Twenty-Two Days Ago

  Andara the Evershifting observed with curiosity the human who was trying to provoke Boral into a fight. There were very few things she was not curious about, but this girl was a treasure trove of mysteries.

  Once a leading scientist of the Old Empire, Andara had thrived during the time of Evolution. It was a blessing for her. She remained dedicated to her true Intent—the one she had pursued her entire life, even before evolving: Understanding.

  While others sought to govern, endure, or rule, she focused on comprehension.

  She wanted to understand everything.

  Andara had designed her evolutions based on the microscopic life forms she had studied throughout her life. To the untrained eye, she appeared as a blob vaguely resembling a female shape and constantly shifting in shape and color.

  However, within her, her mutations manifested as various organelles that made a cell function: Mystic mitochondria generated energy, esoteric DNA helices transmitted information, and destructive lysosomes were ready to be deployed as defenses.

  She took pride in the membrane that protected these treasures, acting as a barrier to the outside world. All her sensory powers were concentrated there.

  The girl stood proudly in her elven armor, delivering meticulously crafted insults at Boral. The Duke of Commitment played the role of the big, dumb brute, easily provoked into action, but Andara was no longer deceived. She had seen the multiple secondary brains he concealed within his chitin armor.

  Boral had as many layers as an onion, but she had seen to his very core.

  Feigning stupidity would not work against her, even though it might take Eleazar by surprise.

  The girl also had her own layers. She felt like a weak Avatar, not much stronger than a Progressor after their first evolution, yet her versatility rivaled that of a Fluid without the constraints of Intent.

  How was this possible? It defied the strict power balances imposed by the Compendium.

  Her second layer was even more stunning: this girl held an entire multiverse inside her mind. A copy of the Compendium was stored in her memory. More mysteries. The infinite, contained inside the fragile mind of a mortal.

  Andara disregarded the court's games, even as the girl skillfully manipulated factions against one another. When she left this place, the tenuous alliance binding them together would dissolve. Andara foresaw this even before the girl threw her copy of Alpha and Omega onto the floor. To Andara, the world was a puzzle, and Jenna’s victory was the only piece that currently fit.

  The third and innermost layer was the one that intrigued Andara the most—an aspect even Jenna was unaware of. This girl existed slightly out of phase with reality.

  Her very existence disturbed the universe, like the unsettling sound of nails scraping on a chalkboard.

  She had met that condition only once before. Governance also had it.

  Ten Days Ago

  The corpse of the Beli slowly dissolved inside Andara’s plasm, as her organelles incorporated his memories into her own. This one had been a lucky catch. He had been in a clandestine meeting a couple of weeks ago, which took place in one of Belona’s never-ending underground tunnels.

  A well-known but not too respected Beli Player named Useful Pob had been doing a recruiting drive. He gave an impassioned speech, promising Arcana to all who took the fight against the Imperials.

  He had been asked a lot of questions, and his answers were chock-full of helpful information.

  The girl was part of a group called the Losers who had been empowered with a forbidden system. That explained the incredible versatility of her stats.

  It was clear that this girl had also been exposed to the artifact Governance called the Icosahedron, and she had used her powers to somehow imprint a copy of the Compendium inside her memory.

  Andara’s evolved mind had a particular knack for sensing when a piece of information was relevant to understanding her query, and no matter how interesting, those two tidbits explained nothing.

  There was a metaphysical link between Governance and Jenna, one not explained by Pantean stats or Compendiums.

  She had named that grating sensation the Dissonance.

  It was the universe’s way of expressing displeasure at those two. Andara instinctively understood that the Dissonance was also a weakness, a flaw that could be exploited against those affected by it.

  The Dissonance was the key to understanding the current game being played between Immortals.

  All of them were pawns: the Beli, the Imperials, the Losers, even Dignity herself. There were only two real players in this game: Governance and Necessity.

  Two masterminds poking at each other with Systems, Realities, and Apocalypses.

  But even a pawn may be promoted if it reaches the other side of the board.

  She had one evolution pending, and it was not going to be into a rook, a queen, or a knight.

  She was going to be the third player in the game.

  Andara could do nothing about Necessity or Governance; both were out of her reach. Governance could even be dead, even though his plans lived on.

  She would play, for now, their silly games of cores, postulants, and petty revenges, but her real focus would be on finding the rules of their game. She would understand, and once she understood, she could not be denied.

  The key to understanding lies in the third Immortal in the game: Discovery.

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  She savored the dissolving Beli’s memories about Discovery: A stout man, well into his sixties, he had been the director of the Belona Academy since its inception, when he was still known as Robard, and had gained entry into the Coven a few generations ago, taking the mantle of Discovery.

  Or so Discovery would have us believe.

  She had manifested in her true form over the Earthen city of Babylon, the homeland of the Losers. “He” was a woman.

  Robard was nothing but a fictional persona acting as a figurehead for the real Discovery, and she knew her identity.

  When “Robard” gained his hundredth Arcana and got his name, he was offered the chance to return it to Necessity and continue the cycle of the Apocalypse.

  He did not want to make that decision alone; instead, he let the people of Belona vote to determine the way forward.

  Garan the Relentless and most of the Beli status quo had campaigned to restore the Icosahedron to the Coven.

  They had been opposed by another Academy professor, a brilliant scholar and talented Beli player with a well-deserved reputation for being eccentric, known as Mad Jagetha.

  She advocated resisting the system and keeping the Icosahedron so that it could not unleash the apocalypse on other worlds.

  Jagetha had lost and retired from public life. Robard became the new immortal and proceeded to turn Belona’s dungeons into sources of prosperity.

  The real Discovery could only be this Jagetha woman. If she was using her Robard persona to interpret her role, he was the key to finding her.

  Andara considered the map of war.

  Her enemies were expecting her to kill the River Dragon to negate the strategic advantage she had allowed Boral to acquire during the last days. That would turn a blitzkrieg campaign into a war that raged for centuries.

  Andara smiled. Did they really think that Necessity was playing that game? He was not taking revenge: he was making a statement to the rest of the Coven.

  When you made statements, you did not slowly smother your enemy over decades of war; you crushed him utterly, and you crushed him fast.

  Let Eleazar and Boral play their little battles. Let Necessity think she had swallowed his lies. She only needed information. With enough information, there was nothing she could not do, and she knew where to look for it.

  Two Days Ago

  Andara slowly studied the Academy's remains.

  Once, it had been the most respected organization dedicated to investigating and teaching Bounty, the magical card game that provided power to Beli Players.

  When the system became locked and no new Arcana appeared, Bounty no longer needed to be taught.

  The Academy became a social club for the remaining players who had survived the Dungeons and the Tribulations.

  As time went on, only players who had acquired at least fifty Arcana, making them immune to the ravages of time, remained. Duels, wars, and accidents took a toll on those remaining few.

  Only about 150 Players remained when the Empire attacked Belona.

  Of those, only about 80 remained alive, most of them imprisoned by the Empire.

  A few had been vivisected by Andara herself. Understanding the enemy was crucial. Understanding was an end in itself.

  The building, once a storehouse of magical and mundane knowledge, had been reduced almost to rubble in one of those petty squabbles between Imperials. This one had been among Committed and Unfocused. She would never have allowed their people to desecrate a house of knowledge.

  Once a scientist, always a scientist.

  She focused her thoughts as she walked through the destroyed corridors. She had tried to understand Jagetha’s mind and, of course, she had succeeded. She was a scholar and an academic, but also, like all Beli, a gambler.

  She treasured her books, but not like a miser treasures his gold. He would like them to be exposed to the public while also being protected. And she would protect them like a gambler would, by bluffing.

  Andara entered the Library, one of the few buildings miraculously still standing.

  How do you bluff when hiding books? You show your cards, but you make them look like a poor hand.

  Her form extended multiple pseudopods, each ending in a sensory organ. There was a pattern to the way the books were ordered. All of them were numbered, and the slots where they were to be placed were clearly marked.

  Her mind expanded, touching all the books at once, and growing in several spatial, logical, and temporal dimensions. She encompassed the mystery of the Library, solving it in less than seven seconds. It was a subtle color code, designed to trick the human brain into ignoring specific books that did not match it.

  She picked the books from the veiled spots.

  They clearly shared a common author: Discovery.

  All these books held precious information, an incredible treasure of knowledge, invaluable to any human academic.

  But she was no longer a human academic; she was Andara the Evershifting, trying to understand a mystery.

  She dismissed the books not related to her query, dropping them on the ground as if they were worthless trash.

  And finally, she found the one she was looking for: The Black Tower. Their means of entry into this world. She absorbed it and understood it.

  And then she swore.

  Bloody Necessity! He was even more devious than she gave him credit for.

  Now

  Andara reached her main headquarters. Much as she had suspected from the beginning, Necessity had tricked them. Those seeds had to be trapped, somehow or other, but she did not intend to stay around to discover how. She had already seen the way out of the maze.

  She would play the game, but not in the way they expected. And when the battle was over, and the dust had settled, there would be a new Immortal in the Coven, and her name would be Evolution.

  Erbora, her second-in-command, suddenly rushed into her room. She had been a lecturer under her supervision, and she had a fine, clear mind. She had chosen Learning as her Intent and was one of the few living beings Andara felt some respect for.

  Her form could charitably be described as a vulture made of worms.

  “Your holiness, our dungeons are under attack!” the vulture screeched.

  “Which ones?” Andara asked, the urgency in Erbora’s voice waking her from her reverie.

  “All of them,” she answered, “at the same time.”

  And then she understood.

  “It is more than an attack, Erbora. It is a trap, an exceptionally well-crafted one,” she answered.

  “What are your instructions, your Holiness?” Erbora anxiously waited for an answer, as Andara’s exceptional mind calibrated all the possibilities, choosing the most advantageous one.

  “We are going to fall into it, Erbora. Wholly. The only way my gambit is going to work is if our enemies think they have killed me. This means all our people must die in that trap. And that includes you, Erbora,” she said dispassionately. “Let them look for my body among a mountain of corpses while I do what I must.”

  “Your Holiness?” Erbora asked, bewildered. “I do not understand.”

  “Of course you don't.” For a second, Andara wished she had kept a human mouth so that she could smile when the occasion called for it. “But you will learn.”

  Then she explained her plan to Erbora. Her second-in-command listened intently, nodded, and went away to her already appointed death.

  Before she left, she turned away and looked at Andara.

  “Andara,” she said, using her name for the first time in years. “Thank you for this.”

  Andara acknowledged her thanks and then prepared herself for what she had to do. It was going to be a long day.