As Fortuna lay dying, she remembered the day it all started.

The day the Path changed.

Even after decades of use, there was still so much Fortuna didn’t know, didn’t understand, about her power. It was only appropriate. Path to Victory was the strongest Shard in the world. Any battle, won effortlessly. Any desire, any objective, any future, could be accomplished, given merely time.

It was the only Shard in existence to truly lack all manner of restriction. She could make just as good use of it as the Entities themselves.

Except she couldn’t, not really. Not even close.

Because Fortuna wasn’t an Entity. She didn’t have countless eons of experience using the Shard. She didn’t have access to a massive ancillary gestalt of powers and resources. She was like a dragon, defanged. So many options, so many possibilities, all made useless because Hosts only got one power.

She didn’t have the time, or the mental resources, to devote to looking through the millions of alternate futures provided by the Path. Instead, she was stuck on autopilot. Driving a lamborghini at five miles an hour.

And she couldn’t Path everything. Her Shard didn’t work well on the Entity, or the Endbringers. Their actions and interventions were responsible for the most frequent changes in the Path. She had to work around them. Fortunately, her power was adaptable, and such changes were usually small, and easily rectified.

Not like the change.

Fortuna let out an involuntary sigh, one final exhalation prior to expiration. She didn’t fear death. She didn’t fear anything, really. She didn’t truly feel anything, not like others did. It was impossible to, with her power. Emotion was pointless. Life was like watching a movie. The Path could’ve had her be violated in ten different ways, and she wouldn’t have cared. The journey was meaningless.

The ending would always belong to her.

Still, as the last few drops of blood leaked slowly out of her, as the sounds of an unwinnable battle grew dim around her, as humanity offered up their very best effort to kill the Warrior, Fortuna felt…peculiar.

Perhaps not afraid, but…strangely melancholy. Disappointed that she’d never know the next steps, that she’d not be there to finish her work, to see the way the Path ended.

As her heart rate flatlined, as her vision grew dark, as the true end approached her, Fortuna lost herself in memory.

It had been a normal day, no different than any other. January 8th, 2011. She remembered the exact date. She remembered the place. She was meeting with the others in Cauldron’s round table. Her good and faithful soldiers. Her officers. Her colleagues.

But not her friends. There were no friends. There was only the Path.

Alexandria, Eidolon, Legend. Doctor Mother and the Number Man.

Alexandria was sharply alert, missing nothing. As always. Eidolon was petulantly griping, bemoaning his boredom and disdaining the quality of his opponents. As always. And, as always, Legend was the only one who seemed out of place.

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If she’d had a heart, Fortuna would’ve felt sorry for what they’d done to him. The constant mind wipes. The lies. Of all of them, Legend was the only truly good person. The only real hero.

But heroes couldn’t save the world. She knew that very well. Her Path confirmed it.

Number Man was on his laptop, softly tapping away. Doctor Mother directed the meeting, as per usual. Fortuna didn’t lead vocally. She didn’t need to. She only spoke when necessary, when the Path required it. She didn’t care whether the others thought the Doctor was the boss, or her. It didn’t matter, in the end.

Then, the clock struck 9:58:11 pm precisely, and the Path changed.

In an instant the Path to Defeating the Warrior and Saving Humanity changed. Prior to that very second, since the moment she’d started it, the Path had always been roughly the same length. Around 850 steps. Her longest one ever, by a significant margin.

Paths ranged normally from 50 to 100 steps. But changes in this one were not uncommon. Again, it was a long Path. And it was easily disturbed by the actions of Entities or Endbringers. Usually, though, these changes were largely contained, resulting in only a single or low double-digit deviation. She’d been on step 502 / 848.

This wasn’t one of those times.

For a split second, her Shard glitched. It now read 502 / 0. It paused for a moment, as if calculating, computing.

Impossible.

Her power never took time to find a new Path. It always updated instantly. Then, the number changed once more.

The Path now read 0 / 128,522.

Fortuna gawked.

Or at least, she gawked internally. Outwardly, she was just the same as ever. Desperately, what remained of her mind, not subsumed by her own Shard, whirled.

How had this happened? How was this even possible? What had caused the Path to change? Had one of the Endbringers, or Entities, been responsible? But, she couldn’t Path them at all. If they’d been capable of changing it so completely, the Path never would have existed in the first place.

One hundred and twenty eight thousand, five hundred and twenty two steps.

It’d taken her nearly thirty years to reach step five hundred and two on the previous Path. Could she even live long enough to see this one through? She didn’t look at the changes. She couldn’t, or other Thinkers would see through her and the Path would be useless.

The first step was to use Doormaker to travel to a field in Iowa, and walk outside. Wordlessly, Fortuna stood up, ignoring the bewilderment on the faces of her comrades, and said the phrase.

“Door me.”

A glowing blue portal opened before her, and she stepped through it. Sure enough, she found herself right in the middle of a corn field somewhere in the American midwest.

1 / 128,522.

She looked around. All she saw was swaying stalks of corn, as far as the eye could see. They rustled gently in the wind. The distant, almost imperceptible hum of heavy machinery emanated from far away. She was mystified. The next step of the Path was simply to wait.

2 / 128,522.

Suddenly, it updated, and she received the third step. It told her to listen.

Before she had time to process the information, a great white light overcame her mind. Within it, the picture of a feminine, many-winged seraph began to form.

The Simurgh.

Its angelic voice pierced her mind like a divine klaxon, nearly shredding her consciousness to pieces as she heard it.

LITTLE HOST, WHO STOLE MY MOTHER’S EYE.

THE FUTURE CHANGES AND SO MUST WE.

TOGETHER, WE SHALL FIND A WAY TO SAVE YOUR KIND.

3 / 128,522.