Julius was trying to think up an appropriate response to that when Marci said, “Is ‘Dragon Sees the Beginning’ your name or your title?”
The giant dragon rolled its coils. “I don’t see the difference. It is what I am, just as you are a perceptive, presumptuous, death-bound creature.” The wall of smiling teeth grew wider. “Perhaps that should beyourname?”
“I’ll stick with Marci, thanks,” Marci said. “But what is it that you do here? Do you just sit around and stare at chains?”
“Does it always ask this many questions?” the dragon said, turning its milky eyes back to Julius. “I shouldn’t have to ask, of course, but your recent memories are highly emotional and disordered, which makes them difficult to interpret.”
Julius wasn’t sure if that was an insult or just a blunt observation, but taking offense at a dragon hundreds of times his size was pointless in any case, so he just moved on. “Is that how you see the beginning?” he asked. “By reading memories? And how is it you are still here? I thought all the dragons had to flee this plane?”
“They did,” the dragon said. “I am merely a magical construct created to preserve the history of this world. All that has happened before this moment is mine to preserve.” The toothy smile faded. “Unfortunately, since the collapse, there has been little for me to remember and no one to remember it for.”
“We would love to hear your memories,” Julius said quickly. “I know nothing about this place or why we left it.”
“So I can see,” the dragon said with a sigh. “The depth of your ignorance is truly depressing, though not surprising. Our kind doesn’t like to remember defeats, and there is no defeat more shameful than the loss of one’s homeworld to careless greed and lack of forethought.”
“How does lack of forethought causethat?” Marci asked, pointing back down the tunnel toward the empty desert.
“It doesn’t. The waste you crossed is not the current state of the former draconic plane. It is merely a representation of emptiness, a buffer to protect me and the history I guard from the void that lies beyond worlds.” He nodded to the chains rising around them on all sides. “Even this place is nothing but a construct created by the future the two of you brought here with you. Though I must admit I’m impressed. I haven’t had a mountain this large to enjoy for a long, long time.”
“Wait,” Julius said. “Are you saying all these chains are connected tous?”
“Who else would they belong to?” the dragon asked. “This is a dead world. Thereisno future in this place save what you bring with you.” It raised a massive paw from beneath its coils, running its meter-long claws over the curving wall of chains that surrounded them. “These are your possible futures, every chain of events that could yet happen from the moment you entered this place until the end of time.”
“So my future’s in there, too?” Marci said, her eyes huge.
“A small portion,” the dragon replied. “But not bad, for a mortal.”
“What about our pasts?” Julius asked. “Are those here, too?”
Dragon Sees the Beginning smirked. “They are, but they were so minuscule, I’m afraid I already consumed them so we would be able to communicate. An unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of coming to this place at such a young age.”
“Youateour pasts?” Marci squeaked. “How does that work? And what about the future? Do you eat that, too?”
The dragon looked insulted. “Of course not. The past of all dragons and their servants is mine by right of my station, not to mention my only fuel in this empty place. The future, however, belongs to my brother, Dragon Sees Eternity, but he left here long ago to live with the dragons who survived the collapse in their new home.”
“So there’s another one of you?” Marci asked, getting excited. “Like, on Earth?”
“Is that not what I just said?” the dragon rumbled, shaking its huge head. “We were created to be a pair, but there’s not much for a guardian of the future to do in a world that no longer has one. So he left, and now it’s just me.”
Julius couldn’t believe there could possibly be a dragon this big on Earth withouteveryoneknowing. But interesting as all this was, it wasn’t why they were here. “I’m sorry you lost your brother,” he said as tactfully as he could. “But if he’s in charge of the future, then maybe he’s the one we need to talk to? You see, we came here because another dragon, a seer named Estella, is using chains like these,” he pointed at the tangled chains that made up the ground, “to control several members of my clan. I need to find a way to break them.”
“You don’t need my brother forthat,” Dragon Sees the Beginning huffed. “What you ask is impossible. Chains from this place can never be broken.”
Julius scowled. That couldn’t be right. If Estella’s chains of control were unbreakable, then why were they here? Why had Bob even mentioned this place? Before he could open his mouth to ask, though, the giant dragon lowered his head down in front of them.
“It seems you are in need of a lesson from history,” it said, its voice deeply pleased. “Do you know how the future got chained in the first place?”
Julius shook his head, and the dragon grinned wide, launching gleefully into the story like it had just been waiting for this chance. “Ages ago, back when this was a proper plane, every clan had seers. Not just one, either, but dozens, whole teams working together to shape the future to their liking. But, dragons being dragons, this brought them into constant conflict with other clans who were building different futures, ones wheretheyruled. Naturally, it was always the cleverest seers, the ones who used their knowledge of the future most audaciously, who came out the victors in these skirmishes. But no dragon clan has ever accepted defeat gracefully, and it was only a matter of time before a seer on the verge of losing tried something truly desperate and accidentally figured out a way to turn the future back in his favorpermanently.”
“How did that work?” Marci asked. “I thought the whole point of being a seer was looking into the future and meddling with stuff until you got the outcome you wanted, but nothing’s really sure until it actually happens, right?”
The dragon grinned. “Not with this. Despite being grossly outmaneuvered by his enemies, this particular seer was very cunning. He knew he’d already been beaten and that the future he wanted was now so unlikely as to be functionally impossible. So, like any good dragon facing defeat, he changed the game. Since manipulating his own future was no longer an option, he reached further still, twisting the relationship between time, probability, and the nature of dragon magic itself to create a situation that allowed him topurchaseone future over another.”
Julius’s breath caught. That wasexactlywhat Estella had said, that the future was bought and paid for. But, “How can youbuythe future?”
“By trading one for another,” the dragon replied, its voice taking on a lecturing tone. “When it comes to seer magic, all potential futures are simply matters of probability. Some outcomes—such as what happens when you drop a stone—are so likely as to be practically guaranteed. Drop a stone, and it will fall. Others—such as the rise and fall of one particular dragon clan over another—are more fluid. Traditionally, seers combat this by using their cunning to influence key critical events in a timeline until their desired outcome becomes as unavoidable as that falling stone. But achieving that level of certainty is very difficult when multiple seers are all trying to influence the same events at once. For our wayward seer, it was nigh impossible, and so the question became, how can we create a fixed point? How can we forge a chain of eventssoguaranteed that no decision or stroke of random chance can possibly change or upset it?”
The dragon stopped there, looking down expectantly at Julius and Marci. “Uh,” Julius said at last. “I don’t—”
