responding, the Fomorian took a step closer to Kaleigh, and both of us immediately had to resist the urge to recoil in disgust and fear. That probably wouldn’t have done much to endear us to these people. He slowly reached out, waving a hand through her intangible form before frowning. He sounded utterly baffled after giving a quick look toward his crew. “What is this? Why have you not fully materialized after your transport? And how many of you are there? We have seen many of your kind like this, but the ones who rode the beasts are not here. What is this technology you use to remain partially discorporated? We’ve not seen its like before now.”

  Uh, okay. Jason spoke up before I could respond to that. “You’ve never seen ghosts before?”

  “Dead? We’ve never seen dead before?” The Fomorian looked confused. “We have seen our dead. We have seen many of our dead, but I fail to understand what that has to do with this.”

  Locke figured it out first, sounding completely taken aback. Wait a second, they don't actually know anything about ghosts. The word is only translating into dead for them because they don't even have the concept in their language. They don't have any word for something that is dead and comes back as some sort of intangible spirit figure or whatever. They really don't know what we're talking about. Dude, how is that even possible? How can they have no concept of ghosts? Even Bystander humans have that, and they're kept magically ignorant. This is so damn weird.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Yeah, that was strange, for sure. But things were even more baffling a moment later as I did my best to try to explain the concept, only for these guys to immediately make it clear that they had no idea what real magic was. Oh, they had the concept of waving your hand around, saying special words, and making stuff happen. But they didn't think that was real. They were convinced that liienfe (it sounded like lion-fee when Chas turned down his translation power enough for us to hear it properly), as they called it, was just a collection of tricks meant to entertain children. Apparently any actual magic they had seen was dismissed as being some sort of unexplained technology used by others that they themselves hadn’t developed yet.

  I really had no idea what to do with that. I couldn't change the course of their entire civilization by teaching them magic and all that, obviously. Even if the urge to change this particular civilization’s course was higher than it would be for basically anyone else. No, I had to let everything play out the way it was supposed to. No matter how much I desperately wanted to think that doing so would save literally trillions upon trillions of lives, all it would do was move us into a different timeline where that happened. The one we had come from would still be there, with us completely cut off from it. I had to push that entire temptation out of my mind and focus on getting through this. All that really mattered was finding a way to convince these people to back off and just let us get to that rift.

  Unfortunately, even after setting aside the wild thought about changing everything about the entire timeline and ending up in some completely different universe, I still didn't know what I was supposed to do now. These people didn't think magic existed, and they had no real concept of what ghosts were. As far as they were concerned, when people died, they just stopped existing entirely. From what they said, they actually had no belief in an afterlife of any kind. When you died, you were simply gone forever. They seriously didn't understand any thoughts otherwise. They were all about hard science and technology. Which was just… strange considering the source.

  They did, however, understand that some species had special abilities that they didn't. They didn't consider that to be magic, just biological strengths that they personally didn't know how to duplicate and hadn’t evolved into having. So, I very carefully explained that our people were able to continue to exist after the death of our physical body, and that we could interact with the physical world to a limited extent. It was probably still more than I should have said, but I was doing the best I could in a very confusing situation. This whole thing was so much more than I had been expecting to deal with here. I had thought that I was just going to need to walk up to the rift and jump through it. Yeah, how naive was that? As if there was ever the slightest chance of things being that simple. I was willing to bet there wasn’t a single rift out there through this entire timeline that was that easy.

  Except maybe for whatever rift Wukong ended up helping me with, assuming he was involved with one of them. Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t think even the Ankou would survive if Wukong ever found out there was a quest like this and he had been left out of it. So just considering their own survival instincts, he probably was involved.

  Shaking off thoughts of that, and about what those other versions of me were probably going through with their own rifts, I spoke carefully through Kaleigh once more. “You said that your people have been looking for this rift across the entire universe for all that time, but why? How did you know about it, and what exactly are you going to do with it? And what does any of this have to do with those other people out there, the ones you called Wrethkin, I guess because they work for this Wreth guy? He must be the owner of the intergalactic zoo we heard them talking about back there.”

  For a moment, I thought the Fomorian in charge was going to call me a liar. His face twisted a little with obvious anger and disgust that made me cringe inwardly considering the face I was looking at. I definitely wasn't going to get used to talking to these people anytime soon.

  Fortunately, the man took a breath before responding very carefully. “Wreth is the scourge of our people. He was one of us at some point, but he has replaced almost his entire body with very advanced machine parts. He was one of our most important people, before becoming obsessed with owning every piece of our world, and the universe beyond. He was the wealthiest of us, even more wealthy than the largest and most powerful of our nations. But even having all of that wasn't enough for him. Even after he conquered death for himself by replacing so much of his body, and was able to live for many centuries, none of that was ever enough. He had more wealth than he could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes, and he only wanted more. He took over our political leadership, at first simply by paying for their favor, and then by buying his way into the governance role himself. No law or rule against his choices would stand against his money.”

  After muttering a bit about how that sounded awfully familiar, I urged him to go on with his story. Though I could already tell that I really wasn't going to like this rich Wreth guy at all. Maybe I shouldn’t make snap judgments like that, but I had the sneakiest suspicion he probably wasn't going to turn out to be the secret hero of this particular story. At least not for all these people.

  I didn't end up being surprised on that point. According to this guy, Wreth became so rich and powerful amongst their people that he started to buy pieces of other worlds, buying property and even living beings. He brought the concept of slavery back to their people even though they had grown beyond it many centuries earlier. By the time the rest of the Fomorian people actually understood just how bad things had gotten, it was too late. Not only did Wreth own what amounted to their entire home planet, but he had brought enough slave and mercenary armies to completely smack down any attempt to control him. He was literally more powerful than any of their governments, even after supposedly leaving the role of leader thanks to term limits. Not that it actually made him any weaker. It was like he had outgrown the simple concept of being president or whatever they called it. He took over the entire planet before they knew there was a war. By the time the majority of their people actually understood the full gravity of the situation they were in, it was too late. He controlled everything, and there was no way to fight against him. He didn’t just own things, his people manufactured them. He had code embedded in all their equipment that would prevent it from being used against him and his own forces. He owned all of their food production, their weapons manufacturing, their supply chains, the guy had his fingers in all of it. If they ate it, drove it, fired it, played with it, or… did anything really, he had some control over it.

  Many of their people had simply surrendered and become more of his property. Wreth didn’t even consider himself Fomorian by that point, thanks to all his upgrades. His own people were no better in his eyes than the rest of the species he had already enslaved. Which at least made him an equal-opportunity piece of shit, but still. The whole situation was completely beyond bad.

  Those who hadn't surrendered had managed to flee the planet. They took over enough equipment, managing to remove his code that allowed his people to take control of those ships and weapons so they could escape and fight back. It sounded like only a few million of their people had gotten out of there. That was when they began to depend heavily on robots to do most of their work. They became very good at designing and creating them. Eventually, they were able to simply scan native life forms and create robotic versions to do what was needed on whatever planet they found.

  They became nomads, doing everything they could to fight back against that guy. But it didn't work. He just kept getting stronger, taking over other civilizations, largely by finding ways to buy up their property until they were just as dependent on him as his own people had become. He grew into a collector, who was obsessed with owning everything in the universe. Or at least part of everything. He wanted samples from across every corner of every galaxy that he could reach.

  The fact that there had been some of his own people, the species he originated from, standing against him had been completely unacceptable. He needed to have everyone ground under his heel. So he sent his forces after them with a vengeance. Eventually, the surviving Fomorians had given up on actually beating him. He was too untouchable. So, they focused on finding a new place to live, a new world to settle on. Unfortunately, no matter where they tried, Wreth always showed up and ruined things. He would never let them go.

  That had been almost five hundred years ago (they called it revolutions of this planet). It had been over two thousand years since he took over their homeworld. Eventually, they came across a group of people whose species were capable of seeing the future. These people told the Fomorians that they would find safety and freedom by locating a rip in space and time that would take them far out of Wreth’s reach. They were going to flee a hundred million years into the future, to a time when he no longer existed.

  The only thing these future-seers had been able to tell them about the rift was that they could only find it if they scattered and kept searching constantly. So, that's what they did. For the past half millennium, they had been spread across the galaxy in their various ships. They stayed in contact and followed any leads to any possible anomalies, all while fighting a constant war against these Wrethkin, which was what Wreth called all those who served under him.

  Which, naturally, just made me think about a very important question. Fucking how? Seriously, how was all this even possible? Did the rift down there always take the Fomorians to the future? Which would imply it had always been there. But why would it have been there before I went to the past with Ehn and ended up in this whole situation to begin with? What had the original timeline without my involvement looked like? Had there been no actual Cronus Fomorians out there?

  Nope, Locke immediately put in. Turns out the--hang on, Story had a whole thing she’s been working on ever since before we got in the water. She was quiet for a few seconds before starting again. Okay, so it turns out this isn’t exactly our rift. I mean, it is, but it--it’s just like two rifts stacked on top of each other. That’s why the energy it--they were giving off was so strong. Remember how it seemed like it was about to blow up? It wasn’t, that’s just the energy from two rifts overlapping. That’s what Story was trying to figure out. The only way we could be seeing that much energy like that--okay not the only way, but the way that makes the most sense given what we know, is if there were actually two rifts. The Fomorian rift was always here, leading them to that point in time. After they go through it, the energy from that rift should be spent, and it’ll sputter out. Which will leave the rift it’s sitting on top of. You know, the one we actually want. We let them go through, then their rift disappears and we can go through ours. Two rifts intertwined with one another. Hell, that’s probably what eventually makes Grandfather come here to let humanity grow up. This is the world they used to jump to their new home. Weird, huh?

  This whole fucking situation is weird, so sure, why not just throw more on the pile, I shot back. But yeah, I guess that’s at least less mind-breaking than the idea that this single rift somehow had to be here in order for the Fomorians as we know them to have ever existed. Maybe rifts can be drawn to each other, like magnets. Especially if they lead to similar places and times. One rift was always here and goes to what we call the Fomorian homeworld over a hundred million years from now. That’s the one these guys always took to get to the future and set up their world. Then our rift, the second one, appeared and was drawn here because it also goes to the Fomorian homeworld, but a few thousand years later or whatever.

  So uhh, let’s be very careful about making sure we know for certain which rift is which, okay?

  I can't even imagine what sort of time explosion we'd create if we accidentally sent the Fomorian progenitors to the exact time and place where their descendants were completely wiped out.

  Joke Tags: Anyone Else Notice The Fomorians Seem To Have Really Bad Luck With Dictators?