Urza - Rescuing Teferi

Brightening, Jhoira nodded toward the students, who began plying the pumps with all their might. The tubes hissed and gurgled for a time before the first brown splashes of water entered the reservoir. The liquid spattered the base of the trough and immediately evaporated, leaving a residue of dry dust.

Jhoira was distressed to see this, but Malzra crossed to her and patted her shoulder. “It just shows that the water retains its fast-time properties. Be patient. The pumps will do their work. It is a very good design.”

Water flooded up from the pump tubes and rushed out along the base of the trough. It shimmered and splashed with preternatural speed, rectangular waves coursing over its rising surface. The students continued their work at the cranks. The water level rose. It seemed to be teeming with fish, so energetic was its surface. It reached the halfway point along the wall of the reservoir and crept upward. The crowd around the tank watched in anticipation.

Malzra stood beside Karn as the gauze-covered blades began to windmill through the trough. After a complete revolution of the blades, workers manning the turbine began cranking. A hot, unnatural wind jetted from one end of the device, striking wet gauze and sending a thin spray outward. Wind bore the vapor along, spotting flagstones between the machine and the alcove where Teferi huddled beneath his soaked robe. The spray entered the slow-time pit and crept slowly over him. Those gathered near the shrine strained forward to make out any movement across the crouched figure—the shift of wet fabric, the quickening of drip lines. As the crank teams set up a powerful rhythm, the mist thickened into a white wall of fog, opaque and dazzling in the sunlight.

Jhoira nodded to Malzra.

He studied the roiling wall of fog before him. It churned in a dizzy dance, the suspended particles of water as vital as they had been in the trough.

“Well, Karn, it seems creature and creator will step together into this time machine.”

The silver man stared at the turgid mist. “I can precede you and provide report.”

Malzra flung away the suggestion with a simple shake of his head. “We go, side by side.” With that, the two strode to the rolling edge of the fog and stepped inside.

The mist enveloped Karn with sudden force. It felt like the rush of sea water when he had fallen into it from his time-travel cone. He could sense the wet flagstones beneath his feet, but the fog tore over him like a gale. Bracing himself against the rolling blast, Karn reached a hand outward to make certain Malzra was beside him. Through the impenetrable white air, as thick as paint, it was impossible to see the man. The buffeting wind coursed around something solid. Karn’s hand swayed outward and struck another hand, reaching. Malzra took hold of the silver man’s fingers and clung tightly.

The winds slackened. The violent forces tearing along Karn’s armor plating diminished to a washing flood, and then a gentle caress.

Malzra’s voice sounded pinched, as though he were caught in a great vise. “The time differential…is leveling…off.”

Karn responded easily. “You are having trouble breathing.”

“I don’t need…to breathe,” came the reply. Again the winds softened. “We should walk. We are nearly…time adjusted now. Hours will pass on the outside for every few minutes we spend…in here.”

Shoulder to shoulder, they pressed forward, in line with the sifting fog. Though time in the fog was compacted, space remained constant. In only five steps, white mist turned to gray, and they could sense the looming corner behind the Teferi shrine. The boy himself lay in a barely distinguishable huddle on the ground. Karn was thankful he hadn’t stepped on him. It might not have mattered. Teferi didn’t appear to move beneath that wet cloak.

***

After the first hour of cranking, I moved among the crowd, organizing the students into teams that took shifts powering the pumps, windmills, and turbines. If the flow of fast-time fog had ceased for only a moment, Urza, Karn, and Teferi could have been torn to shreds on the verge of their time pit. The teams worked all through the night. I fortified them with a number of white-mana spells I know. All the while, Jhoira and I remained beside the machine to monitor it for stresses and possible breakdown. No crises came—as Urza had said, it was a good design.

***

Time Streams, Chapter 10