Truthfully, Time Turner hadn’t done much planeswalking since the Great Mending. The feeling of rushing through the Blind Eternities was one that he had been familiar with for centuries, yet in recent decades there was something distinctly different about it. A tingle as he rushed across pandimensional space that wasn’t there before, a subtle reminder of his newfound vulnerability.
Thanks to the Cutie Map’s aid (and Harmony herself, of course), Time Turner could see the mana line that connected Princess Twilight to her home plane. It was a single stream of magic, gleaming brightly even among the swirling colors between planes, pulsing with a power that few planeswalkers today possessed. Following it led him across hundreds if not thousands of different planes, each nearly indistinguishable from one another from the outside.
Finally, the line connected to a single plane, in a vast expanse of space that was devoid of other planes. Space itself seemed to fold around the plane from most sides, leaving only a single opening in the spatial pocket where the plane could be accessed.
A grin broke out on Time Turner’s face. He’d seen that pocket before, many years ago. With renewed determination, he charged forward through the Blind Eternities, diving straight into the plane.
As his body materialized, his eyes took a moment to adjust to his new surroundings, blurry scenery coming into focus as his senses recalibrated themselves. When his vision cleared, he found himself in the midst of a street that looked to have been utterly destroyed. Massive, crumbling constructions dotted the road on both sides, with grass slipping through the cracks of the cobblestone roads, trees bursting through the pavement, and vines slithering their way up the collapsing buildings. It looked like jungle that was made of equal parts stone and plant life.
From the looks of it, he had ended up right in the middle of the Rubblebelt, just as he intended. Planeswalking to a specific location in any plane was difficult, but he had a great many years of practice beneath his belt. Besides, the Rubblebelt was one of the ideal locations to arrive in if he wished to avoid being seen, thanks to its extremely sparse population.
Of course, there was still the matter of finding Princess Twilight. Time Turner closed his eyes, focusing his magical sense on the same mana line that drew him to the plane. He could feel Harmony’s magic, and he could feel it leading somewhere to the west. All he had to do was follow it.
He was then suddenly pulled out of his focus by a sudden jolt running down his spine: a quasi-psychic danger impulse that he’d developed from hundreds of years of training. Time Turner’s eyes snapped open and he stamped his hoof. Guided by his own will, his magic was channeled into a thin membrane of temporal stasis surrounding his body, one that would stop any projectile approaching him in its tracks.
Sure enough, just to the right of him was a very large javelin, carved from wood and bone, one that would have impaled him right through the head if he had acted even a moment later. He released the temporal membrane, letting the javelin drop to the ground with a clatter.
“Alright! Come on out, then!” Time Turner called out. “I know you’re out here somewhere! No sense hiding from me now, is there?”
“Whoa, you can talk?” It was a youthful voice, male from the sound of it, and it came calling from high above.
Time Turner looked in the direction of the voice, and saw an adolescent boy sitting atop one of the ruined buildings. His skin was dark, and he wore sparse clothing made from animal hide. His head possessed only a single tuft of hair on top, as well as several facial tattoos and piercings. Most noticeably, he carried by his side an axe that was larger than his entire body, crudely cobbled together from salvaged wood and animal bones. With impossible speed and grace, the boy jumped down from the building and approached.
“Yes, I can talk, thank you for noticing,” said Time Turner. “What I want to know is what you think you’re doing, attacking me out of the blue like that.”
The boy shrugged. “Hey, I just thought you were another animal. I’ve gotta eat, you know?” He stepped forward, regarding Time Turner curiously. “But now that I get a good look at you, you don’t quite look like any animal I’ve seen on this plane. You’re not really from Ravnica, are you?”
Plane. Somehow, this boy knew of the existence of other planes. Which could only mean...
Time Turner let out a laugh. “Another planeswalker! Well, talk about a coincidence! So, what do you call yourself? You’ve got a name, right?”
“Just call me Domri,” said the boy. “What exactly is a talking horse like you doing here on Ravnica, anyway?”
Time Turner paused. Beneath Domri’s wild appearance, there was a true sincerity in his eyes, and not a trace of harmful intent. He had all the trappings of a Gruul, and though they were widely derided as savages, they lived more honestly than most of the ponies he had met. They were not ones to deceive others in any circumstance, and they didn’t have the subtlety for it regardless.
Trusting Domri with the information of why he’d come to Ravnica was a gamble, but it was one he could easily manage. A Gruul wouldn’t spread rumors or gossip about his presence in the multiverse. For the most part, they didn’t care for anything but preserving their own way of life, and protecting it from the constant encroach of civilization.
“There’s someone I happen to be looking for,” Time Turner finally spoke. “A pony like me, only she’s bright purple, and has both wings and a horn. Does that ring any bells?”
Domri shrugged. “Can’t say I have, no. Is she a friend of yours?”
“Well, no,” said Time Turner. “Princess Twilight Sparkle happens to be a very important person on my home plane, and it’s of utmost importance that she be returned as possible, or things could get quite nasty in the near future. So as you can imagine, I’ve come here to bring her back.”
“A princess, huh?” Domri’s eyes narrowed. “You mean like some kind of authority figure. Someone who rules over others.”
Oh. Oh, bollocks. That was a mistake. In all his life, Time Turner had never quite gotten a solid grasp on when to stop talking. “Now hold on there, it’s not exactly like that...”
“You know, now that I look at you, you look kind of like one of those Azorius,” Domri continued. “All neat and tidy, like you want everything in its place. Like you want to put everyone else in their place. And that magic you used before looked like the same kind of magic they use.”
“Well, in some sense, perhaps, but I’ve never quite seen eye-to-eye with any of the guilds here,” Time Turner protested. “There a quite a few things I find questionable about the Azorius in particular, and... and you’re not going to listen to what I say about that, are you?”
“Nope,” said Domri, tightening his grip on his axe. “I don’t think I like princesses. And I think your people would be better off without one.”
“Now hold on, let’s not do anything rash he—”
Time Turner abruptly cut himself off when Domri’s axe came swinging horizontally towards his head, forcing him to duck just beneath the attack. Before he could even think to say anything else, Domri followed the movement up with a second, vertical swing. As Time Turner jumped back to avoid the blow, the impact of bone against the ground caused an explosion of dirt and cobblestone.
The distance that Time Turner had created was quickly closed by Domri, who came swinging with his axe once more. Time Turner had always prided himself on his incredible agility and speed; even without the aid of his chronomancy he was fast and nimble enough to outpace almost every other pony he’d ever known. Yet here Domri was, not only able to keep up with him, but keep up with him while swinging an axe that seemed far too large for him to carry.
Then, the answer came to him. He could sense the mana that Domri was drawing into himself from Ravnica’s leylines: equal parts red and green. Red magic for speed, and green magic for strength. If that was all he could come up with, the boy was in over his head more than he could possibly comprehend.
Time Turner dodged another strike aimed at his head, and then spoke. “You know, you’re not the first planeswalker—” Another swing, another miss. “—to use this kind of magic against me.”
“Oh?” said Domri. Another swing of his axe, hitting only the empty air where Time Turner was a moment before. “So who’s the other guy?”
“Nasty-looking goat fellow,” said Time Turner. There was a whiff as Domri’s axe passed dangerously close to his own ear. “Quite vicious, liked to burn things.”
“Not a fan of burning things,” said Domri. “I prefer smashing stuff.” As if to demonstrate, he swung his axe again, only to be met with the same result as all his other attempts.
“I can see that, yes,” said Time Turner, managing to roll his eyes even as the axe came crashing down on the space he previously occupied. “The point is that he was quite a lot more formidable than you—” The axe once again whizzed past his head. “—and I still defeated him. Quite soundly, even. So what chance do you think you have, going up against someone like me?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” said Domri. He raised his axe once again, this time above his own head.
“But you should be,” Time Turner shot back. “And this is why.” Just as Domri began moving to send the axe crashing down, he reacted. This time, instead of dodging, he sent out a burst of his magic. Domri was at once enveloped in a transparent, shimmering bubble, holding every part of him completely in place. A muffled ‘mmph’ sound came from Domri as he feebly attempted to protest.
“Alright, Domri,” said Time Turner, approaching the young planeswalker with a glare. “Since you’ve been remarkably stubborn thus far, I’m going to go ahead and spell this out for you as clearly and plainly as possible. You, under absolutely no circumstances, will ever be able to hurt me. I’m far older and far stronger than you, and there isn’t anything you can do to me that I haven’t survived at least a dozen times before. But there’s something else I want you to understand.”
Domri let out a wordless grunt, his mouth twitching ever so slightly.
“I want you to understand that, while you may be unable to hurt me, I under absolutely no circumstance will hurt you,” Time Turner continued. “Not just because you’re only a child, but because I’ve no reason to hurt someone who is so very, very outmatched. But though I won’t hurt you, if you continue to antagonize me, you’ll find that I have no qualms making your life unreasonably frustrating. So you go your own way, and I’ll go mine, and we’ll both forget that this ever happened. Do we have a deal?”
Time Turner released his magic, and Domri collapsed to the ground. Time Turner expected some hostility as he picked himself up to his feet, but instead Domri looked at him and smirked.
“Alright, deal,” said Domri. “I’m not the one you should be worried about, anyway. I was just keeping you busy.”
Time Turner blinked, and he felt a sudden realization punch him in the gut. The red and green magic he sensed before. Domri wasn’t just using it on himself.
A deafening roar suddenly pierced the air, causing Time Turner’s ears to reflexively fold back on themselves.
“Sorry, I’ve gotta go,” said Domri, grinning. “I don’t want to be around when that thing gets hungry.”
“Hold on! Now you wait just a moment here!” Time Turner cried out, but by then it was too late. Domri had already leapt into the air, carrying his axe with him as he jumped across the rooftops, fleeing into the distance.
The hair on the back of Time Turner’s neck stood on end even before he heard the beast’s approach, a cacophonous symphony of thunderous footsteps, crunching stone, and crashing branches. He turned towards the direction of the noise, a ruined cathedral just to his left, and assumed a defensive stance.
Suddenly, the stone entrance of the building violently exploded outwards, spewing chunks of stone, dust, and splintered wood out with the force of a volcano. Time Turner shielded himself from the debris with a temporal bubble, and looked through it to see the source of the disturbance. When the dust cleared, he felt a twinge of fear for what was probably the first time since the Mending.
The beast was a massive, hulking creature that stood nearly fifty feet tall, leaving the cathedral interior utterly demolished as the monster forcefully cleared a path through it. Though its shape was vaguely humanoid, its features were like a grotesque parody of bipedal life. It was a dark grey mass of pure muscle and sinew, and no face but a single maw filled with predatory teeth, each of them as large as a pony, dripping with saliva that left disgusting, sticky puddles on the ground.
“Well now,” said Time Turner. “I suppose you’re not interested in negotiating, are you?”
If the beast understood language, it wasn’t apparent in its response, as it instead lunged forward with a single arm, attempting to seize Time Turner in its hand. Time Turner reacted immediately, jumping to the right so that the beast was left only with empty air in its fist.
The trajectory of Time Turner’s jump carried him towards a massive tree that was growing through one of the buildings to the right, its trunk angled forty-five degrees from the ground, and its canopy more than a dozen feet above the beast’s head. As he landed, he ran up its trunk and onto the massive branches, and then leapt high into the air.
As his jump reached his peak, he would remain suspended in the air for only a brief moment before falling, but that was all the time he needed. He applied a bit of time magic on a pocket of air just in front of him, enveloping it in a thin membrane. The flow of time within the bubble was sped up to several hundred times faster than normal, and the air within it glowed red-hot from the increased motion of its molecules.
Then, twisting his body around, he kicked the fast-time bubble with a rear hoof. The temporal bubble vanished instantly, causing the air within it to expand outwards with explosive force. With another subtle touch of his magic, all of the motion of the expanding air was condensed into a single linear vector, aimed straight at the monster’s head.
It was one of Time Turner’s favorite tricks. A destructive burst of sonic energy, created solely through the manipulation of time.
There was a painful shriek in the air as the monster recoiled from the impact, crashing through even more of the ruined cathedral. Time Turner, propelled backwards by the force of his attack, landed back onto the branches of the tree.
The monster picked itself back onto its feet, clutching its forehead in pain. Rivers of crimson blood dripped from the wound beneath its palm, staining the ground beneath it deep red. Teeth grinding together in rage, the monster let out a roar so intense that it generated a powerful gust of wind, threatening to blow Time Turner straight off the tree he stood on.
Thunderous footsteps like miniature earthquakes shook the ground as the monster charged forward. It raised a clenched fist and brought it smashing into the tree’s trunk. Time Turner reacted with a backwards leap, soaring high through the air. The tree’s trunk immediately shattered from the impact of the blow, sending splinters, leaves, bark and branches flying. He placed a quick shield around himself, stopping the worst of the debris from impacting him.
Another large branch, wide enough that he could stand on it, soared past Time Turner. With another touch of time magic, he adjusted his trajectory so that he landed hoof-first on the branch’s side. Then, before gravity could pull him off, and before the branch could even begin to land, he pushed off with his hooves once more, sending him soaring above the monster’s head.
This time, he created two separate bubbles of time magic. With a pair of rapid, twisting roundhouse kicks, Time Turner sent two sonic blasts at the monster in rapid succession. The impact was so intense that he could feel the shockwaves radiating from it.
The monster let out another roar, a desperate cry of pain and fury, as its body began frantically writhing, thrashing about with no aim or direction. Buildings and stonework buckled, crashed, and crumbled from the force of the monster’s rage, until finally, with one final cry, it collapsed head-first onto the ground. The cloud of dust it kicked up was so large that it billowed into the sky, no doubt visible for miles in every direction.
Finally, Time Turner descended back onto the ground, his fall slowed by the application of his own magic. He coughed as the dust from the monster’s fall invaded his lungs, and wiped the invasive particles from his eyes with his foreleg. When the dust finally cleared, the monster was lying dead, right in the middle of the crater its fall had created.
Time Turner let out a sigh of relief, allowing his own breath to catch up to him. “Well! That was exciting! I just hope I don’t attract that kind of attention again.”
————————
Sonic Bolt W
Instant
Sonic Bolt deals 3 damage to target attacking or blocking creature.
“I don’t start fights, but I always end them.”
— Time Turner