"You fucking coward," the youngest daughter of the old Li Patriarch screams after Li Markuth's arc of fire cuts off both her legs at the knee. The blood loss will kill her soon. "Coming here, down to fight us instead of the immortals in the worlds after this one. Pathetic fucking worm."

That annoys him. The little brat has no idea whose eye he's spitting in by being here at all. The Abidan have the power to unmake worlds and here he is, conquering their Cradle.

A pulse of Song arises from him, screaming in the ears of the Jades around him. He wants them in pain. In the time they're distracted, writhing on the ground in agony, he moves. He picks up the stupid little brat by the throat and squeezes. 

"Care to say that again?"

Lindon is never going to get a better moment than this.

He hurts, but that horrible noise wasn't directed at him. Something that would incapacitate a Jade would kill him, and with him half of the audience that Lindon is realizing Markuth wants.

Lindon can move.

He remembers what happened when he struck his father. His Iron father.

It was just a moment, but it worked. Even though his father was two stages past him. It worked. His father stood still to take it, but Li Markuth sure is standing still right now, isn't he?

Li Markuth is farther beyond him. Far enough it won't work, almost certainly. Certainly not with this many stages between them.

Luckily, he has a trick up his sleeve for that.

He relaxes his grip on the little brat's throat.

"Please, if you have something to say, I'm listening."

His Will squeezes down on her. Letting her feel just how much more powerful than her he is.

She snarls at him and tries to form words, but she can't.

He's too weak to be worth bothering with. Too weak to pay attention to.

Too weak to notice, as he approaches Li Markuth from behind.

He swirls his madra, feeble as it is, around his core. Swirls and swirls. And then, as he pulls back his arm for an Empty Palm, he begins to advance to Copper. His core compresses farther and farther until he feels like it should surely be shining. It feels like something is wrong. He would flinch back, stop, if he didn't know this is what it's supposed to feel like.

His hand moves forward. His Empty Palm rises.

His core compresses down to a single point. It lights.

He advances to Copper as his palm strikes Li Markuth's body.

His own body begins to go limp. Advancing often does that to a sacred artist. But it isn't his body which he needs to control now, and what does it matter if this damages his spirit? If it works he'll be a legend in the valley for a thousand generations and if it fails he's dead anyway.

He grips his Madra. All of it. More than you're supposed to grab at once. He forces it through his channels. Out of his palm.

And into Li Markuth's core.

A little gnat strikes at him. Pure madra strikes his core and washes over it like water, doing nothing at all. He idly backhands the little moron and continues squeezing the throat of the annoying little brat who slandered him.

"Say something. Go on."

Lindon looks up at Li Markuth from the ground. Actually, much more over at than up at. He's- oh, his back is to the side of the arena. Markuth struck him and he flew. Kind of a long way.

He tries to move his legs.

He can't. He blinks in confusion and looks down.

They- they aren't there?

Oh. There they are. A dozen feet away.

Oh. So it was a dream after all, then.

Thank goodness.

Lindon lets out a sigh of relief, closes his eyes, and dies.

Suriel usually doesn't listen to prayers. There are so many. So many prayers, from so many worlds. So many hurts she's sworn not to fix.

So, when she senses a spatial violation on Cradle while she floats in vacuum above the world putting off hunting down Ozriel, her absent friend, she lets herself listen.

She lets herself listen.

Heavens above I hope he's merciful.

Please, please, please, make him friendly.

Gods above I hope he's not as strong as he feels.

Help my daddy win!

Great Judge, when I die here today find me worthy to pass into the company of my ancestors.

Heavens, grant me strength.

Keep my brother safe.

Lords of the firmament above, strike down this wickedness.

Give me daddy back. Put him back together.

Just a bit longer, that's all I ask for, just enough time to get back up and swing this old sword one more time. Just that much more time before you take me. That's all.

Make it stop hurting. Please, please, make it stop. I'll do anything if you just make it stop.

Please let this be a dream.

Who says prayers aren't answered? Today, just this once? When the hurt is something she is allowed to fix?

She saw them all. Saw them stand when they knew it wouldn't work. She sees something in them she wishes she saw more of. She sees in them the exact thing the Abidan is designed to protect. The weak standing against the strong. One boy in particular catches her eye more than the rest. The Foundation boy who advances to Copper just as his strike hits. She can see in his mind that he knows it's pointless. She can see his decision to do the impossible anyway, just in case he's wrong. 

She's so, so glad she gets to save them all.

She arrives and time stops. Markuth is frozen in place. Around him, time goes backwards. Moment by moment, the damage unmade, the hurt undone. The damage to fate itself healed as the action violating it is removed from history. Finally, finally, the Phoenix gets to fulfill her purpose. There is no politicking here. No complex weave of tradeoffs to navigate. The Eledari Pact is not preventing her from acting. No, there is simply a hurt in front of her. A hurt she is allowed to fix.

She looks into the boy's future on a whim.

She sees- something wrong.

Something very, very wrong.

Fate twists around him. It isn't broken, somehow, despite it all. It should be.

She can see one future. An old one, faded, fake and also so much more real than reality itself. He doesn't advance to Copper in this upcoming match. No, he's nowhere close. It takes him years. He grows old in the valley, never meeting Yerin. He makes Iron. He's allowed to marry a crippled girl from outside Sacred Valley, despite the laws against such things. He dies in thirty years in a Dreadgod attack.

Things are different. Very different. The entire history of the valley is different in that future, somehow. Different but the same. It rhymes. 

There is another future wrapped around him, another present, another past.

It wraps around the others here too. Around all of them. On them it's fainter. It's stronger around the boy. Much stronger.

Makiel has theorized, before, that their Way is not the only Way, that there is something above the Way like the Way is above the worlds within it. That it all repeats.

She looks into the current version of the boy's past. 

There is a blank spot in it. The changes are from before that blank spot. It isn't the cause. Retrocausal manipulation on that scale couldn't get past Makiel. But it still shouldn't be there.

As she watches, the old false timeline wrapped around Lindon frays. It comes apart bit by slow bit.

She records it all with her Presence, a semi-sapient construct that follows her commands and can interface with her power. She needs to ensure Makiel can see every instant of this. She suspects that his pastwatching will fail to work on this.

Makiel is the Judge most focused on seeing and reading fate. She hopes he will be able to make sense of this.

In the meantime, she needs to ask the boy some questions. Now, while the Eledari Pact still allows her to act.

Lindon wakes. He blinks. Oh, so it was a-

He sees Li Markuth floating in the air, frozen in place. He watches time itself wind in reverse. Watches wounds knit shut, bodies fly back together.

He knows, with quite a bit of certainty, that he is not dreaming.

He turns. In the center of it all is a woman. She's shorter than him, but she's floating high enough in the air that he's very much looking up at her. Her face is perfectly symmetrical. Wheels swirl in her violet eyes, reminiscent of script circles. Vivid green hair swirls around her, floating as though she's immersed in water.

She's beautiful. Beautiful the same way the sunrise is beautiful. Beautiful the same way salvation is beautiful.

Behind her, he watches the bodies of his family knit themselves back together, his mother coalescing from the air.

He looks back to Li Markuth. Looks into his eyes. His body is frozen but his eyes are twitching back and forth, looking around.

Lindon can see fear in those eyes.

Good.

Suriel watches as the skein of false fate around the boy finishes falling to pieces.

His old fate and his new one come apart here and now. But somehow she doesn't believe what she's seeing will come to pass either. She's never been as good as Makiel at seeing the fate-under-fate but she can feel something here.

It occurs to her that it's likely not a coincidence that she was the one here to see the web of fate around the boy moments before it came apart.

She, Suriel, a Judge on the Court of Seven. She, Suriel, the Phoenix. She, Suriel, the Abidan with the duty of finding Ozriel, Reaper of Worlds.

She sends an emergency message to Makiel and curses herself for not doing it sooner. She gathers her power about her for the ambush that is surely only a moment away.

Moments later she hears Makiel's voice in her ear. 

"I am here. Nothing Outside can see in. Gadrael is shielding the Iteration."

A frisson of fear rushes through her. Three of the Seven, here at once.

Makiel is afraid. What could he possibly fear-

Ah, of course. Ozriel. Makiel never did understand him.

Ozriel wouldn't hurt her. If this is a scheme of his, it's not one aimed at killing her.

"Ask your questions of the boy. The ones that feel right. The things you want to know."

That directive is concerning. Makiel can see a narrow path through fate and is steering her though it.

Well, there's nothing for it but to follow it.

"I have questions I need to ask you, and they may be urgent. I know you've just been through something truly horrible. I am sorry to have to press you for information right now."

She can see how he'll react to that. Seeing that far into the future isn't hard.

She saved him. She saved his family. She saved his home. She can ask him questions. Of course she can ask him questions!

He bows at the waist, pressing his fists together in earnest, unforced respect. Somehow he can tell she wouldn't make him bow. He does it anyway. He wants to.

"Of course. Whatever you need. But first- um- may I know the name of the one who saved me?"