The Iron Empire

Riq straightened, his chest puffing out. “I’d like to join your army. Fight by your side.”

Dak and Sera were on him in an instant, throwing out questions left and right. The world suddenly felt surreal and unstable again, as if the Breaks hadn’t been corrected after all. What could he possibly be talking about?

“You guys, stop,” Riq said quietly. But something in his face silenced Dak completely, and he knew there’d be no changing his friend’s mind. Riq wasn’t going back with them. “Both of you knew this was coming. My future was altered, and I can’t go back.” He lowered his voice. “But I can have a future here, and I can make a difference. These people need my help. I think their intentions are good, but they obviously have a lot to learn about civility and treating other cultures with respect. I can do them a lot of good.”

“But . . .” Dak started, and didn’t finish. His heart hurt. Sera’s face had melted into the saddest frown he’d ever seen. “But,” he repeated.

“Trust me, okay?” Riq replied, reaching out to squeeze both Dak’s and Sera’s shoulders. “This is what I have to do.”

“What about Kisa?” Sera asked. “You could go and be with her and the Maya.”

Riq shook his head. “No. She has her own destiny. Mine is here. To help Alexander change the world. And hey, what’s the big deal? You have a time-travel device. You can come visit me anytime you want. Duh.” He smiled, then turned his gaze to the king. “Will you have me, hegemon?”

Alexander, tired and worn out as he might be, looked every bit a king as he walked over and stood in front of Riq. “I’d be honored to have you by my side. I really would. And there you’ll be, always, to the four corners of the earth. But I’m giving you a new name, a . . . Greek name. You are a builder, a maker, and so I name you after Hephaestus, god of fire. From this day forward you’ll be known as Hephaestion. Be back here at dawn to plan our next move.” And with that, Alexander left, leaving his own tent to Riq and the others for their good-byes.

Dak felt no shame as he hugged his two best friends in the world and bawled his eyes out.

SERA LOOKED up, way up, and saw something that she surely never imagined she would: the long, long neck of an Apatosaurus. Its gigantic mouth munched and munched as it tore the leaves off of a tree.

She wasn’t dreaming. This was real. And it had all been Aristotle’s idea.

“Cool,” Dak whispered, staring above with his mouth hanging open like the cargo door of a giant airplane. “Cool.”

Olympias — mother of Alexander the Third, wearer of amethysts, plotter of murders — sat upon a stone, her hands and feet bound by a material that the great philosopher said would dissolve within a few hours. Right next to her, Pausanius himself sat, tied up and brooding like a punished child. He was an ugly guy, and Sera was anxious to warp back to the time of Greece so she wouldn’t have see his traitorous face anymore.

“How could you do this to us?” Olympias asked, as calm, cool, and collected as Sera had ever seen her. “How will you go throughout the rest of your lives, living with the guilt of leaving us here to be eaten by these monsters?”

“Oh, stop your complaining,” Dak answered, finally pulling his gaze from the enormous beast that towered above them. “This region is dominated by herbivores, and there’s plenty of food and fresh water for you guys to live long happy years together. You deserve each other. Just be glad that Aristotle didn’t let them throw you in the dark dungeons, like the hegemon ordered. This is paradise.”

Sera did feel a little guilty, but Dak made a great point. Alexander had felt so utterly betrayed by his own mother that he’d wanted the harshest of punishments. Olympias and Pausanius were actually getting off easy. Way easy. Most civilizations would’ve put them to death. In fact, Alexander intended to tell everyone that Pausanius, at least, had been killed. The new hegemon couldn’t afford to look weak.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Pausanius grumbled. “Just please explain why I saw doubles of you two while we were . . . journeying here.”

Sera almost laughed. She’d inputted a wrong number when calculating the warp back to prehistoric times, and they’d appeared just as their doubles were leaving the stables to go back and stop Tilda from killing Alexander the first time. Thinking about it confused even her, so she couldn’t imagine what Olympias and her partner in crime thought about it.

“It’ll give you something to ponder for the rest of your life,” Dak answered. “With the dinosaurs. I’m kind of jealous, to be honest. Seems like a cool place. And don’t worry, T. rexes don’t come around these parts.”

“T. rexes?” Olympias asked, looking baffled.

“Never mind.”

“Come on,” Sera said, stepping beside Dak and holding out the Infinity Ring. “Let’s go say our final bye-bye to Aristotle.” They had two more trips to make. Back to Greece, then back to the modern day, where hopefully everything was hunky-dory. Then maybe they could spend a few months healing from the toll all that time traveling took on their bodies.

Dak reached out and put his hand on the cool metal of the Ring, then he gave one last glance at the banished prisoners. “I hope you guys learned your lesson. And don’t be mad at us. It was Aristotle’s idea, and we just do what we’re told. He’s the boss of the Hystorians, you know.”

Sera loved the expression of confusion that swept over the face of Olympias. She pushed the button and quantum physics took them back to Greece, far in the future and long ago, depending on how you looked at it. She just never knew how to think of such things anymore.

“I don’t really know what to say,” Aristotle said as they sat on the balcony in the place they’d had their first deep discussion. Dak thought it seemed like thousands of years ago, which, in a way, was true. “We’ve been through so much in such a relatively short period of time. It’s hard to say good-bye to friends. Friendship is a single soul living in two bodies. Or, in our case, four. At least I’ll get to see Riq — I mean, Hephaestion — again, once the wars are over.”

Dak nodded, not sure what to say himself. He was itching to get back to the modern day and make sure his parents were okay. And that the world wasn’t, you know, about to blow up into tiny pieces. Sera did the talking for them.