First person to learn about time travel say what?
Beta'd by Sesparra
"Hell's bells, Bob," said Harry, rubbing at the side of his head from where he'd smacked it solidly into the wall. "You have any idea what the hell that was?"
"Huh?" The orange eye-lights glowing in the sockets of the rune-carved skull on the shelf gave the impression of lolling about for a moment. "Oh, right, Harry. Huh. I didn't know you'd be able to feel that."
"Feel what, Bob?"
"That!" Harry got the impression that, if Bob had had hands, he would have gestured wildly around at the universe as a whole. "Not a whole lot of people are powerful enough to actually feel it when something rewrites the laws of reality, even when they're this close to the focal point. Most of the time it's because they're either tied in closely enough to a fundamental aspect of reality to feel it through that, they're a god, their birth was particularly auspicious like a Starborn, or they're Senior Council material."
Harry's jaw decided it was about time it got better acquainted with his collarbone. Once he managed to recover control over his voice, he managed to squeak out "What do you mean, rewrite the laws of reality?"
"Oh, don't worry, Harry, it's not nearly as bad as it seems. Something like this happens… what, every fifty years, or something like that, and it's not like it's gonna kill anyone. You just had the bad luck of being really closely attuned to whatever it is that shifted." Bob's voice was nonchalant, like he wasn't talking about someone shattering the foundations of reality and forging them anew. "We're actually overdue for some big reality alterations, I think- last one was almost a century ago, someone killed a Dragon, big D, and made it stick. This feels like a foreshock, nothing really major, but a sign to batten down the hatches, you know."
"Hell's bells, Bob," Harry repeated, running a hand through his unkempt hair. "Should I even ask what it was this time?"
Bob made a noise that resembled someone sucking in air through their teeth. "You can, but I couldn't tell you what it is exactly. Best guess, someone discovered or rediscovered an ancient magical secret of some sort, but this kind of thing can be from so many different causes that you'd have to find something like an angel or maybe one of the greater Sidhe lords to have any hope of figuring out what without being able to lay eyes on the source. Er, so to speak. But no, it's benign, mostly, you just haven't had the chance to learn about it yet. From what DuMorne told me, the Council still likes to make their wizards ask about it."
Harry sighed. "Well, at least there's that. I'm gonna go ahead and head out now. I need a beer, and a sandwich at Mac's wouldn't do me amiss."
"Good luck, boss!" Bob called, before turning to the romance novels on his shelf.
In the five minutes that it took Harry to grab his coat and all the foci he kept on him when he went out, he resolved to go and do a little snooping to see if he couldn't figure out what it was that had rung his bell. He could almost still feel it, humming against his back teeth, and he might be able to pinpoint a source if "close" meant within Chicago.
He opened his door to leave just to find three figures in gray cloaks standing in the stairwell to his apartment. The one in front, a stern, gray-haired matriarch type, had her fist raised to knock on the heavy steel of his security door, and the two behind her (a rangy Hispanic man with a cocky smirk and a sweet-faced East Asian woman with a similar build to Murphy) both tensed and reached for their swords before deliberately relaxing.
His teeth clacked shut, managing to restrain a truly inspired (at least, in his mind) zinger about Morgan outsourcing his stalking. "Can I help you, Warden…"
"Captain Anastasia Luccio, and these are Wardens Yoshimo and Ramirez. We have, ah, actionable intelligence that the Order of the Blackened Denarius is operating in this city."
Perfect. It never rained when it could pour.
I'm going to chalk up the fact that Sanya and I maintained enough eye contact to kick off a proper Soulgaze to the fact that he caught me off guard as well as the fact that I was still working on wrapping my head around, you know, being back in time as a teenager.
I will admit, though, the idea of having someone who understood my situation, in the here and now, is… nice.
Okay, so, right, Soulgaze. Everyone sees them differently, and I've even heard people talking about how you'd see people differently depending on where you are in your journey even if they were the same, although I can't say I know of anyone who's been able to actually confirm that. You only get one soul gaze, and if you look into someone's eyes after Soulgazing them and get another Soulgaze, you've either got a case of mistaken identity or someone's broken the Third Law of Magic.
To me, a Soulgaze shows… things. They're incredibly symbolic, the kind of critical collection of items that shaped a person's experiences and their life, and they're framed relative to the importance and general feel of their impacts, but ultimately it's on me to really interpret them.
Right out of the gate, the first thing I saw was Esperacchius. It was in a place of pride, yes, but it was also heavily used, the grip of the sword sweat-stained, flecks of ectoplasm and blood dotting the blade. It looked like he was using it as an anchor, almost, with how the blade seemed to almost bend from where it was embedded in the ground, but… no, not in the ground, in a coin.
No, a Coin.
I'd known, in the abstract, that Sanya had borne one of the Blackened Denarii, but seeing it, seeping soot everywhere and covered in bloodstains that the light radiating from Esperacchius had dried, made it clear that even though he'd managed to give up the Coin, he was still very much shaped by the experience.
The rest of the items were relatively minor- a scarf that had been gifted to him while he had wielded the Coin, ugly even without the bloodstains clashing with the pastel colors, grimy and discarded, a bandanna tied as a face mask, well-worn, that while not in a place of pride was still close at hand, and other trinkets that defined Sanya far less than the struggle between the Coin and his own choices as it continued.
I closed my eyes as soon as I was able, offering up a brief moment of mourning for the time that Magog had stolen from him.
I heard him staggering back as the Soulgaze released him from its grasp, breathing heavily and almost slamming his hand into the doorjamb. When I opened my eyes again, his eyes were wide with shock at… whatever he'd seen in me, and his shoulders were puffed up as if to make himself too big for a predator to take a bite out of, like a cat facing down a bear.
"Bozhe moi," he said, one hand twitching down as if to draw the sword that wasn't there before stilling. "What… what happened to you?"
"Someone broke the Sixth Law of Magic," I said, putting down the half-carved wand with forced calm. One of the things that always happened whenever I endured a Soulgaze was my hands went all jittery, but this wasn't one of the bad ones, so I managed to put down the knife and dowel without nicking myself before the jitters really showed through.
"Sixth Law?" Sanya asked.
"Time travel is verboten, for a number of reasons including but not limited to paradox and the possibility of tipping off some of the Bigger Fish of things they really shouldn't know. Of course, since I was in the middle of bleeding out after anti-saint Nick got to me… well. I have no room to complain about someone sending my memories back in time." The paintbrushes made one last stroke before laying them down, and I had to resist the urge to pick up the medallion and get my hand all full of wet paint. "I'd rather things go better now than they did in the future."
The shine of the pedestals wasn't as much of a distraction as the arrival of the Starsphere, so I was more than able to track the confusion, panic, and then resolve as they cycled through their turn upon his face.
"I will see him dead for this," rumbled Sanya, fist clenching. "How did he do it?"
"He caught me in my bed in thirty years, after… well. I don't particularly want to relive it, but we, as in humanity, ceased to be the most dominant species on the planet. I survived this particular encounter just fine."
He snorted. "Of course it would be like that. What can you tell me about the situation at hand?"
"Not as much as I'd like," I said, taking a deep breath, then another, and feeling as the shakes were dying down. "He's after the Shroud, global plague, and he's afraid of Harry getting involved."
"Harry?" asked Sanya, raising an eyebrow. "Little Harry, the tyke?" He pried his fist open and flattened it at about hip height to indicate how tall my littlest brother was.
"No, Harry Dresden. He's a Wizard of the White Council, and Nicky knew his mom before she ran away from a White Court vampire nest with her new husband." I shook my head. "I don't remember the exact details, but there's a partial prophecy situation going on. He's the best bet at finding the Shroud before Nicodemus, I think it's in one of the old warehouse districts."
Sanya's eyebrows rose. "Are you sure?"
"No, but I'd dare you to perfectly remember something that happened to you thirty years ago." I shrugged before pushing myself up once I was pretty sure that the jitters wouldn't show by the time I washed my hands. "C'mon, if we don't go in and wash up for dinner, Mom's gonna get mad, and I really don't think we want that.
Sanya shuddered. "No, your mother is… not to be trifled with. Come, then, ah…"
I rolled my eyes at him, jabbing my elbow into his ribs good-naturedly. "I'm Molly, old man, don't go getting all senile on me yet."
"I think you are older than me, if you count those thirty years," Sanya grumbled, before following me into the house.
I was tempted to respond with an upraised finger, but the fact that we were in range of Mom's mom-radar kept the bird unshot, so I just spun around to stick my tongue out at him before pulling open the back door for Sanya in a mockery of Harry's usual chivalry.
"My thanks, Lady Carpenter," he said, inclining his head gravely as he put entirely too much pomp into the statement.
"Of course, Sir Knight," I said, regretting it as soon as I'd said it. Inasmuch as Mab was on our side, defining "our side" as "generally opposed to the Outsiders, at least in theory", the way she'd treated her Knights after someone finally put Slate out of his misery had always rankled, and those two words were a key part of it.
Sanya slanted me a sideways look, and I hurriedly un-scrunched my face before anyone else could see. "Sorry," I said. "Bad associations, didn't realize they'd be an issue until I opened my fat mouth."
He just chuckled and ruffled my hair. "Happens to everyone. You are teenager, so expect more to come."
I rankled under his hand, but managed to bite back the annoyance over having a baby face thanks to the fact that I was, in fact, a teenager again, much to my neurochemistry's chagrin. "Careful," I said, casting just enough of an illusion to make my teeth look sharper. "I bite."
"Duly noted, young one," he said, still chuckling. "Now, come, your mother is waiting."
The thought of Mom waiting, one foot tapping as she cast ever more irritated glances at the clock, got me moving, and I beat Sanya to the table handily.
And that's that!
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