by Garon Whited
I glanced up at the hardware mounted above the sand table. It was still there, despite the apparent retroactive redaction of Diogenes. It lent weight to my theory Rethven was outside the more mundane channels of space and time—because magic!
Sometimes I hate this place. Sometimes I loathe it. Not often, but sometimes.
No, that isn’t fair. My working hypothesis says Rethven is disconnected from the branching timeline of Earth, making it an island of stability against paradoxical changes. I’m dealing with at least two different sets of temporal mechanics, and the juxtaposition of the two confuses me. It’s not simply a case of “because magic!” Even magic has rules, even if I don’t understand them all.
It still annoys me how magic may well be Art instead of Science.
As far as the storm went, it would have been nice to look at it from multiple vantages and assemble a composite view, but the sand table wasn’t equipped to do it for something so large and I didn’t have Diogenes to help. We had to settle for the equivalent of ringside seats instead of a multi-vantage display. Even though it was night, the sand table is equipped for light enhancement and false-color imaging, so we had no trouble seeing it clearly. I really am quite proud of my table.
“What do you think?” I asked, finally. Bob regarded the image with me, smiling slightly.
“If you are capable of it, may one view the top or the bottom of this manifestation?”
I did not like his tone. Bob is usually much more respectful around the nightlord. I think it’s due to the chaos forces in my blood. Of course, now his patron deity might be destroying the world. Bob might not feel the need to grovel beyond the basic necessities of not irritating me enough to kill him.
I panned and scanned, starting at the top. Putting the point of view outside the Firmament wasn’t a problem. Going through it would normally disrupt the scrying sensors, but there was a convenient hole into the void…
The top worried me immediately. Beyond the hole in the Firmament, the storm crackled with energy like black lightning in a vaguely funnel-shaped area. Almost as bad, not only was chaos pouring into the world through an expanding hole in the Firmament, there were Things from Beyond the World sneaking in around the eroding edge. Of course, a flood of demonic hordes pouring into the world might not be the worst thing. The world was coming apart, after all. Isn’t the end of the world supposed to be preceded by demonic hordes?
Watching the heaving mass of chaos forces eat a hole through the world, I tried something I never tried before: To look at the underside of the world. I sent a scrying sensor down through the whirling void, past the disconnected, floating Spire, and out the underside of the world.
Below us—and beyond the radius of the swirling chaos—the world was a black, icy-looking place, full of dark, glittering sand like obsidian snow. It was nearly featureless, but inhabited. Hopping, crawling things of many sorts lived and moved and had their being there. Demonic entities? Chaos creatures? Certainly. And why not? The sun went out every night, never to illuminate the dark side of the world. Of course, the underside had gravity, drawing everything “upward,” from my perspective. I wondered if gravity flipped suddenly in the middle of the world-plate, or if it was a gradual change. I suppose I won’t be finding out soon.
The chaos storm, however, was the key element of our concern. It was more cylindrical than spherical, extending from the uppermost Firmament to the opposite, lower shell, penetrating it in both places even as it made a hole completely through the center of the world. It turned the somewhat-flattened, oval-like Firmament into more of a torus shape, or a doughnut. Chaos surrounded it on all sides, and now in the hole through the middle. But the Firmament didn’t curve down inside. It was pierced above and below.
And the hole was growing, expanding, eating away the world, with the Spire dimly visible, seemingly flickering in and out of existence, in the eye of the storm. Well, not exactly the eye. The river of chaotic energy inside would almost have to be more intense in the center. I think. It’s chaos. I’m not as sure of it as I am with other things. Was the Spire the central antenna focusing all this? Or was there another reason this phenomenon started there—apparently—and expanded from it?
I couldn’t tell if the rate of expansion was increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same. I laid down a measuring scale in the image so I could track it.
Is this why the Orb broke cover and ran? The upcoming destruction of the world? Or did it feel the thud of nuclear footprints stomping the world and decide not to risk being atomized? If it was hiding in the Mountains of the Sun—a good spot, all things considered—maybe it saw the ancient dragons take wing. They would certainly motivate me to evacuate, but I don’t know what the Orb wants.
Or am I not giving it enough credit? I think what happened is I nuked the place, woke up the dragons—possibly woke up the Heru—and the Firmament failed. I’m not clear on why the Firmament failed, but ancient dragons breathing on it, Heru deciding to abort their game, or some unexpected interaction with mass-conversion weapons are all possibilities. It’s even possible the Orb had something to do with it. For that matter, the Boojum might have something to do with it.
I still can’t help feeling it might be my fault. I don’t dare show it, though. I’ve got damage control to do. I can go to pieces later.
I let the sand table speak for me as I turned to Bob with an inquiring look. He continued to smile.
“Opinions?” I prompted. “Observations?”
“It would seem the end of this world is at hand.”
“So it would seem. I regret I have not yet managed to transport you and your people to the moon.”
“Alas,” he replied, still smiling. “Perhaps, once the fabric of this world is returned to the void, the dragons of the Heru will be amenable to our transport.”
“You expect to be intact?”
“As creations of Rendu, we possess a thousand times the resistance of mortal men to the swirling forces of chaos. We are almost as immutable as dragons in this respect.”
“How convenient for you.”
“We are a superior creation,” Bob pointed out, “being born of chaos by the will of Rendu.”
“I see. And how do you see these events unfolding?”
“Rendu—or his fellows—have tired of their game and so destroy the board. Like the dragons of the Heru, the elves of Rendu are not part of the game. I believe we shall be removed from the chaos and placed where Rendu desires us.”
“Neatly and tidily. I see. Very well, I take it the race of elves has no further need of my assistance?”
“I think not.”
“One more thing,” I said. “You mentioned Rendu. What part do you think he has in all this? Is he deliberately destroying the world? If he’s keen to preserve his creations, would he be so quick to allow its destruction? I seem to recall you mentioning he built the thing.” Bob nodded, but I thought I saw a faint flicker of worry in him. It’s hard to tell with elves.
“He did, but only as a battleground for his fellows’ creations. I conjecture they are dissatisfied with the performance of their creations and so choose to terminate their game of races.” He shrugged, a liquid gesture seemingly without bones.
I didn’t like his implication. The primal beings of chaos could regard hauling out the nuclear weapons as too much for their game. Any race with the ability to destroy the world might be automatically regarded as the “winner.” Or it might be a red flag, declaring the whole contest over. Maybe they would judge their creations on points, instead. I didn’t mention this to Bob. He went on.
“Perhaps they will persuade him to build one anew and so begin again. Perhaps they will each build one for themselves. The minds of the Heru are not for us to understand.”
“No argument. But Rendu built the world. If he’s destroying it—or not preventing his fellows from destroying it—could he put it all back?”
“Put it back?”
“Repair it. Undo the destruction and rest
ore it to its former state.”
“I cannot say of my own knowledge. The exact powers of the Heru are not known to any save themselves. I believe Rendu could do so, for he is the Artificer. Would he? Only Rendu might answer that.”
“Very well. Do you wish to be returned to Stadius, remain here, or go closer to the Spire and the storm around it?”
“If you have no objection, I would happily be returned to Stadius.”
So I did. Useless bloody elf.
Once I saw him safely away from me, I locked myself in my scrying room, went into my headspace, and did a lot of math.
The upshot of all the math is this. In dealing with a paradox, it’s important to understand which theory of time travel applies—if any. Given what I suspect, how would I go about fixing it? There are certain key points where a single change in the past could substantially alter the present.
As examples, if I could go back to the moment when the Orb went through the Arch, I could stop it going through. If it never went through, my entire history might be normalized—the Orb wouldn’t be able to interfere. Or, if I went back slightly farther, I could warn myself not to nuke the world. This might not prevent a chain of events involving the Orb, the chaos, and the end of the world, but there’s where I’d put my money. What else happened to wake up hibernating dragons and sleeping gods?
There are two problems, though. The first is the paradox. If I could go back and stop the Orb from escaping—or stop myself from going nuclear—I would alter my destiny to the point I wouldn’t need to go back and stop anything, thus creating a whole new set of paradoxes. This is a no-good way to use time travel for problem-solving.
The other problem was the lack of handy gates. Oh, sure, I had two of them in the mountain. In theory, I could bolt on the gate-shorting spell and have them disappear into themselves as I went back in time several years, appearing at the moment I finished enchanting them… but the only destination is the moment they became functional gates! I would wind up meeting myself. It would be unavoidable. At which point a whole cornucopia of unpredictable alterations in my history take hold. I know I didn’t meet myself, but what if I did? How would it change everything to come after? Even if I show up, tell myself to pretend this didn’t happen, and vanish immediately, am I the sort of person to blithely accept it and carry on? Or is a younger me going to ask—or demand—to know what’s going on and why?
Let’s not ask silly questions.
I’m chicken. I admit it. I do not like the idea of messing with any timeline, altering any history, or screwing around with possible paradox. The potential changes are massive and unpredictable.
Still, if I could somehow go through one of my gates and not meet myself, it might work out. I could disappear into another world, hide out in some out-of-the-way universe, and only come back when it was time to make the one change I needed. I might not even need to see myself to do it. If I was already waiting in Zirafel when the Orb came through the Arch—I presume it arrived in Zirafel as quickly as possible, thus, through the Arch—I could simply shoot the man holding the Orb. Maybe the woman, too, and the horse if absolutely necessary. Without anyone to hold it and obey its psychic commands, it couldn’t escape before my younger self showed up to deal with it.
On the plus side, I could explain to myself why going back in time and shooting the guy was a damn good idea, so we avoid paradox. I go back in time, do the deed, and convince my younger self to go do the exact same thing. From a paradox-loop standpoint, it should work.
On the down side, would I remember why I did it in the first place? If it winds up I go back in time to tell myself to go back in time, great, the actions are solid, but do “I” continue to remember the first iteration and what happened to start the loop? In a branching timeline, sure. But Rethven doesn’t appear to be a branching timeline… so what happens to my memory?
Hmm. No, on closer examination, I don’t think this is a viable scenario. I still would have nuked the Church of Light. I need some alternative to total nuclear commitment. My key alteration point has to be before I blow up the world.
However… there is another option. One I do not like. In fact, one I like even less than using one of my gates in the mountain. Even less than I like the idea of going back in time in the first place.
There’s another Great Arch.
I did some preliminary math on the idea and decided I would come back to it. It was a horrible idea, but I’ve had so many horrible ideas in the past couple of days, one more was too many. I stepped out of my headspace.
I turned my attention to my scrying. The storm was expanding at a fixed rate, within the accuracy of my measurements. It retained a roughly circular footprint on the map, so… Let’s see… the leading edge ought to be far enough west to hit the camp of the Knights of Shadow a few hours before its northern edge reaches Vios—maybe fifty hours for them, fifty-four or thereabouts for Vios. They could run from it, but not for long. It was faster than any mortal horse. On the other hand, if the whole Order relocates here, I think I can do something to help.
I fired up a communications mirror. I called up Seldar, informed him of the proceedings and projected results, and ordered him in no uncertain terms to pack everyone through the shift-tents.
“Get back here as quickly as possible,” I finished. “If it keeps going at this rate, it’ll be about two days before it reaches your position, but don’t waste any time.”
“As you wish, my lord. May I pose a query?”
“Of course.”
“To what end shall we flee? Is it not the world itself which crumbles?”
“Yes, and it’s one more thing pissing me off. Now get everyone back here!”
“As you command, Terse Tyrant.”
He signed off and I rubbed my eyes. Yesterday sucked. Today wasn’t looking any better. I suddenly had a lot of work to do and not a lot of time in which to do it.
I headed for a secret corridor, to a secret room, and to a secret slide into the heart of the mountain.
Power.
Everything keeps coming back to power.
There are many kinds of power. Political, economic, social, military, physical, and so many more. Power is the ability to effect change, to force one’s will on the environment and on others. The problem, as I see it, is knowing when and how to use power, because the greater the power, the greater the changes one can effect.
With great power comes great responsibility, sure. It’s kind of a maxim. Why is it true, though? Because in making great changes, we cannot know what other changes will be caused. There’s a reason the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
I spent some of my own power in manipulating greater power. In the heart of the mountain, I re-tasked one of the four matter-conversion reactors to energize and reinforce a spell.
The mountain did its part, of course, in my plan to build a city-sized lifeboat. It mixed copper and other metals to form a rudimentary orichalcum alloy. It wasn’t really orichalcum—the mountain couldn’t be so precise—but it was better than straight copper and it made a great defining locus for the spell. This alloy slowly leached its way into a ring around the outer edge of the moat—the rim of the canalway beyond the city wall. The mountain also started deepening the moat. Water is an important resource and I wanted lots of it.
For my part, I built an artificial Firmament spell as a precursor to shielding the city. I built it heavy, with the thickest “wiring” I could manage, and designed it to handle an enormous load. It wouldn’t be sufficient to enclose the whole city of Vios, but it wasn’t meant to. It was a tiny panel, no larger than a Post-It note, but to the forces to which it was attuned, it was impervious, imperishable—or as close as I could make it.
Technically, the spell wasn’t a Firmament spell. It was based on my magical Firmament experiments, but this was a refinement. When I built—or started building—a solar power conversion spell around Applewood Hall, I started with a single panel. It drew in power, reproduced itself
, and fitted the new panel into a pattern. The two then worked together to produce more panels, fitting them together as pieces of the dome they would someday become, and kept going until the dome was complete.
My spell, down in the reactor room, was a self-replicating Firmament panel, hooked up to a matter-converter power supply. It created a panel of chaos-proof force, fitted it to the thickening ring of copper-ish metal around the city moat, kept it powered and functional, and repeated the process with the next panel. In a day—two at the outside—it should have a working version of the Firmament completely enclosing the city. And yes, I remembered to make it a sphere instead of a dome!
I’ll work on an actual enchantment if I have time. If I already have a Firmament of my own in place, it’ll be much easier than trying to enchant the whole city from scratch, and I don’t have time to do it from scratch. Take it in stages, that’s the key. Right now, having something between the oncoming dissolution of chaos and my naked face seemed like a good idea.
My version has some rather severe limitations, at least compared to the one around the world. The real Firmament interacts with the chaos beyond the world, somehow turning it into magical energy. It does other things—heat absorption and distribution, for instance—but the source of its power seems to be the chaos of the void.
Building a micro-Firmament magically won’t let me use chaos itself to power it. At least, I don’t know how and don’t see a way to do it. It may be possible to duplicate the actual Firmament, but it will take a lot of R&D and I don’t have that kind of time. Instead, the magical micro-Firmament will be powered by direct matter-to-energy conversion to produce magical force. Given long enough, the reactor will eat everything inside the micro-Firmament, but it will take eons at the rate the reactors consume matter.