Chapter 14: The Time Keepers

“So what’s the plan now?” Arno asked as the three of them peered around the corner, ducking back as a line of reapers marched down the hall. They snuck into an empty room and crouched down.

“We need to get into the Timekeepers realm. Steal a time orb like Helen did in the first place, and change things back to how they are supposed to be.”

“Ok. So… how exactly does that work?”

This seemed to be the first time Byron actually considered this.

“Lily, how exactly did you change what happened to you?”

“Oh. One of the Builders came and told me what to do.”

The two of them stared at her.

“What?”

“What’s a Builder?”

“They built the Inbetween. At least that’s what she told me.”

“Ok. Well, we’ll talk about this later. How exactly did you fix it?”

Lily thought back, feeling a little sad as she thought about how hard it was to leave her family.

“I had to choose to die.”

“...Oh…”

“This might be a bit harder than we thought…”

“Hey-we’ve got to make it through the Timekeepers first. We’ll worry about Death later…”

The three of them ran through the Insanities as quietly as they could.

“Hey! There’s the glass portal!” They jumped in and held their breaths as the dark smoke encompassed them.

Lily hoped they would be able to find a time orb. She had never been to the time keeper’s realm before. The smoke dissipated, and she looked around in wonder at the bright green and turquoise walls. It looked like they were made out of circuit boards, lighter lines cornering around brown lines and silver dots. The floor they were standing on was black, covered with dark gray zeros and ones.

“This place is… interesting.” Arno commented, hesitantly touching a finger to the wall.

“Yeah. I bet it is old timer. You died before the age of computers.”

“...I guess I’ll just take your word for it…”

“Where do we go now?” Lily asked, keeping them on track.

“Um… Down this way. I think…”

“What do you mean you think?”

“Hey-I’m not a timekeeper, I’m a reaper.”

They traveled down the hallway, which curved and swerved, and soon, they could see white doors on either side up ahead. They turned to the first one and opened it, to find a room full of hourglasses.

“Well, don’t know what those are supposed to be for, but they don’t look like time orbs, so moving on.”

They opened the next door to find a long carpet leading up to a large ticking clock.

“Nope.”

The next room had a lot of artifacts from different time periods from the living world.

“Not that one either.”

Door after door they tried, but none of them seemed to be holding what they were looking for. Byron slammed yet another door with frustration.

“This is taking too long! We’ll never find it this way!”

“Look. I don’t think stealing a time orb is going to be this easy. Helen has probably thought ahead.”

“So we’re looking for something that would be difficult to get into. Maybe even guarded.”

“Probably.”

“Oh great…”

They decided to stop trying random doors and continue down the long hallway. It eventually forked off down too different hallways.

“Let’s go left.” Byron decided.

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just making a decision here.”

“We can’t just make random choices. This is serious.”

“Then where do you think we should go?”

“Fine. Left it is then.”

They started down the left hallway.

It eventually forked off down too different hallways.

“Let’s go left.” Byron decided.

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just making a decision here.”

“We can’t just make random choices. This is serious.”

“Then where do you think we should go?”

“Fine. Left it is then.”

The third time Arno and Byron bantered like this, Lily began to sense that something was off.

“Maybe we should go right…”

“Why? I thought we decided to go left?”

“You guys have been saying the same things over and over again…”

“No we haven’t.” Arno said defensively.

“What are you talking about? This is the first fork we’ve come to.” Byron agreed.

“This is the third one we’ve come to.”

“We’re going left.” Despite Lily’s protests, they went down the left hallway… again...

It eventually forked off down two different hallways.

“Let’s go left.” Byron decided.

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just making a decision here.”

“We can’t just make random choices. This is serious.”

“Then where do you think we should go?”

The two men paused, and then looked down at Lily.

“We’re saying the same thing again.”

“We must be on a time loop.”

“...”

“...”

“Let’s go right…”

“Agreed…”

“Told you so.” Lily said, trailing behind them.

The right hallway did not lead to another fork. It led to the top of a large room-where they were standing on one of several balconies and bridges. They looked over the railing to see a cylindrical channel that seemed to go on forever. They looked up to find the same thing. Time keepers in midnight blue robes traveled across the pathways. A couple of them seemed to notice the odd group.

An echoed screech was heard from behind him.

“Uh-oh...I bet that’s Helen and her team of ‘dark reapers’.”

“What do we do?”

“Make a run for it? Hide? I don’t know!”

Another screech was heard, louder this time.

“Just run for it!!” Arno scooped Lily up onto his back, and the three of them made a mad dash across one of the bridges as Helen and her dark entities appeared out of the hallway behind them.

“STOP THEM!” she boomed, pointing.

“Sorry!” Arno apologized as he pushed a surprised timekeeper out of their way. They stopped dead in their tracks as they were cut off by reapers. They turned around only to see that they were trapped. They started to close in on them…

“Waargh!!!” Without warning, one of the timekeepers threw themselves on top of one of the reapers. Soon, the man’s companions joined in as a fight between the timekeepers and reapers ensued.

“What the-.“ Arno started as a mousy woman ran up to them her blue cloak billowing behind her.

“Forgive me for this-.” She squeaked.

And then she pushed the three of them off the bridge.

The three companion’s screamed as they fell for what seemed like eons. Lily reached out to her Guardian, who pulled her close to him. The cylindrical room around them was a blur as Lily’s pigtails whipped her in the face. She looked down to see far below them, that they were approaching what looked like a bunch of reapers on a bridge. Was it the same one? They fell past it to see that it was indeed the very bridge they had fallen from, and that the fight was still going on. They weren’t sure how long the wind rushed up to greet them, and Lily was about to get a little worried about what they were going to do next, when suddenly, everything was standing still.

Lily couldn’t move. She was frozen in mid-air, unable to talk or blink or even breathe.

“You three!”

Suddenly they were turning, and Lily could see the woman from before, holding out a staff with her arms outstretched. She had boy short curly brown hair and more freckles than Lily had ever seen in her life, and was wearing very large glasses that covered half her face. The woman waved her staff, and the three frozen fugitives began to float toward the balcony.

“Ok. I’m going to unfreeze you in a moment, so please don’t freak out.” As soon as they could move again, Byron rounded on her.

“WHAT were you THINKING??” the reaper gasped, a bit flustered from falling hundreds of feet.

“What’s the worst that could have happened? You fall to your death? You’re already dead! Besides, there’s no bottom. You would have just kept falling and falling. It’s another time loop you see...” the woman laughed a little nervously.

“Yeah, but…”

Lily looked up at her with interest as the woman took off her glasses and cleaned them off on her cloak.

“You have glasses.” The little girl commented.

“Yes I do.”

“You’re the first person in the Inbetween that I’ve seen with glasses on.”

The woman smiled a little sheepishly as Arno and Byron still attempted to catch their breath and calm their nerves from their fall.

“Yes well… When I was alive I wore some just like these…You know, people in the Inbetween don’t really need glasses or anything, but I’d grown so accustomed to having them and they kind of identified who I was and-.”

“Ok lady. Enough rambling.” Byron scoffed a little rudely, probably still miffed that she had shoved them off a bridge. “What did you do that for, who are you, and what’s happening?”

“My name is Sandra, and I had to do something to get you away from the reapers didn’t I? We have help you get things back to the way they’re supposed to be!”

“But I thought everyone’s memories had been altered due to the changes?” Arno asked, confused. Sandra scoffed.

“You really think a reaper like Helen would be able to fool a realm full of timekeepers?” she asked with pride. “There’s no way. She’s messed up our whole system. There’s time holes everywhere with the paradox she’s created. It’s going to be a mess to clean it up… Of course we put up quite the ruckus when she started changing things.”

“So what you’re saying is-you’re going to be helping us?” Arno asked hopefully.

“Yes. But first we should probably go get George…”

“Where is he?”

“Helen and the other reapers locked him up in one of the time vaults. He was beginning a full out rebellion and none of the other realms even had the slightest idea…”

Their conversation ended when they heard another screech echoing from somewhere above them.

“We need to move…” Arno said quietly.

“Agreed. Follow me. First we need to get George-he’ll be able to help set things right.”

The three of them followed after the timekeeper down the sloping floor of the balconies, and Lily realized that it did a constant spiral down. Eventually, the woman led them down a hallway, past two doors, through three, and up a flight of stairs.

Lily started to get a little dizzy.

Finally, she held out her hand to stop them.

“We’re here. Can I count on you two to help me? There are some very powerful reapers in there. I just need you to hold them off while I release George. The reaper and Guardian nodded, bracing themselves.

“Are we going to have any sort of plan?” Byron asked.

“I just told it to you. We’re going to barge in there and get George back.”

“Great… Sounds very well thought out…” the man said grimly.

“All right! Let’s go!!”

The four of them burst through the door into a smaller room with a mixture of reapers and dark entities and both, who looked up in surprise. The fight began, but it was obvious that it was going to be too much for just Arno and Byron to handle on their own. Soon, a great fight started as Lily hugged the wall and watched. Arno pushed his hand forward, and the reaper he was fighting all of a sudden froze in mid punch. The Guardian happily poked him and tipped him over. Sandra raised her staff, and the three reapers coming for her suddenly went into slow motion. With a smirk, she then whacked them on the head with it.

Even with all of this, it seemed like there were too many enemies. Arno could only freeze one at a time, and it didn’t last forever, and Sandra could only affect a few at a time. Byron was simply struggling to not get taken down as he was surrounded.

Lily glanced over at a cold metal door that was standing off to one side. Could George be in there? Stealing another glance at the fight before her, she snuck off to the door and tried to pull it open.

It wouldn’t budge.

She tried again, knowing that a lot counted on her to get this door open.

Please!! I need George! She thought.

There was suddenly a bright light that came from her hands, and the door began to open-cold air and mist breaking its way through the crack. She pulled it open and peered inside.

Inside, was a frozen George, his mouth agape and his eyes wide. His arms were outstretched with his staff in hand, almost like he had been in the middle of a fight.  

Lily pulled the door open and pushed him out of the little chamber, causing him to topple to the floor. She could tell he was starting to thaw when his eyebrow started twitching. Then, his eyes blinked, and his fingers moved. He shook off the frost from his shoulders.

“And-wait a second-what’s going on here?” he asked in surprise as those fighting began to realize that the master of the timekeepers was free. They all ran for him at once as he quickly raised his staff and the room filled with a bright blue light.

When the light diminished, the dark entities were gone, and the reapers that had been attacking them were crying on the floor as babies.

“What the-?” Arno cried as a little dark haired baby tried to latch onto his leg.

“Man was it cold in there!” George exclaimed, brushing the ice off his robe. “Freaking Helen. I’m beginning to dislike her…”

“You just turned everyone into babies!!” Arno gaped, gingerly peeling off the infant as it gripped his pant leg in its tiny fists.

“Oh yeah. That? It won’t last forever.”

“But-.”

“What? How do you think the whole aging process in the Inbetween works? That’s our job! The Timekeepers!!”

At this, George struck a pose.

“Ok. Well, we need to fix things, so we were planning on stealing a time warp. That’ll work right?” Byron asked. George shrugged.

“Probs. Can’t hurt in trying. But I should probably make an announcement to my crew. Like Captain Kirk. Sandra! Be my Spock! Go to the announcement room thingie and… make an announcement. Also. Start thinking of a better name than ‘announcement room thingie’!”

The reaper rolled his eyes, but the woman saluted him.

“Yes sir! May the force be with you!” she said with a smile, and she zipped out of the room faster than Lily thought was humanly possible.

“Well follow me! This is about to get more exciting than an episode of Doctor Who!!” George exclaimed, bounding out of the room.

None of them knew what he was talking about.

George led them through a maze of hallways and rooms and who knew what else. Arno commented on how it was a stroke of luck that they had even gotten this far. Lily wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t help thinking about the Builders, and how they all played into it. She wasn’t sure, but she felt like they had something to do with their “luck”, not to mention the light that she kept emitting from her fingers. She couldn’t tell if that was just a reaper thing, or something else.

At one point, Sandra’s voice echoed through the hallways.

“Attention TimeKeepers!” she announced energetically. “Lily Hoagen is here and our sensei has been freed. The time has come! This is our battle. Let us fight for our realm and our freedom. Let’s band together like the Ninja Turtles and defeat this Shredder once and for all!”

Click.

“Oh. And by the way, if the opportunity arises, I’m totally going to use my staff and say ‘you shall not pass.” K?” George grinned at them.

“Like Gandalf?” Byron asked inquisitively.

“Precisely!”

“Ok… Whatever.”

Arno opened his mouth to ask what a Gandalf was, but then decided he didn’t want to take up too much more time.  

Finally, the leader of the timekeepers put his arm out to stop them. “Ok. We are getting close to where we keep the time orbs. I’m sure it’s guarded, so we are going to have to play this strategically.” They peered around the corner to see a larger room, ornamented with deep blues and silvers. In the middle was a floating clear ball filled with little glowing time orbs. Standing guard, were several more reapers.

“Poor guys don’t even know what’s going on…” George said sadly. “Not all the reapers wanted to follow Helen you know. She’s probably altered a lot of memories…” They crept around the corner when the guards weren’t looking and hid behind some cube statues.

“So… Do we just run and try to grab one? Or…” Arno whispered.

“Or what? Think of a plan of some sorts? Making a go for it sounds good enough to me.” Byron responded, flexing his fingers.

“I don’t think you will be needing a plan…” a voice said behind them. They whirled around to see Helen standing there, dark entities hovering around her, the hood of her cloak only halfway on her, her face clouded in darkness.    

“Man we’re toast…” George had to comment. They were backed out into the open, the guards and the reapers having them surrounded.

“Niccccce to seeee you again Georgessss.” Helen hissed. “Although Ido haaave tooo sssay that your Timekeeeepersss are making quite a mess of thingssss. Caussssing a loot of troublesss.”

“We’re making a mess of things?” George asked, aghast. “What-you-the nerve-.”

“H-Helen?” Arno said in shock as the TimeKeeper was left stuttering insults and mentioning something about how if he was a fire bender.

“Ooooh. Arnooo. You maaade it out of the Insssanities?”

The Guardian took a step back.

“What happened to you?” he said sorrowfully.

Helen did not answer him. She simply pointed to the group of fugitives.

“Get themmmm.” The dark entities and reapers slowly started to come towards them.

“Crapola. Now what?” George asked.

At that moment, something happened that none of them were expecting.

A cow appeared out of nowhere.

“Mr. Twinkleshine?” Lily asked in surprise. The cow opened its mouth wide, and out popped some familiar faces. Suddenly, the leaders of all the realms Lily had visited stood by her side.

“What are you guys doing here?” Byron asked in surprise.

Alma smiled. “Someone helped recruit us. By the way Helen, you really did do a horrible job at your time alteration. It’s going to take more than a couple of switches to change our memories.”

Lastly, out of the cow’s mouth stepped Daya, who smiled.

“I saw you running off with Arno and Lily and thought it time to set things in action.” She said kindly to Byron.

“Wait-you remember?”

The woman put a hand on his cheek. “Of course I do. Love can’t be altered by time.”

Despite everything, Byron’s bearded face broke out into a large smile.

“Helen. It’s time to put things back the way they are meant to. It can’t keep going like this.” Sgt. Downey demanded, pounding a fist into his hand.

“Yes. The Inbetween is falling apart.” Morpheus added. His shirt hummed in agreement.

“This is not your fate dear one…” The three Fates said simultaneously.

Daya turned to her. “Can’t you see what’s happening? You’re turning. What happened to Laerke and her best Savers is happening to you. They had their own plans of how the Inbetween should work, and look what happened to them. They turned into dark entities. Are you so blind that you can’t see it happening to you?”

Helen swayed a little as she stood there.

“I like it this way…” she hissed. The dark entities and reapers charged. Lily stepped back and watched as all chaos broke loose. She watched as the leaders battled with all their might in their different respects. Alma had a tree grow from nothing behind her, whacking at any shadows that came her way. Morpheus wrapped and trapped them with various objects that came from his pockets-from bubble wrap to a french horn. Sgt. Downey punched. George froze, the three fates wrapped them in gold thread, and Daya and Bryon held them back with flashes of light.

“Go!” Brie yelled to Arno and Lily as she swung a thread around a dark reaper and dodged a punch like she knew it was coming. “Fix this! Follow your fate!!”

Arno scooped up Lily and they ran towards the time orbs. The little girl reached out to grab one, and as she thought about Death and how things were supposed to be, their world disappeared in a flash of white light...