AN: Minor Editing Pass 5-29-24

Waking up cold and alone on a dusty mattress was terrible, 3 out of 10, I would not recommend. Yeah, it was better than the alley, but the knowledge I was still unable to shower, poop, or even turn on a light made the house little more than an annoyance this early. Really I probably would have slept even longer since I had been practicing past midnight, but the alarm on my phone was set for 6am so I could possibly bump into Taylor on her morning jog. I hadn’t originally been planning on that, but I found some old clothes that sorta kinda fit upstairs. A pair of shorts later I could at least attempt to catch her and check on her.

Opening a portal to a back alley closer to Taylor’s neighborhood was easy now. Really we were only about 5 miles away. After all of my practice last night my range was probably about 10 miles for a human sized portal if I knew where I was going. The good news was two fold. One I could open one to anywhere I had been fairly easily. The second was that I could open one about the size of a pea and see through it. Plus as long as my side of the portal was dark and the area I was viewing was a distance away from what I wanted to see it was incredibly hard to notice me.

Ultimately I had decided to call scrying, it was incredibly useful and I was probably going to be using it constantly.

Opening a hole near ground level in broad daylight was probably a stupid idea though. Additionally I found that unless you fit through you weren’t going to force your way through the portal. Actually the entire thing felt a lot like a brick window and smacking into the sides of the portal were as solid as said brick. Ironically if I didn’t want to go through the portal then I could hit the portal from a side angle and disperse it like slapping away some dense smoke… Weird was the least of what I was feeling. At least I knew I wouldn’t bring down a plane by putting it in the wrong place and time or something.

Starting my jog I kept my eyes on a swivel trying to figure out where Taylor might pop out at. Really it was a bit of a long shot, but I was pretty sure it was worth the effort if I could meet her carefully at first and bring her somewhere safe to talk.

As I slowly jogged I tried to make sure I was clearly a newbie so I could ask her for tips. The girl needed some confidence in something and helping me with my jogging was a reasonable start.

Once I was able to move I started planning out my next steps. I needed to find some drug houses and take their cash. I was down to around $200 and I had only been here a single day. Trying to spot dealers coming and going from several stories up where my scrying couldn’t be noticed was going to be annoying, but I didn’t exactly have many options yet. Taylor would make this so much easier as long as she could command the bugs on the other side of my portals.

It was after 8am before I gave up. I had obviously not picked the right time or location and so it was best to head back to my base to plan my next options.

Finding an alley I portal back home. Was this my home? Whatever, best to call it home while I get off of this rock. A thought crossed my mind while I sat and ate a granola bar while scrying the best way to get a shower. What if I don’t know the setting for the next world we hop to? Maybe if Worm was my world’s fiction, then some of the fiction here would end up as the next world I was dropped into. Then again, what were the chances I would be dropped into a point in star wars I would actually recognize. I was pretty sure the franchise crossed something like 10 thousand years if you include all of the lore and the Knights of the old republic stories.

Sighing I found a house three houses down that only had one middle aged lady living there, cats and all. It felt a little weird to be using her shower when she left for work, but it would have to do.

As it turns out it was even weirder than I expected as there were no less than three cats staring at me as I got out of the shower despite taking no more than 5 minutes.

Clean and once again dressed I took a pillowcase of laundry down to a local laundromat and got to cleaning including the old bed sheets I had been using. I still needed to figure out how best to approach this all, but more urgently I wanted to start figuring out how to make a lich. I paused and then winced. Yeah, I was going to have to practice on animals wasn’t I?

Thus that afternoon I was sitting in front of a restrained stray cat, six mice, and two pigeons. One mouse was dead. I had yanked too hard on his soul and it tore free and the mouse instantly died. Not to say the process of yanking the soul was instant. It took nearly a full minute to yank it free, but apparently that was still too fast. The mouse didn’t seem to know what was happening until near the end though. Then it seemed to go crazy in fear, heart racing and everything. The second, third and fourth mice all resulted in the same.

The fifth mouse went a little better and the soul was placed neatly inside a crystal shot glass. However apparently I had left the body soulless for too long as the body was dead before I could tie a string back to the body to allow the soul to puppet it.

Deciding that I might as well find out if I could remove a soul from the shot glass I pulled it free and tried putting it back in the body. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that it didn’t work, by the time I had done all of this testing it had been dead for some time. I wasn’t a necromancer. I could pretty clearly feel that all I could do was move souls around and tie them to things to make sure they couldn’t move on. The sixth mouse however worked. I had a lich mouse being puppeted by a sliver of soul. Deciding to let the mouse go back into its cage for a moment I felt the soul snap. The body collapsed and I quickly pulled another sliver of soul to the mouse. It once again woke up shaking. It seemed that souls really didn’t like to be stretched more than a foot or two.

I had thought this might be the case and I tried to weave a portal into the body of the mouse. It took nearly forty minutes and I was frustrated before I finally succeeded. It turned out that I needed to weave the portal together then pull the soul sliver through it. Then I could close it down to nothing. That was better than I could have possibly hoped for.

The soul was now anchored into the area below the heart and I got the impression it was only a few atoms wide. However the moment that anything happened to the few atoms around the portal within the body, the soul portal would close keeping the phylactery safe. I didn’t even have to keep the portal open myself as the rat’s soul didn’t want to be cut off so it supported the portal itself. However, It wasn’t perfect quite yet. I would have preferred even more separation, but it was infinitely better than my current vulnerable self.

Next I tried the bird. The bird’s soul was not much bigger than the mice, but I seemed to be improving as I kept a small sliver tied to the bird’s body while moving the rest to the shot glass. Now was the real moment of truth. I released the bird into the cat’s cage and predictably the cat tore it to pieces. I waited for a moment as the cat ate away at the bird’s body. Reaching out I pushed my senses into the shot glass. I was relieved to find the soul was still there. The soul seemed agitated which was to be expected, it had just felt its body die. I tried to soothe the soul by petting it and surprisingly it seemed to work.

That was just the second step; however, the most important step was this final one. Next I pulled the soul from the second pigeon and released it, letting that soul disperse. Then I quickly put a tendril of soul from the shot glass into the now soulless pigeon. The pigeon in question slowly opened its eyes and then blinked while standing up. I resisted the impulse to cheer as I didn’t want to be overheard by the neighbors.

That was the three steps I needed. The ability to tie a soul to an object to create a phylactery. The ability to leave said phylactery somewhere safe. Finally the ability to tie said soul to a new empty body when the soul’s original body had been destroyed.

I could feel instinctively that for anyone else being stuck in a phylactery would be like being stuck asleep, but since I was so heavily attuned to souls I would still be awake and capable of all of my soul magic while stuck in my phylactery. The problem was without a blank body I would have to rip someone’s soul out and puppet them if I wanted to actually affect the physical world… Damn it, I was basically Voldemort wasn’t I?

Throwing up my hands I pulled the soul out of the cat who had started to hiss at me and then wove it back into the cat’s body through the portal. Dropping the stray in a separate warehouse I decided to practice manipulating the cat’s soul.

I knew that the soul and mind were intrinsically linked so if I poked at it enough I might be able to change some things, maybe even get some affection. It was probably not very effective. Especially as I couldn’t program responses, but I could tell already it might eventually turn into something if I spent a lot of time developing the skill. The problem was I was sure it wouldn’t do much to the type of intelligent women I was looking for. Just being bonded to me was probably only enough to encourage mutual trust.

After nearly an hour I was pretty sure if that cat ever found me again it would believe I was its best friend. I mean, even without actually being able to change anything I had just given it the equivalent of the best back rub and scratches both physically and spiritually that it could possibly have imagined.

Sighing I got up. It was past noon and I hadn’t really had breakfast. Popping back around to the Mcdonalds I had lunch before heading over to a grocery store. I couldn’t cook exactly, but I could still buy basic stuff. Plus if the lady next door was gone I could easily cook some ramen using her microwave… I sighed. I really wanted to get out of this world.

Deciding to scout out some drug dens by once again scrying some streets I moved up and down through what was clearly gang territory. It took nearly two hours before I noticed several guys in gang colors moving out of a run down house. Poking my scrying window inside I found what was probably a low level supplier. There were probably 30 or 40 pounds of drugs in various different bags. Then again, I wasn’t good at estimating them. It seemed a lot, but I was pretty sure there were nearly a quarter million people in the city. If only one in every ten people did drugs then that was 20 thousand people using drugs. A little over 30 pounds in drugs wouldn’t even constitute 1% of what those people were probably using.

Stolen story; please report.

I sighed. Yeah, the failing city was definitely something I wasn’t going to be able to handle right now. I would have to think about what I could do there. Maybe get Amy and Taylor to get a metal eating bug and clear out the harbor.

Shaking my head to get back on target I eventually found the safe where the money was placed and then took it all. I had thought about taking only a little bit, but it really wasn’t worth the effort to try to find another safehouse right now. Still, to make it look like a stranger or some sort of other cape I waited until everyone had left the money room before messing up the room and then breaking the window inwards as softly as I could.

After counting my money I realized I now had nearly 10 thousand dollars. I didn’t know if I was lucky or not. Was that high or low?

Regardless, I could now move a little more openly. Deciding that I wanted to rent an apartment so I could have a real presence in the city, as well as a place to shower, I popped back near the boardwalk where I had seen some for rent signs. An annoying couple of hours later and I was the proud renter of a one room, semi-furnished apartment. Sure the one bedroom apartment was not worth the nearly $600 a month I was paying, but the landlord had thrown in water, electricity, and wifi along with asking no questions on who I was or what I was doing. Some insinuation that I was a normal runaway working at the local junkyard seemed to be enough.

After some consideration I decided to move the bed over and still sleep in the abandoned house. I would just keep the windows closed and blinds closed and portal back and forth. That way if anyone tracked me down to the apartment I entered each night I wouldn’t actually be here when they broke in after me.

Maybe the paranoia of Earth Bet was getting to me.

Regardless I moved to scope out what I hoped was Dinah’s middle school. I wasn’t going to do anything yet, but I wanted to scope things out and I had been sitting far too long. This was also one of the nicer parts of town so the gangs shouldn’t be bothering me here.

As I walked I noticed that school had gotten out a while ago as the middle school was very much empty. That was good. I really didn’t want to meet anyone right now.

“The numbers say that you can save me.”

Turning around quickly I finally noticed a young girl in a school uniform who somehow managed to walk up to me without me seeing her. Blinking, what she said suddenly hit me and I nearly facepalmed. I had been worrying about how to approach her, but she was a thrice damn precog. Obviously if she wanted to be found then she was going to find me instead.

Glancing around I tried to act natural and stick out my hand. “Nice to meet you. My name is Max.”

Her eyes narrowed. “0.052% chance your name is Max.”

I sighed. “Just shake the damn hand kid and let's head towards your house. I can get us somewhere safe once we are alone and explain.”

She seemed to consider this for a moment before shaking my hand. “93.134% chance you are telling the truth.”

Trying to look like I was just escorting her home, I waited until we turned down a side street before pulling her around the back of a dumpster and portaling us both back to the house.

Realizing that pulling a kid into a dark enclosed area would be terrible for her nerves I had portaled us to the second story where it was still dusty and dirty, but the window blinds had been left open.

Once we were there I waited for a second. “What I am going to say is incredibly sensitive information so I am going to portal this room halfway into a pocket dimension.”

It was an idea that I just had. Maybe it was an idea from my ROB given instincts, but I still would have preferred a chance to test it before using it. However, this might be crucial as I didn’t know how Contessa and Cauldron got their info and the more secrecy I could use the better.

“It shouldn’t do anything except make it so no one will be able to tell what we are saying unless they have a dimensional tunnel directly into the room. No radios, sensors, or even tinkertech communication devices should work. Plus I would feel it if they tried.”

Sitting down on one of the chairs in the room I gestured towards the other.

“Three things Dinah. I know about your power. I know what is about to happen to you. I have a way to help you. Said help can come in several different ways. I can help a little or I can possibly take you away from the danger entirely, but you will have to trust me completely in turn. So I recommend not asking any questions with your power until the end. I know you have limited questions per day.”

The girl just nodded. “Depends on the question type. Maybe 20-30 questions on defined yes or no scenarios like telling the truth. Hypotheticals are much harder and so I can only do about 4 or 5 before I get headaches and maybe double that before I pass out…”

I sighed. “Good to know. Again, ask if I am telling the truth at the end or we aren’t going to get anywhere. So here goes.”

I took a deep breath before looking her straight in the eye. “I don’t know what you know about the multiverse, but there are two thoughts. One is that every possible option is being taken in some universe somewhere. The second is that every creative thought we have is the product of some other choice made somewhere else. I don’t recommend asking too many detailed questions about those as I suspect the backlash of trying to understand the truth of the multiverse might do real damage to your mind. We just aren’t built to handle infinity. Plus there are several types of monsters in both this world and maybe others that might be able to track those questions back to us and neither of us would survive the interrogation.”

Dinah looked suitably chastised so I continued. “I am from one of these alternate worlds and whether you want to think of my info as something from a suitably powerful precog such as yourself or someone able to pierce the veil and truly see the future, this world is going to die in less than two years if nothing is done. Worse yet, there are several forces with both good and bad intentions that will ensure it goes down in flames. You are one who is going to suffer greatly as it happens. You were going to be captured by a man named Thomas Calvert who has the ability to split time into two hypotheticals running concurrently and decide which one is real later. That means he can trap you eventually as he can choose both options any time you make a decision and eventually he will catch you.”

I sighed again, “He is then going to get you addicted to some incredibly powerful drugs and keep you as a ‘pet’ oracle. Unfortunately that isn’t a joke, he is literally going to call you his little ‘pet’ and I am pretty sure he gets off on some pretty intense torture and rape in throw away timelines.”

Dinah was starting to shake so I reached forward and tried to pat her knee. She flinched for a moment before she relaxed so I continued. “This is where you have two options. You can enlist my help for the price of answering a few questions per day. Let's stay maybe 10 yes no questions and 3 hypotheticals. In turn I will remove you from any cell or containment Coil could place you in or direct the local heroes to your current location regardless of where he takes you. However I don’t have very many combat options at the moment. So, for instance, if he ever sets it up so that if you are saved the room in question explodes then there is little I could do to save you then.”

Dinah had started to look hopeful before her face once again fell. I sigh and run my hand through my hair. “The second option is where you trust me completely. Truth is that I have every intention of leaving this world and jumping to another reality entirely. I plan on trying to leave instructions on how to save this world when I do, but I am not going to stick around to see what happens. There are too many boogie men here with weird powers to ever be completely 100% safe. Instead I am offering to bind you to me and bring you with me. I am a soul mage from another world and I have every intention of turning myself and all of my companions into liches. Ones that will still control their bodies, but if those bodies are ever killed then their souls would be safe and we could simply get them new bodies to live on in.”

Dinah's eyes got wider and wider as I continued talking. I could see her starting to ask questions so I held up my hand. “The final thing you should know before you start asking questions is that I am not setting up a platonic companionship. I would like to think of myself as an honest man, but I am also someone who is looking to get several wives to travel with. I will treat all my companions well, but I am picking women as I want to make these companions my family. Now, I have no interest in children, you are what? 12?”

At her mumbled “13” I sighed. “So yeah, I am not going to touch you any time soon, but when you are much older I would give you the choice to stay with us or leave. If you stay you would be one of my wives. Note, I will not force myself on anyone, but I do want affection. Now in full transparency I don’t actually know how to let you leave, but I will try to find a way if you decide to leave.” A part of me felt better at that while my greed twisted.

I ran a hand through my hair before I gave her a little half smile. “Yes I know this is a lot to think about, but know this. We are going to be immortal as long as our soul jar can remain hidden in its pocket dimension so the difference in our ages will matter very little once we are both over a century old. Plus I really do want a sisterhood of women who care about each other and the connection between our souls will pretty much ensure that it stays that way. Now give me a second to cut off most of your power so we hopefully won’t alert anything to what we are doing here and you can ask you questions.”

Before she could so much as blink I narrowed her shard’s connection to Scion down to a bare trickle. “There. You should be able to ask simple questions like ‘Am I telling the truth?’, but hopefully no hypotheticals. I don’t want this information to get out to anyone else.”

I watched Dinah go through a variety of faces as she asked questions. Finally she looked up at me. “90% chance you are telling me the truth as you know it. 90% chance you were the one to affect my power and make it less accurate. 90% chance the number of questions I can ask has quadrupled. 90% chance that you believe you can make such a harem a loving family.” She blushed heavily at that. “70% chance I would eventually be happy in this harem. 90% I would be more happy in this harem than I would be on Earth Bet.” I blinked. I didn’t think she would be able to ask hypotheticals with her power restricted like this, but before I could think of a way to adjust my dimensional adjustment of her shard she continued. “10% chance of being detected by any other force while my power is restricted like this. 70% chance Earth Bet survives with the information you are currently thinking of leaving them.”

I blinked, but before I could ask Dinah continued. “30% chance of the survival of you and your wives if you stay on Earth Bet after leaking your information.”

I slumped. Yeah, that was Caldron for you.

“50% chance I will survive on Earth Bet in the next 10 years if I stay here. 90% chance my parents will miss me. 20% chance it will dramatically affect their lives.” I winced. Yeah, they loved her, but who doesn’t realize that their daughter triggered when she starts spouting percentages at everyone who asks.

Dinah slumped and started to tear up while sniffling. I hesitated for a moment before I got up and picked her up to place her in my lap before stroking her hair. This felt kinda scummy to do, but if she joined me she would be mine and I didn’t want any of them to suffer.

Yet something in me was uncomfortable, deeply uncomfortable, but another part was pleased. She was almost certainly going to join me now. Yet I pushed my conflicted feelings aside for now. I would do what I needed to do.

Slowly, as she calmed down, I started to consider what to do next before I sent her home. We had a lot to plan out if we were going to succeed.

Interlude Dinah:

A large part of her was scared. She was selling herself as a future child bride to a young man she had just met. However the probabilities didn’t lie. He really did care about those that would eventually be his wives. Well, he both cared about their happiness but also about being able to sleep with them.

That revelation from her power hadn’t been the nicest to receive, however after a few more questions, virtually every man and woman she might eventually date would want intimacy to one degree or another. It was something she had only recently started to understand.

She could feel the slight attraction to boys that hadn’t been there a year ago, but it wasn’t like she wanted to do anything more than stand next to them and hold hands, maybe kiss one on the cheek.

Still, her power had been very clear when she asked if she would be happy. Then even clearer when she asked again with the clarification that she would try to make it work. 90% was worth considering, right?

Still, as she stood in her bedroom looking at her stuffed animals she felt alone. Her parents were once again rubbing elbows with the rich and successful members of the city in the party downtown without her. It was nice to have a babysitter that could cook a little, but Lily was just a normal teenage girl who had sent her to bed the soonest she could get away with it.

Walking over to her bedroom, she felt the soft carpet under her feet and managed to hear gunfire echoing across the town from the docks. Her power would probably be able to tell her more about it, but she didn’t actually care that much.

She wanted to save her questions for the things that actually mattered. Things like getting away from Coil. Knowing for certain what would happen to her. The forced drug addiction and probable rape and torture were horrifying. When Coil was done she would barely be a person anymore. The questions she was able to ask her power confirmed each and every detail.

Suppressing a shutter, she felt the tears start to fall. She really didn’t have a chance here in Brockton Bay. Not while Coil held so much power. Then even if Coil was removed, her power was quite clear she would still be roped into some think tank or other regardless of who took over afterward. All while Max was offering protection, power, and the ability to see new worlds. All it would take is joining his family. A family he would fight tooth and nail to protect.

She didn’t love him, not yet, but it was hard to beat that offer. Especially when her power could tell her the odds on each of her options. She didn’t know the odds of what would happen when she left this world. Her power couldn’t calculate that. But uncertain odds were better than a nearly universal losing hand here.