No one seemed to like being called a pawn, but Bob was clearly on a timer, so they didn’t interrupt.
“For this particular problem, I found myself in the same boat,” he went on. “It wasn’t enough to merely discover a future that didn’t end with the Leviathan eating us. I also needed the means to secure it, which were far beyond what I had available as a mere Seer of the Heartstrikers.” He glanced down at Julius. “Since it happened on another plane, I never saw exactly what Dragon Sees the Beginning told you, but I’m sure he explained that the exchange rate on buying futures is terrible.”
“He did more than explain,” Julius said. “He showed us firsthand. When Marci and I were in the dragons’ old plane, I had to buy a future where Estella didn’t kill us. It was just five minutes, but it cost a lot.”
“Certainty always does,” Bob said, nodding. “It takes an absolutely enormous amount of potential futures to buy even one guaranteed outcome. But Dragon Sees the Beginning didn’t actually sell you anything. He’s only a construct, a tool. He can’t actually trade futures. He merely used the knowledge of past seers to act as a broker for the one who could.” He nodded at the pigeon on his shoulder. “Her.”
“Wait,” Julius said, voice shaking. “So you mean when we were in the dragons’ old world, when I made the trade for a chain of guaranteed events to defeat Estella, I was actually dealing with aNameless End?”
“There’s no one else who could have done it,” Bob said with a shrug. “That’s her End. She’s what remains when every choice is made, the point all the streams of the future eventually flow to, the end of time itself. And before you ask how the end of time can be here now, know that our way of seeing time is very much limited by our perception. We experience time as a line because that’s how we live it, but Nameless Ends aren’t bound by such strict measures.” He smiled proudly at his pigeon. “My lady exists simultaneously in all times at once. That’s how she’s able to trade one future for another, because from her point of view, all possible futures are already done. If we want one instead of another—say, survival instead of death—she can find that possibility, pluck it out of whatever hole it was languishing in, and shove it in front of us so that—from our limited perspective—that future becomes the only path. But this sort of heavy lifting requires an enormous amount of energy. Energy that she creates by consuming other timelines in bulk, until—”
“Until there’s nothing left,” Julius said angrily. “That’s what happened to our old world. The ancient seers were so bent on securing the timelines they needed to beat each other, they let her consumeallof their futures.”
Bob nodded. “Ironically shortsighted, wasn’t it?”
“If you understand that, why are you repeating their mistake?” the Black Reach growled.
“Because it’s better than the alternative,” Bob replied, his head snapping up to glare at the construct. “There are futures where I don’t use the Nameless End, and you don’t kill me, but in every single one of them—every single one—I die. Sometimes I make it an hour, sometimes I make it four, but every one of them is fatal, and not just for me. Everything in this world dies when the Leviathan wins, which he does in every future I can see where you don’t kill me. That means if thereisa way we get out of this, it canonly happenif I ask the Nameless End for help, because I’ve seen every path where I don’t, and they all lead to the end of the world.” He cupped his hand gently over the pigeon’s wings. “Given those odds, I’ll take my chances with her.”
“And do what?” Marci asked, stepping forward. “What future are you buying?”
“The best there could be,” Bob promised. “I’ve been studying the events leading up to this day for nearly all my life. I knew that if there was a future where we lived, I’d have to buy it, but I couldn’t see past my death, which meant I’d have to make my purchase sight unseen. But unlike us born seers, my lady isn’t limited by chance. I can only nudge the events back and forth between likely possible futures, but she sees everything. Any event that could happen, she can make happen, so since I was going to be bringing the Death of Seers down on my head anyway, I figured I might as well go for broke and buy the best future I could possibly imagine. One whereeveryonelived happily ever after, including me.”
“How is that possible?” Julius asked. “You just said that every future where you lived culminated in the end of the world.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Bob said. “Itwasn’tpossible by everything I could see, but again, I can only see what’s partially likely to happen. There are billions of practically impossible futures I can’t see simply because they’re so unlikely, but she can.” He stroked his pigeon again. “She sees every way time can bend, no matter how impossible. All I had to do was tell her what I wanted, and she found it. The only downside was the cost. As you might imagine, turning impossibility into certainty isghastlyexpensive, and with only the futures of Heartstriker to work with, I simply didn’t have enough. I needed more. I neededeveryone, every single dragon that exists. There was no way to get all those futures under my control through the usual ways—no dragon has ever united all the clans in the history of our kind—so Amelia and I hatched a plan to do itmagically.”
He smiled at his older sister. “As the Spirit of Dragons, Amelia is now intimately connected to every dragon’s fire, and I’m connected to her as her beloved brother.” He swept his hand at the gathered dragons. “The moment she became a spirit, you all became part of my matrix, and your futures became mine to trade.”
Svena began to growl deep in her throat, but Julius was too shocked to pay it any mind. “That’swhy you killed Amelia?” he cried. “So she’d be the Spirit of Dragons and give you the ability to sell our futures? What about restoring our race’s connection to the native magic of a plane? What about giving us a home?”
“Oh, well, that was good too,” Bob said. “But eyes on the prize, Julius.EverythingI’ve done—hooking you up with the human who would become the Merlin, placing you at the top of our clan, reuniting the Qilin with his old flame and then breaking him to weaken Algonquin before restoring him so Amelia would have the luck she needed at the right time to claim her place as spirit—it was all a play to bring us tothismoment. This one particular crossroads in time where every dragon’s future is mine to manipulate, which should be just enough sway to purchase the one future in whichwe don’t die.” He held his hands up with a flourish. “I will now accept your praise and adoration.”
Silence was his only answer.
“I can see why the Black Reach wants to kill you,” Svena said at last. “You’re worse than Estella. At least she only sold her own future. You’ve sold us all!”
“Considering that every other path led todeath, I don’t see how you have cause to complain,” Bob said testily.
“But she has every right,” the Black Reach said, his normally calm voice shaking in fury. “Death is not the only end, Brohomir. You and I would have no quarrel if all you’d done was bring all dragons under your influence to manipulate the species toward a beneficial future. That’s just good seer work. But that’s not what you’ve done. For all your machinations, the future you’ve chosen is still so unlikely as to be functionally impossible. To ensure it, you will have to feed every other potential outcome to the Final Future, which means that even though lives will be saved, they will not be lived. By trimming every branch of the future but one, you will destroy our free will. Dragons will live on, but our choices will mean nothing. No matter what we decide, there will only be one path forward. Yours.”
Silence fell again, harder this time. “Is that true?” Julius asked at last, looking up at his brother.
“It’s not a perfect solution,” Bob said, his confident smile slipping. “But what else was I supposed to do? I’ve spent my entire life looking down millions and millions of futures in my search for a way to beat Algonquin’s Leviathan, and every single one ended in death. My death, your death, the death of my family and friends. Everyone I knew or cared about, including me, had no future past this point unless I did something, so I did.” He looked up at the Black Reach. “I know I’m breaking your rules, but I’m doing it to save the future of the raceyouwere created to protect. That has to count for something.”
The eldest seer shook his head. “Good intentions do not excuse the crime. Every seer I’ve ever killed thought they were doing what had to be done. You are no different.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” Bob argued. “I’m not Estella, trading my soul for petty vindictiveness. We’re talking about the end of the world.Ourworld, right now. The scale alone should—”
“No different,” the Black Reach repeated, pulling himself to his full impressive height. “Selling potential futures was how we destroyed the only true home our race has ever known. It does not matter if you are buying one life or millions, the mistakes of the pastmust notbe repeated.”
“So you would let us die?” Bob snarled. “You would rather let Algonquin’s tantrum destroy us than bend on this one issue? Have you evenlookedat the future I chose?”
“I have,” the construct said. “And I can admit that it is good. Far better than I expected of you, to be honest. But a lovely prison is still a prison, and yours only saves dragons.”
“Dragons were all I could control,” Bob argued. “Even I couldn’t get my claws in the futures of the entire world.”
“But what are we without the world?” the Black Reach asked. “In your future, we survive, as does Amelia as our spirit, but everything else gets eaten down to the bedrock. Humans, spirits, plants, animals, they’re all gone. We’ll be stranded in a wasteland no bigger than what remains of the dragons’ old home without even the free will to choose how we will rebuild.” He bared his teeth. “Can such a future really be considered better than death?”
