Right, this definitely wasn't going to be any sort of fun. Which was probably one of the biggest understatement thoughts I had had in some time. Part of me wanted to summon Doctor Manakel up to ask him why the hell he hadn't warned me about this or explained what was happening, since I was sure he had to have known about it. But I knew that wasn't fair. He couldn't change the future either. Not if he wanted things to play out as they had to lead him to this point. I understood that deep down, even if I did feel a bit annoyed. Okay, a lot annoyed. But a fair bit of that was probably more because I was so upset at the very thought of needing to fight Sariel.

  Wait, maybe I didn't actually have to do that after all. The elevator was still coming down. Before it could reach even the halfway point, I sent a couple ghosts over to rip out the electronics at the base of it and shut the thing down. Then Story used our small portal creation power to reach out and scribble a quick spell on the side of the thing that would hopefully prevent the Seosten woman from using magic to simply phase or teleport her way through. I just hoped it would last long enough to be done with this. After all, Sariel wasn’t exactly a slouch when it came to magic.

  Even as that was happening, Cassiel demanded to know what I was talking about. I didn't have time to tell them all of it out loud, so I just grabbed their hand and possessed them briefly so I could shove the memory of what I had just seen into their head before jumping right back out again. My attention was on Korsmea while I gave the human-turned-Seosten behind me a moment to process what I’d just shown them. “Okay, listen, the woman we came with, she’s trying to change the future. I don’t-- it’s not something we can get into. She thinks she can fix things, but we have--”

  Unfortunately, that was the moment something else went wrong. Because of course it did. While I was trying to finish what I was saying, I caught a glimpse of that energy that had been steadily pulsing off of the rift so it could be pulled into the machines in the pyramid abruptly fluctuate and wobble in the air. Instead of being pulled that way, they held still before being pushed back the way they had come. Wait, what was going on? Why would the energy suddenly start going into--

  Suddenly, the rift gave a heavy shudder and the energy seemed to explode off of it. I felt something hit me like a blow to the chest, and even as I staggered backward, I could tell I was somewhere else. The ground under me was different. I wasn't in that cave anymore. I was back out in the area surrounding the pyramid, next to an old florist shop. Or a very new florist shop, considering it wouldn’t exist for another couple thousand years. I could see the very tip of the pyramid in the distance, as the buildings around it had changed completely in that time.

  Okay, just great, obviously Sariel had managed to do something to the rift that teleported me away from it. I wasn’t sure how she’d done that, but it probably had something to do with the future version of her creating that pyramid in the first place. Maybe she’d gone as far as to include some sort of ‘send Jacob the fuck over there’ button. At this point, I just didn’t think anything would surprise me.

  I was proven wrong about that not being surprised thing pretty quickly, because when I went to start running back toward the pyramid with a muttered curse, I found myself suddenly facing the wrong direction. What--how did--huh? Spinning back around to get the pyramid in sight, I took another two steps. And just like that, I was facing the wrong way again. Not only that, I had been transported another twenty feet or so in that direction, further away from the pyramid. So, right, not only did Sariel have a ‘send Jacob the fuck over there’ button, but it was an ongoing thing. I couldn’t get closer to the pyramid, or the rift, because every time I tried to, it sent me further away and turned me around. Fantastic, just super-great, this whole situation was really going positively swimmingly.

  Nor could I simply teleport back to that spot. The spatial anomaly shit was acting up too much for that. I tried to focus on that area I had just been in very briefly, and immediately felt a wave of very intense backlash that left me dizzy and convinced me it was a bad idea to push any further. It wasn’t going to be that easy. Not that even a single part of this had been easy at all, but still.

  Quickly, I checked on the ghosts I still had back at the rift. Or tried to. But when I did, they were scattered all over the area too. They had been sent everywhere except the pyramid and rift. And none of them were having any more luck when it came to going back that way. I even tried looking through the eyes of Penny--the ghost Penny who was possessing the golem of herself.

  Yeah, unsurprisingly, she wasn't anywhere near the pyramid either. She had been transported to some area on the far side of the structure, opposite where I was. As soon as I made contact, I could feel her confusion and fear. She was, after all, still a little girl in there. She liked to play up the animalistic stuff for fun, but she was a child. I let her know I was right there, that she wasn't alone. Then I told her to circle all the way around to rejoin me, and not to try to go into the pyramid. I also manifested a couple ghosts over there to keep her company and play escort so she wouldn't be lonely. At least I could still do that, as long as they didn't go toward the rift.

  Speaking of ghosts playing escort, I checked on the ones that were with my parents as well, as soon as that thought occurred to me. The good news on that front was that they hadn't been sent away from the pyramid. The bad news was that they were right in front of it and couldn't get inside. The doorway we had gone through was gone, leaving just a solid wall there. Worse, there was some sort of forcefield around the whole thing. What a great time for Sariel to apparently figure out what all the buttons in that place did. Really, just completely fantastic.

  Speaking through one of my escort ghosts, I quickly told my parents what was going on, and that they had to find some way to get into that pyramid, promising that I would get there as soon as I could. Mom wanted to come find me, but I insisted that getting into the pyramid was what mattered. I still couldn't understand what Sariel wanted to do to change the future, but we couldn't let it happen. We had to stop her. We just had to do it gently enough that she would still live to become the person we knew in our own time. God, this was really fucking awkward.

  We have to do something, Story put in tersely. I don't know when that future version of Sariel is from, exactly, but she's obviously not the version we know. She's from just far enough ahead to know enough to be a problem. How did she find out about Manakel? And how would she know that much, but not know that she's the one who actually ends up killing him? Hell, why would she believe that so easily? I swear, there's so much of this that really doesn't make any sense.

  Informing her that I was very well aware that there were a lot of questions about all this, and that I would make certain to complain to the management, I tried one more thing. Cassiel. I had possessed them a couple times now. Once right before I was sent out of that place. If Sariel had left them in there, I could use the recall power and get right back into the-- aaaand they had been sent out of the place as well. I could tell that as soon as I did a quick partial recall just to look through their eyes. It was weird, because when I did that, I was looking at myself. It was just myself from the side and at a distance, as they jumped off the roof of one of those random buildings and used their red paint to pull themself toward me. Which was all somewhat disorienting on top of being disappointing. I really had to accept that Sariel wasn't going to let it be easy to get back in that pyramid. She was just far too smart for something simple like that.

  I released the partial-recall and snapped back to myself just as Cassiel landed next to me. Their eyes were wide. “What the hell? Now you're telling me there's some future version of my friend that's pissed at you because she doesn't have the context she needs about what really happened so she's trying to change the entire timeline? Why would Sariel finding out that you had something to do with that yes make her want to change everything about the future? She knows better than to change the future. She knows even better than I do so that's a bad idea. This doesn’t make sense!”

  My head shook. “Believe me, I have no idea. Actually, I think the me being responsible for Manakel’s death thing was just the part that made her not trust me anymore. It was something else that convinced her to try to change the future. I just don't know what. She's trying to fix things. I guess from her point of view those things haven't happened yet, so she's not exactly changing the future, she's just making a better one for her people from this point forward. Hell, maybe she thinks she's making a better one for everybody. I don't know. She might really believe that she can stop the entire Fomorian war or something. Maybe she thinks she can use this rift to create a better timeline. But we have to get back in there and stop her. Wherever she's getting this information from, whoever told her about me, they obviously told her just enough to make her not trust me. They're manipulating her. So I think it's safe to say that they're lying when they told her she could fix things.”

  There was plenty more I wanted to say about that, but now wasn't the time. I had to figure out why I couldn't get back to the pyramid. Which was a thought that went through my mind for a second before I snapped my gaze back to Cassiel. “I don't suppose you can get closer to the pyramid? Whatever she did to throw me out of that place keeps pushing me away from it when I try to go back there.”

  They shook their head and glanced that way with a heavy sigh. “No, I tried. I'm being pushed away from it too. And I tried to use magic to talk to her, but all she would say was that I'd understand soon. Also, that I shouldn't trust you. I tried to tell her that it was okay and that there’s more to that story, but she pushed me out and broke the connection. She's not exactly in the right frame of mind right now. I think having her mother so close really put her on edge, and now that she's got that message from her future self, she's just not in any state to talk.”

  Yep, this was definitely very bad. The Sariel I was accustomed to dealing with had a couple more millennia of coming to terms with things, maturing, and just generally growing into who she was. One might say that being around a hundred years old would mean she’d had plenty of time to mature, but I was pretty sure Seosten actually matured slower in addition to just having an extended lifespan and getting older more slowly in general. I was willing to bet that as far as psychological maturity went, Sariel was operating around the same as someone my age or so. And now she had just been told that not only should she not trust me, but that I was the one responsible for Manakel’s death. Manakel, a person who, at this point in time, she looked up to.

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  Oh, and on top of that, she had the presence of her mother to throw her off. Her mom, someone she had literally never known while she wasn't affected by that curse, was right here and talking to her. That had to screw with her mind an awful lot. Especially if this was really one of the last times when Korsmea’s memory would be clear. She had been trying so hard to stop herself from attempting to change the timeline, and now some future version of herself sends a message and an entire super-magic machine back to tell her it’s okay and that she can actually fix things? And that she shouldn’t trust me in particular, because I was a liar? Sure, no wonder she wasn’t listening. I understood that, but we still had to stop her. And I was going to try very hard not to think about the confusing fact that a future version of Sariel should already know whether we had stopped her at this point or not. That just-- yeah, really not something to focus on right now.

  Instead, all that I could focus on was how to get inside that place to make sure Sariel didn’t end up doing something that all of us would regret. I didn’t even know exactly what that future version of herself had convinced her she could do, since she wasn’t exactly explaining things, and she had made sure I couldn’t use ghosts to spy on her. Something about using this machine to fix things, but what? How? No, I just had to stop her. Maybe once we got her to calm down she could explain, after… well, after we made sure she couldn’t do whatever she was trying to.

  My mind was racing fruitlessly until Cassiel grabbed my arm and pointed up. “Can you teleport us to a spot above the Earth? As high as possible. Maybe if we’re high enough, it’ll be above the anti-teleportation shield she’s got up. Then we just… uh, drop down. I can hit the pyramid roof with pink paint before we get there. That’ll make the material soft enough for us to go right through it. Then I’ll slow us down before we land. That should give us a second of surprise.”

  They looked straight at me then, their eyes darkening. “But listen, she’s trying to fix things, and she’s not--she’s not thinking straight, so--”

  “I know,” I assured her. “Trust me, all I want to do is end this rift. That’s--”

  I was interrupted by Story, who abruptly cut in. Uh, really hate to pile on, but there’s another problem. We’ve been doing the math in here, and you know how weird and sickly that rift looked? It’s not just because of all that stuff in the pyramid. Actually, we’re pretty sure the pyramid is actually keeping the rift somewhat more intact. It would’ve fallen apart before now without that. It’s because of Korsmea. She shouldn’t be here. When the rift was trying to grab the rest of us to bring us back here and got her instead that first time, it… it messed something up. It’s like the rift is sick or something. It has indigestion. It needs to send Korsmea back where--I mean when she came from. Which means--

  Which means she has to go through the rift herself, I finished. We have to get in there, send Korsmea through, then I’ll go through after her. Then--then maybe, hopefully this will all be over and everything will go back to normal here.

  There was so much more I still wanted to talk through. We were missing something, I knew that much. Something important. But the longer we stood here debating and fretting over it, the better chance that Sariel would end up doing something we couldn’t let her do. There was no more time to think. So, I told Cassiel to brace themself and to get us down into that cave asap, before focusing on transporting us as high above the pyramid as possible, to get higher than the protective shield Sariel had around it.

  It worked. We were suddenly freefalling through the air. Looking down, I saw the pyramid rushing up toward us. Cassiel inverted, pointing a hand that way to hit the side of it with a spray of pink paint. Instead of just letting us crash through that, I extended my staff, sending a blast of concussive force that way. Sure enough, the bits that were pink were easily blown apart, leaving a hole right there for us to drop through. Coming at it from above actually let us bypass the protective field that kept sending us away.

  Just like that, we were in the pyramid proper, going through the space where the spell tubes were. Which might’ve been a problem, but Cassiel kept hitting everything in our path with pink paint, and I kept blasting it apart. We went right through the thing, even as the pyramid started to shake and groan in protest about the damage we were doing. We were breaking the whole thing on our way in, destroying the intricately-created and maintained magic. But I couldn’t think about that. We just had to end this. Get Korsmea through the rift, then I could go through, and it would be over.

  Yes, it occurred to me that this was probably what created Korsmea’s memory problems. The rift itself, sending her through it like this, while the rift was unstable was probably… almost certainly what caused the so-called ‘curse.’ That was what Sariel wanted to fix by stopping me from sending her mother through. But what choice did I have? If Sariel’s mother didn’t end up with her memory problems, then… then everything would change. Sariel herself wouldn’t even exist. Vanessa wouldn’t exist, or Tristan. Tabbris wouldn’t exist. Everything, absolutely everything would be different. I couldn’t let her save her mother’s memory, I just--fucking god damn it, I couldn’t let her!

  Fuck, I hated this. I hated it so much. No wonder the future Sariel was so pissed at me. This was what I had to do. I had to give her mother those memory problems by sending her through that rift. It wasn’t just about not letting her change the future, I was going to have to actually be the one who threw her mother into the rift to create that whole situation.

  Then there was no more time to even think about it. We had blasted our way all the way down through the pyramid and back into the cavern underneath it. Cassiel used yellow paint on both of us to slow our descent so we could land safely. But no sooner had my feet touched the ground than I was already sprinting toward the rift. Korsmea was there, looking at it. In the background, I heard Cassiel shout something toward the other end of the cavern, where Sariel was. Sariel was ignoring her, hurling something my way. No--somethings, my item sense had the chance to warn me. Throwing knives. Six of them came my way. Four were caught by a spray of paint from Cassiel. One of them stopped its momentum and froze there briefly when I focused on it, while the last one sliced right through my shoulder. A shock of pain went through me, but I didn’t stop.

  “Sorry, sorry!” I blurted toward Korsmea while grabbing her arm and putting one hand on her back. “I’m really sorry about this! No time to talk, you’ve gotta go--through!”

  With that, I used my Seosten boost and every bit of strength I had, bodily hurling the woman through that rift. There was no time to think, no time to do anything else. Sariel was too dangerous. If I didn’t get Korsmea through that rift right now, I might never be able to.

  Then it was done. The woman passed through the rift and disappeared from sight. She was… gone.

  Everything went silent for a moment. I stood there, panting heavily. I could sense Sariel and Cassiel somewhere behind me. When I spoke, my voice was soft. “I’m sorry. I know you won’t believe me, but I am. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t let you change the timeline.”

  There was no response at first. And no knives being thrown my way either. Slowly, I turned to look that way. In that moment, as I looked at Sariel’s face, I saw… pain. I saw grief. I saw hope ripped away and burned to ash. I saw such deep loss that it made my breath stop. Her face twisted, her soul cracking apart in front of me as she stared at the rift.

  “I wasn’t.” Her voice was so soft then, so faint, that I could barely hear her. “I wasn’t… changing the timeline. I wasn’t changing it. The person in the pod, it’s her. It’s my mother, from the future, from after you came to the past, from after your time. The stasis spells were meant to stop the timeline from noticing that there were two of them at once. Her body was time-locked so she could exist in two places at once. That’s what all the pyramid was doing, that’s why it was taking energy from the rift, just to… just to maintain the stasis spell so I could have both versions of my mother in the same place at the same time, to… to transfer the memories properly. All I had to do was… was take a sample of my younger mother’s memories, a full copy of her mind from before she was affected. I could have… I could have taken a mind-copy, let her go through the rift, then put that copy into the older version of her, before it degraded too much. I could have fixed her. I could have saved that… that future version of her. I could have saved her. Then I’d send her back to when she belonged, and she--she would’ve been fine. She--” Her voice cracked, becoming soundless for a moment as her mouth opened and shut a couple times while she fought for words.

  “I wasn’t changing the timeline. I just needed both versions of my mother in the same place at the same time for a few minutes, and I could have fixed her. All I wanted to do was make a copy of my mother’s memories, her mind, her… her mental state and give them to her older self. That would have fixed her. It would have saved her. It wouldn’t have changed anything about the timeline. It was safe. I figured it out. I figured it all out. I’d just fix her, send her back into the future, and know that… that someday she’d be okay. I could have lived with that. I could have lived with knowing that even if she wasn’t okay right now, in a couple thousand years, she’d be safe. I could have lived with that. I could have saved her. It would have taken millennia to pay off, but it wouldn’t matter. At least I’d know-- at least I would have gone through all that time knowing that someday she would be okay.”

  Everything I’d heard, everything I’d thought she said about changing the timeline, it… the words of her future self were ringing through my head.

  ‘It will work.’

  ‘You can fix things.’

  ‘We can change it.’

  ‘We can fix it.’

  She… she wasn’t talking about the timeline. She was talking about her mother. The entire time, that whole thing I’d overheard, she was talking about fixing her mother, not the timeline. But I-- I thought… I thought…

  The enormity of the horrific mistake I had just made was still bringing its full weight down even as Sariel’s gaze centered on me. The grief and loss was still there, but it was rapidly eclipsed by the rage that had just begun to erupt inside her. The rage of a woman who had had hope offered to her and then ripped away and burned to ash right in front of her face.

  “You took that away from me,” she announced, in a voice that fairly crackled with the sort of anger I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Hate that I had never seen directed at me before. Not like this. “If you’d given me thirty seconds I could have copied her memories and saved her. You ruined that. You sent her away. You… you…

  “You!”

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