They came down the linking ramps confidently if warily, and Astrovik himself noticeably checked when he saw Primus standing there, the red star in white jangling alarm bells at him as he bore a copy of a plain Captain America shield. Primus just ignored it calmly, having dealt with much worse.

Carol took over greeting them, as normal protocol. “Major Astro? Colonel Carol Danvers, administrative head of LaGrange Station. Welcome aboard.” The man in the full white and dark blue bodysuit was definitely relieved to hear a Stater accent as he shook her hand. “Thank you for sending over your identifications in a timely fashion. We’ve got you registered as visitors. Is there anything we can help you with at this time?”

They had an odd amount of confidence, but they thought they were from the future and had a massive tech advantage, at the least, so I suppose it was alright.

Martinex, the Pluvian, body made from crystal for living on the frozen planet. Charlie-27, tall yet squat, massive heavy-worlder body made for mining in the depths of Jupiter. Nikki, the dark-skinned, fire-haired Mercurian, made for living on the fireworld of Mercury. Yondu, a Centaurian, with blue skin and crimson spinal fin, almost an alien Tribal in space. Lastly, Starhawk, the long-lived and perpetually-reincarnating son of Kismet and Quasar in another timeline, looking a bit lost as he looked around and saw nothing he recognized.

Heroes from another time and space.

Major Astro hesitated, looked at Primus once, and then sighed. “To be honest, we’re a little bit caught off-guard. I don’t remember us having a space presence at this time in the past.”

If he was thinking to catch us off-guard, that fell monstrously flat. “Your timeline probably doesn’t, then,” Carol smiled easily, making them all blink as she got out in front of them. “You’ve done an alternity skip. You’re in the Earth-1832 timeline. You’re from the Earth-2790 future. Why don’t you let me give you a tour?”

“You, you can tell we’re from the future?” Nikki blurted out.

Martinex was more reasoned. “You can tell we’re from another reality?” was his exclamation.

“Of course, we get alternity incursions all the time.” Carol rolled her eyes theatrically. “You’re not even the first from your timeline. There was another one that came here several months ago, but we had to eliminate him. He had some crackpot ideas about recreating the cosmos in his image or something, killed an Elder of the Universe, and basically was the sort we just don’t tolerate around here.”

They were all gaping, especially Starhawk. “You, you have killed Korvac?” the blue and gold-outfitted man gasped loudly as he stepped forward.

“I think that was his name.” Carol looked down at her tablet, hit a few buttons, turned it around. “This fellow?” The image changed from a handsome, almost idealized Caucasian man in civilian clothes of this era, States style, to a person in a high-tech uniform, the lower half of his body replaced by a computer cube that had been blasted all to Hell and gone, along with him.

They all crowded around to stare at the image, looking at one another in shock. “Holy crap, they killed Korvac!” blurted out Charlie-27. “How did you do it?”

“With experience. I think he’s like the third of him we’ve had to get rid of,” Carol dismissed airily, and they gaped even more. “So, purpose of your visit... shall I put down ‘vacation’?” she asked them cheerfully.

---

“Nice,” I murmured to Primus, watching all that. “She’s good at this.”

“She is,” he agreed softly. “We get all kinds here, you know.”

“I bet. Any problems with an American alternity patriot?”

He smiled thinly. “As I said, we get all kinds.”

“I’m going to assume I’m not needed for now and sod off, then.”

He nodded shortly. “There’s quarters set aside for you. Modify them as you see fit.”

“Thank you.” And with Molecular Manipulation, that wouldn’t be hard at all. As always, I had plenty of things to fill my day and time, but now that I was a Twenty Caster, it was time to do something I’d been putting off for years.

I was going to souldive Morgan le Fey.

--------

I didn’t have any explicit duties yet. Wrench and Paragon would be going over those with me tomorrow, at the same time the quiet announcement that Dynamo, you know, the one from the Champion games, was now serving in the High Guard. No, not the one in New York, the doctor and scientist serving with the Baxter Foundation. We’ll have to call her Doctor Dynamo or something to make sure things are different. No, we don’t know if they are related, but probably, as they use the same colors. Little sister, big sister?

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

A souldive was a chancy thing, as it wasn’t very hard to boobytrap your mind and memories if you knew what you were doing. Swapping them with those of the person intruding on you was totally a possible thing, and they wouldn’t even know it was happening until they woke up as you.

I assumed that was what was going to be happening with le Fey, and planned accordingly.

First of all, I made sure that I didn’t take her memories in toto, by dint of simply erasing at least one minute a day in an irregular fashion. Any continuity-based thread of magic was going to be disrupted at multiple random points and simply be unable to function with so many breaks in its patterns.

I also relived them in a random manner, which meant stitching them together erratically, further disrupting anything she did. I had thoughtstreams zipping all over the place as I went back and forth between earlier remembered moments erratically, and instead of returning properly, zipping off to a completely unrelated day and time to see what had happened.

To the magic lying in wait, I was just twisting it up in knots as it tried to compensate for my actions, and it failed.

Morgan le Fey was hundreds of years old. Not physically, of course. She had sent her astral form forward and backwards in time, seeking out other worlds and places, trying to find a way to get free of her Curse, and expanding her knowledge as she did so.

She had even met and spoken with both Karnilla and Amora several times in the past, and they had decent working relationships, even if coming from different traditions of magic. Mutual interests of ageless women living in warrior-happy male-dominated societies and all.

I sifted out the false memories put there to activate substitutions, the cognition traps, the emotive swaps, the logic weavers, and the id rushes simply by hitting them from the wrong angles and seeing them for what they were. If some tidbit of lore looked too tantalizing, I simply passed on it, certain it had something wrapped around it that I couldn’t quite perceive that needed to be undone.

Sure, it meant I was leaving more and more of her past open... but huge chunks of that were false images and unwaking dreams, anyways, and as I started to get a true feel for her magic I began to snip them off.

That was Silver Magic, and her Fey-based Sorcery was particularly susceptible to it.

Threads of magic woven through memories were unwoven, studied for their links to other magic and how to sense them, and set aside. Each one gained me a clearer picture of the whole, yet were studied independently, not joined together to form a greater whole... because that whole was the greatest trap of all.

No matter how carefully I went over everything, I assumed I had missed something. That was just how it was. In so doing, I began to weave my own counter-threads through her memories, using some of her own skills, some psionic ones, some spiritual ones, and some of my own. I began to link up her memories in new and unusual ways, and in so doing further disrupt the traps she had set within herself.

Be patient, patient, patient, patient...

-------

“Why did you wish to speak with me?” the glowing-eyed Starhawk asked, joining me on the Promenade, currently looking out at the moon below. If you had good eyes, you could see the lights of the Blue Area where the Xandarans were working.

I had dropped Atom’s Mimicry at Renewal, and used magic to tie my Ur-Usage to Mimi, meaning that if I kept the same configs that she did, I just had to burn the Slots at Renewal to maintain them as long as she was within range. It meant I had to spend an hour with Kismet today, but that was simple, as I was doing and going to be doing a lot of downtime work with her.

Dropping the golden skin for normal skin was a very simple morphing effect, and effectively made me look like my Wrecker Buff was up. It also doubled the power of my Molecular Manipulation, which was extremely useful when making stuff.

As a result, I looked like my tall and stacked goddess-equiv self, taller than the One Who Knows standing next to me.

“Full disclosure, Stakar. I have full Cosmic Awareness up to the universal level. If I open my eyes wide enough, I can see Eternity. If I narrow it far enough, I can see into the microverses.”

He paused a moment in shock. “I am familiar with such senses,” he admitted, a combination of loftiness and being impressed.

“Yes, your father had it, and your mother probably had a measure of it, too. By now you have seen that your mother has a counterpart here, but she is young. Your father, Wendell Vaughn, has no counterpart in this timeline, nor do his Quantum Bands exist. That technology is instead to be found in the Lanterns of those born by the likes of Lantern Zhuli.”

He was taken aback. “I will... trust in what you say on this. Your Awareness is indeed impressive. Why are you telling me this?”

“This timeline is unlike any you have ever known. While certain cosmic-class events are still going to happen... many are not, and have not. You may wish to remain in this timeline, and actually enjoy the fact that what you know... is not what will come to pass.”

He stared at me in consternation. “You are truly insightful,” he murmured. “How do you know this?”

“My Awareness is sensitive enough to know that you’re a perpetual reincarnate, and that Fate will guide you into circumstances where you will be reborn as Stakar in a new timeline over and over again... unless you break that Fate in a timeline that is not subject to such things.” I gestured around us. “Meet Earth-1832. We are very far off that paradigm of yours, and despite Fate, are continuing to deviate.

“There will be no counterpart of you born in this timeline. Here, you are free.”

I could tell he was very interested in that possibility. “I... would not reincarnate?” he asked in wonder.

“If you do... it will not be as Stakar.”

That was all that was truly necessary. After all, continually living the same life and events over to slightly different results every time was what he was caught up in. To be free of that loop was all that he could hope for.

“That is an extraordinary gift!” he breathed.

“I would suggest you talk with the man we call The Great Bear. He is the being most responsible for breaking Fate in this alternity. The more you work with him, the freer your own Fate will be. Sources break predestiny as a matter of course.”

His gloved hands clenched in sudden desire. “So be it. What of my comrades?”

“I assume that Aleta will return to the future with them, and so take your place on their team and what they need to do. Furthermore, I can separate you and Aleta with absolutely no side-effects or penalties to body and soul, such as you have encountered in the past and future, while keeping your powers intact. Immediately, if you so desire.”