His death was another weight on her soul. She had known everything: the pressure they put on him, his desire to change the restrictive rules of the Abidan, Makiel’s refusal to listen. She could have joined him, lobbied for change.
Another chunk of the planet crumbled to nothing, leaving a loose collection of fragments drifting in an ocean of nothing. A slice of city spun away, all but frozen in time. A great machine of springs and copper gears kept pumping away as it tumbled into the distance, and a hundred-kilometer mass of flesh and limbs drifted away.
Ozriel had finally taken matters into his own hands, as he always did. He’d manipulated Fate so that no one could see his departure coming—if anyone could twist the future to such a degree, Ozriel could. He’d prepared to minimize the damage of his absence, but he’d been caught.
But who had caught him?
[Entities confirmed capable of killing Ozriel, while he is fully armed and aware: NOT FOUND.]
Well, that was telling.
[Entities possibly capable, though not confirmed:]
The possibilities spooled out in Suriel’s consciousness, a mix of images, text, and memory.
Information requested: Judge Killers
Beginning report…
Vroshir:
Our information on Vroshir worlds is limited, so the capabilities of the Vroshir themselves are largely unknown. Only a handful are projected to possess combat power that rivals a Judge.
The Silverlords gather armies from the worlds they conquer. Between them, they may have found a combination of specialists and assassins capable of catching Ozriel unaware.
The Horseman rides from world to world, gathering energy systems and replicating their effects. He has demonstrated capabilities from at least thirteen dead worlds, and under certain conditions, he could have bypassed Ozriel’s protection.
The Mad King hosts an entity that has killed Judges before, but the Court would have been notified if he had left his Iteration. If he has found a way to cross the Way without alerting Sector Control, then he represents a Class One threat.
The Angler has stolen six weapons from Abidan Iterations, and she remains at large. Her confirmed arsenal holds nothing that could threaten the Reaper, but certainly possesses other weapons beyond the knowledge of the Court.
Fiends of Chaos:
True Fiends defy classification by nature, and the only individuals known capable of threatening Judges remain imprisoned in Asylum. Also, no Fiend has ever demonstrated the ability to pass into existence without disturbing the Way, and the Spider Division has reported no such violation near Harrow or Limit prior to Limit’s expiration.
If a Fiend capable of doing battle with Ozriel has passed through the Way undetected, current quarantine levels are insufficient. Contact the other Judges to prepare for system collapse.
Abidan:
For security reasons, each Judge’s combat potential is not available for access. However, inferences can be made from publicly available data.
Razael, the Wolf, has expressed a personal grudge against Ozriel since the creation of the Reaper’s office. She was capable of depopulating an Iteration even before her first conscious contact with the Way, and Razael’s Sword was designed for the execution of Judges and Class One threats. The Wolf Division contains many destructive powers that are not public record, and Ozriel may have underestimated them.
Makiel, the Hound. As the Judge of Fate, he is the only individual whose prediction skills rival Ozriel’s. In combat power alone, he was once considered capable of assuming the role of Razael, though he declined the mantle. He has attempted to replace Ozriel many times, fought to deny Ozriel the rank of Judge, and led the opposition to all Ozriel’s proposed modifications to the Eledari Pact. With the Reaper gone, he will propose an imperfect replacement within the standard year, and unofficial reports suggest he has been developing his own Scythe.
Due to the personal biases involved, an encounter between Makiel and Ozriel is virtually guaranteed to end in conflict.
Report complete.
As the report faded away, so did Harrow. Suriel drifted in a black nothingness like the darkness of space, with swirling balls of color instead of stars. They were world fragments—one of the closer spots carried the fractured black tower from Harrow. Another fragment was a shining blue bubble with an island floating inside; water streamed down from the island and hit the bubble, looping up the inside to fall as rain.
The power of the Way was weak here, where chaos thrived. Each fragment was a little pocket of order and energy, which could someday be combined once again into a new Iteration.
With Gadrael’s isolation gone, her information requests arrived from Cradle one after the other:
Lindon and Yerin, together, left Sacred Valley and went into the Desolate Wilds.
He was trained by a local Soulsmith in the very basics of the art.
They encountered the Transcendent Ruins, where they were the first to retrieve the treasure at the top.
Lindon killed a Highgold, initiating a rivalry with a young man named Jai Long. Good. Pressure would help him grow. His sister was more interesting: she would have met Lindon in a few more years, if not for Suriel’s interference.
The exact nature of their relationship would have changed depending on several factors, but the destiny between them must have been quite strong to survive Lindon’s divergence.
A minor point of interest, nothing alarming. Fate adjusted for such small variations as a matter of course.
After a few moments of reviewing her Presence’s predicted future for Lindon and Jai Long, Suriel noticed a handful of gaps. She reviewed the data, pulling up extra information, comparing the reports.
Finally, she found what her automated requests had overlooked.
The Arelius family.
A young Underlord had found Lindon and Yerin, adopting them, and taken them back into the Blackflame Empire for training.
Suriel frowned. That could be a problem. She was familiar with the Arelius family—or rather, their ancestors—and they hadn’t come anywhere near Lindon in any of her projections. Why would they? He was a weak child from nowhere.
She tore open a blue hole in the void, stepping into the Way: the power of order washed over her, soothing and empowering, soaking her body and mind in comfort.
Here, she was close to every Iteration of reality. She could get some answers.
Through her Presence, she reached out to Cradle, requesting information on Wei Shi Lindon.
[Significant deviations detected,] her Presence announced. [Entity Wei Shi Lindon has deviated from primary course. Any analysis of current conditions or projections of future activity will have a low degree of accuracy.]
She’d made a mistake somewhere, but a quick review of her actions found nothing to account for this degree of change. She’d altered his future, true, but she should still be able to call up information about his current status.
If her Presence couldn’t even connect to the fate of Cradle, then something was badly off-course. None of her assumptions were reliable any longer.