SSD 5.00 - Prologue - Pruning Fate

Sorry this chapter took a bit longer for me to get up. I am still going to be working on editing, and there will be some new chapters written for book one as I do that (mostly fleshing out Sevso and Gnaeus'(Tam) journey.)

This chapter is one of the longest I have ever written, at over 4500 words. and is the prologue to book two. I decided to keep pushing forward, even as I take time to edit book one. That will make book one take longer to edit, I am sure, but I think people would appreciate me continuing with book two more, so I decided to do that.

START OF BOOK TWO

“If I could foresee the consequences of my actions, I would hardly be here.”

-Utwasfa the Foolish

Seer: You will not like my answer.

Questioner: I haven’t even asked the question yet.

Seer: Ask if you must, but know that you won’t like the answer, regardless.

Questioner: What should people do with their lives? I mean… what action would make it the best life?

Seer: Leaving aside the fact that everyone is different, and therefore has different desires and situations, what, exactly, do you mean by best? Are you looking for the life that would make them happiest? The life that is best for their family and friends? Their community or nation? For everyone that lives on the world as a whole?

Questioner: Uh-

Seer: It doesn’t matter. I don’t have a good answer for most of those. I can only say this. The future is constantly spinning into a multitude of new threads, but it is also constantly dying, the frayed edges of existence trimmed away. Your life is just the selvage, the edge maintained by the boundaries you placed on yourself.

Most of those limits, those edges, were things you placed on yourself.

And it is true for almost everyone. They cut away the impossible out of fear or despair. They allow the world to tell them what is possible.

The world is changed by people who look at it and weave something new. It is changed by people who decide that impossible is something that happens to other people. People who prove that the world was wrong, not them.

I have seen this conversation with you in a hundred different fashions dressed upon the shadows of a hundred different days.

I know what you actually want. You want to change the world, to make a difference.

You want to go change the world? Then go out and do it. Go out and fail a thousand times just for the opportunity to succeed once.

-Transcript of “The Weaver of Fate,” Seer of Daf’kagnerg, with questioner, 943 IC.

==Seer – Alrannorra==

When I spoke; the world shifted.

To speak the future was to shift the world, to reorient it onto a specific branch, the tree opening like a flower, budding into new possibilities as petals fell away and died.

And now I prepared to speak again, waiting in my meeting room.

There were rarely more than two seers living here at a time, but rooms were still available for up to a dozen. There were only three meeting rooms, but with only three of us, currently, each of us was free to have them decorated as we liked.

The youngest of us was a boy scarcely more than fifteen.

His rooms kept getting redecorated. His tastes alternated, his room a constantly shifting change between paintings and curtains of fabric. He had been training as a painter, before, and I suspected that he was trying to alternate colors and designs in such a way to create a shifting canvas of the future and past. He was also, under my guidance, raising the value and patronage of artists whose talent had gone unrecognized, and whose futures could shine far brighter with a light touch.

The other seer was older, a child of performers. She had leaned into the mystique of performance, her room holding deep shadows and uncanny reflections. She tended to favor physical aides: cards, crystals, and other accouterments.

Mine was more akin to a garden.

Illusionists, and others, had been hired to create the effect.

My caretakers had initially been reluctant to outlay that degree of expense, but I had not so subtly reminded them that they worked for me, and not the other way around.

A few secrets revealed, and a few specific word choices in front of an official scribe, and I had gotten what I wanted.

I hadn’t felt particularly bad about it, all the money that I earned and that was allocated by the empire was for us. There was far more money available than I had any inclination to spend. Any administrator that tried to lie to a seer about available funds was foolish indeed. I had prevented his execution, and made sure he knew exactly what I had done. I had curbed his worst impulses, using portions of the money to do what good I could.

The last seer had been particularly disconnected from the world, but his level of brazen embezzlement was enough to make me question his sanity.

Unofficially, I had a number of different names. Usually, those names had something to do with how we saw the future. One of the more popular was “The Iron Birch.” I still found it amusing when the director called me “The Iron Bitch” instead. He mostly did it in private.

Now, I had my garden, and a gazebo of polished dark red wood. Real plants adorned the pathways that lead in winding routes across it.

A breeze blew through the garden, causing leaves, both real and illusory, in all shades to dance beneath the gentle light of Shurum and Otga. Shadows danced across the ground and dappled light was cast across the surface of the table.

Tea steamed gently into the air, casting out the scent of jasmine and targantae, mingling with the flowers of the garden into a sweet medley. The favorite tea of the guest that slowly walked toward me.

For all the amusement I felt at my fellow seer’s obsession with mystique, we all indulged to some extent. There were a number of reasons for that.

At the beginning it was often simply practice.

Casting your perception a half second into the future was a good way to align your sight closer to the present, while still letting you focus on the present. It also meant you tended to react to things noticeably before they happened.

Of course, unless you practiced, it also meant you tended to start speaking before someone finished speaking.

I had long since moved on to more advanced exercises. Once I mastered casting everything forward, I had disconnected my sight and my hearing, alternating which was perceiving the present and future. Then I had learned to duplicate everything, seeing the present and most certain future simultaneously. Now I lived in both the present, and also saw a blurred blend of possible near futures, with a constant eye on the many diverging boughs that existed farther out.

Still… I was limited.

No one else understood the full impact of our oaths, and the cost for what we were given.

Our gifts were magnified, The System acting to open the way.

However, The System was using us, and we could see it.

It couldn’t see the future properly, not like us. It tapped into our natural talents, analyzing everything that we saw.

And we saw The System for what it was, which was why we were never allowed to speak of it.

Finally, the man arrived, his robes brushing against the edges of the steps as he climbed up into the gazebo to join me.

He ignored the scribe, his eyes only on me.

I didn’t bother to stand, my lips quirked in a slight smile.

He said nothing, but I could see faint futures where his self-control cracked, where he raged at my failure to show deference to his office. Those possibilities were truly faint, matched with other faint paths containing professions of lust, and other drivel.

I saw could see paths for all the thoughts one could think to do, and the fainter they were, the greater the self-control. His self-control wasn’t the best I had seen, but it was still remarkably good.

Of course, that tended to be true of politicians. Even if they let that control lapse in private, they were very good at keeping their public demeanor contained.

He inclined his head slightly, in a bow, before lifting his head. The faint smile on my lips grew deeper at his faint insult.

For a moment, I was tempted to wait, to make him speak first, but the thought quickly grew tedious. Best just to return the slight insult with a faint jab of my own. Politics wasn’t really my game, but only a bad seer couldn’t pay it properly.

“Welcome Chancellor,” I said, “how is your wife enjoying her new painting?” I didn’t say anything more, but the implication of knowing its origin as a bribe was clear.

The faint scratching of the scribe’s quill started. It used to be distracting, but it was just another piece of the background, and I had long become accustomed to their ubiquitous presence.

“She is quite taken with it,” he said. “The artist only recently came to greater prominence. I understand that your newest companion ordered some work by him a few months back.” He gestured toward the seat across from me. “May I sit?”

“Of course,” I said, smiling slightly wider as I reached out to pour the tea. It was no longer scalding, the temperature having just cooled to point it would be drinkable when poured. His cup already had honey, just enough to get the perfect sweetness. I poured a cup for the scribe and then the last one for myself.

I visibly engaged the emblem on the teapot, maintaining the temperature.

It was just another part of the game, of course. The tea’s perfection matched his arrival, another piece arranged to demonstrate my mastery over time. Playing up my own knowledge was almost reflexive, after so many years.

Politics was a simple enough game, when you knew all the secrets and stood mostly outside it. Occasionally I had to slap down attempts to rope me into it more fully. Chancellor Vardis, head of the External Affairs Authority, knew better than to push. He wouldn’t respect me if I failed to slap back against his subtle power plays.

I wasn’t sure whether he had been playing the game so long that it had warped his views, or if he simply enjoyed the delicate interplay.

To be fair, as long as he didn’t push I was one of the safest people to practice with. And I was certainly the safest person to practice with that could actually do damage.

I sipped my tea, allowing my eyes to look away and over the garden.

The illusion flickered with future possibilities, and the plants bloomed and died in a profusion of colors and a riot of life. Holes blasted through the walls, merging true overgrowth with the careful perfection of the manicured view.

I waited until just before he spoke, letting my future sight determine the proper moment, my words coming as he tipped into action.

“You wanted to ask about the dungeon, and the Adar.” It wasn’t a question.

Branches where he showed some irritation grew quite close, but the present killed them as he remained perfectly controlled. It would probably gall him to know I could read him so well. Of course, the tool only worked because he didn’t know about it. He was smart enough to throw off futures where he acted falsely, if he understood.

Of course, very few had enough control to act that way through their entire lives, so such subterfuge was mostly useless, and none could truly control all the actions that they might do, in some future born of infinitesimal chance.

None could truly hide from a seer with enough skill. Still, plenty had enough control to make it more work than it was worth to dig out the secrets, even if I could delegate the task to future versions of myself, choosing to follow only the paths where they found secrets worth the effort.

Even without The System fighting against itself, I would want seers to be limited in some fashion, and so would the rest of the world. I doubted it would matter. Without The System, our level of mastery was only a possibility in the barest flickers of mostly withered leaves.

“Yes,” he responded, finally.

“You may ask,” I said.

I heard Vardis’ teeth grind together, before that future was pruned away in face of his self control. I thought a faint tightening of his jaw might have made it into reality, but if so it was so quick I wasn’t sure. I could delve the past to find out for sure, but I left it in the past. If I wasn’t sure, then I wouldn’t count it as a point.

“What would be the best course in dealing with the dungeon?” he asked.

I nodded internally at his separation of the question, even as my full gift activated.

The System pushed the limits of my gift, and suddenly I could see more. Absently I could see The System recording everything I saw, though it carefully truncated its records of me seeing itself, avoiding a recursive infinity.

My soul opened and the world opened with it.

I wouldn’t remember everything, but my soul would contain it without limit. This was why The System needed us. We could parse and derive meaning in an infinity where it would lose its way.

Stones were cast, ripples spread, waves grew, and the future mirrored into true infinity. Every choice was infinite in scope and consequence, but the choices grouped together, producing the pathways that were most likely.

Each branch was not singular, but an infinite group of futures leading to the same general path.

To answer his question, the past dredged itself upward, starting with the core of the tree. Myself. The tree of the future started with my impact on events, my knowledge, and my experience.

And I had been reflecting on the dungeon quite often, lately, on Caden and Exsan.

That possibly had not been something I had seen. I had seen the possibility of someone coming, but the summoning had dipped deeper into infinity than I could follow. I had only known that, in the barest sliver of possibility that Gnaeus managed to summon one, they would be something new.

As it was, my visions had shown disaster following in the dungeons footsteps, and death was inevitable. Except I had seen it change, the ripples of fate as futures were actively pruned and time moved backwards under The System’s immeasurable power. Power enough to destroy the world, ripping it apart into the smallest components and flinging them every which way into the void, in numbers for which I had no name, had been spent to reverse and tame instants of time.

The two halves of The System had done battle, but the core directives would not be denied.

I had seen other futures. Gnaeus’ grand discovery was an excellent weapon of war, and it’s eventual freedom had been sufficient to conquer it, or destroy it.

A failure to master the dungeon’s instincts had seen Caden blend them with himself more fully, leading to a world twisted into a perverse mockery, the whole world a dungeon that was as beautiful as it was dangerous.

The worlds where the dungeon instincts had become dominant were less beautiful, but perhaps more honest, the savagery out in the open, instead of veiled in silk.

Those were not ends, the cycle eventually resuming after a long stall, but they were terrible enough that I counted them as more than disaster enough.

There had been better futures, too, where Gnaeus and Caden had worked together, building up something new.

Caden’s escape had been unlikely, but he had pushed hard enough that The System was forced to respect his choices, his resolve to be free was absolute, not fearing death because he had done it once already. If he had failed, he would have accepted it, but he would have given everything he had to the effort first.

Yet he escaped, brushing against the life of Sevso, dooming and saving him both, with his actions echoing back to lead Gnaeus toward Caden in the future, even as he teleported across the world.

And then Caden had been truly split, truly become two individuals, the dungeon and the human, still inextricably intertwined, but with the ability to follow their own purposes.

The future had trembled; branches once again fell away.

Caden displayed force with his other half, threaded the narrow path of communication that Exsan was able to understand, and still tried to compromise. The fact that that compromise had been renegotiated later was immaterial, Caden had won enough time to show that his method worked, and be something more than a normal dungeon to the adventurers when he showed mercy.

And he had displayed exactly who he was, later, saving the life of an adventurer who had shared the secret of what dungeon’s could become. Exsan, fresh from delving into Caden’s knowledge and with greater understanding of humanity, thrust himself onto the same stage.

And now the past gave way to the present.

Across the world, news of the strange new dungeon spread, intermixed with a truth long hidden. Wiser rulers publicly spread the message, controlling how it was presented. The public would know, but they would know in a way those governments chose. Most chose the simple truth, that most dungeons are beasts, and the Adar had long claimed those that have transcended that reality.

Less wise rulers saw a growing unrest. Long bitterness and sorrow inflamed to anger with the presentation of a viable, if misguided, target.

Nobles, merchants, priests, and fools each considered how they might benefit from the information. Most did nothing, but a few made wise choices. Sadly, a larger selection allowed their own greed and hubris to lead them to unwise action.

The Adar muttered in discontent, the loss of a secret striking against their control and comfort. Ancient Ones soothed their charges, retelling other secrets lost, many with far more dire consequences and with far greater malice.

Across the world we seers continued our trade, joined by our lesser cousins, the fortune tellers, fate weavers, and sundry. Some of them even had a spark of the gift. Many young virgins were promised wealth and bountiful companionship. Worried individuals were promised times of trouble, with only a few coins needed to show the route to avoid disaster. And, amidst the normal cacophony, the truly powerful and gifted, spoke little. The world was in constant flux, and our words could send it careening into worse paths. Disaster, salvation, or the continuation of things as they had always been?

In Tsary, far across the sea, to the south of the Lances, and south of Caden and Exsan’s new domain, priests and clerics debated if the dungeon was linked to some remnant of their ancient city, the former center of Otga worship. According to their legend, the city was stolen from them because of a cataclysm caused by Froa.

And, in Froa to the north, they consider much the same, though with greater worry, for their legends say the danger was caused by the lost city itself. They unearth ancient records and sealed rooms, searching for greater knowledge, and a way to prevent disaster.

Neither is entirely correct, or entirely wrong, though the ancient city slumbers beneath a dome of volcanic stone, and the dungeon has already touched upon it.

And, Caden himself prepared to deal with a hundred issues that called for his attention, while Exsan waited with mild impatience, bemused to even feel such an emotion.

The One Who Dwells In Darkness waited, mostly awake. It had nothing so concrete as thoughts, but it felt the presence of the dungeon, still the barest measure of distance away. It would strike soon.

And the visions of the future trembled and blew through the tree of time like storms, casting off leaves and twigs and whole branches, even as the tree changed and grew anew. Lightning strikes of implausibility sheared away sections in blazing moments of transfiguration.

And I looked into the twining mess, trying to discern a route to salvation.

Air pulled into the dungeon from a thousand entrances, forming a vast permanent hurricane. The world died so slowly it almost failed to notice, the air growing thin over thousands of years, until only pockets of it pooled into valleys and down into the underground. Few places of shelter remained: hidden vales whose barriers now caught the air, just as much as they shielded against the burning fury of Otga and held against Shurum’s neglect, the Antre Gloom served as a refuge to some, with whole new civilizations, which displaced those already there, some few found shelters in dungeons, though only the Adar had true success, become even more sheltered and separated from the world in their dungeon islands. The margins grew too thin for the cycle to truly exist anymore, and civilization persisted as embers in the endless dark.

I pulled away, looking for something better, only to find something worse.

Corruptions spread from the dungeon like rot, like fungus, an empire of decay. Not of the world, or the flesh, but the mind. People smiled vacantly and drifted through their lives in a haze of disjointed soporific joy, asleep within themselves. The cycle ended, and civilization puppeted itself through the motions of being alive, too empty to cause disaster or progress. People delved dungeons, because it was what they had always done, and none cared for the dead.

Another vision, another corruption, this one visible and dark, taking the physical and mind both, twisting the world into monstrous shapes. Feral and savage the whole world twisted upon itself, the physical as twisted as the mind within.

I delved deeper. Even if the world fought off the dark futures, the price was paid in blood and ashes.

Ashes. Magic invoked and the world was ashen. Beneath the dungeon, the volcano was stirred to action, blasting out in fiery rage at its disturbed slumber. Tapping deep into the vein of earth mana, the power was out of control, raging deeper than intended, spreading across the world for the second time in as many millennia, and even worst than the first. The earth mana poisoned the plants, and broke down the barriers over the cities. The cycle had come to fruition once again, casting the world into ruin. Only the most sheltered of vales, and the strongest of defenses, survived, left to start civilization again.

The dungeon broke its own mountain apart in a fit of rage and madness, choosing destruction over madness.

Exsan stood in human form as he carved the core with a chisel, excising the dead crystal of his partner, his soul departed. His expression shifted in wild swings of probability, madness, avarice, dripping tears of sorrow, of joy, laughter, or hurried fear.

Caden did the same, his expressions just as varied.

A tree bloomed out of the dungeon, taking over the whole world. It ravaged the world, or saved it, or ripped it in twain. It nestled the world on a bough of incomprehensible size, the entire world just one of many, and the roots of the tree bathed in the fire of Otga, and Shurum danced between the branches.

The tree never left the dungeon, instead dungeon grew to span worlds, its small exterior belying the vastness contained within. The dungeon died and all its vast enormity spilled into the world, exploding outward in vast cataclysms of mass, mana, and a conflagration, too much forced out into the world all at once.

The tree grew to span the breadth of eternity, and the gaze of its eye stared back across time. I saw it and knew, for it was eternal, and its name was Jianmu/ Égig érő fa/ Integral/ Modun/ Kenac' Car /Yggdrasil /Forest /Ağaç Ana /Eden /Irminsul /Ashvattha.

I shook my head for a moment, then dug deeper. It was hardly my first encounter with beings that could gaze backward through time. Until it actually existed, it was no more than a fangless serpent.

The timeline opened before me, until I had an answer. Two, actually.

“Do nothing about the dungeon. The best odds are when it is pressured as little as possible, at least from our end. It has plenty to deal with already.”

Vardis shook his head.

“You know people won’t like that.”

I smiled at him.

“It isn’t my job to make you, or anyone else happy,” I said, my smile flashing like the bared fangs. “Besides, I know perfectly well that you know how to be patient.”

Many of Vardis’ enemies had fallen to that patience, struck down long after they had dropped their guard, or spurred into precipitous action by events that had superficially favored them, gloating even as they swam into unseen depths with hungry predators.

Vardis went to speak, but I interrupted him before he could.

“And, yes, I know that others might lack your talents, but you are in charge, so you get to make the final say. Even if you have to talk to Empress, do you expect me to believe that you are incapable of using logic or persuasion?”

“No,” he said, biting off the word slightly.

My smile grew wider, pleased at winning the little game I had set for myself.

“And,” I said, “I have at least a bit better news about the Adar. Reach out to them, and coordinate with them on a public dissemination of the knowledge. A controlled release will produce less unrest. It will also have the shockingly rare benefit of being both true, and a more accurate viewpoint on that truth.”

Vardis allowed himself to show me a small smile, though the laugh I heard in a few timelines was more pleasant than I had expected, the laughter fading into echoes only I could hear.

“A rare opportunity, it is true,” Vardis admitted. “Usually even the truth is massaged so much it presents a false face. I wonder how many of my colleges will actually believe it?”

“Up to you, no doubt,” I replied. “I don’t see any other pressing questions, so we will finish here.”

Vardis protested in a few worlds, but here he simply nodded.

A muffled knock came from the door to the room, the intervening plants and the quiet brush of the wind making it no more than a subtle sound.

“Ah, excellent,” I said. “My next appointment is here, perfectly on time.”

Vardis gave me a long look. His others selves were less controlled, ranging from eye rolls, sighs, and groans.

“Don’t tell me you don’t enjoy our little games, Chancellor?”

Vardis allowed himself a small quirk of the mouth, the smile as fleeting as lightning strike.

“If nothing else, Seer, it is a reminder to stay humble.”

We walked toward the door together. When we arrived, I bid him a farewell, then opened the door. Outside, the painter, Rontan Tanrol, waited, accompanied by a guard.

Vardis’ gaze flickered toward me, but he contained himself. The much less controlled possible exclamations were much more fun. Still, it served as an adequate end to my game.

After all, I did actually want a portrait done by a painter with such incredible potential.

Rontan would find painting me incredibly frustrating, as my comments pushed against the limits of his style, but I would steer him towards his best self, and my portrait would stand as the true transitional piece of his art. I could see dozens of masterpieces, each capturing perfectly my too knowing gaze. I would need to pick which one to steer him towards. It was a bit vain of me, perhaps, to enshrine my legacy in such a way, but it would truly propel Rontan forward.

A walked back into the meandering paths of the garden, Rontan following dutifully behind, as time twisted and bloomed with every step.