“Wait,” Julius said, voice shaking. “So you mean when we were in the dragons’ old world, when I made the trade for a chain of guaranteed events to defeat Estella, I was actually dealing with a Nameless End?”
“There’s no one else who could have done it,” Bob said with a shrug. “That’s her End. She’s what remains when every choice is made, the point all the streams of the future eventually flow to, the end of time itself. And before you ask how the end of time can be here now, know that our way of seeing time is very much limited by our perception. We experience time as a line because that’s how we live it, but Nameless Ends aren’t bound by such strict measures.” He smiled proudly at his pigeon. “My lady exists simultaneously in all times at once. That’s how she’s able to trade one future for another, because from her point of view, all possible futures are already done. If we want one instead of another—say, survival instead of death—she can find that possibility, pluck it out of whatever hole it was languishing in, and shove it in front of us so that—from our limited perspective—that future becomes the only path. But this sort of heavy lifting requires an enormous amount of energy. Energy that she creates by consuming other timelines in bulk, until—”
“Until there’s nothing left,” Julius said angrily. “That’s what happened to our old world. The ancient seers were so bent on securing the timelines they needed to beat each other, they let her consume all of their futures.”
Bob nodded. “Ironically shortsighted, wasn’t it?”
“If you understand that, why are you repeating their mistake?” the Black Reach growled.
“Because it’s better than the alternative,” Bob replied, his head snapping up to glare at the construct. “There are futures where I don’t use the Nameless End, and you don’t kill me, but in every single one of them—every single one—I die. Sometimes I make it an hour, sometimes I make it four, but every one of them is fatal, and not just for me. Everything in this world dies when the Leviathan wins, which he does in every future I can see where you don’t kill me. That means if there is a way we get out of this, it can only happen if I ask the Nameless End for help, because I’ve seen every path where I don’t, and they all lead to the end of the world.” He cupped his hand gently over the pigeon’s wings. “Given those odds, I’ll take my chances with her.”
“And do what?” Marci asked, stepping forward. “What future are you buying?”
“The best there could be,” Bob promised. “I’ve been studying the events leading up to this day for nearly all my life. I knew that if there was a future where we lived, I’d have to buy it, but I couldn’t see past my death, which meant I’d have to make my purchase sight unseen. But unlike us born seers, my lady isn’t limited by chance. I can only nudge the events back and forth between likely possible futures, but she sees everything. Any event that could happen, she can make happen, so since I was going to be bringing the Death of Seers down on my head anyway, I figured I might as well go for broke and buy the best future I could possibly imagine. One where everyone lived happily ever after, including me.”
“How is that possible?” Julius asked. “You just said that every future where you lived culminated in the end of the world.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Bob said. “It wasn’t possible by everything I could see, but again, I can only see what’s partially likely to happen. There are billions of practically impossible futures I can’t see simply because they’re so unlikely, but she can.” He stroked his pigeon again. “She sees every way time can bend, no matter how impossible. All I had to do was tell her what I wanted, and she found it. The only downside was the cost. As you might imagine, turning impossibility into certainty is ghastly expensive, and with only the futures of Heartstriker to work with, I simply didn’t have enough. I needed more. I needed everyone, every single dragon that exists. There was no way to get all those futures under my control through the usual ways—no dragon has ever united all the clans in the history of our kind—so Amelia and I hatched a plan to do it magically.”
He smiled at his older sister. “As the Spirit of Dragons, Amelia is now intimately connected to every dragon’s fire, and I’m connected to her as her beloved brother.” He swept his hand at the gathered dragons. “The moment she became a spirit, you all became part of my matrix, and your futures became mine to trade.”
Svena began to growl deep in her throat, but Julius was too shocked to pay it any mind. “That’s why you killed Amelia?” he cried. “So she’d be the Spirit of Dragons and give you the ability to sell our futures? What about restoring our race’s connection to the native magic of a plane? What about giving us a home?”
“Oh, well, that was good too,” Bob said. “But eyes on the prize, Julius. Everything I’ve done—hooking you up with the human who would become the Merlin, placing you at the top of our clan, reuniting the Qilin with his old flame and then breaking him to weaken Algonquin before restoring him so Amelia would have the luck she needed at the right time to claim her place as spirit—it was all a play to bring us to this moment. This one particular crossroads in time where every dragon’s future is mine to manipulate, which should be just enough sway to purchase the one future in which we don’t die.” He held his hands up with a flourish. “I will now accept your praise and adoration.”
Silence was his only answer.
“I can see why the Black Reach wants to kill you,” Svena said at last. “You’re worse than Estella. At least she only sold her own future. You’ve sold us all!”
“Considering that every other path led to death, I don’t see how you have cause to complain,” Bob said testily.
“But she has every right,” the Black Reach said, his normally calm voice shaking in fury. “Death is not the only end, Brohomir. You and I would have no quarrel if all you’d done was bring all dragons under your influence to manipulate the species toward a beneficial future. That’s just good seer work. But that’s not what you’ve done. For all your machinations, the future you’ve chosen is still so unlikely as to be functionally impossible. To ensure it, you will have to feed every other potential outcome to the Final Future, which means that even though lives will be saved, they will not be lived. By trimming every branch of the future but one, you will destroy our free will. Dragons will live on, but our choices will mean nothing. No matter what we decide, there will only be one path forward. Yours.”