Reaper(Cradle #10)(105)
A four-armed woman gathered up the collateral damage from one of the Mad King’s attacks, spooling up spatial cracks like thread, and wove them into text that touched something deep inside the world of Fathom.
Time froze around her. In that space beyond time, she began a subtle but far-reaching working, redefining the mechanisms of Iteration One-one-nine.
Durandiel rose up from behind the four-armed Vroshir and watched.
“Not bad,” the Ghost said.
The woman spun around, her backhand trailing energy that could annihilate entire populations, but it was all a function of will and energy, so it faded to nothing before the authority of the Ghost.
The slap landed normally on Durandiel’s cheek.
“Ow.”
The Vroshir flinched and tried to run, but space was still sealed. The Ghost grabbed her by the collar. “Why don’t you come work for me?” She folded the four-armed woman like a piece of paper, but this paper squirmed and resisted, so Durandiel let it unfold slightly and peeked inside.
“It’s that or execution,” she pointed out.
The woman stopped resisting, and the Ghost folded her up and slipped her inside a pocket. The zone of frozen time vanished as she strode after other rule-breakers.
Several galaxies away, the Mad King clashed in combat against Razael, the Wolf, and Gadrael, the Titan. The unstoppable sword of the Abidan and their unbreakable shield.
Every clash between them devastated star systems, setting even distant planets trembling. Civilizations throughout Fathom begged for someone to save them from what was surely the end of the world.
Suriel, the Phoenix, answered them. Her Razor removed toxic energy, hostile will, and insidious parasites even as she herself constantly renewed the Iteration, keeping it moving toward a state of wholeness and order. Corpses returned to life, shattered planets re-formed and drifted back into orbit, and the explosion of stars reversed.
Over it all, the Hound watched, directing each Judge from one decision to another, guiding Fate toward victory. Futures flashed, were chosen, and sprang into being at his command. In realms unseen, he steered causality around dead ends of nonexistence and pitfalls of chaos.
All passed in one blink of a mortal eye.
To the uncountable trillions of mortals who called Fathom home, this was an incomprehensible nightmare. Only earlier that day, across many thousands of inhabited planets, the universe had functioned exactly as it always had.
Then reality had begun to tear apart. A figure with burning eyes, in armor of bone, had appeared in the sky, somehow visible from every city on every planet at once.
He had unraveled their world. They had seen space crumble, time spiral in on itself. Unnamed horrors had sprung forth from nothing, and neither gravity nor reality were reliable any longer. Then the quakes in existence had ceased without warning, and all had been restored to normal. The warped rules had righted themselves, leaving everyone in Fathom to wonder if they had suffered a collective hallucination.
Until the stellar war had ignited. Then planets exploded and were remade seconds later. People were slaughtered, revived, reborn, repaired. Time twisted, slowed, sped up. Space was compressed, then stretched. Bloody lightning fell from the sky, followed by healing rain. Towers sprang from dreams while ruins bloomed into bustling cities that had suddenly always existed.
And Suriel knew that all this was only possible because of the presence of all the Court of Seven. Fathom was the lynchpin of Sector Eleven, with by far the greatest population and the most stable connection to the Way. The world was so stable that it helped steady all the other Iterations in the Sector, so it had to fall before any of the others could. The Mad King had spent great effort trying to destroy it, even with the Scythe of Ozriel.
Yet, without the seven Judges anchoring its existence, he would have succeeded. That the beings of Fathom remained to experience the battle was itself a stroke of fortune.
While Suriel reached all over the Iteration to correct disruptions and knit the fabric of reality back together, her Presence continually spat communications and warnings into her mind.
[WARNING: incoming attack.]
[Telariel has redirected attack; requests restoration at the following coordinates.]
[Sector Three Control reports an unusual spike in deviations.]
[Temporal deviation detected. Corrected by Durandiel, but requires Phoenix support.]
[Sector Zero Control requests an update.]
It was the Spider and his Presence that handled communication through the Way, so Suriel knew he was enduring a far greater deluge of requests and alarms, but she found herself overwhelmed anyway.
There was a reason the Judges never acted together. There were only seven of them.
While their greatest enemies may have chosen to stand and face them here, this was by no means an exhaustive list of the forces arrayed against them. While they were here, they would lose territory everywhere else. Even Sanctum was no longer completely secure, though it had powerful and ancient protections ready to deploy.
They would certainly win here, but they had to make it worth the price.
Suriel’s Presence blared with another alarm, and Suriel knew that this time, the Spider had passed this message to all of them at once.
[WARNING: Haven breached.]
It came with a vision of Haven, the prison-world that looked like an iron prison even from orbit. It flared red in her vision, indicating a spatial breach in the Iteration.
Suriel overheard as the Hound’s voice was transmitted to the Fox.