Ari searched the skies for the off-white, boxy Mercer vessels that would arrest them on the spot, but the clouds were a solid dark gray. There was no Mercer. Her gamble had paid off. She needed to rub that in Kay’s face—once they were safe, of course.
Ari stepped deeper into the forest, her curiosity piqued. The gravity on this planet was heavy, and her whole body felt dense and stiff. The undergrowth thinned as she neared a clear-cut section, peering out at the madness of screeching, smoke-belching machines. No humans in sight.
Old Earth was supposed to be preserved. Who was leveling these trees? There wasn’t even soil left, just strips of gray bedrock, which was also being laser-cut into cubes and hauled away by unmarked factory tanks with too many robotic arms. Someone was deforesting Old Earth, skinning it to its bones and then sucking out the planet’s marrow.
Oh, who was she kidding? It was Mercer. It was always Mercer.
So they had crash-landed in the middle of a secret exploitation of the ancient home of all humanity. Great. Like she needed another reason for Mercer to come after her.
Ari took a few pictures with her watch and was about to double back to Error when she spotted a gorgeous stone wall. The machines were close. They would overtake it soon. She walked along the edge, brushing her fingers down the smooth, fitted rocks. So much had fallen—entire cities, mountains, countries—but not this. People had created it with their hands, bearing stones in their arms, leaving a mark on their world that lasted hundreds of years longer than any corporation or words or courage.
And the machines were about to eat it.
“Don’t do it, Ari,” she said in the same moment that she reached for the top of the stone wall, hauling herself up and over. She dropped down in a graveyard. Marble and granite headstones lay helter-skelter, mostly fallen, some crookedly half-sunk. And at the center of the darkly magical sight? A gigantic, ancient oak. Its gnarled arms were held up against the sky like a tribute to death. Ari jogged closer, her curiosity rewarded by an even stranger sight.
Buried in the trunk of the thousand-year-old oak was a sword.
“What the…”
Her eyes trailed along the silver pommel and the intricate crossbar. Unlike the sword on Heritage, this one looked real. She walked all the way around it. The shining point glinted on the other side like a question.
There were things in this universe that Ari didn’t understand. Space travel for one, the segregation of Ketch for another, herself for the grand finale. But this sword—it needed to be set free. She’d never felt anything so strongly in her whole life, almost like someone was nudging her toward it. Almost as if that someone had been nudging for a lot longer than the last few minutes, and only now were they willing to tip their hand. She got her hands around the hilt and gave it a good tug.
The sword budged.
She tossed her long black hair behind her shoulder and set her stance wider. And pulled the sword. The blade came free with a ringing sound that didn’t seem possible, and even though it had been lodged in that tree for however long, it was sharp and clean.
And no doubt worth a lot of money. Their parents’ savings were running lean these days. Selling this sword could solve several problems.…
“You’re pretty enough to pay for a whole host of repairs to Kay’s baby. Not to mention all the snacks his heart desires.” Ari swung it with a loose wrist. It had the perfect weight. Like it was made for her. Already, she didn’t want to trade it for tortilla chips, no matter how many it could buy. “Bad idea,” she muttered, putting on her best Kay impression. “So now you’ve got an impulse control problem and a sword.”
A cracking shriek sounded from the oak. Ari turned as the trunk gave way, a crumbling dark heart of bark where the sword had been. She ran as it snapped, snarled, and cascaded into a heartless fall.
Ari had to dive out from under the whipping branches. Rolling onto her back, she breathed in gasps on the soft ground, cradling her new treasure. “What are you?” she found herself mumbling, running her fingers over letters etched above the hilt. It wasn’t in Ari’s native tongue, but it was the same alphabet Mercer pumped through the galaxy along with their crappy goods. The only language she’d spoken during the decade she’d been forcibly separated from her home planet.
Ari thought she recognized the word. It was so regal she whispered the name aloud.
“Excalibur.”
Merlin woke up.
The ceiling of the crystal cave glimmered. He could make out, in a fuzzy way, points that stabbed the air high above his head. He reached for his glasses, smacking around on the cold floor until he found the thin wafers of glass, the horn-rims. He settled them onto his face and everything danced into focus. Merlin sighed. He didn’t know why he bothered correcting his eyesight when there was no one to look at.
At this point, he preferred his nightmares to being awake. Waking up meant caring about things like Morgana and magic. It meant the hamster wheel of tragedy was spinning, and it wouldn’t stop until Arthur died—again.
The chivalrous fool must have pulled the sword out of something. It wasn’t always a stone. Once it had been a sewer grate, another time, a beanbag chair. Let no one say that Morgana lacked a sense of the absurd.
And now that he was awake, it was time to work. Merlin had to go through the same steps he did in every cycle. Find Arthur. Train Arthur. Relieve his bladder of centuries of pressure. Not in that order.
He stood up, knees springy. When he looked down, his skin was wrinkle-free and baby fresh. He caught sight of himself in the nearest crystal. He was no longer old and venerable, or even middle-aged and respectable. Merlin’s cheeks were round, his glasses set over eyebrows that had been stripped of their bushy character. His lips frowned back at him, the color of English roses in springtime.
The glory of his beard? Reduced to a scratch of stubble.
“Stop,” he muttered to his body. “Stop doing this.”
Merlin remembered taking Arthur 37 to a Mexican restaurant for his thirteenth birthday, when over fried ice cream Arthur shouted that he, like Merlin, intended to get younger every year. Merlin had wanted to throttle that particular Arthur, in a friendly and informative sort of way.
Everyone assumed Merlin had done it on purpose, but he’d never asked to age backward. And now he was sliding into adolescence, with a sickening anticipation of what must be in store. How old would he be when he woke up for the next cycle? Ten? Five? Would Arthur listen to a tiny child who claimed to be his mentor?
And afterward—after babyhood—would Merlin merely blink out of existence?
He moved with a stewing sense of anger. He couldn’t decide if the fuming was meant for Morgana, who kept them trapped in this cycle, or Arthur, who had woken it up. Again.
Merlin found an out-of-the-way cluster of crystals to use as a toilet before he made his way through the many paths of the cave. They all led one way. Out. Away from his hibernation spot and into the world—such a terrible place, the world, always needing to be saved.
When he reached the cave’s entrance, the portal appeared like always, as reflective as a mirror, oily black instead of silver, ready to send Merlin wherever he needed to be. He touched his fingertips to the surface. It swirled like troubled ink. “Where are you, Arthur 42?”
That number. Merlin tried not to feel the weight of forty-one Arthurs, all dead before they fulfilled their great destiny. Mankind was never truly united. And so Merlin kept spinning through the cycle, hoping that the newest incarnation of an ancient king would do the job.