Perhaps it was presumptuous to say this woman, a Wanderer who’d been around since before the System, believed in him, but she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t. She wouldn’t have been watching him if she didn’t, either.
“You are unique, Xavier Collins. Even if I recreated everything you’ve done or intend to do, I have come to believe only you can perform this task. Wanderers can grow powerful. Very powerful. But there is a plateau in which each of us hit. I am one of the old ones, the most ancient of beings out there in the multiverse, and I know this to be true. And as to creating unfoldings in the way that you do… I cannot.”
Xavier blinked. He’d already felt a tremendous amount of pressure on his shoulders. The fate of the world. The sector. The universe.
The fate of every universe.
And along the way, he’d tried to let go of any doubt that he would be able to achieve this—a feat impossible in and of itself—but to hear a Wanderer as old and powerful as the woman sitting in one of his armchairs in his tower library saying she’d come to believe that he was the only one who could do this…
Well, in that moment that pressure seemed to double, pushing him down into the couch he sat on, making his shoulders sag. This woman didn’t seem to come to him with confidence. While he looked in her eyes and saw what felt like absolute power, what he felt most from her was a quiet desperation.
Xavier licked his lips. Swallowed. His mouth felt suddenly dry. The mix of emotions he felt, from feeling unstoppable to feeling like nothing more than an ant, then having that pressure double…
He sighed, straightened in his seat, and stared Derrida in the eye.
He had questions.
“What plateau do you hit? And why can’t you break through? What’s stopping you?”
Derrida waved a hand. “That is a lot to explain. Suffice to say, there are things the Interdimensional Dragon is capable of that even a whole generation of Wanderers wasn’t powerful enough to come up against. And that was many years ago.”
“The Interdimensional Dragon has grown stronger since then.”
Derrida inclined her head. “Yes. It’s hard to say how strong it is now. The scale of power it holds within it after all the universes it has consumed…” She shook her head. “It is not something even I know how to measure.”
“What makes you think I can break through this plateau?”
The elven Wanderer peered into his eyes. “Because you’ve done it before.”
“Another version of me has done—” He paused. “You mean, as the Interdimensional Dragon?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to transform into something like that,” he replied firmly.
“Good. I’m not asking you to.”
Xavier had bent forward when he’d snapped off his reply. He leant back into the chair. “There are other versions of me. Other Xavier Collins who have already become Wanderers.”
“None of them are you.”
Xavier shook his head. It was a strange sensation, having this woman think he could do the very thing he planned to do, when she was way beyond him. It was one thing to think it in his own mind, among his friends, allies, and those he ruled… but now he was getting hit with a massive injection of Imposter Syndrome.
None of her answers had been satisfying. He had more questions, but he didn’t think she would give him much of an answer. Though there was one he was burning to ask. “What do you mean, you can’t do the same thing with an unfolding? You must be able to wield the kinds of powers the Spirit of Time can wield.”
“Oh, I have a similar mastery over time. But…” She gave him a sad smile. “My universe is long gone. There are certain constraints even Wanderers have not been able to get past. We are no longer connected to our original universe, because no Wanderer’s universe has survived—that is what it means to be a Wanderer. Not just to have left your home universe, but to not have a home universe to go back to. We can connect certain parts of our being to another time stream, as you do with Pocket Time Stream, but we cannot fully connect our mind, body, and soul to a universe in the way that is required to create an unfolding. And we certainly could not perform such a feat inside the void.”
Xavier bowed his head and thought on what she’d said. There were a few things in his mind that didn’t feel like they added up. “My connection to this universe was lost. Altered… I underwent a massive amount of Universal Pressure when I defeated the Arakashinai Queen. It shattered my cores, and more. It severed my connection to this universe.” He tilted his head to the side, remembering. “Larona. A Seer. She couldn’t see my future because of that.”
Derrida smiled. “You are still connected to this universe, Xavier, but your connection is different now. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there anymore.
Xavier frowned. “I’m not sure I understand. I thought I was… unmoored.”
“In a way, you are. But not in the most fundamental way.” She sighed. “It is a difficult concept to explain, especially since Wanderers only know the effects, not the cause.” Derrida bent forward, resting her elbows on her knees and interlocking her fingers. “When a being’s origin universe dies, this… alters them. This same alteration happens to any being who has experienced this, no matter what they’ve done to change themselves since. The Interdimensional Dragon suffers from this same problem, though few among even Wanderers consider this to be a problem. Wanderers are truly disconnected from our home universe. We are the ones who are unmoored, untethered. When a Wanderer sets foot inside a universe, that universe can no longer have alternates created until the Wanderer leaves. That is one of many reasons I protect so very many universes from the touch of beings from outside. That word you used for yourself was very apt, as many of us call such beings Unmoored.”
Xavier bent his head, considering this. It had… an awful lot of implications.
Many of those implications were ones he didn’t like, but one of those implications made something in his body relax. There was a thought deep in the back of his mind, one he’d been frightened to ever entertain. This small part of him had worried about what might happen if the Interdimensional Dragon were to ever create unfoldings of itself.
What if it multiplied itself?
But it can’t. Because like Wanderers, it’s Unmoored.
“So, right now, with you here, I wouldn’t be able to have the Spirit of Time create another unfolding?”
“Not while I’m inside your universe, no.”
He nodded. Interesting. Very interesting.
Not only interesting—it was more than a little terrifying. If the Interdimensional Dragon were attacking his universe, he wouldn’t be able to benefit from the use of the Spirit of Time. He wouldn’t be able to create more versions of himself.
He tapped his fingers on the arm of the couch. “Roln never told me anything like this.”
“The mental construct in your head might seem like Roln, but it isn’t every memory he held. That is something you have already figured out, of course. There are certain things I left out. There is only so much information I imagined you would be able to handle, even being drip fed by the mental construct as was the plan. Though of course, I know that didn’t go how I foresaw.” Her smile was a sly one. She didn’t seem angry that he’d basically broken through the locks on the construct’s knowledge.
Unmoored. The very idea made him want to create more versions of himself the next moment he could. He supposed it was a good thing that Wanderers couldn’t do this. That beings that powerful couldn’t simply multiply themselves ad infinitum.
But to think an Unmoored being simply being inside his universe meant no alternate versions could be created during that time?
That was a mind-blowing revelation. Something about that inability felt wrong to him, as though it hit his very soul. As though a universe was already dead if alternates couldn’t sprout from it.
“That is why you need me. Because I’m still… Moored.”
“It has always been my belief that only one still connected to a universe will be able to break through the power plateau necessary to defeat the Interdimensional Dragon.”
“But the Interdimensional Dragon didn’t break through while still Moored.”
“Even so. There are things those who are still Moored can do that those Unmoored cannot. Today is not the day I explain what those other things are. Suffice to say, it is important your universe remain intact, not just that you remain alive. That is what other inter-universal empires have gotten wrong over the years. They have transported their populations to new universes when an old one is destroyed. Creating more and more of these universes that cannot have alterations created, stagnating whole sections of the multiverse.” She tilted her head. “Though that isn’t unlike what us Wanderers have done whenever we take residence inside a universe. But what else are we to do?”
Xavier nodded along to what the woman was saying. The fright he’d felt when he’d found this woman at his door and he’d realised all the things that were locked out to him had all but gone away. Now, his mind was working on other things, wondering about what the other differences between those who were Moored and those who were Unmoored were. The woman was certainly right when she said he needed his universe to survive. But even if it didn’t have this consequence, saving his universe had always been the plan.
It also made him wonder about something Roln had told him. That if his universe became too powerful too soon, that there was a chance the Interdimensional Dragon might come earlier than anticipated. But even that fear was only a small one.
After all this talk, he still didn’t have an answer to an earlier question. “Why have you come here? What do you want from me right now? While this little chat has been informative, something tells me you didn’t just come here to talk. You said you want the Interdimensional Dragon defeated.” He opened his hands. “Well, I’m not exactly ready to do that just now. So tell me, why are you here?”
Derrida seemed to peer at him a long time before she answered. “I have debated with myself about whether or not you’re ready for the next step. There is still more you can accomplish in this universe. Still time for you to reach A Grade and S Grade. Still time for you to advance through your Cultivator path. Not only that, you have an entire universe to conquer, and some beings more powerful than Jhanku who will be standing in your way. And yet, at the rate you’re going, with the way you defeated Jhanku, these other steps are becoming… inevitable.”
Xavier was about to open his mouth and ask what she meant by “the next step,” but before he could she raised a hand to stop him and continued talking.
“Tell me something, Xavier, when you defeated Jhanku, was it a challenge?”
Xavier shook his head. “No. It was… easy.”
She nodded. “And expanding your empire to ten sectors, was that a challenge?”
He pursed his lips. “No. But you know that. What are you getting at?”
“Why haven’t you walked further down the path of your advancements? With the time dilation fields you can create, you could have slipped back into the Tower of Champions and pushed yourself to A Grade. You could have pushed your Cultivator Tier to 4, 5, even 6. Why didn’t you do that before facing Jhanku?”
“You can read my mind. You know.”
“I’d rather you tell me.”