The End of Eternity

The Wind and Bone

Claw began a new day by walking out of the prison building, ne intended to catch and cook something. Being able to hunt just about anything with little effort was a fact he tried to kept secret from the community. When he was about to leave the second perimeter of protection, which had been formed out of high fence, he saw a small group of people in front of him and gaped at them in shock. The group was probably leaving the safety of the prison in order to scavenge for any valuables around. That was nothing unusual, Claw's attention had been caught by the outfit of one of the scavengers.

"How is this possible? Can I be mistaken?" Claw sped up to get closer to the group, inspecting one of its members, who wore a set of wooden armor, the same exact armor of the elves of Emerald Down.

Marching behind the group, keeping little distance, Claw noticed the man had even the wooden sword, which the elves had used as their weapon.

"Excuse me friends, may I know where did you get such an extraordinary equipment?" Claw asked politely. The men looked at him, hands on their possessions. They probably thought, Claw wanted to rob them.

"All you need to know is, that it is ours now!" One of them snapped at Claw. He let them laugh and followed them, until they were a significant distance away from the prison.

"What do you think you are doing, you overgrown fish head?" The man from before pointed his gun at him.

"I do not think we should kill him Nick, he is one of ours."

"Says who? No one have asked me, if I want this creature in my camp and he is obviously asking for trouble!" In an environment in which a law "kill or be killed" applied, it was definitely more effective to be the one, who shoots first and everyone knew it.

"All I want is your answer, I do not want any trouble." The two stared at each other for a while. After a while, the man snorted.

"There is nothing there anymore, I can show you the location on a map." The man concluded, Claw was not worth the trouble and took out a map from his bag, while he was still pointing at Claw with his gun.

"We found it right here." A dirty finger poked into the dirty map. It took a while, before Claw realized, it was the exact same spot, where the three of them had woken up into this world.

"What are you staring at? It is not all you have wanted right? But the onlz thing I am willing to give you, is a bullet."

"No, it was all, thanks." Claw turned around and walked away, leaving the bunch of angry men behind him. They were sure, he wanted to rob them and had just been scared by their guns.

After the brief encounter, Claw went hunting, but he coudl not stop shinking about what had just happened. Hesitating at first, he ended up turning his steps in the direction the man had pointed out.

"Something weird is going on."

* * * *

"Can you explain your actions to me captain? Do you realize, what catastrophe have you almost caused?!" Admiral Izuma had the captain of battleship Kirov on the line.

"W-We were holding our position outside of the quarantine zone sir, but it suddenly pulled us closer." Amiral Izuma thought for a while, could they pull the ship by a tractor beam to cause this violation? Unlikely. They would have made an immediate political move, if this accident had been a setup, but the Consortium was apparently as surprised as them.

"Investigate the cause again, you explanation is just too bizarre."

"I will, sir." Amiral ended the communication and turned his head to face one of the technicians, who was sitting near him. Before he could ask him, the man was already reporting.

"Based on minor differences in planet's trajecories, the captain speaks the truth. For approximately thirty seconds, Earth's gravity was higher than normal." The man looked up, staring at a big panel in front of him.

"By seven percent."

"Seven percent?" Admiral chuckled. The number was enormous, no weapon on the Eart's surface could have energy source strong enough to create gravity wave of that magnitude.

"That's strange," The technician frowned. "The source of the additional gravity was not in the centre, it was near the surface!"

"I want a list of every experiment conducted on Earth in last hundred years, this is not something we can afford to ignore." Izuma sank back into his chair. The situation was already tense, the last thing they needed was some mysterious force to pop out of nowhere.

* * * *

* * * *

Dear Inge

The project doesn't look promising anymore. We have tried everything we could with no result. I know, you do not like my constant travels, but this is really the last one. Everyone is losing faith in the project, it seems to be even declassified soon. The company is already in debt and investors are pulling out of the research, having no more hope in our spacetime travel vision. Some of them started to believe it was all a fraud in the first place and lawsuited the company, It is probably time to move on and find another, more stable employer. I do not care anymore, if I end up sitting in an office all day, it would be better than the constant travel.

Forever yours, Gerhard Schulz

* * * *

* * * *

As soon asClaw, Mei, and Davena entered the anomaly, it closed behind them. It seemedthey were the last pieces of the puzzle and as soon as everything from theirworld returned to where it belonged