Chương 1108: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Six

Dear Diary, Sometimes I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. To scream with rage or curl up in a little ball. To plan and work productively to make things better, or to lie down and rest so I don't fuck things up worse because I'm tired. Of course, most of that is because if I stop moving for any appreciable length of time, the Black Dog comes nipping at my heels.

But now and then it's because when I go out of my way to be patient, and peaceful, and pretty much let other people do as they will, instead of things working out for me, they wind up... Not bad, exactly, because when I let people do as they will and things wind up bad on purpose, I know how to respond to that.

For those who regret the consequences of their actions, especially if they clearly didn't realize those consequences would ensue, I make them clean shit up and maybe put them in the time out corner to think over what they've done. For those who revel in the pain and suffering they've caused, endings are a thing I have, albeit occasionally guiltily, reveled in providing.

Yeah, I'm not talking about good or bad results from letting folks do as they will, I'm talking about things that probably don't qualify as endings, because they just don't have any fuckin' closure whatsoever. Just some degree of ongoing confusion, which I do not deal with nearly as well as I pretend to. Chaos I can revel in, confusion I cannot.

So after I have no idea how long waiting for the Norns to finish up their divinations, with the only breaks being Orla's news of a pirate fleet being mousetrapped and Verthandi telling me that nobody's targeting kids near me, Urd stepped into view. From the past, I guess. I didn't have to glance up to know that the sun hung almost directly overhead, even though Aisling, Dad, and I stood in the shade of Yggdrasil's branches. After a kind of disappointed sniff, Urd nodded to her sister, then turned to fully face me.

"My divinations are complete." I nodded to her, then when she just stood there, asked, "so... Anything you can tell me?" She head-tilted at that, then said, "yes." After a long pause, she sighed and continued.

"Nowhere in the past has any entity placed any form of curse related to harming children upon you." She stopped talking, still staring at me. I took a moment to parse what she'd said, then replied, "that's a really specific wording."

"It is." I waited, but she didn't say anything else. Eventually I asked, "anything else you can tell me? Like, can you even confirm or deny that there's an actual pattern to the shit that's been happening?" She nodded.

"There is. I can confirm that not every danger to Children near you was part of that pattern, although..." I stayed quiet when she drifted off. Eventually my patience paid off.

"Those incidents which are not part of the greater pattern could be considered to be some kind of fractal extension of that larger pattern."

"What?"

"You are unfamiliar with the concept of fractals?" I shook my head.

"No, not that. I'm just... Every time a kid is in danger near me, it might be connected to whatever it is?" She shrugged.

"It could be that. Or it could be like her," she nodded to Aisling.

"Dafuq?" She sighed and shook her head.

"You are a Goddess of Children, and are a Goddess of both Healing and Vengeance. Not only have you set your Clergy to collecting Children most likely to be traumatized, your very nature has drawn you to times and places where Children have been in danger."

"Oh, shit. You're saying this is my fault?" She paused far longer than I liked, then nodded, followed by rocking her head side to side.

"The danger? Unlikely, although your presence is likely to reveal previously hidden dangers. Your proximity to Children in danger? While I wouldn't think to assign fault or blame, that is very likely due to your nature, yes." When I just stood there, jaw working, not sure how to respond to that, she said, "if that disturbs you, consider what would have happened to those Children had you not been present." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I stiffened a little at that, then sighed.

"Thanks." She just nodded, then walked over to speak quietly with Verthandi for a moment. After that we stood there for another M-Space endless moment. At some point when the sun had cleared Yggdrasil's branches, meaning late afternoon, early evening, she shifted like she'd just realized something.

"Odd. I had thought my divinations would take longer than Skuld's. I wonder what's keeping..." Skuld tumbled into view, smoke and tiny licks of flame chasing her. Something about her triggered my protective instincts, and I leapt to stand between her and where she'd arrived, throwing a protective Ward around all of us as I did.

"Do you need Healing? Do we have incoming?" I'd turned my side toward where she'd arrived, putting Aisling away from any incoming danger, because I didn't need her adding Bane Sidhe wails to whatever problems we had. Skuld rolled to her feet, her gun at least half again as big as it had been. After a split second I realized it hadn't grown, she'd shrunk. Literally gotten younger, or at least younger looking.

"I'm fine." She wasn't on fire, and I couldn't see any burn marks or soot or anything, but I definitely got the impression that she was anything but 'fine'. I sighed, realizing that normal Skuld was definitely firmly in the middle of the 'thinks she's invulnerable and immortal' phase, and this Skuld might be worse, somewhere in the middle of a chunni phase.

"Care to let us know what happened, or whether you're being chased?" She shuddered.

"I... Normally I would say that none can chase me from the future, but..." Her shudder turned into a shake, like she was trying to fling the fear off like a dog shaking off water.

"I... I think found the pattern. I found the source of the pattern. I think."

"Okay?" We stood there for a long moment.

"Care to share with the class?" Aisling chose that moment to pipe up. Well, as much as she ever did.

"Maze... share... class." Skuld glared at her a moment, then snorted, shook her head, and broke out laughing. If it had the edge of hysteria to it, it wasn't scared hysteria. More like the weird kind of high that came with realizing that death hadn't, in fact, ended things. Eventually she settled down as her sisters clustered near her, their hands finding her shoulders.

"Okay. I'm okay. That was not fun."

"Okay. In your own time. If you've got any kind of information, I'd appreciate knowing whatever you can share." She took a deep breath, let it out, and said, "I saw the pattern you spoke of. I... You know the dangers of prophecy?" I nodded.

"Yeah. So I get it if you want the others to leave, or if you want to hedge stuff." I frowned.

"Don't try threatening me or mine, though." She shuddered again.

"No. No, after watching you awaken Jormungandr, I think not. No..." She trailed off, then shook herself again.

"The pattern continues into the future. It is a pattern, but not... Not exactly a targeted one?"

"How the fuck is it finding me so well then?" She shook her head.

"That I do not know. Or rather, I am not sure of. Most certainly, I cannot say."

"So what can you say?" She paused, thinking. I gave her the time she needed, because I didn't want to be the one to shove a Deity of Fate down the wrong leg of the trousers of time. Eventually she nodded and said, "The pattern is not a targeted thing, but a... A fracture. A fracture in Time."

"And space?" She shrugged, shaking her head.

"That I could not say. But perhaps. However, I suspect you are drawn to that fracture for some reason; at each point where the pattern repeated, you were there."

"Fighting against it?" She shook her head.

"Not always fighting. Helping? Mourning? Fighting sometimes, yes, but... Have you fought every time in the past?" I thought about the times I'd saved kids in the past. I mean, in some ways I was always fighting against, y'know, Fate, tryna save kids, but I wasn't always punching things.

"I guess not." She nodded.

"So there you have it. You are drawn to those cracks in Time. In... In Fate."

"Whoa... Cracks in Fate? Dafuq? You're making it sound like some kind of apocalypse is coming." She snorted, chuckled a little, holding up one hand.

"Sorry. Just funny hearing that from the Walking Ragnarok."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. But is Time and Space gonna end early or something?" Before I could mention how I'd fixed that kind of thing before, Urd shook her head and interrupted with, "rather the opposite, I think." Skuld's gaze shot around to look at Urd almost as quick as mine, which almost made me miss how she'd started out staring at her sister's tits, then raised her gaze to meet Urd's. I definitely did not expect her to squeak out, "oh, shit."

"What's wrong? Somebody want to explain? Also, tell me if I need to get ready to throw down?" Skuld took another deep breath, then slung her gun over her shoulder before turning to me.

"I... I think not, but I'm... My judgement is perhaps more juvenile now."

"Why?"

"Because Skuld's age is not based on how long she has lived, but how long she has yet to live." I looked at Urd and asked, "tell me she's not looking young because she doesn't have long to live?"

"She is not. She in fact has longer to live than she had before the divination. Whatever she has seen, whatever has seared itself into future history so strongly that it has cracked Time and Fate itself, has not hastened the end, but delayed it. Significantly."

"Oh." I shook my head, trying to get everything to fall into place, then moved to drop my Ward. Before I did, I decided to do one more due diligence check.

"So what was it you saw that had you so shook when you arrived?" Skuld closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. When she spoke, I felt some kind of subtle shift in the air. Prophecy.

"I saw the destruction of the Moirai."

"The who now?" That's when Dad touched my shoulder. When I turned to look at him, he said, "the Moirai are the proper name of the Greek Fates."