“I would have never returned the Icosahedron if I knew I was condemning my people to extinction,” Governance faced the Coven and pleaded his case.

  Seventy-three faces regarded him. Some seemed amused, a few expressed sympathy, and most showed complete indifference.

  “Cry me a river, and I will swim in it,” answered Callousness.

  “Welcome to the club, Governance; we have all been there,” Reliance tried to soothe him. “It is just the way it is. Some last longer than others, but in the end, they all go extinct.”

  “We were nothing but an experiment to you,” protested Governance.

  “A failed experiment,” added young Continuity, who had immediately preceded him into the Coven. “We will not go down that route again. I am sorry for your plight, Governance, but your people are better off gone. They have turned themselves into a menagerie of monsters. Their minds are as horrible as their bodies.”

  Governance tried to answer, but Necessity cut him off.

  “Next point of the day,” it said, in Governance’s own voice.

  Governance stormed off the Coven’s main hall and went to his private room in fury.

  “My, my, what a temper!” said Contemplation, licking his lips as if already savouring his prey.

  When Governance entered his suit, he found an unexpected guest inside it.

  “Close the door,” ordered Necessity in Governance’s own voice.

  “Nothing of what we discuss here can get out of this room, do you understand?” it asked Governance.

  “Why?” Governance asked.

  “Because I can’t be seen playing favourites. I can give your people another chance, but no one else must know it. You will not discuss this with anyone, not even me, is that clear?” Necessity asked.

  He gave Governance two items he took from within the robes it was wearing. The first was a map of the continent from which Governance came. There was an X marked on it. “That is the location of a structure known as the Black Tower. You must take your people there—no one with less than four Evolutions.”

  “That is two thousand people at most,” protested Governance.

  The Coven leader nodded. “Those are the ones you will save. Once in the Tower, you must cross the gates following this sequence.” Necessity gave Governance a piece of paper with thirteen numbers on it.

  “Once you emerge from the tower, a different world will be waiting for you. Conquer its dungeons, and I will give you a tool to transform them into sources for Evolution,” it said.

  “I will grant your people the means to fill their Progression bars again. Special tools will be waiting for them once they climb out of the tower. One of yours will become the Omega. He must claim the Icosahedron and return it to the Coven.”

  “One more thing,” Necessity added. “A demonic being, a malevolent and cunning beast, guards the tower. It will try to trick you. You must not talk to it. All the information you need is already in that paper. That thing can’t offer you more than what I have already given you.”

  “What do you get out of this, Necessity?” Governance asked the shrouded figure as he prepared to leave.

  “Revenge,” Necessity answered. “Revenge against a common enemy. An enemy of all.” Then, it disappeared, leaving behind a very troubled Governance.

  Fool me once, it is your fault; fool me twice, it is mine, Governance thought grimly as he neared the Black Tower.

  He had followed Necessity’s instructions and had not mentioned the deal to anyone. Not before speaking with this malevolent Keeper, he was supposed to avoid.

  When you ruled, you learned to hear both sides of a story before making a decision.

  “So he gave you a key and forbade you to talk with me,” the insectoid dragon’s voice resonated inside Governance’s mind. It had introduced itself as the Keeper.

  “Naughty, naughty boy,” it laughed. Its laughter was like a little girl's, which made it even more disturbing.

  “You have guessed who that was, haven't you?” the dragon asked.

  “Necessity,” answered Governance. “But not the one I had talked with, just minutes ago. Necessity from a faraway future. That was why it forbade me to mention anything, even to itself.”

  “Clever boy,” snickered the dragon.

  “Are you aware of the nature of this place?” it asked Governance in a more serious tone.

  “I am. I know what it can do. Do you know where this sequence leads?” Governance asked, showing the Keeper the series of numbers Necessity had provided.

  “Of course I do,” the Keeper snorted. “What do you need me for if you already know the way there?”

  “Because I do not want to go there,” Governance answered. “I want to go five years in the future after that point.”

  “Oh, naughty, naughty boy, indeed,” the dragon laughed. “You and I are going to work well together. But first, you must do something for me.”

  The Dragon raised its serpentine body over the surface of the lake. A series of glowing numbers appeared on its translucent skin.

  “Memorize them well,” it said. “They will lead you somewhere in time. You must listen to the Dissonance. It will lead you to a woman trying to save the life of her child. That child ought to have died in her crib. She will grow to be an influential leader who will shape history. It must not come to pass. History must be left alone to follow its own path.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Help me in this, and I will give you the information you seek.”

  “What is the Dissonance?” Governance asked.

  “This,” the Keeper answered, as the sound of the universe breaking into screaming pieces thundered into Governance’s mind, making him writhe in pain and bringing him to his knees.

  “If I were to explain it in lay terms, the Dissonance is the Universe protesting when uppity mortals try to change causality by taking advantage of my good faith,” the Keeper calmly explained.

  “Once you have heard it once, you learn to recognize it.”

  “Use it to seek that woman, and stop her,” it continued.

  He entered the maze of tunnels and followed the precise instructions laid out by the keeper. Sure enough, there it was: a light at the end of the tunnel.

  Eleal studied the night sky at his new destination. It was unfamiliar, but he realized that even 50,000 years in the past or the future could create that effect. Valaia, the giant moon, was still soaring in the sky, the only familiar object in the heavens. Even that could change given enough time.

  The Tower was still in the middle of a forest, but some of the trees looked a bit different.

  Governance opened his mind, trying to scan for the Dissonance. There it was, a few hundred miles to the East. He discorporated his body, keeping complete control over its molecules, and traveled as a ray of light towards his destination.

  Veta the Gray entered her home silently, ashamed of everything that had happened over the last week. She had to buy two trips from that damned dragon-thing at the bottom of the lake.

  The first one had been two hundred years in the future, when the medicine that would save Sita would be discovered. The other was the way back, to what she called the Present.

  The prices were high in both cases, but they were paid; anything for Sita.

  She climbed through the window into her own home, as she often did when she was back from work trips.

  Her husband had fallen asleep watching their sick child. Let him rest-he had earned it.

  Veta took the vial of medicine and approached her child, a look of tenderness appearing on her face for the first time. She froze as soon as she checked the unmoving form of Sita. She was not breathing. This was impossible! She was to die tomorrow.

  A calm voice whispered inside her mind. “Turn around slowly and make no sudden movements.”

  Veta turned towards the voice, as smoothly and gracefully as a predator.

  A half-human thing, with a transparent skull through which its glowing brain could be seen, was holding her child in its four arms.

  “The dead child in the cradle is a simulacrum, created from my own blood. Your husband will discover it tomorrow when he wakes up. He will mourn her death and wait for you for years, but you will never return. He will never forget you. Even on his deathbed, he will still hope that you will appear with the medicine you went to look for. You never came back.

  As it was fated to happen. As it did happen.”

  “I have already taken care of the child. She will live. You both will if you do exactly as I say,” Governance added.

  Seven hours later and several thousand miles away, the three of them sat, waiting as Veta breastfed her daughter.

  “You are an assassin,” Governance stated calmly. “The keeper asked you to stop two people from doing a specific task, in return for your trips. So you killed them.”

  “It is how I do things,” Veta did not even try to deny the fact. “Not all of us have your weird magical powers.”

  “Did you ever wonder why they had to die?” Governance asked her.

  Veta shook her head.

  “Their sin was the same as yours; they tried to change their past. The Keeper's price is undoing what others do with the time trips he provides. A closed system. A very elegant one.”

  “So it was all a cruel game, I never had a chance to make it,” Veta said sadly, gently rocking her daughter as she fell asleep.

  “It was indeed a game, but not as cruel as you think. You just played it badly,” Governance calmly asserted.

  “Changing the past is allowed, if it ends up looking mostly the same as it originally did. It is what the philosophers of my time call the observer effect.”

  “Your daughter will not grow up to be a general. You will both live the rest of your lives in this forest. I have already altered the ecosystem so that it will provide for you and shelter you.

  But if you try to leave the forest, it will kill you.”

  “Who are you?” asked a bewildered Veta. “How do you have such power?”

  “I am Governance, and the rules I create are obeyed,” the Emperor answered.

  “How do you know I will not manage to escape with my daughter?” Veta asked.

  “Because you no longer emit Dissonance. You are at peace with the timeline,” Governance answered.

  “I am returning now to the Tower. I have more things to do. Before you curse my name, think of how easy it would have been to kill you. I can’t give your daughter the full life she never had, but I can give you both a few years with each other.” Governance words lingered in the air as he turned into light and traveled back the way he had originally come.

  “Thank you,” whispered Veta as she watched him fly away.

  One hour, or millions of years later, depending on how you looked at it, Governance entered Belona, five years after the Imperial Host invaded it. He still had his Sight Log, and you could learn a lot from it if you knew how.

  He opened his mind and studied the world of horror he had helped come into being.

  Belona was destroyed, a playpen for Tribulations. There was not a single Beli alive on the whole planet.

  His own log had interesting information. He had been Exiled as soon as he exited the Black Tower. Each reality could have only one Immortal at one time, and the Belona slot was already occupied by Discovery. The Compendium had solved the problem by Exiling him.

  As Necessity had originally intended.

  There was only a single Imperial alive, Boral, now known as Endurance, an Immortal and part of the Coven. He ruled a nearby reality with an iron fist after taking the Icosahedron from the dead hands of a minor ruler called the Knife-Witch.

  He studied millions of logs, his evolved brain trying to find a way to turn it all around.

  There!

  A nexus point.

  A Tribulation.

  A beast that could have died, but survived. He was the key to all. He had his dragon. Now he needed a St George.

  He went back to the tower, and the Keeper asked for another favor in return for the trip back.

  This was easier. No desperate mother trying to save her child. Just a madman trying to use time as a weapon to get rid of a rival. He killed him, leaving his corpse exactly as History expected him to be found.

  Then he went back for his second trip.

  “I guess you will be returning to your present,” the dragon-thing said, almost wistfully. “A pity, I was starting to get fond of you.”

  “Not my present,” Eleal corrected him. “Eight years before I first went to the Black Tower.”

  “Oh, naughty, naughty Eleal,” the dragon said, delighted. “Try not to make too much noise. I would hate to send assassins after you. Remember, in eight years, you have a date with Limbo. Try to be there.”

  As Eleal left the lake, the dragon shouted one last warning. “No one can change history, Eleal. The future you have seen will come to be, no matter what you do. You have observed it. Now it is real. No one can beat time, Eleal. It is the strongest force in the Multiverse.”

  Eleal did not answer as he left the tower. The dragon was wrong. There was an unbeatable force in the cosmos.

  But it was not time.

  It was Limbo.