After the End: Serenity

Serenity knew Blaze’s comment was meant as a clue and he could infer more from what the Memory of Light said. Adding in his knowledge of Rissa’s abilities made things a little more clear, even if he didn’t think Rissa would ever be fooled the way Blaze clearly wanted Serenity to fool Dinatha.

He was clearly supposed to pretend to be an echo of the past, an echo that the Memory of Light had accidentally triggered. If he were really here, “Eternus” would also be able to see him, which meant that the Memory of Light had to be seeing him with her oracular sight.

Or, at least, that was what Blaze wanted her to believe. Serenity knew she was actually seeing him with her normal vision, but she seemed to think he wasn’t there normally. Maybe she was mixing up her normal sight and her foresight? If he was hard for her to see with foresight, but her foresight often saw things her normal sight didn’t, it made some sense for her to get confused about which one she used to see him.

He could get that far without any difficulty, but he didn’t really know what to do with it. Fortunately, the Memory of Light seemed to expect some confusion; he’d just have to play into that and hope that she patched over any mistakes he made. “I don’t know. Did you call me?”

That seemed to be the right question, or at least a right question. Dinatha stopped and seemed to think for a moment. “Did I call you? Uh. Maybe? That would explain why you’re here now.”

Serenity tilted his head. This was perfect; he needed more information and her reaction gave him a way to get it. “Then you’ll have to tell me why I’m here.”

Dinatha frowned. If she were younger, Serenity might even have called the expression a pout; she was definitely unhappy. She spent some time thinking; Serenity simply waited.

While Dinatha thought, Blaze made his way quietly to another room and brought back a chair. He didn’t get one for either Dinatha or Serenity, which probably meant that he was still in character as Eternus. As much as Serenity wished Blaze could give him advice right now, staying in character was more important. If the Memory of Light realized they were fooling her, things could go sideways quickly.

Dinatha’s eyes followed Blaze as she thought, but she didn’t seem surprised by his actions. Instead, she tugged the chair out of Blaze’s hands and set it next to the enveloping reclined seat she’d lain in before they arrived. “Go ahead, Eternus. Sit with me.”

Blaze’s expression twisted into something close to a sneer and for a moment Serenity thought he was going to say something cruel, but he nodded. As far as Serenity was concerned, that was the first time he’d truly seen just how in character Blaze was; the gentle man he knew would never have looked that disdainful of someone who so dearly wanted his approval.

Serenity could only hope that it was all acting. The one good thing he could say was that even if Eternus had some influence on Blaze’s reactions, he definitely wasn’t in control. There was no way Eternus would have gone along with the plan Serenity and Blaze were following.

Dinatha waited for Blaze to sit, then climbed back into the permanently reclined seat. During that entire time, she paid no attention to Serenity, clearly convinced that the ghost of the past she’d accidentally summoned would wait for her convenience. Once she was settled, she turned her head towards Serenity. “You are here because of the storm.”

“Storm?” Serenity had no idea what the Memory of Light was talking about. The weather was clear. If she meant some kind of storm through Time itself, she was going to have to be more specific.

“I can’t tell what form it will take or why it is coming; All I can see are glimpses of what might happen but they are all bad. Right before you appeared, I saw…” The Memory of Light broke off and turned her head to look at Blaze. She reached out and set a hand on the false Eternus’s shoulder. Serenity could hear suppressed tears in her next words. “I saw a body laid out for all to see, the powerful brought low by nothing.”

If she meant that she’d seen Eternus’s body laid out before a burial, there was a good chance that her vision would come true. Serenity wasn’t about to mention that. In fact, it was probably best to spend as little time on that topic as possible. “What else have you seen?”

Blaze said nothing; he didn’t even look at Dinatha. Serenity took that as a sign that Blaze didn’t like pretending to be Eternus, but it could just as easily have been completely in character for the man. Dinatha didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, which didn’t ease Serenity’s feelings about Eternus at all.

Dinatha tightened her grip on “Eternus’s” shoulder, then took a deep breath and let it out. “I’ve seen so many things. They make no sense; why would ships from outside descend upon the Mound in a single wave to destroy everything we’ve built? Why would a turtle the size of the Mound itself appear from below and destroy everything?”

Serenity had to fight to prevent a laugh. Contacting the World Spirit of Eadsyt had occurred to him, even if there hadn’t seemed to be much point. It sounded like he could also have found a Near Point, visited the World Core physically, and met a Black Tortoise larger than even the elder he’d met back on Eitchen, Old Morrek. Serenity didn’t know how to convince such a tortoise to attack the Mound, but Dinatha’s vision implied that it was possible, even if it wasn’t likely.

A fleet of ships was easier to explain; he’d been offered exactly such a fleet by the Emperor. He could probably also have hired a mercenary company with enough ships or even somehow gotten a disparate group of people affected by the Mimir together to attack all at once. It was far more likely, but Serenity still didn’t see the point. If he wanted that sort of devastation, he could do it himself with some preparation time and materials. He didn’t want to kill that many innocents.

That thought made everything far less amusing. “What else did you see? That can’t have been all, if you’re calling it a storm.”

The Memory of Light shook her head. “No, but most of them are only a flash. A deadly cloud, creatures that make no sense, a horde of the living dead, waves of creatures springing from nowhere, even an assault by insects that hop. None of them tell me anything but it’s all I can see when I try to look forward!”

Strangely enough, this was a problem Serenity was qualified to help with; he’d helped Rissa through blocks on her sight a handful of times over the past few years, generally by talking to her and letting her solve them herself. They always came down to her mind fixating on something and not moving past it to the causes the way she wanted it to.

In this case, Serenity wasn’t certain he wanted to help. He was fairly certain he was the person behind each of the terrors she described, even if he considered them unlikely, unnecessary, or undesired. He’d approach the problem from a different direction, then. She needed to have confidence he could help whether he decided to help or mislead. “Who do you think I am? Who can help you?”

Dinatha frowned at Serenity. “You’re not Mimir, but you feel like him. That means you have to be the first Memory! The one who took Mimir’s teachings and the ruins of his temple and turned them into the Mound.”

Serenity wondered what her “first Memory” would think of the Mound if he saw it today. He suspected that he’d be astonished at the opulence and repelled by the obvious inflighting and lack of forethought. Perhaps that was simply Serenity’s own prejudices, however; maybe this was exactly what the first Memory had in mind, if he even existed the way Dinatha thought he did. “Then why have I come to see you?”

The Memory of Light stared at Serenity for a moment before turning to face the ceiling. That had to be more comfortable; the chair she lay in was clearly not designed to let her watch what happened around her easily. “It has to be important. You didn’t come for the Thinning. How could this be more important than the Thinning?”

Serenity didn’t know what the Thinning was. He could guess, but there was no way to be certain that he was right. He decided to keep quiet and let her think through it. With what she’d seen, it wasn’t hard to imagine how her visions might be more important than almost anything.

“The only thing that could be worse than the Tinning is destruction, yet you’ve never come for any other threat. Not for any of the threats we’ve survived over the centuries. Why now?”

Serenity smiled; there was no reason not to when Dinatha couldn’t see the smile. “How do you know I didn’t?”

“I’ve read the Chronicle,” the Memory of Light countered.

Serenity chuckled. “And what makes you think that everything is in the Chronicle?”

That made the Memory of Light pause for a long moment. “It isn’t, it’s impossible to put everything in the Chronicle. Only the important things are supposed to go there, the things the future Memories will need.”

Serenity was certain that Eternus didn’t care about what future Memories might need. He was probably happy to have less informed counterparts since it might make them easier to control. Of course, what Eternus wanted really wasn’t relevant anymore, was it?

Dinatha continued, oblivious to Serenity’s thoughts and his glance at the body his friend possessed. “Am I supposed to keep your presence out of the Chronicle?”

Serenity shook his head. He couldn’t believe this was working. How did she actually believe that he was the “First Memory?” He sucked at lying and he knew he’d surely given the game away repeatedly by now. He needed to get on with this and figure out if she was someone he could leave alive, which really meant finding out if she’d leave Rissa alone once Eternus was out of the picture. That was an open question since she seemed to have an intimate relationship with him. “That’s not my choice to make. That’s also not the question you want to ask. Go ahead, ask the correct question.”

Dinatha took a moment to think before she settled on a question. “Why does the storm keep changing? Is it because I cannot stop it?”

Serenity sighed. It was the wrong question for her and also the wrong question for him to know what she’d do. It was especially annoying because the answer was obvious and she should already know it. “No, not at all. It keeps changing because the future is not fixed. You are seeing possibility, not probability. You should know that; that’s not the right question. What is the question you should have asked?”

This time, the Memory of Light didn’t take long to answer. “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything more important than why the storm keeps changing. I can’t stop it if I don’t know what it is!”

Serenity barked out a quick laugh. This would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. She was so very close. “No, you can’t stop it if you don’t know why it’s happening. The right question is why you keep seeing disaster.” He paused, then decided to add one more thing. “They’re all caused by the same thing, and it’s your own actions, but they can be prevented.”