Heretical Edge

When Sahveniah lifted her head out of the dirt that she had been lying in for however long it had been since she fell millions of years through time and managed to immediately pass out, the first thing she saw was a small carnivore reptile peering at her with obvious interest. The thing was barely two feet tall, and maybe three feet long if she was going to be generous and add in the full length of its tail. Despite its small size, however, the thing snarled when she raised her head. It looked like it was ready to throw itself right into taking by force what it had previously thought would be a free meal.

Seeing that, the Seosten woman snarled right back at it, showing the creature her teeth. The two of them were face-to-face like that, and she could see how dangerously sharp its teeth were.

In the end, when she didn't back down, the creature seemed to decide it wasn't worth the fight and began slowly backing away, keeping a close eye on her the whole time as though checking to make sure she wouldn't obediently roll over and offer herself up to be eaten after all. It made an annoyed sound when that failed to happen and continued backing away into the brush.

With that done, Savvy turned her attention toward taking stock of her surroundings. She picked herself up off the ground slowly, eyes quickly darting around. This first impression was nothing like what she had expected. In all of the stories she had heard about this place, she had always pictured it as a barren wasteland. She had imagined Wreth coming here and finding that rift in the middle of a flat gray desert devoid of color or any other life. Possibly surrounded by skulls and bones.

After all, this was the place that had sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of planets, allowing that monster to bring all of his forces and weaponry millions of years into the future to completely ambush an unsuspecting universe. Her own people, the Seosten, hadn't been anywhere near ready for any sort of intergalactic fight by that point. They were barely starting to explore the stars beyond their own planet after that horrific tragedy with Cronus. That creature had taken so much from them, had been responsible for so many deaths before leaving the world in that experimental ship.

Whatever was left of that man, and the minds of everyone he had absorbed, would likely never be known. Because no sooner had the Seosten who were left begun to explore space, than Wreth and his Armada had found them and completely taken over the planet.

For hundreds of thousands of years, the Seosten had been a slave species, along with every other civilization in the known universe. They were implanted with cybernetic 'upgrades' that allowed Wreth and his leadership committee to dictate how and when they could use the possession powers their people had been left with after the Cronus incident. Wreth used technology and magic pulled from across the entire intervening hundred million years between his origin and arrival points through the rift to give himself every possible advantage. He had all of that timeline to pull from, and he was able to jump into any point along that time, see what sort of threats he needed to deal with, and take care of them before they ever posed an actual problem.

That was why it was so utterly impossible to oppose that man and his forces. He knew by watching the timeline where and when all the biggest problems were going to develop, and took steps against them while they were still in their infancy. No one could hope to create a military force strong enough to go against him when he held that sort of advantage.

Or at least, it had been impossible. But one day that had changed. Sahveniah was one of the small group of Seosten who were approached by someone who said they could fix things, someone who said they knew how to stop Wreth. And they helped prove they weren't completely out of their mind by successfully extracting the cybernetic tech that had prevented Sahveniah and the others from using their possession power. The tech had done even more than that. It could track them, monitor them, could even give them pain or kill them at a whim. It should've been impossible to remove, yet their benefactor had managed to do so anyway.

That made them listen to this stranger. And for a time, they had found small ways to strike against Wreth. Nothing too serious at first, as they simply tested their limits and what this benefactor could do. They were a small force, a tiny rebellion.

Then it came time for this mission. The mission to actually put a stop to that bastard once and for all, before he could become the problem he now was. The only way to stop it was to take the last energy left in that rift and go back to when this at all truly started. One of them, because there was only enough energy for a single person, had to come back to this time, to this place, and kill that evil man before he ever went through the rift.

That was what she was doing here. Assuming all of this had worked, Sahveniah should now be on the right planet in the right general area in the right time before Wreth had found the rift. She wasn't going to get much of a chance at this. This might have been before Wreth was as powerful as he would become in the future, but he still ruled a good portion of the known galaxy at this point. He still had entire fleets behind him. He was still one of the most dangerous threats alive.

But none of that mattered. It couldn't matter. This was the only chance she had. It was the only chance her people had, the only chance the entire universe had. If she wanted to give every living creature in known existence even a chance at freedom, she had to succeed here.

She had to kill Wreth. And after that… well, who knew what would happen? She had been told that time travel changes like this normally tended to push the person who made them into a newly created timeline, but this was different. The rift energy, condensed and shaped over several hundred thousand years by the way Wreth used it, would actually cause this timeline to be altered. Instead of creating a new offshoot, this specific timeline would change.

Savvy didn't know the details, and she didn't care. For all she was concerned, she could simply cease existing once this was done. As long as she managed to create a better universe than the one she had left, that was more than enough.

With that in mind, the woman reached into the pocket of her flight suit and withdrew a small computer. It was barely larger than her hand, and not even as thick as her finger. The entire thing simply looked like an almost flat mirror. When she held it up to her face, twin points of light projected from it to scan her eyes before disengaging. Then words appeared on the screen. It simply told her a direction and distance. North-west, thirty miles. That was where she needed to go to reach the rift. And she needed to hurry. They didn't know the exact time that Wreth had found it, or when he went through. But this would be close to that time, and she wouldn't get any sort of do-over.

Shaking off those thoughts, Sahveniah started running that way. She double-checked her heading with that little computer, then tucked it away and took off. There was no way to tell how much time she had lost while lying unconscious after arriving here. Which was something she cursed herself for even as her feet pounded against the dirt and grass. Stupid, stupid. She could have completely thrown away this single chance just because she couldn't stay awake after that trip. If Wreth had already gone through that rift, if this was all for nothing, she'd never forgive herself.

She saw more of those reptiles during her run, some with feathers, others without. All of them watched her curiously as she sprinted, a few even trying to give chase. A rather large carnivore on two powerful hind legs came from the trees with its enormous mouth open as it leaned in to catch its moving prey. Sahveniah never broke stride, simply leaping right onto the thing's snout. Even as its teeth started to close around her, she possessed it.

And just like that, she wasn't running with her own feet anymore. She was controlling this creature, directing it to sprint through this thick foliage, which made her travel much easier in several ways. She was resting her own body, and this creature could simply knock down everything in its way.

With that, it didn't take long for her to reach the right area. She knew it was the right area because there had been a battle there. As soon as her possessed creature reached the edge of that field, she saw shattered and motionless robot versions of this very reptile, along with others like it. There was a damaged ship crashed near a lake, and hundreds of armored troops milling around the battlefield, apparently victorious. When she tilted the creature's head to look up, she saw ships hovering there overhead.

This was the place. This was Wreth's fleet, his army. She had heard something, some sort of story about him finding the rift while crushing one of the rebellions against him. And that seemed to be exactly what this was. This rebellion had lost, his people were in complete control, and now he was about to go through that rift. He was about to become the unstoppable god that would rule the entire universe for hundreds of generations.

No, not this time, not now. She wouldn't let that happen. All she had to do was get close enough. He wouldn't know what her power was, what she was capable of, not yet. This version of him didn't know to watch out for that sort of threat. He had never encountered the Seosten. He was vulnerable like this. For just a little bit longer, he was still vulnerable.

She had to find him. She had to get to him before he went through the rift, before he began sending his armada through it. But where was the void-damned thing? The details had been too fuzzy. Her computer could direct her to the right general area, but even if she had been out of this reptile's body and able to check it, it wouldn't get her any closer than this. She had to find it on her own from here. How? Where were these troops looking? What area were they paying the most attention to? Where were they guarding the most? She had to get closer, had to make this reptile wander out that way while looking as innocent and unthreatening as possible. She had to make this look natural.

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Slowly, telling herself not to rush it, and also not to look like she was trying not to rush it, Sahveniah made the giant creature lumber its way out onto that field. She made it sniff the air and begin to walk closer to a small pile of dead bodies nearby. Part of her expected one of the soldiers in the distance to open fire any second to cut the beast down. Then she would have to go to plan B. Which amounted to a lot of panicked winging it.

Not that she wasn't winging it now, but at least there was less panic involved. Anxiety yes, panic no.

Fortunately, the expected shot never came. The troops noticed her, and she saw a couple gesture toward the monster she was piloting, but they were waved off. The apparent leader of that group said something and made a gesture that made the rest laugh. She couldn't hear the words, but assumed the man was saying something about how the reptile would do the job of disposing of the corpses for them. It was very convenient that way.

She didn't want to push her luck, so she directed the creature to grab a couple of the corpses in its mouth. Then she immediately shut off her connection to its taste buds while having the thing begin wolfing down those bodies. It wasn't the worst thing she would have tasted, not after growing up as one of Wreth's work slaves, but still.

With each motion of its head in the process, Savvy had the creature take a couple coincidental steps closer to that group of soldiers so she could see what they were doing, what they were paying the most attention to. Only the fact that they were all standing around and seemed unconcerned convinced her Wreth wasn't down here yet. If he was present, they would be standing at attention, or at the very least would be much more on guard. He wasn't here, and their ships were still present. He hadn't gone through the rift. She had time. She had to have time. Everything depended on her having a chance to actually do this, so she refused to entertain the possibility that she had already failed. The soldiers were milling around, there was still an opening.

The lake. They were definitely paying attention to the lake. Her reptile host's vision wasn't very good from this distance, especially through water, but she had the impression that there were shapes down there, and it looked like most of the soldiers were lined up along the beach. Was the rift underwater? That had to be it. If they didn't know exactly where the rift was, they would be actively searching for it, not milling around. And once they did know where it was, they would be making sure no one else reached it. They were guarding the lake, so the rift was in there.

But if the rift was there, and these people were still acting like Wreth wasn't down here yet, where was he? Sahveniah had to resist the very strong urge to make her host look up again. She couldn't risk drawing attention now, and it was very unlikely a large meat-eater faced with all these bodies to wolf down would bother tilting its head to look at the sky for no discernible reason. The ships up there weren't making noise or giving any real indication of their presence.

No, she couldn't look up, but that was obviously where the man was. For now, at least. He was probably gearing up to lead his first group of soldiers through that rift. Which meant she had to hurry and get herself into position. She needed a good opening, she needed… that guy. There was a lone soldier walking around the back of that crashed ship, examining it for some reason.

Wasting no time, Savvy directed her mount to take another body and stomp away closer to the treeline for a moment, without looking like it was rushing. Once she had some cover, she left a quick mental instruction, then pushed herself out of the thing and dropped silently into the bushes. The reptile hesitated, swaying back and forth slightly as it got its bearings. Then it lumbered forward, continuing to chew the body in its mouth as it went back to the pile for more.

Once she was satisfied that no one had noticed her emerge from the thing, Sahveniah silently and quickly made her way through the treeline toward the ship. She kept one eye on the line of troops to make sure nothing changed, while continuing to stalk her target. That soldier had made his way around most of the ship by then. He seemed to be scanning it with a portable device, making notes on the holographic screen that popped up in between murmuring to himself.

Whatever he was doing with all that, it left the man rather distracted. Which worked for her. Sahveniah crouched silent and motionless in the thick foliage, watching his approach. A touch of her fingers to her waistband and a single whispered, almost silent word had activated the camouflage spell there, making her almost entirely invisible. She wasn't the best at magic, having learned how to use it only in the few years since their benefactor had freed Savvy and her companions. But she knew enough to make this work. Besides, if that benefactor's information was correct, none of these people knew anything about magic either. It didn't really exist in this time period.

Once the man was close enough, she didn't waste any more time. Springing silently from the bushes, Sahveniah caught hold of him, possessing the figure instantly. Before anyone could notice there was anything wrong, she had control, shoving his personality out of the way. Already, she was searching his memory for anything he knew about what Wreth was doing.

She had been right. Wreth was up on one of those ships, at least for the moment. He would be descending at the head of his first exploratory force momentarily, leading a scouting group through the rift to establish a beachhead. That beachhead would one day become the cornerstone of Wreth's universe-spanning Empire.

Or it would have been. But not now. Not this time. Wreth wasn't going through that rift. She wouldn't let it happen. He was going to die here.

It didn't take long before the shuttles began to descend. Savvy watched them approach, while more and more of the soldiers lined up along this field, leaving a wide path for Wreth and his scouting force to take straight to the lake. There was a boat here already waiting to take them down to the rift itself. They could have done all this much more efficiently, but this was all about putting on a show. Wreth wanted his people to see him take a triumphant march into the future. He even had a dozen of his troops utilizing their built-in cameras to send the feed across the rest of his territory through the galaxy.

Which just meant all his people would see him die.

There he was, the man himself. He looked different now than he would in the future, smaller, his body still somewhat biological. But it was him. He was flanked by thirty heavily-armed troops on either side as he descended from that first shuttle and began the parade march through the path created by the rest of these soldiers.

She was surrounded by enemies who would kill her in an instant. There would only be one chance at this. If she failed, if she missed, it was over.

She wouldn't miss.

The man was taking his time, playing up the moment for the cameras and his troops. For a couple minutes, Sahveniah was left standing there in her stolen body, doing her best to blend in and look just as excited as the rest, just as cheerful and triumphant. She watched him get closer… closer…

There. He looked at her host, his eyes passing over her completely unaware, his smile casual. Their gazes met only briefly, then he looked on without even the slightest hint of suspicion, turning his attention to the next soldier down the line while taking another step.

It was his last step. Sahveniah erupted from her host, her energy-form quickly solidifying as she slammed into the man responsible for so much horror and tragedy. Her knife was there, driven deep into his throat and up through his brain. A single word triggered the spell on it, the most powerful bit of immolation magic that her entire group was capable of putting together. They had wanted to be absolutely certain there would be nothing left of him.

There wasn't. His body instantly disintegrated. One second he had been completely fine, and in the next, Sahveniah was lying on the ground in the ashes of the man who would, in another timeline, have ruled the universe for hundreds of thousands of years.

She expected to die. Or be erased as the timeline adjusted. There had been talk of the energy from the time rift crystal keeping her personally alive and unchanged, but she was never convinced. And even if it was true, there were hundreds of troops around her who had just seen her kill their leader. Her eyes closed as she lay in Wreth's ashes, breathing in the scent of his death while awaiting her own.

It didn't come. Nothing came. Nothing, that was, aside from a strange, high-pitched whistle accompanied by a series of heavy thumps. Slowly, Sahveniah lifted her head to look around. The soldiers, all of them, were dead. They collapsed to the ground, all the way down the line to the lake. Hundreds of troops were falling just like that.

"It's done." The voice startled her, and she rolled over to look up at a humanoid figure in sleek red and gold metallic armor. He wore a matching helmet that covered his entire head and face, leaving nothing exposed. His eyes were sealed behind gold lenses.

It was their benefactor, the mysterious figure who had saved Sahveniah and the others, who taught them to fight, who set all of this up. None of them had ever seen him outside of that armor and helmet, but they owed everything to him. The entire universe owed everything to him.

"You're here?" she managed a bit weakly.

"Yes, we are," came the response, while he reached down to take her hand, pulling the woman to her feet. "We're sorry you had to do that most important part yourself. Out of all of the simulations we ran of ourselves attempting this approach, Wreth managed to escape in thirty-nine percent. An unacceptable figure. Your stealth attack held an eighty-three percent success probability. Not perfect, but better than ours."

Looking around the field of dead troops, Savvy hesitated before asking, "What happens now? He's dead. He is dead, right? That wasn't a trick."

"He is dead," the other figure confirmed. "And now, we will take a journey through the timeline, to see what has actually changed." Even as he said that, the man was reaching up to touch his helmet. With a hiss, the thing parted, opening to reveal his face to her for the first time.

"And hope that the universe we have created is one that all our descendants can thrive in," announced Cronus.