NOVEL NEXT 78. And What Is External
Totality poured forth from pages that spanned from ancient, crumbling parchment to freshly made paper, every spare point on the page filled with words that themselves formed the shape of a greater symbol. Just staring at a fraction of a single page of this book of infinite pages felt akin to lifting a mountain with one’s breath—theoretically one could do it, if only one could blow with limitless force and maintain that pace for all of time.
Yenna’s mind was scooped out and placed to one side as all the possible pasts, presents and futures attempted to explain themselves and all their actions all at once in her mind. The witch was vaguely aware that she was screaming, as an infinite array of peoples calmly attempted to make themselves heard, unaware of one another. The book was every story at once, everything that ever could have come to pass and everything that might inevitably be so—if only there weren’t a fixed route.
That was the part that snapped Yenna out of the trance, the piece that let her focus past infinity trying to rebuild itself from a single fractal arm behind her eyeballs. A large part of the possibilities of the future—in fact, nearly every single piece of it except for one shining strand of reality—was thoroughly irrelevant. With great effort Yenna mentally discarded them and focused on this one shimmering line. It brought to mind the Ledger’s discussion of options, of paths one might take. However, there were no options here. Every action that anyone could take was written down already. Yenna was suddenly aware that she had a perfect knowledge of the future of the world around her, her mind capable of perceiving this singular, infinitesimal section of existence. Yenna could see the path, and extrapolate every piece and player.
The witch read ahead.
The inevitable future was told thusly—without hesitation, the Ledger took the opened book. Narasanha threw herself onto the construct to pry the book away, but the Ledger would not be stopped. She screamed and howled, demanded and roared as she broke herself on the implacable bulwark of Fate’s Ledger. Narasanha swung her fists with force that could crush rock, and shattered her chains against the metal plates of the Ledger’s armour, but came away with nothing but broken bones and pouring blood.
Lumale attempted to stop it too, weaving grand magic the likes of which she hadn’t used in countless years, grand spells to warp reality and place the Ledger and the book elsewhere, to break this pseudo-space at its seams to deny the Ledger a place to finish its ritual. The borders of this existence frayed, the very air shook in terror, and great vortices of dark energy screamed as the space held on for dear life. Yet, it was all for naught.
Tirk knew it too, but he still prayed—he prayed to every god or spirit or force of nature that was capable of listening. They did listen, too, and sent divine intervention. Yenna saw for a moment the truth of Tirk’s power, though she could not put it into words as she read the future on the page. Old gods and young gods, spirits of light and dark, forces that set the wind and weathered the stones, all those and more rose in divine chorus. The hammer of the gods levelled itself upon this place adjacent to their reality. Yet, the voices of the divine were stymied—this was not a place they could infringe upon, not an event that could be altered. This was Fate, and Fate could not be changed.
The Ledger placed the book in its rightful place in the pillar in the centre of the room. It rose to stand atop the pillar, where the collected prayers and wishes for salvation from millions of creatures, past, present and future, all coalesced into power that could cow even the very heavens. It stood there and was destroyed by that awesome power, as the light of all the voices mingled with the very framework of reality. The Ledger was, for one singular, miniscule moment, the centre of the creation of a new universe. That was where the story of this reality ended, and where another began. Fate could not peer into a place where Fate wasn’t, but Yenna’s mind crumpled against that point—because Fate was totality, and totality was everything, all things within and without, and without was within, and–
The witch’s mind crumbled to dust. The burning flame of her soul rose, and used itself as a template to remake the conscious and unconscious mind, her mind remade once more. One very witch-like question occurred to Yenna.
Why was I not involved in this vision of the future?
In that vision of the certain, fixed, Fated future, Yenna was not present. The Ledger did not take the book from her shivering hands, the Ledger simply took the book. Narasanha did not shout for Yenna’s aid, nor did Lumale prod her into action. Tirk did not so much as acknowledge her—it was a scene entirely without her. Because, I am outside fate.
It was Suee, the priestess of the moon and augur to House Deepstar, who had enlightened her to this. Where predictions of the future existed, they bent and distorted around facets involving one particular kesh. She wasn’t important to the grand events that Fate had written out, was not a part of anything major or minor. Yenna wasn’t meant to be there. Somehow, Fate had overlooked her entirely.
Which means I can change it.
It occurred to Yenna that the only reason this moment had been reached was with the cult of the word tampering with Fate itself. This was what the black book itself was—a kind of record of everything that could happen, and the events that lead up to it. Merely by observing those factors and employing the power within, one could alter the stream of reality so that Fate always intended to go one way rather than another. It still didn’t explain why Yenna wasn’t involved in these actions—the Ledger, Mulvari, Nadhan, all of them had likely seen within the book or used its power to alter Fate to their desired end, but they were still inside Fate. Even here, with a book that detailed every single detail of every single potential reality, Yenna was left with more questions than answers.
The witch blinked. That entire thought—reading over every last word of this brief future, having her mind destroyed upon the rocky shores of totality, rebuilding herself from a miniscule scrap—had taken no time at all. Mere observation of the words on the page distorted reality, for observation was a kind of intrusion into Fate itself. The last thing Yenna wanted to do right now was consider the implications of such mental annihilation and resurrection, so she turned back to the book.
It was honestly a rather silly thing, a jovial part of Yenna’s mind decided. It was not an impossible object, not in the mundane sense—it contained, in disturbing detail, every possible moment that could have ever occurred in every possible history and future. As a tome that outlined the exact future of events, it was wrong in literally every case but one. However, as an artifact of Fate itself, it held the disturbing ability to tell you which of these infinite routes was the one you were on—all of totality, defined down to a sliver of shimmering causality, one tiny spit of existence on the shores of all that could be.
Yenna wasn’t sure exactly what to do with this information. A presence before her distracted her, and the witch stumbled back as the Ledger reached for the book. She tumbled to the ground, her legs unsteady—Narasanha rushed to her side and propped her up.
The Ledger stood there, hand clasped over where the book would have been. It was still for a moment—the logic centres of a faulty golem ticking over the difficult puzzle of an unanticipated error—before it snapped back to attention.
“Hand over the book. You have already seen what happens—play your part in the tale of the triumph of all that is Good.”
Its voice sent a shiver down Yenna’s spine.
“We can’t let it have this. I– I can’t move.” Her legs kicked, unwilling to listen to commands—Yenna’s body felt light one moment and leaden the next, a horrible feeling of existential nausea racking her body. Her centre of gravity shifted suddenly and Yenna flailed—only to realise that Narasanha had scooped her up into her arms.
“I’ll be your legs, Yenna,” the bodyguard gave her a resolute nod. “Tell me what to do.”
Lumale began weaving a spell, and Tirk clasped his hands in prayer—exactly as they had done in that vision of the future written in the book. The only difference was that the Ledger didn’t take the book yet, and that Narasanha had changed her role.
Yenna looked down at the book, willed her crumbling soul to sift through the threads of totality, and settled her eyes upon the current timeline. She read ahead once more—a future where Narasanha carries her, sprints left, sprints right, small variations and flourishes that loop right back into the eventuality of the Ledger standing in exactly the right place and snatching the book right out of Yenna’s grasp.
“It’s reading the same thing I’m reading… but it’s missing details.”
“Yenna? It’s getting closer!”
“It can’t see me, not properly—but it was able to perceive me, and talk to me, and even predict me before. How? How can it know I’m holding the book?”
The witch clenched her teeth, willing herself to focus. In the retelling of events that hadn’t yet come to pass presented in the black book, Narasanha was the one holding the book—but if the bodyguard was holding it, the book wouldn’t be in the same position. The discrepancy couldn’t match the Ledger’s actions. Both of them were reading ahead, but a creeping suspicion wormed its way into Yenna’s thoughts. The Ledger was reading from a slightly different book.
One that included Yenna as a matter of course. A book that had to involve the kesh mage, and all her thoughts and fears and capabilities. A book that detailed her actions above all others—to fill in the blanks where the black book of Fate was wrong. A loophole in Fate’s blessed ignorance. The Ledger was reading Yenna’s journal.
That thought struck at Yenna’s heart like ice. It was a paradox, but one easily solved—the journal of these events couldn’t be in the timeline where the Ledger won, for Yenna would never have a chance to record her thoughts. The construct instead had to be looking into a set of eventualities that was just barely adjacent, a reality where it lost at the very last moment, where Yenna had gone home and recovered, had put her thoughts to paper and detailed every last piece of the action. With but one action done wrong, the Ledger could simply provide a singular act of improvisation—the one moment of true creative flourish in its life, to act against what was written and change Fate itself. Which meant, in a roundabout way, that Fate was able to be changed.
That was a definitive statement, Yenna now knew. It wasn’t some hokey theoretical outcome—a fervent hope against hope. It necessarily had to be true. The only way the Ledger could read her actions was by observing a timeline where it failed and then altering the outcome, which meant that Yenna was just as capable of doing the same. But how?
“Mage, stop thinking and start doing!” Lumale’s voice, high and musical, rang out with all the bitterness of an old crone. Her spell fell into place with a sound of a struck glass bell of unimaginable size, and the space where the Ledger stood devolved into a cosmic swirl of impossible colour. The Ledger stepped through it unperturbed, and reached for the book—Narasanha tensed her muscles to leap backwards.
“No!” Yenna cried out. “Nothing you can’t change!”
The bodyguard stumbled, steadying herself. Narasanha leaned into a teetering dodge, and pivoted expertly as the Ledger predicted that maneuver. The rapid, jerking motions did nothing for Yenna’s mounting nausea, and being upside down and cradled like a baby didn’t help at all with the fact that her soul appeared to be drifting apart.
Yenna concentrated as best she could as Narasanha ducked and weaved, the construct’s arms flashing out with lightning speed. If the Ledger was reading her journal—a theoretical, completed version of it from another timeline—then Yenna should be able to read it too. With great effort, Yenna peered through the very edge of totality, skimming the lines that aborted against the side of the Ledger’s new world, to look for the one strand that carried on past it.
There, she found it. One shining moment of absolute genius—an alternate ending to that sad tale. At first glance, Yenna could see nothing different about this timeline—the detail made it clear that the Ledger simply failed, ran out of power or missed some crucial timing that caused it to cease operation. The Ledger had been designed to exist until that exact moment, and not a second longer—this timeline was the one where Yenna’s friends, without her or the guidance of the book, had managed to duck, weave and delay just that moment long enough.
Yenna dug into that timeline. Every fragment of surface description was a fractal infinity of further detail, and that line of inquiry ran far further into the future. In a moment that spanned a heartbeat and a lifetime, Yenna found what she was looking for. The loophole, the reflection that glared into Fate’s blind-spot. Yenna found a travelling mage’s almanac.
