“Why are you on Earth? It can’t be to kill Rissa, not when the first attempt was only a couple weeks ago.” None of the other attacks were on Earth, after all; they were years earlier in the Timestream. Yes, it was a threat now, but it couldn’t be why they were here. They’d have tried earlier; if nothing else, it sounded like it took Morgan a while to come to her new opinion that Rissa needed to live.
Morgan looked down and muttered something that sounded like “hoped you’d miss that.”
Serenity decided not to comment on the mutter. He was fairly confident he wasn’t supposed to hear it. “Are you simply here to observe? That would make some sense, I guess.”
Morgan shook her head. “No, it really is to kill Rissa … along with anything else that will shape the future in the right direction. Ann can’t see the future, but she has just enough ability to hear the Mimir’s whispers and take directions from them on what to do. It’s not always killing, in fact it usually isn’t. We don’t usually know why we’re told to do things, just that we need to do them.”
Morgan seemed to stop there for a moment, as if waiting for Serenity to say something, but when he didn’t, she continued. “I was sent here almost immediately after I failed, but they didn’t say anything about having me try again. The Mimir don’t tell anyone anything unless it furthers the future they want. I was sent here so that they could give Ann a goal instead of detailed instructions; I was supposed to figure out how to make the goal reality. The direction to kill Rissa, that she was on this world … that came about five months ago.”
Five months ago. Serenity tried to think back to what they were doing then. They were still on A’Atla at that point, weren’t they? No, they couldn’t have been; he knew he’d been back longer than that. Rissa went back and forth for a while, but he thought she’d completely moved back to New York City before then. In fact, Serenity thought she was already dealing with the insider trading mess. He couldn’t quite believe that still wasn’t over.
Time slipped by without him noticing it. It always had, but it was even worse since he came back in time. Serenity wanted to blame that on the Tutorials he’d instructed, but he didn’t really think that was the reason. It was far more likely that the cause was the lack of regular reminders of time. He didn’t even have weekends!
Focusing on the important part, though, Serenity couldn’t think of anything offhand that had changed five months earlier in either his life or Rissa’s that would have suddenly brought them to the attention of the Mimir again. It seemed more likely that the change in orders was related to something on their end than something that had changed for Serenity. He didn’t know what it was and it seemed unlikely that Morgan did either.
“You’re getting orders from offworld while Earth is interdicted by the Voice?” Kaasi’s tone was incredulous. “That’s going to get you killed at best and your faction, these Mimir, destroyed as well if you’re unlucky. The Voice doesn’t like people who work around its restrictions.”
Serenity didn’t think that particular question would have occurred to him. It was interesting that it had occurred to Kaasi. She was probably right, but she’d clearly spent a lot of time thinking about what the ten years of protection consisted of. Maybe she’d talked to someone from offworld? Other than this group that had clearly snuck through before they allowed their portal to be closed without contest, there were a number of groups that had established trade through their portals during the time they lasted; more than a few had a number of people move to earth, such as the gecko-like Traa.
“There are things the Voice can’t see,” Rolan replied. “I don’t understand how it’s done, but it lets the people sent to an interdicted world get instructions without attracting the Voice’s attention. I think it’s like they always had the instructions, and the Voice doesn’t stop people who become residents of an interdicted world because their portal is destroyed from doing things?”
The way Rolan described it was poor, but Serenity could sort of see what he was getting at. It sounded like a method created deliberately to get around the Voice. He wasn’t certain what he should do about it; the only option he could immediately think of was to inform the Voice and see if it could do anything.He probably would do that, but later.
Kaasi snorted. “You can count on that if you want to. I’ve always found that trying to beat the Voice at its own game was a fool’s gamble.”
“I doubt the Mimir care as long as it won’t hurt them,” Serenity interjected. “You certainly haven’t portrayed them as caring about others. That may come back to bite them, but apparently it hasn’t so far.”
The destruction of Earth was always in the back of Serenity’s mind these days. It wasn’t a constant thought, especially not since he still expected to somehow avert it, but having a Quest to deal with it did prey on his mind sometimes. He hadn’t succeeded yet. “Have you looked forward a few years to see what is likely to happen here?”
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Serenity had asked Rissa the same question. She’d said it was too far in the future for a solid prediction. He knew she was right, but he couldn’t entirely dismiss the thought that maybe she didn’t want to look out of worry over what she might see.
Morgan nodded slowly. “Yes, of course. That’s part of what I looked for when I was looking at consequences. It’s hard to interpret, and I usually can’t tell exactly what the branch points are; we weren’t taught to find them. I never realized how much we weren’t taught until I started looking.”
Serenity waited for her to continue, but apparently she’d missed the implication of his question. “What did you see? Here, on Earth, at a big scale; I don’t need small details.”
“It’s a lot more impactful than I expected,” Morgan admitted. “I definitely didn’t see everything, but as far as I can tell, the local effect isn’t really visible for a year or two; in the timelines where she lives, there are a lot more people with enchanted stuff on Earth. I don’t know why, I couldn’t find that. It’s not consistent, so it’s not the only factor that can change things, but that was pretty common. Other than that, a lot of the futures where she dies have a catastrophe start four to six years after her death. A couple years after that, I stop being able to follow most of those timelines. I’m not sure why.”
Serenity was fairly confident he’d paled a little at her statement. She might not know why those futures couldn’t be followed past that time, but he had a good guess. Six to eight years from the attempt on Rissa’s life two weeks earlier would put the time when Morgan lost the timelines roughly ten to twelve years after Earth’s Tutorial started, squarely over the timeframe where Serenity remembered seeing the world disintegrate in front of his eyes. He knew it was after the ten-year protection was gone, but not exactly how long after. He’d have guessed six months to a year, but two was entirely possible.
In short, if Rissa died, so did the planet. It might not be that strict. It probably wasn’t, in fact, since Morgan said some timelines continued past that point. Serenity needed to confirm the other side, too. He didn’t want to, but since he wasn’t going to let Rissa die, knowing only what might happen afterwards wasn’t useful. “And if she lives? Do some of the timelines stop strangely early then?”
Morgan shrugged. “A few, not nearly as many. It’s like there’s something I can’t see, some major factor that just doesn’t show up. I don’t know what it is.”
Something she couldn’t see? Serenity had a guess as to what that might be. The question was probably entirely too revealing, but he decided to go ahead and ask anyway. “Have you ever seen me in those visions?”
Morgan frowned and seemed to have to think about it. “Hmm. I know I saw you in the Timestream, back …” She waved behind her, clearly uncomfortable with talking about when he kicked her sword off the branch of the Timestream. For a moment, Serenity wondered if she’d seen that fight the same way he did; his guess was that she’d seen something different. “Since then? I haven’t been looking for you. I don’t think I’ve seen you, but I’m not entirely certain.”
Serenity nodded. Maybe his question hadn’t been too revealing after all, at least not to her. She might realize the implication later, or someone else might; either way, it was worth it for the knowledge that his Unbound Child of Time advantage was probably still protecting him. In many ways, it was too bad it hadn’t protected Rissa as well; if it had, the Mimir wouldn’t have found her and sent their agents on Earth after her.
“No, wait. I did see you. When I was looking for a time to give Ann that wouldn’t kill Rissa, you were there. A couple of different times and places, actually. The others were - there were too many people around or I couldn’t be confident enough that they’d happen.” Morgan frowned and shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve seen you other than that, though?”
Serenity pulled up the Skill he was thinking of. It had been ages since he looked at it, after all.
Unbound
Time does not quite have the same hold on you as it does on others, and Fate does not rule you. You can slip between the lines of the future and past or even blur them if you have the desire and the strength. That which will be has no power over you, and you can break the strands of Destiny for others if you dare. This ability is always active and has always applied to you
Now that he took a close look, it didn’t protect him from being seen; it only meant that he could choose differently. He was fine with that, really; it meant that someone would have to know him to know what he’d do. He was pretty predictable, most of the time, but only to people who knew him.
Really, Morgan’s foresight sounded more like a really good way to guess what might happen than truly predicting the future. She could say something was likely to happen and even learn things she didn’t know, but she had to look and it took a lot of time. It seemed a lot like Rissa’s foresight. Serenity didn’t really have any problems with that.
Serenity wasn’t sure what to ask next. He’d sort of hit a dead end with questions about the future; he only wanted to know so much. Morgan probably hadn’t looked into “how can I save the Earth” at all, since she didn’t even recognize that that was probably the reason she couldn’t see farther.
No, wait, that wasn’t quite true. He did have a question to ask, it just wasn’t about the future. Well, not about the future of Earth. It was still about the future in a way. “So what’s next for you? What do you want out of this?”
“Protection.” Arthur clearly didn’t have to think about the answer. “Morgan wants to abandon the Mimir, but the Mimir don’t let people leave, especially not Valas. She says that if we tell you what we know, we can probably get you to protect us from Ann, and she’s probably the only Valkyrie on Earth. We ought to be safe for the next six years. We’ll have to figure out what to do after that.”