NOVEL NEXT 75. In Hindsight
Excerpt from Master Forthosa’s ‘Beginner’s Guide To Retrotemporal Manipulation.’
“FOREWORD
If you are an aspiring young mage, freshly arrived at a university and eager to find your niche to settle into, your eye may have been drawn to this book. If so, put this book down immediately. Retrotemporal manipulation, the holy grail of time magic itself, is an unforgiving field, in which you will make no friends, discover nothing and walk away having lost your youth to a flight of fancy. If time interests you, look into other time magic fields—retrotemporal observation, if the past fascinates you so. But, do not waste your years attempting to manipulate the past, not without being fully aware of the consequences. If your future self has not appeared before you to tell you to keep reading, put this book back immediately.”
“Make him anew?”
Yenna looked down at the paper between her and her double. Three lines, one marked DEATH, one marked MERCY, one marked REWRITE. Across the small table, the Ledger wearing her face tapped the tip of her charcoal stick against the line—an impatient little habit Yenna herself had, when she felt like she had been descriptive enough but suddenly needed to explain further.
“Yes. It wouldn’t take much effort, in the grand scheme of things. All I would have to do is make a few changes to his fate, destine him as a strange old healer, slot him in as an unexpected ally in a time of need in someone’s story—mine, perhaps, or someone else’s—and all would be well. Morally, it is the optimal choice. Not only do I prevent him from performing future evil without killing him, but I retroactively prevent all of his past wrongdoings as well.”
As she spoke, the Ledger Yenna stared down at the page, idly doodling meaningless shapes around the edges of the paper. Yenna knew what the gesture meant for her—she was being condescended to by her own doppelganger!
“You’re speaking of rewriting history.” Yenna put a hand down on the table, demanding her double look up at her—it was somehow easier to assert herself, when the face across the table was merely her own. “The greatest mages of history have never once managed to so much as send anything back through the stream of time—not a person, a thing, or even a whisper. We can look¹, but we cannot touch. What makes you so confident that you can… oh.”
A handful of scattered thoughts clicked into place, fragments revealed to be parts of a greater whole. The people of the valley had rejected Demvya, for they believed they could simply reach back through time and make the place bountiful. The book itself had such a strange effect on magic simply because of its nature in relation to the continuity of time. The book didn’t just contain magical secrets to grant their reader power or mastery over magic, they offered a chance to do what nothing else could do—rewrite history. It had been why Nadhan and Mulvari had been so worried about Yenna having read the book, for fear that she had altered fate to favour her. But, if the books could simply rewrite history, then why were they even having this conversation at all? There had to be something more to it.
“There is,” the Ledger nodded, a quiet huff on her breath. “I do wish you would just speak aloud, it’s much clearer.”
“Sorry. Wait, no, I’m not! Stop reading my thoughts!” Yenna frowned.
“Technically speaking, I am doing no such thing.” The Ledger raised her hands defensively, pulling a face. It was such an awkward, cringing expression that it made Yenna cringe in sympathy. Do I really look like that? How awful…
“Right, well.” Yenna was starting to change her opinion on not-quite talking to herself. “If there is more to it, explain.”
“You understand the rules of temporal intervention—altering events in the past with magic is, potentially, impossible.”
Yenna nodded. “Changing an event in the past causes a paradox—the event you altered is now the desired outcome, so you have no reason to change it. Thus, the event doesn’t change, leaving you in a position to desire changing it once more.”
“Correct!” A small smile, a wave of a finger—the Ledger had Yenna’s more teacherly mannerisms down perfectly. “Insofar as the theory goes. It is proposed that time smooths things over by disallowing changes at all. However, this is incorrect.”
Yenna felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. What the Ledger was even implying here fundamentally challenged the entire Aulprean understanding of temporal mechanics.
“Incorrect how?”
The Ledger as Yenna flipped over the page in front of them to its blank backside. Along it she drew a single line, and marked two positions at either end of it. With all the artistic skill that Yenna possessed, the Ledger drew a crude image of a kesh at one end, and an explosion at the other.
“Let us suppose that, a year in the past, you were witness to a tragic accident. Having been powerless at the time to do nothing to stop it, you study up on retrotemporal manipulation.”
“Retro… ah, altering past events. I think I read a book on that, once.” Yenna shuddered—it was more of a maddened master’s ramblings than a guide.
“Yes. Let us also suppose that, by some miracle of discovery, you figure out how to alter events in the past to prevent the accident.” The other Yenna drew a curving arrow, from the kesh in the ‘present’ to the accident in the ‘past’. “When you do so you are disturbed to find that, despite your magecraft having no flaws, you have affected no change. The unfortunate accident remains in your memory, and in the memory of all others. All the changes that stemmed from that moment of destruction remain—injuries, damage, deaths.”
Something about the casual statement of ‘death’ in her own voice made Yenna frown. She could picture it in her head, the kind of circumstance that would leave her in the state required to reach such a point. The death of a student in a tragic accident, a spell improperly secured backfiring. Even if it wasn’t Yenna’s own fault, or really anyone’s fault at all, she would be wracked with guilt and regret. Of course she would attempt to change it, if she could.
“Well, you seem to know something I don’t.” Yenna couldn’t shake the frown—even the hypothetical situation was starting to affect her, tearing away at the thin veneer of this place to reveal her stress and anxiety beneath. “Why doesn’t it work?”
“Aha, but it does!” Ledger Yenna gave a self-satisfied grin, and Yenna wanted to slap it off her own face. “Now, look here.”
With a glowing thumb, she erased the arrow pointing back towards the accident event, and drew a new arrow pointing to a point to the right and slightly below it. From here she drew another line, parallel to the first.
“Time is not some powerful force, nor is it sentient. It is a very rigid set of rules bundled together to solve extraordinarily complex problems. However, altering past events presents a dilemma.”
“Right.” Yenna nodded. “The paradox of altering an event, only to have it not necessary to alter.”
“The thing is, time itself cannot stop anyone from manipulating it. The mechanisms with which to do so are built into the system, and require the altering of several rules, but they are there. However, it cannot cooperate with the rules as they are—to bend it so far as to allow two mutually exclusive events to occur would break it.
“Fortunately for us, there is a solution. Put in place by gods at the dawn of reality, or some natural consequence of the laws of reality—even I can’t say. When time reaches a paradox that would break it, when its rules and laws cannot accommodate an attempted alteration without shattering into countless pieces, another force takes over for it. We know this thing by the name Fate.”
Yenna could feel an emphasis on that word. The Ledger had introduced itself as Fate before, too—she gulped, suddenly flooded with anxiety once more.
“Fate is a thinking thing, able to operate outside the confines of the very rules that time as fragile as it is powerful. It tries its best to… smooth the edges of time, to grease the wheels and ensure life goes on.”
The Ledger tapped the page, bringing Yenna’s attention back to the drawing.
“Say you have cast your spell. Back through time, you send a barrier to protect the victim of the accident, saving their life. Time cannot reconcile the two actions—the life saved, and your motivation to save a life that is already safe. Fate reaches in, and splits the flow of time into two separate threads—the story changes.”
“I’m not sure I understand.” Yenna played with the end of her braid, though the feeling of her hair hanging in there so poorly distracted her. “Splits into two? There are now two realities, all at the creation of Fate?”
“Yes and no.” Ledger Yenna gave a curious nod-shake, bobbing her head from side to side. “It is still one reality, just… another version. A retelling of the same story.”
Saying that perked Yenna’s ears up. “You mentioned it before—rewriting Mulvari’s story.”
“Mhm. In our example, it would make a terrible story if a barrier just appeared and saved the life of my precious student– oop! Now I’m borrowing your metaphor, aren’t I?”
Yenna fixed her giggling doppelganger with a glare, forcing her to move on.
“So,” she waved a hand, turning her eyes to the table, “Instead of a sudden barrier-from-nowhere, Fate rewrites things. In this version of the story, you turn at just the right moment to see everything going poorly. Acting quickly, you raise your hands, cast a barrier spell, and surprise yourself with your speed—you have saved your student in this reality, achieving the purpose of the spell that the you of the first story made, but in this retelling instead.”
“I see.” Yenna gave a small, slow nod. “This is fascinating, but what does it have to do with Mulvari? With the black books, and what you intend to do?”
The Ledger gave a nod of its own, and for a moment Yenna could have sworn the mask slipped—as though speaking as Yenna was incompatible with the attitude it had been about to use.
“Mulvari is, as all people are, one directed by Fate’s design. It is not necessary for time to be manipulated for Fate to step in, as their role is one of balance. They believe that there must be darkness, for good to rally against it. That villains are a necessity, so that heroes may rise and make for satisfying tales. The events that led him here are no random chance, but careful redirections—a traumatising childhood, a dark discovery, an avenue through which to perform ever-greater acts of evil. Then, he would impact upon your tale, and you would see your two choices, and render it best to kill him.”
Yenna reached down and flipped the paper, revealing the three-pronged path the pair had discussed earlier. “But I have a third option here, now. Are you saying Fate never meant that to be?”
The other Yenna shook her head. “No, I am saying Fate intended for you to pick that third option. Because you, as you are, would not be accomplice to his murder, but would not enable his continued villainy.”
“Then we come full circle. You mean to rewrite his story, to make him good somehow. To do that, you want, perhaps need me to open this book. But to do that, I need a key, which… somehow Mulvari makes?” Yenna stood up, the knot of emotion in her chest bubbling over with annoyance. “You’ve barely explained anything useful.”
“Now now, my other self!” The Ledger laughed, a good-natured laugh that unfortunately reminded Yenna of Mulvari’s demeanour. “Sit down, I’m not done. I know that you need context for the final part of this. That you won’t agree without it.”
Yenna huffed. She paced for a moment, looking out over the cloudy nothing that was wherever they were. Were they still in the chamber, or in a new space entirely? Yenna was sure it ultimately didn’t matter, so she sat.
“Thank you,” the Ledger smiled with Yenna’s face.
“Stop doing that. Stop wearing my face, it’s… uncomfortable.”
“You’ve changed your mind? I suppose all this peaceful, nice talk in the middle of a stressful situation is very Mulvari-like, isn’t it? Almost appropriate, heh…” Yenna as the Ledger shook her head, then nodded, then giggled awkwardly. An uncertain gesture—which one was right, nodding, shaking, laughing? Yenna could feel herself in the question, and hated it.
“Change, or I’ll not entertain the rest of your explanation.”
There was no fanfare, sparkle or flash of magic—in an instant Yenna’s double was replaced by the Ledger, standing exactly where he had been standing on the platform in the vast chamber. But there was no one else here. Nadhan and Mulvari were gone, as were the countless worshipping ghouls. Still just the two of us, for now.
“B-Better.” Yenna could definitely feel her worries creeping back in. Being angry at the Ledger’s use of her likeness was one thing, but now it was the cold fact that she was at this being’s mercy.
“To rewrite Mulvari,” the Ledger continued, their midnight-dark voice now bearing a hint of feminine pitch, “We must first do to him something you would call horrible.”
The mage once again felt a spike of fear. “What? Do you mean to kill him, all the same?”
“In a manner of speaking. It shall be a fate worse than death. But, it will also cease to have happened, when we rewrite him.”
That raised an eyebrow. “But, if we change the past, the event will be in another timeline– story, whatever you called it. A tale that we won’t be in! Altering him in another version of reality, one which we cannot perceive, would change nothing about what has happened here.”
“And that, Ms Bookbinder, is where this comes in.”
The Ledger reached out with a gauntleted hand and tapped the surface of the black book. Yenna hadn’t realised she was still holding it, and nearly dropped it in surprise.
“This can… break the rules? Alter time without putting it into another reality?”
“Better.” The Ledger turned slightly, moving like oil paint smudged across glass. They gestured with an arm at the pillar, and all its various copies of the book. “When we have observed the totality of the word, we will gain control of Fate—I will become it, and serve to do what I have been created to do. I shall create a world of everlasting good, where there are no unhappy moments, no villains or evils. I shall make it so that every version of this story of reality becomes one. I may do countless acts of cruelty here, if it enables that world of perfect good.”
Yenna’s jaw dropped. “What?! No! You’re… you’ve killed countless people, caused untold chaos, enabled villains like Mulvari to harm. That’s evil! No amount of goodness can take that away!”
The Ledger shook its head. “This version of the story will cease to exist. All the wrongdoing that I have ever done, all of yours, Mulvari’s, Nadhan’s, everyone’s evils. It will be gone. It will never have happened. In this true telling of the story, there will never have once been a moment of anything less than purest joy. It is the morally correct thing to do.”
Anger, confusion, despair, and fear waged bloody war in Yenna’s heart, tearing and beating against whatever held it all back inside her. But a traitorous voice piped up in the back of her head—It made sense, in a way.
Yenna imagined it as a mathematical equation. More ‘good’ was better, morally speaking. Helping those in need, saving those in danger. It was good to do those things. Less ‘bad’ was better too—preventing people from coming into situations where they needed help in the first place. If the Ledger committed a large but finite amount of evil, then zeroed it away as part of an equation that produced an infinite amount of good, then it was morally correct to do any evil act that summed up to that infinite good.
But it was still wrong. Yenna wasn’t a fool, blinded by the idea of morality as a kind of calculus. Doing evil things was wrong! It felt almost daft to think that. It was such a ridiculous statement to even put into words that it felt like condescension—it was a thing that all people could grasp, a tautological statement that bordered on the obvious.
Yenna opened her mouth, ready to shout in righteous indignation. The Ledger, however, cut her off.
“I understand,” they began, “That you may have some objections. That this idea seems… wrong to you, somehow. But I ask you, what is worse? A world where nothing but good occurs, or one in which villains may exist, simply so that the tale of your lives may become interesting to hear?”
Once again, Yenna faltered, on the cusp of agreeing. Put like that, the answer felt obvious—but it didn’t change the facts. The Ledger intended to do evil acts, and even if they were for ultimately good reasons they were still evil. There were too many variables. Too much that could go wrong. Was this what Fate intended, or was this a defiance of its goals? Could Fate conspire against itself?
Before Yenna could speak again, the Ledger gave a nod, as though responding to something the mage had said. But when they spoke, there was an odd disconnect—they didn’t respond to anything Yenna had said or thought.
“I’m glad you could agree, despite your objections.”
“What? No, I didn’t agree at all–”
“Now, let us speak of specifics. First, we shall make your key.”
¹ - Time magic, in the arcane tradition of magecraft, is used primarily for archaeological and forensic purposes. Peering back in time is extremely tricky, with the targeted event needing to fulfill a tome’s worth of requirements before one can even begin to observe it. It is not a precise science, either—there are countless records of time magic being used to observe the scene of a crime, only to discover that the spell has observed some similar event elsewhere, or produced a distorted or wrong series of events. Only retrotemporal observation methods produced by an experienced master and verified by no less than three others of the same or higher peerage are admissible in a court of Aulprean law, making their usage rare indeed.
