"Mother! Mother!" His gentle tenor voice had turned into a wild, deep roar. The emaciated wizard flew down the Tower's stairs, miraculously avoiding being tripped up in his own voluminous black robes. The lamps' flickering flames seemed somehow retarded by the dense shadows of his cyclopean tower. At each level he frantically searched the murky darkness for his family. He could hear the faint cry of his wife and children below. But his mother's horrific screech had reached a crescendo several minutes ago, right before her shrill cries abruptly ended.

He entered into the marble vault of the Tower's shrine. Dread assaulted him like a knight and his lance, piercing deep within his pounding heart. In the preternatural darkness, between the altars dedicated to his father and grandfather, a mass of writhing tissue covered the flagstone dais. Throughout his flight he feared he would find his mother dead, or even worse, mad from the Lemurian's attack on his home. He imagined her incapacitated form lying in his arms. But what he found of his mother repulsed him to the core of his being. It wasn't enough for them to kill he beloved mother. Instead they twisted every molecule in her body and soul and left a creature even fouler than themselves.

"Oh no," he sobbed as he slowly backed away from the grotesque form before him. "What have I done? If I would have taken you away at once when my research was done, I could have saved you. I could have saved all of you all. But I didn't. I had to show my work to others. Doing so I practically invited Qayin's monster's in. Damn my arrogance. I doomed you all."

He wept so bitterly that he could barely breathe. But the shrill cry of his children below snapped him out of his remorse. "I'm coming. Hang on children, I'm coming!"

His heart beat faster than it ever had before. His lungs burned as he practically threw himself down the massive stairs. He grasped the door ring and pulled with all his might. It was bolted! "Please, unlock the door. Miryam, are you in there with the children? Oh Miryam, please open the door…"

He tumbled into the massive parlor of his family. Furniture blocked each of the heavy brass doors that led to the outside rooms. He clawed at his face, desperate to wipe the tears from his eyes. He had to see. He had to see if his beloved family met the same fate as his mother.

"Dionysus," the sweet voice whispered as gently as a cool summer breeze. "We're all here. We're alright. Where is Rasha? Where is your mother Rasha?"

"Miryam, they took her from us," Dionysus gasped as he tried to still the horror in his mind. "The spell didn't bring me back far enough. I couldn't save her…"

"Spell? What spell? What has happened? What do you mean…?"

"Listen! Can you hear them?" Dionysus hissed. He struggled to keep his wits as he heard the nearly inaudible whispering that heralded the coming of the Lemurians. Within the shadows across the huge parlor he could see them slowly appearing. They were like shadows among shadows. He could see the vaguely human-like figures of the coming horde. He could make out the featureless, flat ebony head of the Hyperborean hybrids. He could practically feel the long crinoid tentacles that seemed to reach across the room towards he and his family. "Look! There! They're almost here. We have to go…"

"There's nothing there, Dionysus," Miryam responded as she knelt down and grabbed her husband's shoulders. She was struck dumb as she beheld deep crow's feet around his unearthly blue eyes. She looked at his short auburn hair and gasped when she beheld several grey hairs in it.

"When they invaded the Tower, I left. I left for Future's End. I fled so that we could raise an army at the end of time to push back these nightmares. But after a century without you, I could no longer live with myself. I've come back to rapture all of you away. But we have to go now before they fully arrive her. Please gather our children and get behind me… Now!"

Miryam jumped at the sudden roar of her husband's voice. Their two sons and four daughters began to scream and cry. They were all pointing at the shadows her husband dinsisted the Lemurians were coming in from. "They can see them, can't they? Why can't I?"

"I'll explain later. Just get behind me," Dionysus implored.

"Stop!" He expected such a cry from the shadowy Lemurians. But instead the command came from a man in black robes. He had a long aristocratic face and short cropped auburn hair. Yet there was no grey in his hair, and no crow's feet about his eyes.

"Dionysus!" Miryam cried over the elder Dionysus' shoulder.

"Listen to me," the younger Dionysus demanded, as he met his future self's eyes. He slowly drew forth a slender sword from beneath his black robes. "If you do this, you'll endanger all of Causality! If you save them, you'll condemn uncounted others to death. If I have to, I will kill you to stop you."

"Then that's just what you'll have to do!" The elder Dionysus bellowed. The nebulous forms of the Lemurians began to come forth from the shadows. "But if you do, remember you'll also kill your own wife and children. I don't care about Causality. All I care about is giving them the chance to live. Perhaps you didn't notice the protoplasmic shell our mother now is up in the shrine! Kill me so that Causality can be preserved, and our family can face a fate far, far worse than death! Do it! Now!"

The blow of the younger Dionysus' sword never came. Instead he turned promptly around and threw himself into the horde of inhuman forms that came forth from the shadows as his elder self intoned the spell.