I fucked up. We fucked up, all of us, the entire Flique. We had made assumptions, bad ones. We had assumed that Sariel was so angry and upset about the situation that she was willing to just change the entire timeline simply to ‘fix’ things. We had assumed that being so thrown off by her mother’s appearance in a healthy condition had made her be willing to risk creating an entire new timeline. We--I had thought that I knew better, that I had to stop her from making a mistake.

  But it was me. I was the one who made the mistake. I had shoved her mother through the rift to send her back to the time she belonged in, but if I had waited. If I had just stopped and given Sariel just another couple minutes, she could have… she could have extracted the mental imprint or whatever from the younger version of her mother, then given them to the older version of her mother and sent her back to the future, knowing that at some distant point in time, her mom would be cured. I took that away from her. I had… I’d just destroyed that chance.

  The elevator. I had thought she was coming down to start a fight so I trapped her in there, but she was probably trying to tell us what she was planning. Then I cut her off, I stopped the elevator and that was when she reacted by transporting us out of the pyramid. I was the one who--oh. Damn it.

  The realization of just how badly I had fucked up hit me like a train, leaving me physically and mentally staggering, my eyes widening through all that. In the background, I could see Cassiel coming to terms with what had just happened, their own eyes seeming to reflect the shock and rush of guilt that I was feeling. My mouth opened and shut, until I managed a weak, “I’m sor--”

  I had to snap my head out of the way as a knife went flying right past my ear. Sariel wasn’t listening to anything I wanted to say, and she definitely wasn’t talking either. No, she was past all that. The only thing she was interested in was attacking me. And honestly, at this point, could I really blame her? I fucked up. I seriously fucked up. This was bad, and I had no idea how to fix it. I had to survive right now, no matter how guilty I felt, I had to survive and get out of here. I had to keep going. I would find a way to help Sariel and her mother, somehow. At some point later on, I would find a way to make up for this mistake. But right now, I had to get out of this place and just--just keep going.

  Actually, the sooner the better on that point, since from the sound of things, we had done a lot of damage to that pyramid on our way through it. There were ominous groaning and whistling sounds coming from up there, and the ground had started to shake. I was pretty sure the whole structure was already falling apart. Actually, falling apart would be the optimistic version. It might just end up exploding, which I was going to guess would not be good. Especially given it was still sucking large amounts of energy off the rift itself. I had to take that part out of the equation.

  Right, the rift, I just had to go through that. Unfortunately, no sooner had I started to pivot that way, than I felt some sort of tight cord suddenly snap around my arm. The next thing I knew, Sariel was yanking me away from the rift. She was clearly using her boost, and possibly a spell enhancing her strength even further, judging from the way she was able to bodily haul me off my feet and pull me toward her. I barely had time to orient myself in the air before her fist collided with my face. It actually probably hurt both of us about the same, given my durability versus her temporarily enhanced strength, but still. I really didn’t think she cared about any damage to her hand. Nor was she making any sort of future plans or thinking about what was going to happen. I doubted she was even paying the slightest bit of attention to the shaking and groaning around us. She just wanted to take out all her anger on me. There wasn’t any further thought than that.

  My hand caught her rising arm as she was trying to stab me, and I twisted it enough while both of us came down in the dirt to stop her from driving it forward. “I’m sorry!” I managed to get out, not that she was listening to anything that came out of my mouth. She snarled like an animal, jerking her arm free. I felt her pivot around, her foot lashing out to kick at me, and managed to lift my foot just enough to avoid it. But that left me open to her fist coming at my throat. At the last second, I managed to tuck my chin so she hit that instead. Which hurt, but at least it was better than taking her fist to my trachea. I just had to shake it off, shake her off, and get through the rift.

  Some sort of bright, blinding flash spell went off in my face, making me reel backward with spots dancing through my vision just as she pivoted around to bring her foot up and drove it into my stomach. If I hadn’t had that high durability boost, I would’ve been flat on my back, wheezing desperately for air. I needed just a second to collect myself, to orient and focus once more. But she had no intention of giving me that second. She was too angry, too upset. I’d never seen the Sariel I knew like this. It was a wild, animalistic rage that scared me coming from Sariel almost as much as it would have coming from my own mother. Especially when it was pointed at me.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t alone in here. Story, who had been just as shaken and shocked by the guilt of what we had done, managed to recover enough to create a quick distraction. Through a combination of the power that allowed her to make small illusions, and the one that allowed her to mess with someone’s senses, she made Sariel see some sort of large tentacle reaching out for her from the side, trying to wrap around her neck. That made the woman jerk backward before she could realize that it wasn’t real, and I used that opening to throw myself away from her. My staff appeared in my hand, as I sent a blast of concussive force that way in the midst of my backwards flip. It was enough to catch the Seosten woman and fling her a dozen feet away.

  Something hit me then, and I looked down reflexively, squinting through the spots that were still dancing through my vision thanks to that flash spell just enough to see green paint covering my side and chest. Cassiel’s voice called through the air, shouting for me to go, to get to the rift now. They were facing Sariel, putting themself between the two of us as they shouted for her to wait, that I had to do this, that we were sorry but this had to happen and we would all find a way to fix it somehow. Honestly, I was pretty sure they were just saying anything to keep her attention.

  Right, green paint meant speed. I couldn’t waste that. Spinning toward the rift, I sprinted that way. My own boost combined with the green paint from Cassiel made me a blur of motion, which I added to by using a burst from my staff to launch myself forward. The rift was right there, I just had to get through the damn thing. I could fix everything else eventually, I could make up for what happened with Korsmea. I would find a way to help Sariel save her mother, whatever it took. I didn’t know how, but I would. There had to be something. But right now, this was about stopping the Fomorians from becoming even more powerful. And, more immediately, it was about stopping this particular rift from doing any more damage to the landscape around us.

  Unfortunately, being as quick as I was in that moment didn’t even matter in the end. Not when I literally slammed basically face-first into a damn forcefield that popped into existence at a quick, snarled word from Sariel while she was still on the other side of the room. The knife, the one she threw past my ear a few seconds earlier. Of course she’d intentionally missed me, it was Sariel. She had obviously been putting the blade in place with a forcefield spell on it, and now that was blocking my path. I hit the invisible shield like a fly hitting a windshield. Fortunately, I bounced right off it rather than smearing myself over the thing like an actual fly. But it still hurt. I was briefly dazed.

  Cassiel was on the ground. I hadn’t even seen what Sariel did, but it was enough to drop them for the moment, leaving the other figure on the ground even as the woman jumped over them and came at me.

  None of this was helped by the fact that I was still recovering from being half-blinded by that earlier flash spell. This was ridiculous, I just had to get through the rift, then this would be over.

  No, it wouldn’t be over. This part of it would be, but it was going to take a lot to make up for my mistake. I had fucked up badly, and I had no idea what it was going to take to fix it. All I knew was that somehow, I was going to have to help Sariel fix her mother’s memory. I’d taken away her chance to do that now, and I would have to deal with that at some point. For the moment, all I could do was tell myself that my chance to make up for it would come, but first I had to go through this rift before everything got even worse. I had a personal mistake to make up for. Unfortunately, if I didn’t make it through the rift, and soon from the sound of things shaking apart around us, I wouldn’t get the chance to make up for anything. The situation was rapidly and drastically deteriorating.

  As if to illustrate just how much it was deteriorating, I had to duck and pivot around the knife in Sariel’s hand as she landed next to me and swung at my neck. I still couldn’t see that well, but my item-sense helped with that. My arm rose, smacking hers out of the way before she could skewer me with it in her follow-up stab, and I used my object-slowing power on her clothes to delay the kick that she tried to nail me with in the same moment. That bought me enough time to strip the knife from her hand and toss it to the ground while continuing my pivot to put myself behind her while she was still in the midst of that slow motion kick. Unfortunately, she simply recalled the knife back to her hand with that other aspect of her Olympian power, and threw it straight down into my foot while I stood behind her with a flick of her wrist so that the slowing effect on her clothes didn’t come into play. It was very nearly driven directly into the middle of my foot. I managed to shift just enough that it went through the side instead, sending a shock of pain through me and drawing a grunt. Which was made worse when she triggered some sort of spell on the thing that made it hit me with a burst of pain clearly meant to drop me.

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  Honestly, if I hadn’t had my increased pain resistance power, it probably would have done the trick. I would’ve been on the ground before I even knew what was happening. As it was, I barely managed to stay on my feet, focusing on getting the knife out of my foot. Which I did by using my own item-recall power, since I’d been touching that knife, however briefly, seconds earlier.

  The knife had barely appeared in my own hand before Sariel recalled it to herself once more, already twisting toward me and lashing out with it right at my face. My head snapped sideways to avoid that blade, while I grabbed her elbow and shoved it up further out of the way. With her arm fully extended out over my shoulder, I pivoted on one foot, the one that wasn’t currently busy screaming at me in agony from that spell-blade combination it had been hit with. At the same time, I yanked down on her arm, throwing the woman over my shoulder and sending her stumbling away from me once she landed. Before she could recover, a quick shot of yellow paint from Cassiel slowed the woman down even more. She was stumbling a bit, taking a second to recover. That was what I needed. A second, maybe two, to think of how to break that shield.

  Obviously, I was operating at an even bigger disadvantage than I already would’ve been just from needing to fight Sariel while reeling from the guilt of what I had done. She still had those anti-Necromancy measures up, so I couldn’t exactly summon all my ghost friends to help out. Story and I had to deal with this ourselves. Well, Cassiel and us, and I couldn’t even imagine what was going through their mind right now. They were trying to help me get through the rift, but how guilty were they feeling about what we had done? I just--no, I couldn’t focus on that. I had to deal with getting through the rift. Everything else could wait. It had to wait, or I’d be broken by the guilt. All that mattered right now was getting through that shield she’d put up so I could jump into the rift.

  We’re on it! That was Story, her own voice cracking a bit from the emotions we were all feeling. My hand was already moving, grabbing a blank spell coin to start putting something on it. Right, it was some sort of enhanced version of that active magic-draining spell I’d used way back when I was being held prisoner by Fossor at his home, the ones I’d used to drain his own protection spells. This would work a bit faster, hopefully, and drain enough to create an opening for me to use. We didn’t need to take down the whole shield, it just had to be enough to squeeze through.

  Obviously, Sariel wasn't about to just give me all the time I needed for that. Fortunately, I had help, and not just from Cassiel. In that moment, I sensed figures coming down through the hole we had left in the ceiling of the cave. It was only then that I realized that the pyramid was gone. It had vanished, along with all of its enchanted machines, probably pulled back to the time it had been sent back here from. Which meant the future version of Korsmea was gone too. Yet another reminder of just how badly I had managed to screw things up with my assumptions.

  But then those figures arrived. It was my parents, accompanied by Penny Dreadful, who had caught up with them out there. As soon as the pyramid was out of the way, they had found the hole in the ground and jumped through. Now, Penny crashed into the stumbling Sariel, knocking her further away from me just before the woman managed to spin around, catch the zombie golem around the waist and arm, and fling her sidelong into the distant wall with a loud yowl.

  I didn't have time to even think much about everything that had happened and all the problems with that, let alone explain it to my parents. So, I just snapped a quick request for them to keep Sariel off of me for a minute. I’d have to deal with everything else later, including telling my parents about my mistake, and what I would have to do to make up for that. If I even could.

  Mom and Dad didn't even question it. They just jumped that way, grabbing Sariel by her arms while she was still trying to turn back around. They pulled her away from me, shouting for me to do what I needed to. The Seosten woman was struggling, but they did what they could. It didn’t have to last for long, I only needed a few seconds to create a hole in this forcefield to get through. Story had already used that time to finish the spell-draining coin, flinging it at the shield with a snapped command word to trigger the thing. There was a quick spark of energy, then--a hole, there was a hole in the shield. It wasn’t much, but that was enough. Quickly, I threw myself that way, squeezing through the opening while hearing the sounds of my parents struggling with Sariel, doing the best they could to keep her off me for just a few, incredibly crucial seconds.

  The rift was right there. I just had to walk through it. I just… had to… wait, why wasn’t I moving? I had made it through the forcefield, and the rift itself was barely a few feet in front of me. But I was standing still. My feet were planted to the ground, stubbornly refusing to pick themselves up. Just a couple steps and I could finish this whole thing, but… but I couldn’t make myself do it. No matter how much I told myself just to take those last couple steps, I stayed rooted in place.

  Fuck, this wasn’t just mental doubts or anything like that. This was a spell, another one that had been on that knife. Sariel hadn’t left it at a physical shield to stop me, she’d also put another bit of magic besides that one. This obviously hit me with some sort of psychological effect, stopping me from moving forward. And from a quick check with Story, it wasn’t just me. Story wasn’t able to take over and make our feet move either. It’s a personal, targeted thing, she informed me through what sounded like gritted teeth from the effort she was expending trying to push past that magic. The spell affects your mind, and because we’re extensions of--or just versions of you, it affects us too. We could swap any of the others in here and it wouldn’t help. The entire Flique are just other versions of the same mind, so the spell would affect them as much as it does the two of us. We can’t move.

  Fuck, damn it! I had to figure out a way past this, I had to get my feet to lift off the ground. In the background, I could hear Sariel fighting with my parents, scrambling to get away from them. They couldn’t really hurt her, none of us wanted that. They just--they just had to hold her long enough. But long enough for what? How could I beat this spell of hers? How could I get the--

  A hand caught my arm, making my gaze snap that way. Cassiel. I’d forgotten about them briefly. They’d slipped through the same hole in the shield, and were looking at me intently. “What’s wrong? Just go through the rift, stop waiting!”

  I quickly explained what was going on, that I couldn’t make myself move. They, in turn, hit me with red paint, then tried to shoot some past the rift in order to pull me through that way. That was how their red paint worked. They should have been able to hit me with one part, then send another part past the rift and pull me into it. But their paint just went into the tear in reality and disappeared.

  We were close enough to the rift by now that I felt… strange. It wasn’t just Sariel’s spell, something about the rift itself was… simultaneously pulling at me and pushing me away. It wanted me to jump into it, but it also wanted me to leave. I couldn’t--I couldn’t focus on that.

  My parents and Penny were all doing everything possible to slow Sariel down, without actually hurting her too much. But this couldn’t last. I had to figure out a way past this stupid spell!

  “What if it isn’t your mind telling your body to move?” Cassiel quickly demanded, giving up on trying to get red paint past or anywhere near the rift. “Let me possess you, I’ll send you through.”

  “And you’ll be pulled through with me,” I pointed out quickly. “You don’t know what’ll happen then, or when you’ll end up. You don’t know--”

  “It’s worse than that!” Story used my mouth to shout. “If I understand what’s going on with this rift--if the research the others have been doing down in our library is anywhere near close, them going through is going to--listen, it fucked with Korsmea’s own memory because she was sent through by herself. Cassiel being inside us won’t mess up their memory because we’ll be shielding them, but if it can’t get to them, it’ll mess up everyone else’s memories of them instead. Everyone besides us will just forget them, they’ll all forget Cassiel completely!”

  “We don’t have a choice!” they insisted, both of us looking over at my parents struggling with Sariel. “You need to get through that rift, and we don’t know how to break this spell. Besides, I--I have to make up for what we did, I have to fix it, and I feel like I can only do that if I go with you. I don’t care if they forget me, as long as I can help Sariel.”

  What could I do? What could I say? My head gave a short nod, before they grabbed my arm once more. Then they were inside me, possessing me. I felt a brief hesitation. Then my foot rose. They were right, the spell targeted my mind, and those like mine. Theirs was sufficiently different. They were able to control my body, pushing us to walk forward.

  “Jacob!” That was Sariel, shouting at me as she spun around my mother, dropping into a roll before springing back up. She couldn’t reach us, couldn’t stop us, but she did meet my gaze, snapping a quick, “I’ll find you! Whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re going, whatever you’re up to, I’ll get to you!”

  That was the promise that echoed through my mind, as Cassiel stopped hesitating and flung our body forward through the rift. Those words, shouted at me by an enraged, grieving Sariel, were the last thing I heard before the rift took me away from this place. Four sharp, simple words, shouted at me from across the cavern.

  “I will end you!”

  Those shouted words came from a woman whose opinion I valued almost as high as my own parents’, the hate and rage from the literal mother of my sister driving a spike of guilt through that was as real as the actual blade she had been trying to stab me with.

  I would fix this. I would fix my mistake, somehow. Whatever it took, I would find a way to help Sariel save her mother. But that didn’t stop the pain that her words drove into me, and it didn’t help the pain she herself was feeling right then. Pain that would linger through the years, through the centuries. Cassiel and I had both stopped her from saving her mother. And now we were leaving, disappearing, vanishing right in front of her.

  We hit the rift then, and as waves of guilt and doubt washed over me, as the echoes of Sariel’s promise reverberated through my mind, I felt the world, the universe squeeze itself all the way down into my stomach.

  Then it expanded once more, enveloping me… and we were gone.

  Joke Tags: Don’t Worry Cassiel? You And Dare Can Compare Notes About Being Erased. Or At Least You Could If Dare Could Bring It Up Without Dooming The World