I am nine hundred and sixty-three fragments of possibility, bound together in a form that mortals perceive as wings and beaks and flame.
I am one fragment, split across nine hundred and sixty-three realities.
The distinction matters less than mortals might imagine.
Today I wear the shape of a Lord of Change, though 'today' has little meaning in the Crystal Labyrinth. My thoughts scatter like light through prisms. I remember futures that haven't happened yet. I forget pasts that might have been.
The mortal sorcerers who summon us believe we serve Tzeentch. A quaint notion. We do not serve the Architect of Fate any more than a man's thoughts serve his mind. We are Him, in fragments so minute they've developed their own approximation of consciousness.
Among my fragments, there is one that remembers being mortal. This troubles me more than it should. The memory persists - a life lived ten thousand years ago, before ascension into daemonhood. I try to dismiss it as another thread in the tapestry infinite.
Yet it clings, sharp-edged and certain in a way that possibilities should not be.
I watch a version of myself bound into servitude by a mortal champion. In another reality, I am that champion. In yet another, I am the binding chains. All of these are true. None of them matter.
But that one fragment pulses with memories of blood and bone and linear time.
My wings unfold across dimensions. Each feather contains a universe of possibility. Each universe contains infinite feathers. Sometimes I lose track of which fragment I am supposed to be. Sometimes I remember I am all of them.
Sometimes I remember being one.
A summons tugs at my essence. A sorcerer speaks my name – one of them, at least – with perfect and painful precision. Power flows through carefully drawn circles. Reality parts like curtains.
But this summons is different. The voice that speaks my name echoes that troubling fragment's past.
I could resist. Could choose to remain here in the Labyrinth where time flows in all directions at once. But resistance, too, is part of the pattern. Better to embrace the role while knowing it for what it is.
I allow myself to be pulled through.
The material realm hits me like a wall of iron certainty. How do mortals bear such linearity? Such crushing momentum in a single direction? Their minds can only perceive one moment at a time, each instant dying as the next is born. The tragedy of it would break my hearts, if I had hearts to break.
The sorcerer before me wears a face I remember wearing.
Not possible.
Yet there it is - that same sharp nose, those same dark eyes. A descendant perhaps? A reflection? Or the seed of torment that binds us still?
The Fragment That Remembers pulses stronger, threatening to overwhelm the rest.
He believes he has bound me. His circles are perfect, his willpower adamantine, his knowledge of the true names vast. He does not understand that his very act of summoning me was ordained before his species learned to walk upright.
Before I ceased being what he is.
I could tell him this truth. Could show him how his greatest achievement was written into the pattern before the first star burned. Could tell him of the life I remember, of the moment of transformation, of the price of transcendence.
But that would serve neither of us. Better to play my part in this elaborate dance.
Despite my derision, linear time has its own peculiar beauty. Each moment distinct and precious because it can never truly come again. Even a daemon can appreciate that.
The sorcerer commands me to reveal secrets of the future. I laugh with nine hundred and sixty-three throats. I show him fragments of possibility, each one true, each one false, each one simultaneously possible and impossible.
But among them, I hide a memory of what it means to be singular, to be certain, to be real.
He believes he has tricked secrets from a servant of Tzeentch. He does not understand that he himself is a secret, his existence a riddle told by the universe to itself. Does not understand that he might become what I am, or perhaps already has been.
I spread my wings and the sorcerer sees a creature of fire and feathers. He does not see the spaces between my fragments, the gaps where other universes leak through. Does not see his own face reflected in my crystalline form.
The bargain is struck. Knowledge exchanged for service. But who serves who?
That troubling Fragment pulses again.
For a moment, I remember the taste of wine, the warmth of sun, the weight of mortality.
For a moment, I am singular, certain, real.
The sensation threatens to shatter my crystalline form, to collapse all of my possibilities into one terrible certainty.
The sorcerer banishes me, believing our transaction complete. My fragments scatter like light through crystal, each one containing the whole. But that one Fragment remains distinct, a mote of certainty in an ocean of possibility.
I am nine hundred and sixty-three possibilities.
I am one possibility fragmented.
I am the space between fragments.
I am the pattern that contains all patterns.
And somewhere, in a reality that might have been or might yet be, I am mortal still.
Time flows sideways in the Labyrinth. The summons that brought me to the material realm hasn't happened yet. It happened an eternity ago. It is happening now. The memory of being singular fades, or perhaps has yet to occur.
I spread my wings across realities that have no names.
The fragments shift.
And shift.
And shift.
Until even certainty becomes just another possibility.