Sebastian Pop
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The Unified Theorem - Ending, Book One
🕑 Added 2024-10-20 20:15:28 +0000 UTCChapter 22, with which the first volume of the story ends. No, the story won't be going on hiatus.
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Ending – Book One: Politics of Arcane Rationale
“-. January 16, 581 .-“
Reach out, heal, next, repeat. For days that was all I did. First at the foot of the cyclone, healing the blind, the deaf and the maimed whether I had caused it or not. Then I dragged my feet through the city in a rounding path all the way to the outer ring, to tend to those who were too weak or scared to make the trip themselves.
People were shellshocked, and judging, and my aid may well only have been accepted because those who escaped the castle painted me as a holy savior, come down from heaven to banish the wicked monsters that had secretly stolen the country from man.
I didn’t set the record straight only because I didn’t have the will to talk. I didn’t have the will for anything, not to walk, to talk, to stand, even to lift my arms. I should have been insensate and boneless, laid out in bed for a month while my spirit healed from the self-inflicted breakdown and immolation. But I couldn’t afford to, not if it meant leaving tens of thousands of people blind and deaf, never mind everyone who’d died. That I didn’t kill. Mean to kill.
Even so, while the body was willing the spirit wasn’t. Wasn’t able. Though it wasn’t the physical body that failed me, I was as blind and deaf as the rest of them. The only reason I was still able to do something was by looking through the eyes of the spirits, and even then I needed Richard’s strength just to get myself moving, never mind cast spells.
I finally drifted off mid-way through restoring the hearing of a one-legged old man, but I didn’t fall. My body just… kept moving by rote. Moving, healing, rinse and repeat. My need had written itself into the Light. And from it. Out of it… Death… was… so close… white gold all around me, searingly bright as if I was standing inside the sun. It burned.
The Light kept working its healing through my vacant shell until I had seen to everyone that I had harmed, and all those who came to me in between. Even with Richard and Uther helping me in shifts, it took days. Days and nights of doing just that with no interruptions until, at last, only one person was left. So my body finally left the city behind. Listlessly dragged my feet, down the road and off the road and through forest and trench, to where Emerentius was still fallen, unmoving and being fought over by people with far too high an opinion of their claim.
My consciousness only returned many days later, with a false smell of oncoming rain, the sound of people arguing all around me, and the feeling of a stiff back from sitting on the very cusp of rigor mortis all that time.
“-ou can’t be serious, Uther!”
I was sitting on the ground, my back against gold dragon scales.
“With all respect, Lord Duke, you are biased,” the cleric so named said flatly. “There is a reason the Church did not have cause to look into the happenings here – it wasn’t that the local clerics are corrupt, or missives were intercepted, or any other malice aforethought. At least no more than everywhere else. No, the fact of the matter is that, as bad as he was, Aiden Perenolde did uphold his role as mediator of all four estates, if only by weakening them equally as much as he could. Do not cry foul that your enemies are so emboldened, now that you have no king to defend you.”
In front of me were Richard and Uther.
“I am not talking about enemies!” Richard’s voice snapped like a whip. “What I want to know is what Lordaeron is thinking, crossing our borders right now, never mind in force of arms! You’d think House Menethil was more eager for war than Stromgarde!”
Around us, maintaining a forcefield and an anti-travel ward, were mages dressed in violet robes. Why… were they having this argument here? Amidst…
“You ask me for insights I do not have, when you should be demanding answers of these interlopers instead, unless you mean to paint me as some manner of abettor in addition to tyrant sympathizer.”
Purple. Mages. The guards of the Violet Hold. Dalaran’s prison. They were scattered in all directions, maintaining an anti-travel ward because… My memory… hadn’t been interrupted this time. They’d tried to abscond with the dragon and failed, so now they were preventing others from trying the same? No-
“What point would there be?” Richard sounded bitter now, even as the mages pretended to be aloof from the conversation, did he know they were Dalaran’s prison guards? Did anyone? “Their highest council can’t tell a real man from a lizard. If they galvanized Lordaeron to madness they’ll just blame the dragons again, all the while ignoring what it says of their own gross incompetence. If I could banish them I would have, their claims of neutrality are as hollow as the place where Alterac Keep once stood.”
Dalaran. And the dragons. They were at odds now, either over custody of me, or because either or both of them tried to take off with Emerentius and they couldn’t. Or both. Because…
“You could,” Uther’s tone was more level now, though no less clear. “You only need-“
The Light…
“No.”
Emerentius was healing himself.
“You will have to, Duke, lest General Hath remain at loose ends.”
Emerentius was healing himself, and everything in the same space including the Arcane. Which prevented any changes against the purpose of natural order. Prevented arcane spells.
“Too late for that now,” Richard said darkly. “He’s taken matters into his own hands. He is escorting the host of King Liam Trollbane of Strom. Here.”
Even for Emerentius it should be impossible, nobody knew I’d made that discovery… Unless the dragon hadn’t been as comatose as he seemed when I dragged myself down here to do this very thing. Heal the Arcane all around me so that nothing could warp it, especially arcane magic. To prevent his abduction. For barely a minute, before I finally fell against him and didn’t come up again.
Until now.
“You heard that, you lot?!” Came the voice of Mercad Occitanier from almost right next to me, Richard’s second-in-command. “Make sure your masters over in Dalaran hear about this right fast, so the Menethils know they won’t be the only kids with swords on the playground.”
Either these men were casting blame blindly for Lordaeron’s uncannily effective espionage, or Dalaran’s vaunted neutrality had collapsed in the face of a nuclear bomb as easily as everything else.
Except Geirrvif, it seemed. The valkyrie was still with me, in the spirit world.
“Emerentius,” I spoke. “Get to safety.”
With a wing buffet so strong the air flattened me, the black dragon blasted upwards and was shooting away at full Light-assisted acceleration before the mages even realized he’d left their spell’s confines. Also before any dragons could realize he’d been awake well before me, it was just a wild guess but-
With colored flashes and the sounds of organ chimes, two dragons erupted from the forest somewhere to our right in a futile attempt to pursue. One was Rheastrasza, both of them were red, and they continued flying away even after it became clear they were never going to catch up to Emerentius, who’d already disappeared into the distance.
I fell on my back and didn’t hurry to get back up. I waited until the forcefield came down.
Mercad crouched next to me, hard eyes aimed at the foreigners with sword drawn like a barrier between them and us. “Your family’s with My Lord Duke’s wife and sister.” Richard must have told him how to handle me during a crisis. I perceived the pattern of a sound trapping spell too, centered on a charm along his wrist. Discreet as well. “They’re same as you left them, but down in Hillsbrad instead of Stormsong Valley. Kul Tiras forfeited any direct stake in this by leaving early, but My Lord still decided his demesne was safer until this mess of diplomatic incidents is over with.”
My sight was all a blur, but I somehow managed to grip his pauldron well enough to haul myself back to a sitting position. I felt the Arcane around me and my mood hardened. The anti-teleportation magic was still in place. It wasn’t just my dragon that the wardens of Dalaran were keeping in place, just as I thought.
“Richard,” I grunted. “Where’s Antonidas?”
The duke stopped just short of hugging me, gave the mages around us a vicious glare, then got down to one knee to take over from Mercad in keeping me upright. “He was called to give account of events in Dalaran. He never came back.”
So either he washed his hands of us, or had been detained somehow himself. No bet on which, if it was to disavow me Antonidas would have done so in person. “What of Kairozdormu?”
“He was taken away by a couple other bronze dragons, one was even bigger than him. They didn’t speak to us, just did something so we couldn’t interfere. One moment I was listening to a report from one of my men, next thing I knew there were three of them disappearing like ghosts in the daylight.”
“Narett?”
“Up in the city. People stopped coming for healing when you – when they realized that you were actively harming yourself to keep going. I was able to run proper triage after that, let only the ones with damage no one else could solve through. Narett’s helping the clerics see to what minor injuries remain.”
Still? Over a week later? “… The rest? The ones who got out? Gilneas?”
Richard grimaced. “My very few surviving peers agreed to go home and rally their banners, though it didn’t take much persuasion since they’re convinced a civil war is imminent, once the heirs of the Sellouts take their parents’ seats.” I could almost hear the capital letters. “Antonidas teleported them, and the foreign dignitaries as well before he took his final leave. Only Mara Fordragon chose to stay, at least until the Archbishop passes this way on the way back to Lordaeron. She’s working with the other clerics too.”
Who was left? “Ravenholdt?”
“Somewhere or other,” Richard looked away with a scowl. “’Securing the new board’ he said before he pulled his vanishing act without any further explanation. No doubt it’s his way of expressing disapproval, he wanted to send his assassins after the remaining holdouts that weren’t present at the party, few as they are. I said no, obviously.”
Other than branch house members, the only heirs not present at the occasion were the scions younger than twelve. “Did he mean the heirs themselves, or their regents?”
“He didn’t say.”
I weakly waved for him to help me up, which he did reluctantly. I had to take a few moments to make sure I wouldn’t fall back down. “Was there a service for the dead?”
“It took the priests days to finish reading all the names,” Uther replied this time, in a voice just barely warmer than ice. “But the funeral itself was necessarily short, seeing as you left no bodies in the wake of whatever you did.”
He stood looming over the two of us, with only Mercad taller than him now. Outside the range of the latter’s anti-eavesdropping charm. “You have misgivings.”
“For months I stood by your side as a walking, tacit endorsement on the part of the Church, only to now learn that the entire time you had been planning regicide and mass slaughter. Yes, I have misgivings. I am only still here because I do not trust you to follow through on your promise to his Holiness to confess your sins.”
Richard glared up at the older man but didn’t say anything. Clearly, this was not the first time this topic erupted between them two.
I didn’t say anything either. After all, what Uther said was all true. By the time the Archbishop visited me, I had already committed to causing the deaths most of the Alterac aristocracy, even if this wasn’t how I thought it would go. I’d expected for most of the cancer to kill itself through in-fighting, just in time for Richard to sweep into the city and take care of the rest however he saw fit. Public trials, knowing him. That dragons got involved didn’t change that, it only changed the number of people I personally killed by the end. Added some two and a half dozen children to the list of dead too.
I felt a pang of heart-deep ache, and a feeling as if I was being showered in swashing, sizzling oil, but that was from the spirit-sacrificing spells more than my decisions. My actions only left me with a dull, fatalistic feeling.
The black dragons could not be allowed to escape. They would have roused Deathwing the Destroyer, the Corrupted Aspect of Earth whose opening action in another future would be a cataclysm that shattered the entire world in omnicidal fire and earthquakes. Granted, his actions during the First War were admittedly more restrained, if you could even use that term for enslaving the entire red dragonflight to serve as attack beasts and mounts for the orcs. But now, here, I’d categorically proven that his fall to evil and madness had been a tragic failure, not unavoidable fate.
If he woke up and found out about Emerentius, Alterac would burn in volcanic flame, and the ensuing global cooling from the ash blocking the sun would finish what was left. At minimum.
“My Lord?” Richard called when I stood there too long. “Can you walk?”
The mages around us were discreetly moving as if to ‘accompany’ us into the city, up until Mercad turned on them with a vicious glare and the threat of calling his soldiers down on them right there if they overstepped themselves on foreign soil one more time.
I patted Richard on the shoulder and pulled myself free from his grip. “I’ll do better when I’ve eaten something other than magic eater fish.”
My joke didn’t fall flat, but only because it didn’t fall at all. The moment I wasn’t in physical contact with anyone, the world turned slow, and grey, then completely colorless to an uncanny degree that my mind would have struggled to process if not for the memory of being dead for so long, where sight didn’t use light at all. I saw now the same way, and through the Light and the Arcane too, as… everything stopped.
In front of me, through a vortex shining the color of golden sand, came a person. He had extremely long brown air, gleaming blue eyes, and the tallest and most muscular body I’d ever seen on a high elf, dressed in bronze armor over grey-blue robes.
“I am told we do not require introduction,” said the Leader of the Bronze Dragonflight, the Aspect of Time. “But I am also told that you value polite comportment. I am called Nozdormu, and I am precisely who you have already deduced. Greetings. I am pleased to finally make acquaintance in person.”
I stared. For longer than it ever took me to return a greeting. “Hello.” I was almost at a loss for words. “Are you here to eliminate me?” I was at my weakest by far, if any time was good-
“I bring information, clarification, confirmation, and a question of my own that will determine how you and I proceed.”
The Light was with me, as bright and mighty as ever, but suddenly it couldn’t fill the deep pit in my gut. “What inf-“ something occurred to me, as suddenly as it was belated. “Where… when are you talking with me from?”
“Here and now, I am here in full. But if you wanted to know when and whence leads the portal behind me, the answer is the Caverns of Time, precisely ten years from now.”
Ten years. Year 592. Year 1 of the New Calendar. The year when the Dark Portal was to open, if nothing changed, letting the orcish horde spill into the world. If everything I already did isn’t enough of a change. “Do I get a say in whatever script you have for this conversation?”
“You already have, you are on the other side of the portal right now.”
It felt like all my tension wanted to rip its way out of me like a chest-burster. “Which doesn’t necessarily mean I’m there by choice, or conscious.” Or alive, even. “I’d have to take you at your word.” I was in no shape to soulgaze anyone right not, even if he let me.
“I was assured that would not be the case.”
From the portal came a glowing star, which shot right into me with no impulse from me to avoid because I felt to threat, and no woe. It was… me. A piece of spirit. My spirit. It entered me and dispersed through me, filling the open wounds in my flesh and not flesh, soothing all my weakness and my pain.
There was the promise of accomplishment there, blended with an echo of sorrow, the feeling of power far greater than what I’d managed up to now, and no memory of future deeds save one: myself breaking part of myself off and throwing it through the portal just now. “Ah…” I almost collapsed all over again from the sudden relief. “That’s… some proof.”
“I agree.” Nozdormu hadn’t known what form the proof would take either, it seemed, and the Light did not warn me of lies in his words. Not the Shadow either, I could…
The Light wasn’t fainter, but it was thinner because my spirit was thinner after all I’d done. I could perceive what moved in the Void better than before. Nothing of what I’d seen in Fahrad was present here. “So, what? You’re just here to… provide exposition?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“And the fact that this will once again make me seem more omniscient than I actually am is just pure coincidence?”
“What you do with your knowledge is, as always, your decision, but no. It does not run contrary to the needs of time to service your mystique.”
How did he say that with a straight face? “Alright. What-” asking about information was my first instinct, especially since nothing came to mind of what I could require clarification on… but that just meant I’d missed something important, didn’t it? “Let’s start with this then: what clarification?”
“Kairozdormu was only wrong about the when, not if,” Nozdormu said. “It is possible to reset the world the way he told you. It just hasn’t happened now.” Nozdormu gave me a meaningful look. “Yet.”
… Holy- “Are you… asking for my permission? Or my help?”
“I have the latter, it is the former that I am not sure about.”
The former- permission? He wants my permission? Since when do the Bronze dragons need anyone’s permission for anything?
No, no distractions. Don’t interrupt someone doing you a favor unasked. “Reset the world.” Just how many blind spots did those strangely prophetic games back on Terra have? “Is it really possible?”
I knew the games went all-in on the alternate timeline multiverse nonsense, but if that was really possible… then there was literally no reason why the Bronze had to aid and abet bad events. Unless you’re literally evil, you’re only restricted to bad choices when the power is contested, and it certainly wasn’t the Infinites actively forcing history to turn Alexstrasza into a sex slave for the orcs-
“It has already been done,” Nozdormu derailed my inner tangent. “More than once.”
What? Making Alextrasza – no, wait, we weren’t talking about that, we were actually talking… about…
My mouth fell open.
Reset.
Rest the world. “Holy shit.” What? “When? How?” Was Kairozdormu right and that was involved in me showing up here? But I saw no such thing, nor was there anything – no external force acted on me, nothing drew me or pulled me or-
“The War of the Ancients was not a mere one-off mortal conflict,” explained the Aspect of Time. “It was a grind that unfolded over a span of time many times longer than the history you know. Sometimes it lasted decades. Sometimes years. Sometimes days. Always we lost. And always, the five Dragonflights would come together before the Keepers in the Halls of Origination at the heart of Uldum, to pour our combined might into the Dragon Soul and join it to the power of the world itself tapped by those places.”
I stood in astonishment at the things I was hearing.
“It was a mighty stalemate. A galactic-wide stream of demonic invaders matched against effectively infinite reserves, on a battlefield that always, actively favored us in all ways. All the while, we never lost tactical and strategic parity. Though none besides me and a few others recalled past times, our heroes were always returned, and Ysera’s dreams and portents did well enough to make up for their lost memories and backsliding experience. Even without this, there is a limit to any skill. Sargeras and his lieutenants could hardly draw any further benefit from experience, after a while. Mastering a skill doesn’t take more than a few years, in the end. That is why mortals can contend with immortals at all.”
I didn’t say anything.
“When Sargeras turned from tactical warfare to bedroom diplomacy, it wasn’t because the Well of Eternity was the greatest weakness on our front, it was the only weakness left. Even then, it could only be breached from this side, not his. That was why he lowered himself to seducing a mortal queen.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“Contrary to your worries, demons do not respawn in the Twisting Nether, never mind instantly. Most of them were mortal first, after all. Only very few life forms native to that dimension can reconstitute that way, like the Nathrezim, and even they do not recover the power they gained after their original birth, or even their bodies – it takes much to grow from an imp to a demon lord. But we developed ways to prevent even that by the fiftieth iteration of the War of the Ancients. If any such creatures survive from those times, I will be surprised.”
I still didn’t say anything. It was hard enough just to take all of that in.
“Unfortunately, betrayal ultimately did come, and from no vector we had suspected. Though time was rewound for all life on Azeroth, the Re-Temporization for the earth itself was barely better than crust deep. The corruption of the Old Gods continued seeping out of their prisons, compounding all the while and accelerating Neltharion’s corruption faster and faster every cycle. Even so, when the Aspect of the Earth said to create the Dragon Soul early and use it on offense, his reasoning was sound – if we were to reverse the process and turn the power of the Titan Facilities through it outward, Sargeras himself could have been slain.”
“… How many times? How many times did this happen?”
“Six hundred and sixty-six.”
I’m not even shocked anymore. “Is this why the Pantheon gave Azeorth so many things? The Halls, the Forges, Titans by the dozen, even a bunch of them with the potential to become their heirs…”
“They never shared their designs to that extent, at least with us dragons, but I believe so.”
Odyn never even hinted at any of this, in any of our conversations. “Did the Keepers remember?”
“Freya certainly, for a time in the beginning, she was intrinsically connected to all life she personally nurtured, before the toll became too maddening and she severed it,” said Nozdormu. “Odyn perhaps, to whatever extent his other eye saw events from the other side, though he keeps to himself on most things relative to us dragons. Helya I do not know, though I would not be surprised if the recurring deaths of so many contributed to her fall to madness. Some days, I myself am surprised I haven’t done the same, then I wonder if I did and I just don’t realize it.” Nozdormu’s stoic manner slipped momentarily, to something softer as he beheld me. “Somewhat less, now.”
Nozdormu fell quiet.
I stood there, ruminating over everything I’d learned.
It took some time, and I still had questions, though the one that yelled loudest in my head was one that that conflicted me the most. “Do you… mean to undo the Sundering?”
All the land on Azeroth was a single continent, before they had to blow up the Well of Eternity along with Sargeras. That was how the War of the Ancients finally ended for good.
“If only. Alas, Re-Temporization has far narrower limits to its potential span. A few decades is all that we could manage then. Even if the breaking of the world hadn’t ripped or displaced a majority of the ley lines the Titan facilities relied on, the World Soul itself can hardly spare so much power now.”
“… Assuming it goes along with it, right?” I ventured a guess, which wasn’t immediately denied. The Titan facilities weren’t just prisons for the old mollusks, they were also designed as means to nurture the titan of Azeroth and shape it. Its form. Its consciousness.
Automatically assuming the worst without a previously observed pattern was for cowards, so I didn’t think it was a case of trying to indoctrinate or brainwash a baby. Besides, it’s not like planets would have the same life cycle as humans. That said, if the Sundering wasn’t enough of a wake-up call for the World Soul, what would be? “Is the Titan awake?”
“Not that anyone has noticed.”
I stand corrected. “Alright, then… why tell me all this?”
“Because, in theory, if we were to initiate the process again, it should be possible to reach far enough to include the last few months of your life as of this moment.”
My head felt light. The last few months.
Altarac Castle, everyone who’d just died, all the meetings that went wrong, everything I’d had to decide while still blind to the future because of a betrayed spirit pact, my little brothers…
I ran a shaky hand over my face. “Might that be really Sargeras beneath your face, offering me the devil’s deal?”
“It is not.”
My laughter sounded hollow in my ears. I’d never felt so feeble. “No, Nozdormu. Let the World Soul be.”
“… Not even a moment’s consideration?”
“I don’t know how far you can travel and affect time without the powers bound in the Dragon Soul,” I said, feeling wrung out. “But by your own words, to offer this at all you must either have it, or a sane Aspect of the Earth, or both. Both mean that, just ten years in the future, Deathwing is no more.”
Nozdormu didn’t deny it.
“Did the Cataclysm happen?”
“No.
“Then why are you here at all? You said future me is right there with you. Why not ask him?”
Did I go bad, or-?
“Because age does not necessarily bring wisdom if trauma is plentiful enough, even after it heals.”
I felt a wave of dread, and even then it was overshadowed by all-new outrage. “Are you… being deliberately obtuse right now, or just circumspect?”
“The latter.”
So I was expected to take him at his word where it counted, of course he’d lie in the same breath as he all but stated someone I loved was going to die. Or more.
No.
No.
I felt a bitter pang of resentment. Who did this creature think he was, to test me? Never mind like this? How dare he? “Get out of my sight.”
“Pardon?”
“When I asked Kairozdormu why he did all he did, his answer was that you told him he had to convince me to convince you.’” I glared at the dragon’s face, so perfect and so fake. “If not for the meddling of one of yours, none of this would have happened. You sent him here. And now, even though you knowingly and deliberately caused all my problems, you have the gall to come here and offer to make them go away like it’s some kind of divine grace! As if – as if it’s my character test?!”
Nozdormu’s expression closed off. “It seems I misjudged the situation.”
“No,” I said bitterly. “You judged it perfectly. The moment I’m at my weakest, my most depressed, never has my judgment been more malleable than right now, right here, you could not possibly have chosen a better time to bring me low, whether with violence or false hopes. Congratulations, you’ve succeeded.”
Nozdormu sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “This was not my intention.”
I clenched my fists. I’m supposed to be allied with this person in the future? How?
The dragon sighed. “My current self has Kairozdormu. He will recover.”
Light forbid he leave without getting the last word.
“He is on your side now, as it happens, though my current self will not know that for certain for some time. I will talk to myself so that he does not err the way I just did.”
Please don’t.
“More relevant to your present, your deployment of Khaz'Goroth’s Breach was seen from all over the northern continent. Strom’s response was predictable, but the reason House Menethil is coming in force is because of Dalaran. They saw you replicate the feat that ended the Troll Wars and reacted rashly. They cannot currently abide the thought of anyone being in possession of that secret besides them. The greedy want it, the neutral want the knowledge you possess, the good don’t trust anyone but themselves with the power you displayed, and the Council of Five, currently, will not take no for an answer.”
Of course they won’t, their prison guards were all around me right now.
“They were swift in denouncing the ‘unspeakable crime against mankind’ that was perpetrated here. In absence of the archbishop’s moderating influence, King Terenas was swayed by their argument, and the urging of Prince Thoras Trollbane who currently enjoys his hospitality.”
All the justice in the world couldn’t stand up to a single snub.
“Krasus is no longer available as a moderating influence in the Council, and the red are now conflicted at best towards you, with him gone. The one you saw flying away with Rheastrasza, without a word to you or even showing his face, despite watching you for days on end, was Tyranastrasz. It was a snub, and it was deliberate. The Green are unavailable as you know.”
I was being baited, but I didn’t care anymore. “What about the Blue?”
“Their situation rests on a future development which your future self insists is best left free of prophecy’s taint.”
“Well, if it’s me saying it, I suppose I have to agree.”
“I disagree.”
“… Does current you feel that way?”
“More so,” Nozdormu said cautiously. “I – he – is so wary of Infinite trickery that he suspects even himself. He believes these spots of hope are merely building up to something worse. The developments that will categorically prove I am no longer destined to become Murozond will take some several years yet.”
A tense quiet fell between us then. I thought he would say something about the Archbishop, it was the only thing he’d left out at this point. But he didn’t, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t care why. All I wanted was for him to go away.
“The answer to the question you told Kairozdormu to ask me is yes.”
… Excuse him?
“And my addendum is this: there is no limit on time frame, at either end. You are free to see to your aims when and how you wish, no matter the world.”
The Dark Portal. It could be used to reach times before and after. From any time before and after. I didn’t know if I wanted to thank or throttle him. “It didn’t occur to you to open with that?”
“It did,” Nozdormu admitted. “Clearly, I made the wrong decision.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response, my mood was beyond salvaging now.
“Do you wish me to tell you who will perish among those you hold close? And how?” The dragon had the nerve to outright ask.
Somehow, I don’t know how, I held myself from punching him in the face. “Did you discuss this with future me?”
“Yes. He said not to tell you.”
“How does that even work? Unless you don’t expect to be able to change the past anymore?”
“I have deliberately avoided observing this conversation, from all points in my time. There is no path it cannot take.”
Nozdormu, Leader of the Bronze Dragonflight, the Aspect of Time, had just told me that he’d made all the wrong decisions the moment he chose not to use his powers. And he didn’t even realize it. Much how the current him didn’t have all his powers. And would continue to not have them for ten more years.
Good god.
Maybe I’m overreacting, I thought despairingly. Just like I told him, I’m in the worst emotional place I’ve ever been. Nozdormu probably came here in good faith and it’s me that’s screwing it all up.
I didn’t know what it said about my life that I actually wanted that to be true. I pressed my hands against my eyes and tried to think logically. Try to – there had to be some wisdom about this in my memory somewhere.
You can form objective opinions based on the measurable elements of a situation, I recalled the recording of a wise man’s words, long long ago. Or a subjective opinion based on how you feel about it. But those are two completely different conversations.
Unfortunately, Nozdormu gave me neither the time nor peace and quiet to figure out which kind of situation this was. “Perhaps it would have been best after all, if I did not come.”
“Look, just… do what future me says to do.”
“… As you wish,” Nozdormu finally backed away. “May the mystery be one less burden to bear.”
One less – there’s literally no world where unsolved mysteries make things easier!
“The Archbishop will arrive in Alterac in but few more days,” the dragon said in closing, because of course he couldn’t suffer any event to be completely free of his meddling, I had to be wrong about this too. “But I see you would rather hear about that from the man himself.”
Nozdormu finally departed.
The portal closed behind him with the feel of a time loop firmly locked in place.
“Well, Lad?” Uther asked when time resumed its flow. “Can you walk, or do you need us to carry you? I have my horse over there, if you need it.”
I blinked and met the eyes of this person who loathed what I had done, even more so because of all my secrecy, my deception of the best people around me in service of conspiracy to mass slaughter. But he was still offering to make my burdens lighter. Unlike every last lizard. “You’re a good man.”
Uther turned visibly uncomfortable. “If only you’d matched action to those words before now.” He turned away to get his horse before I could come up with a reply to that rebuke of my character. Or, well, what I did relative to his character. And didn’t do. Didn’t let him in on my plans. Because I wanted his hands to remain clean, like I did Richard.
“He has no business judging you,” Richard rumbled nearby. “He is not from here, doesn’t know what it’s like to live under such an evil king, he’ll never understand.”
“He understands, he just doesn’t accept because compromise with objective evil is objective defeat. Now he won’t have to do that,” I said ruefully. “His standards for good can stay intact. Stay the right ones, mighty and high as everyone’s should be.”
I’d managed to live up to those words with Fahrad.
Not now.
Richard’s lips twisted in a sneer, but there was more introspection than resentment in his eyes now.
I was introspective too, but about something completely different. Namely, the one root cause behind all that had happened this year that reached even deeper into the foundation of this frustrating world. Now, with the dust finally settled, I had arrived to a conclusion.
The Old Gods were not quite as insidious as they thought themselves. They’d never come up with a story where a weasel and a swine manipulate a child into eating bugs and singing ‘everything is fine’ as he abandons his heritage for a life of aimless vagrancy, for example. They’d certainly never think of making an entire generation of people, young and old alike, hail it as a masterpiece of culture.
Of course, if they did ever think about it they’d probably succeed, which was why getting a hold of a proper human mind made them so dangerous.
Unfortunately, my troubles didn’t end where their influence did. Aiden Perenolde hadn’t been some misled youth or mind-bound thrall, he was an evil swine whose minions happened to include an ancient black dragon masquerading as a professional murderer. That made him my problem, which eventually ended up making a bunch more dragons into my problem, and the mollusks puppetting the whole lot of them.
People back in my last life used to quote ‘blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ It completely escaped them that the inheriting was only going to happened after the Earth had been nuked into a flat wasteland. Which itself was well after the Rapture took all the worthy believers away to God’s side. Supposedly. It wasn’t a promise of heaven, but of hell.
It also escaped them that the original saying referred to being as meek as a warhorse, which meant that you were expected to bravely charge in battle when called on by a worthy lord.
How fortunate that I had a worthy lord right next to me.
“Richard.”
“I am here.”
“Men, dragons, those are just two of three evils that meddled in this mess.”
“They are? What is the third?”
“The monsters in our strangest nightmares.”
Anyone else would have thought I was being deliberately vague, but not Richard. He’d been there for my talks with Antonidas, and even without them…
He asked no questions that would give the mages around us anything more to work with. He was a discerning sort, my Paladin. “What will you do?” he asked.
“Everything you won’t be able to do while tied up with ruling the country from here out.” I ignored the flash of alarm from the man who’d been certain and hopeful that I would become King myself.
Back when I’d first remembered in this life, I’d made plans. Plans I’d set aside after getting tied up with events here in Alterac, because a pair of bronze dragons didn’t think I was being brazen enough.
Now, those plans had just moved back to the foreground.
“I’m going to retaliate.”
Comments
Sebastian Pop
All I can say is that I like the movie well enough, but that isn't stopping me from disliking that part of it at the same time.
Cameron Burchett
In that case hate away, I don’t care much for Disney, I just didn’t feel like that movie in particular deserved the roast, given there are far better options for it.
Sebastian Pop
It was Definitely Disney getting the shade, it's not like I disliked that movie either.
Sebastian Pop
Things are better than they could've been on the greater scope levels, at least.
Judah Frankel
Oh yeah, it was the Lion King! I was really having trouble figuring that out. And I agree, if we’re talking about manipulative gaslighters then Scar deserves the blame, not Timon and Pumbaa. Say what you like about the rectitude of their teachings, they at least lived by those teachings themselves. Although if you’re throwing shade at Disney, that’s a different question. Their narrative choices are questionable, but that whole arc fits well within the pattern of the monomyth, so does that mean that they’re only guilty of following the narrative tropes? Either way, I’d say that if we’re looking for exemplars of poor life examples, Mark Twain’s narratives are an easier target.
Cameron Burchett
I liked the chapter well enough. I don’t much care for how often your protagonists seem to suffer a “lessening of spirit” or something as an excuse to nerf them. I also didn’t care for the snide comment about the Lion King, which is a childhood favorite of mine, and which your description of is deliberately misleading or outright wrong. Everything else was alright though.
Robert H.
Hot damn. Nozdormu... I dunno. I liked the conversation a lot; I'm also not surprised that I'm disappointed by the great dragon. Still happy he won't fracture into corrupted evil, though.
Sebastian Pop
Antioch is a scrub, this is the Caerbannog iteration.
Ben Lockwood
The Holy Hand grenade of Antioch, the nuclear variety then?
