"The supreme art of war is to defeat the enemy without fighting."

Sun Tzu.

The entrance hall looked comfortable and there was a person at a desk, perhaps a receptionist. Along the opposite wall, there were waiting armchairs and, at the back, wells of elevators powered by artificial gravity. Mia made a sloppy sign to the receptionist and took Igor to an entrance that was next to the elevators, but at the other end of the room where it was not visible at first. The wide corridor did not seem long and ended in a kind of semicircular auditorium of large dimensions. Along the way, the wizard noticed that she was nervous and found it strange in someone who had always been calm. Asked, the scientist gave a yellow smile.

"Don't trust them," she said, laconic and then shut up.

Igor was forced to give a discreet smile, concluding that she was as apprehensive to see the rulers as a simple mortal on Earth would be before the authorities. Although he had been the Supreme Guardian for such a short time and there was not the same relationship of governor to governed that the common peoples had, he already felt this behavior in some of his subjects. The curious thing is that Igor noticed that this happened even with people of clear conscience.

They reached the goal and he stopped to observe the place. It was a room in a half moon and quite large, where more than two hundred people would fit comfortably, although there were no chairs to sit on. The floor was light and made of an unknown material, but it resembled some kind of ceramic. The white walls emitted a diffuse light and the ceiling had an acoustic treatment that seemed to be perfect. Igor was sure that a word spoken in a normal voice was heard effortlessly in every corner of the hall. Amused, he wondered what the reason for that was, if they communicated by telepathy, but concluded that it must also have been done to receive foreign peoples.

At the bottom, on a stage that was perhaps a meter and a half above the ground, seven beings of that people were sitting, also in a semicircle. Igor already knew enough of their appearance to see that they were not friendly as the scientist had been, not at all, except for one who even smiled. Igor stopped in the middle of the room, watching and being watched. The ruler in the center of the group signaled for Mia to leave.

"I'll come back to get you when they authorize me," she said. With a murmur, she continued. "Be careful with them."

"Thank you, Mia." Igor said goodbye and turned to the seven subjects, silent and advancing a little more until he was about five meters away from the stage. He thought it was their obligation to manifest themselves first and, therefore, remained silent.

"Are you not going to say anything, sir?" asked the same subject who dismissed Mia and who was the most grumpy.

"Well, excellence," he began, shrugging his shoulders and giving a small courteous smile, "you called me. So, I assumed I should wait quietly not to break any rules of good manners. I ask you to forgive me if I offended you with that."

"We are from different peoples," said the one on the left, a person who appeared calm and kind, "so we have to be understanding of both sides. Your name is Igor, isn't it correct?"

"Exactly, sir, and I agree with you." The wizard liked him very much. "I believe I am before the rulers of this world."

"Yes, we are the government conclave," said another, now from the extreme right. "You are a contradiction, Igor, and you have already generated, just with your presence, some discord among us."

The young man was surprised by this observation because he did not understand where they wanted to go with that, since he did nothing that could have created any kind of antagonism. For a few seconds he stopped to review all the steps taken since he opened the passage to that planet and concluded that there was no apparent reason. Following this premise, he said:

"Such a revelation makes me sorrowful, excellencies, because the last thing I want is to sow discord. Perhaps, if your excellencies enlighten me, I can contribute to dispel the concerns that I caused."

"First, your world of origin is too primitive for the kind of man you are. Mia showed us, at our command, various images of both your organism and the gadgets you carry. Your brain, in some points, is even superior to ours who are much more evolved and ancient. Your technology is equivalent to someone who is in the early stages of space navigation and that primitive weapon on your waist does not match anything, besides being useless. Add to that the fact that you came to ask for help because you are displaced in the past almost two dozen centuries of your time count and also that you are able to cross the Universal Planes," said the ruler in the middle, the most severe and dangerous of them. "How do you cross the planes and where did you get such a strong mental block?"

"Let's see," Igor began, sighing. "I already explained to Mia that we are some exceptions among our people and they call us magicians. Naturally, an evolution in different worlds makes us not equal to each other, with advantages and disadvantages between me and your people. Among us there are beings who can go to any world they want, just by thinking to open the passage and I am one of them. As for the blocked brain, you forgive me, but I like to keep my privacy. This is one of our most sacred laws and not even I can violate it."

"Why not even you?" asked the fifth from left to right.

"Because I am the one entitled the Supreme Guardian of the Crystal World, the highest authority on the planet where I live."

"We noticed images on your versatile device that show several worlds beyond yours. How did you get there? How did you get here without a spaceship?"

"I just explained to you, excellence. I just wish and that's it... I'm there." Igor smiled, shrugging his shoulders again and shaking his head. "I believe, gentlemen, that you have been too long without observing the human species and have lost much of our natural evolution. After all, what's the problem with that?"

"You were of class H and now Mia wants to put you in level B or even A and that is impossible," complained one of those who had not yet spoken and who was next to the nice one. "To reach our level in this short period of time you would need to have a development speed almost a hundred times higher than ours."

"I don't see why it couldn't be like that, excellencies. The human species is very tenacious."

The seven elements began to look at each other and Igor noticed that they were debating among themselves. He was not afraid of them, but he did not feel safe there because they were the total opposite of Mia except for the first one on the left. The one in the center turned to him and asked:

"How did you end up here in the past?"

Igor repeated the story and they listened to it, silent. He commented lastly about his theory of being able to save the victims.

This time they were even longer silent, conferring by telepathy. Finally, the nice one said:

"Our people do not master the displacement in time and you already have rudimentary theories about it, which is very worrying. Since the great war, we have considered some things extremely dangerous and time is the worst of them. On the other hand, I see in your behavior someone who would be anything but dangerous, in fact, a good friend and ally—"

"But we," interrupted one of those who were silent, "do not think the same way and judge that you are too dangerous."

"That's why," said another, "we decided by six to one that you will be neutralized and kept here, in captivity, but do not despair that we will not mistreat you."

"Excellencies, did you see in me any behavior that was reprehensible?" asked the wizard, surprised. "Would you like to be treated like this if you went to my world?"

"I don't care what you feel, sir—"

"My title of right is Magnificent," Igor interrupted in a grotesque way because he was very angry. "Then respect a planetary leader, excellencies, as I have done with you... for now."

"You will be a leader here in a long time, but not now. We do not want time travelers invading our world and we do not tolerate threats either."

"I will say something very simple, excellencies," said Igor, threatening, "you won a war where you imprisoned a semi-intelligent monster six hundred millennia ago and never fought anything again, according to Mia told me. I am a level one superior wizard and not the grotesque being that you think I am, not to mention that I am not willing to spend the next centuries, imprisoned. Regardless of your technological prowess, you're unaware of my defensive capabilities and lack any means to detain me. It's in our best interest that you desist, lest we face consequences we'll all lament. Remember that I am not like the creature and neither do you know how to fight—"

Igor did not know how, but he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a large batch of robots that filled a large part of the room, threatening. He did not want to fight those beings, much less hurt them, but they deserved a good demonstration of the power of a wizard. He activated his personal barrier, shining in the traditional green tone, when several shock weapons reached him without any effect. In the brain of the governors, he planted his message:

"You should never threaten a man you don't know. I am a wizard and I came in peace. I will not accept being imprisoned. If I am not welcome, then I will withdraw, but do not think of imprisoning me, gentlemen, because, in that case, this will have been your last act as living beings." He raised his right hand and a luminous shield, similar to a glass film, appeared taking the oval shape. The nearest robot, seeing that, raised his arms and fired rays at Igor, rays that hit the shield and, unlike what the personal barrier would do with them, were reflected hitting the chair of one of the governors, who shrank scared.

Igor imagined that they must have given some mental order to the machines, because instead of shooting, they made a siege, squeezing him little by little.

The young man unsheathed the sword, whose blade began to shine in a strong gold, and pointed to one of the robots. The dazzling ray tore the air in silence and hit the machine that imitated the humanoid form perfectly, exploding violently and making the governors shrink again. He advanced on the second device and cut it in half while with his right hand he threw a microball of plasma at a third robot, causing a new explosion. Seeing that they were powerless against the stranger, the machines retreated, waiting for new orders. The threat of the wizard echoed in the brain of the governors:

"This was a warning to leave me alone. I respect life up to a certain limit, do you understand?"

"You will never leave this city," said the one in the center. "An energy barrier with the data of your cellular vibrations will prevent the exit from this world. If you do not surrender, we will be forced to kill you and the blame will be only yours."

"By the love of the Goddess, do not force me to destroy your city that I came in peace. You are insane!" Igor turned to the exit, starting to walk.

Seeing that he no longer represented a threat to the septet due to the position and distance, the robots attacked by dumping more than forty beams of rays on the young man from Earth. The energy reached his personal barrier and was neutralized, but Igor turned and used the sword again, bursting half a dozen machines.

"Did you see that she is not so primitive after all?" he said, raising the blade and showing it to the conclave. "Stop it or you will be next."

He turned and went to the exit, followed by the half hundred of robots that kept fire on him. In the lobby, the girl had left the post and Igor supposed she was alerted.

As soon as he set foot on the street, he was surrounded by more than three hundred machines like that. Desperate and not wanting to risk a fight with so many robots, he concentrated on Mia, disappearing from in front of them and reappearing by her side, giving her a big scare. She seemed too worried and distressed, but, when she saw him, she expressed relief, despite the fright.

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