Fallen

chapter 11

Silence.

Slowly and painfully, I rolled onto my side. I was lying in the entrance room to the bubble realm, and I was alone. There was no sign of where the gate had been. My upper back and right shoulder blade were throbbing as if they’d been seared, there was a sharp pain around my lower back just next to my spine, and there was something wet above my right hand.

The right hand scared me the most. I looked down.

The bandages on the hand had been scorched off. Beneath, the skin was red, and two bloody holes gaped, one in the middle of the palm and one just above the wrist. Gunshot wounds; the bullets had gone through and through. I could see white bone and had the nauseating feeling that if I tried poking a finger, it would come out the other side.

Twisting my head, I could see that the armour over my right shoulder blade had been partially melted. My armour had saved me, diffusing the heat across my back. From looking into the futures where I stripped, I could see that the skin was scorched, but no more. Finally I reached around with my left hand to my back, afraid that my fingers would find a hole in the armour and the skin beneath, and instead found a bullet embedded in the mesh. There was blood, but the skin was unbroken. It must have been one of the shots that had gone through my hand. I was lucky that it had: if it hadn’t lost so much energy, it would have penetrated . . .

Had it been luck? I vaguely remembered my right arm twisting to shield me as I dived. I hadn’t done it consciously. Maybe it had been a reflex. Or maybe my armour had moved on its own.

“Thank you,” I said quietly, and felt the armour pulse. It was damaged, badly damaged. Imbued items aren’t just things, and they can be hurt or killed. The armour couldn’t have much strength left.

I already knew that I wasn’t being pursued, so I went through my pockets. My stock was running low: I had my gate stones and not much else. I’d lost the stun focus back in the storeroom. One of the few items I had left was a jar of healing salve, and I unscrewed it one-handed and applied it. It didn’t do much—the item had never been designed to treat such severe wounds.

“Guess I should look on the bright side,” I said to no one in particular. “I couldn’t use that hand anyway.” Blood was seeping from the wounds, and for the first time I was glad for the loss of those nerves. If they hadn’t been numb, I’d have been in agony.

I did what I could to bind the wounds, using what was left of the bandages and strips of my clothing. The bindings started to soak through immediately, and I remembered what Klara had told me about my hand not healing. Until I got proper treatment, I was going to keep losing blood.

Better not hang around, then.

I got to my feet and looked down at the red cube. Its glow had died and now it sat silent on the floor, sparks glinting in its depths. “I’m having a rematch with Abithriax,” I told it. “You coming?”

The cube watched me.

I stooped and picked it up, then started walking.

The interior of the bubble realm hadn’t changed much from the last time I’d seen it. Off-white walls and rounded corners gave the rooms a muted, soft feel, and patches of light shone from the ceiling. The silence was total. My muffled footsteps felt like the only trace of life in an empty world.

As I walked, I reached out through the dreamstone. Luna.

Alex! Luna answered instantly. Oh, thank God.

You doing okay?

I should be asking you that. Luna’s thoughts were clear, with no trace of pain this time. You sound hurt.

Had a little trouble getting through the gate. I heard a faint splat; glancing down, I saw that drips were falling from my right hand. I lifted it to slow the bleeding. But I’m inside and they’re not. What about you guys?

Starbreeze dropped us off when Vari wouldn’t stop shouting, then she did a runner. I don’t think she’s coming back.

No, running away’s pretty much her standard reaction when she’s upset. How far away are you?

Miles. Vari thinks he can gate us back pretty close to the mansion.

A sealed door blocked my path. I searched the futures and saw that there were controls hidden behind a wall panel; I pulled it off awkwardly with my left hand and got to work. No point, I told Luna. The whole place’ll be on alert by now. Probably they’ve found the passage we used to get in. If you guys try to break in again, it’ll be a bloodbath.

Then what are you going to do? Luna asked. If Vari’s right, then as soon as you leave, you’re getting dropped right back in that storeroom. They’ll all be waiting.

I could camp out in here and wait for them to get bored.

You think that’ll work?

I found the trigger for the door and channelled a flow of magic. The door opened about a quarter of the way, then grated to a stop. Not really.

The controls weren’t responding, but the gap was big enough for me to fit, and I squeezed through into a corridor going left and right. So what are you going to do? Luna asked. Fight your way through one-handed?

Suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Looking through the futures, I couldn’t recognise any of the paths ahead. Apparently the cube had dropped me into a different part of the bubble realm from last time. I picked a direction at random and kept going. Luna was silent for a moment, and I had the feeling that she was talking. Okay, she said at last. What if we attack at the same time that you’re coming out? We pull some of them away from the storeroom and you’ll have a better chance.

Yeah, they’re not going to fall for that. Onyx and Pyre will send a few guys to keep you busy while they stay by the statue. Only way you’re going to pull them off is to fight your way right into the mansion.

We could.

And if you do, you’ll be too deep to disengage. Chances are whoever’s at the front will get killed.

If we don’t, you’ll get killed.

I’m not letting you guys do a suicide run against Onyx and Pyre, I said. Look, if I can get the fateweaver, it’ll open up options. Maybe I can figure out a way to bypass the sink effect. Either way, I’m pretty sure I’ve got better chances of getting away solo than the three of you have with a frontal attack.

Right, Luna said. She didn’t sound happy. Because using the fateweaver to fight Onyx worked so well last time.

Hey, I’ve got out of worse situations than this.

Name one.

Uh . . . I said. Got to go. I’ll be in touch.

I kept on walking, following the curving corridors. The only sounds were the echo of my footsteps and the occasional drip of blood. I wondered if Abithriax was watching me now, and how I’d look if he was. He’d see a mage in battered and burned armour, right hand ruined, left hand holding the cube that was the key to his prison. What would he be feeling as he looked at me? Curiosity? Contempt?

“So I’ve always wondered,” I asked the cube. “Why did you choose Luna anyway?”

The cube didn’t answer.

“I mean, you obviously picked her out. I knew that as soon as she told me the story about how she ‘found’ you. I was just never sure as to why.”

The corridor ended in a door. I set the cube down on the floor and took out my tools. “I suppose you could have just bonded with the first girl to pick you up,” I said over my shoulder as I started working on the door. This one was more complicated, needing a password as well as a specific magical signal. “But I never got the feeling that that was what you were doing. You always struck me as the kind of imbued item that has a purpose. So what was it? What were you created for?”

The locking mechanism gave way. I put my tools back in my pocket, picked up the cube, and put a hand to the door. It slid open with a hiss.

The room within was a death trap. Mirrors covered the walls, floor, and ceiling, even the backs of the doors, all tilted at slight angles. A tiny panel at the far corner held three projectors, aimed so that the energy beams they sent out would reflect over and over throughout the room in a deadly lattice able to cut flesh and armour to ribbons.

Or at least that was what they would have done if they’d been active. The projector at the back of the room was inert, and without it, the room was just a lot of mirrors. A glance through the futures confirmed that it wasn’t going to activate. I walked in and took a closer look. The mechanism hadn’t been sabotaged or deactivated that I could see: it had just failed.

Now that I thought about it, a lot of the systems in the bubble realm seemed to be failing. I’d been passing flickering and dimmed lights, and that door that had jammed hadn’t been the only one. Maybe the entire place was finally falling apart. It had lasted for over a thousand years undisturbed, but that had been before Luna and I had broken its seals six years ago. Bubble realms aren’t all that stable.

“Maybe it’s because of us,” I said to myself as I opened the door and kept going. “When we opened this place back then, we must have disturbed a lot of stuff. And no one’s been doing maintenance.” I looked down at the cube. “Was that why you showed up? Because the Council had found the statue, and you knew that sooner or later they’d force a way in?”

The cube sat silently.

“Doesn’t explain why you’d pick Luna though. I mean, if you wanted the place opened, a Council mage would have made more sense. But then, if you just wanted it opened, you could have done that a long time ago. So what do you want? I guess maybe you want to keep Abithriax sealed, but at the rate it’s going, the prison might not last much longer . . .”

No answer.

“You know, I kind of feel like I’m doing all the work in this conversation.”

I kept working my way through the bubble realm. Not all the traps were inactive, but I had my divination and my memories, and unlike last time, I didn’t have a bunch of people chasing me. My hand kept bleeding. The bandages were soaked through, and I was starting to wonder if I should be worrying about blood loss.

And then, all of a sudden, I was there. The corridor opened up into a huge circular room, columns around the edge rising up into darkness. The lights set densely around the wall should have illuminated the room brightly, but only a handful still glowed, leaving deep, uneven shadows. At the centre of the room was a dais, and on the dais was a pedestal, a barrier of force shielding a small object within.

Time to end this. I checked to see that my route to the pedestal was clear, and stepped out.

At least, I’d meant to step out. Instead, I hesitated. Nothing was stopping me. I knew that I was perfectly safe, at least until I opened that barrier . . .

And that was the problem. As soon as I did, I was going to stop being safe.

Come on, I told myself. After everything else that’s happened the last few days, this should be easy. If you can make it through Richard’s shadow realm . . .

Except that in Richard’s shadow realm, I hadn’t been the one making the decisions. I’d just reacted to what had happened. Same with what had come afterwards. Even the raid we’d just done, in a way. Sure, I’d planned it, but the big choice had been made for me.

If I took up the fateweaver, I wouldn’t be able to react anymore. I was going to change, and I didn’t know how much of my old self would be left.

It’s not as though you have much choice.

But wasn’t that how I’d ended up like this? I’d adapted and reacted, telling myself that I was doing what I had to. And in doing so, I’d let Richard and the Council set the prevailing wind. Now that wind had blown me to the edge of a cliff.

I did have a choice. I’d always had a choice. Richard had been trying to teach me that, in a way. It was just that accepting that lesson would have meant giving up things I cared about. Now it looked as though I was going to have to give them up anyway. If I wanted to save Anne, I would have to change.

In the old days, when I was struggling with something like this, I’d have gone to Arachne. I’d have asked her what to do, looked for reassurance. But Arachne was gone, and who could I go to instead? Luna? Even if she was willing, it wouldn’t work. Sitting back and letting other people make decisions for me was how I’d gotten into this mess in the first place. This had to be my decision.

Maybe I’d been so passive for so long because, deep down, I’d been afraid of what might happen if I stopped. I’d relied on the judgement of Arachne and my friends because I hadn’t really trusted my own. There’s a ruthless streak inside me, something cold and lethal that Richard had recognized from the very beginning. When I’d rejected Richard, I’d rejected that part of myself as well. Except that by doing that, I’d also turned my back on the part of myself that was most decisive, most willing to commit to a choice and accept the consequences. In a way I’d made the same mistake as Anne, burying my dark side in the hope that it’d go away.

But it hadn’t gone away, and to be honest, I’d never really tried to make it go away. Again and again, when my back was to the wall and I was in real danger, I’d fallen back on that part of myself to stay alive. And so it had always been there, a quiet voice at the back of my mind. Vari had said that I was too passive, that I always let my enemies take the first shot, and he’d been right, but he hadn’t understood that the biggest reason I did that was because I was resisting that little voice reminding me how much easier it would be to just kill them instead.

I couldn’t afford to be passive anymore. For a long time, I’d been pretending to be something I wasn’t. It had been a holiday, and now my time was up.

I remembered Hermes. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go do something.

I gave a half smile. “Well,” I said aloud. “It was good while it lasted.” And I walked out.

The room had been left almost exactly as I remembered it. I could see the place where Griff had moulded the stone into chains to bind Luna, see the patch on the floor where Onyx, Rachel, and Cinder had killed him. If I looked closely, I thought I could even make out a faint stain on the floor. Now that I was closer, I could see the fateweaver, half obscured by the barrier, a simple wand of ivory. There were three receptacles on the edge of the pedestal, each the size and shape of the cube. I reached out towards the leftmost one—

I felt menace from the cube, clear and threatening.

I stopped dead. All of a sudden, the futures had stopped being safe. “You don’t want me to open it?” I asked, being very careful not to move.

The cube didn’t exactly answer, but the sensations changed, becoming demanding and insistent.

I thought for a second. I knew Abithriax was watching and I didn’t want to speak out loud. Reaching out with the dreamstone, I touched the cube delicately, its thoughts slick and hard, like wet glass. I projected a clear image of what I was intending to do.

The cube seemed to consider a moment, then its resistance ceased. I dropped it into the receptacle. The barrier pulsed and vanished.

I started to reach for the fateweaver, then paused. I could feel my armour around me, wounded and bleeding. It had carried me this far, but it wouldn’t survive where I was going. Slowly and painfully, I stripped it off, blood leaking onto the mesh from my useless right hand. When I was done, I folded up my armour and laid it on the dais. “I’ll try to get you out safe,” I told it.

The armour stirred under my hand. I straightened, took a deep breath, and picked up the fateweaver. “Hey, Abithriax,” I said to the air. “I’m back.”

A voice spoke from behind me. “So I see.”

I turned. A man was standing there, his hands clasped behind his back. He had white hair and a white beard, thinly streaked with red, and wore the crimson robes of a member of the Old Council. He looked exactly the same as when I’d last seen him, but then he’d been dead for over two thousand years. Or at least his body had.

“I want the fateweaver,” I told Abithriax.

“You act as though you expect me to be surprised,” Abithriax said. “Everyone who comes here wants the fateweaver. Do you have any concept of just how many mages have come before you? Of how many have stood where you stand right now?”

“Not really.”

“No,” Abithriax said. “You have no idea at all. So very many. Begging and demanding, confident and fearful, brave and cowardly, all find their way here. All wanting the same thing, all thinking themselves clever enough to hide the desire burning inside. All ending the same way.”

“I imagine you haven’t had too many come twice.”

“And you think that makes you special?” Abithriax looked at me with contempt. “I was a master mage for more than two thousand years before you tried your first fumbling spell. You are a child.”

“I suppose to you, I am,” I said. “So are you going to try to possess me again?”

“Why should I bother?” Abithriax asked. “You shield your thoughts, but your body tells me all I need to know. Your own power is insufficient to win your battles, so you come here, expecting to make use of mine. I have no need of a weak bearer.”

“Liar,” I said. “You aren’t doing it because you can’t.”

“You think those mental defences you are so proud of could withstand me at my full strength?” Abithriax said. “I could break your mind like a twig. I choose not to. Be grateful for that, and go live the brief remainder of your life in whatever manner seems best to you.” Abithriax vanished, leaving me alone.

Or not quite alone. I could feel his presence from within the fateweaver, locking me out of the item. I didn’t know whether Abithriax really could possess me if I didn’t invite him in, but he was right about the gap in our abilities. I had no way to take the fight to him.

At least, not here.

I reached out to the dreamstone in my pocket, and channelled. I’d practised this over and over again with my divination, and now that I did it for real, the spell was quick and easy. Even though I’d known in advance, it was a surprise how little power it took. You’d think something like this would be harder.

A translucent oval appeared in midair, hovering in front of me. It could have been an ordinary transport gate, except for two things. First, it seemed to lead into the same room I was standing in already. Second, there was a transparent barrier across the gateway, visible to magesight as a faint shimmer. It would give to pressure, but air didn’t flow in or out.

I stepped through the gateway, the fateweaver in my hand, and let it close behind me. “Abithriax,” I said again.

The fateweaver didn’t respond.

He’s not even paying attention. Well, that’d change soon enough. The pedestal was still there, empty in this reflection. I set the fateweaver down on it, then stepped back and waited.

Seconds passed. I bounced up and down on my toes, full of energy. I didn’t feel as though I was dreaming at all: I felt more awake than I’d ever been. My vision was clearer, and vitality surged through me. I could get used to this.

Focusing on the fateweaver, I saw tiny wisps trailing upwards from it, like evaporating light. I glanced down to see that the same wisps were trailing from my clothing and the wrappings around my hand. I wondered how long I’d have.

Abithriax rematerialised, blinking into existence in front of the fateweaver. He looked around, frowning. The room wasn’t shadowed anymore, but clearly lit in grey and blue. “What are you doing?”

“Let’s try this again,” I said. “I want the fateweaver.”

“Travelling to some shadow realm will not change my answer.”

“But this isn’t a shadow realm,” I said. “This is Elsewhere.”

Abithriax went still.

I nodded down at the fateweaver. “See those trails? How long do you think it’ll last?”

“So this is your plan.” Abithriax studied me. “The fateweaver will last longer than you will.”

“Possibly,” I said. “I imagine it’ll depend on our relative strengths of self. You’re probably stronger as far as that goes, but then, the fateweaver isn’t your natural body. I expect that’ll work against you. As to who’ll give out first?” I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Want to find out?”

“Hm,” Abithriax said. “You surprise me.”

“First time you’ve been in Elsewhere?”

“Please,” Abithriax said. “I’ll admit your Council has made some advances, but in pure magical theory, you have a long way to go. No, my surprise is to do with you. I remember sifting through your memories quite clearly, and you were a type I’d seen many times. Trying so hard to prove that you weren’t a Dark mage. Yet now you come here willing to throw away your life and mine, just to take what you want. A Light mage would never do something so destructive.”

“I’m done pretending to be Light.”

“So I see,” Abithriax said. He looked at me a moment longer, then shrugged. “Very well.”

“Very well?”

“I concede the conflict,” Abithriax said. “As you have correctly surmised, I value my life more highly than you do yours, and I am unwilling to take the risks of a direct confrontation in Elsewhere. My powers are at your disposal.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to work.”

Abithriax frowned at me. “What?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’d love to be able to take advantage of your abilities. There are a couple of problems I’m going to be dealing with quite soon that a mind mage would help with enormously. Unfortunately, I can’t trust you.”

“It appears you do not have a choice.”

“You aren’t listening,” I said. “I told you. I want the fateweaver.”

“I am the fateweaver.”

“No, you’re bonded to it. I’m going to do the same.”

“I have no interest in sharing it with you.”

I tilted my head. “Sharing?”

Abithriax’s face darkened.

“I don’t know how many people you’ve possessed and thrown away over the years,” I said. “Right now, I don’t really care. But I’m pretty sure you’ve had this coming for a long time.”

Abithriax struck. A wave of mental pressure crashed against my mind, trying to roll over my thoughts. It was similar to how it had been with Crystal, but Abithriax was better. Faster, stronger. A true master.

But this time I could fight back. I met Abithriax’s attack with a wall of pure will and threw him away. Abithriax rallied, redoubled his efforts, and I held him off. It was a strain, but I could do it. He wasn’t breaking through.

Surprise flashed across Abithriax’s face, followed by concentration. The two of us stood ten feet apart, eyes locked. Abithriax tried to worm his way through my defences, and failed. I could sense what he was doing, and I started to press him back.

Then Abithriax disengaged and struck with some attack I’d never seen before, sharp-edged like a blade. My defences shattered and Abithriax’s will poured in. Panic rang like a gong as I sensed him starting to take control: with a surge I threw him out, rebuilding my defences higher and stronger.

My body was feeling odd, insubstantial. I glanced down and felt a chill. The trails of light coming up from my clothes and hand had multiplied, and threads of my coat were flaring and wisping away into nothingness. Whatever Abithriax had done, it had damaged my ability to hold together in Elsewhere. I hadn’t even known that was possible.

“You should not have come back,” Abithriax said.

I struck again, my will pressing in on Abithriax, and I copied what he’d done to me, bearing down on him from all directions. I saw strain flicker on his face as he fought back, but he was losing ground. I pushed against his defences, trying to seize control of his thoughts—

—it didn’t work. It was like trying to grab onto slippery ice. They slid away and Abithriax used the opportunity to push me out of his mind. We were even again.

Without looking down, I could sense my clothes disintegrating. My body would be next: already the nails on my right hand were being eaten away. It didn’t hurt—it felt as though I was becoming lighter, on the verge of flying. I’d probably keep feeling that way right until I evaporated.

This wasn’t working. I needed to do something different.

Abithriax launched another attack. I fended him off, thinking fast. Abithriax was standing close. The last time we’d fought, I’d gone for his body . . . or what had looked like his body. But it hadn’t done anything, not really. The man standing before me was only a projection. The real Abithriax was inside the fateweaver.

Abithriax tried the same trick again, withdrawing and then striking with a knife-edged blade of mental energy. This time I was ready and met it with a surge of my own, blocking it. It was painful but not lethal, and I realised that it was meant as a way to break down my defences. Abithriax was a mind mage, and that was how he was thinking. Victory by domination.

I wasn’t going to beat him at his own game. I needed to fight like a Dark mage.

I forced Abithriax back, but this time, instead of launching the same attack, I focused on him, straining to see. My senses felt impossibly sharp, and on some level that my magesight couldn’t usually reach, I became aware of another layer underpinning what my eyes were showing. Abithriax’s form was hollow, half real, but within the fateweaver there was something else. The fateweaver was a tightly woven mass of white, and wrapped around it was a spiderweb of green light, something alive that pulsed and thought.

Experimentally, I pulled at it. Green strands stretched, tearing.

Abithriax screamed. A shock wave of mental energy lashed out, shattering my attack and my shield. I felt Elsewhere flow in, engulfing me, and frantically I threw up my defences. After only a second I managed to stabilise, but this time I’d been hurt badly. Half of my clothes had been dissolved, along with all my remaining items; only the dreamstone was left, and the lethal wisps of light were starting to rise from my skin. The fingers on my right hand were gone and the palm was being eaten away.

But Abithriax was hurt too. He was staggering as if drunk, and the wisps of light rising from the fateweaver had multiplied. Glaring at me balefully, he attacked again, but I’d taken his measure now and I knew that here in Elsewhere, my will was a match for his. I met his domination attempt and forced it back.

Seconds ticked by. I could feel sweat on my brow, dissolving as soon as it beaded. Abithriax stared as if trying to bore a hole in me with his eyes. Both of us were past subtlety: it was will against will, each of us trying to overwhelm the other. I strained with everything I had, trying to break through to Abithriax’s core.

And Abithriax began to give way. It was slow, very slow, but I could sense him losing ground. Instead of attacking, he was being forced to defend. I kept pressing and felt Abithriax slipping, bit by bit. I saw a flash of fear in his eyes: he redoubled his efforts but all it did was slow me down.

My right hand dissolved into nothingness. With its connection to my body severed, it hadn’t been able to survive the corrosion. I felt its loss distantly, set it aside, kept going. Abithriax’s defence was feeling frantic now. “Wait,” his projection said.

I looked Abithriax in the eyes and kept going.

“Wait,” Abithriax said again. Again I could sense that image: a green web wrapped around the fateweaver’s white. Abithriax’s defences were an invisible barrier, but I was pressing inwards and he didn’t have much more ground to lose. In only a few more seconds I’d break through.

In desperation, Abithriax tried the same trick he’d used before, recoiling to lash out, but I’d been anticipating it and was ready. As his defences fell back I surged in, and for an instant I could reach that green web.

An instant was all I needed. One moment Abithriax was gathering his strength; the next his mind was ripped to pieces. His projection convulsed and disappeared, the green web fraying and coming apart. I tore the fragments from the fateweaver and scattered them.

The patches of green light drifted, dimmed, faded.

Abithriax was gone.

I staggered, catching myself. Light was rising up from my body; my vision was whiter than it should have been and I knew I didn’t have much time. The wisps of light coming from the fateweaver had multiplied, and they were intensifying as I watched. The ends of the wand were glowing white, starting to dissolve. Reaching out with the dreamstone, I could sense the fateweaver’s presence. It was hurt, dying. It had been dependent on Abithriax, and now that he was gone, it wouldn’t survive.

Unless it had a substitute. I tried to link with the item, using the dreamstone as a bridge. The fateweaver seemed to react, but weakly. It wasn’t stabilising. Abithriax had maintained some sort of mental link with the thing, but I wasn’t a mind mage. The fateweaver was glowing; the item was becoming ethereal, part of Elsewhere. I stared at it, then looked at where my right hand had been.

There wasn’t time to think. I dropped the dreamstone, picked up the fateweaver in my left hand, and placed it against the stump of my right hand. As I did I focused my will, reshaping the fateweaver into a new form, one linked to me.

Agony exploded in my arm. It felt as though I had a bar of molten metal fused to my wrist. I forced through the pain, disregarded it. Join with me, I told the fateweaver.

The fateweaver latched on, merging into me like flowing water.

Chaotic sensations flashed through my mind, insane and indescribable. I struggled to keep my sense of self, hold against the pressure. Gradually the tide slowed, eased.

The wisps of light streaming up around me were so bright I could barely see. I felt light and airy, my feet nearly floating. I snatched up the dreamstone and channelled. A gate appeared, and I flew towards it.

I burst through the gateway like a diver landing in water. Sound and sensation hit like a hammer and I slammed into the floor of the bubble realm, the impact knocking the breath out of me. Behind me I felt the gate to Elsewhere wink out. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, moving my limbs experimentally. They were all still there. More than that, the pain of my injuries was gone. I felt better than I had for days.

I sat up, took a deep breath, and looked down at my right arm.

The stump of my right wrist and the fateweaver were gone. In their place I had a new hand, white and pale as though sculpted from alabaster. Tendrils of white traced into my forearm, linking into my flesh. I flexed the fingers of the hand one by one, closed them into a fist, opened them again. The movements were sluggish, but they became smoother as I watched.

The view my magesight gave me was . . . odd. The signature from my hand was still recognisably the fateweaver’s, but it had changed, less like an imbued item and more like a living creature. I couldn’t tell for sure, but through the dreamstone the fateweaver seemed stable. Actually, I didn’t need the dreamstone. I could sense the fateweaver, feel its presence in my thoughts.

I got to my feet and stretched. I felt refreshed, as though I’d been given a whole new body. Maybe I had. Glancing down, I saw that most of my clothes had dissolved: my coat was gone and my shirt was hanging in tatters. My trousers, made of a heavier material, had fared a little better, but still looked like they’d been attacked by a swarm of moths. Everything in my pockets was gone: I had the dreamstone, and that was it.

New hand, though. That counts for something.

I could use the fateweaver as a hand. What about its powers?

The last time I’d used the fateweaver, Abithriax had placed the knowledge of how it worked directly into my mind. The item granted the ability to determine future events, choosing what would and wouldn’t come to pass. But back then, Abithriax had been the one to actually use it. This time, I’d have to figure it out on my own.

I looked into the futures, trying various approaches. It took me only seconds; the fateweaver’s magic felt very compatible with mine. From a quick glance, it didn’t seem as though I’d have to do very much—

Wait. Why did a lot of my futures end in a black void?

A tremor seemed to go through the bubble realm, and I thought I could sense a sound on the edge of hearing, something that made me think of something buckling. An image flashed through my head of water pressing against a ship’s hull. I didn’t understand what was going on. I was alone in this place, especially now that . . .

“Oh crap,” I said out loud. This place had been made as a prison for Abithriax. And now he was gone.

The creaking sound echoed through the bubble realm again, and I could swear I felt the ground shift. I snatched up my armour and the cube and started hurrying towards the exit. Looking through the futures, I felt a chill. The lines ending in a void were multiplying, and worse, they were completely independent of my actions. At any moment I could get wiped out of existence, and there was nothing I could do . . .

. . . nothing I could do as a diviner. But I wasn’t just a diviner anymore.

I could feel the futures branching, lines of light in the darkness. I picked one in which I was safe, except this time, instead of looking back along the line to match it with my actions, I reached for it. I felt the fateweaver stir and unfold, like a muscle contracting. I touched the line and felt the lights shift, the glows of the other possibilities winking out as their potential flowed into the path I’d chosen.

There were no more branching futures, no possibilities of sudden death. The futures followed a clear, set path.

I blinked. So easy? I slowed to a walk—no need to hurry—and studied my immediate futures. They weren’t a solid line, more like a flowing river. The water could follow many paths, but it was constrained by the banks. But up ahead I could sense the futures branching. Without my intervention, they were drifting apart again.

As I walked, I kept working on the futures, and with each attempt I learned more about how the fateweaver functioned. It wasn’t choosing among options, exactly—more of a decree. I could decide on a future, and make it come to pass. It had limits though, which I didn’t fully understand but which I was pretty sure involved probability. The more unlikely the event I chose, the more effort the fateweaver had to expend. If I tried to force a future that was sufficiently improbable, or which was possible but not in the way I decreed, it would fail.

Except that my own magic let me know exactly how probable every possible future was. The two types dovetailed perfectly. Divination showed the possibilities; fate let me choose among them.

Right now, the possibilities in which the bubble realm collapsed were multiplying. It was becoming harder to hold to the future in which the bubble stayed together. I probably didn’t have more than a few minutes.

The corridor opened into a small, featureless room. I held up the red cube. “Abithriax is dead,” I told it. “Ready for something new?”

The cube seemed to consider, then glowed. A section of the wall shimmered and became a gateway. The last time I’d used it, it had led into a grassy meadow deep in the countryside. This time, the gate was masked by an opaque black screen.

I knew what was waiting on the other side. I looked down, taking inventory. Cube, dreamstone, shoes and socks, tattered trousers, shredded T-shirt, a set of armour too badly injured to use. None would be of use in the coming fight.

The bubble’s collapse was drawing near. I let the futures settle into one with ten seconds remaining, then stepped through the gate and back to Earth.