The collapsing bubble of the Box deposited Pandora within the confines of an alley, her appearance sending a nearby colony of rats scrambling away from piled refuse with annoyed chitters. Blinking away the disorientation—and damn glad she’d not appeared in the midst of the rats—Pandora rose, steadying herself against the alley wall. In one hand she held the Box. Beautiful, hateful, tormenting, and oh so precious, this vessel into which she had poured all the hopes of changing Fate.
To hold it once more, years after having lost it, felt akin to regaining the use of a lost limb. An impossible boon, a surging relief that threatened to have her heart bursting in elation she could scarce believe, much less put into words. But beneath all that joy—tears welled from it—was fear, too, for she looked at this Box just as the Gnostic Cabal had looked upon their Time Chambers, infusing it with desperate hopes of escaping the ouroboros.
The Cabal had, so far as Pandora knew, failed. Vorsanos had become Kronos, Kronos had fled through time, and, in the end, Kala had slain him in the distant, snow-blighted future Hekate would create. Neither seeing the future in the Oracle Mirrors nor timewalking using the Chambers had allowed the Cabalist to change aught. Fate had stalked him through the halls of time, cornered him, and claimed him.
That knowledge struck like a fist to her gut. It tried to blast the hope from her lungs and leave her resigned, giving in to the fatalistic ennui that always lurked in the shadows of her doubting soul. But Pandora had sworn to Nemesis—Athene!—that she would never stop fighting, and it was more than an oath; it was an assertion of the greater truth of her soul.
She stared at the Box, its metal cool in her hand. It dared her to use it, to strive once more, to fight against the constricting coils of that ouroboros. To try, always at least one more time, to find the way toward true freedom of will. With a sigh, she tucked the device into her satchel and strode forth, into whatever polis she now found herself in.
The place was foreign to her and, given that twilight had most shopkeepers already packed up for the eve, it took her longer than she might have liked to identify her surroundings. It was not as if she could walk up to a passerby and inquire as to what city she was in, though the mental image of their expressions at such a question did bring a smile to her lips. Mostlike, she’d find herself named a madwoman and locked up or thrown outside the city for fear her condition might prove catching.
Instead, she strolled the breezeways until she caught enough snippets of conversation to recognise the local tongue as Phrygian. The only city of this size in Phrygia was Ilium, the place Artemis had claimed to have last seen Pandora before their fateful encounter in Babilim. The thought of Artemis had Pandora’s chest clenching in its familiar tightness. Even her eye was twitching. How had Pandora allowed their friendship to flounder thus? Why had she not been able to do more to avert the conflict she had foreseen coming betwixt them? Every step she had taken had seemed, at the time, so needful.
But then, that was what Ananke meant, after all: necessity. Things happened as they must, based upon causal chains. Even this moment, even her regrets and self-recriminations now, were predicated upon events in her past that led to the pattern of her thoughts, to the movements of her soul. How was Pandora to hope to overcome a fundamental law of the universe, to deny causality itself?
If she was to have a chance, any chance at all, it must lie in the absolute mastery of the Box. Every time she had used this thing, her control had improved. Maybe, given enough knowledge and pratice, given a clever enough means to outwit the Moirai, she could find a way to save the future without unmaking the past. Such were her musings as she came to stare up at the walls surrounding the royal citadel of Ilium.
Beneath the citadel lay the lower city, where she had appeared, a place thick with tenements and workshops, with markets where the real people of this land plied their trades and hoped to peddle enough goods to return home with food for their families. And above all of them rose this towering edifice of kings, almost a literal mountain looking down on them the way Olympus soared over Elládos. Pandora wondered if the king here, whoever it was in these days, was better than the rulers of other lands.
Either way, if she was to find Artemis, assuming she had reached the correct time, she would need to head within the palace. Perhaps the citadel guards would have taken in her Heliad eyes, assumed her a Nymph, and admitted her despite her dirty, battle-stained clothes and dishevelled appearance. Perhaps they would even believe if she named herself as Nike. Or she might admit herself to the palace and thus test how fine her control with this Box had become.
For a time, Pandora walked the wall’s periphery, judging the distance to the terrace far above. A few citizens and at least one guard seemed to take note of the strange woman examining the wall, but she paid them little mind as she performed a few trigonometric calculations in her head. Thus far, the Box had never caused her to appear in immediate danger, so perhaps Prometheus had installed some sort of safety feature that ensured she could not transport herself inside a solid object, or appear in midair, or under the sea, or any such fatal situation. Still, she thought it best to remain as precise as possible; why even take the chance of missing the terrace?
When she had checked her calculations twice, she removed the Box and began twisting the gears and panels. In Vulgeth, Amirani had told her the Time Chambers moved one through both time and space, and that, in fact, they had to move one through space to function. But the Box was a more subtle tool, a masterpiece predicated upon its creation, as Prometheus had used his experience examining the Box to later create it in the first place. So perhaps, with care, Pandora could move herself through space without any meaningful shift in time. Or, if she did move through time, then let her move by but a few heartbeats, so as to make no difference to her ends.
“You there!” someone cried from behind her, and she turned to see a guardsman headed her way, a wary look on his face. “It’s rather late for a woman to be out alone.”
Pandora favoured the man with a smirk. “Oh, but alone I’ve braved the sea of time, and survived the thrashing of its wild waves. Alone, I have walked through dark spaces others fear to even name in whispers.” When the guard faltered, gawping at her, Pandora winked, and activated the Box.
The bubble of light rose up, engulfing her, making her ears pop. Next she knew, the World had shifted, and she was kneeling upon the terrace, a magnificent view of the stars spread out before her. She tried to stand, but a second wave of vertigo drove her back to her knees and forced her to remain there until, at last, her vision ceased to swim. That was odd …
As she rose once more, a servant sweeping the area around the balcony stumbled back, mumbling. “Forgive me, lady. I did not know anyone was up here.” The man seemed afraid to even raise his head. Were most aristoi in this place such oafish brutes as to castigate a servant for doing his assigned tasks?
Pandora strode to the man’s side and gently touched his elbow. “I am seeking for the Olympian, Artemis. Is she here?”
The man swallowed hard but nodded and scampered off, with mumbled obeisance Pandora had not sought.
With a sigh, she turned and made her way to the edge of a battlement. Leaning against it, she gazed up at the moon. Was that Thoth himself—itself?—the Elder God? Prometheus had told her the Elders Gods, once called Archons, had commanded the Watchers. Now, she could not shake the sense the moon itself watched her, and its regard, imagined or not, made her feel like a scrambling insect underfoot, allowed to exist only by the indifference of giants.
She and Prometheus had found precious little time to speak of such things on Mu, more was the pity, given he had at long last begun to offer real answers to her questions. Perhaps he had judged she had journeyed far enough, learnt enough, to handle the truths he must unveil to her. His awful Ontos; that knowledge that had shaken a Watcher, born at the dawn of time, to his core.
She heard someone running toward her, and when she turned, Artemis skidded to a stop several feet away. “Did Zeus send you here for me?”
Pandora could have sworn she’d had almost the same conversation with the woman in Babilim. And the thought of that, of how it had ended, it once more had that ache in her chest throbbing. Something between a cry and a chortle escaped her, for she could not say for certain whether elation or deepest of sorrows should have come from this moment. She was afraid, was terrified, this would prove the last time she would see Artemis on friendly terms. The thought of that sent a fire more intense than even the Phoenix burning through her core. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d strode forward and flung her arms around Artemis. Even as she did so, she recalled that was how Artemis had greeted her in Babilim, before Pandora had tried to kill her emperor.
“Gods, Artemis,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry for everything … what happened or will … f-for the mistakes I’ve made. I want us only to be friends, always …”
