A nullifier powered on without warning, snuffing out the Empress’ visions. Catherine had been expecting it, but even so, she found the sensation of having her head suddenly cleared incredibly strange.

The Empress’ tiara had activated the nullifier, forcibly switching off her powers to prevent harmful over-exhaustion. The beautiful headpiece had secondary functions beyond style; it recorded her predictions and analysed her gemstone hive in real time, maintaining her physical health and ensuring her safety.

“General Lucina, I have reached my limit. Instruct your team to take a rest also. We will resume when my condition improves.” Catherine ordered.

“Empress, you push yourself too much,” Lucina said.

“Don’t flatter me, General. You know just as well as me what is at stake. We must persevere, countless lives are at stake.”

“Yes, you are right…” Lucina admitted. And I can’t let you bear the burden of killing an entire planet of your own subjects, at least not on your lonesome. If we are destined to fail in our quest, at least let my involvement lessen the guilt you must suffer. She thought.

They took their rest. Lucina teleported back to the Owl, retreating to a liquid bed in her quarters aboard the imperial luxury transport vessel.

Catherine too retreated to her own liquid bed, the nullifiers quieting her fevered mind. She knew that they were closing in on success. She had seen a future where they had ‘succeeded’: A whisper of a song in a future where reality continued, sung about a city being destroyed by a freak earthquake. Such an occurrence could only be the work of Auntie Lucina and her team, engineering a ‘natural’ disaster to destroy a city as fate required. But Catherine still had no inkling of what city that might be, or when the earthquake was engineered to happen. It was still possible that the future inventor was presently in the countryside, and would only be present in a city at a specific time.

There was still work to be done.

Catherine took her rest, automatically waking due to an electrical impulse sent to her brain by her neural implant. She woke up feeling refreshed, though her head was still a little warmer than had she been fully rested.

“General Lucina. Let us resume.” Catherine ordered as she dressed in an elegant red robe.

At once, Lucina was awakened. “Of course, your Excellency.”

The general woke the rest of her team, and they continued their mission.

Eventually…

“I found something,” Catherine said. “Destruction of the island nation of Edtagyre prevents our dark future. An earthquake, solar flare, volcanism, and high-energy neutrino blast all result in Edtagyre’s destruction… as does an orbital strike from a destroyer.”

“Edtagyre?” Lucina asked in confirmation. “Edtagyre has only three cities. We shall ignore everything else and focus on infants born there in the past seven days. That cuts the list down to less than a thousand.”

Lucina and her squadron made their way to Edtagre immediately, utilising the Teleportation Network standard for all Incandestine-ruled planets. They began recording information for Catherine to use right away. An update arrived just minutes later.

“I can’t see any obvious signs. No city is destroyed without the others also being affected significantly. You’ll need to start surveilling the cities one at a time. If I can see a particular infant, I may be able to see their future. A simple photograph won’t work though, I need details. Their home, their school, their pets, and their neighbourhood. Things like that.”

“Understood, your Luminance. We’ll find them.”

“Yes, we will…” Catherine agreed.

General Lucina and her team began to send Catherine recordings of recently born infants and their families, captured by satellite, drone, and hacked cameras. It sickened Lucina to think that the candid images that they were capturing could be used to decide if the newborns of the unwitting citizenry would live or die.

They deserve better than this…

But it was not up to Lucina to decide what they deserved. She could only act as fate demanded.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“I’ve found them, sooner than I expected too,” Catherine said. “I can see parts of their future. An infant by the name of Laetus Herenbjorn. They develop an interest in natural sciences when they learn the differences between GD-III and the standard protocols for allowable biological life. They pursue an

Lucina steadied her mind as her heart dropped. It seemed far too simple.

“Are you sure this is them?”

“Yes. Based on a video from one of your operatives in Eflenspiege. In Laetus’ future, I sense feelings of deep guilt and burning curiosity. He comes into wealth in a number of ways, be it family inheritance, secretly smuggling endemic life away to other planets, hard work and recognition, or marriage. It matters not. Without fail, Laetus uses the money to build a secret laboratory deep underground. They dedicate their life to fulfilling their curiosity. And then… disaster. It has to be them.” Catherine spoke with great confidence.

“My Empress, Is there no future where Laetus doesn’t pursue the study of natural laws? One where he doesn’t lead to the destruction of everything?” Lucina asked.

“Even if Laetus is not the one to invent whatever it is he invents, life is long. Too long perhaps. I cannot see a future where Laetus doesn’t directly or indirectly cause the discovery and associated cataclysm I have foreseen. It is almost like it is a fate that is bound to him.”

“Fate that is bound to him, your Grace?”

“Yes. The only other time I have seen such a bound fate is the escape from the Chimaera Project. Someone is fated to die that night, and Rolynd is fated to escape to Apolaphia.”

Something about Catherine’s words rang deeply true, but even so, General Lucina would not accept the notion of ‘fate’ so easily.

“My Empress-… Catherine. There has to be something that we can do! Is it not possible for us to take possession of the child, and rear them in confinement? At least spare them their life. We have the power to keep them happy and healthy.”

“There is no escape, General. Some things are just in people’s nature. We cannot prevent him from being himself. No one can escape the fate written for them in the stars; The Laws of Causality must be obeyed. It is our friend Laetus’ obsession with causality and local reality that so causes his dark destiny.”

“Then… the only thing we can do is…”

“Yes. The safest and most merciful course of action would be to kill him. So long as Laetus lives, he will bring about the end of all things, or inspire those around him to do so, necessitating their own deaths… He is cursed, a harbinger of the end.”

Lucina did not know what to say to that. She wanted more time to think, but Empress Catherine had been explicitly clear on what she saw the best course of action to be.

A child had to be killed. Not just a child, but a newborn infant at that. A cursed baby that could bring misfortune to those around him at any moment.

What had the babe done to deserve such a fate?

In some ways, Lucina had done far more for far less. She had killed and tortured in the name of peace and stability for the Empire. Never had Lucina ever let the memory of what she’d done haunt her. She knew that this world was neither fair nor just, so she had unreservedly chosen the path of the greater good.

If she did not dirty her hands, someone else would. If no one did what had to be done, greater evils would be loosed upon the world. As a General of the Incandestine Empire, that could not be allowed to happen.

The weak tried to escape the responsibility of making hard decisions, the wise knew what had to be done, and the strong were the ones to do it.

If it must be done, let me be the one to bear the burden of doing it.

“Do not worry, Empress Catherine. ” Lucina said, breaking her silence. “I will take care of it.” The General’s resolve was like unblemished silver shining through in the tone of her voice.

“Thank you,” The Empress replied warmly. She knew what Lucina’s conviction meant.

Her niece’s praise was the only consolation Lucina had for the grisly task ahead of her. A pittance of strength for the great burden the General was to bear.

Lucina teleported to Eflenspiege. From there, she rode the morphic vehicle awaiting her. It swam through the skies like a fish through water.

Beneath her in the city below, the tiny shapes of people swimming through the air could be seen. Lucina could not allow herself to feel any sense of happiness or pride at the sight.

In a few brief minutes, she had reached her destination. The street outside the Herenbjorn residence.

Lucina had done this before. She took a capsule from a pocket hidden in the inner lining of her coat and twisted the cap open. A swarm of nanomachines spilt out, invisible to the naked eye. The nanomachines would enter the infant’s body through its lungs, bypassing any technological safety implants with the authority of the Empress. Once in the bloodstream, the nanomachines would obstruct metabolism in the heart and brain, and then exit the body, near-impossible to find. It was a poison that Incandestine medical machines would recognise. One synonymous with the actions of higher powers. Of the greater good.

And that was that. What was done was done.

“It is done. Crisis averted.” Catherine said, confirming what Lucina knew.

Lucina sighed. She left the scene before she witnessed anything that would cause her irreparable emotional harm.

If ever the knowledge of what had transpired on Garacleus Delta III was to be known by anyone else, it was possible that some might regard Lucina as a hero, but Lucina could not afford herself that comfort. She had deliberately assassinated an innocent, newborn baby. She could not allow that horrible truth to be escaped or painted over in any way. Yet, Lucina would not want it to be. It was what it was. A sacrifice of the few in exchange for the many. And Lucina would bear the burden of that choice. It was the least she could do to honour the one she had killed.

Beyond the means of Lucina’s perception, two Angels armoured in black turned away from the scene, having confirmed the death of their target at Lucina’s hands.

“That’s what it means to be human. Even with the knowledge of the future, we’re too weak to change it. All we can do is our mediocre best.” The Empress said. “Well done. Let’s go home.”