Mrythdom: Game of Time

by Jasper T. Scott

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Sword & Sorcery; Science Fiction Fantasy; Science Fiction

Synopsis

FROM MILLION COPY BESTSELLER JASPER T. SCOTT
In a battle over an ancient elven relic, two powerful wizards accidentally abduct an “Elder” from the past.
While fleeing system patrollers in his ship, Aurelius flies through a temporal anomaly and crash lands on Meridia. This planet is nothing like the one he remembers. It’s full of strange, magical creatures, and peppered with the ruins of cities he once knew.

Armed with nothing but his damaged ship, Aurelius joins the wizard Gabrian on a dangerous quest to recover the stolen relic so that he can return to his time. Along the way, he encounters the greatest danger of all, one with the power to consume his mind, body, and soul.

Mrythdom is a standalone high fantasy adventure with a genre-blending dash of sci-fi and a splash of romance. From the Dragonlands of the north to the Misty Sea of the south, this book is chock full of wizards, werewolves, elves, gremlins, trolls, dragons, and mermaids; a unique adventure told in the tradition of Tolkien.

 

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Release date: May 8, 2023

Publisher: Anthem Press

Print pages: 704

Sample

PART ONE: THE CHASE

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 4

CHAPTER ONE

The frigid air was heavy with darkness and malevolent
purpose as Malgore strode down the stone corridor. His
steel-studded boots rang against the stone floor with
echoing thuds. Torches flickered in wall sconces, revealing
black walls slick with glistening green slime and
condensing moisture; the torches all but flickered out as
Malgore passed; his presence seemed to draw the
shadows to him from every crack and crevice in the
fortress, rallying darkness like an army to snuff every
flicker of warmth and light from the world. The sounds of
gremlins hissing echoed down the corridor from
somewhere deep within the fortress—or perhaps, Malgore
thought grimly, from the very walls themselves. Haunting
echoes from those long dead. The walls of Gadagur were
so full of the poisonous residues of tormented lives that
they seemed to scream at him.
He whispered a word of revelation and allowed his
shriveled hand to trace a long slime-streaked crack in the
wall. Sharp images assaulted his mind, subverting his eyes:
he saw swords flashing and blood spraying the walls as
gremlins fought one another for scraps of food and cloth,
the blood of the slain seeping into the stones, a marker for
memories long bereft of their hosts. Malgore withdrew his
palm from the stones, and fresh blood glistened blackly

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 5
against his shriveled gray skin. Time was a scroll, written in
blood. It was but a matter of knowing the script to read it.
Malgore had already seen much. Too much. He had gazed
back through time and seen things so wondrous that not
even magic could explain them. Lying buried in the ashes
and ruins of the past was the key to a power great enough
to destroy the Elves with but the twitch of a finger.
Weapons the size of a traveling case that could destroy an
entire city. Vehicles that could fly so high they joined the
mantle of stars in the ether. But it was not enough to
merely see the past; to possess such wonders, one had to
travel back and take them.
Malgore reached the end of the corridor. A solid
wooden door stood before him, barred by a heavy beam.
A thundering roar rattled the door on its hinges, and a
flash of golden light silhouetted the wooden frame. Wisps
of smoke curled under it, bringing the smell of charred
flesh to his nostrils.
Malgore smiled. “Abrea!” he intoned. The beam
barring the door flew off and clattered to the stone tiles,
bouncing twice with wooden echoes. Malgore stepped
forward, and the door swung open as he mentally guided
the action.
The scene beyond the door was of a yawning cave,
guarded by deep shadows. From those shadows, Malgore
heard wet tearing sounds and a loud crunching. He caught
a glimpse of movement as his eyes adjusted to the
darkness. An enormous hulking shape crouched in the
corner. Malgore walked toward it. As the darkness
enveloped him, he began to make out more details. His
mind filled in the rest, knowing what to expect. He walked

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 6
straight up to the monster and patted it on its scaly flank.
“Good dragon.”
The monster growled contentedly, and the crunching
sounds abruptly stopped as it spat something out. A bent
and bloodied shield fell with a heavy clank at Malgore’s
feet. He smiled to see the Elves’ emblem of a branching
white elm so cruelly deformed. He knelt beside the shield
and placed a hand upon the darkest bloodstain. “Hur
paseas su hur pasel arevelada ...” Malgore whispered and
closed his eyes. He sifted through the elf’s memories,
carelessly discarding them all until he came upon the one
he was searching for:
The cold air rushed past his face, buffeting his clothes
and whipping his long blond hair into a tangled mess.
Below him lay a range of jagged, snow-capped mountains.
The constant whoosh of his Gryphon’s feathery white
wings abruptly ceased as his mount began to descend. The
mountains gave way to a twisted forest of trees like gray
skeletons reaching with gnarled hands for the sky. His
stomach lurched as they glided sharply down to the
treetops and then leveled out mere cubits above the
branches. The trees rushed by underneath them in a
twisted gray blur; the air grew misty and damp, wrapping
the forest in shifting gray veils. His Gryphon continued,
occasionally flapping its wings to keep them aloft. At last,
the trees and mist parted to reveal a murky lake. A cabin
lay on the far end, smoke curling from its chimney.
As they flew out over the lake, he could feel the power
pulsing beneath the sullen gray surface. Something terrible
lay concealed in the water’s depths, yet knowing it was
there gave him comfort. He landed on the shore beside the

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 7
cabin, and saw a man with long white hair and beard
standing before the entrance, waiting for him.
As he dismounted his gryphon and walked toward the
old man, he found that he knew the man’s name and face,
not distantly, the way that knowledge might have felt
coming to him second-hand through the elf’s memories,
but rather he knew that man personally, as a rival, a
friend, a brother. The man was Gabrian, a wizard from the
Isle of Cavendal, once the most powerful and revered
wizard in all of Mrythdom, now but a lonely guardsman,
forever bound by his fate to wait by Deadwood Lake and
protect its secret, a relic so powerful that with it one could
transcend the fourth dimension—
Time.
“Welcome back, Erathos,” the wizard said as he drew
near. “What tidings from Elvindom?”
“Black news, Gabrian. Someone has pierced the veil of
creation; they are searching for the relic.”
“How do you know this?”
“King Asarial had a vision. Our enemy has been to the
Necromancers’ Tomb. It is only a matter of time before
they come here.”
“Who?”
“That is not yet known, but they must be powerful to
command the spirits of the Necromancers.”
“I’ll leave at dawn.”
“No. All is not yet lost. Not even the spirits of the
Necromancers could find the relic, not with all the power of
the Elves and wizards to shield it from their gaze. We must
stand fast.”
“If it is only a matter of time, then take the relic to

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 8

Elvindom. It will be safer there.”
“No! Many a pure heart would be tempted to right the
wrongs of the past, yet with unspeakable consequences.
You must stay here and draw out our enemy. Discover his
identity and defeat him.”
“And if he defeats me?”
“It must not come to that.”
“Surely you have not come all this way to deliver a
warning.”
“I come bearing a gift as well.” Malgore watched the
elf’s hand extend to the wizard. In his palm lay a glowing
sapphire set in a gold pendant attached to a heavy gold
chain. “May this give you the strength to defeat whatever
forces come against you.”
The wizard’s eyes widened and he reached for the
amulet with a trembling hand. “A firestone! Where...”
“It is Asarial’s. His power is greatly diminished without
it. He has entrusted it to you for the sake of our cause.”
“I will guard it well.”
Malgore broke contact with the bloody shield, and the
flow of memories danced away in streaks of fading color.
He smirked to himself. An Elvish firestone and a decrepit
old fool. That is the best defense they could muster?
Malgore stood and turned to the monster beside him.
Its appetite sated, the dragon now lay on the cave floor,
the rhythmic sound of its breathing accompanied by
contented little puffs of smoke curling from its nostrils.
“Arise, Valkyl,” he said, patting the dragon’s diamond-
hard flank. “We’re going to see an old friend.”

* * *

The wind cut through the forest of dead elm and oak

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 9
trees with chilling force, tugging at Gabrian’s flowing white
beard and hair and plastering his brown robes to his lean
frame. The trees groaned as though angry to be awoken
from their eternal sleep. Not a leaf rustled in the wind, for
not a leaf remained upon the branches. Nothing had
grown in Deadwood Forest since Gabrian had been exiled
there with the relic. It had been so long that no mortal
man still lived who remembered the forest’s original
name. It had been the Golden Forest, so named for its
ever-sunny skies and the brilliant shafts of light which had
filtered down through the canopy, wrapping the trees in
gilded light. But no more. Ever since the relic had been
hidden here, the entire forest had been poisoned by its
presence, frozen in that moment: cloudy, cold, snowy,
gray...
Dead.
Gabrian stood outside his centuries-old home, an
elmwood staff in one hand, the relic in the other, waiting.
With Asarial’s firestone amulet to augment his power,
Gabrian was confident that he could face whoever came
for the relic. The old wizard could sense the man’s
approach, just as the air grew heavy with moisture before
a storm, so too it grew heavy with malevolence as his
enemy approached. And that man was coming.
Now.
An ear-splitting screech split the frigid air, and then...
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
A shadow passed over the misty gray canopy, and
Gabrian looked up. Directly overhead, scarcely concealed
by the mist was a dark shape of enormous size. A monster.
It had been so long since Gabrian had seen its like,

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 10
that for a moment he just stood there, frozen like the
trees. Could it be?
Then, as if in slow motion, the monster’s head poked
out of the mist. A roar and a flash of light were Gabrian’s
only warnings. He dove away from his home, into a
snowdrift banked against the water’s edge.
A jet of billowing flames struck his humble cabin and
Gabrian felt a stab of loss as he heard wood splintering
beneath the assault. At his back, he felt a wave of heat so
intense he feared that the flames had already engulfed
him.
Gabrian rose from the snowdrift, his beard and hair
tangled with clumps of white. He turned to see his home
ablaze and a wall of flame rushing to greet him as the
monster adjusted its aim. Gabrian aimed his staff at the
creature, uttering a vengeful rebuke, “Lashas ara
eglasinada!” The gemstone set in the top of his staff
glowed brightly for a moment, and then the flames
abruptly vanished, both from his home and the monster’s
gaping jaws. He watched with a grim smile as the creature
coughed pitiful clouds of smoke, trying with all its might to
breathe fire again. When it failed, the whooshing of its
wings batting the air drew nearer and the beast quickly
swelled in size. Gabrian scrambled to get out of the way as
it set down with a ground-shaking thud. It was then that
he caught a glimpse of the rider on the monster’s back.
“You,” Gabrian said as the man hopped down from his
dragon and threw back his cowl to reveal a horrid
countenance, twisted with evil and rutted with years
beyond reckoning.
“Am I not expected?” the man, though he was not a

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 11
man at all, asked in a strong, melodic voice that belied his
age.
“If I’d known who exactly to expect, I might have
prepared a better reception. Unfortunately, your mount
seems to have toasted what little means I have to
welcome you here. Where are your armies, Malgore? Have
you come to defeat me alone? That was foolish of you.”
Malgore’s lips twisted in a cruel smile and his yellow
eyes narrowed, seeming to blaze brighter for a moment. “I
think not,” he said, crunching with steel studded boots
across the icy ground. He gestured with a withered hand
to the faintly shimmering orb in Gabrian’s palm. “I have
come but for a moment, to retrieve what is mine, and then
I’ll be on my way.”
Gabrian held the orb aloft. “You came for this? It is
but a useless trinket. The past cannot be changed Malgore,
you know this.”
“One can but try.”
Gabrian whipped the orb inside his voluminous sleeve,
concealing it from view. “You shall not have that chance.”
Malgore growled. Upon hearing the sound of its
master’s discontent, the dragon turned its head and fixed
Gabrian with its icy reptilian gaze.
“You will yield the relic, or I will kill you.”
As the gremlin king stalked toward him, Gabrian held
the orb aloft, revealing it once more, and then he
whispered so Malgore would not hear him, “Abrea hur
gatas su timel.”
Open the gates of time. The orb shimmered more
spectacularly, seeming to vibrate in his palm. It glowed
gold, then crimson, then amethyst, then emerald, then

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 12
sapphire—passing through every color in the spectrum
and back again, faster and faster, seeming to blink in
different colors until time began to slow.
Malgore seemed to realize too late what was
happening. He began to run faster toward the relic, but his
stride was slowed by the grasping hands of time itself.
Gabrian watched the gremlin king extend his staff, and he
caught a flash of the king’s intent in his mind’s eye. The
orb began floating slowly toward Malgore, and Gabrian
watched with a dispassionate air, appreciating the irony. In
his lust for the relic, Malgore didn’t seem to notice that
Gabrian wasn’t fighting to keep it. As the relic grew farther
from Gabrian, time began to assume its normal pace, yet
Malgore’s every movement quickly sped up to the point
that he became a blur.
Gabrian smiled as the relic touched Malgore’s palm. In
that instant, Gabrian began to weave a protective spell
around himself: “Ur sefensa asha mershalah.” The air
shimmered before him, and he watched through a gauzy
curtain of energy as the orb in Malgore’s hand grew white
hot. Soon it was so bright that it was painful to look at. The
gremlin king screeched in pain and dropped the orb,
whereupon it melted into the ice at his feet. The relic
released a dazzling flash, and all the world went white.
Gabrian heard an explosive bang accompanied by the
gremlin king screeching again, and then he felt a massive
force pressing against his protective shield, draining his
strength to the point of exhaustion.
Malgore’s screeching died abruptly, swallowed by a
ringing silence. Gabrian slumped and leaned heavily on his
staff. He blinked his eyes, yet still found he couldn’t see.

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 13
“Eja seera!” His sight cleared, but it was hard to tell at
first, for all he saw was a swirling portal of darkness, black
as a starless night. Then he looked around and saw the
splintered remains of tree trunks and branches raining
from the sky to land in a bald crater of hard-packed dirt.
Gabrian stood upon a mound of dirt that rose like an
island from the center of that crater. Were it not for his
protective spell he would not have survived the blast.
Gabrian stared deeply into the swirling darkness before
him, trying to see beyond it to where Malgore and his
dragon mount had been, but he could see nothing, and the
portal seemed to stretch out forever to either side,
looming above him as a great, black wall.
Gabrian was just about to speak the ancient words
that would close the portal when there came a distant
roar. For a moment Gabrian feared it was Malgore’s
dragon, having somehow escaped the blast. He looked up,
but even as he did so, he caught a flicker of movement,
and his gaze arrowed in on the portal, just in time to see a
monstrous shape leaping out of the infinite darkness on
tongues of crimson flame. Gabrian heard a giant boom! as
though thunder had suddenly split the sky, and then he
was picked up and thrown by a gust of wind so powerful
that he was like a leaf, twisting and turning as he fell, arms
flailing and guts clawing for his throat. He was dimly aware
of the sound of trees shattering once more and of a
deafening, scraping roar like a thousand wagons rolling
down a gravel road at the same time. As he fell, Gabrian
whispered another spell to protect himself, but in the time
it took for him to reach the ground, the spell had
weakened, and his strength had all but failed. He felt a

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 14
solid jolt go through his back, his head carried backward
until it hit something with a violent crack!
And he knew no more.

CHAPTER TWO

Aurelius pushed the throttles past their stops and
winced at the resultant whine and slightly unstable
shudder which grumbled out of the Halcyon Courier’s
engines. A flash of orange light zapped past his cockpit,
and Aurelius jumped with a jolt of adrenaline as the Sound
in Space Emulator (SISE) blared to life with a sharp buzzing
noise that quickly rose in and out of hearing.
He hadn’t realized that the patrollers were so close. A
quick look at his sensors confirmed the worst. They were
gaining on him. Aurelius gritted his teeth and cursed under
his breath. He couldn’t outrun ISS interceptors. Another
buzzing sound, and then his ship shook with an impact and
the SISE registered a sizzling noise like water boiling over
onto a hotplate.
Aurelius stomped on the port rudder pedal, firing the
maneuvering thrusters, and then he flipped the flight stick
to the same side, throwing his ship into a spiraling barrel
roll. The stars spun in a dizzying diamond swirl just as
brilliant beams of hot orange plasma came buzzing past to
all sides. Intermittent flashes of light illuminated the dark
interior of the cockpit, casting Aurelius’s features into
sharp relief. Another couple of shots sizzled off his shields,
leaving the Halcyon Courier shivering in space. A warning
tone screeched, drawing Aurelius’s attention to his

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 16
overloaded aft shields. Then a three-note melody of beeps
issued from the comm and a blinking red light appeared.
They were hailing him—for the third time.
Probably trying to get me to surrender now that they
have me at a disadvantage. He didn’t even dare to answer,
in case he accidentally said something to incriminate
himself. At least this way he could claim he’d never
received their order to search his ship. He’d say the comm
was broken, and break it with his fist before they boarded
him. Plausible deniability.
It would be easy if he were innocent, but he was
smuggling weapons, and the Dominion didn’t look kindly
on gun runners. Maybe they hadn’t read the Constitution.
Every man or woman supposedly had the right to bear
arms. But the Dominion was not the seemingly benign
force it claimed to be, guaranteeing the rights and
privileges of its people, guarding peace across the three
continents of Meridia. No, the Dominion was a bloated
monster that grew fat with taxes and defecated
regulations, and people deserved to know they still had
freedoms worth the ancient paper they’d been inked
upon. At least, that’s how he justified arming Freedom to
undermine the Dominion.
Another zap sounded behind him, and Aurelius tried
to evade, but the blast clipped his starboard tail wing. The
Halcyon Courier shuddered and he heard a groan from its
frame, accompanied by a wedge of blackened alloy which
came fluttering past his cockpit. Aurelius grimaced and
shot a quick glance at the damage report. Mostly
superficial. He’d lose some maneuverability once he was
back in atmosphere, but otherwise, his ship was still in one

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 17
piece. But with the aft shields down, the next hit would be
much more serious. The comm sounded again with one
last chance to surrender.
Aurelius worried his lip as he struggled to think of a
way out. He couldn’t outrun the patrols, and he certainly
couldn’t lead them straight to Freedom’s headquarters. He
either had to turn around and fight them, which he likely
wouldn’t survive, or…
Aurelius’s gaze found a fuzzy patch of gray on the
gravidar and he frowned thoughtfully. Trade one certain
death for another? He’d prefer to go down fighting, but
this way there was a chance—not a good one, but a
chance—that he might outmaneuver his pursuit. Breaking
out of his barrel roll, Aurelius flipped the stick in the other
direction and then pulled up sharply. A different patch of
stars swam into view. Space looked no different, but for
the intermittently shining stars that were winking on and
off like festive lights.
Asteroids. Without the sun to illuminate them, they
were deadly black wraiths, impossible to see except on
scanners. Aurelius flicked a switch on his cockpit dash to
enable the light amplification overlay. Suddenly space was
clouded with craggy rocks, shifting and spinning before
him, growing quickly larger in his viewscreen. Orange
plasma blasts began zapping past him again, and Aurelius
put his ship into a crazy series of maneuvers: stick left, fire
starboard jets; stick right, fire ventral jets; stick back, fire
dorsal jets.
Incredibly, Aurelius made it to the edge of the
asteroid field without another shot grazing his ship. Now
the hard part began. Speeding flecks of pulverized rock

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 18
flew at him from every side, hissing as they stuck his
forward shields. Plasma blasts from the interceptors
continued raining around him, now striking rocks and
splitting them open, creating even more of the dangerous
debris. Aurelius dodged and weaved through the spinning
razor edges of rock, quietly praying that nothing would
strike his ship’s unprotected aft section. The shields there
were just beginning to recover some strength. If he was
lucky, he might be able to absorb another plasma blast
without damage.
Sweat beaded on his forehead as he focused every
ounce of his attention in a thousand directions at once.
There were too many rocks to watch simultaneously, so he
kept an eye on only the nearest ones and relied on his
proximity sensors to warn him if anything got too close.
Suddenly a splinter of rock the size of a man came
spinning out from behind one the size of a house, and
Aurelius had no time to move. The rock exploded on his
cockpit canopy and the Halcyon Courier jolted violently. He
had the inertial compensator dialed up to the maximum,
but that did nothing to dull the ship’s internal vibrations. A
quick glance at his shields told him he couldn’t survive
another hit like that. The rock must have been moving at
incredible speed.
Aurelius gunned the engines and pulled a sharp turn
around the house-sized asteroid. The plasma fire stopped
briefly, but gravidar showed his pursuers pulling the same
turn close behind him. Aurelius continued through the
maneuver until he’d reversed course 180 degrees, and
then he angled for the next biggest rock he could find. A
few moments later, plasma began sizzling past him once

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 19
more. It seemed like he could buy time by getting closer to
the asteroids.
Reaching the next rock, this one the size of a small
planetoid, Aurelius soared in close to the surface and
flicked a switch on the dash to enable terrain-following
guidance. The surface of the asteroid became overlaid
with a shaded green grid which made it easier to see how
the terrain rose and fell around him. When he drew too
near to the ridges and rises, sections of the grid began to
blink in red, ever more rapidly as he approached, warning
him to adjust course.
A burst of plasma shattered a blinking cliff in front of
him. The resultant flash and cloud of debris nearly blinded
him, and he stomped on the pedal for the ventral
thrusters, sending his ship straight up to clear whatever
remained of the ridge. Debris pounded his shields, but he
emerged unscathed from the roiling cloud a second later.
Over the ridge, he saw a range of mountains pocked and
furrowed with deep craters and gorges. He swung down
into the nearest gorge, the sides of which began blinking
red immediately. Distracted by the grid, Aurelius flicked off
terrain-following mode, deciding to rely upon his eyes
instead. Plasma began raining down all around him. Rather
than follow him into the gorge, the interceptors were
simply angling their weapons down and firing at him from
above. The Halcyon’s shields roared as they repelled the
hail of debris, then a shot hit home and Aurelius felt a stab
of dread as a power regulator exploded, and his ship
skipped sideways on a sudden boost from his thrusters. He
quickly compensated for the power shift, but he was
already jetting toward a looming spire of rock. Aurelius

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 20
stomped on the ventral thrusters again and pulled up on
the stick, but he was just a second too late. He clipped the
spire of rock and it shattered. His ship bucked and twisted,
threatening to tumble into an end-over-end spin. He fired
maneuvering jets and battled the flight stick to counter the
direction of the spin, just barely managing to keep a
straight and level course.
The gorge curved sharply to the right, and as the turn
deepened, Aurelius realized he was going far too fast to
make it. He pulled back on the thruster power levers until
the engines were firing in full reverse, but it was too late
to correct his momentum. The belly of his ship hit the side
of the gorge and skidded along it, shuddering violently as it
ripped up clouds of jagged rock. An alert quickly sounded,
warning that belly shields were nearly depleted. Then
suddenly, the gorge widened out and he was free of the
rocks.
The lingering cloud of debris was impossible to see
through. Aurelius kept his eyes glued to the scanners,
which rendered his surroundings in a shaded wireframe. It
wasn’t ideal, but at least the ships following him wouldn’t
get a clear target lock through the debris.
Then space cleared and Aurelius found himself
frowning into a gaping void. He was confused for a
moment, “Where are the stars?” he wondered aloud.
The void swallowed him, and he realized that it must
be a tunnel. Quickly flicking on his ship’s external lights,
the darkness disappeared in a blinding flash. Suddenly
realizing the reason, Aurelius snapped off the light
amplification overlay and the tunnel came into sharper
focus. After his ship had lost most of its momentum

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 21
against the craggy walls of the gorge, the Halcyon was now
cruising at a reasonable speed, but still overrunning its
lights by a substantial margin, so Aurelius triggered the
braking thrusters, and clouds of propellant billowed out in
front of him.
As the clouds cleared, Aurelius was startled to find
that he saw nothing but a wall of black. His ship’s lights
were being impossibly swallowed by the void; he could see
nothing but broad beams of illuminated dust and
glistening beads of moisture streaking toward the
darkness. Scanners revealed nothing but blank space
ahead of him. Maybe it was a massive cavern?
The seconds ticked by, but still, he couldn’t see
anything, and his scanners continued to show a curiously
empty space ahead. Given the range of his scanners, he
began to wonder how big the cavern could be. No asteroid
could be that large; maybe the tunnel went straight
through it to the other side.
But then why couldn’t he see any stars?
A brilliant flash of light swallowed Aurelius’s
questions, blinding him once more. The patrollers must
have caught up with him, and he’d just witnessed his ship
exploding around him. His mind grew foggy, and he felt
strangely airy and light, as though his ship’s gravity had
just failed. Was this what it felt like to be dead? He tried to
move, but he felt as though his body were trapped in
thick, viscous fluid—his movements slow and awkward.
In the next instant, the ship bucked wildly, and his
body went back to obeying his commands at a normal
speed. The void briefly gave way to a bright tangle of
shapes and colors—gray, brown, and white—which made

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 22
no sense at all. And then those colors seemed to explode
around him, raining down in twisted, broken fragments.
The scene was accompanied by a sound like a thousand
trees splintering all at once, combined with a shrieking
roar that vibrated through the deck under his feet. Alarms
and sirens wailed in the cockpit, accompanied by curls of
acrid smoke, and then a sharp pop! sounded as the
artificial gravity gave way, and with it . . .
The inertial compensator.
Aurelius’s head snapped forward, his teeth clacking
painfully as he fetched up against his emergency
restraints. A loose object went flying, clipping him in the
head, and everything turned black.
* * *

Drums were beating mercilessly in Aurelius’s ears; the
air was thick and stifling, making every breath feel like his
last. People were shouting somewhere in the distance, an
argument of some kind. The accents were strange, but he
could understand the words. His eyes were shut as though
with glue, leaving everything in terrifying blackness.
“What have I done?” a gruff voice asked.
Cackling laughter.
“You’ve brought me an elder. What a delightful gift,
Gabrian. The relic, now, if you please.”
“Come and get it.”
“If you insist.” That voice rose precipitously: “Lashas
su hur ciel!”
A mighty crack like thunder split the air, and Aurelius
woke with a start. Before him he saw nothing but white
plastered across the canopy, white with specks of brown
and gray that looked like broken tree branches. It looked

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 23
like packed snow. Aurelius’s head swam dangerously. The
last thing he remembered was being in space, the ISS
interceptors chasing him through an asteroid field, a dark
tunnel . . . and then here. Somehow, he’d crash-landed
back on Meridia and lost all memory between the asteroid
field and the planet.
The voices he’d heard while dreaming continued still.
Aurelius thought to wonder why he could hear them, and
then he noticed that his flight helmet had flown off its
hook and smashed into the controls, flicking several
switches; among others, the one for the external audio
pickups.
“Blinda ter seer!”
A quick look at damage reports told him that his
shields were completely overloaded, artificial gravity the
same, but between the two they’d mostly protected both
him and his ship from the crash. Unfortunately, now both
systems would probably need expensive replacement
parts before they’d start working again, meaning that his
ship was all but crippled. He would be limited to low-G
maneuvers, and while also completely denuded of shields,
he may as well paint a target on his hull. Aurelius
grimaced. Repairing those systems would take a giant
chunk out of his profits for this run.
“Arevela mer seer!”
Aurelius frowned, now listening more closely to the
voices coming from outside. He couldn’t tell what
language it was, but it was extremely rare to hear anything
other than versal. The colonial languages were dead, and
now they only existed in ancient books and as useless
topics in academia.

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 24
Snapping out of his seat restraints, Aurelius stood and
waved a hand over the doors leading from the cockpit to
the rest of the ship. The deck was sloping at an angle
which made walking back through his ship like walking
uphill, but in a few quick strides, he made it through the
galley and to the port airlock. Aurelius waved his hand
over the door controls and the inner airlock doors slid
open. Suddenly remembering who he was and what he did
for a living, Aurelius patted his hip and found his gun belt
missing. With a grimace, he hurried back to the cockpit
and retrieved it. Novice mistake, he chided himself as he
strapped on the belt and his forearm gauntlet. Last of all
he fetched his helmet from the dashboard and snapped
the seals shut around his neck with a hiss of air. Between
his gauntlet, helmet, and armored flight suit, he could
defeat ten suitless gunmen without even breaking a sweat.
When he returned to the airlock, he triggered the
inner airlock doors shut behind him, just in case someone
tried to sneak into his ship while he was gone, then he
armed his plasma pistol and held it in cool readiness as he
slapped a palm against the outer airlock controls. He was
ready for whatever might greet him on the other side.
Or so he thought.
The doors slid open to reveal a splintered forest
drenched in dirty snow. Two figures with staffs and cloaks
were yelling at one another in that strange language he’d
heard. They had wooden staffs or walking sticks
outstretched and their hands curled like claws as they
gestured angrily at one another. Flashes of roiling light
bounced between them, careering off to one side or the
other, vaporizing snow and splintering trees with explosive

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 25
force. Aurelius’s ears rang from the noise. Between the
two men lay a glowing orb. Both of them seemed to be
trying to get to it, but whenever one set foot toward the
orb, the other fired a flash of light—plasma?—that
exploded at his adversary’s feet. Aurelius had trouble
seeing what weapons the men were using. The bolts didn’t
look exactly like plasma, and from what he could tell,
neither man actually held a weapon—unless their walking
sticks count. The fire seemed to spring directly from their
hands.
Impossible.
Even more impossibly, whenever a shot reached its
target, it mysteriously bounced away, as though reflected
by some type of armor or shielding, yet he could see no
armor, and personal shields were usually only good for
one or two hits, not half a dozen.
Despite their prior standoff, the two men began
making great strides toward one another. As he watched,
one man dove for the glowing orb, and the other pounced
on him. They began wrestling in the dirty snow, growling
and shouting at one another. The tips of their staffs
glowed strangely, as though with an inner light.
Aurelius took a step forward, and a ramp extended
automatically for him with a rolling clunk, clunk, clunk . . .
he frowned; yet more damage from the crash.
Speaking to his suit, he said, “External speakers on,”
and then, “Put your hands up! Both of you!”
The cloaked figures abruptly turned his way,
momentarily distracted from one another and the glowing
orb. He couldn’t make out much of their features from the
distance, but he was surprised to see that they looked

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 26
alike: both were old men—wrinkly, with white hair. One of
the two spared him only a second of attention before
turning to the glowing orb and declaring, “Traspara mer
alu segera!”
Just like that, he vanished, and the glowing orb, too,
leaving the other man pounding the dirt with his fists and
screaming yet more alien words.
Aurelius gaped and blinked furiously. This had to be a dream.

CHAPTER THREE

Aurelius descended the boarding ramp in a daze. He
still couldn’t believe what he’d seen. A man had
disappeared before his eyes! Snow and broken branches
crunched underfoot as Aurelius cautiously crept toward
the remaining combatant. The old man still lay face-down
in the dirt, beating the ground with his fists and cursing
nonsensically. He walked straight up to the old man
without being noticed, and then cautiously kicked him in
the ribs.
“Get up—slowly—or I’ll shoot!”
The old man froze. “Be careful whom you threaten,
Elder.”
Aurelius began laughing. “Elder? Who are you calling
old, Wrinkles? You must be four times my age.”
Suddenly the man turned and looked up at him with
blazing blue eyes. His flowing white beard and hair were
tangled with dirt and snow. “That’s where you’re wrong.
You are far older than I.”
Aurelius frowned. “You must be brainsick, old man.
Get up.”
“As you wish.” With another whisper of that strange
language, the man seemed to float to his feet, his robes
rippling in the wind. Aurelius blinked. I must have hit my
head pretty hard. . . . “We have to follow him, Aurelius.”

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 28
Aurelius gaped and quickly thrust the pistol up under
the old man’s chin, plastering his dirty beard to his
wrinkled neck. “How do you know my name?”
“Your thoughts are not well guarded. It was a simple
matter to see it in your mind.”
“You expect me to believe that you can read my mind
without a probe?”
“I can read anyone’s mind.”
“Prove it.”
“You are confused. The last thing you remember was
coming through the portal. Your memories make little
sense to me, but you were being chased through a rocky
canyon. It was night; the stars were out… orange lightning
was shattering the canyon walls and rocks were raining
from the sky…”
Aurelius’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t night. I was in
space. And those were asteroids, not rocks. Your synapses
must be misfiring, old man.”
“Space?”
Aurelius gestured impatiently to the sky.
The old man’s blue eyes widened appreciably. “You
can fly in the ether?”
“Ahh…” Aurelius’s head began throbbing again.
“Ether? Really?”
“It seems that we have different words for the same
things. Please remove your weapon from my throat before
I disarm you forcibly.”
“You try anything and I’ll burn you a new pastry hole.”
“Congela teru harns,” the old man whispered.
“What?” Aurelius demanded. The old man turned and
began walking toward the Halcyon Courier. “Stop!”

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 29
But he kept walking. Aurelius tracked his target, took
aim, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. His finger didn’t even move. He
tried again—
With the same result. Suddenly panicking, Aurelius
tried to move his other fingers and found to his
astonishment that they wouldn’t even twitch. He stared in
horror at his hands until the old man’s gravelly voice
interrupted him.
“You’ll regain the use of your hands if you promise not
to harm me.”
“You did this to me?” Aurelius demanded.
The old man stopped to regard him with a crinkly
smile. “Yes. I could have frozen your entire body, but that
would take much longer to recover from, and I need you
to operate your flying machine. If we do not catch up to
Malgore soon, it will be too late.”
Aurelius went back to staring at his hands. “How?”
The old man sighed. “Stop wasting my time. I will
explain to you on the way. We must hurry!”
Aurelius stumbled forward, putting one leaden foot in
front of the other until they had both ascended the
boarding ramp to his ship. He tried to place his palm
against the door controls but found that he couldn’t and
turned to gaze pointedly at his wizened companion.
“Of course.” The old man waved his hand and
whispered something.
Suddenly Aurelius’s hands regained their strength and
his fist tightened around the butt of his pistol. Bringing his
faceplate close to the old man’s nose, he glared into a pair
of icy blue eyes set in flaccid folds of gray skin and then he

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 30
spoke through gritted teeth, “If you ever do something like
that to me again, I’ll kill you.”
“I am certain you will try. Open up,” the man said,
slapping the door with his palm.
Aurelius continued glaring for a sullen moment; then
he nodded viciously, almost head-butting the old man in
the process, and he pressed his palm against the door
scanner. The outer doors slid open with a swish. “Start
explaining,” Aurelius demanded.
“Very well. You have been inadvertently brought to
the future.”
Aurelius stopped just inside the airlock, doing a quick
double-take. “What?”
“I don’t have the patience to explain this more than
once, so just listen, and keep moving.” Aurelius started for
the inner airlock doors, and the outer ones automatically
slid shut behind them. “You are what we in Mrythdom call
an elder, a lost race of humans who all but died out more
than five thousand years ago.”
“Time travel is impossible,” Aurelius stated as he
stalked through the corridors on his way to the cockpit.
Why am I listening to this old sherp? He’s completely lost
his mind.
“Nothing is impossible with magic. The Elves created
the relic sometime in the far future, but when they
created it, it was created outside of time, so it exists in all
times simultaneously. Somewhere, hidden in your time lies
a matching relic, yet these relics are all the same. If one of
them were to be somehow destroyed, they would be
destroyed everywhere, and it would be as though they had
never existed.”

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 31
“That’s a cute story, but you can save it for your
grandkids, Wrinkles. Are you with Freedom? Is this some
kind of test? I have your shipment.”
“Freedom? Freedom from what? Never mind; stop
interrupting me. Do you want me to explain or not?”
Aurelius snorted and rounded on him from the
entrance to the cockpit. “Sure, why not?” He leaned
against the door jamb, affecting a bored look.
“You asked how I was able to freeze your hands. That
was magic. I was also using magic to read your mind. And
Malgore used magic when he took advantage of the
distraction you provided to transport himself and the relic
somewhere far from here.
“Had I been paying attention, I would have sensed his
intentions and been able to stop him, therefore, I blame
you, Elder, for losing the relic, and it is your responsibility
to set things right.”
“Yeah . . .” Aurelius aimed his gun at the old man’s
chest. “Even if I believed your impossibly stupid story, I
wouldn’t owe you or anyone else anything. The only
person I owe is myself, and he’s getting pretty angry right
now that you’re wasting his valuable time. Tell you what,
why don’t you get out of my ship, and I’ll let you live.”
“If you ever want to get back to your time again, I
suggest you accept my help.”
“I don’t need your help, Wrinkles.”
The old man’s face twisted into a grim smile. “My
name is Gabrian, not Wrinkles, and unfortunately for both
of us, I need your help.” Gabrian pointed imperiously over
Aurelius’s shoulder to the pilot’s chair. “SIT.”
Aurelius’s head swam, and he felt a hazy weight settle

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 32
inside his head, as though his brain has suddenly turned to
stone. He swayed unsteadily on his feet before turning to
sit in the pilot’s chair. His brow furrowed as he realized
that he hadn’t made any conscious decision to move. He
was peripherally aware of Gabrian settling into the
copilot’s chair beside him.
“Now, how do I fly this machine?”
“You’re in the wrong seat.”
“Then MOVE.”
Aurelius stood up, feeling light-headed again. “Have
you ever flown a spaceship?”
“No.”
“Then you won’t be able to.”
“I will be the judge of what I can and cannot do,”
Gabrian said, pushing past Aurelius to sit in the pilot’s
chair. He spent a moment frowning at the controls; then
he whispered some strange words and went on frowning.
“You can’t do it, can you?” Aurelius asked.
Gabrian hesitated briefly before flicking a switch on
the dash.
The interior lights snapped on.
“Drackla!” The old man stood and pushed Aurelius
back into the chair. “You fly; I’ll guide you.”
“No,” Aurelius insisted, but his hands flew over the
controls of their own accord, quickly running through a
preflight checklist.
Gabrian sat fuming beside him. “Flying a dragon is far
harder, I can assure you. It won’t take me long to learn
how you make this piece of metal flap its wings.”
Aurelius grinned despite the heavy weight pressing
against the inside of his skull. “Flap its wings? That’ll be the

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 33
day . . . wait,” Aurelius turned slowly to the old man. He
shook his head as though unable to believe what he’d just
heard. “Did you say dragon or dargon?”
Gabrian frowned. “Dragon, of course. What is a
dargon?”
“It’s a troop transport. Never mind that! You really are
brainsick, Wrinkles. Dragons don’t exist.”
“Really?”
A deep and throaty roar began thrumming through
the deck as Aurelius started the ship’s reactor. He
considered the Halcyon’s position for a moment before
applying 5% braking thrust to reverse out of the ditch that
his ship had plowed with its nose. The Halcyon Courier
shuddered, and the blanket of white that was draped
across the canopy began shivering. Sticks and stones
rattled across the transparent beryllium. With a loud
scraping noise, his ship broke free and the tail end
thudded to the ground, sending a jolt up Aurelius’s spine
and instantly clearing the canopy of snow and debris.
Aurelius grimaced. Flying without the inertial
compensators was going to be very difficult. He would
have to keep that in mind so he didn’t accidentally crush
himself with excessive g-forces.
“If dragons don’t exist, then what, pray tell, is that,
Elder?”
Aurelius’s gaze followed the old man’s crooked finger
out the forward viewport to where a craggy black hill
jutted from the dirty snow. His eyes narrowed as he fired
the ventral maneuvering thrusters with his foot. The ship
shot straight up, rising quickly above the trees. That hill
looked strange enough that for a moment Aurelius

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 34
doubted himself. Could it be a dragon? It wasn’t moving.
He shook his head abruptly. Dragons don’t exist. Aurelius
smiled wryly. “Nice try, Wrinkles. That’s just a pile of
rocks.”
Gabrian shrugged. “Deceive yourself if you must,
Elder, but do not pretend to deceive me as well.”
Aurelius snorted and applied more vertical thrust. He
rose ever higher above the trees, revealing an endless
vista of barren gray branches clawing through a carpet of
mist toward a blank white slate of sky.
“Where are we going?” Aurelius asked.
“Due south.”
He swung the ship in a half circle, and a glimmering
gray-white lake swam into view. He carefully applied 10%
forward thrust, and almost lost his grip on the thruster
controls as his ship shot forward, plastering both him and
Gabrian to their chairs. Aurelius grinned from the
exhilaration.
He heard the old man gasping and shot him a quick
look. Gabrian’s face was frozen in terror, and he was
clutching his armrests with white-knuckled claws.
“Are you okay?”
“Do all flying machines move so quickly?”
Aurelius shrugged. “For her size, the Halcyon Courier
is about as fast as they get, but interceptors and fighters
are far faster.”
“Faster than this?” Gabrian asked as they roared
across the lake in mere seconds.
“Much faster, but I’m only using 10% of the Halcyon’s
potential right now. She could go ten times this fast if she
hadn’t been damaged in the crash.” Gabrian gaped at him.

SCOTT / MRYTHDOM / 35
“Speaking of speed, Wrinkles, we’d better strap in or we’ll
be thrown out of our chairs the minute I change course.”
Aurelius clicked the emergency seat restraints into the
buckles on either side of his chair, and Gabrian released
his death grip on the armrests to do the same. Aurelius
noticed that the old man’s hands were shaking violently,
and as Gabrian let go of his right armrest, his staff which
had been clutched in that hand, clattered to the deck.
Suddenly Aurelius felt an enormous weight lift, and his
mind cleared. He gaped accusingly at Gabrian and brought
his elbow up in a vicious sideways hook to Gabrian’s jaw.
Something cracked and the old man screamed.
“You fool!” Gabrian shouted, spitting blood against
the canopy as he reeled in his seat restraints. “Can you not
see that I am trying to help you?”
Aurelius had his pistol aimed at Gabrian again.
“I warned you, Wrinkles.” Suddenly everything was
clear. The old man must have drugged him.
Gabrian fought the seat restraints to reach his fallen
staff, but his arms were too short. Aurelius pulled the
trigger and a brilliant flash of blue light connected with the
old man’s skull. Gabrian slumped in his chair, and Aurelius
scowled. “Good riddance,” he muttered as he holstered his pistol. ...