Ch. 75: Temporal Rift Generator
“I’m willing,” I said, my voice steady despite the fear gnawing at my insides. “Whatever it takes.”
Hephaestus studied me for a long moment, then turned to Talos. “You trust this one?”
Talos hesitated, then nodded. “I do.”
The god of the forge let out a long sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. “Fine. I’ll help. But know this—if I do, you’ll owe me. Big. And I don’t deal in favors lightly.”
“Was that a threat?” I asked.
“That’s rich coming from a god that lost and arm to his own brother. You big gods giving yourself the title of the big three and your honorariums. In the end your are not all that different from us.” He boomed as he walked to a fridge and smashed it open. “When we’re done I want you out of my sights.” He said as he popped open the cover of the bottle of beer with his teeth.
Talos’s face brightened with a mixture of relief and tension, but she nodded in agreement. “We understand.”
“Good.” Hephaestus gurgled down his beer and burped loudly. “So what brings you here my prodigal daughter? I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Talos looked a bit agitated, a bit out of her behavior. “Not the case father, I merely escaped my prison here. You sought to control me like one of your hand tools and I failed to comply with your protocol, there was not much to be up for discussion on the matter.”
“And here you are back in my life Talos, I guess you really are one sided.” He sighed and turned to face me. “Now why would the god of the underworld be here? Come for a weapon to help you take down Zeus, I hear he went mad because you left him. Let me tell you something, Zeus is unbeatable when it comes to battle and his thunderbolt is second to none so keep dreaming. And why is Hermes alive, I’m sure you died though I didn’t come to your funeral.”
Hermes wanted to speak but I shut him up with a simple hand gesture. No point in offending the only person that planned to help me.
“No knew comes to see the deformity unless they need something from me so what do you want?” He asked again.
I took a step forward and said. “You know of the Calamity so I guess you already know.”
Hephestus finished the bottle of beer and tossed it into a section where it met with a number of other bottles there. “No, I don’t. All I know is that the calamities are a home call to the endtime. It’s funny how people disregard messages on the end of the world. There are stories that a savior will come but I was never one for stories on hope.”
What a tough guy. “I am in need of a time machine and Talos said you might be able to help me out. It’s urgent.”
“That sounds far fetched.” Hephestus let out a crooked chuckle.
Talos gnashed her teeth at him. “Why else do you think we’re here father? You’re the only mad genius we have who had even thought about time travel so are you going to help us or not.”
Hephestus hesitated for a moment before saying. “A’ight, a’ight. Anything for my darling daughter.” He lumbered over to a cluttered workbench and started rummaging through the debris of what I thought to be half-finished projects and tools. “There’s something I’ve been working on… an old experiment. Time travel, or at least a crude version of it. It didn’t work the way I wanted it to, but if anyone’s got a chance of using it, it’ll be you. That is if you want to end up as cream paste.”
He pulled out a strange device, about the size of a large backpack, covered in wires and gears that hummed faintly with power. It looked ancient yet advanced at the same time, like something that shouldn’t exist.
“This,” he said, setting it down in front of us, “is the Temporal Rift Generator. It can open a door to the past— briefly. But it’s unstable. You won’t have long, and there’s no guarantee you’ll end up exactly where or when you need to be. I haven’t had a live specimen before so.”
Hermes practically danced in place with excitement, his eyes wide as he stared at the device. “Time travel! I knew it! This is incredible!”
I, on the other hand, felt a knot form in my stomach. As much as I wanted to believe that this was the solution we’d been searching for, something about the way Hephaestus described it didn’t sit right with me. The risks were too high, the uncertainties too many.
Talos reached out and placed a hand on the device, her expression unreadable. “This is a bunch of horse crap,” she said quietly. “Its a water proof backpack he made back in the day. Quit fooling around father.”
Hephestus chuckled deeply. “Guess I can’t play a prank on my daughter’s guests.” What a bundle of joy he turned out to be. “I have long since abandoned the project of time travel but if you want to see my ol’ baby come this way.”
Hephaestus took us deeper into his workshop where we stopped before a huge tarp, he tugged at it to reveal a huge circular disk metal glowing in the light.
Hephaestus crossed his arms, his face grim. “Just remember what I said— if you go back and fail, you could end up making things worse. Time is fragile, and one wrong move could unravel everything.”
I glanced at Talos, then at Hermes, who was still buzzing with excitement. My mind raced with the possibilities and the dangers. This was it. Our chance to stop Calamity Zero before it ever began. But if we failed, the consequences could be catastrophic.
Finally, I nodded. “We’ll do it.”
“Nuh-huh, ain’t no we on this matter, just you.” Talos scoffed at me.
Why that betrayer!
“I’m in, I love time and parallel universes theories.” Hermes was eager to join.
Hephaestus’s eyes narrowed. “Then you’d better prepare yourselves. Once you step through that portal, there’s no turning back.”
With that, he turned back to his forge, the clanging of metal resuming as if our conversation had never happened. The weight of what we were about to do settled on me like a heavy cloak. We were about to step into the unknown, with no guarantees of success and no way to predict what would happen on the other side.
But there was no choice.
We had to stop Calamity Zero.
Time, fate, and the gods themselves were watching us now. And the clock was ticking.
“That old man….” Talos called my attention to the sign next to the huge machine reading: OUT OF COMMISSION!
My eyes twitched in rage, just what is that guy’s damn problem.
Author’s Note: I apologize for the errors in the latest chapters. My work had a lot of errors but has been resolved. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please enjoy my work.
If I revive a magic castle I will mass release 10 chapters
