The Sixth Age

Prologue

Egwene al'Vere, The Watcher of the Seals, Flame of Tar Valon, didn't expect to ever open her eyes again.

When she did, the absolute 'last' thing she expected was to be in a tightly cramped metal box with odd books, bugs, and refuse cluttering her feet.

"The wheel weaves..." She thought grimly. "But light does it do so in the strangest of ways."

This room, this box, was a strange contraption but she could feel a… weaker end that had to be the door out of it. She considered for a moment. She felt herself coming down from an adrenaline high of sorts, panting as if only moments before she had been…

'Oh Light, Rand! Did you hear me you wool-brained lumox!? Did you…?' thought the Amyrlin remembering her words to him, her dreams of him like vague and long forgotten memories. A dream of a dream. The pain ached but it was somehow an old ache even though she could remember whispering those final words to him as he faced the Dark One in the depths of Shayol Ghul.

"Let us go, I asked you Rand. I guess you didn't listen. It must've been you. I still feel alive."

"Gone silent on us Hebert? Come on. Claustraphobic?" Came the sudden sneer of someone from outside Egwene's confines.

She hesitated. The metal of this box was so fine. She pushed on one of the walls and felt the thin metal balloon out into what sounded like another box. How strange?

Was this a prison?

Sudden fury took hold of Egwene. Not a leash but who would dare, who would dare try to shove her inside a box!?

Elaida?

Light how long had it been since she'd even thought of the Red sister. But no. That name felt wrong. Old. Forgotten.

The seanchan?

Just as old and buried deeper. Even her hatred of them had finally dulled just a bit. Leilwyn had bought them that much. There lie in all peoples the potential for good as well as ill. The seanchan just had a strong monopoly was all.

A different name came to her mind, squeaked as if from a mouse. A shudder ran down her spine and real fear coursed through her veins, unlike that dull thing she felt at the thought of an a'dam.

"Sophia Hess." I murmured, mastering my fear. Why should I be afraid of such a small name? I, who held within me, the Flame of Tar Valon?

"Ooooh listen, She didn't stutter at all!" Came a delighted giggle. Another name drifted across Egwene's mind, and with it came sorrow. Oh light. The girl's words sounded like rats clawing at her ears. Rats bathed in honey. Her heart burned and grief poured over her. Betrayal so strong that she felt she might've been overwhelmed.

"What are you all doing?!" The girl's pleasant voice suddenly muffled, the girl turning away from the box Egwene found herself trapped in. "Get the hell out of here! There's nothing interesting here! Go!"

'As if discovering Gawyn was a Darkfriend. Why, why, why do her words make my heart bleed!?'

Betrayal. Betrayal so deep that is cut to the bone, and seared like no blade could. Egwene fought furiously against the tears that threatened to leak down her cheeks. Again, she mastered herself. In a moment, even that deep hurt only burned, cast off, forgotten in light of who she was. What, she was.

'I am the Amyrlin Seat. I learned the teachings of the three-fold-land. I am a dreamer who broke forsaken and cut the a'dam from my throat. I will not feel this deeply over this… this creature that betrayed me! I will not!' She insisted to herself, and as simply as that, it was so.

Half expecting herself to be burned out, for the source to be beyond her reach, she remembered, feeling the novice exercises flowing into her as naturally as ever. A rose bud, feeling the light of the sun and opening herself to Saidar.

To her shock, to her relief, the light flooded her. Filled her. Made her whole and complete in a way she'd feared she might never feel again.

And yet, it felt as if she had never touched the source before. Never even opened herself. It burned so hot and yet so little filled her. A trickle! She strained to grab more but weakness seemed to suffuse her. She could barely channel enough to lift a person!

"To be expected. All things come at a price. Taim. Did you enjoy the Flames of the White Tower?!'

"Why…" She said coldly to the girls tittering outside. "Have you put me in this box?"

Egwene could feel the malicious grin form on the girl –Sophia's– face. "Because that's where worms like you belong, Hebert."

At the same time though, Egwene hardly noticed. Her voice! Her voice was so…. different! Well, not so different but she didn't sound like herself! Younger. Higher pitched, almost like a child! Well… she wasn't truly very old but she'd been older than this.

Hebert. Yes… I am Taylor Hebert. Not Egwene al'Vere. Not… Egwene?

'Hebert. Hebert. What… what is happening to me?'

Egwene's mind grasped, reached. This metal. These… memories assaulting her like visions of a past so much closer than her own made her dizzy. Egwene, a voice dead a thousand thousand years and then some, passed on in a lace of the pattern so far down that the entire lace had left the wheel yet…

Oh light.

'Balefire. It burns things out of the pattern so… so the Flame of Tar Valon… '

'I've been spun back into the pattern. And Taylor… she was about to channel. No, "I" was about to channel for my first time. And on the light of Saidar my memories road out the eons held aloft on the winds of time!'

She almost laughed. Maybe Rand really had let her go. It was she who had clung on.

She held onto the source. Bathed in it. And nearly gagged on the horrible smell wracking her nose. Abruptly she noticed the bugs. Hordes of bugs like a torrent swarming up her legs and out of the muck. An acrid taste in her own mouth made her aware of the sickness she'd just recovered from.

'This poor girl.' She almost thought, before realizing that she was thinking about herself.

Flows of air surrounded her body and their density became that of iron.

Bugs touching her body or clothes were crushed. Those that line the walls suffocated as the air in her box became too thick to breathe anywhere but near her on nostrils.

She considered channeling the lock free, but hesitated, memories of Taylor assaulting me.

Parahuman. That is what they would call me. Parahuman. Some sort of figure from a story. A regular person one day, a hero or a villain the next. Powers that came from thin air!

"If I am a Worm. Sophia. Then you will be the mere dirt, to be gobbled." I said lowly. "Do you plan to keep me in here all day? Let me skip class? Is that the joke?"

'Class? I am in a school! How wonderful!' Egwene thought, before memories of the place bubbled forth to replace her enthusiasm with anger.

Graffiti lined hallways. Gangs, bandits by any other name, backed by supremely powerful Parahumans like the Empire Eighty Eight and Lung ran the school more than any teacher did. Children bullied, helpless victims of pressure and neglect. She herself one of those very victims and not even close to the worst case.

Skin color? The gangs formed based on skin color?!

The girls suddenly fled. She could feel the air moving outside the small slits in the metal. Airslits? No. Locker. She was inside a locker.

"Hey! What's going on there?" Came a sudden shout.

"Sir. I've been locked in here. Please let me out?" Egwene asked as calmly as her anger would allow. The words came shakily and the man, whoever he was, took them for terror rather than anger.

"Oh my… oh my god who would…" Y-Yeah I'm getting you out. Whats… do you know the combo? Jesus kid!"

Such a curiously Blasphemous and Vulgar tongue. But it wasn't, at least, not to the part of Egwene that was Taylor. That part of her was busy trying not to hyperventilate.

Egwene controlled her pitching breath with the calm surety of an Aes Sedai. It was just like the cold. She did not let it touch her. And it did not.

Except that it did.

The words, the numbers to free her from her own prison seemed to leap from her breathless lips and when the door swung open and light scalded her eyes, enhanced as they were by Saidar, she fell into the mans arms.

She wanted to howl. She wanted to scream and beat them and hurt them for all the hurts they'd brought upon her! She wanted revenge! But… no.

Egwene had done all this before.

'Calm, child. Calm.' she spoke, fighting herself but the words worked.

Instead she wept, crying tears into the broad shoulder of the man, a servant –janitor?– whose name she did not even know.

"So'kay kid. It's okay." He said, less awkwardly than one might expect.

He reminded Egwene of Bran, her father. The Mayor of Emond's Field. Light, how long had it been since she had seen him? Her mother, and her sisters?

A pain burned in her gut when she realized that she never would see her father again. Her sisters. Any of them. They were gone, lost to the pattern to be spun out again and again.

And Egwene found her pride.

'They were to be spun out again and again, time without end! Because of me! I saved them. I was the hero too Rand! I was too!' It seemed a small silly thing to be so proud of now. A new weave, a true weave that could patch the holes of creation. But without that silly weave, the great serpent fall and die, and the tapestry of the ages burn and be recast with each thread bathed in the dye of the shadow.

Egwene shivered. Taylor, though. Taylor remembered her father.

"Its alright girl. Wh-what's your name huh? You! Hey, you kid. Go get the principle. Now," the janitor said with a finger and a tone that brooked no argument to an asian boy who wore the colors of the ABB.

'Asian? Surely he is a borderlander.' thought the Amyrlin.

Egwene pulled herself off the man's shoulder as more memories assaulted her. Memories of a father unlike Brandelwyn. A man out of his depth, and unable to compensate for the loss of her mother. But still a man who loved her. Loved the child she had been.

"Could… could you… get my dad?"

"Sure hon. Sure. What's his number? He'll be here in no time, alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah." Egwene breathed as her mind found the combination of numbers that the man could use to contact her father at his work.

Oh LIGHT this is amazing! Egwene breathed as she stared in sudden wonder at the phone. How many problems could we have solved! Oh light how many lives could I have saved if I'd had this one device!?

Amazement turned to horror as Egwene remembered the phone call and her Mother's…

She tried to forget that. Forget everything. This life was… horrible. She missed Emond's Field, and the Two Rivers. She missed the Tower, her Tower. She missed Gawyn and Elayne and Nyneave. Rand… Siuan.

But no. That time was done. The Amyrlin was gone and try as she might, Taylor had no memory of anyone who had ever been called Amyrlin.

Aes Sedai were gone. The power itself seemed hidden from the eyes of the world. That would need to be changed. A great many things would need to be changed.

But first…?

First, Egwene wanted a hug from the only man in this life who'd ever given a damn about her. A big one.

A/N: Just a thought that became 2k in a night.