Chương 25: 24-Living the (Non-Linear) Life

A long, long time ago Dawn left the Black Tower with the intention of completing the task the Keeper had demanded of her. Her time powers acted strangely within the tower. Everything left after images of futures that could be and pasts that had been avoided. She saw the ghostly phantoms of other petitioners, asking for the Keeper's help. The only non-changing feature was the Keeper itself. He did not exist in the past or the future. Only the present was real for it. She appeared seventeen Aeons into the future.

It was easy to keep track of these things when you had Vision. The world was very unlike the one she had left. Same sun, same moon, different stars, fauna, and flora. She knew this Aeon to be inhabited by humans, with a technology level similar to that of Erela two subjective centuries ago. The Keeper had asked for a simple task: a book written two days ago should have one single sentence changed back to its original form, the one that fit with History.

Her 99 level and her vision granted Dawn great powers, but they were subtle and slow; she was more of a puppeteer than a hero. No matter. It suited her purpose. She could easily see which actions to avoid if she did not want to become Dissonant herself while achieving her mission. She could also detect the book with her temporal senses, but probability told her the straight line was not the shortest path in this case. She went five miles south and waited for a caravan she knew would pass through this spot.

The caravan was made up of five coaches, a whole clan riding inside. They looked human, but their clothes looked rough, and their language was gibberish to Dawn. They tried in vain to communicate with her for ten minutes. Then they gave up and invited her to join them on one of the coaches. By their attitude, Dawn realized they thought she was mentally deranged. Their next stop was the city where the book was to be found. Dawn knew she would save five days of travel by going with them.

She used the trip to hone and practice her prophecy powers and refine her strategy. She could see her personal timeline splitting infinitely. Nearly all ended with her death, either to misfortune or monster attacks, assassins sent by the Keeper when she inadvertently broke History or the Coven's Champions, once Necessity realized she had survived Erela. She only survived if she kept Vision as her sole power, reset at least once every fifty years, and tried not to draw much attention or commit dissonant actions.

There was also one fascinating aspect: the more into the future she traveled, the more fragile her timeline became. This aspect seemed to dominate all others. No matter how she did it, she could not chain more than ten thousand resets without losing her life. Considering each reset took fifty years, that seemed an awful long time at first glance. She knew it was not. If she wanted to become crafty and knowledgeable enough to achieve her ends, ten thousand lives were but a drop in the ocean.

There was much she did not know, but she was no longer the scared girl caged in Arimel's lab, trying to escape the Sniffer. She now had the means to control her own fate. They reached the city ten days later. By then, Dawn's enhanced Intellect had already learned their language, much to their amazement. They no longer saw her as a madwoman, but as some kind of holy seer. She said goodbye to them, thanking them for their help.

She gave subtle payment as a token of gratitude: as she was leaving, her right hand loosened one of the screws of the third coach's front right wheel. Two weeks later, the wheel would come off, making them three hours late as the clan repaired it. They would miss a date with hungry wolves and the clan's total extermination because of that delay. It did not make Dawn feel better. She knew they would die one day later, the result of food poisoning.

She had to save them in a way that would not endanger History and make her dissonant—that is, she could not save them at all. But the poisoned herbs they would inadvertently throw into their cooking pots were painless and fast, much better than being devoured by wolves. It was all the payment she could offer. Somehow, she did not feel it was enough. She went through the city, shrouded by prophecy, ignored by all.

She walked paths that guaranteed no one would look at her, entering private homes just at the right moment, their watchers looking away, distracted by the cry of a child or someone dropping a pot in the next room. The city was filled with life, yet it was empty to her. Time is the greatest weapon. She modified the sentence in the book and felt dissonance die with her action. The Keeper now owed her a trip. Later Dawn knew she could ask the Keeper to send her at any moment in time, but the rules still applied.

The farther away she sent her, the more fragile her personal line became. Life was not an end in itself to her. She lived so she could become stronger. Strong enough to face Arimel one day, perhaps to undo what she had done. Her powers allowed her to see time laid bare before her like a canvas. She saw that it was divided into long expanses called Aeons, each lasting one million years. All Aeons ended and began with the physical rebirth of the plane, erasing the old to give way to the new.

There were long stretches of eternity she could fill with her presence, but only a small fraction of time in each Aeon allowed her to become more experienced and learned. She could spend all her time among ancient fauna and flora, doing the metaphysical equivalent of watching paint dry. Only interaction with sentient species would allow her to grow. There was only one place she could choose as her first destination.

"Send me to the earliest apparition of new sentient life after the destruction of Erela." She came to a changed world, with similar skies. That is when she understood that Aeons measured eternity only at the planetary scale. Celestial bodies would survive between them. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The new world was fresh and vibrant. The sentient race was not totally human, being shorter and blue-skinned.

But Dawn soon learned to disguise her appearance to dwell among them. She lived for fifty years, honing her prophetic powers and learning all she could from them. Little by little, her zeal for life waned. Each morning, it took her a bit more effort to hate Arimel and to feel guilty for what she had done. One day, she asked herself Is it worth it? Then she reset herself. She chose Vision again from her list of available powers. She was back to level 1, but she not only reset her level: she had reset her soul.

Her emotions were as strong and bright as the day she had seen that damned dungeon explode, taking Ahura with it and sealing her fate. Hate and guilt shone again, bright and sharp. Then, Dawn understood why she had to reset every fifty years. Her body was immortal; it would never age, but the same thing could not be said for her soul. Resetting was her armor against ennui. She would never become jaded and lose faith, as long as she kept it as part of her routine. She rose and faced the new day. I am coming, Arimel.

I am coming for you. Much Later She needed time. She had all eternity in front of her, and yet it was not enough. She was confined to a single world, while Arimel had access to all of them. She could only learn and grow during one diminutive fraction of each Aeon, while her foe was always active. There was always one active System, always, but in planes Dawn could not access. As a result, Arimel would always learn much faster than her. This would not do.

There was no way she could beat him if he learned exponentially faster than she. It was not a matter of levels but of real-life experience. Then, she had a brilliant idea. She had access to a time dungeon. Who said she had to live her life in a linear fashion? And Dawn's trek through the Aeons began. She spent one reset. Then chained it with another, and another. When the Aeon reached its end, and she ran out of time, she would barter with the keeper and ask it to send her back again. And the loop restarted.

There were rules to avoid becoming dissonant: no changing history while in the past. Avoid interacting with yourself. So many rules. But then, she was a prophet. She could see whether an action would turn her dissonant before she committed it. And she learned. When the system became active, she discovered she could level by proxy, much as she had originally in Erela. And new powers entered her list, only they were not called like that.

They were called Roles—they were not as freeform as the original Erela powers, but there were an awful lot of possible combinations with them. She eventually learned them all, but kept to her tried-and-true Vision power when resetting; it was the only one that could keep her alive. During her first Aeon, she managed to cram ten thousand lifetimes in it, without becoming dissonant even once. And when it no longer became possible, she went on to the next Aeon. After Countless Resets On, and on the cycle went.

Thousands of lives crammed in a few years. New systems learned. New experience and skill acquired. Each Aeon was experienced from thousands of points of view simultaneously. She was a noble, a revolutionary, a priestess, the criminal who broke the law, and the sheriff who hunted him. She learned how history worked to the point that she no longer needed to rely on Vision to ensure her survival. She started trying different powers and systems.

If she enhanced herself, she could use any ability she had learned in the past. She always took Vision every fifty resets and used it to scan the future, seeking hope. She never found it. The answer was always the same: destroy the Coven, and the universe goes with it. And on she went, learning, growing wiser, and resetting when desperation became too great, trying to find an exception to the rules that no one had ever promised her. She never gave up.

She became so experienced at everything that she knew she could not be stopped. She mastered every skill, every knowledge, every power. She became so proficient that she could divine what people were thinking through her knowledge of human nature or play chess using only muscle memory, each game a repetition of one she had played before. And one day, the future changed. Suddenly, something blocked her vision. She could not see the destruction of the multiverse with the terrifying clarity she had.

It was as if a wall of fog had stopped her prophetic powers. For the first time in Aeons, she felt excitement. The source of the anomaly was not in Belona, however. It was in another plane, and thus out of reach for her. She honed her powers, trying to find any disruption to the timeline in Belona, any intersection with the chronal anomaly. She found one that lasted only three hours. It was localized at the entry of the Black Tower.

She understood this anomaly must be a living person who had used the Tower's powers to travel in time. For the first time, she felt a stirring of hope. She asked the Keeper to send her at the moment in time of the interloper's return to the tower. She went to meet him. She had never felt so alive. Her target was a middle-aged man with practical but well-made clothes, returning to the Tower for a trip back to the era he had come from.

"I need to talk with you," she told him. He looked surprised at her.

"And who might you be, lady?" he asked.

"My name is Zaralin." Two hours later Dawn finally shut up. She had been talking nonstop for two hours. She felt moistness on her cheeks. She thought she had run out of tears Aeons ago. She realized this was the first time she had told her story. Zaralin stood awed.

"When did you feel the future become impossible to divine?" he asked.

"About five years ago, in objective time," she answered.

"That checks. It is the same date my Potmaking skill was unnerfed," he thought aloud.

"I am what the Coven calls an Abomination. The first one, and the last one too, if they have any say on it," Zaralin chuckled.

"My powers are not defined by the Compendium. This is why I have become a rogue variable, the one thing that makes the future uncertain," he went on.

"As long as I draw breath, there is no fate, only possibility."

"Come with me," Dawn begged him.

"Help me save the Universe."

"I am sorry, Dawn, I can't do that," Zaralin told her gently.

"I came here to travel into the future. The Coven promised me safety for my people if I renounced my powers. I have seen what they will do. They will scour the plane, no matter what I choose."

"What are you going to do?" Dawn asked him softly.

"I am taking my people away from this Universe, to a place where they can't reach us," he answered. Dawn began to cry.

"Come with us, Dawn, leave all this behind," Zaralin gently offered her.

"There is a place for you with us."

"I can't," she softly answered.

"I can't turn my back on this Universe. This is all my fault."

"I have to leave now," Zaralin told her.

"We will never meet again. But I can leave you a parting gift. A gift for the bravest, noblest person I have ever met." Zaralin's hands hovered in mid-air, and a lump of clay appeared between them. He started working on it, shaping it into something else. When he finished, she gave the item to Dawn. It was an Icosahedron, made of clay.

"You are like a beautiful bird trapped in a cage made of time. I am Zaralin. It is not in my nature to leave cages unopened." Then he went back into the tower. Dawn never saw him again She studied the clay die. Suddenly, it broke, releasing motes of light that entered Dawn's brain. With the motes came knowledge. Dawn learned the dimensional coordinates of all the known planes of existence. She was no longer trapped in her home plane. She could now travel anywhere, anytime.

And she had something else, an even greater gift. She had hope. If an abomination had been born once, more could appear later. She had lived many lives and had a peculiar perspective on what was and was not possible. Given enough time, anything was. She could wait. Arimel, I am coming for you.