Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 10) - Chapter 14 - Talk About Invasive

Xavier opened the door.

A woman stood on the other side. Her hair was blonde and done up in an intricate braid that curled around her head like a crown, making her pointed ears clearly visible. Her features were sharp and soft at the same time. Her eyes were a radiant blue, and though he couldn’t sense a lick of her power something seemed to radiate from them, an energy he couldn’t discern even with his Immortal Soul lens, which still informed him that absolutely nothing was there.

She was beautiful, but it was hard not to be beautiful when you were a powerful being. Though he could admire her, she didn’t hold a candle to his Adranial.

The elven woman smirked at that—almost as though she were listening to his thoughts.

Maybe she is, considering she must be why I can’t feel Roln.

She wore strange, golden robes that shimmered in the light, robes that matched her hair. Her hands were clasped neatly in front of her and if he didn’t know any better, he wouldn’t think this woman all that intimidating.

“Who are you?”

The woman tilted her head up. “Someone you’ve heard of.”

He narrowed his eyes, then widened them. Behind him, he could sense that Adranial had stopped moving. His time dilation field was still large enough to encompass her, but it didn’t seem to be working on her at all. She was now outside his timestream, as though she’d been hit with a Time Prison spell. Yet he hadn’t sensed any energy reaching for her at all. He hadn’t sensed any energy coming from the elven woman either.

How…

“Worry not, no harm will come to the girl.”

The elven woman was outside his time dilation field. He’d made a point of contracting it from the area immediately outside the house. There was no time distortion that Xavier could sense around her. She should have been all but frozen in time. Then again, if he couldn’t sense her, then there was no way he’d be able to sense whatever time distortion she used.

She tilted her head to the side. “I’m not using a time distortion.”

Okay, she’s definitely reading my mind. Talk about invasive. Though I suppose I’ve done the same to my enemies—

The words she said sunk in. If she wasn’t using a time dilation field… but no, that had to be impossible. Even the most powerful beings in this universe were susceptible to getting stuck outside his time dilation fields. If she didn’t have a field of her own or any other type of time distortion, there was no way she’d be able to talk to him at all.

No one could be that fast.

A full smile graced her lips, and it made her look even more beautiful than before. “I’m that fast.”

“You’re a Wanderer.”

It was the only explanation. No one in his universe could pull off what she was doing. Hell, he was quite sure no one in his corner of the multiverse could pull it off either.

Xavier wasn’t using the most powerful time dilation field he’d ever wielded, but this one was the most powerful one he could muster up without pulling energy from his empire to do it. For her to be moving as though she was standing in a normal time stream…

That’s insane. Absolutely insane. Though it might explain how she managed to get here in the first place…

Someone you’ve heard of she’d said.

“Derrida. You’re the leader of Roln’s faction. Roln’s former faction, since you killed him.” Xavier took a step back. This woman had altered his mind on more than one occasion now. And though he no longer had access to Roln, he’d observed more than one of his memories.

This woman could squash him like a bug. The fact that she hadn’t should perhaps have dulled his fear, but it didn’t. For one simple reason…

“You shouldn’t be here. Not by your own rules. Isn’t that why you killed Roln, because he didn’t follow the rules?”

“I’m the one who made the rules. I know when best to… work around them.”

“The other Wanderers watching, won’t they want to stop whatever it is you’re doing? Won’t they see the hypocrisy?”

She tilted her head to the side. “They can’t see this. Just as you’ve blocked the beings in your universe from seeing what happens in your empire and the empires you convert, I’ve now blocked the eyes of everyone outside this universe from seeing what is happening on this planet.”

“That’s…”

The elven woman sighed. “Powerful beyond your imagination?” She waved a hand. “I think we’ve established that. Now, are you going to invite me in?”

“Do I have a choice?”

She smiled again. This time, it didn’t amplify her beauty. This time, it made every one of her features lose their softness and look nothing but sharp. “Everyone always has a choice, Xavier Collins. I’m sure that is something you’ve learnt by now. But we must be careful with what choices we make, shouldn’t we?”

Xavier stepped aside.

He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it one bit.

He held the door open, gripping it so tightly it cracked between his fingers. When she stepped through, he had the impulse to slam it closed behind her, but he hadn’t gotten this far by completely losing control of his emotions every time something didn’t go his way.

The door shut with a soft click. He considered leading her to his dining room, or even the living room. But instead, he found himself leading her down the long hall toward his tower library where he’d just gotten lost in a fever dream of reading.

That was the room that felt most his, and right now he needed that.

His mind whirled with all the possibilities of why this woman might be here. As far as he knew, this woman should be his ally. She’d been the one to place Roln inside his mind. She wanted the universe to be saved. She hadn’t hurt him—nor had she hurt Adranial.

But that didn’t mean he trusted her. This woman had killed Roln without a second thought when he’d done something she ultimately agreed with. When he’d done something she was doing right now. Altering the fate of an entire universe.

That was supposed to be against the very rules she set for her faction of Wanderers, and yet…

And it wasn’t as though she’d asked him his permission to insert the mental construct into his mind. That hadn’t been his choice at all, even if he’d benefited from it in the end.

Xavier sat on the same couch he’d just been reading on. Derrida, the elven Wanderer who’d been around since before the System had been but a thought in its creator’s mind, settled into an armchair across from him.

The woman looked around, her blue eyes raking every inch of the room. “It’s a beautiful collection.”

“Something tells me you didn’t come all this way to complement my library.”

“No,” she replied. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be courteous.”

“Courteous? Like freezing Adranial? Like blocking my Communication Stones? Portals? Teleportation?” Xavier paused. “And Roln.”

“I wanted this to be a private conversation.” She glanced at the doorway. “Adranial will not remember this when the spell on her wears off.”

Xavier released a breath. He figured there was no reason to hide his fear. This woman could see into his mind. Could alter it. Could do… basically anything. He wondered if this was what people weaker than him felt in his presence—considering that was all the things he could do to them.

He’d been feeling so powerful. He’d been feeling… unstoppable. And yet, this woman simply turning up at his door had undone all of that. Right now, he felt like he was nothing. A bug looking up at a boot, wondering if this was when he would be squashed.

He hated the feeling.

“Are you talking to the other versions of me right now?”

He wouldn’t put it past her to have that kind of power. To appear to all of them at once. Thinking of the other versions of him, of the combined power they wielded, he knew that even if they were all together pulling on the power from every single one of their twenty-thousand sectors, they wouldn’t even be able to scratch this woman.

Derrida shook her head. “No. You’re the original. The catalyst. I only came to you.”

Xavier tilted his head up. He found that rather interesting. “The others are just as powerful as I am.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Yes. But that is beside the point. Whatever my reason, I came to talk to you. No one else.” She tilted her head to one side. “Aren’t you curious what I have to say?” The elf smiled.

She knew he was. He was burning with curiosity. But it looked as though she wanted him to say it.

“What do you want with me?”

“I want what you want, Xavier Collins. I want to defeat the Interdimensional Dragon.”

“You mean, you want me to defeat the Interdimensional Dragon.”

Derrida dipped her head. “If I were powerful enough, I would do it myself. I’m not too proud to say I’m not.”

Xavier stared at her a long while. He’d had a lot of thoughts about defeating the Interdimensional Dragon, and what he would need to do to make that happen. He had a feeling Derrida had access to every single one of those thoughts. She was reading his mind right now, after all. Perhaps she’d been reading his mind for a long while.

Which meant, she also knew—

“Yes,” Derrida confirmed. “I know where the Interdimensional Dragon came from. I knew before you did.”

“And yet you still came to me?”

“Don’t think it hasn’t coloured my thinking.”

Xavier shook his head. “What I don’t understand is… why can’t you do what I’m doing?” He waved a hand. “You know what my plans are. You know what’s in my head. And you’re far more powerful than even Roln ever was. You have more knowledge locked in that head of yours than perhaps any other being in the multiverse—do I have that right?”

She nodded.

“Then why can’t you unite a universe? A whole host of universes? Why can’t you create more unfoldings of yourself, more versions of a powerful Wanderer? You know exactly what my plan is. It would be easy enough for you to recreate.”

He wasn’t sure why he was saying these words—he wanted to be the one to do this—but he knew it wasn’t the first time they’d occurred to him. As confident as he was that he would be the one to finally kill the Interdimensional Dragon, there was always a small voice somewhere inside his head telling him how crazy that was. Telling him that if it could be done it would have been done by now. That his plans couldn’t be all that unique. That someone out there must have tried it all before.

Derrida seemed to give this consideration. “It has occurred to me, Xavier. As the stream of your thoughts lead to, the things you intend to do have been thought up before.” He looked away, her eyes seeming to stare straight through the tower library’s walls. “I could take control of an entire universe in a snap.” She clicked her fingers. “It wouldn’t even be hard. I could unite them all toward one cause and one cause alone. That has, in fact, been done before. But it wasn’t enough. And combining multiple universes like you are now? There are empires that span millions of universes. They are powerful. Very powerful. But they are not powerful enough to take on the Interdimensional Dragon, believe me on that.”

Xavier blinked. None of this was all that surprising with just how big the multiverse was, but it certainly made that seed of doubt in him start to sprout. “So, why believe in me?”