A/N: An earlier version of this chapter was posted for a while under the title "Stormseeker: New Futures". This version is a bit different, however.

I wake. I'm not sure where I am at first. But at least I know my name. I am Lexen Skywalker. The Stormseeker. Darth Revan. Dark Lord of the Sith, Gray Lord of the Elkandu, harbinger of regret and bearer of hope.

And I hope that wherever and whenever my father ended up, he's happy.

My body is much smaller than I am used to. I'm a child again? How strange. I can't be older than ten or eleven. Frowning a little, I get up and go outside, making my way through corridors that seem like they should be familiar, and out into the open air.

The sky swirls purple and black overhead. Glowing cyan runes light the streets. Strange beings wander the area. And the feeling here, the Force is alive here like I have never felt anywhere else. It's so strong that the air is practically dripping with it, saturated to the point of bursting. It's like I'm inside the very heart of the Force.

I know this place.

I know this place.

This is Torn Elkandu. The center of the multiverse. This is where it all began. This is where I died for the very first time, and discovered that I could not die.

How did I even get back here? How did I get sent so far back in time to the day when I first died? I feel like this should not be surprising to me, somehow. But I cannot remember. I cannot really remember. Thoughts slip away at my attempts to grasp them.

I wander around Torn Elkandu for some time, exploring, looking into every nook and cranny, trying to jog my memory. But most of these things, I cannot remember ever having seen them before. Finally I sigh and come toward the middle of the city, to the heart of everything, to the Nexus.

Eight obelisks covered in glowing runes curve upward toward the sky, and the purple and black overhead almost seems to swirl around this place. Everything points to here. This is where all the power leads. There's so much energy here that I feel like I could go anywhere and do anything.

A woman stands at the Nexus, watching over things with glazed silver eyes. Auburn hair falls around her long, pointed ears, and I feel like I should know her, as well. What was her name? Keolah. Keolah the Seeker. The founder of the Elkandu. The one who started this all.

"Hello, Stormseeker," Keolah says, finally noticing me. "Where would you like to go today?"

What kind of a question is that? Where do I want to go? I barely even know what's going on here. And the only place I can really remember in more than scraps and fragments is the universe that I just came out from. The universe of my father, where all my hopes were dashed to pieces... and yet, I find no sorrow in that, and can only hope that I've given my father a chance at a better future.

"I don't know," I say after a few moments.

"Well, if you're looking for something, I can probably find it for you."

I sigh softly and give a sad smile. "I'm looking for answers to questions that cannot be answered. I'm looking for dreams that cannot be grasped. I'm looking for a future that cannot exist."

"Do not be so quick to dismiss things as impossible, Stormseeker."

"Why not? It's the truth."

"Whether or not it's true is irrelevant," Keolah says. "If you believe something to be impossible, what hope do you have of ever achieving it?"

"That is why I fail," I whisper.

How did it come to this? How much have I truly lost? When I left behind my father's home universe, I had no hope for myself, and only hope to give. And now I'm back here. Back in a place that I barely remember. How many other universes have I visited and forgotten? What lessons might I have learned there and lost? What friends might I have seen die, forever slipping away from me, lost in the depths of time?

The runes on the Nexus activate, glowing brightly for a few moments as the circle within fills with shimmering mists. When the fog receeds, a single figure steps out of the Nexus. A very pale man clad in black robes, distinctly reminding me of Emperor Palpatine.

But something in the back of my mind tells me that this is different. This is not quite what happened before. What changed?

"Stormseeker," the man addresses me. "What have you done?"

Sardill is his name. The Dark Knight, he is called. That is his title, even as mine is the Stormseeker. And I remember seeing him killing me, again and again and again.

You don't get it, do you, fool. Try again, Stormseeker.

You are not in a position where you can understand my purpose. Try again, Stormseeker.

Try again, Stormseeker.

"Are you going to tell me to try again?" I ask.

"So you at least remember something," Sardill replies. "But your mind is damaged. Your soul is damaged. What have you done to yourself?"

"Why should you care?"

"You are a fool. You were to be the instrument of our salvation. But if you cannot do it, then I must find another course."

"What are you talking about, salvation?" I say. "You've killed me how many times, for the sake of salvation?"

"You understand nothing," Sardill snaps. "I had hoped, after all I've forced you through, that you might have gleaned some small measure of ability. But... hmm... Perhaps there is still some hope for you after all. Yes. Yes, I see. For all you've forgotten, you wound up learning things that you were incapable of before because you never considered them possible."

"What are you talking about?" I say. "Do you mean sending others back in time?"

"Yes. But it's just scratching the surface. It's just getting started. There is a long, long way you have to go yet. And yet, now you've even forgotten what started you upon this path. That motivation was clearly not enough to keep your mind from breaking under the strain, however. So perhaps you need something more. Perhaps you are finally ready to comprehend why you are doing this, why I have put you through all of this."

"I would very much like to find out."

Sardill raises his hand toward me. "First, I must repair the damage to your soul. This much I can do, without disrupting the balance too badly."

"Very well," I say, nodding to him.

I don't know why I should trust him. But I get the feeling that, if he truly ever wished to destroy me, there wouldn't be much I could do about it. I can feel the power within him, the raw Force radiating from him like a supernova. He is so far above my level, even as powerful as I am, that he makes even the Sith Emperor of the ancient times pale in comparison. The being before me is the closest thing I know to a deity.

There's a tingling sensation as energy rushes through me, and then burns, like fire and ice in my veins. I gasp at the feeling, and I sense something within me shifting. Like broken pieces, repairing themselves, mending the shattered fragments, restoring what had been torn apart.

When it is done, and Sardill withdraws his power, I feel lightheaded. I feel whole again. I had not even realized just how tattered and torn I had become.

"Thank you," I say quietly.

Sardill nods to me. "You may not thank me yet by the time we are done here today."

"Show me what you have to show me."

"You must see it for yourself," Sardill says. I feel him linking his power to me, binding it temporarily. "I assume that you have learned how to see the future through the Force?"

"Mostly just myself dying and going back," I reply dryly. "I mistook that for Force visions at first, until I realized what was actually happening."

Sardill rolls his eyes in disgust. "Did you ever actually learn to view the future without actually going there yourself?"

"The future isn't set in stone," I say. "There are many possibilities. Different things can happen. Different choices can be made."

"Yes. But I suppose I will have to guide you to the future I am from, myself."

"You are from the future?" I ask.

"Why do you think I have done all of this? It's certainly not because I get my jollies from being evil. Come. Let us take a little trip down the future that I have seen with my own eyes. The Nexus shall be our Pensieve, and we shall see what I have seen."

"You spoke of salvation," I say. "Is there some disaster awaiting us?"

"You shall see," Sardill says, and the world swirls around me.

We're in another place. A place very much like Torn Elkandu, and yet different, darker, the runes are red, the sky is red and black.

"What is this place?" I ask.

"Drakanna. The headquarters of the Drakandu, whom you know in this time as the Dark Elkandu."

"They made their own Nexus?"

"Yes. But it didn't last."

Swirling images. A blizzard on a mountainside kills many of the Drakandu. Flashes of light, mushroom clouds rising into the air. The Nexus in Drakanna destabilizes and goes dark. A world is torn apart by war.

"Is this the disaster awaiting the Elkandu?"

"No," Sardill says. "This was the Elkandu Crisis. But we recovered from this."

Many leave Torn Elkandu for a time. Keolah goes to a huge city, where she is worshipped as a goddess. She has a son there, with glowing blue eyes, who turns out to be an incarnation of Shazmar, the Blue Star, a deity in and of himself.

But things change. Tensions between the Elkandu factions escalate, and more factions break off, each of them with their own ideals. They return to Torn Elkandu, but they keep it as neutral ground, no longer fighting over it or making their own Nexi.

"The Age of Rogue Winds," Sardill says. "It was not a peaceful time. But it was stable enough, despite influences otherwise."

Faces I don't recognize, fighting, sometimes dying. One I am gratified to see is Sedder, the one who first killed me, slain by my own great-grandfather, Silver. Silver was his friend, and was forced to strike down Sedder, who had completely lost his mind.

And things still change. The old factions dissolve, and new ones rise instead. The new ones are called Whitefire, Conclave, Darkhammer, and Tempest. They each have different goals and motivations, but they all fight fiercely.

Tempest seeks to bring chaos to the universe, in the name of freedom. Some members of this faction, led by a powerful Changer, forge a strange purple device called the Wheel of Chaos. Black lightning shoots out from it as it spins. And the universe is torn asunder.

"Was this, then, the disaster you mentioned?"

"This was the Planar Wars," Sardill says. "A dark time for the Elkandu. But we recovered from this."

I can't see how anyone could recover from something like this. Reality itself has been broken. Worlds shift and change like dreams. Pieces of flotsam drift in an ethereal sea, lost shards of what once was. If this wasn't the end that Sardill fears, what could it possibly have been?

Then figures emerge from the chaos. A glowing, runed sword, Zarnith, the sword of my ancestors, breaks the Wheel of Chaos. Eventually, piece by piece, the universe is repaired, restored to some semblance of what it once was. And, as it turns out, it wasn't really the entire universe at all, but merely Lezaria and its vicinity. Much as I hated to see my homeworld in such a state, the disaster was far more localized than it had seemed at first.

And, no sooner are they released from the Chaos that had embroiled them do the Elkandu start another war with one another. The faction war starts up again as if it had never ceased.

"They're already fighting again?" I say incredulously. "You'd think they'd have learned their lesson after that."

"The War of Planar Dominance," Sardill says. "If you haven't noticed by now, the Elkandu never learn."

Many die in this conflict, but I don't recognize them. I don't know these people. Many of them were born after my time. And then, in the end, the factions are broken one by one. The secretive Watchers are swept away in a decisive strike by Tempest. Whitefire is brought down by my great-grandmother, Hawthorne, whom they had tried to hold prisoner. Darkhammer is betrayed from within by its own second-in-command. In the end, Conclave surrenders to Tempest, who proceeds to party and forget that they even rule the universe now.

"Why did Conclave surrender?"

"Because they realized that Tempest would do nothing," Sardill said. "They ended the war. And Tempest no longer had reason to fight. So they ended up dissolving. Only Conclave survived the faction war."

"Wait. Is that me?"

I stare incredulously at a man who looks distressingly like me, sitting in Tempest's headquarters, completely drunk. And conjuring more alcohol, enough to flood the entire castle.

"Yes, Stormseeker. That is you. Look at what you've become."

I gape. I can't believe this. "I turn into a drunken idiot?"

"Do you find this surprising?" Sardill says wryly. "You so often have turned to substance abuse when you can't deal with your own problems. You've sought the oblivion of drink when you could not handle your own Time Magic abilities. I know how it is. I've been there myself. There are times when I would welcome oblivion." He shakes his head. "You could have been so much more, but you made the world go away, and you were nothing. You were forgotten. The greatest Time Mage that ever lived, turned into this."

I still can't believe this. I shake my head, closing my eyes in denial of what I see before me.

"I should have known, from the way you reacted to it all here, that your mind would not be able to handle what I demanded of you," Sardill goes on. "I should have known that you were too weak, and would break under the pressure. But I was desperate, and despite that, you were my best hope. I just had to mold you into something better, and make you something stronger, give you reason to fight. It was clearly not enough, however."

"I am not weak," I say, clenching my fist and opening my eyes to stare at him, hard.

"Aren't you? You certainly could have fooled me."

"I am not weak," I snarl. "And I will not turn into... into this!"

"So determined, are you, to avoid the destiny that awaits you?"

"There is no such thing as destiny. There is no future that we do not make ourselves. There are always choices."

"So be it," Sardill says, shrugging. "It will remain to be seen. Let us continue on."

Even with the War of Planar Dominance done with, the Elkandu are not finished with fighting. It's not over factions any longer, however. Now, as they start to fight over one Dreamwalker by the name of Tarna, eight timelines are somehow merged into one.

"Was this the disaster you hoped I could avert?"

"No," Sardill replies. "This was the Temporal Convergence. Resulting from the whims of a bored god. It confused things a good deal, but we recovered from this."

And all but one of these Tarnas wind up dying in some way. The insane telepath Jami holes away in his basement to bother no one any longer, after causing havoc upon the universe for centuries.

Things are not settled for long, however. A fleet descents upon Lezaria, killing millions of people. A plague spreads in the northern realms. A horde of green-skinned humanoids strikes another one of the Elkandu worlds.

"Was this the disaster?" I ask.

"The Interdimensional Bridge had opened," Sardill says. "It allowed easy travel between universes. But we recovered from this, although it required extraordinary measures. The Orks were repelled. The Black Fleet moved on to other targets."

Flying monkeys fight against Chaos Marines, fighting tooth and nail to defend their precious trees. Many of them die, and they probably only succeed because the Chaos army didn't actually care about the forest to begin with.

"They were not the real threat here, however. The Nameless Ones from Karzan were. Let me show you."

The Gods of Death from someplace called Karzan come forth, and destroy the universe. They destroy Karzan first, and then the Elkandu. In the end, they're stopped only by a group of people having escaped the destruction through time travel, who gather up a Circle of Nine in order to enact a Time-Change ritual. I see my future self among them, in a rare moment of relative sobriety.

Time itself has been changed somehow. The Black Crusade still invades, but the Nameless Ones are no more, and never were a threat now. I don't understand how they did it. It should be impossible to actually change time. Even if they just forged a new timeline for themselves, the old one should still be present. I start to understand why I turned to alcohol.

In the wake of the Black Fleet, Lezaria recovers. They had been called away to strike against another place, to Karzan. I'm not familiar with this place. But I pity whatever might come of this strike.

And Tarna appears again, and with the guidance of an elven jester god who reminds me distinctly of Shazmar, a blow is struck against Chaos that they cannot recover from. Their very gods are slain by a mighty figure of blood and flame, and the elvish harlequin laughs at their passing.

"With the Interdimensional Bridge open, a cluster of four different universes became closely intertwined," Sardill explains. "They were not merged, but what happened in one often affected the others, and travel between them became common for a time. As we can see from one of these worlds..."

A demonic figure rises out from the darkness, a black-furred werewolf, and his name is Jez'kai, the leader of the Black Spiral Dancers. He brings forth a ritual that requires sacrifice of an entire city in hopes of manifesting a great evil into the world. But instead of completing it, he decides on a whim to try to corrupt the leader of the Gaians instead, a Silver Fang called Lucian. In the wake of this, Lucian somehow becomes the new deity of this world. He seals Jez'kai within a soultrap, and gives it to a werewolf named Rettah, who was originally from my own universe.

"That should have been the end of that problem, shouldn't it?" I say.

"It should," Sardill agrees.

Rettah is exiled back to Torn Elkandu, and she decides not to resurrect her former master, but to hand the soultrap off to Shazmar instead. Shazmar decides to bring Jez'kai out himself for some "fun".

"Oh, that was a terrible idea."

"Shazmar's good at terrible ideas," Sardill says.

"I resemble that remark," says a blond young elf, suddenly appearing beside us.

"Go away, Shazmar," Sardill says offhandedly. "Nobody likes you. Not even your future you."

The future Shazmar gets extremely frustrated that Jez'kai won't play the games like he wants him to, throws a tantrum, and vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Mmmaybe that wasn't one of my more shining moments," the present Shazmar says. At least I think he's the present Shazmar. Although all things considered, between the time travel and deities, it's hard to be sure, assuming it even matters anyway.

"Shazmar, you great buffoon, you realize that this was all your fault?" Sardill snaps, casting a hard glare upon the child deity. "You caused the Temporal Convergence. You opened the Interdimensional Bridge. You resurrected Jez'kai and set him loose again. It took stupidity of deific proportions to bring about the disaster!"

I've never seen Sardill actually angry before. Actually fuming, raging, furiously angry. At this moment, he looks like he could rip Shazmar apart with his bare hands. Even Shazmar looks a little leery at this.

"Um... I'm sorry?" Shazmar says sheepishly.

"Not. Good. Enough," Sardill grates. "And let me show you why."

Jez'kai goes to the next universe over, to Karzan, and makes himself a god there by sacrificing the entire planet Earth. In the wake of Shazmar's abandoning the place, Keolah, Hawthorne, and a woman named Suzcecoz have been left in charge of my universe. Suzcecoz is going insane trying to control everything, however, and she goes to ask Jez'kai for advice, and winds up happily handing the reigns over to him.

"That was stupid," I say.

"Yes, it was," Sardill agrees.

Jez'kai is now the god of both the Karzan and Elkandu universes. Torn Elkandu is shut down, the Nexus going dark and the place entirely sealed off from outside influences.

"Surely this must be the disaster you talked about," I say.

"Not yet," Sardill says. "Not just yet. But we're getting close."

There is a powerful vampire hunter by the name of Falk, who is himself a vampire. He is sent to kill the kitsune Inari, whom Jez'kai had done something horrible to. Falk gets captured by Jez'kai, but I get the impression that he allowed himself to be captured. After killing Inari, he hangs around talking, almost seeming to be waiting for Jez'kai to show up.

Jez'kai brings Falk to Suzcecoz, in her castle that was once Tempest's headquarters. She convinces Jez'kai to allow her to keep the hunter as a pet and servant. Jez'kai corrupts Falk with demonic energies, transforming him into a monstrous creature.

"Suzcecoz knew what was coming," Sardill says quietly. "She may be foolish, but she's not entirely stupid."

Falk bides his time, making like a good, loyal servant. And then, when the time is right, he makes his move. He asks Jez'kai for access to a little extra power in order to deal with a problem that he secretly created himself. With that, in one sudden strike, he digs his roots in and takes over control of the universe.

"How did he do that?" I wonder.

"He used a trojan horse through the backdoor Jez'kai provided in order to hack root access to the universe," Shazmar says. "And then changed the passwords to lock Jez'kai out again."

"He what?" I say, blinking.

"Shazmar enjoys using arcane programming metaphors," Sardill says, rolling his eyes.

"Well, I got what he meant, anyway," I say.

"This was it," Sardill says. "This was the disaster I told you about."

"This?" I say, raising an eyebrow. "This Falk fellow didn't seem like a bad sort to me. I would have thought Jez'kai would have been worse."

"Yes, but Falk hates the Elkandu," Sardill says. "See what he does now."

Not only does Falk keep Torn Elkandu locked down, but he utterly kills the power levels of the universe. Most Elkandu have access to very little magic. And he shuts off Time Magic, and rebirth... He's brought death to people who had long been used to the idea of their own immortality. People grow old, and when they die, they stay dead.

Needless to say, I really don't like that idea very much.

"Sith's blood, why would he do such a thing?" I say, frowning.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that I'm not a good person. I'd let the universe burn to save myself, and I know it. But this threatens me as well. If this future comes to pass, my Time Magic will be shut down, and I will die a real, final death.

"I won't let this happen," I say fiercely.

"You think you can stop him?" Sardill says.

"I think I can stop this future from coming to pass," I say.

"Too late," Sardill says with a smirk. "It already has."

"I'm not even in that time frame. I'm five hundred years in the past still. Aren't I?"

"You know that he also shut down branching timelines?" Sardill says. "My meddling was the only reason why new timelines were being split off with your power. The ones that you split off are the only ones that exist now."

"Really bothersome, let me tell you," Shazmar puts in. "That wasn't how the universe was supposed to be set up."

"How?" I breathe. "How did you come back to give me a push?"

"I was outside the universe when he took over," Sardill says.

"I need to stop this," I say, shaking my head. "I can't let this happen!"

"You're not ready-" Sardill begins.

"No!" I say. "I'm damned well ready. Enough is enough. You didn't show me all this just to tell me I'm not ready. Why the fuck didn't you tell me about all of this in the first place? Instead of killing me over and over and putting me through hell?"

"You had to learn," Sardill says quietly. "You were a child. You could not have understood, then. You had to grow, and there was so much that you had to learn."

"And what have I learned?" I retort. "I learned that I couldn't handle it and forgot everything, again and again!"

"And yet learn you did," Sardill says.

I shake my head and sigh. "And I didn't stop any of this, and just became a useless drunk instead. I suppose I can't blame you too much for forcing me off of that path, even if I don't like the means you used to go about it."

"Do you really think you are ready for this, Stormseeker?" Sardill asks. "I can send you off now to a thousand more lives, where you might actually keep remembering and be able to learn and build your power to the point of reaching the skill level you will need for this."

"I'm not backing down, Sardill," I say.

Magic swirls around me, rippling in the air, disorienting me. My head is spinning, and I stagger, trying to steady myself.

"I could destroy you, you know," Sardill says. "I could take your power from you, and find someone who is more mentally stable to accomplish this instead."

I scream at him in wordless defiance. Time seems to slow down around me as I realize in an instant that he could do this, he could follow through on this sort of threat. And I'm not going to let him. I will show him that I'm not a complete failure. I will - I must - prevent this future from coming to pass.

I reach out with my Time Magic power. My power to change the past is based off regret. My own regret is pretty damned strong, but it's not enough for what I must do. I seek out the strongest sources of regret across the multiverse, across space and time. I don't know most of their names, but I can feel their emotions, outwelling like a fountain of remorse, willing to give up their lives for the slightest chance at a second chance, a hope for a better future.

Blue lightning crackles across my vision, shoots across time, rips across the universe.

"Wow, he's actually invoking the Trayziak Tatalyar," Shazmar murmurs. "The universe is splitting..."

CRACK-A-DOOM!

One thousand broken dreams...

The hope of a thousand worlds...

The regret of a thousand souls...

My vision blurs and fades, and the world slips away into darkness.