Chapter 2

Outpost 01: Oversight

People from various worlds often likened the Way to a tree, or a branching vine. Suriel had always thought of it more as a network of veins, stretching out in all directions from a central heart. The Way touched everything, bringing order, stability, and protection from the ravages of the void. Only in the shelter of the Way could life and reason exist.

In the center of that heart of the Way, at the nexus of everything that existed, was Oversight.

As she drifted in endless blue, thousands of kilometers away, she could see the entire station: one blue-and-green planet of standard size orbited by no less than sixteen moons. Each of the moons was so close that it almost looked like they skated along the planet's surface, and she could see city lights blanketing every surface over all seventeen spheres.

This was the headquarters of Makiel's First Division: the Hounds.

He had created this system himself, hand-selecting the fragments from the void and binding them together with the force of his will. He had positioned it here, manipulating the Way to enforce natural laws. The inhabitants of Outpost lived as naturally as they would in an Iteration, but with an endless blue sky devoid of sun or stars.

Twelve billion people lived here, and the vast majority of them were not Abidan. They were simply people. They went about their lives, living and dying with no knowledge of the greater cosmos.

These were his ties to Fate. Every sentient being was a tie to the Way, and even here at the heart of it all, Makiel wanted to be closer.

As staggered as she was every time she thought about the vast expenditure of time and personal power that must have gone into the creation of this outpost, it frightened her as much as it impressed her. Every other division of the Abidan was headquartered on Sanctum, so they shared a cultural understanding that facilitated interaction.

Not the Hounds. The First Division was centered here.

They tracked targets forward and backwards in time, reading Fate to find criminals and predict disasters, and their official excuse for their location was a desire to see as clearly as possible.

Suriel had no doubt that was true. From Oversight, a sufficiently talented Hound could glimpse the destiny of every Iteration in existence. It was especially easy to locate those places where one Iteration's fate overlapped another's, and investigate for violations.

But even here, she couldn't sense Cradle.

She touched the Way—so easy here—and simply adjusted her position in space. One blue flash later, she stood on an endless arctic plain, a layer of gray clouds overhead and snow drifting in the wind.

The north pole of Oversight’s main planet. Makiel’s home.

She glanced down at the two hundred meters of snow and ice beneath her: this was Makiel’s front door.

Suriel tapped the Way, flexing her authority as the sixth Judge of the Abidan Court. Blue power flared from her back like wings, and the seal on the door responded.

A symbol shone blue in response: a three-headed dog, one hundred meters in diameter. The symbol of the Hounds.

The ice cracked, sliding apart, snow trickling down in white waterfalls. The ice split beneath her feet, but she stayed floating in the air until it had parted enough for her shoulders. Then she let herself drift downwards.

Into Makiel’s lair.

The room beneath her was huge, hundreds of meters, its tiles marked in a giant circle of runes meant to focus sight. It was lit by a diffuse purple glow, all emanating from violet-edged “screens” that floated in the air at various heights. These were celestial lenses, used by Judges and most high-ranking Abidan for monitoring Iterations from the Way. They displayed images of the future, which looked odd to the naked eye, as though they showed dreams. Actions would have two results, or would rewind and play again on a loop. Numbers flashed with each image: chance of occurrence, temporal deviation, Iteration number, and so on.

The lenses opened like eyes even as others blinked shut. They were rectangles, some as small as a palm and others as big as a barn wall, all angled toward the center of the room. The chamber was packed with them, such that no one could possibly see them all at once.

Unless you were both powerful and very skilled.

Makiel stood in the center, surrounded by eyes. Manifestations of his Presence. His white-gauntleted hands were a blur of motion as he tapped one eye and another, transmitting messages to one sector or another. When he tapped an eye, it flashed blue and disappeared, transferred through the Way to its destination. For every eye that disappeared, a celestial lens vanished.

By her brief count, he was tracking over a thousand threads of Fate at once, over hundreds of different worlds. Any other Judge would have delegated this work, in order to focus their power and attention only where it was needed. Not Makiel. The only busier Judge should be Telariel, the Spider, who coordinated communications for all the Abidan and simultaneously scouted for invasions…but he used his subordinates to cover practically every one of his duties.

No wonder Makiel’s Hounds worshiped him so. He was worth a division all on his own.

The First Judge himself had an unremarkable appearance. He looked like a natural human, as though his genetics had remained the same since birth. Suriel, and every other Abidan she knew, had altered themselves in some way to improve their performance. Rumor said that Makiel never had, and that he worked solely on natural talent, but of course he would never allow a scan to confirm those rumors.

He had dark brown skin, slightly wrinkled like a man in his fifties, and silver at the wings of his black, short hair. He was trim and solidly built, with a square jaw; as a girl, she would have said he looked like a soldier. Only his eyes stood out, blazing a brighter violet than the celestial lenses around him, as he watched Fate.

“Suriel,” he said, and his voice resonated through the room. “Will you verify for the record that Ozriel is dead?”

Her Presence had prepared her for this. Suriel had not told Sector Twenty-one the story of the survivors she’d pulled from Ozriel’s shelter, but Makiel’s mandate included watching the past as well as the future. Her actions would have alerted him, and he would be able to piece together a picture of the truth, even from the ashes of a dead world.

“I cannot,” she responded, finally settling down on the tiled floor. “I am not myself convinced.” She could feel the energy passing through the circle beneath her feet, urging her to gaze into the future.

Makiel’s hands were still a blur, eyes fluttering into existence and then vanishing several times a second. He didn’t seem to be looking at her, but she knew he saw everything. “Yet he was already missing. Why stage his death?”

The First Judge would have considered all the possibilities already. He was asking her for her opinion, so she gave it.

“To encourage us to look for a replacement,” she said. “He has left us in a scenario where we have no choice but to act as though he is dead. He may have thought that we would simply wait for him to return, even as the cosmos crumbled around us.”

[Based on models of Ozriel’s personality, this explanation is sixty-two percent convincing,] her Presence told her. [And only eighteen percent likely to be the sole explanation.]

Makiel’s hands paused for half a second, and she felt a ripple in Fate as possibilities began tumbling like a handful of dice. For her to feel such a working even in the midst of his normal activity meant he had exerted himself. To check something, or to change something? She would have to investigate later.

“It seems your task has ended, Suriel,” he said at last. “That took much less time than I anticipated. Ninety-two out of a hundred projections had you on his trail for decades.”

Her own predictions had suggested as much. “And a twelve percent chance of finding him eventually,” she added. “In those cases, I had a ninety-one percent chance of persuading him to return. How were your odds?”

Makiel gestured, and his Presence stopped manifesting. The arc of eyeballs in front of him vanished, with a single purple eye hovering over his shoulder just as the gray ghost hovered on Suriel’s. The celestial lenses in the room all remained frozen in the air, emitting violet light and flickering with images and scrolling numbers.

His eyes blazed as he faced her, crossing his hands behind his back. “Tell me. What were you doing in Harrow?”

Anger flooded her system, but she flushed it out. He was provoking her, just as Gadrael had when he had sent her to Harrow. On Makiel’s orders.

“Is the Hound’s eye so blind that he can no longer see his own actions?”

“Gadrael was ordered to show you the cost of Ozriel’s absence. You chose to stay and cleanse the world yourself.”

Which he had surely known she would do, but she remained silent. She would not give him excuses.

“It only cost you a handful of standard months, but those were months in which you were not seeking Ozriel. That you stumbled on evidence of him was due to his foresight, not your own success as a hunter. And where were you before that?”

It was dangerous, here in the heart of Makiel’s power, but she couldn’t let him play her like a puppet. She activated her eyes and scanned Fate.

Immediately, she saw where he was headed with this line of questioning. He hadn’t bothered to hide it. Her stomach twisted, and her anger gained greater heat before she choked it off.

“You were in Cradle,” he continued, overlooking her glimpse into the future. “Where you knew you would not find Ozriel, because he could not hide there. He would have a better chance of hiding in Sanctum itself than in Cradle, but you knew you had a plausible excuse for checking his home world.”

“I want to restore the Abidan,” she said, her power crackling blue in the air between them. “You have been tearing the wound deeper for centuries.”

She was trying to distract him, to pull him away from his plan, but he remained doggedly focused. “You went to Cradle for a breath of fresh air, to consider your options, to decide if you wanted to hunt Ozriel at all. Convenient, then, that your search has ended before you ever started looking for him.”

He would go on for another minute if she didn’t stop him. He would say that she had been manipulated by the Reaper, and allowed him his freedom. That if Ozriel was still on their side, he would have told Suriel before his departure. She was his closest friend on the Court, after all. There was no need to hide it from her, and then place an elaborate distraction to keep her from looking for him.

He was controlling her. Looking down on her. Exploiting her sympathy.

That was the Hound’s objective. Since she couldn’t deflect him, she cut straight to it. “If he didn’t want me looking for him, there were easier ways to stop me.”

“He knew you could find him,” Makiel said. “Your odds of finding him must have been much higher without this plan. Since I didn’t know about his fake death scene, I couldn’t factor it into my projections. He blinded me, and he kept you sidetracked.”

“Then he succeeded. I’m returning to my division.” She tapped into the Way, preparing to depart directly. Leaving this way was disrespectful, but she was beyond caring. She always left Makiel irritated if not disgusted. He had only summoned her here to produce the results he wanted, and then he had the nerve to accuse someone else of manipulation.

The worst part was, he was probably right. Ozriel could have warned her about his departure, but he hadn’t. He had moved her like a pawn to be manipulated.

She would feel better if he really were dead.

“The quarantine,” Makiel said, before she left. “I would like your vote.”

“Ozriel said he left a total of sixteen shelters,” she said, light tearing into a blue-edged portal overlooking Iteration 001: Sanctum. “Evacuate the other fifteen, prepare those worlds for corruption, and you have my vote.”

“Already done.” When she turned back to the portal, he continued. “Now, let’s talk about the changes you made to Cradle.”

Behind her, all the screens vanished except one, which swelled to take up the whole wall.

It showed Wei Shi Lindon. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with short black hair and his expression locked in a glower. He looked sullen even when he was fast asleep, and she knew his face alone had provoked more than one fight.

That face was even more unpleasant now.

His eyes were solid black but for the irises, which were solid red. They shone as black fire gathered within his hands. He was practicing a new Path.

[The Path of Black Flame,] her Presence supplied. [Its sacred artists imitate the power of a tribe of black dragons.]

Suriel didn’t care about those details at the moment. Why had Makiel shown her this?

She turned, allowing her portal to close.

Makiel fully faced the image on the lens, his hands still behind his back, looking away from her. “What changes did you make in this young man’s life?” he asked.

She told the truth, as it would not matter. The Eledari Pact only prevented Abidan from changing the destiny of a healthy Iteration. Saving one young man’s life wouldn’t have altered anything. “He was caught in a spatial violation, which I reverted. After conversing with him, I determined that he was fated to die in a disaster, and I set him on a course to prevent it.”

“You stayed within the bounds of the Pact,” Makiel agreed. “But someone else did not.”

Cradle’s deviation. It hadn’t been her interference after all. But who…

The answer came to her before she even finished answering the question.

“Ozriel left something behind, it seems,” Makiel went on. “For his descendants.”

The picture changed to show a man in his early thirties, handsome and smiling, with blond hair trailing behind him. He wore a silk robe of fine blue, and he looked down fondly on someone: Yerin, the girl that Suriel had told Lindon to seek. She scowled at a pale white sword as she knelt on the ground, invisible blades cutting at the dirt around her and nicking the edges of her robes. Two silver blades hung on thin arms over her shoulders: Goldsigns.

The man was training her. Eithan Arelius, an Underlord in the Arelius family.

A touch of anger entered Makiel’s voice. “Ozriel’s bloodline, from before he was Ozriel. He worked against us before he ever gained his Mantle.”

Now it was starting to come together in Suriel’s mind. Some artifact of Ozriel’s had been recently found by one of his descendants, altering that man’s destiny. Then Suriel’s actions had changed Lindon’s direction.

And the two had collided.

On their own, neither of those changes had been significant. Together, they would be exponentially more dangerous. And more difficult to predict.

“Their actions would have affected all of Cradle,” the Hound said. “They would work for decades, changing the Iteration, and eventually derailing it entirely. I cannot see any further than thirty years in Cradle’s future.”

That was chilling. Either it meant that Cradle would be destroyed so soon, or it would have changed so drastically that its relationship to Fate shifted. Either way, they couldn’t jeopardize their Cradle. It produced an Abidan candidate every century or so: far more than any other Iteration.

“I will resolve this,” Suriel said heavily.

“This is a violation of Fate. It is the mandate of Makiel.” He shifted his gaze to her. “However, I will act with a gentle hand. I intend to accelerate events so that they cannot stay within the confines of the world for so long. The faster they are gone, the lesser the damage.”

“You have a solution?”

“I believe I do. If I am successful, their world itself will eventually force them to leave, and will not tolerate their staying and making alterations. However, this does increase the personal risk to both subjects.”

The odds were already stacked against Lindon, but the alternative was manipulating his memory and sending him home. This was a peace offering from Makiel to her, fixing the problem she had helped create while keeping her favored mortal intact. All the while demonstrating the damage that Ozriel’s meddling could cause.

She appreciated the gesture. Perhaps Makiel was willing to work together for unity after all.

Suriel nodded, and the Hound reached up to his Presence.

***

Jai Daishou stood before a stone door, weighing his life in his mind.

The door was marked with a familiar symbol, one that had remained embedded in his memory for decades. It was etched with four beasts: on the top, a coiling dragon surrounded by rain and crackling with lightning. On the bottom, a phoenix with feathers like drops of blood. To the right, an armored warrior with the shell of a turtle and a sword so rough it was almost a club. To the left, a tiger seated on treasure and crowned with light.

This was more than just a decoration. It was a warning.

By his oath to the Empire, he should not open this door. It was located inside Jai clan territory, beneath a lake and past miles of underground tunnel. This was the deepest into the labyrinth he—or anyone else—had ever dared to delve since the demise of the old Blackflame Empire.

Behind him, in the shallow chambers, had once been a series of Gold-stage weapons and devices left by ancient Soulsmiths. His clan had plundered that chamber decades ago.

But here...past this door were weapons for Lords. Ancient records described a few of their number, and with any one of them, he could shoot to the top of the Underlord rankings. With some, he could declare himself Emperor.

Of course, opening this door was punishable by the death of one's entire clan. Part of his mandate as Patriarch of the Jai clan was to prevent anyone from entering.

It was forbidden not because of the power of its contents, but because of their danger. When this door had been opened before, it had called disaster down on the entire continent.

But then, it had remained open for years. Now, he would be in and out in a flash. No one would ever know.

The Dreadgods wouldn't be watching so closely.

He had even consulted some oracles, who confirmed that there was no hint of the Dreadgods in their dreams. At least not for several decades.

That was good enough for him. But still he hesitated.

Every day of his life, he had been taught to serve his clan so that his clan could serve the Empire. In his earlier rage against Eithan Arelius, he had been willing to risk this, but now that he faced it...was he really willing to put everything at risk?

He thought of his clan, doomed to slide into obscurity without him to lead them. If he opened this door and was detected, they would be executed by either the Dreadgods or the Empire. No matter how good his odds, was he really willing to roll the dice with his family's lives?

But what kind of lives would they be, without an Underlord at their helm? They would not enjoy the respect, the standard of living to which they had become accustomed. They would have to live like paupers.

Dithering over a decision for so long wasn't like him. He was a man of action.

And he couldn't wait to see the smile torn from Eithan Arelius' face.

With a ward key in each hand, he pressed them against the script-circles to the sides of the door. He had to pour most of his madra into the circles before they activated—far more than he anticipated, enough that the loss of power left him gasping for air—and those didn't even open the door. They caused a pedestal to rise from the floor, set with yet another circle of script.

On his fingertips, he ignited soulfire. The gray, almost colorless flame danced for a moment before being sucked into the script.

It drew more, enough that he was glad he had woven extra soulfire before coming. When it had finished devouring a stream of dull fire, it flickered once and then slid back down into the ground.

This time, the door swung silently open.

Power washed out, flooding him with awe. He glanced at the aura, which seemed both shining white and utter black at the same time, as though he couldn't see through the doorway because it was both too bright and too dark. Either way, the aura blinded his spiritual sight, and he had to close down that sense as he stepped inside the ancient storehouse.

He couldn't shut the door behind him while he was inside, or he'd be sealed within to die alone, so he had to be quick.

It had taken them years to notice before, so he could probably take his time, but he thought he might as well minimize his risk.

The room was a hallway, set on either side with walls of polished wooden cabinets from floor to the ceiling, fifteen feet above his head. That hallway continued as far as he could see...and as an Underlord, he could see quite far indeed.

For a moment, he felt as though he'd stumbled onto a dragon's hoard. He was shocked by the sheer value of what was presented before him, overwhelmed by the weight of wealth.

He wanted it all.

He was surprised at his own greed, but his hands trembling as he reached to open the first cabinet. The bottom row of cubbies was the largest, big enough to contain a large dog, but each row got progressively smaller up to the top, far above his head. Those were only the size of his fist.

If each of these cabinets, down this endless hallway, contained precious treasures of the ancients...there might be millions of weapons down here. He might have enough to buy the entire Empire.

Or to destroy it.

The cabinet was smooth to the touch, and he seized the wooden handle and pulled it open.

It was empty.

So was its neighbor, and the eighteen others he checked in an instant. He was sweating by this point, his gut heavy with disappointment. Where had all his wealth gone?

He shook himself. He wasn't worried about riches, but about the fate of his family.

He had to tell himself that very firmly.

Ten more empty cabinets went by before he found something: a ring of pure white, scripted inside and out, set with a single black gemstone. He had no records of this, so he swept his spirit through it.

He couldn't sense anything. It would be an Overlord weapon, then, or perhaps even one for Archlords.

Reluctantly, he set it back and shut the door. He left all the empty ones open.

He moved to the next cabinet feeling like an idiot. Why couldn't he take the ring? Surely he should stuff his pockets.

He knew why: because everything he took was another chance to get caught, and he could only carry one object at a time in his soulspace. He had to find a weapon he recognized if he wanted to kill Eithan Arelius. Anything else would only weigh him down.

Ten more minutes passed before he found something that initially excited him: a duplicate of the Ancestor's Spear.

Until he realized it was cracked in the middle. The scripts around the edges of the cabinet were preserving it, keeping it from dissolving, but he would need a Soulsmith to repair it. Which may or may not succeed.

He tucked the two halves of the spear away; it wouldn’t be enough on its own, but at least he wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

Finally, when he was almost ready to give up, he pulled open a cabinet the size of his head. The object inside was so unremarkable at first glance that it wouldn't have grabbed his attention anywhere else. Only that it was here, important enough to seal up, drew his focus.

It was a crystal ball slightly bigger than a hand, filled with a dim, diffuse light. The light swirled like smoke, as though something invisible swam within.

He touched it with his spirit, and felt an endless will to devour that almost consumed him. He wanted to tear through every cabinet, cramming his pockets full. So what if he died in here? He would die the richest man in the world. The will of an Underlord was not so easily swayed, and he resisted.

But he recognized this device from the records. It was perfect.

He focused his power onto it, then took in a deep breath. As though he had inhaled it, the stone vanished and reappeared inside his spirit.

Inside him, above his core and behind the cage of his tangled madra channels, a crystal ball floated. It seemed to orbit his soulfire, as though the two attracted one another but could draw no closer.

His soulspace was full, and he may have even obtained a replacement for the Ancestor’s Spear. This may have been the most profitable day of his life; it was cause for celebration.

No matter how much he might be leaving behind.

Feeling as though he were leaving behind his own limbs, he left the chamber and sealed it once again behind him. The satisfaction of success carried him away, and allowed him to break the hold of whatever feelings had swallowed him back in the storehouse.

Armed with this Archstone, he couldn't lose.

***

Information requested: Makiel’s influence on Cradle

Beginning report…

The Jai Patriarch exits the labyrinth proud of his prize. The facility's unique aura shone like a beacon for the duration of his visit: twenty-six minutes.

In ninety-nine out of a hundred projections, this aura goes unnoticed. Jai Daishou returns from his trip safely. There is only a negligible chance that a Dreadgod will notice this aura, which calls to them like the scent of meat to a predator, and choose to investigate. His gamble has paid off.

Influence detected: designation zero-zero-one, Makiel.

Makiel's influence confirmed. Recalculating...

The possibility of a Dreadgod noticing increases in likelihood as the probability shifts. The will of the Hound bends Fate, twisting chance.

Currently, there is only one Dreadgod within range: the Bleeding Phoenix. Hundreds of miles to the south, it rests beneath a city of tattered cloth. Its servants, the Redmoon Hall, attend to its feeding as it sleeps.

During the first twenty-five minutes, the Dreadgod tosses and turns, sending shivers through the members of Redmoon Hall. They sense their master's needs through the parasites embedded in their bodies, and they seek the cause of its distress.

On the twenty-sixth minute, as the aura fades, the Bleeding Phoenix regains a fraction of its consciousness. It catches the scent of power it has almost forgotten, power long lost. It calls to a memory buried deep in the creature's awareness.

For the first time in centuries, its bloody feathers stir.

The members of Redmoon Hall, from Jade to Herald, fall to their knees in supplication. Their master has spoken to them through its Blood Shadows, preparing them.

They must head north and pave the way.

Suggested topic: Yerin, reluctant host of a sealed Blood Shadow. Continue?

Topic accepted, continuing report...

Yerin is seeking the voice of the Sword Sage as she cycles. She has uncovered four of his memories since achieving Highgold, and combs over them every day for fragments of his wisdom. The remaining memories in his Remnants will help polish her techniques, if not advance her to Truegold.

At the moment the Bleeding Phoenix contacts its subordinates, she feels a sudden restlessness, an urge to rise to her feet and destroy everything around her. The call seems to be pushing her north.

She shifts in her meditation, uncomfortable, but she knows where this compulsion comes from.

An idle hand moves behind her, to feel the knot tied in her Blood Shadow, which she wears as a belt. Her fingertips pass through it as though through a liquid, though nothing remains on her skin.

The thought is pushed aside, a momentary distraction, and she returns to her training.

Report complete.