Chapter Eleven: Changing the Tapestry One Thread at a Time

"We can't let the Chaos Gods take over either," said a voice from behind Kalli. It was Kanraku. She had momentarily forgotten he was even in the room. "They are no better than the Nameless Ones, even if they are less likely to outright destroy the universe."

"Generally, I would agree with you," Mika said. "However, at the moment, we don't have much choice. They'll take over Linear-Alpha-6 without any problems. Aviel is completely mad and drunk with power. I just hope she stops to help take over first before realizing just what she's capable of."

"Yeah," Kalli said. "If Aviel stops the Nameless Ones, who is going to stop Aviel?"

"I will," Kanraku said stubbornly. "I don't care if she is a Time Mage. I can't let her do that."

"Wow, what is this?" Kall replied. "One of us who isn't a cynical centuries-old person who just wants some semblance of normality again? Suzy, did that power converter you put in actually give him time to actually like, think, and not just sit around eating all the time?"

"Uh, maybe?" Suzy said sheepishly.

"Compartively, the Chaos Gods aren't quite so bad, considering the alternative is the world being destroyed," Kalli said. "Although I would prefer, when the dust settles, that they don't have unequivocal control over the universe."

"The issue with that," Suzy said, "is that most Elkandu are more than happy to follow them."

"Most Elkandu are completely barking mad," Kalli said.

"I'll give you that." Suzy shrugged. "And even the group in Tinemocun won't be very useful once Zuna Taike gets around to massacring them."

"Zuna Taike should be stopped as well," Kanraku said. "What she did to Tinemocun was unacceptable."

"She only attacked them because there were pattern elves there," Suzy said. "And she hated pattern elves."

"And she was driven mad and made extra powerful by the Geneforge," Kalli added.

"And if any one of those things were altered, Zuna Taike would not attack Tinemocun," Suzy finished.

"However," Mika said, "We should probably focus first upon removing the immediate threat of the Nameless Ones. Aviel changed Linear-Alpha-6, but there are still many other timelines in which the Nameless Ones rule over an obliterated universe. And even though she has changed it, and caused a paradox rather than forcing a new timeline to split off, it is still entirely possible that someone in that universe will again get it into their head to try to destroy them, and start the whole business into motion again."

Kanraku gave a grim nod. "I suppose that must be our priority for the moment, I'll give you that. But Aviel will get what's coming to her, sooner or later. She has been a very bad person."

"Although that portal she made was very skillfully done considering she has never done anything like that before, to my knowledge," Suzy commented. "It could use some tweaks in terms of efficiency but all in all it was pretty impressive." People glared at her. "What?" she said innocently.

"But how are we going to get rid of the Nameless Ones if they've been around for a million years?" Kalli wondered.

"That's the question, isn't it," Mika said. "Messing with Til'raine could very well change every universe in existence..."

"So what are we going to do?" Suzy asked.

"At the moment, it's probably best to ensure that no timeline has the Nameless Ones with that level of power currently," Mika said. "It's not a permanent solution, but it will at least ensure us the time to find one before they can start messing with Time themselves."

"And how do we make sure the timelines actually change and don't just split off new timelines?" Suzy wondered.

"Aviel appears to have accomplished it by opening a permanent gateway, redirecting the bridge a few months further into the future," Mika observed. "However, that isn't really a viable option in this case."

"Why can't we just go to all the timelines and warn ourselves not to mess with them?" Kanraku wondered.

"It would not be very effective. Although eventually the number of timelines having that change would exceed the ones without it, the Nameless Ones would catch on to what we were doing fairly quickly, I think," Mika said.

"Wouldn't they realize what we did in Linear-Alpha-3 and what Aviel is doing in 6?" Suzy said.

"Most likely, however those are just two of many timelines," Mika said. "Hmm, if we made the adjustments early enough, in different manners, and never specifically mentioned the Nameless Ones, it might be doable."

"Just let me know where to," Kalli said. "Or when to. And I'll fly us around."

"Let's head for Linear-Alpha-7, day 12 of 4865," Mika said. "We'll see what happens from there."

Kalli nodded and headed for the cockpit to put in the temporal coordinates. She sighed mentally as she had never thought she would be piloting a spaceship across time as well as space, but if it would put the universe back the way it was supposed to be, she wasn't about to start complaining now. She sat down in the pilot's seat and tapped them in, powering up the engines.

In this timeline, their focal point to make the alteration was with Sedder. As he was already intending to take over the universe, they had merely to speak with him and alter his course of action slightly to make sure the same line of events did not occur which led up to the release of the Nameless Ones, without actually explicitly stating so.

"Oh, hi, Suzy," Sedder said as she walked in. "Have you come to join the new Tempest and fight against the foreign gods? I have these nifty pins that make you immune to gods!"

Suzy stared at the silver pin he was offering her and smirked. "You're being played, you know."

"What?" Sedder said, looking at the pin again in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Shazmar's set you up for a good laugh," she said. "The pins only work because he is doing it himself. Shazmar intends you to piss off all the other gods so that you are forced to worship solely him for eternity and be incapable of following any other god because you've pissed them all off severely with your atheism campaign."

Sedder stared at her, her words percolating through his mind. Were she anyone he trusted less, he probably wouldn't believe her, but this was not something he would put past Shazmar as doing. Shazmar did so enjoy messing with people for the fun of it. He plucked the insignia off his chest and said, "Okay, forget this then. Let's go have a beer instead."

They heard an ethereal raspberry as they went to Sedder's office to have a drink. While they were there, Suzy explained briefly about the Chaos Gods that were coming, and suggested that he make sure Sardill didn't do anything to stop them.

"Why would I do that?" Sedder wondered. "These Chaos Gods sound fun." He caught her look. "Oh, this is one of those super-secret Time things again, isn't it. Sure, okay. Sardill's my old buddy, he'll listen."

"Thanks," Suzy said, grinning at him and heading back to the ship.

They continued to hop from timeline to timeline, making small changes that would hopefully have huge affects upon the outcome of the time stream. In different timelines, they killed Iyriel to prevent him from collapsing the bridge, killed Chang to keep him from having the Karzan Galaxy invaded by Chaos, destroyed or sabotaged Pandora Research Facility or otherwise convinced them not to summon Sindri, sabotaged the teleporter that would have brought in Aviel, destroyed or sabotaged the Geneforge on Sucia Island and the one under construction in Muterra, killed Aviel before she could be summoned, rescued Kalli so that she did not fall into the unstable wormhole that took her to the Geneforge planet, and other alterations.

"We should not have killed Iyriel," Kanraku said. "He's a good person, even if he didn't realize what would come about because of his actions."

"Well, let's do something else, then," Suzy said. "We've still got more timelines to fill. We're making headway, though."

So on the next timeline, they simply flew through and kidnapped Iyriel and took him out of the timeline. As they flew out to their basecamp in Linear-Beta, he sat there looking fairly confused. "Uh, what's going on?"

"We're saving you from yourself," Kalli said. "You'll thank us later."

They briefed him on the situation as they assessed what they had accomplished thus far. "A lot of them did split off alternate timelines," Mika said. "However, we're making headway. The amount of temporal space devoted to the Nameless Ones supremacy is decreasing."

"You know, I don't think anyone has ever tried to change the past in quite this manner before," Suzy observed.

"Well, yeah, a couple times, with varying degrees of success," Mika said.

"Wait a minute," Iyriel said. "You're telling me the universe was destroyed, because of me?" He found that hard to believe.

"Well, not entirely," Kanraku said, "but it was one factor. The Nameless Ones could not have come in had they not had the opening created by the removal of Chaos. It really wasn't your fault. You didn't realize that you were stopping one evil only to allow in a more immediate one. I don't really think Chaos taking over would have been such a great future either, but at the moment, preferable to the entire universe being destroyed. We'll work on getting rid of Chaos once we've made sure the Nameless Ones aren't about to do anything precipitous."

"We should go back to where I ended up three thousand years in the past in the Warhammer universe," Suzy said, "so I can convince myself of what to do differently."

"Oh, no you don't," Kalli said. "I hate flying through that universe. That place is crazy."

"I'm sure the ship can handle it," Suzy said. "I have equipped it with trifurcate quantum shields and redundant engine couplings to ensure maximal temporal protection and maneuverability-"

"Even if I had any idea what you just said, I still don't want to go there," Kalli insisted.

"Oh, fine, I'll just go myself, then," Suzy said. "Mika?" He nodded. "We'll be back momentarily."

Suzcecoz appeared on a Chaos ship near her past self. "Hi there," Future Suzy said.

"Er, hi," Past Suzy replied. "Who are you?"

"I'm you."

"Well, I can see that," Past Suzy said impatiently.

"I'm you from the future," Future Suzy said.

"I'm already from the future."

"I'm from further in the future."

"Oh," Past Suzy said. "So what are you doing here?"

"It's a long story."

"And why aren't you Chaos?"

"That's also a long story," Future Suzy said impatiently. "For starters, you have approximately three hours to prepare for a fair-sized battle," Future Suzy said.

"It won't matter anyway due to entropy, won't it?" Past Suzy asked.

"Actually, that's what I needed to tell you. It will matter. It is possible to change the past. Keep this in mind. It's important. Good luck, and kick some ass."

"Right, I'm sure I can take them all singlehandedly," Past Suzy commented.

Future Suzy waved and signalled Mika to return to base camp seconds after leaving. One back on board the Darkstar, she said, "Okay, let's check up on the results of that alteration." She proceeded to do some scans of the timeline. "Hmm. Apparently, I drastically changed the outcome of that battle. They still got beaten back eventually, but did considerable damage and far more of them survived. Considering nearly none of them had survived before, I'd call that a reasonable difference."

"That's nice," Kalli said, smirking. "What about the Nameless Ones?"

"Scanning," Suzy said, peering at the ball. "It appears they have no chance to take over in that timeline and the ones springing off from it. Apparently, I decided to open a temporal rift and invade the Elkandu Universe thousands of years before they were prepared for it. And it's caused another paradox, too. Man, three thousand years ago... The Elkandu as we know them didn't even exist back then. Khasadala Seer had not even yet been born."

"Okay, so what do we do next?" Kalli asked.

"I'll do some more scans of the timelines for the optimal course of action and analyze the effects of the recent paradoxen," Mika said, heading off to do that.

Kalli glanced over toward Suzcecoz. "Why are you looking so smug?"

"I knew I could take them all on singlehandedly," she said. "Well, even if it did get me killed. A couple times."

Kalli rolled her eyes, and went to get some espresso.