Chapter 991: This Offer Kind of Sucks

Raythe looked at home, wandering through the tree city of Arbour beside Jason. She was an elf with dark brown skin and light brown hair, flecked with green. The city was empty of people, the hard-packed dirt roads lined with fallen leaves. Only diffused sunlight made it through the canopy, creating a shady sanctuary. Hanging from the branches were many gourd-like pods, large enough to contain a mid-size sedan.

“Is it unusual?” Jason asked, following her gaze as she looked at the pods.

“See enough of the cosmos,” Raythe told him, “and you will find that everything and nothing is an oddity. Ordinary astral kings cannot use the planets in their astral realms to birth messengers, but you are not the first original to do so. Or to birth more than messengers. There are others like your lehenik to be found amongst the countless worlds.”

“Forgive me if the question is rude, but may I ask how old you are? And how long you have been a prime avatar?”

“I do not mind the question, but it is not one I can answer in any way you would understand. My relationship with time is not a linear one.”

“Does that mean you can see the future?”

“It means that I don’t believe in the future. Not the way you do. For you, the future is fixed. Whatever you encounter it as, when it becomes your present, is what it was always going to be. I see time as a series of interconnected points, the alteration of which ripples to the surrounding points and beyond, altering the whole. To those occupying those points, this process feels like a linear passage through time.”

“And your job is what? To stop the ripples from tangling everything up?”

“The process is a natural one. The only rule is that any given node in the pattern can only be directly changed by those within it.”

“Meaning… no time travel?”

“Or any other manipulation of time.”

“Well, except the one way to travel through time, obviously.”

She looked at him in confusion.

“What way?” she asked.

“Waiting.”

She gave him a disapproving frown while he grinned to himself and conjured a sandwich out of thin air.

“You want one?” he asked.

“Please.”

He conjured another sandwich that floated in front of her, bobbing along as they walked, until she reached out and took it. Rather than eating it, she held it in front of her like a specimen.

“Your ability to manipulate material here is coming along,” she said. “Few are able to create a world as developed as this.”

“Turning raw magic into food was a pretty easy one. Most organic material is a challenge, but it’s not too bad when it’s relatively inert. Living things are the trick. All the animals here, and even the plants, I created half-subconsciously at best. The secret is to create a seed and let it sort itself out. The Healer gave me something that taught me how to create the spark, but I don’t think I could create a living thing deliberately. But give it a chance, and life finds a way.”

“I see. Most entities who create worlds are reluctant to surrender control of even the most superficial detail. All must be as they will, meaning that geological and biological diversity only comes as they master every aspect of creation, over the course of millennia.”

“That sounds incredibly tedious,” Jason said. “You have to let things go. Let them become what they will on their own. Otherwise, all you’ll get is a reflection of yourself. I suppose that’s the point, for a lot of people looking to create a whole world. As acts of hubris go, it’s pretty up there.”

Raythe didn’t interrupt, instead finally biting into the sandwich.

“This conversation has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?” Jason asked.

“I can see why you would think so.”

“How’s Dawn?”

“Nervous. She worries about what I’m going to tell you today. If I tell you.”

“If? I’ve been waiting a lot of years to hear whatever it was Dawn didn’t want to tell me. It was already meant to have happened by now.”

“There are two conditions you must agree to. The first is the reason I waited until your astral kingdom was complete. What I tell you must be kept from your prime avatar.”

“I didn’t realise that was possible.”

“It is. You have seen that half-transcendents make extensive use of avatars, largely to avoid violating the rules of intrusion. There is much about avatars that I can teach you, even if I don’t have a prime avatar. That includes vulnerabilities of prime avatars.”

“Vulnerabilities?”

“Your prime avatar is a place in which to seat your consciousness. That makes it a link to your true self, and there are ways to exploit that link. There is nothing that can be done to harm you, but there are ways to disadvantage you. To cost you time when you need it most.”

“Alright. Why do I need to keep it from my avatar?”

“I’ll explain once we’ve come to an accord.”

“Then what’s the second condition?”

“I think that is best explained after I offer you some context. You know that Dawn, before she left Pallimustus, warned you of a danger that she refused to specify.”

Jason turned from the wide road of hard-packed earth onto a side street that sloped down and had tiles set into it. It led to a shallow gully with a stream running through it, winding its way around the trees. Bushes lined the gully, with a path running alongside.

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Jason led Raythe to a short wooden bridge where he stopped halfway across. There was a break in the canopy over the gully, lighting it up with sunlight from a clear blue sky. He leaned on the railing, looking out as he finished his sandwich. She stood waiting, finishing hers as well. There was a gentle breeze, carrying the clean, natural scent of the forest. The only sounds were the trickling water and the occasional bird call or buzz of insect wings.

“Dawn told me that I was in a fight that I didn’t even know was happening,” Jason said, finally breaching the quiet. “She said I’d already lost.”

“The situation was meant to come to a head already, but the timeline shifted when you claimed the soul forge, completing the requirements for becoming an astral king.”

“Which you saw coming, I imagine.”

“It doesn’t work like that. The pattern is always in flux. And while the timing changed, the facts have not.”

“It’s about the bridge between worlds, isn’t it? The delay was because I put off completing it while I was off fighting with the great astral beings. Something is going to happen when the bridge settles and fully opens. Some kind of invasion?”

“I will not furnish you with details until we have an agreement. What matters is what happens when you learn of what is to come. When you are faced with a fight that you cannot win.”

“I know we haven’t hung out a lot, but doing the impossible is kind of my thing.”

“Yes, and that is precisely the problem. I do not know if there is a way to prevent what is to come, but—”