The Chemist
The two boys glared at each other. Almost the same height and build, they could have passed for brothers to those that didn't know them. The older boy sneered as they faced each other like gunslingers.
Only gunslingers hadn't been born yet, because firearms weren't even a dream in an inventor's brain.
"Chemist?" The older boy's sneer grew more pronounced. "What kind of title is Chemist?"
"I looked into the future." The younger boy crossed his arms. "That's the name I had so I have decided to adopt it at the start instead of changing my mind and picking another name."
"Looked into the future." The Chemist's counterpart laughed. "What makes you think you'll be alive in this future. Time can't be trusted."
"I'll be alive as long as you're alive." The younger boy barely changed his expression. "That much I saw, Scriptus."
"You know that isn't a guarantee." Scriptus jabbed a finger at the Chemist. "Time can change at a moment's decision. You know the rules for that."
"I'm not worried." The Chemist frowned. "The glimpses I took was enough show me the way the world will change in the next millennium. Magic will slowly become a lost art and be replaced by something called science. No one will even believe in it."
"You're lying." Scriptus pushed the other boy with both hands. The Chemist fell to the ground before he could catch his balance. "There's no way that magic will fade away. Look around you."
The Chemist picked himself up, letting the dust fall off his robe. He shook his head. The school of magicians was the biggest facility of its type in the world. Every train of thought about the metaphysical world was honed and bestowed on the students in the hopes they would destroy darkness wherever they found it.
The Chemist knew all of that would be gone and never be replaced. They could strive to hold off the end, but he didn't see how the masters would be able to stop it.
"Admit this vision was in error." Scriptus loomed over the Chemist. "Admit that you saw a false future."
"Only time will tell." The Chemist almost smiled at his joke. The fist cracking against his cheek stopped that thought. He staggered back. "What did you do that for?"
"You tell me these hideous things but you don't tell me how to prevent the outcome." Scriptus raised his fist to strike again.
"You can't, boy." One of the masters tapped his walking stick against the smooth stone walk as he approached the students. "Well, you can, but time is the consequences of our decisions, not the tool of prophecy."
"I don't understand, Doctor." Scriptus let his hand fall to his side. Fighting was prohibited and he had been caught doing that by one of the teachers. He could be expelled if the old man wanted to make an issue of it.
"No one does." The Doctor smiled. "Shall we go for a walk, boys? Maybe that will cool your heads."
He turned, white hair brushed back from his high forehead. His short cloak flapped as he stepped into a floating hourglass that appeared in the air around him. Scriptus and the Chemist hurried to catch up.
The world changed to a blur with the Doctor holding on to the slippery slope of time with his stick embedded at the edge of reality. Scriptus and the Chemist grabbed his cloak so they wouldn't fall into the maelstrom around them.
"A bit confusing, isn't it?" The Doctor raised his free hand. The landscape slowed to a barely tolerable vibration of the small courtyard where they had stood moments before.
"This is time?" Scriptus looked around, careful to maintain his grip on the old man.
"This is what the world looks like when the likely outcomes of things are plainly visible." The Doctor looked around. "In this small setting, the courtyard seems hardly to change. Shall we go ahead five hundred years?"
"I want to see this future where the magic is gone." Scriptus glared at his fellow student. "I want to see it for myself."
"All right." The Doctor started walking, pulling himself forward with his stick. "Let's go."
The three of them watched as the world changed. The courtyard blew apart in a soundless fury, fire and destruction reigning for a few steps. Then they were pass, and still walking to some unknown destination.
"What was that?" The Chemist stared back at the fiery cloud falling behind him.
"The destruction of the school a few years after we left." The Doctor kept walking, examining the sky above them. Things roared through the sky above. The type of thing depended on the moment they watched as they walked.
"It doesn't look like your future, Chemist." Scriptus smiled.
"It looks worse." The Chemist tried to identify the things that drifted above them.
"This is a consequence of someone's decision, or of some disaster that was unforseen." The Doctor pointed ahead. "We'll stop at the millennium and look around."
The three reached the line of light placed to mark the end of their thousand years and the start of the next. The scene looked worse than it had when they had started. The Chemist raised his hands to start writing on the ether.
"I wouldn't." The Doctor held up his hand. "Magic will reverberate along the timelines, disrupting more than helping."
"This isn't what I saw." The Chemist balled up his fist. "I swear it. None of this was in the scrying bowl."
"This is more interesting than a world without magic." Scriptus looked around in wonder. "I've never seen so many demons wandering the world."
"And almost as likely to appear." The Doctor turned. "Let's start back. I think this is the end of the lesson."