"We're all going to die," I said, and was surprised at how much I meant it. I'd come close to death plenty of times in the past six months - almost exactly six months in Earth time, actually - but even when I'd been worried I was fucked there was a glimmer of hope, or denial, or overwhelming panic, or... something. This time, it was just a fact. We were going to die. This was stupid. Even if we could barrel past the soldiers and knights and reach the portal, then what? What would be on the other side, a beautiful field of flowers with a picnic lunch all laid out? I'd seen, just this morning - what a fucking day it had been - the horrific mess of explosions and gore as people tried to push through. What could the three of us do, other than immediately get killed?

And if we stayed, the Knights of the Storm would be more eager to kill us than ever. Surrendering to whoever I could reach from the Empire was still the best plan, though it was exceedingly clear that it came a distant second to just not doing any of this in the first place. Hammersmith wouldn't have just let them get executed, right? Klinec was awful and I didn't regret what I'd done to him, but Hammersmith? I didn't trust her, not really, but she'd been willing to sit down and try to make a deal. She could have just disappeared me into a cell from the beginning. And Hugh wouldn't have let anything happen to Katrin and Errod either, there would have been some way for me to get word to him if I'd tried.

It wasn't even my worry about their safety, in the end. If I was honest - while I did care about them - it was much more a combination of my hatred of feeling trapped and this perverse sort of possessiveness. Those were MY friends, and nobody was allowed to do that to them - not because I loved them, not because they were always so good to me, but because they were mine. And based on that, on this ridiculous panic and anger, I'd doomed us all. I'd been thinking about fate a lot today, about the ways it might have been manipulating me, and for a moment I was ready to lay this all at fate's feet. It had forced me, it had caused me to be impulsive and irrational.

But, more likely, fate had chosen me because of those traits - not caused them. Wouldn't it be easier to get someone to run off and do something if they're prone to impulsive acts? How else to get the most out of a little nudge in probability? I was always going to be a disaster, though maybe without fate involved I would have been... hmm. A regular Sahrger? Would they have gotten me back from Earth, or not sent me so far to begin with? They would have killed the little girl I replaced, and I would have grown up in Xeyul. Then I would have helped to kidnap more children, and... part of me protested, saying that morality was all relative anyway, but it was a feeble argument. I remembered - not in detail, but as a vague cloud of half-memories - my talks with Bill about the topic.

What it meant to be part of a community. How we benefitted from not being dicks. What society would look like with and without any kind of charity - not in the sense of organizations, but the little acts between individuals. Sometimes it felt good to help people, and sometimes it was exhausting, but it either way it was right. It was taking a long-term view, rather than just doing whatever stupid selfish thing I wanted in the moment. And the Sahrger had gotten along without it, but they'd replaced it with endless manipulative social rules and head games and intimidation and threats. They'd perfectly crafted a society on spite and insecurity, so that the ones in power could torture those below them, all the way down until the weakest of the Sahrger took out their frustrations on stolen children.

Earth had sucked, and it had its fair share of people that thought the same way as the Sahrger, but Bill had been right that I didn't want to contribute to that. That even in a terrible system, you can choose to be good. Maybe I would have been happy in Xeyul, if I'd grown up there. Or if not happy, maybe I would have just accepted it. But knowing what I did, I couldn't think of it that way. I couldn't turn my back on the idea of trying to do the right thing even when it was inconvenient and annoying. So. No more whining and wondering about fate, not until I had the more immediate problem under control. Errod and Katrin were going to get absolutely killed unless I decided what to do, right now.

"My surrender is still the best plan," I said, "because there's going to be a whole army on the other side of that portal."

"Doubtful," Katrin said, "they'll have needed to focus on the Empire's attack. There'll be some, and maybe traps? But that's not worse than here."

"It is, though. Here I can surrender and plead for your safety in return for a deal. They'll still want someone that can get them in to Brinkmar, even if the attack is going well."

"They won't need to make a deal anymore," Errod said, "because now you've committed direct crimes against them. You'll be forced, one way or another - and while it's possible that the Empire will draw the line at mental coercion I wouldn't count on it."

Mental shit they would find difficult, but there were other things they could do. I could still feel a painful throbbing at the back of my head from the iron shackles earlier, and despite sipping one of the healing potions my wrists were still oozing and raw. I had a sudden memory, a flicker of something forgotten from the first timeline. Sneaking somewhere, spying, and seeing Hammersmith pack iron manacles in her bag. It was right before the mission into Brinkmar, the night before the Grand Alignment. I hadn't known what I was at the time, but I could feel the malice pouring off of them and knew they were for me. And so in return, I had...

The memory was incomplete, but I suddenly was transfixed by the reflection of Helma's face in my bracer. I'd forgotten that I looked like her in all the confusion.

The metal doors in the other room had only just finished their slow swing open - presumably they'd been built to prevent anyone from opening the portal from the other side and attacking the keep - and the soldiers were all bracing and ready. Nobody from the Empire was looking our way, but not surprisingly two of the Knights of the Storm were heading towards us. They would know about the security room, and might suspect it had been compromised - even if not, they'd want to find out if the command to open the doors could be overridden.

"I hate this. This is a bad plan." I wanted to do something sneaky. I'd ditched the outer layer of my Helma disguise when I'd gotten my jacket back, but that probably wouldn't have mattered anyway since they knew I had been wearing it. There was stuff available that would make us look like we were with the Knights of the Storm, but it wouldn't fit and we didn't really have time. We had manacles, maybe there was some sort of "I've taken them prisoner" thing we could do if Errod put on a helmet and cloak... no, it would never work.

I hated just charging in, but I literally couldn't think of a better plan. "Okay. We run, full speed. Katrin shields us, we open the portal, and then... fuck, I don't know. Stay to the corner, and stay low. I don't know what's going to come out when we open it."

Ideally I would have said we'd duck behind the metal doors until whatever fighting there was died down, but they were huge and by the time we ran all the way around them we'd be dead anyway if there was an attack. Errod did put on a helmet, and I picked up Katrin - unlike Errod and I she hadn't been working out, and she was already having trouble keeping up. This last sprint was ridiculously important and I couldn't afford to have her fall behind.

She was in front of me, legs wrapped around my waist and arms reaching under mine to grab my shoulders from behind while I held her. We probably looked ridiculous, but she would be shielded by my body from most attacks and since she was the one that would be magically protecting Errod and I that seemed important. She told me to let her know as soon as the door opened, her breath hot on my ear.

"Now," I said, and the opening door nearly exploded off its hinges as Katrin released another concussive blast focused directly on the doorway. Both knights stumbled back, one falling, and we rushed out past them. Fewer people than I would have expected turned around - the blast itself wasn't actually that loud, but the clattering of armor couldn't be missed. Then I realized that there was already too much going on in the room, too many noises from arguing and people arming themselves and setting up barriers in front of the portal to hide behind to make the advance of invaders difficult.

They were so focused on an attack coming from the portal, they just weren't thinking about what was going on behind them. Well, most weren't. One knight suddenly appeared next to us, teleporting to the exact right place to swing down and cut me in half - Katrin's shield spell collapsed under the strike but must have absorbed some of the energy, since it didn't manage to knock me down. For what felt like the millionth time since arriving in this world, I felt a rib crack. I hated to think what would have happened without my armored jacket.

Errod was swinging defensively as others rushed to engage us, but only a few were really fast enough. We'd already passed some by before they understood what was happening, and once they all charged as a group Katrin just made a thin shield low to the ground - it sliced into a few ankles, but most were just tripped which was good enough. Black lightning crackled on swords as a few knights moved to block our way, and then one came hurtling at us through the air from across the room.

A shield appeared in front of him and was instantly destroyed - maybe if Katrin had selected Force magic or something it would have worked, but the downside to the versatility of her spellcasting was its relative weakness. A second shield forced him to swing early, clearly not trusting his momentum alone to break it this time, but he still tackled me so hard that Katrin went flying from my grasp.

Errod's progress had slowed, as more caught up to him. I saw his shield brooch fire off to save him once, but after that it must have been out of charges because the next blow landed just fine. A knight was stalking towards Katrin, probably the same one that had slammed into us, and he held his sword pointed down as if he was about to just skewer her where she lay. She reached out to me, looking scared but determined, and a spell attack hit me. I tumbled and slid across the floor, bouncing hard as I skidded, and then came to a rest against a wall with my ears ringing. What the fuck was she...

It wasn't a wall. It was the portal. She'd blasted me the rest of the way. I placed a hand against it, and for the second time in a day imagined a gateway opening to the fantasy realm I'd spent hundreds of hours reading about, obsessing over, writing fanfiction for... and felt the stone my head was leaning against vanish.

From my vantage on the ground, looking up and behind me, I could see a strange device on a large tripod. There were ranks of soldiers behind it, hundreds at least, but more importantly it was surrounded by people in robes and matte black masks - the Hierophants of Oblivion. They turned, body language communicating total shock, and then one of them grabbed handles on the device and howled as the air shimmered in front of it.

The device was round and slightly domed, reminding me of a crab with its legs all tucked in. I could see a hint of gears spinning, covered in light that had to be the smallest runes I'd ever seen, and then the front of it unfolded strangely and my divination broke. It had already been having trouble, because it couldn't really extend through the portal, but now I felt it wrenched away on my side of the gateway - I'd barely been aware of the planar membrane that I relied on for divination, only really feeling its absence in cases where wards had stopped me, but now I sensed it tear and crumple as the most complete blackness I'd ever experienced blossomed above me and extended into the keep.

It spread as it reached out, although the actual shape was hard to see; it swallowed the light perfectly, leaving it looking like a two-dimensional cutout. The portal was shaking, a terrible dark red glow creeping in around the edges, and panic had overtaken the soldiers - one was stepping away from the blackness staring down at an arm that simply stopped just above where his elbow should have been, flesh and bone and armor perfectly severed. Another was clearly trying to cast a spell at the void, to no effect.

And Katrin and Errod... were gone. They'd been right in line with it, and where they had been was simply that perfect nothingness. The end of Errod's sword was laying on the ground, next to a bisected knight, but otherwise there was no trace. They were dead - nothing to heal, nothing to bury, just wiped from existence. And it was all my fault.

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The darkness was still spreading, eating into the walls and ceiling, and as I laid there trying to think of what to do the whole keep groaned and a section of the floor above came crashing down. Rubble tumbled everywhere, some passing into the inky blackness and not coming out the other side. I could see bits of rune-covered metal plates, and smaller sections of wall that fell down all in one piece, and there, clattering into the room from the new hole...

Oh, fuck you fate.

Fuck yourself in the eyes, you stupid bitch. I felt rage boiling up, and wanted desperately to will fate into a physical form just so I could choke it to death. This wasn't just a minor nudge to probability. This was murder and blackmail. There, laying on the ground not that far from me, was Yesrin's Loom. The tool of a god, that could supposedly remake the world after it was destroyed - a tool that I had deliberately refused to touch, and that was now being presented to me as the void reached out and consumed my friends.

Fate wanted me to take it, to use it. Not to save Katrin and Errod, no. Fate wanted me to bring it into Brinkmar.

Here was the planar terraforming device, tuned to Azaraze - a plane of total destruction. If Ulren had finished his creation, and if Azaraze were aligned, the Hierophants would be using it to collapse every plane together into the void and erase reality. But instead, it was just a weapon - a horrible weapon, but not a doomsday device - because Ulren was waiting on a few parts he needed. Like Yesrin's Loom. The Clockmaker had learned to harness the Loom's power through one of his creations, and now Ulren wanted to do the same. I killed him this time around, and the version of him from the last time showed up somehow. I warned Hammersmith about the attack on Storm's Keep and made sure Halenvar was too busy to commit enough forces, and so the Loom stayed here all safe... until I arrived.

Fate was trying to force Ulren's plan. It wanted time to reset, again and again. I refused Sentortzi's version of the plan, and now I was finding out that 'no' wasn't an option. Fate would bludgeon me into shape. I could refuse it again, actively resist, and all it would take is letting Katrin and Errod stay dead and probably dying myself. Was someone lined up to take the job next? Did I have an understudy? Or would this actually fuck fate over? It was possible that so close to the Grand Alignment there wouldn't be time to find a new mark. Was it being this overt, risking pissing me off, because it was desperate? Was Sentortzi right that the world would end at the Grand Alignment as it was?

The deep red glow from the edges of the portal had faded to a luminous black, a darkness much more tangible than the one eating everything. I rolled away just in time, and the portal snapped shut as the stone frame cracked and fell to pieces. The blackness remained, but had stopped growing. Crawling, I got clear far enough to safely stand and sprinted over to Yesrin's Loom. It was a thin staff, pointed on one end and hooked on the other just like the knight's swords - presumably it was where they'd taken the design choice from. It had a warm color like cherry wood, but the pattern on it wasn't woodgrain and when I touched it I couldn't identify what material it might actually be.

Everyone had fled from the collapsing ceiling or fallen into the void, so there was nobody there to stop me from picking it up. I couldn't even stop myself. I held it in my hands and felt something flowing through me, both into and out of Yesrin's Loom like it was part of me. Meant for me. I wanted to throw it into the void. "Fuck you," I whispered, but just held the staff tighter. A line appeared, a hairline fracture running down the length of it, and abruptly the Loom split in two - glowing lines connecting the sides in a pattern so complex and deep that I immediately felt vertigo as I tried to look at it. It was threads like I'd seen before, but in more colors than my brain could comprehend and twisting into infinite fractals. It seemed to fill my whole range of vision, and...

I was floating, lost and broken for a million years or no time at all. My mind had shattered, overwhelmed by the scope of what surrounded me. If I hadn't spent some of my potential on being better at seeing and comprehending that impossible space between my Dumines when I meditated would I have been rendered brain dead? It felt like that, like I'd barely scraped by intact. Well... mostly intact. Things felt disjointed, and there was nowhere I could focus my attention on without losing coherence again. My body was gone, or I was removed from it - it didn't matter which. Out of the corners of my vision, shapes seemed to swirl into existence and then collapse back into those fractal patterns of thread as I turned to look at them more closely.

I'd always hated those stupid fucking Magic Eye pictures, and now I was trapped in one. There was something with me, something I couldn't see properly, and I had to know what it was. I couldn't take a deep breath, or close my eyes for a moment, or anything else I wanted to - but I managed to calm down after a minute regardless, and started trying to gently bring the chaos around me into focus in different ways. At first everything I tried hurt or forced me to dissociate, but after some timeless eternity I began to see images in the depths.

Clocks covered the walls. I turned, and could see outside the shop to where a vague space - a city? A warehouse? Was in total disarray and ready to collapse. An androgynous figure with too many arms was running around, propping things up or fixing things. They reminded me of a spider, and as I had that thought I saw they were climbing along threads that led to places that needed the most attention. Another one, equally frantic, was trying to hand me instructions - the booklet looked like something from Ikea, but the diagrams didn't make sense to me. I flipped through, and the pages never ended - they just repeated the same incomprehensible steps.

I turned back towards the shop as I heard banging from the doors along the far wall - there were three of them, with windows of frosted glass, but one had been smashed open and was empty. The shape behind the first intact door was human, and I knew it was my fault he was there. Behind the other was another one of the spider people, and it had someone else in there with it - they were tied up with string, but had wrapped some around its neck in turn. I stepped forward, but then realized something else was guiding me along; it had been invisible until I knew to look for it. It had dead eyes and was carved from stone, some ancient statue brought to life. I could see gears through some of the cracks, but those felt tacked on - some later addition. Threads extended from its limbs like a marionette, up into the ceiling and along little tracks until it reached the top of the door with the spider-person.

As I stepped closer to the doors I could finally see behind the shop's counter, and found a pile of bodies - too many to possibly fit in the little shop, and all but one with their heads missing. That last one was laying on the pile but still alive. He was dressed like a waiter, and was holding out a chocolate milkshake as he smiled menacingly. "For your birthday," he said, "may it be your last. She's got her mark on you, see? We can't allow that."

I looked down and could see that where the statue had touched me there was a dusty handprint, and I knew that the same mark was on every body in that pile. I looked past them to that door with the human, and the blurry form was holding an axe. Was that why I'd locked him up? Or was he killing people because of me? I stepped back, pulling my arm free from the statue, and the thing that had handed me the instructions took my arm instead. I pulled away from that, and the statue grabbed me. Finally I squirmed and fought and managed to get free of both of them at once, and a crack ripped the floorboards apart. I pushed past them, ran for the door, and at every step things cracked and crumbled around me until I knew I had ruined everything.

Too late, I saw the supports under the shattered floor and realized there had been places I could have stepped safely - almost imperceptible, but identifiable because they were the spots the other beings had been stepping on. The cracks extended, and the sky itself opened up revealing a creature bigger than reality - with my mind unable to give meaning to something so vast I instead pictured a planet-sized field of tentacles, eyes, mouths. This eldritch monstrosity was everything, eternal, stretching to the corners of the universe. Another one, equally big, swam into view and then vanished and I realized there were more of them - the others just weren't interested in me.

A million million mouths opened as a million million eyes focused on me, and a voice entered my head clear as a bell and sounding like... a young girl with a Southern accent? "Hang on doll, you're crooked. This is a bad spot, I've got no bars."

The world twisted and I could see the threads again - but actually see them, without my mind breaking. What had just happened? Had it been a nightmare? I had this sensation as if I was being propped up somehow, supported so I wouldn't fall back in to the insanity I'd just been drowning in. As I tilted my head - my vision, anyway, since I still didn't seem to have an actual body while looking at the threads - everything shifted and changed. There was a hole in the pattern, a place where the threads ended abruptly. Looking out across the strange landscape I could see another spot without threads, but this one was a massive chasm that seemed large enough to swallow the world. Across it stretched a few feeble threads, one or two in particular doing all the work of holding the two halves together.

I tried to follow them, and while I couldn't track it the whole way I was almost certain one ran right alongside the gap closer to me. I reached out and somehow plucked it, gently, and felt a rush as my mind rippled in an instant through the past and future. That... was me. And that meant that the other threads... I couldn't figure out which was which, but everything that had vanished in the void was here, an existence cut short. All that destruction was my fault. I looked back at the larger black gulf, and remembered finally. That had been my fault too.

Helma had come to me, panting, and told me that Hammersmith needed me. That the Hierophants of Oblivion had begun activating a device, and I needed to hurry because the door wouldn't open. Only I would be able to save them, only I was capable of unsealing that room. And I thought about the hateful manacles Hammersmith had brought, and looked back at the rest of the team that had assaulted Ulren's lab - they were all dead or dying. Ulren had been thrown into a container of temporal mana and vanished in a searing flash of green light, destroyed instantly - or so I had believed - but the few that hadn't already been killed in the fight had been too close, and it had... done things... to them.

And so it was just me and Helma. Helma, who had been nothing but sweet to me. Who had helped me make my case about the threat Ulren posed. Who had stayed up with me, late at night, and taught me how to read runes. Her eyes widened in shock as I stabbed her, and I held her close. "I'm sorry," I whispered, "it's not real. None of it is real." I closed the door to the lab and sealed it, made sure everyone was truly dead, and then set to work preparing for the end of the world. It would go better the next time, I was so sure of it. I would start over, and I'd save everyone. None of this would count.

My view of the threads shook as the memory hit me, and the conflicting parts of my mind grated against each other. I was a monster, just like mother always said. But she wasn't my mother, and I was just being practical; what if I hadn't had time to stop it? If I'd left Ulren's lab and the world had ended on my way to the device, or I'd gotten there but they couldn't shut it down? Then nobody would go back, and it would all just be over. What a fucking waste. I'd fixed it, hadn't I? I recalled the horror I'd felt when I saw myself murder Kern and rewind time. If only I had known the grander scale of my atrocities.

But when you had a clear starting point, repairs were easy. My arrival in this world was something I could trace back to, using the Clockmaker's notes from his own device. And here, in this place, using the Loom directly and seeing where threads ended, how trivial would it be to re-start them? The Loom wove, and while the gap remained the pattern warped around it to continue on the other side. It was imperfect, but it was... mostly right. I felt the universe shaking as my already tired mind began to give out, the strain of using the Loom even this little bit - and even with assistance from whatever was propping me up - too much for a mere mortal.

But I couldn't forget my anger. Fate was making me do this, putting me in this situation. It wanted the Loom to go back to Brinkmar, to be part of the cycle again? It could go fuck itself. Here, in this place, fate couldn't touch me - I felt certain of it, somehow. I spun a thread futureward, as far as I could reach until it hit some sort of wall, and tied it to the Loom itself. I wouldn't be a puppet anymore. I wouldn't dance to fate's tune. I was going to take all of its toys and break them, even if that included myself.

I dropped to the ground, back in Storm's Keep, and felt the rush of air into the space where Yesrin's Loom had been a moment ago. The rubble was still there, the ceiling still collapsed, but the blackness had been banished and in its place everything directly destroyed by the void was back - including Katrin and Errod. His sword was in one piece despite the tip still laying there near him, and the Knight who had been bisected was standing over half his own corpse, staring in horror. Everyone in the room seemed disoriented, some even falling over or throwing up, and I took the opportunity to grab my friends and run towards the portal which was, despite not being directly consumed by the void, whole once more - although I noticed some of the chunks of it remained scattered around, extra materials that shouldn't have existed. No repairs were perfect.

We reached the portal just as the soldiers recovered enough to start charging, but they were too late - the gateway flared open, now leading to an empty and decaying hall; the Brinkmar side of the portal hadn't been reconstructed, and this had to be the backup location that had been chosen thousands of years ago. We tumbled through, and with a thought I sealed it behind us as we collapsed. Everything was silent except for the three of us panting on the ground, and then Errod noisily pulled off his stolen helmet and drank a healing potion. I considered saving them, but my whole back was probably a bruise and at least one rib was broken - not to mention other smaller injuries and the whole-body pummeling from Katrin's magical shove. I tossed a potion back while still laying half on Katrin and half on Errod, and felt the alchemical mixture do its work.

Slowly we untangled from each other, and wandered over to the far wall where a cracked window looked out across the once beautiful landscape of Brinkmar, now dead and withered. In the distance, a sea of shining metal caught the sunlight, and columns of smoke drifted up from the scarred hills covered in bodies.

"What... happened back there?" Errod asked, and Katrin wrapped her hand around mine.

"Nothing," I said, "it was nothing. None of it was real."

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