A dark-gray falcon circled high through the branches of the world tree, Farsil. It came to a flat bough and settled, shaking off its feathers as it rose to its natural form. Archdruid Etharis bore the long-tipped ears of a svarters but stood two feet taller than most of that race. His purple skin, forest green hair, and glowing amber eyes heralded him as a being far more venerable: a Mraasil.
He settled down and stretched his arms and legs wide, delighted to finally not be sharing his favorite shelf of limbs with a corpse. The group from Poas came and left yesterday with the body of their prince to burn or bury, or whatever their custom was. It didn’t matter; Etharis had his spot back. The archdruid kicked off his leather boots and spread his toes with a deep breath that he let out with a resounding, satisfied sigh.
Since vastly overexerting himself during the events at Amer’s End in Poas a few weeks ago, Etharis remained bound to Farsil, needing to stay near to his tree to recover his vitality. He never felt so unproductive.
He had just spruced up the clearing before the entrance the svarters used for millennia to enter their ancestral catacombs of Elogoh’an. The archdruid never appreciated the trunk of his world tree holding a gateway to a demi-realm full of thousands of dead svarters slowly dissipating to mana, but he felt he owed it to his sister Ters after what happened to her own tree and realm. King Daelin, the human, left quite a mess in that little clearing, between all his bad teleports and his exhibition of magic that ruined the gateway into Elogoh’an. Surprisingly, only minor damage lingered from the daemon army that came through a short time after, just a few damaged bushes that he quickly set straight; very considerate of them.
He glanced over Tempus Fa, seeing pockets of the different cultures that resided within. Entire civilizations rose and decayed in Tempus Fa without encountering another, thinking they were alone in this endless world. The fish people still did well, but drew nearer to the ones that resembled drifting puffs of vapor. He’d never visited either to learn what they called themselves. Etharis almost wished for the fish and gas folks to meet, just to see what would happen.
A few pockets of daemon slithered around portals to realms they had conquered. Daemon were a vermin bound to show up in any realm eventually, and Tempus Fa proved no exemption. They were mainly harmless on their own, without a master to guide them, unlike the humans Etharis saw far to the west, as much as west existed here, led by a living god and old friend of the archdruid’s.
“I should visit Aiden when I can get away from here.” He said to an industrious spider working overhead. “I honestly have no notion how long it’s been since I’ve seen him.”
Etharis lay back against the smooth bark with another deep breath. He watched with forced interest as the spider spun.
“We’re two miles from the ground. Nothing is going to fly into that, friend,” he told it.
The spider kept on weaving despite the advice of futility. Maybe it knew something Etharis didn’t, despite his hundreds of centuries of experience.
The archdruid was debating dropping to the canopy below to tend to more of his tree’s base when a sudden distortion in the air caught his interest. He sat up as a twist of purple light flowed from a vertical slit seven feet tall. With a sound like arcing lightning, a spark of white light ran the length of the purple glow, and a second Mraasil stood in its place. He smoothed his robe, a deep, red velvet lined with blue satin.
Etharis looked over his brother, from the upcurled blue slippers, over the elaborate fusion of colors, to the short hair just a shade deeper than his own. “Ruvaal,” Etharis pulled his feet close with his knees out wide. “I see your fashion sense is as alive as you.”
The newcomer rubbed his chest and shied a step away from the edge of the boughs. “I’m blessed to have a tree as nurturing as Nethraanzil. Poas is finally flowing mana to my realm again, and it’s as though someone uncorked a clog. I feel as spry as the day he gave me life.” He peered at the edge of the tree again. “Why do you insist on always being so high up, brother?”
Etharis shrugged. “Why should it matter? I can fly. You can fly. The air is no thinner or colder at this height in Tempus Fa. How are things in the Afterlands?”
Ruvaal sneered, “Don’t call it that. You know it annoys me.”
“I’m sorry, I forget.” His brother snickered. “I’m sure I don’t do it on purpose.” Etharis paused and narrowed his amber eyes. “What brings you here, Ruvaal?” He created a staff, drawing it from the bark below him, and used it to help rise to his feet. His brother may be fit, but he had drawn his own body thin at the battle at Amer’s End, in that place of absolute death.
“Etharis,” Ruvaal said patiently. “You and I, unlike most of our kind, are not idle. As such, these last few weeks spent sitting in my tree have allowed my mind time to reminisce, to consider what we have achieved in all our long ages together. I ask you…” He ran a hand through his short green beard. “If you could reverse any one event in the past, what would it be?”
“Breakfast,” Etharis said.
Ruvaal raised an eyebrow.
“I had jasmine mint tea with breakfast,” the archdruid explained. “It was the last of it that I have on hand until I can travel farther from Farsil. I should have saved the jasmine and drank the ginger root instead. I have a stockpile of ginger root, but now, I’m really wanting more jasmine and, well, too bad. I’m out.”
Ruvaal rubbed his eyes and grumbled. “Not what I meant. Be serious a moment.”
“That’s what you asked. Were I to change the past, I would change my breakfast tea selection. Never accuse me of being unserious when it comes to teas.” Etharis stared at his brother, and Ruvaal’s eye twitched.
“I’m not sure what you would have me say,” Etharis continued. “Even such a simple thing could set a completely different course for my life. Let’s say I alter the past, preserve my jasmine mint, and have ginger root instead. Then I wish to enjoy the jasmine in a week and open the jar to discover that grubs have gotten to it. Another week passes, and I venture from Farsil, hellsbent on a quest — a crusade — to drink the jasmine tea that was denied me. The quest consumes me. Years pass until even you, my dear brother, the one who knows me best, cannot recognize the creature I have become.”
Ruvaal rolled his glowing amber eyes. “You are ridiculous, but I’ll play along. Think larger. One sweeping change that would bring back a thousand types of teas now lost.”
Etharis said nothing while he waited for his brother to continue.
“The daemon invaded hundreds of realms,” said Ruvaal. “They destroyed the world trees and slaughtered their Mraasil. What if you could save them, Etharis? What if we could save Kazren and Enzrok? Baris? We could have Ters and Felen back, but more than that, make it such that we never lost them.”
Etharis let go of the staff, letting it sink as the tree reclaimed the bark. He peered at his brother for some trace of jest.
“Altering the past,” declared the archdruid with a severe tone, “is a dangerous thing, Ruvaal. That is why, even if time flows at different rates in different realms, it always flows forward.”
“Not always. There is one that breaks that law by her very nature.”
“The Chronicler,” Etharis sighed and moved to lean against the trunk of Farsil. “She only observes and records. She does not interfere.”
“You know that to be a lie! She cannot observe firsthand without imposing alterations. She traveled with us, off and on, for years at a time. Her very presence affected our own decisions and shaped the course of our history.”
“Even if you could persuade her to use her power to perform some adjustment to the timeline, you must consider all the minor differences that would result. No, let me correct myself, not minor. Since we just spent time there, let’s think about Poas. If Ters and her world tree were never assaulted, out they were but the tree was not lost, what would that mean for the entire race of svarters? The avaryll would have cast out the human refugees as soon as they arrived in Poas. Flash forward twelve-thousand years and we—you and I—would not have been in Iecil fighting the necromancer. We wouldn’t have been injured to be here, having this discussion about going back to change the thing that never happened because we stopped it from happening. No. You don’t mess with the past.”
Ruvaal grinned and spread his arms wide. “I never said I had a means for this, dear brother. I’m simply making conversation. I only said I was ruminating on past mistakes while lying in the shade of Nethraanzil these last few days. It’s a perfectly natural thing to reflect back on past mistakes and ill-chosen actions. Idle chatter, that’s all.”
Etharis frowned and narrowed his eyes. “Idle thoughts, such as these, are best unthought. Dwelling on the past is a trail to madness. We’ve seen it before.”
Ruvaal raised his hands defensively. “I get it. I get it. I’ll leave you to your business here, brother. I hope you’re up and about soon.”
A purple mist flowed from Ruvaal’s form and a spark of light ran down his body as he disappeared.
Etharis sat down hard with a huff. Despite his own words to Ruvaal, the archdruid’s mind drifted to what minor adjustments in history would cause the grandest impact.
“The Venatus,” he whispered to the spider. “Keep the humans in their home realm and there would never have been a daemon war. There wouldn’t be daemon in Tempus Fa. The Teroian would still be contained and a thousand worlds would be saved.” He blinked, shocked by how easy it was to fantasize about what the realms would be like without that one event.
His mind churned, wondering if it would be murder to change events such that some unconceivable number were never born, when yet many more would exist that were not currently alive. Etharis groaned and fell forward to lay on his belly in the tree. His right arm dangled out in space, two miles from the ground.
