The Tangled Path of Destiny

By Shiva Winters

~* Book 5.5 of the Salak'patan Series *~

History is a strange and dangerous thing, especially when one is an outsider forced to navigate a path through it. For Monorth, a man who has been trapped in the past, his journey to return home has been far from an easy passage through that history. Terrible truths and strange encounters have punctuated his path thus far, but for all the dangers he has faced, nothing can compare to the darkness that lays ahead for him. The Mage war, the very words were enough to stir up the stuff of nightmares long ago and far into the future shaped by those terrible events. It was a time when the old civilization fell and the Monsters of that era tried to destroy any chance at a future, as they tore at the very fabric of reality. It was a terrible darkness that caused untold suffering, destruction, and death and left mental scars that had persisted through many dozens of generations, and it is that very same darkness that lays directly in Monorth's path.

Everything he has been working for, everything that he hopes to achieve, lays beyond the Mage war that now blocks his path towards home. But there is more at risk from that looming shadow than just his own hopes and dreams, because the coming War threatens to destroy everything. Not merely planets and peoples, but the very legacy of the Ancients he promised to help protect and preserve for future generations, all that is and all that was is threatened by the war, and the monsters of the coming age. Though he could hide away from it, let history take its' course, Monorth can not take the easy way out, he can not allow the darkness consume everything he has worked for. If he is to reach home and fulfill his promise, Monorth now must take up the terrible mantle of the Monster and put his life on the line to insure that the future isn't lost, while everything descends into the most terrible madness ever known.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shiva Winters
• Release date: Aug 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301621422

Shiva Winters

I know, I am supposed to come on here and give everyone some deep insight into who I am and the nature of my existence, but for all that I have been writing for better than half my life and have been publishing the results of those efforts for several years, I have not in the past nor will I likely in the future do such a thing. To be perfectly honest, I am simply and without question just not that interesting, personally or professionally, perhaps that is an assessment that is overly humble or unfair, but it's a truth that is nevertheless fundamental. In a day and in the age when seemingly everyone is all too eager to document their every personal detail and display their every passing thought, I personally can find no compelling reason to do the same. Call it a quirk, call it a choice, or call it my own personal form of crazy, but there is me living through the dull-drums of existence and there are my books which at their core are the stories I've told myself over the years, and one category is considerably more interesting to me than the other.When I first started writing, all those years ago, I didn't begin by putting words to a page for profit, or because I had delusions that one day I'd be celebrated for my efforts. I did it because it seemed like it might be a good way to pass the time, and in that moment, though I hardly understood it at that time, I found something when I wasn't looking for it. Since then, as time has passed, and I have honed my abilities, the underlying element of that moment of self-discovery hasn't truly changed, Entertainment. I don't write books because I can, I certainly don't write them for the sake of profit, though there is a glimmer of hope that one day there might be more of that. I write books because it's fun for me, it is my own strange kind of hobby and my own odd form of self-entertainment. And even if were to reach a point on some future day where the scales tip and I feel that this whole attempt to publish the results of my efforts is no longer viable, I will undoubtedly keep writing, if only for my own sake. I first published my books after a long and troubled decision making process, which ultimately weighed out marginally in the favor of the idea, that perhaps because I liked my books a great deal, that perhaps there were people in the world who would find an equal amount of joy in them. While at times there has been good reasons to doubt that belief there have been moments when that belief has proven true.I am not like most writers, that is a truth best acknowledged right up front, I don't write my books thinking to imitate another author with their pulse pounding action, high drama, or unending tension. I write the stories I find interesting, create the worlds I think are cool, to follow the characters I like, through the events that unfold in front of both them and myself as we work our way towards whatever may come. I don't plot out my novels, I don't outline the story, I don't pre-program the dialogue, and often enough even I am surprised by the end of the current chapter as things change on a whim. My books are an organic process that grow and shift, free from over-sight and restrictions and ultimately often lead to place not even I can predict. Whether those who read my books like what comes of my strange hobby is more often than not is my very last concern, and while I might feel compelled to apologize for that being the case, it doesn't or won't change the facts in the end. Each book and each series I write are a result of the page's progress through the succession of each line and paragraph, loyal only to the facts on the page and require only the input of myself as a conduit in allowing those words to progress through their natural courses. So the end results of those efforts often enough take a path not even I expected, but I for one won't and will never change that fact.My books are often strange and unexpected, I feel it is only right to acknowledge this, and there have been some in the past who have taken exception with that fact, angry that I did not meet their expectations. But I did not write my books for them, I wrote them for myself, selfish though that is, and I certainly did not publish my stories for them. Ultimately I publish my books for the small percentage of people who might read them and like them, and for the occasional bits of far flung joy I get from having people tell me how and why they enjoyed something I wrote. If you are one of those readers who starts a book with expectations and the belief that it is the writer's job to meet those expectations, please look elsewhere. But if you are one of those readers who reads simply for the joy of it, without expectations of what you might find, than I hope you will like what I have written.

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The Tangled Path of Destiny

Book 5.5 of the Salak'patan Series

By Shiva Winters

Copyright 2013 Shiva Winters

Smashwords Edition

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is licensed for personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it please return to Smashwords to purchase your own copy. This book may not be copied, reproduced, or distributed without the express written permission of the Author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the Author, and the dedication of the Smashwords staff.

Chapter One: The Rambling Discourse of a Life Unwanted

Causality, it was a funny word with a serious meaning and one that seemed to be in so many ways over-used and abused when discussing a certain subject. Having at one time been numbered among the fiction writers and authors to have to toyed with the idea and tenants of time-travel during those far off years when he had needed only to rely on his imagination to cause trouble, Monorth couldn't help but feel that all of his former colleagues were slowly being consumed by madness. It had always seemed a little confused, a little silly, and very much strange to him that someone would have long ago, or perhaps in the far off future, come up with the idea of traveling into the past to kill their own grandfather. Besides being self-defeating and rather pointless, it had always amused him to think one fractional speck living on a tiny grain of dust, in grand scales of the universe, could somehow do something with such dire consequences as to destroy that universe, much less a part of it. It was a conceit of those fractional beings that even in the grand scheme of a few billion years that it and its' descendants could somehow collectively change that grain of dust in any truly significant way, much less the universe as a whole. It was in truth the same perspective he had taken on grand destinies long before that time, before rejecting the idea. And when taken from that same perspective, so many things like causality, paradoxes, destinies, and fate had all seemed like the tried and true tools of an uncreative mind, and ones usually used by only the worst of authors.

Of course, then again, Monorth had never really expected to find himself trapped 105,000 years in the past, much less stuck few billion years into spans of unknown history. He had certainly never really expected to get caught up in the kind of grand destiny he had denied and ignored for so much of his life. And he really never thought it was even possible he might very well get the chance to kill his own many times great grandfather, or grandmother, even accidentally. While he might still be able to dismiss paradoxes and therefore, in some small way, causality as a myth of the fictionally inclined, he couldn't really ignore destiny and fate any longer since it had already changed the course of his own life several times. However Monorth couldn't exactly say at what point he should stop worrying about just who might be consigned to death around him, much less concern himself over changing the course of future history. For as much as he knew it was smarter, better, wiser, and safer Monorth would not, and in some small ways could not, let the fear of any given act to stop him. Asarian was essentially dead, that being at the heart of the vast planet sized machine charged with maintaining the balance inside the halls and preventing disaster from striking was gone, and he had been gone from that time-line for more than 100,000 years. Besides being some kind of super-force binding together the threads of what he considered reality, Asarian had also been the best possible record of the past, present, and future ever known. It was altogether universally ironic, in so many ways, that at time when Monorth could have used him, and the potential advisory qualities of what he might say, the most, he was gone.

Faced with death, destruction, darkness, demonic forces, the collapse of civilization, the extinction of whole species, monstrously corrupt figures of unlimited power, universal war, and finally more death and darkness, he stood at the threshold of living nightmares. And the one force capable of guiding him through to the other side, much less preventing it all together had passed away into obscurity and neglect. While Jynx 2.0 was there to advise Monorth and she in some small way had access to Asarian's memories, she could not however access his consciousness, his experience, or his perspective, which were entirely different things than what she could summon up through her own shared experiences. And Jynx 1.0 was in many ways like a child, unable to understand much of anything at all, much less comprehend her own existence with any great depth. It was true, she would slowly grow into a being he could not comprehend, and who would at sometime in an unknown future, send a piece of herself back to him at a time when she would become that other version of herself. The math of it was enough to make a sane man cross-eyed, or a crazy man cackle like a little school girl, and he couldn't be sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was very much tempted to do both, at the same time.

While Jynx had since grown from an awkward entity who had little to no understanding of anything beyond her previous existence, as a formless and timeless elemental from a realm of space-time Monorth only barely understood, she was still little more than a child, or perhaps a somewhat naive underdeveloped teenager. Her time with him during much of the past handful of decades, had educated her about the nature of mortal beings, given her insight into their ever changing cultures, and taught her at least something about the nature of reality. But to say that she still had a long road ahead of her was an understatement unequaled in his experience, since the piece of herself she'd later send back into the past, had at least hinted to him that she had waited and watched a vast span of history pass her by as she grew into her more matured form. While the spans of time between him and that time-line, when he hoped she would be discovered, barely even equaled a fraction of the time Asarian had existed. And it was still a span of history 50 times longer than he could expect to live, even if he maintained good health and avoided hazards. Of course these far off possible facts, hardly even mattered where her two current incarnations were concerned, and even less so where her primary version counted.

<> Jynx's soft sweet sounding voice whispered close to his senses, both admonishing him for the dark direction of his thoughts, and silently expressing her concern for him. Why she had originally chosen to entitle him as her parent he had no idea, and while instinct might have had him discouraging the practice he had pushed aside that instinct and accepted that title with a smile instead. He had spent any number of years being called affectionately by that name, and had grown used to the word to the point where he had missed desperately in more recent spans of time. And while he sometimes worried Jynx might not really understand the meaning of that word, it was as accurate enough that the debate would hardly serve either one of them. He was after all the person who was caring for her, helping her to grow up, teaching her, and expanding her horizons.

<> She giggled at him, and was quick to agree with his playful response.

With his own ability to survive, endure, and live long enough to see the other family he had been forced to leave behind highly in doubt, Monorth's primary goal had taken a shift in the recent past. For all the years he had contemplated the seemingly impossible task of dragging his butt back across the spans of history to reach home. He could not simply turn a blind eye to all the barriers that now stood between him and that place he was trying to return too. Some 100,000+ years of half forgotten history, was a hurdle too high for him to jump, and a wall far too thick to punch through, and not even the most far flung magics he had contemplated over recent decades could potentially slow down the steady march of his own aging to simply wait out that amount of history. While that barrier was formidable it was by no means his primary concern, and because of other concerns he had long since acknowledged that his chances of returning home were most likely zero. He, in truth, had come to the conclusion that if he could live just a few years past the dark times ahead, than he could pass into the spirit world safe in the knowledge that his had been a life well lived. This was because the greatest good he might ever be able to accomplish was Jynx herself, and seeing her safely into that far off future when she could both fulfill her own destiny, and the promise he had made to her predecessor was all that mattered.

With Asarian's presence now broken and the planet sized machine one fatal flaw away from self destruction, all of the Salak'patan was at risk from a disaster they lived ignorance of. If the machine's automated systems failed before a being capable of replacing him was ready, the stable 'reality' of the Salak'patan would fracture. The spells that made the Halls possible were far from a perfected thing, they were in truth unstable, random, and as imperfect as anything he might have named. In order for them to connect to all the worlds, all the cultures, peoples, and governments acknowledged throughout history, those spells needed a guiding, stabilizing force, of which Asarian had provided. Without him the Salak'patan would be fractured as the Halls became a chaos of disconnected, randomly shifting spells that would never be the same twice.

Jynx was in part a promise Monorth had in many ways unwillingly made to Asarian all those years ago, she was an entity unlike any other ever discovered, and potentially that force that might be able to replace him. This was why Monorth had willingly left behind his other family, his other home, in order to offer that far of future he had left behind the slim chance that their future would not be a brief one filled with all manner of disasters, and a culture doomed to be forever broken. Jynx was the most important thing he might ever do, and she was in so many ways that all important destiny he had known nothing about. But to see Jynx settled safely into the future was as far from being an easy thing as anything else he might have tried to name. Though he could easily have installed her on some world with everything she would have needed to mature into the being she would one day be at that point in time, much less in the long ago past, history was never so simple a thing. Between them and the time-line that would need her the most, was a darkness that was in many ways worse than any other ever known. Called simply the 'Mage war', by the survivors and descendants to have lived beyond those dark days, it was the barrier to Jynx's future, and his own, that surpassed any other. That span of forgotten history was a time when the old civilization would literally shred itself into tiny bleeding chunks and would leave a fractured chaos in its' wake.

Though most of the facts behind it and the events that were a part of it were lost, it was historically acknowledged that the trigger for so much death, destruction, and darkness was the unintentional unlocking of the knowledge of the Ancient's before the time was right. This single event gave birth to the so called 'Great mages', warped beings whose pursuit of power and control would be the driving force behind the war. Through that unclean influence society would be fractured, worlds would be destroyed, and entire races of people would become extinct. And when the war came to an abrupt end, it would leave behind a fragmented chaos of survivors who would be forced to forget much of those facts simply so they could survive the shadowed age to follow. This war with all of its' unknowns was both the reason Monorth could not take the easy way out and let himself fade into history, and it was the greatest threat to Jynx and the importance she would have to the future. He could not have simply left her in the past for the same reason, nor could he do it in the current time-line. In order to insure Jynx safely reached the future and that time when she could fulfill the promise of all that she might become, he had to see to it that she reached the far side of the Mage war undiscovered, and unthreatened. Were she to be found before that time she could potentially become the greatest weapon ever known, one capable of destroying everything, not simply worlds or peoples. She could be warped into a thing that might very well fracture reality and cause destruction on such a scale that everything would be ripped apart and would wither away into nothing.

However life, especially his life, was so rarely simple and straightforward, for all that he knew that the safest, wisest, and perhaps best thing he could do would be to find a planet certain to survive the war, burrow down deep, and embed himself in a fortress-like pocket of the forgotten, Monorth knew only too well what the result would be. If he tried to hide them both away, close his eyes and ears to what was happening on a billion worlds around them while he waited for history to pass them by, he knew he would slowly but surely go stark raving mad, these were the simple undeniable facts of it. Perhaps if he was an entirely different person he could do such a thing and turn a blind eye to all the death and suffering about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting civilization. But then again if he were such a person he would never have been in that situation to begin with, because he would never have acknowledged nearly a century before that his friends had been suffering and gone off to trigger that first singular event that had set his life on such a course once upon another time back on Earth. Even still the mere thought of not simply hiding away with the Mage war about to come ripping through the Halls, was a thought that severely reduced his chance of surviving to see the far side of it. The idea of actually getting involved in those events nearly took his chances of survival to zero, and the mere whisper of contemplation that he might get involved with the goal of trying to help as many people as he could, all but doomed him to a violent death in the near future.

This was because in order to make even the most insignificant difference in the dark times ahead, Monorth must be able to withstand the incomprehensible forces of the 'Great mages', and to do that he must be numbered as one of them. It was a move and a direction he tried very hard not to think about, since he had so very long ago come close to the point of unthinking hatred for those vague figures of history. In the time-line where his family and home existed, it had been impossible not to acknowledge the terrible cost of that war, nor come to hate those responsible for it. The whole of that society and culture was affected by that legacy each and every day, whether that fact was acknowledged or not. Any weapon more modern or deadly than a sword or bow had been outlawed because of that war, most every world had carried the faded scars of some part of that war, and there was an inherent fear of both the unknown and of pursuing the knowledge of past cultures because of that war. The whole of the Salak'patan had been, or rather would be, affected by the faded memory and terrible costs of that war, and the war would continue to affect that time-line far into that unknown future. The scars of the war might very well never fade or be completely forgotten, because to let that happen might very well be the trigger that would cause the reality they knew to blink out of existence once and for all time. However much his own personal feelings might tell him that stepping beyond that fine line between hero and monster was a bad idea, his own personal sense of justice would not allow him to ignore the coming darkness. There was no cave deep enough, no rock thick enough that he could hide away and ignore the sounds of suffering that were coming, not even if he stuck his fingers in his ears and sang nonsensical songs at full volume.

But this course of action presented a planet sized bundle of problems, and potential problems, not the least of which was surviving the darkness sane enough to fulfill his promise to Asarian. Though he could potentially sit down and spend months just listing the billions of problems and issues he now had to face head on. It was all together unlike Monorth to spend an overabundance of time worrying over the details when the broader picture was horrifyingly tangled and over-packed. He ultimately could only do so many things at a time, let alone tear himself in so many directions, and each minute spent trying to contemplate the 'could be's' was the equivalent of an hour wasted doing something that might help him face the most immediate of that massive bundle'o'trouble that was about to be dropped on all their heads. And while he had hesitated over the idea of trying to find a way to prevent the war all together, that thought was ultimately rejected having neither the historical knowledge to be in the right time or place to cut off the serpents' head, much less the belief that it could even be prevented. During the many months spent in the backlog of forgotten history with the ancestors of the current generation, he had been forced to acknowledge that some kind of war was in many ways inevitable. Those fragmented and contrary peoples had as a whole had been seemingly inclined to violence. They had begun wars over the most petty and insignificant of things, and continued those wars seemingly without end, and well beyond the point of good sense.

No if Monorth was to do anything and to be in a position to do that something, he needed make it absolutely certain that he would be in the right time and the right place to be among the first of the Great Mages to ascend to power. He could not afford to be among the last if he hoped to serve the greater good, and he could not afford to have rivals on all sides if he was to have any hope of harnessing and understanding whatever that power was, in time to help those who were in the greatest need. But that need begged the question of how he could possibly do that, for all that he had some idea of what object would ultimately trigger the coming darkness, he had not cared enough in those long ago days to ask when or where those objects would be found. Though he had contemplated, briefly, simply sneaking himself into Academia and the universities and institutions that were slowly rediscovering all that the Ancients had left behind. It was a path he ultimately had to reject, without at least some clue as to the direction of his quarry, there was simply too many factors that would prevent him from being in the right time and place to be one of the discoverers of that dangerous object. So many of the other paths he could take towards those goals were rejected, and for many of the same reasons, and were discarded just as quickly. Ultimately it was the path Monorth liked the least that made the most sense, and it was all together the very same reason his thoughts were filled with darkness at that time.

It almost went without saying that if that first dangerous object that would unlock the spiraling path towards hell, had come first into the hands of someone with a strong spirit filled with noble intentions, the war would never have happened. And by the same turning thought it was easy to acknowledge that the reason an advanced culture could so quickly and completely descend into a state of terrible widespread war, was because that key had fallen very much into the wrong set of hands. It was an old axiom of Earth that 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.', and though that world had been all together backwards and in many ways primitive compared to the societies of the Halls, it was nevertheless a timeless truth in so many ways. Therefore if Monorth was to position himself in that time and place where he could gain whatever power or knowledge was behind the rise of the Great mages, then he needed to be right in the heart of the corruption that existed in virtually every society. And this realization was what had narrowed the vast fields of possibilities down to fundamental facts, in most modern societies there were two forms of power, political and financial. While any number of governments could be in so many ways the most corrupt and evil of things, Monorth had again turned to the vagaries and half remembered truths to survive the course of history for guidance. Though governments were ultimately 'in power' it was said in those unclear histories that the corruption that gave rise to the Great mages had spread quickly across that previous society. Any single government given the key to ultimate power would by its' very nature do everything it could to prevent their rivals and adversaries from gaining that same power. So, though not simple, by the process of elimination Monorth was given a single path and a single target on which he could focus his efforts.

In the grand conclusion it really only made sense that those with great wealth would be among the first who would be 'in the know' and the first to gain the ultimate power. The vast sums of money they could command were a nexus, a focal point, by which all manner of things would be brought to them. They would be the investors people would turn to in order to fund archaeological digs of all kinds, they would be the bank rolls for the researches who would be needed to find unlock that knowledge, and they would own the companies who in turn owned the worlds where those things would be discovered. And by the 'virtue' of these very facts, they would be the people who felt themselves the most deserving of that ultimate power. Though they would be as reluctant as any government to share that power with others, none of those vague entities operated solely alone, this too was a fact of life inside a modern culture. Such people were a part of the elite and the upper echelons of a given society, all aware of their rivals and potential allies, all in so many ways set apart from the majority of a given population, and in turn forced to congregate together with those most like them. And together they formed a tangled net of individuals who were both rivals and allies, who hid their fangs and claws beneath a veneer of polite civility. So while it would have been in so many ways far easier to insert himself into Academia or a government body, and he would have gladly accepted either course if he thought for a moment it had a chance of working in his favor, despite his distaste for those things. High society, was in truth the very thing Monorth despised more than most everything he could have named. Not because of the manners, the contentious nature of such groups, or even the kinds of people so often found inside such groups, but because of the source of that frothy kind of wrong, money.

Monorth had already, in truth, spent decades contemplating all of this and so much more, having been set on that course a half dozen decades before when he had reluctantly accepted the need that he would have to bring Asarian's replacement into being. So while he had long ago come to all of the same conclusions a very long time before, now he was actually faced with the first steps down such a dark path. But despite this and the knowledge that he would need vast mounded piles of treasure and wealth if he was to have any hope of following such a course, he had hesitated often to take steps towards those needs. The Ancients had very little need for wealth beyond the ordinary need of having a common currency for trade, but they had not, like later cultures, come to look at accumulating wealth as a worthwhile pursuit. Nor had they valued the same things, their coins were often enough made from stones, wood, or common metals. They had not treated precious metals, gemstones, or other 'valuable' objects as a basis for their economy, rather such things were all together more valued for their usefulness as components in technologies, more often than not, meant to benefit everyone rather than the privileged. But even knowing all of that Monorth, his long standing and intense distaste for wealth of any kind, had not allowed him to simply ask them for great heaping mounds of objects valued in later history. Considering what he had done for them and the views they took on such things, Monorth had no doubt what their response would have been, and might have been concerned that even his strongest spells would be strong enough to carry their generous contributions to his cause. All things considered Monorth had known it was unwise for him to move forward into the time-line as anything less than fully prepared for what he might find, but somehow it had seemed all together wrong to ask that of them. The heavens knew he was stepping into a history when he might very well have to do horrible things in order to achieve his goals, and had felt that he did not need to add to his sins.

Convinced by his own sometimes twisted moral code to move forward without the mountains of treasure that would have insured an easy transition into the path of the wicked he must follow, Monorth had eased that worry by telling himself he would find a way into the halls of the wealthy by other means. However as it turned out there was no need to scour the unexplored halls for some abandoned city to pillage, nor did he have to make some fantastical life-altering invention. It was Jynx 2.0's solution to both his problem and hers that would buy him into the world of the elite, and in some small way his own cleverness that insured him the time he needed to do it. When Monorth had encountered his own future self in the still distant past, that other Monorth had been smart enough to specify that he would see his own past self to a point in history twenty years before the war reached full swing, and a year before the machine planet would be discovered by explorers of that time-line. When informed of this impending event it was Jynx 2.0, who had been quick to suggest that 'something' be done to disable huge chunks of the machinery around her. While Monorth was initially against the idea, even if he had just enough reason to fear the consequences of someone unlocking even a small portion of that massive tangle of technology. But she had eventually won him over to the idea that massive portions of the machine could be disabled, without further compromising the still vital operating components.

He had spent the whole of that year ripping out massive chunks of the machine he had spent past decades trying to maintain, it was this impossibly huge tonnage of scrapped materials that had been the answer to his own needs. Trillions of tons of common metals had been extracted, billions of tons of precious metals had been pried out along with it. And what had ultimately amounted to a whole planet's worth of resources had been ripped out of the machine, before being carried to an even more distant point in the Halls. He was now in possession of a treasure of refined minerals in many ways greater than what the Ancients might have given him. By the time Monorth had retreated from the machine planet, almost nothing easily accessible had been functional, and that world had been reduced to a near useless state, unless one knew exactly how to do a given thing. Jynx and what was left of those still vital machine sections, had been sealed off behind collapsed regions, miles of twisted tunnels, bulk heads, and traps as devious as his twisted mind could create. She and what remained of Asarian's critical systems had been made as protected and secured as he could make them, and everything else beyond that had been destroyed, broken, or disabled by his rampage of scrap.

While his wealth was in some small way assured, this time-line and society was very much unlike the one he had come from. Though many of the races were the same and in some small way the basis of their beliefs was alike. Unlike that future time-line, Monorth could not simply create himself whatever fictional identity and background he might want. Without a centralized government much less easy access into the systems of a similar powerful unifying force, in that time-line he could simply not appear from nothing one day and not raise all manner of questions that would ultimately lead to defeat and death on his part. He needed more than just a story and a fortune, he needed a back-story and all those big and little facts that went along with such a thing. He was after all trying to penetrate the most inclusive levels of society and to step past those closed and locked doorways, so that he could be recruited by the worst, most corrupt figures he could find within those upper ranks. There was not a one of those people who would hesitate for a heartbeat to run background checks on whomever touched the fringes of their realms, and they would think nothing of spending vast sums of money to hire investigators to pry into every detail about anyone they'd actually concern themselves over. This meant that Monorth needed more than just a story that looked good on the surface, he'd literally have to have a life and a history in this time-line. He'd have to have a family, people who remembered him growing up, old girl friends, best friends, jobs, co-workers, records, files, reports, and all the minutia that went along with living in a modern age. In order to have a chance of succeeding in this goal, Monorth could not simply make up the facts as things went along, he would have to insert himself into that world with flawless precision. He would have to make it appear as if had simply been there all along, simply unnoticed until the discovery of his fabulous new wealth brought his proverbial star into ascension.

This of course was far from an easy proposition since he had to meet all manner of requirements both large, small, and medium in order to have everything withstand scrutiny. Most of all he needed a set of circumstances that would reinforce both his back story and his potential usefulness to those he was trying to win favor with, and that further complicated the issue considerably. More than 4 months were wasted away pouring through records, stories, and family histories from all cross the Halls seeking out just such a set of circumstances, and for a time he had despaired that it was even possible. But just about that time when he would have been ready to give up and investigate a less certain, bit more productive way of getting what he wanted and needed for his plan to work, it seemed as if the gods might have nudged things along just a little for the sake of his sanity. Out of the blue he had gotten exactly what he needed the most, almost exactly the kind of scenario he needed so that he could sneak himself into that time-line. Alidar Torva had died without an official heir, leaving the ownership of his families' company in doubt, at least until Monorth had read of their plight.

The families' company, a mining consortium, had four generations previous been high in the ranks of such concerns, wealthy, powerful, and with a great deal of potential. But in all the years to pass from that successful beginning, the company had taken a series of downward turns as they both failed to heed the changing tides of the future, and had suffered from the bad decisions of a mismanagement. By the time Monorth had entered the picture it was little more than an aging skeleton with few prospects and even fewer assets. Alidar Torva had been an adequate manager, and had through his few skills managed to keep the business afloat, despite a series of personal tragedies that had taken his wife and then both of his children. If not for Monorth the company would likely have folded and would have been seized by the banks, or bought out by a larger company so they could sell off what few things of value that were owned by the company. Though it was something that he considered less than moral and a half dozen steps past the line he considered comfortable, both the company assets and the aging set of loyal company employees were few, so the number of people whose memories would have to be altered was blissfully small. Rather than trying to present himself as some unknown but legitimate heir to that broken family line and inheritor of a failing company, it was in some small ways far easier and potentially more useful to make his new fake history less than pleasant. This was for several fairly good reasons, but the biggest of those was that if the demons in a fictional history were right out front, most people would be less motivated to go digging deeper for the shadows everyone had in their past.

Narocin Torva, his new identity, was the illegitimate and unacknowledged child of Alidar Torva and an unmarried servant, who had served in his household during those years when his official wife had been alive and married to him. His infidelity had been hidden from the public at large through bribery and trickery, and had been lucky enough that the much younger woman had died in childbirth. Narocin was taken in by his overly generous and forgiving wife, and had for a period of two years been considered his father's heir, until his adopted mother became pregnant. Cast aside for a legitimate son, Narocin was kept hidden for much of his life and spent most of it far away from the family home at boarding schools on other worlds, keeping the shame he represented at an arm's length. After he had grown and completed his basic education, he had then turned on the father who had been so shamed by the results of his own weakness, threatening to go public with the truth of his birth unless paid off to simply go away. That minor bit of blackmail was the nest egg that Narocin used to create a much more successful company than his father's, one that had handled a variety of services for dozens of worlds out on the edge of the explored Halls. However when his father had died without an official heir, Narocin's goals changed suddenly as he decided to take the ultimate kind of revenge against the father who had hated him for things that were not his fault. He sold his own company to a much larger firm that was expanding their interests farther out, and used that money to bribe, buy off, and otherwise take over the family's company and name.

It was all very official with all the paperwork in place on a dozen worlds, documented and recorded through all the varied means. It had taken more than two months of constant effort to get the whole sordid story into place, and to alter the memories of scores of people. But it was a fiction that would and could stand up to the most intense scrutiny and not give a single clue that all of it was untrue. That other company had been just a bit of convenient timing, that had been altered after the fact to fit into the time-line, as well as provide Monorth with the explanation for what he had needed next. Torva mining was in truth even worse off fiscally than had been apparent from the outside, while they owned the mining rights to four different worlds, those worlds had been all but depleted of worthwhile resources without going to extremes to dig down to the mantle to extract nearly impossible to reach deposits below. The company's equipment was antiquated in the extreme and much of it was non-functional, and if the owner hadn't died the company might well have gone into bankruptcy in just a few more months. However with the new conquering, and unwanted, heir now installed at its' head, and with an official worth great enough to save the failing company, there was every reason why the company could take a sudden upswing towards great wealth and sudden influence. Most of the company's aged workforce was given early retirement, allowing them to quietly settle down where they could be easily found and interviewed by whatever secret investigations that would follow. Their faked memories would provide for all manner of 'intrigue' and 'secrets' about the company's new president, but nothing that wasn't already unofficially known.

Monorth's 'reinvested' wealth was in fact the quietly conducted sale of precious metals he had personally scrapped from the vast stores of recycled materials taken from the machine planet. The sales had been made discretely from at least a hundred different worlds, sources, and sellers, none of which would have any official connection anyone might find. Besides being used to quietly retire the old employees of the company who had one and all only stayed on out of loyalty or desperation, it was invested first and foremost in those things that would make his and the company's prospects swing radically in the other direction. Once everything had been arranged and his back-story was officially marked into the histories and the paperwork of that society, Monorth's first act was to buy the mining rights to a world so distant that it hadn't even been evaluated by the larger mining company's for potential value in terms of what ores could be extracted easily from it. For Monorth that world and the massive investment it represented had mattered not at all, what had been the important factors in its' selection was the extreme distance between it and other planets of interest, and that little had been known about it. There had only been a report by the exploration team about the discovery of giant rough gemstones being seen during their initial investigation, and a few subsequent notes over the flora and fauna found on that world. With that world secured, a fleet of new equipment was purchased and the employee rolls filled with young, adventurous, and trust-worthy people, all of whom had been spelled with extreme discretion to keep them from talking about certain things if tracked down and queried.

While Monorth made certain that planet's natural assets were exploited, opening up three sites to extract the rare and valuable gemstone deposits, the main site and the one he didn't want any of his new employees talking about was to provide the bulk of his sudden wealth. This one was in truth a massive recycling center that would be charged with slicing up, smelting, and producing the massive quantities of newly raw minerals that he had extracted from the machine planet. Those employees especially had been implanted with spells meant to keep those 'mining' efforts under strict secrecy, even from their friends and family. But mostly to ease Monorth's bruised conscious, all his employees were paid well above standard pay rates and should have little worry over of financial issues for all the years still ahead of them. By the end of six months billions of credits worth of material had poured into the markets and the company's fortunes, and his along with it, had skyrocketed. While this would not endear him to any person who was also in the business of mining, all too quickly Monorth's personal assets amounted to a sum that would make even the super wealthy stand up and take notice. Those massive bank rolls could and would open any number of doors merely because he could potentially invest massive sums into other things. And this was ultimately his goal after all that work, with a vast wealth that was growing every day Monorth could officially begin what would be his true occupation during however much time was left to him.

It was that goal that had finally taken him out of obscurity and brought him to what in many ways was the world at the heart of that vast civilization and all the societies that were connected to it. In that time-line that world was called Anilisha, but in a far different time-line it would be called somewhat ubiquitously 'the Center'. In those still far off days that Monorth had first seen it, the Center was the world at the heart of the Salak'patan and that place which held the focal point of the spells that linked all those worlds together through the Halls. In the far distant past that world had been the fortress from which the Black Emperor had spread his reign of terror and destruction. In the near future that world would be a ruin and a place where the terrible cost of the coming war would be made infinitely clear, as every would be power would fight for right to claim that world as their own. In his time-line the Center was barely even occupied, with just a few dozen small settlements spread around the massive western continent. If not for the Great Council and the force of agents that was the military arm charged with maintaining balance and preventing war from consuming the Halls, that world would be little more than a footnote in history. In the time Monorth would have the best chance to come to know a little of that world, that world had been teaming with life and covered over with unspoiled wilderness from practically one end to the other. But it was a far different sight to see in this other time-line, so much so that even Monorth's stubborn ways were forced to call that world by its' other name.

Anilisha was a whole other animal compared to the world he had glimpsed in those other time-lines, and one that staggered his imagination in a way those other time-lines could not have done. If he were ever to have had doubts about the advances, size, and scale of that civilization that was about to fall, Anilisha would have been the only answer he might have needed to see the truth for himself. Long gone was the evidence of the rampant, out of control volcanism that had resurfaced the western continent during the time of the Black Emperor, absent were the vast forested vistas Monorth would later come to know. In its' place was the vast, unbroken sprawl of an urban landscape built on a scale nearly equal to the Stronghold of the Stars at the height of the Ancient's civilization. It was a singular, unending city that literally spread from one end of that vast continent to every other end, it was so large that one would have to venture out into high orbit to see all of it at the same time. And even as that singular city strained to hold all those people within its' confines, off shore floating islands, underwater complexes, and landfill projects all extended the borders of that city beyond its' natural limits. Not even the sky seemed able to constrain that city in the least little way, as there were sky-scrapers so tall they extended up to touch the edge of space, lording their near unattainable heights over vast swaths of the city below. Several hundred billion square miles of city had become the cultural and economic focal point of the Halls, and in so many ways, become that point to which all 'roads' connected.

Though the rampant widespread war that consumed worlds and cultures with conflict Monorth had glimpsed in the past of this civilization had eased during the interim he had skipped over, that vast web of interconnected societies were far from peaceful. Wars were still waged over those now ancient insults and imagined slights, and over cultural and racial differences. However the seemingly unending conflicts had long ago jaded the numerous peoples of the Salak'patan against the deaths of others. In some small way, the constant fighting of their ancestors had shifted focus and become wars of economics and politics, and in this fashion Anilisha had become ground zero, for wars of all kinds. While there was no unifying central force for politics every major government above a certain size had an Embassy within those city limits, and every major corporation had a presence there. Being quite literally at the center point of all the Halls spreading out in every direction, Anilisha had perhaps been always destined to be the focus of any conflict to take place. The world itself had somehow maintained its' independence and was free from any other outside influence, making it one the very few and extremely rare neutral worlds within the borders of the conflicting civilizations around it. This too had in many ways made it a hub for political intrigue and economic in-fighting. But being a vast city where in some small way 'all were welcome' had also made it the focal point of the culture and society, that existed above and beyond governments and races. So there was perhaps no better world from which Monorth could seek out his long term goals, and few reasons, beyond his distaste for High society, not to launch his campaign from inside the heart of that doomed super-city.

In so many ways Torva's move from his ancestral home to Anilisha's only city, called with a spectacular lack of creativity, New Anilisha, was the thing that was expected of him as a new-found member of the super rich. Almost as soon as the turn in the company's fortunes had become public knowledge, he had started receiving invitations to the city by those who thought to gain his favor and access to his new mass of disposable wealth. Monorth took one of the massive and ludicrously expensive mansion in the 'right part' of the city as his own, he had it decorated by the most expensive designer in the city. He then made a massive spectacle of moving his household into the neighborhood, which was in so many ways was a faked event, involving empty moving trucks and crews of men who were well paid to look busy. And then as was expected, his Debut was in so many ways an expression of all the big and little things he personally hated, and would now face daily in greater and lesser fashions. Pomp, circumstance, and continuous events, from the arrival of new foods, new entertainments, and endless talking throughout all these minor things. Nothing cost less than the very premium, from the chefs, to the serving staff, to their director, through the food, the dishes, the beverages, the decorations, the set-up and tear down staff, nor the 'praise' and press reporters and their teams. All told the entire Masquerade and Event cost the price of two planets. But nothing could compare to the praise given for his first entertainment, nor the sudden number of 'friends' he suddenly had when the mess had been cleaned and that house had become now a quiet somewhat empty space.

What do you think happens to this city, Daddy? Jynx asked of him choosing as she so rarely did to use her other voice, and therefore something that could be overheard were there anyone else nearby, in other words she wanted to a little of his attention. She was suddenly something far less than a projected image and a disembodied voice in his head, and her sudden substance was in many ways some of the most advanced magics he had ever attempted. While her changed presence was separate from those advanced magics in some small way, adding her into his life was a matter of little choice and necessity both.

This city will be destroyed almost completely, if this whole continent is not taken back to the bedrock, I'd be surprised. Monorth rumbled back to her calmly, for whatever reason she smirked back at him across the back of the oversized stretched luxury air-car. After which her eyes turned out the the far window and her eyes closed, for a moment it was as if she was listening to voices he could not hear, and this might very well be the case. For all that he might be considered gifted in many circles and disciplines, she had long since surpassed him and might be able to communicate across a space he could not contemplate. When she seemed to come back to herself her eyes were open and on his instantly as if confused and wondering if she had been watched that whole time. He smirked at her and looked away and nodded to that massive thing in the far distance behind the automated driving systems and the open window looking straight ahead behind that empty front seat and the outside of the fast moving craft. Her eyes widened and was suddenly climbing up into the front seat to duck down to peer up through the curved slope of the windshield at that seemingly straight object rising into the sky and disappearing into that unbelievable distance above, their car had already departed the elevation where it was safe to breath the air outside the cabin. They were aiming for the very edge at which it was safe to fly and where the curvature of the planet was safely visible from the comfort of the cabin. After which the rest of the journey would be conducted from inside the tower as they aimed for the very top near to that point where one could simply step off and into space. Unlike the civilization to follow, the ability to willy-nilly step off into space and be carried to some distant point of the halls was a technology long in use by this civilization. The Halls of his time were only just being in the process of mapping the Salak'patan from space, and the technology brought into use by the Marza was still new and tremendously expensive.

His investigations into the limits of magic had continued, and since he had already been carrying a passenger whose very existence would need to be insured in the matter of his likely death those investigations had taken a surprising turn. Her life and survival into the future above all needed to be insured, and the only place safe for her was at his side or hidden in a place that could only be reached in a moment of pure energy. But until she was taken to a time beyond the Mage war, there was no safe ground, so until that changed she needed always to be at his side. The only other alternative would to be to hide her in a place no single act of magic could reach, at least not a mortal act of magic. So it was that he had linked her core with his very own life force, in essence fused a part of her to his very soul, binding the two of them together. Should he die she would be transmitted by that sudden burning spark of his released life-energy and taken to the deepest depths of the Stronghold of the Stars where she could safely wait out the future. But this act of magic had the side effects of giving her life and substance that was more than even the greatest of illusions, making it possible for her to become in essence a real person. Her role as his daughter was both troubling and potentially a mistake, but it was also something that was the answer to a thing he had lacked for the first time in a very long time, a second pair of ears to hear things he might normally miss. At first that role had been fulfilled by his sister, Sarath, then by his long absent and dearly missed companion Nix, then it had been Ferin. At no other time in his life could he have used a partner more than he did just then, someone to watch his back, and keep him on his toes when trouble was near. And as much as it was a risk, Jynx was the only one who was even remotely capable of fulfilling that role at that time and in that place when danger was close at hand. Jynx was to play the role of his daughter, a girl of about ten years old, and one who would both be his heir and his potential partner in crime for the years ahead of them.

What's it going to be like, Daddy? He could perhaps only smirk at being addressed as such even though there were in many ways that entitlement was inaccurate, but she had done this almost as soon as she could speak more than a few words they both could understand, and for the purposes of their back-story she was in fact his daughter. Her question was asked as the air car began the long upward spiral that spun them around that rising tower as it aimed for their point of debarkation in the tower high above.

The ride up, or our destination? He asked of her as his eyes dropped to meet hers as she peered over the back of the front seat. For all that he had accepted nearly two dozen invitations since his arrival on that world, this was the first time that Jynx specifically had been invited by one of her peers among the cities' Elite. Her response to his question was as much her answer as it need be, before the spells now interconnecting them vibrated for simply a heartbeat before becoming quiet once more. This was that strange but now recognizable form of her her true amusement and not simply the polite form of the sound she gave most attempts at humor. I have little idea, Imp. I would have thought swords were a lost art in this culture.. She gave him a sad smile as she in turn felt the deep longing he felt at moment for the time-lines and families he had left behind, twice now. "Anyways, I can only imagine that this is some attempt by some of the players of the grander game to find insights into we two, so we must be careful.

Of course, Daddy. She agreed happily before turning back to the windows. Only too often Monorth had been forced to recall the decade he had spent working as an undercover agent of the Center in those most recent weeks. Thief, brigand, spy, infiltrator, and a thousand different roles in between had been in constant rotation as his job title had changed with each mission. Only one thing had remained unchanged during all of those years, this was that danger was around him, at all times, and everything he did or said was watched closely for the tiniest thing that was out of place. While death was not in fact an immediate consequence of any given mistake, the stakes had never been any higher where everything was concerned. But that ultra-taut, high tension sense that had permeated those years, was present at nearly all times now, and that made those hard won lessons easy to recall. Though there was perhaps plenty of time to find an 'in' towards those future events he sought to be a part of through another means, he had only this one chance to make this one work. A single mistake and nearly two years of work would come crumbling down around them, and despite his recent thoughts he was far less worried about Jynx than he was about himself.

She of course was given the benefit of being a child and therefore mostly innocent in the ways of the world, that status would protect her from any a medium sized oversight. While Monorth himself would have to be perfect in so many ways that his instinct was to try and think as little as possible about all the ways things might go wrong. Even still there was a risk in Jynx's presence that could not be denied, since she was not in fact a 'real' person in the traditional sense. And no matter how many layers of concealing spells he might use there were symptoms of her unusual status, however he very much needed an ally, more proof of his back-story, and someone who could at the very least keep him sane during the times ahead of him. She had been presented in much the same way as he had been during the night of his debut, part and parcel of his household. Though the 'Official' story no doubt varied considerably as it had been spread, the version he had told those who were curious enough to breech protocol to ask, was one that was both tragic and consistent with her lack of records. Jynx was supposedly his daughter and another child born out of wed-lock, sired of a clandestine love affair with a native woman from the world where his families' ancestral home was located. Her people, supposedly, were even less accepting of outsiders than most other races, and who had rejected the peoples who had 'invaded' their world. For her crime Jynx's mother had been cast out by her people, and