Arcturus flung himself backwards as the charybdis' jaws snapped closed. They missed him by mere inches. "Gavrel!" he shouted, desperately, no longer expecting a response.

He'd made a mistake. He'd made a horrible mistake, but he didn't know where he'd gone wrong; Gavrel had lived in the town for decades and there have never been any indication that he was capable of this. But here Arcturus was, and here the charybdis was, and here Gavrel was not. He'd been abandoned. He was going to die.

Oh, gods, he was going to die, and Atticus was barely thirteen and only beginning to unwind from the tightly-wound knot of pain and grief and trauma...and the charybdis opened its mouth again. He was bleeding, exhausted, and on the verge of Numenosis. Arcturus braced for death.

A hand seized his shoulder out of nowhere and yanked. Arcturus landed hard on his rear and blinked in the sudden sunlight, trying to orient himself.

A portal by his feet snapped shut. "YES!" shouted a short Asterian woman, pumping her fist and doing some kind of victory dance.

"Oh, gods, that worked. It worked. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," came Gavrel's voice, and Arcturus twisted to look at him in bafflement.

Judging by where Gavrel was standing, he must have been the one to pull Arcturus through the portal. But before he could get out, "Sorry for what?" (since he apparently hadn't been abandoned, though how Gavrel had gotten here – when 'here' was apparently the Labyrinth – was an unanswered question), he locked eyes with a young man who looked strikingly like Atticus.

"Arcturus?" the youth asked, sounding like he'd just been stabbed.

Red eyes, white hair, pale complexion – this didn't just look like Atticus, this was Atticus. But, if Arcturus was right, Atticus at around seventeen. Atticus as an adult. "Atticus?"

The youth nodded, tears silently overflowing. A moment later Arcturus had an armful of his apparently now grown student, who was shaking. The asterian was drawing Gavrel away by the hand, presumably to give them some privacy – and now that he looked more closely, Gavrel looked different than when Arcturus had last seen him, too. His gear had gone from worn-in to battered, and his face had lost a little of its youthful roundness. And yet, there was something oddly lighter about him, too. He looked both younger and older.

Still with most of his attention on comforting Atticus, but sparing half an eye for any dangers, since he had just come out of combat, Arcturus continued to look around in bewilderment. This was definitely the Labyrinth. There was an adolescent kitsune standing a few yards away, apparently keeping watch, and Arcturus wondered what she was doing with a party of the High Races...and...that was a dhampir.

He startled to his feet, instinctively stepping between Atticus and the monster – though this Atticus was humming with power and probably didn't need Arcturus' protection any longer – spell already forming by instinct. A grey-haired man, or what seemed to be a man, gave a shout of warning and hurried towards them. Arcturus prepared to cast the spell. The dhampir raised his open hands, no spell forming, and that was strange…

The asterian caught Arcturus by the arm, interposing herself between him and the dhampir. "Sorry, we probably should have warned you," she said. "He's a friendly. Yes, I am aware of what he is. No, he's not going to kill anyone. We've been travelling with him for weeks, just ask Atticus."

The kitsune rolled her eyes. "Someday, you're going to get killed doing that."

The asterian raised a weary eyebrow in her direction. "Arcturus isn't going to kill me," she said confidently.

"I'm not," Arcturus confirmed, still very confused by the entire situation. "But I'd like an explanation. Not just about him. And perhaps some introductions?"

"Ah. Yeah." The asterian reached up to rub at her nose. "I'm Morwen, this is Gavrel, whom you already know, Count Peles" – she gestured to the dhampir, who bowed – "Casimir" – to the healer – "and Kaera" – to the kitsune. "And...there's really no easy way to explain this...I pulled you forward in time."

"What?"

"Look, Gavrel didn't know how Rebirths worked for people who lived in Terrafell when he first Partied with you," she said hastily. "He thought you'd come back no matter what, but he had limited lives. He...found out that was wrong the hard way. And I apparently have the power to open portals across time as well as space, so…" she gestured awkwardly. "You seemed like a good man, and Atticus deserves to have you back, and I need allies anyway. I might have been able to just pull you out of the Dungeon and leave you in your own time, or go back myself, but playing with time is dangerous; there are too many variables. So I decided to leave your time untouched, and just pull you forward. For now, anyway. It's not like I can't put you back, if we decide that's the best decision, but disturbing the timeline that much is risky."

Arcturus processed this. He turned to Atticus, who was nodding even as their eyes met. "It's true."

"How long has it been?" Arcturus asked, horrified.

"Five years."

"Gods, I'm sorry," Arcturus said, pulling him into an embrace, where Atticus held tightly to him.

Now he had an inkling of what Gavrel had been apologising for. If he'd been left to die, originally – or thought to have been left to die, which would amount to much the same thing for the timeline – he didn't even want to think of what it must have done to Atticus, or the Guild, or the balance of Guild power.

The rest of the decidedly queer party gave them their privacy until Atticus let go, wiping his eyes. "Now," Arcturus said, firmly. "I have more questions."

"Naturally," said Morwen, with a wry smile.

"Starting with you," he said, softening his voice a bit. "And how in the five civilisations you did...this."

The smile turned lopsided. "That is a question," Morwen said. "You might want to sit down."