The Wandering Knight landed on the green planet and began refueling his horse as he sipped from a platinum river. Seeing a figure approaching, he stood.

On the other side of the river, a knight in green stopped with raised banner. “I am the z-ray eyed Gamma Knight,” he announced. “Keeper of the Fusion Blade, and protector of these lands. Who are you, and what is your purpose here?”

The Wandering Knight bowed, saying, “I am a knight without name or homeworld, till such time as I can find the stolen Atomic Diadem, which will prove the right of the one true Solar Empress, Alia Sophos, to the throne.

Can you afford me rest and blessing to continue in my search?”

The Gamma Knight huffed. “You shall have neither while I am insulted. Do you think my protection of this planet so poor that I would allow a thief safe harbor? Prove your quest’s honor through combat.”

“I promise you,” said the Wandering Knight, holding out his palms, “you shall not like the result of such an altercation.”

“Surely if you say so unarmed, you have not heard of the Fusion Blade, forged at the birth of a star, whose edge cuts atoms,” laughed the Gamma Knight, drawing his weapon.

The Gamma Knight thrust forward then, but by the time his arm was extended, the Wandering Knight had leapt over it, wrenching the Gamma Knight’s hand from its wrist, and struck the Gamma Knight from his feet, pinning him to the ground by sitting on his chest.

As the Wandering Knight unscrewed his opponent’s helmet and unlatched his own glowing gauntlets, horror crossed the Gamma Knight’s face. “You are he. The knight with the Negative Touch, which cuts both forward in space and backward in time. I recant my challenge! Leave me and this planet in peace!”

“I warned you,” said the Wandering Knight, “but you bound us to this outcome. By prevailing in combat, I prove my quest’s honor.”

With that he pressed sun-white hands on the face of the Gamma Knight, who ceased to have ever been. Reattaching his gloves, the Wandering Knight pointed his horse toward another star and rode on.

x

Year 1, Day 36

May 9, 2014

The Wandering Knight’s quest is not yet ended, but he’s come a long way over the years. I check in on him every once in a while.

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Dear Empress In Exile

Final Successor to the Solar Throne, Sole Solar Empress, Fairest of all Rulers, I have failed you. Though my touch cuts forward in Space, I cannot but fear that the maw of darkness between us stretches as wide as ever it has. Though my palms smear backward in Time, neither their Power nor my Will can erase the forty-one years spread between this day and that trap-electrified day we were parted. That such reckoning of time is relative to Your throne and may have been folded and thus thickened many times hence by the journeying of your captors is a Horror that has haunted my oft-emptying mind with rapidity and repetition beyond reckoning.

Small Comfort must I till from what Fertility remains underfoot. I imagine how you must have grown into Your own Power and Will decades ago. The lordly waif I long ago lost must have come to wise ladyhood by now; my imaginings but atoms compared to the galactic Radiance of Your Truth. Indeed it is such a gravity of Purity that pulls me inevitably toward Your ransoming.

I must add that the tradeswoman who writes and sends this missive does so at the Hope of a sizable purse and the Threat of an indescribable Fate. Alas, it must be thus, for my hands can be trusted to unwind the silica on which it is printed such that the seed of its alluvium tree would pop from its palladium plain some centuries hence. Nor can I verify her work, as my eyes struggle to sift Meaning from script since they were replaced with models fit to read radiation tides. How much I miss my little collection of local legends taken while traveling under your banner is as nothing compared to what Anguish burns those dendrites yet remaining to me. Each second your Fate is unknown to me passes with an eternity of Sensation equal in Agony to being stretched to a point by the torsion of singularity.

Small Comfort can also be found in the bounds of the universe. No darkness stretches forever. No distance is infinite. We shall find each other again.

This I Thee avow.

Your last Knight

x

Year 8, Day 15

April 15, 2021

Prompt: Letters

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RE: Thus Marked, That The World Might Know Him

The cobalt doors of the grand reception hall were not thrown open by the intruder; they were undone. Lord Pendulus could feel the memory of their erection fading from his mind. He shuddered at the sensation as he had not in centuries, and it was thus that the Wandering Knight found him.

“I am a knight without name or homeworld, till such time as I can find the stolen Atomic Diadem, which will prove the Right of the one true Solar Empress, Alia Sophos, to the throne,” the stranger announced, though his hands – glowing sun-white and uncanny – were announcement enough. “I need no rest, for the End of my search is here. I need no Blessing to reclaim it, but your Blessing would prevent further erasures.”

“Thou art most welcome here, outcast,” replied the Lord of this planet and all time. “Allow any manner of comestible and aid the Cucquorum might offer to be at thy asking.”

“All I require is the holy Artifact,” the Wandering Knight said, and he stepped boldly forward as he continued, “stolen by a common thief pretending at empire.”

“I am not some thief,” Lord Pendulus shrieked as he shot to his feet, but his voice quieted to a hiss as he stalked forward to meet his discourteous petitioner. “I am the thief. I steal epochs and counterfeit centuries. I am all that is forever.”

The Wandering Knight plunged his palms into the bismuth mosaic in the floor, rippling it outward from him until it had never been. So went the scorpiuntium spears of the Cucquorum courtiers who attempted to dislodge him.

“Pettiness,” their Lord spat. He nevertheless removed the desired diadem from within his raiment. “Ancient as thou might be, no future is guaranteed save that seen in thy past. Though this bauble be forged a billion years hence, it may yet be melted in an instant.”

Buckling his gauntlets to grip his goal safely, the Wandering Knight answered, “If Eternity is your goal, have it. Here is mine, now.”

With no guarantee that he could find his beloved Solar Empress – save the determination that had gotten him her Atomic Diadem – the knight wandered again into the stars.

x

Year 10, Day 359

March 24, 2024

Prompt: Use the title of a previous story.