The results of the first trunk’s visions bothered Serenity. Part of that was knowing that the Church of Aeons was stealing from Lyka’s World Core, but that wasn’t the real reason. He was past his initial revulsion and could see several reasons for it.

They were all terribly shortsighted but they existed. Humans had a tendency to be shortsighted; it was something you had to learn to accept if you were going to deal with them.

Serenity didn’t notice as he put himself in a different category.

No, the real problem was the fact that he’d gotten useful information out of the vision that applied to the present rather than just to the future. It was obvious that the effort affecting Lyka’s core wasn’t new at all, which meant it was also happening now. It somehow felt wrong to see a vision of the future and learn something about the present.

Serenity knew it happened; Rissa had mentioned it. In fact, she’d said that the best predictions she made about the stock market were based on something that had already happened that simply wasn’t known or factored in yet. Direct consequences of something that had already happened were far more certain than anything else, which made sense.

It still bothered Serenity a little to look at the future for information about the past. It just seemed backwards.

Serenity glanced around at the three trees. “Why are there still three? Shouldn’t one have gone away?”

Rissa shrugged. “We’re still thinking of it as three options. That’s probably all it is. Which do you want to test next?”

Both trying to find Rourke and heading to Aeon to meet with High Priestess Karin seemed like good options. “Should we stay together or split up?”

“Stay together.” Rissa didn’t hesitate at all. “We may see different things, which could be useful, but mostly I don’t want to be too far from you if another Arbiter shows up. I don’t think the woman will any time soon, but that doesn’t mean she won’t tell someone.”

Serenity nodded. That made sense.

The next vision was an exercise in frustration. Rourke never answered Ekari’s note, so after a couple weeks of waiting they snuck into Abiding One.

Abiding One was half-destroyed and overrun with monsters. Unlike the glass rhino Serenity fought on his way back to the Palace, these monsters seemed maddened, attacking anything that moved and many things that didn’t. Traveling was difficult, because they needed to always have a place ready to fall back to when there were too many monsters.

It was when, not if. They were lucky to make it more than a couple of blocks a day; fighting drew more monsters and while they could kill a lot, there were limits.

At one point, Sillon pointed out just how much they could have made by taking the standard Mercenaries’ Guild contract. It was a good laugh but that was all.

There was simply no way to get anywhere quickly.

When they did arrive somewhere with priests, they were told to stay and defend the location. They stayed for a couple of days but Rourke wasn’t there. The priests couldn’t stop them from moving on and were smart enough to not try.

This repeated once or twice a week for long enough that Serenity lost track of time completely. Sometimes the priests fought to keep them there, but most of the time they were simply cussed out.

More than a year had passed - Aide was keeping track - when Serenity felt a shift in the planet. It was losing a Tier. They assumed it meant the monsters had killed enough people that the planet could no longer maintain itself, which meant this was truly a massive disaster.

Months after that, they’d swept all that remained of Abiding One. They still hadn’t found Rourke.

They also hadn’t made any progress on freeing the Church’s captives, but with the loss of life the planet’s Tier shift indicated, there was a good chance there wasn’t anyone to save anymore anyway.

They fought their way back out of Abiding One. When they reached the Visitors’ Palace, they found a note from Rourke. It had been left there months ago and the contact instructions were no longer valid. It seemed like he’d assumed them dead.

There was no reason to stay on Lyka if they could leave.

Traveling to the nearest portal location wasn’t hard; Aide still had it on Serenity's map and there seemed to be no monsters in Abiding Four. It was deserted, like the last time Serenity was there with the two Acolytes. Serenity established a portal and they left.

Serenity shook himself as the vision ended. He was sitting next to Rissa, who was also coming out of a trance. “That was kind of awful.”

Rissa nodded. “Did you see the same thing I did? Everything overrun with monsters until the world shivered, then some priests came with strange greenish beam weapons and cleared out most of the monsters?”

Serenity blinked. “No. We got different visions again. The way you said that, I think I know what those weapons are. Lyka didn’t lose a Tier because of massive death, it lost a Tier because of damage to its Core. The pieces were used to make those weapons. How could I have forgotten what they were doing to the Core? Why didn’t it occur to me during the vision that that was the reason?”

Rissa shrugged. “It was a prophecy. They can be weird; sometimes they don’t seem to follow logic. There’s probably a reason and it just wasn’t covered, but maybe it didn’t take into account what you learned here because we’re still in the Timestream so it’s anchored to the past versions of ourselves. I can’t say for sure because I’ve never gotten to see more than one.”

That sounded like a good guess.

They compared their experiences and it seemed like the appearance of priests with green beam weapons was only the first major difference. In Rissa’s vision, they left Abiding One while it was still being cleared out but found more priests at the Visitor’s Palace. They still decided to leave the planet, but had to fight their way through still more beam-wielding priests to reach the Portal Node.

Ita didn’t make it.

Serenity was glad he didn’t see that possible future.

High Priestess Karin watched the spot where a portal would appear. This was her rest time, but her daughter would arrive soon and it was worth losing rest to see Ekari.

It was especially worth losing rest to see Ekari when it wasn’t a defined public appearance and she wasn’t acting as High Priestess. Karin didn’t allow herself to think of why that was the case; that way lay only pain. Instead, she concentrated on how wonderful it was that Ekari had brought someone to the Church who controlled multiple planets.

They were excellent planets, too. While it was true that one of them was new, Karin had already received word that it was given one of the highest ratings ever given for the end of its First Wave. Those planets were always either future Powers or taken over by one of the Great Powers; either way, it was a rare thing for there to already be a Sovereign, so their success could probably be credited at least partly to the Sovereign’s direction. He must have great control over the planet.

She directed her thoughts away from what it must have taken for a Tier Four to take over Tzintkra; she remembered the planet from her time training there and had an idea how ridiculous that was despite the lack of any remaining deities on the planet. There was no doubt of the fact that he was a dual Sovereign, and that meant he was exactly the kind of person Lykandeon wanted to bring under his banner.

Which also made him potentially perfect for the plans Karin couldn’t even think about. It was too bad he wasn’t also -

Pain rippled through Karin’s thoughts and she forgot what she was thinking of. Ekari would be here soon; that was what mattered.

A portal rippled into existence and six people stepped through it; the seventh one hopped. At least, Karin thought the hopping one was also a person; she simply knew better than to ever say so. It wouldn’t do for a High Priestess to be seen disregarding one of the tenets of the Church, even if they never said it was a tenet. She could read and she knew what Lykandeon did to people who disrespected him. She knew it all too well.

High Priestess Karin smiled formally. “Welcome to Aeon.” Her eyes drifted to her daughter. Ekari’s face and body showed no reaction to her mother’s greeting. It was good to see the training take so well, yet sad at the same time. Karin couldn’t show a response, either. “Please follow me; I’ll lead you to your rooms. We will have a priest show you the sights of Aeon tomorrow …”

The next thing Serenity knew, he was fighting Lykandeon. It didn’t seem out of place; everything had led up to it. They’d spent months preparing and carefully snuck in to execute the plan. To execute Lykandeon. Once he was dead, they would have many more options.

As far as Serenity could tell, they’d caught Lykandeon completely by surprise. Even so, it was not a fight Serenity was ready for. Not really.

The god didn’t take it seriously at all. He laughed and threw small bolts of light at Serenity, taunting him with his inability to damage a god. Serenity could have avoided almost all of them but deliberately took a few on his armor-self, which visibly scorched the armor but didn’t damage it past the surface as long as he made certain the same area wasn’t hit repeatedly before it could heal. He had to waste Lykandeon’s time while Ita took care of the real prize.

It felt like hours but was probably only ten or fifteen minutes before Lykandeon seemed to realize that Serenity simply wasn’t going to fall over.

“How aren’t you dead?” The bolts from Lykandeon increased in both frequency and potency.

Serenity found that if he wanted to have his armor-self heal between hits, he had to vary up where he was hit more and avoid quite a few more bolts. Unlike the Stojan Aith, the previous City Lord of the Necropolis, Lykandeon wasn’t using Death energy. These bolts weren’t at all harmless. On the other hand, he now had his ax; he was able to cut a fair number of them, dissipating the structure of the spell with the antimagic properties of the ax blade.

Serenity didn’t reply; he kept his concentration on the deity in front of him. Lykandeon had settled into a pattern now, and as long as he wasn’t trying to trick Serenity, there would be an opening in less than a moment.

One of the duplicating knives flashed out of Serenity’s off hand to smack into Lykandeon’s main hand; Serenity ran forward in the gap he’d created and smashed his ax on Lykandeon’s shield.

:NOW, ITA: Serenity screamed over their mental connection.

The world turned green.

Serenity opened his eyes to the Timestream. The green light was simply the Sun shining through leaves. Only there weren’t any leaves and the Timestream didn’t have a Sun. Why was it green, then?

The entire sky was green when Serenity looked up, just like the light it shed.

Was it because of the vision? Serenity turned to look at Rissa, but she’d already turned to him and was hugging him. Through her tears, he could make out some words. “Why don’t I remember the plan? What was supposed to happen?”

Serenity patted Rissa on the back. “Why are you crying? What did you see?”

“I don’t know. I just remember thinking that’s not what was supposed to happen, but I don’t know what went wrong. I don’t even know what was supposed to happen!” Rissa sounded more angry than upset.