“I can’t believe it’s really you!” she said. “I’ve been waiting. I’ve looked. I…” She paused as if to stop herself from gushing.
The wizard repeated, “Eriana? How? You look… older. How could you be…?” They stopped talking and stared silently for several seconds before he asked, “What happened to you?”
She took his hand and pulled him, closing the door, an enormous smile on her face. “It’s a long story, but I’ve been here for about twenty years, Soli. And I just learned in the past few days that only three years have passed on other worlds. That’s why you haven’t aged nearly as much as me.”
“That doesn’t make… Wait. Let me think. Morgana. I have suspected that she summoned us to the past.”
“I think so, yes.”
“So there was already some time period alteration going on.”
“I think something about the spell you did with Merlin threw us back to our own time, except I didn’t quite make it, it seems.”
“Twenty years.” He sounded exasperated. “All this time, you’ve been here.”
“And now you are here. What are you doing here?” Then she seemed to realize something, and the same question in Jack’s head came next. “Wait. What are you doing here, in this apartment? You didn’t know I was here.”
He glanced around the room and sighed. “I am looking for these four imposters. Do you know about this? They are pretending to be us.”
“Yes. It isn’t their fault. They–”
“Are they here?” He stepped past her toward the kitchen but stopped and turned back when she answered.
“No, they were just summoned overnight. Soli, what is going on? Do you know how they became us?”
“They are not us,” he snapped. She recoiled a bit, and he softened his tone. “They are not the Ellorian Champions. The champions are dead.”
Eriana shook her head. “What do you mean? You and I are alive. Have you seen Korrin and Andier?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She approached and took his arm in one hand. “Hey, answer me. Have you seen them?”
Soliander shook his head. “I have not. No one has.”
“Have you looked?”
“I… Yes. You think I would not have looked for all of you? I have searched everywhere that makes any sense, except here, because I couldn’t find Earth until recently. Like it didn’t exist. I suppose I should have been searching when, too, had I known.” He shook his head.
Jack thought that would be impossible, having to re-search every place at different points in time.
“While I have been here,” began Eriana, “where have you been? They tell me no one has seen you either. How can that be? Are you in hiding?”
A moment passed before he asked quietly, “What have they been telling you about me?”
She shook her head. “Things that concern me, frankly. You opened the Dragon Gate and left it that way after all that trouble we went through on Honyn to create and close it. You attacked Lorian and Matt. You cast that mind reading spell on him when it’s forbidden.”
He turned and stepped away from her. “Nothing is forbidden unless I say it is.”
“Soli,” she began, but he cut her off, turning back.
“Don’t you disapprove of me. No one gets to disapprove of what I do, or how I do it. Not anymore. I will not be powerless again like we always were. If I have to cast a supposedly forbidden spell to be free, then so be it. I have done far worse.”
She watched him quietly, putting one hand on her heart as he turned away again. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Are we going to have this argument again?”
“Until I win it, yes,” she said lightly, and he shot her a sideways look before sighing. She added, “It’s nice to argue with you again, Soli. Really. I’m thrilled to get the chance. But I wish we didn’t have things to argue about. I never thought I’d see you again, and I certainly didn’t think that if I did, that I would have reasons to believe you’ve done terrible things. Or that I have reason to be afraid for you. Even afraid of you.”
He turned toward her, sounded wounded as he replied, “I would never hurt you. You know that.”
“The man I knew before would not have.”
“He is dead.” He said it with no trace of uncertainty.
“Then I have reason to fear you, and to grieve you.” When he didn’t respond, she asked, “What were you planning to do when I opened that door?”
For an answer, he only said, “I’m a wizard, aren’t I?”
Seconds of silence passed before she asked, “Kill or immobilize?”
“I wasn’t going to kill them. Not yet, anyway.”
Listening, Jack wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a joke. The wizard sounded blasé about it, and from what he’d heard from his friends, that seemed like the new Soliander, not the one of the Ellorian Champions. He had changed, and Eriana clearly knew it.
She asked, “What do you want with them?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
“You didn’t used to be so coy. I liked the direct Soliander.”
“No one calls me that anymore.”
“What do they call you? Are your deeds really so awful that you live under another name?”
“Some would say yes. I would say no. I have killed. I have tortured. I have destroyed entire cities. I have brought kingdoms to ruin. I rule several more and everyone fears me, just as I would have them do. And
