In desperation, Abithriax tried the same trick he’d used before, recoiling to lash out, but I’d been anticipating it and was ready. As his defences fell back I surged in, and for an instant I could reach that green web.
An instant was all I needed. One moment Abithriax was gathering his strength; the next his mind was ripped to pieces. His projection convulsed and disappeared, the green web fraying and coming apart. I tore the fragments from the fateweaver and scattered them.
The patches of green light drifted, dimmed, faded.
Abithriax was gone.
I staggered, catching myself. Light was rising up from my body; my vision was whiter than it should have been and I knew I didn’t have much time. The wisps of light coming from the fateweaver had multiplied, and they were intensifying as I watched. The ends of the wand were glowing white, starting to dissolve. Reaching out with the dreamstone, I could sense the fateweaver’s presence. It was hurt, dying. It had been dependent on Abithriax, and now that he was gone, it wouldn’t survive.
Unless it had a substitute. I tried to link with the item, using the dreamstone as a bridge. The fateweaver seemed to react, but weakly. It wasn’t stabilising. Abithriax had maintained some sort of mental link with the thing, but I wasn’t a mind mage. The fateweaver was glowing; the item was becoming ethereal, part of Elsewhere. I stared at it, then looked at where my right hand had been.
There wasn’t time to think. I dropped the dreamstone, picked up the fateweaver in my left hand, and placed it against the stump of my right hand. As I did I focused my will, reshaping the fateweaver into a new form, one linked to me.
Agony exploded in my arm. It felt as though I had a bar of molten metal fused to my wrist. I forced through the pain, disregarded it. Join with me, I told the fateweaver.
The fateweaver latched on, merging into me like flowing water.
Chaotic sensations flashed through my mind, insane and indescribable. I struggled to keep my sense of self, hold against the pressure. Gradually the tide slowed, eased.
The wisps of light streaming up around me were so bright I could barely see. I felt light and airy, my feet nearly floating. I snatched up the dreamstone and channelled. A gate appeared, and I flew towards it.
I burst through the gateway like a diver landing in water. Sound and sensation hit like a hammer and I slammed into the floor of the bubble realm, the impact knocking the breath out of me. Behind me I felt the gate to Elsewhere wink out. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, moving my limbs experimentally. They were all still there. More than that, the pain of my injuries was gone. I felt better than I had for days.
I sat up, took a deep breath, and looked down at my right arm.
The stump of my right wrist and the fateweaver were gone. In their place I had a new hand, white and pale as though sculpted from alabaster. Tendrils of white traced into my forearm, linking into my flesh. I flexed the fingers of the hand one by one, closed them into a fist, opened them again. The movements were sluggish, but they became smoother as I watched.
The view my magesight gave me was . . . odd. The signature from my hand was still recognisably the fateweaver’s, but it had changed, less like an imbued item and more like a living creature. I couldn’t tell for sure, but through the dreamstone the fateweaver seemed stable. Actually, I didn’t need the dreamstone. I could sense the fateweaver, feel its presence in my thoughts.
I got to my feet and stretched. I felt refreshed, as though I’d been given a whole new body. Maybe I had. Glancing down, I saw that most of my clothes had dissolved: my coat was gone and my shirt was hanging in tatters. My trousers, made of a heavier material, had fared a little better, but still looked like they’d been attacked by a swarm of moths. Everything in my pockets was gone: I had the dreamstone, and that was it.
New hand, though. That counts for something.
I could use the fateweaver as a hand. What about its powers?
The last time I’d used the fateweaver, Abithriax had placed the knowledge of how it worked directly into my mind. The item granted the ability to determine future events, choosing what would and wouldn’t come to pass. But back then, Abithriax had been the one to actually use it. This time, I’d have to figure it out on my own.
I looked into the futures, trying various approaches. It took me only seconds; the fateweaver’s magic felt very compatible with mine. From a quick glance, it didn’t seem as though I’d have to do very much—
Wait. Why did a lot of my futures end in a black void?
A tremor seemed to go through the bubble realm, and I thought I could sense a sound on the edge of hearing, something that made me think of something buckling. An image flashed through my head of water pressing against a ship’s hull. I didn’t understand what was going on. I was alone in this place, especially now that . . .
“Oh crap,” I said out loud. This place had been made as a prison for Abithriax. And now he was gone.
The creaking sound echoed through the bubble realm again, and I could swear I felt the ground shift. I snatched up my armour and the cube and started hurrying towards the exit. Looking through the futures, I felt a chill. The lines ending in a void were multiplying, and worse, they were completely independent of my actions. At any moment I could get wiped out of existence, and there was nothing I could do . . .
. . . nothing I could do as a diviner. But I wasn’t just a diviner anymore.
I could feel the futures branching, lines of light in the darkness. I picked one in which I was safe, except this time, instead of looking back along the line to match it with my actions, I reached for it. I felt the fateweaver stir and unfold, like a muscle contracting. I touched the line and felt the lights shift, the glows of the other possibilities winking out as their potential flowed into the path I’d chosen.
There were no more branching futures, no possibilities of sudden death. The futures followed a clear, set path.
I blinked. So easy? I slowed to a walk—no need to hurry—and studied my immediate futures. They weren’t a solid line, more like a flowing river. The water could follow many paths, but it was constrained by the banks. But up ahead I could sense the futures branching. Without my intervention, they were drifting apart again.
As I walked, I kept working on the futures, and with each attempt I learned more about how the fateweaver functioned. It wasn’t choosing among options, exactly—more of a decree. I could decide on a future, and make it come to pass. It had limits though, which I didn’t fully understand but which I was pretty sure involved probability. The more unlikely the event I chose, the more effort the fateweaver had to expend. If I tried to force a future that was sufficiently improbable, or which was possible but not in the way I decreed, it would fail.
Except that my own magic let me know exactly how probable every possible future was. The two types dovetailed perfectly. Divination showed the possibilities; fate let me choose among them.
Right now, the possibilities in which the bubble realm collapsed were multiplying. It was becoming harder to hold to the future in which the bubble stayed together. I probably didn’t have more than a few minutes.
The corridor opened into a small, featureless room. I held up the red cube. “Abithriax is dead,” I told it. “Ready for something new?”
The cube seemed to consider, then glowed. A section of the wall shimmered and became a gateway. The last time I’d used it, it had led into a grassy meadow deep in the countryside. This time, the gate was masked by an opaque black screen.