Boris: You have no idea how hard it was! I had to take any leader out, tag switch to Inca to move their army there, then attack with my one unit and no leader. Even then I had to reload once because I won! So yeah, I got this number through the game.
polport: She sure is....
Aliasing: Haha! That cracked me up.
Chicken: Then watch this AAR!
Dewirix: That's how the game starts. Spain spreads rather impossibly actually. They have colonies in central south america they can't even reach! And yeah but she's NOT protecting the timeline.
Razgriz: I hope not too annoying!
Sather: It is...but not too strange once you know why!
BTW I hope this chapter makes sense to everyone. It made sense to me...but that's not necessarily the same thing!
Chapter 10 – A Paradox Revealed
7/3/1533
Veracruz was restive in the breeze that blew in from the west. In the harbour a ship lay at anchor. On the quayside Talena, Rodrigo and the others waited to board. It had been a gruelling experience since the new year, with a long journey across the still unpacified areas of the former Aztec Empire. Though under Spanish control it was anything but unified, and on one occasion rebels had attacked them.
“The permission to leave arrived from the Viceroy today,” Rodrigo said. “It’s time to go.”
Talena nodded. Getting on a ship again was hardly her idea of a good time, but she felt an urge to leave the New World and return to the old.
“I see you are coming with us as well, Talena,” Isabella said. Her tone was ambiguous, hinting at disapproval.
Talena stared levelly at her. “I think after saving your husband to-be from bloodthirsty savages I would be allowed to do this.”
“Unnatural, I would call it, a woman acting like a man. Hardly a woman anymore after that.”
“Depends on your definition of woman. If you mean, self-righteous harpy then-“ Talena begun a very un-politically correct rant.
“I think, Countess, that the ship is prepared to board,” Alava the priest interjected smoothly.
Isabella gave Talena a dirty look and strode aboard, followed by the priest and maid.
Talena looked around Veracruz and the Americas as a whole one last time, and then followed.
The Santa Juan was a larger ship, but had other passengers, so Talena found herself in a small closet-like room a mere four feet wide, but ten long. If it came to battle the wall partition could be removed and a cannon was ready to be used.
As Talena was settling in she came back from a look at the ship to find that someone had casually placed a paper on her bed. It was written in the original language of her home and time. It was a travel brochure for Cuzco. ‘Come see the site of the Inca capital…in Reality Vision Cinematics! Experience the campaign that conquered Peru as if you were there!’ After so long it was like a foreign language to her, but finally she finished it. Eyes narrowed she crumpled it into a ball and stood.
Talena knew she was impetuous, impatient and usually didn’t think things through. But this time took the cake.
As a noble, even a penniless one, Rodrigo had a larger room, and the priest was saying a prayer while Maria and Isabella cleaned clothes.
Talena burst in and held the paper out. “Who put this on my bed?” she demanded.
“Talena, please,” Alava said.
“No! I am sick of being jerked around. One of you did this, and I want to know who!” Demanding information and threatening a Count, his fiancée and a priest was not the smartest move, and for a moment there was silence.
Her eyes tracked from one to the other. Any one of them could have done it. Any one of them was a possibility. One of them knew something, had helped her, but was keeping her in the dark. One of them needed to confess.
The tableaux stretched before Talena. The priest flustered and surprised, the Count embarrassed and annoyed, the Countess angry and vindictive, and the maid amused and smug.
Her eyes snapped to Maria again and she pointed. “You!”
Maria put down her brush and stepped forward. “I won’t be long, Mistress,” she said. “Come, Miss Mazari, I will explain everything.”
Out on deck they were practically alone. The problem of them being overheard was quickly solved when Maria started speaking a language Talena barely remembered; her own.
“I suppose that the pamphlet was a bit much,” Maria said lightly. She grinned.
“You told me you couldn’t read!” Talena accused.
“And you believed me? I’m sorry, but it was necessary. I didn’t want to interfere with you…and you did exactly what I expected and wanted. You’ve derailed the time track again.”
“What? Just who are you?” Talena demanded angrily. “Tell me what is going on with time! First I change history, then it’s back in place, and now it’s broken again?”
“Correct. Your journey back into the past was unplanned, and has severely changed you. Your immortality is a direct result of that. Thus, as long as you are alive and conscious the timeline is changing with you. Normally people’s efforts are absorbed into the greater thread of history, but not you. And I was sent to monitor you, to observe.”
“So you’re from the Order?”
Maria shook her head. “Oh no. Not the Order. We are a group opposed to them. I won’t bore you, but I’m not with them.”
“So you’re the bad guys are you?” Talena asked sourly.
“I’ve not been ordered to neutralise you,” Maria replied pointedly. “So no, I rather think we are morally superior.”
“How did you know where I’d be? Out of all the places in the world you just happened to be there?”
“No luck was involved. I can travel in time remember. It was a simple matter of discovering from your future self where you’d be and going there.”
“So now time is out of sync again? What should I do?”
“You ask me?” Maria asked.
“Well you’ve got an opinion, so you might as well share it.”
“Then I suggest you do as you wish. It is your gift to be your own force in the universe, so use it. I think the two of us could do much to make the world a better place.”
“What do you mean?” Talena asked suspiciously.
“Lucille is a nice girl. I have no enmity towards her, or you. Rather, I think that if you could redo history wouldn’t you want to? Without the great wars, without the instability?”
“Where is Lucille? Where is Cade?”
“Lucille was arrested and taken by her own people. They didn’t want her to help you…they wanted her to neutralise you. As for Cade…I don’t know. He perhaps survived.”
“I don’t trust you still…but thank you for helping me,” Talena said.
“But of course. I wouldn’t expect you to accept me on blind faith. I hope in time you’ll come to agree with me. As a token of good faith though…” She handed Talena a small bag of coins.
Talena took it, puzzled, but pocketed them. “Thanks. I guess you’d better get back to your Mistress.”
Maria snorted. “Only until we get to Europe. Farewell…Talena.”
Talena was left in silence. This…woman. A rival? A friend? Whatever she was, Talena was on her own; she knew this only too well. Things had just gotten a bit more complex though.