Gulydriadge gazed at the great hourglass before him which had nearly spilled all of its sand into the lower chamber, then looked beyond, out the open window of his study. The unending plain of diminutive trees stretched out to the horizon and the base of a distant mountain range, where he could see approximately half of the sun peeking over the ridgeline.

  Pink, orange, and purple bands of sky hovered close to the setting sun. Most of the sky above had already turned black, but a sash of deep navy blue separated the ribbons of colored light from the sea of pinpoint twinkles.

  The last of a black candle smoldered on the table in front of the Keeper. His brow damp with the sweat of labor and his voice nearly hoarse from incanting intensely for most of the last hour. The Keeper uttered a few words, deep and somber, in a very old language he only used for magic. He then nodded to his apprentice, the Arhm Kleligai.

  In turn the adolescent moon elf walked a full circle about the table where the Keeper worked. The path of the circle was already marked onto the study floor in heavy silver paint, its arc adorned with a multitude of symbols and glyphs both simple and complex.

  Upon completing the circle the youth stood before and to the right of Gulydriadge and traced a hexagram in the air before him, the intersecting triangles marked in a shimmering black and silver light. In the center of the star form the young elf held out a medallion of pure lead, formed into a scythe and a skull.

  The Arhm Kleligai said, “Eltaku Thrombas, designas linear, constructus formis, magistara ve chronolius!”

  He withdrew the medallion but its likeness remained, a shimmering sculpture of magical light. Arhm Kleligai walked around the table and took up his place to the right of the Keeper. He held his right hand straight out beside him, and a great black owl descended from the rafters of the chamber to perch upon his forearm.

  In the owl’s beak it held a small branch with leaves resembling a kind of oak, yet smaller. Accompanying the leaves was a group of deep, purple berries. The young elf retrieved the branch from the owl and threw it into a lead brazier on the table, thereafter splashing some liquid into the bowl and dropping a bit of burning wax from a candle into the mix.

  With a vertical woosh fire leapt up from the brazier and began to consume the leaves and berries of the branch. The two elves each added additional materials – powders, dried flowers, a bundle of straw-like material – to the flames which grew taller.

  The chamber began to fill with a musky yet pleasant smelling smoke. It spired up into the rafters and hung like a dense cloud above the work area.

  The Keeper then said, “Eltaku Thrombas. Audite!”

  The two magic-users then recited together, still in the old magical language:

  “Thrombas, we conjure, confirm, and call thy agents.”

  “Dayas. De Maeas. Tey Pha Elas. Takas. Olmas. Tey Mey Qua Tha Las!”

  “Now hear, and behold, and then attend us through your agency! In the name of your intelligence Raz Nias, by whose authority we call to command the power, spirits, natures, forces, magic, and cosmic influence of you, mighty Thrombas, drawer of lines and maker of shapes, master of time and governor of fates.”

  “Lend now thy eternal, heavy, irresistible power!”

  The last trickles of sand fell into the lower chamber. Only the very tip of the sun now peered over the distant ridges.

  The hexagram of light with its attendant symbol of the scythe and skull shimmered once, and then suddenly became a massive, black, humanoid form standing more than ten feet tall with eyes of glowing silver.

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  The magic of the hexagram remained in place, restricting the spirit of Thrombas in movement and in hostility.

  “I here attend your operation, moon elf.” the towering shadow spoke. “What do you ask of me.”

  Without hesitation the Keeper said “Flow with the magic I have cast here. Escort it safely into the heavens to be endorsed by your master and then return it unto the causal spheres in the fullness and likeness of Zhothnaktar and Hekelius, father and mother of the great magical agent.”

  “So mote it be.” the shadowy figure vanished.

  Gulydriadge sighed as if in relief. Then cast his spell of sealing, both his final effort before releasing the work to the higher realms and his explicit instructions to the spirit he dispatched to aid and guard his magic to its end.

  “Time be bent or sheared except for here.

  For temporal anchor hold in place.

  The sequential memories of my race.

  All upon this moon who dwell though one within the time they tell.

  Shall lose not should time be waived or altered.

  His or her experience shall remain, not erased nor made to falter.”

  The Keeper turned to Arhm Kleligai, who laid a blank page onto the table. On this page the young elf drew the image of the seven-pointed star, with a thick line connecting it to the calendar wheel of the Mirabillian year; a symbol with many concentric circles representing the various yearly calendars of the world’s races.

  The youth quickly and to perfection drew the complex symbol, then passed the line from the star through it. He held the page up and folded it outward, saying.

  “Fotemicus, servitor of time that passes to the conscious mind, I command you now deliver on your part what is needed for enhancing this magic. Do this and be free of my bind upon you until next I shall call you. I release you to this work!”

  He dropped the folded page into the flames in the brazier to be consumed.

  The keeper added “Raz Nias command this servitor we offer thee to aid in the fulfillment of this spell.”

  The pair stood in silence as they had many times before at the successful conclusion of a magical operation. Momentarily they would enact the banishing ritual to remove any lingering spirits and perform the energetic clearing to dispel any remnant subtle frequencies.

  The Venerable Law stopped his writing and stared at the hourglass on his desk, certain he had noticed a sparkle of some sort in the falling sand.

  Prionsza stood motionless and wordless before the mirror in her bedroom, her long hair touching the floor and a brush in her left hand. For the briefest instant she had just seen herself in the mirror, wearing the same gown and with her hair let down, yet holding a different brush in her right hand and standing slightly offset to where she now stood.

  The great hall sat empty and the tall, chiming clock with its numbered faces rose proudly over the tables near the front wall. With three great hands for telling the hours, minutes, and seconds of every day, the marvel had been constructed and gifted to the moon elves by gnomes on the world below. The second hand stopped ticking for three seconds, then jumped ahead three seconds and resumed normal operation.

  The Custodian stood over the pool in the observatory. On the water below he watched the image of the blue elf Hōz’b’nahzioh on his horse moving east along the North Shore.

  The Custodian heard the Keeper quietly say the name "Naz Rias."

  Iyepsilon looked around the observatory. “Gulydriadge?”

  Aside from himself the immense chamber was empty. He looked back to the pool below.

  The Custodian heard the Keeper quietly say the name "Naz Rias."

  He knew this was the second time he heard the Keeper. He saw the mounted elf in the pool shift backwards – the horse actually trotted in reverse – and then move forward again.

  “That was a time loop.” Iyepsilon realized aloud. “The Keeper’s magic has worked.

  Far below the mother moon on the plains below the Jagged Jaw Mountains Hōz had the strangest experience. It reminded him of the times when he entered a room or greeted a friend and suddenly had the feeling he had lived that very moment before.

  This experience was similar to that but distinct in a very important way. In this moment Hōz didn’t have a feeling; he had actually watched the moment play out twice, each time vividly aware of himself and his circumstances.

  There was temptation to discount the matter as a side-effect of the paloderm. This didn’t hold up; nothing like what he just experienced had happened in over one-thousand years of smoking the sweet, yellow flower.

  His future self had not mentioned an acute awareness of the time loops as they happened. I feel like I would definitely include that bit if I were explaining time loops to my past self.

  Perhaps this was a new development. Maybe the paloderm had been a catalyst; or perhaps something else had happened.

  The Custodian found it unsettling, the way the blue elf on horseback suddenly looked directly at him through the pool, his expression somewhat accusatory. Iyepsilon comforted himself with the obvious: the blue elf may have looked skyward towards the moon, but he couldn’t possibly see the Custodian standing over the pool.

  Could he?